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 >
Major Court Ruling Opens New Path for Mobile eBook Sales
By: Ginger | Posted on May 16, 2025
Trying to entice readers to buy more of your books through their mobile devices has been unnecessarily cumbersome for a long time, but we’re finally seeing a ray of hope. The battle between Epic Games and Apple has shaken the digital landscape, and the most recent ruling may have cracked open the paywall dead-ends and begun to loosen Apple’s grip on in-app purchases. It is already leading to meaningful changes that create a clearer path to smoother eBook sales and better returns for authors. As Ginger explains in this week’s blog, this is not just another tech industry headline. It is a glimmer of hope for authors struggling to simplify the buying process for readers, and Amazon has already pushed through an update to the iOS Kindle app to reflect these changes. Read on to understand what the court decisions mean, what has changed, and how these shifts might help… Read More >
Are Cost Cap Ads Key to Direct Sales Success?
By: Ginger | Posted on April 18, 2025
While direct sales can be a game-changer for authors with a solid series or bundle to offer, the cost of running standard Facebook ads can make turning a profit a real challenge. Even for marketing-savvy writers, the learning phase, where Facebook figures out who’s most likely to buy, can set your ad budget on fire before you see a single sale. But there’s a rarely used strategy that might just change the game for authors selling direct. In today’s blog, Ginger breaks down Facebook’s Cost Cap setting, a powerful but underused tool that lets you control how much you’re willing to spend per sale. When used correctly, it can help you start running profitable ads from day one, and find your ideal readers before your budget runs dry. So, if you’ve read any of my previous articles on the topic, you should know by now that I’m an evangelical when… Read More >
Breaking Free: Why Direct Sales Might Be For You – Part Four
By: Ginger | Posted on July 26, 2024
This month we’ve been discussing the Direct Sales model of book selling, as many authors look at alternatives to the downsides that come with using the big online retailers. As we’ve mentioned, selling direct isn’t for everyone, but there is a lot of potential for those that can make it work and are willing to put in the effort at getting it all running. Ginger has been our guide throughout this journey, and in today’s blog he is wrapping up this series by sharing and analyzing the results he’s seen after his first month of experimentation. Not only does he provide some raw numbers, but he also notes a surprising result and discusses whether or not he is going to continue forward with the Direct Sales model in the future. As this is the final installment of a four-part series, I would urge you to start at the beginning (if… 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 >
From the Mailbox: Amazon Attribution Tag Questions
By: Ginger | Posted on March 3, 2023
We often get questions from readers of our blog (or listeners of our Podcast) about things that we’ve discussed and we’re happy to send answers along if we have them. Sometimes the same questions come up repeatedly, though, which means that it would benefit the community a lot more if we used this space to open up the old mailbag and share the answers with everyone all at once. Recently, probably since we’ve been covering the topic so much and the feature is so new, we’ve been hearing some common questions regarding Attribution tags. So this week, Ginger is focusing his attention on answering the ones that have been coming up most often. Readers of this blog might have noticed I’ve been on a bit of a tear recently regarding Amazon Attribution Tags. I think these things are amazing – a game-changer for self-published authors and one of the few… Read More >
Maximize Your Book’s ROI with Attribution Tags
By: Ginger | Posted on February 24, 2023
Advertising can be expensive, so it’s important to be careful with your ads and always test the different elements to make sure that you’re maximizing your book’s ROI. Changing up the ad images and copy are the obvious first steps, but you can even experiment with other things, like what potential readers see when they click through the ad to your product page. And keep in mind that positive changes to your book’s product page won’t just help sell books to customers finding it from your ad, but from anyone that stumbles upon it organically as well. The ability to properly measure the results of your changes has only become realistic recently, though, with the introduction of Attribution Tags. Without them, you’re really just guessing. That’s why today, Ginger is going through how to use these tags to figure out the net result (whether positive or negative) that your changes… Read More >
