Getting Started With Facebook Ads
By: Ginger | Posted on September 13, 2019
There’s no denying that Facebook advertising gets results, but with so many options a lot of authors are left confused at how to begin or what types of ads they should be spending their money on. Advertising expert Ginger is back this week to help guide you through the options and give you some examples to help make the process easier to understand and get started on. Because after all, if you aren’t advertising your book, you’re unlikely to achieve the level of success you’re probably hoping for. Understanding Facebook advertising can transform the trajectory of your book – but only if you do it right. If the Russians can allegedly skew the results of the US election through the power of Facebook, you should be able to sell more copies of your books on ‘the social network.’ With nearly 2 billion active users, there’s perhaps no quicker or easier… Read More >
The Author’s Guide to Facebook
By: Ginger | Posted on September 6, 2019
One of the most important but misunderstood tools for an author to use is Facebook. Do you set up an account, or a page? What can you do with it once it’s set up? What do you post? If any of these things have kept you from using Facebook to promote your author brand, our resident advertising and marketing expert Ginger has the answers you’ve been looking for to get started. Don’t hold off on using this powerful marketing platform any longer! Facebook is a powerful tool for authors – here’s how to get started with it. Love it or hate it, but Facebook is here to stay – and as an author, it’s one of the most powerful tools you have for connecting easily, accessibly and meaningfully with your readers. In fact, as an author, if you don’t have an active Facebook page, you’re missing a trick – and,… Read More >
Getting the Most Out of Amazon Advertising
By: Ginger | Posted on August 16, 2019
There’s more to advertising on Amazon than just finding a bunch of great keywords and plunking them down, waiting for the money to roll in. Amazon advertising is a complex system, and the key to squeezing the most profit out of it is in truly understanding how it works. This long and detailed breakdown by advertising expert Ginger does just that, giving you the how and why the system works the way it does, as well as a number of tips and examples to help you get the most out of your keywords and Advertising on Amazon in general. I paid my money – where’s my profit? Like many authors, when Amazon launched their Amazon Marketing Services – now Advertising on Amazon – I was stoked. FINALLY, I’d thought – a way for me to throw money at my books and get them in front of the readers who want… Read More >
Is Amazon taking Author Advertising too far?
By: Ginger | Posted on May 24, 2019
Amazon has been experimenting with their ‘sponsored’ adverts for books – placing them in ever-more prevalent positions throughout a customer’s shopping experience. The question is – have they taken it too far, and have these Amazon advertising spots begun to negatively impact both the success of authors and the reader experience? Ginger gives his opinion on the issue. What do you think? Recently, I was on Amazon organizing my catalog of books – and like I’ve done a thousand times, I typed my pen name into the search bar expecting to see all the books that come up related to it, independent of my Author Profile page. What did I get instead? Two ‘Sponsored’ books, neither of which were mine. My books were there – but ‘beneath the fold’. This means I actually had to scroll down before I’d even get to see any books relevant to the terms I’d… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part Four – PROMOTIONS
By: Ginger | Posted on November 30, 2018
Hitting ‘publish’ on your book is the biggest step in the road towards self-publishing success, but only the first one. In this final part of his four-part series, self-published author Ginger gives a top-level introduction to how to promote your book, using paid and free methods, to get as many potential customers to see it as possible. Last week, we nearly broke the website with a massive post about advertising your self-published books – and we barely scratched the surface! In fact, as reader Erin Wright pointed out, there were other advertising opportunities we hadn’t even explored in that post; like Bookbub. We’ll be revisiting options like that in both the original post and future ones – so stay tuned, and don’t be shy about letting us know what you think we missed! Today, though, we’re going to be looking at the adjacent avenue to advertising: Promotions. There’s some crossover with promotions… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part Three – ADVERTISING
By: Ginger | Posted on November 23, 2018
Writing your book is only the (biggest) first step in the road towards self-publishing success. In a four-part series, self-published author Ginger is giving a top-level introduction to what happens next. Here in part three, he gives an overview of advertising and where you need to focus in order to get all your hard work in front of potential readers. Last week, in part two of this series, we discussed Marketing – an umbrella for all the materials and strategies you need to come up with to put your book in front of potential readers. Today, we’re drilling down into one of the two most important aspects of that; and the one that most new authors have questions about: Advertising. Advertising isn’t something that needs much explanation – each and every day you’re bombarded with countless advertisements for services and products. Advertising is and always has been a ubiquitous presence… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part Two – MARKETING
By: Ginger | Posted on November 16, 2018
As we discussed in part one, actually writing your book is only the first step of your journey as a self-published author. The path to success has many hurdles, but our four-part series aims to clear them all away. In this week’s installment, veteran self-published author Ginger dives in deep, giving you everything you need to know about how to market your book effectively. Last week, I spoke about the importance of marketing and advertising when it comes to your self-publishing career, and recently that’s become more important than ever. In the past, every book page you visited on Amazon was stuffed with thumbnails of ‘also boughts’ – books that were purchased by the same customers who bought the book you’re looking at. Being included in that list was a fantastic – and totally free – way to drive potential customers to your own book. In the last few weeks, Amazon… Read More >
Ginger’s Guide to Marketing & Advertising Your Books: Part One
By: Ginger | Posted on November 9, 2018
Actually writing your book is only the first part of your journey as a self-published author. You’ll have to think about a lot more on your road to success, but resident author Ginger is here to lay it all out for you. This is part one of a four part series, and below Ginger shares some of the basic techniques you need to understand in order to get your book in front of the eyes of potential customers. Links to the next installments are posted at the bottom of this article. Okay, so you’ve written and published a book – that’s the hard part, right? Well – yes and no. Once your book is in print, it’s important to get as many pairs of eyes on it as possible. For a lot of new authors, though, they have no idea where to start – and not much money to waste… Read More >
Minding the Statistics: Key Ad Metrics to Focus On
By: Ginger | Posted on October 13, 2023
Whether you’re diving into Facebook ads or navigating Amazon’s advertising platform, understanding, interpreting and optimizing key ad metrics like CPC, CTR, Conversions, RoAS, Frequency and DPV can make all the difference in your marketing efforts. This week, Ginger is breaking all of these acronyms and confusing terms down as he attempts to lay out the main advertising metrics that authors should be paying attention to – which is in response to a very recent question posed to us via email. Once you have a deeper understanding of how these metrics play a part in the success of your campaign, you’ll be able to fine-tune your ads, maximize your book sales and reach new heights of success. Recently, we received an email from a reader and thought it would be a great topic for a blog post. The email read: I’d love to see a story about “minding the statistics”. Like,… Read More >
How accurate are Attribution Tags in tracking book income?
By: Ginger | Posted on March 17, 2023
Ever since the introduction of Amazon’s Attribution Tags, authors have been able to track the book income resulting from their advertising and promotional campaigns to a level not seen before. This is incredibly useful for determining the value of these campaigns and planning strategies around then. But how accurate are they? In terms of tracking the sales that come directly as a result of a click from one of your attribution links, they’re very accurate, but that doesn’t actually tell the whole story. Even when the only promotion you’re doing is running a campaign with a tracked URL, you may very likely see more sales than are actually being reported. To demonstrate the issue and explain what’s going on, Ginger takes us through an example using an ad campaign he recently ran on one of his own books, complete with all the sales and page read numbers. I’ve been writing… Read More >
