“Why can’t I make money advertising?” – A Common Question from our Mailbox
By: Ginger | Posted on June 12, 2020
Each Friday, we try to post blogs aimed at helping authors get their heads around self-publishing, marketing, and advertising their books. Often, these posts will spark a lot of discussion and debate, and we’ll often receive questions from writers needing a bit of clarification. Here’s a question we’ve received recently – and we hope you find the answer helpful! Dear, Hidden Gems, Whatever happens, I can’t seem to make my advertising profitable. What am I doing wrong? It’s so frustrating to spend more money on advertising than I get in book sales, but otherwise I don’t seem to be getting any traction at all. I’m using Facebook and Advertising on Amazon, but I can’t keep throwing money at it like this. Help! Okay, so if you’re in this boat – you’re not alone! Making any form of advertising profitable is tough, and when you’re marketing ebooks it’s even… Read More >
LinkedIn Advertising – An Overlooked Option for Non-Fiction Authors
By: Ginger | Posted on April 17, 2020
While the overall principles of advertising a book are mainly the same between fiction and non-fiction, it is true that most of our ad and marketing posts are more specifically geared towards writers of fiction. That’s why this week, we’re going to discuss an often overlooked option that is much more suited to writers of non-fiction – and that’s advertising your book on the more professionally oriented social media site LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the professional social network – kind of like Facebook for people in suits. Most of us have a presence there, and because of the way LinkedIn is set up, you might even have hundreds more contacts than you do on Facebook. While it’s not so effective for advertising steamy romance novels, or gritty crime thrillers, there is a lot of value in this audience for authors who write under their own name, and publish books that might… Read More >
How to Write Killer Facebook Ad Copy
By: Ginger | Posted on April 10, 2020
One of the biggest complaints authors have about self-publishing is that they have to do their own marketing and advertising, which is why we spend so much time on the topic in our blog. And while we have covered Facebook ads in the past, there is at least one area where people still ask for help most frequently – writing the actual ad copy! That’s because when done right, Facebook ads can be a very effective tool for selling your books – but if you aren’t careful, they can just end up being very expensive! The key is in determining which combination of words will be most effective in drawing clicks to your book, so we have some tips for that. I spent many years as an advertising copy writer in the New York advertising agency world, and if there’s one thing I learned it was that “shorter is better.”… Read More >
The 5 Golden Rules of Advertising Your Book
By: Ginger | Posted on March 13, 2020
When it comes to advertising your book, advice is plentiful – both on our site and elsewhere. And while it’s vitally important to understand things like where best to spend your ad dollars, what type of ads to design, or how to figure out which audience to target, there are some much more general concepts that should be applied to all of that knowledge. Because even if you’ve mastered everything technical about creating ads, if you don’t grasp these golden rules of advertising, you may still end up wasting a lot of money or letting opportunities slip through your fingers. When I’m asked for advice about marketing and advertising books, one phrase keeps returning to my lips – don’t be afraid not to spend money. It’s originally attributed to Warren Buffett – but I’ve found that world-class investing advice also extends to selling books! In an author’s journey, there are… Read More >
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 >
