Skip to main content
Tag

Marketing

Jan 30
Love3

How to create Amazon Marketing Services Product Display Ads for books

By Tips, Video

Last year, I wrote an article for the IBPA Independent magazine on how to use Amazon Marketing Services advertisements for books. It got a fantastic response. In fact, I am still interviewed and give presentations about this topic today. But I wanted to create an AMS tutorial on video that demonstrates how to make AMS Product Display ads for books.

AMS Product Display ads are an alternative to Google AdWords or Facebook targeted ads, and enable your books to show up product pages of other Amazon books. The video covers:

  1. Targeting shoppers viewing specific products or categories, or by interest.
  2. How to set cost-per-click (CPC) bids and daily budgets
  3. Advice about competing titles
  4. The importance of AMS headlines
  5. Scratchpads for headlines and AMS keywords

Setting up an Amazon Marketing Services Product Display ad requires an AMS account through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) or Amazon Advantage. Scroll to 02:15 if you already have an account.

Jun 18
Love2

My lean publishing advice to a prospective guidebook author

By Blog

The essence of lean media is eliminating waste, focusing creativity, and bringing audiences closer to creators. So when a prospective guidebook author queried me about setting up a publishing company to publish a series of guides about state parks in his region, here’s what I advised:

If the demand is there, I would definitely consider doing such a series. I would first try to determine what the demand is, based on things like state park attendance (which is probably publicly available somewhere) and the competition … and creating a test book (as yourself, not through a company) to see how people react.

If there is already a popular book or state park brochure series that covers the state parks, and it is cheap, that would be something you would have to address as you will be competing with them. Maybe your book series could offer better maps or some other information that the competition doesn’t have. In other words, offer a premium feature (for a premium price).

On the other hand, if the competition is expensive and stands tall on quality, you will have to position yourself differently. Say the competition is a big photo book about state parks. Maybe you could price your series lower, or you could try sizing the paperbacks to be able to fit in someone’s pocket, which is a selling point the photo book can’t match.

Keep in mind that setting up a company comes with real costs … I pay $1500 a year to my accountant to maintain my books, plus $500 to the state government as a corporation fee, not to mention various legal costs (trademarks, agreements, copyright applications) which usually run a few thousand per year. My sales are able to support those costs, but if my series was struggling it would probably be better just to sell them on my own or as a “DBA” entity (doing business as) or sole proprietor.

Because of the potential for higher costs, running a test to see if the demand is there is a good idea. If you get some steady sales and reviews you could then start up a publishing company to take things to the next level.

Note that determining audience demand through a test edition and some other market-sizing activities (such as evaluating state park attendance) is a critical first step. Otherwise, there is a real risk of spending a lot of time, money, and effort on something that not enough people are interested in.

Dropbox In 30 MinutesThis is in fact how I started the IN 30 MINUTES series, with a DIY first edition of Dropbox In 30 Minutes back in 2012. It started selling a few copies per day, as did the next book in the series, Google Drive & Docs In 30 Minutes. Once I knew the demand was there, I went ahead and created the corporate entity in early 2013. Now we sell thousands of copies every year of our most popular titles!

The other element that I touched upon in my reply was Positioning. I have blogged about the concept of positioning in the past after reading the book Positioning. It’s a really helpful way to think about creating and marketing products in a crowded marketplace.  According to the lead author of the book Positioning (Al Ries), it makes sense to work with what customers already know. Marketing strategy for a new product should be built from the perspective of the “prospect”, rather than the perspective of the company (and the ego of company executives). Often, this involves finding the hole that the market leaders have neglected or don’t serve well. Hence, my advice to the guidebook author to do his book in a different way than the existing competition.

Aug 15
Love3

Marketing self-published books: There is no magic bullet

By Blog, Industry

A Lifehacker reader commenting on my recent How to Self-Publish a Book article had an interesting question: How do you advertise self-published books?

I believe his/her question actually had more to do with the entire spectrum of marketing, rather than just advertising. It’s a valid question, considering it will be nearly impossible to attract readers to a self-published work without a marketing plan in place.

Facebook ads books

However, there is no magic bullet for marketing self-published books. I have experimented with low-cost advertising, such as Facebook ads and Google AdWords. The results have been poor. Relatively few people click on the ads, and still fewer actually end up making a purchase. As for traditional advertising, I would never throw away money on expensive broadcast or print advertising — it’s simply not worth it, considering my sales channels are restricted to Amazon and other online stores, and the results are so hard to quantify.

There are other marketing activities that do not involve paid advertising, including social media, community websites (such as Goodreads), blogging, and media/press appearances. None will instantly transform a new title into a breakaway hit, but they can help build awareness of the value offered by your book, which can lead to additional sales or other positive results, such as user reviews and recommendations.

My own marketing efforts center around the following activities:

  1. Ensuring that the online product pages for IN 30 MINUTES titles have attractive, compelling copy that lets people know what information the titles contain.
  2. Creating websites that not only make it easy for potential readers to buy the titles, but also provides helpful “how-to” information for free that demonstrates the expertise of the authors. This can lead to additional sales.
  3. Encouraging existing readers to buy other IN 30 MINUTES titles, and leave honest reviews online.

I don’t waste a lot of time on activities that fail to generate results. For instance, I could spend many hours per week searching out and participating in media opportunities — interviews, guest blog posts, podcasts, “expert” quotes, etc. However, I’ve found the success rate is low and not all media appearances, interviews, and mentions lead to sales.

A corollary: I don’t do things that risk alienating readers. For instance, I see way too many new authors stuffing their twitter feeds with non-stop plugs. This is low-value content that is not authentic, has the potential to scare away new followers as well as existing followers/readers, and at the end of the day doesn’t deliver much in the way of sales. While social media can certainly help a marketing effort for a new book, there has to be more than links to Amazon product pages.

What do you think about marketing for self-published books? What works, and what doesn’t? Leave your comments below.