Jessica Russell's Blog - Posts Tagged "advertising"

Just a quick post today! There's nothing wrong with giving one of your books away for free here and there if you really want to. However, nothing smells stronger of desperation than running after people giving them free books in exchange for reviews. You immediately devalue your work: great things are worth the price. Therefore, you are instantly creating a situation where the person is subconsciously thinking "how good could it be if he/she has to GIVE it away?" Focus on driving traffic to the sites where your book is sold, and reviews will eventually take care of themselves. Don't put the cart before the horse by giving your work away. It took you a long time to create your novel. Don't stamp "desperate" on your forehead after all that blood sweat and tears. Schedule book signings, do podcasts, advertise, get a good book trailer made and post it on social media, but don't devalue your work by handing it away for free!

Someone posed the question “When do you finally decide your book is a flop?” I saw all sorts of answers, up to and including one who said, “NEVER. There’s no time that a book is ever a flop.”

Well, I know that person was trying to be encouraging, but there is such a thing as a book that flops. Even famous writers have had them.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question! It depends on WHY the writer is starting to think that the book flopped:

If it isn't finished yet, and the writer has just become increasingly unhappy with it, only the writer can decide whether it’s time to scrap it and start over. There’s not much anyone else can do.

IF it’s already published but there’s hardly any sales, I would definitely say the novel itself is not what’s flopping. THE MARKETING IS.
The author, particularly if he or she is self published, may simply need to upgrade or begin an advertising campaign that will get traffic to the link.

If the person is wondering if it’s a flop because all the reviews are bad, that’s a little scarier...
If the majority of the reviews are one or two stars, it may be time to read exactly what people are saying about the story and take it to heart. Then the writer can decide about making changes to possibly reverse the negative trend. Of course, make sure there’s enough reviews to count! If the book is 100% one star, but there’s only a total of TWO reviews, it might just be two people who don’t like that author and they’re being spiteful. LOL. But if there’s a lot of reviews and they’re overwhelmingly negative, THAT might be the best indicator that a book is flopping. But even if that’s the case, and it’s looking like the novel's a bona fide clunker, that DOESN’T mean the author should give up. It may just be time to try again. Hope that was helpful!

Like many authors who are not yet well known, you probably have made a monetary investment into advertising. However, it’s important to understand that you can’t always immediately judge whether or not an ad was successful. It’s easy to fall into the trap of looking at stats the minute an ad commences and making an instant judgment on whether or not it was worth it. A friend of mine did this very thing recently. She ran an ad on twitter to get some clicks for her new book and as soon as it was finished, she went to Author Central and checked out her sales stats and said “That was just a waste of time and money!”

That was not necessarily true. Here’s the reality: a lot of readers see interesting books or ads for books they think they might like, but they don’t immediately click and make an impulse purchase. Maybe they don’t have time to do that right away, maybe they want to read some reviews about the book first, or maybe it’s just not a priority that second for any number of reasons. I retweet Whizzbuzz book ads a lot, for instance, and while I love to support fellow authors, of course I can’t buy them all. Sometimes I just make note of some that looked interesting and jot down the titles on a scrap paper on my desk. Those titles might lay there for a month before I ever get around to checking them out on Amazon and making a purchase. Then it may take me even longer to actually get the book read and reviewed. So never assume that if an ad doesn’t result in an instant sales boost that it was a total failure. You may have a lot of return yet to yield in the future from that very ad. It’s important to not get anxious and remember that slow and steady wins the race! Write on!

Marketing is very important for a book, especially if you are not yet known. However, many new writers make the mistake of jumping the gun with this issue and they lose all their marketing dollars in one fell swoop. They hurry up and launch a large-scale marketing campaign only to discover that they are getting a lot of clicks, but not a lot of sales. Otherwise known as the Kiss of Death.

This is usually an indicator that the book does not have enough reviews yet. I know many writers feel frustrated, because most people simply will not leave a review for a book, no matter how good they thought it was. That means it may take a while to get legitimate reviews. Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do about that. Just keep attending events, going to book signings whenever you’re invited, and pushing your book on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and anywhere else you have a social media account.

When you get approximately 20 reviews, and believe me they will come, that’s the time to start advertising in earnest.

This is because a minimum of 20 reviews takes away that feeling in the customers mind that he or she is a “guinea pig” for this new author. Once you hit the magic 50 reviews, you will start to rank higher on Amazon, but 20 at least gets you out of the gate, so to speak, and it is definitely the magic number for marketing. Therefore, once you have that many, you should immediately launch a marketing campaign and advertise as much as your budget will allow.

After that, the sales will come, and reviews will begin to take care of themselves (albeit slowly, so keep that in mind and have patience.) But never jump the gun and spend money on marketing before you have any reviews. It will just be money wasted, and nobody wants to do that! Write on!

Here is something I have touched on before, but I want to reiterate. It pains me when I see so many newly published authors falling for scams and gimmicks, so I will make this very short and not so sweet. I’ve been making a living as a writer for about 16 years so I was ready for the influx of spam once my book was published. Unfortunately, not everyone has experience and some people are just a bit too trusting overall. Here it is straight: there are no “secrets” to making your book a bestseller that you can “learn” from someone online because they are “passionate about helping other authors.” Don’t be naïve in this life. If there was some “best kept secret” about “how to make your book a bestseller on Amazon in 30 days,” NOBODY would be selling it on Facebook for $99.
PERIOD.
Therefore, NEVER give money to ANYONE unless it is for a legitimate add targeted to your demographic. And yes, advertising is expensive, but legitimate advertising is also effective and the other stuff, well, all I can say is use the money to go to a concert or dine out! At least that way you'll get something out of it. The end.

Sorry, peeps, it's been a long week, but as promised, I will quickly cover targeted advertising today. As a recently published novelist, you are likely advertising as much as possible, according to what your budget allows. However, pinpointing your exact demographic is one of the most important, as well as the most overlooked, tasks when it comes to book promotions.

Like most people, you probably receive tons of unsolicited ads for marketing, and trust me, they will ALL look good. Unfortunately, most of them are a waste of time and a waste of money. The reason is because they are too general. For example, many people who have built tremendous followings on Twitter and Facebook offer to “Tweet your book to 50,000 followers” or “advertise your book on four different Facebook pages.” It sounds great at first, but the questions you have to ask are WHO are they tweeting to? What type of followers do their Facebook pages HAVE? For example, if you are like me and you wrote a historical fiction book, it will do you little or no good to have it tweeted to 50,000 people on Twitter if they are all under 25 and their primary interest is Fantasy or Sci-Fi.

It’s not just a numbers game, it’s a Who’s Who? game. In another scenario, say you ARE that Fantasy or Sci-Fi writer and you pay to have your book advertised on several different Facebook pages, but the primary following for those pages are fans of the True Crime genre. Most of you probably know what I’m getting now. Getting your book in front of potential readers is vitally important, but you have to remember that the name of the game is quality over quantity.

It would be far better to run an ad that targeted only several thousand people who are interested in your specific genre than to pay to advertise to 50,000 people in a general audience. You could end up inadvertently bypassing your entire demographic and paying to have your book marketed to people who have absolutely no interest in that type of novel.

Regardless of which advertising venue you choose, make sure that you can pinpoint the demographic. If it is the type of ad that cannot be targeted, pass it up! It may not be politically correct anymore, but every type of novel has a specific market, and you need to target that market in order to get the most for your advertising dollars! Write on!

Don’t be naïve with advertising! If you’ve recently published a book and you’re anxious to get it in people’s hands, rest assured there’s hundreds of thousands of authors who feel the exact same way. Nevertheless, it is extremely important to avoid falling for solicitations that promise you the moon and stars. Let’s just clear one thing up from the beginning: no one can rank you in the top 1000 on Amazon. The only entity who can do that for you is Amazon. An unknown author is not going to suddenly catapult to top ranking on a monster merchant site. Slow and steady wins the race.

However, as soon as your book is out, you will get solicitation after solicitation telling you how people used this service or that service and were suddenly catapulted to stardom. They’re not telling you the truth. Advertising is important, but it’s up to you to make sure you’re using legitimate services. You can buy Amazon ads, twitter ads, Facebook ads, or pay to have your book added to the “shelves” of legitimate services such as BookBub. You can also go on podcasts, hold local events, or go through any other legitimate avenue to get your book in front of the best eyes, but one thing all those methods have in common is that you are paying for a specific service.

Solicitations that show up from merchants with whom you’re unfamiliar should be regarded as suspicious and ignored. This is because legitimate advertising sources don’t have to spam new authors with personal messages through Twitter. Writers go looking for THEM because they have a reputation.

Facebook doesn’t send you a message from a personal account saying “Hey, I’m passionate about helping other writers succeed, for only XXX dollars we can rank you in the top 100 on Amazon, give us the money and we'll show you the “secret.” Can you imagine Amazon doing that?

No, you have to go looking for THEM. Unsolicited messages telling you about “wonderful opportunities” should always be ignored. You’re just going to lose money if you trust them, and even if there is one legitimate one in every 50, it’s not worth playing the guessing game to figure out who’s who. Stick with trusted advertising sources you know, even if they're more expensive. It’s better to pay more money and get something for it than to pay less and end up with nothing. Write on!

Beware when you first publish a book, because promotional offers will come out of the woodwork from far and wide. One of the most popular– probably because it’s the easiest for merchants to push– is the classic “I will tweet your book to 500,000 people,” or “I will advertise your book on my Instagram account to 5000 followers.”

It sounds great, right? Getting your book in front of all those eyes? Unfortunately, those ventures rarely work out. Here’s why:

It’s NOT just a numbers game. The issue is, who and what makes up the database? Many times, the followers to whom your book will be advertised are primarily other authors who want to advertise THEIR books. Well, you don’t need me to tell you that that particular demographic is NOT the one you’re looking for.

Unknown authors are the worst offenders when it comes to turning up their noses at OTHER unknown authors’ works, so you definitely don’t want to waste your time and money advertising to that demographic.

Before you get involved in any venture like that, ALWAYS ask the person soliciting WHO your book will be advertised to. The merchant should be able to show that they can target your demographic, whether you write fiction, nonfiction, mysteries, sci-fi, romance or any other type of book. It’s not just getting it in front of a lot of people, it’s getting it in front of the RIGHT people.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions and demand that they pinpoint the type of market to which the book will be advertised, and if they can’t answer that question, you should consider it a red flag. Write on!

For decades mailing lists have been touted as a top way to sell anything. Not surprisingly, many people say this is also true concerning books. If you’re an author who released a book in the last year or so, you probably have some kind of reader mailing list built up, and I’m sure you used it to advertise your book. I also have a hunch you might’ve been a little bit surprised with the lackluster results. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that mailing lists are useless. A contact is a contact is a contact. However, don’t delude yourself into thinking that building a massive mailing list is the solution to every advertising/sales problem you have. It’s not.

To prove my point, think about how many things you willingly signed up for and then take note of how many times you actually read what you receive from that particular merchant. More to the point, how many times do you ever actually make a purchase on impulse from an email solicitation? And these are typically vendors that you signed up with. Usually, at some point, you signed up for SOMETHING in order to get on that person’s mailing list. But how interested were you? Maybe you signed up because you couldn’t advance further on the website without giving an email. Maybe you couldn’t make a comment on something unless you created an account, and then bingo, your name was sold to other merchants.

There’s a million reasons you might be on a mailing list, but when you look at the volume of inbox pieces you get every day, versus the ones you actually read, and even fewer, the ones you actually make a purchase from, I bet it’s a minuscule minority. Unfortunately, that’s the same way it works with reader lists.

You may have hundreds or even thousands of email addresses from people who read books, but when you did your big email blast after your book launch, how many sales actually tracked back to that list? If you got a lot, then stick with it, it’s working for you! But if you didn’t, move on to a different type of advertising. The bottom line is, growing a list just to say you have a big list doesn’t do anything to advance your career unless the people on the list are buying your book. So go look at your email stats and see if it’s worth it to continue frantically collecting emails or if it would be better to move on to a different type of advertising. Just food for thought. Write on!