One of the biggest challenges for independent author/publishers ("indies") is having their books noticed. There are probably at least 10 million ebooks on Amazon alone, plus 30 million paperbacks and hardcovers. Analogies like needles and haystacks come to mind.
So indies have to advertise. Those authors who are published by traditional publishers (think Random House) have their books advertised by the publishing house's publicity department. After all, institutions like Random House, which have just given an author several thousand dollars if not more, know that they'll never make that back (much less costs of designing, editing, and printing) unless people buy the book.
So they put ads in places where potential readers will see them, arrange to have the author appear on radio shows or even go on a tour to bookstores, send out free copies to bookstores that they think might push the book if they knew it existed, or pay to have the book prominently featured on Amazon or other on-line sites, where people would see it when looking for something else.
Indies have to do the equivalent themselves. Now they probably can't afford an ad in the New York Times Book Review, are unlikely to be invited onto a talk show (there are enough really weak indie books out there that their immediate reaction is No Indies Here), and have a limited selection of friends and family who can be browbeaten into buying the book.
So they advertise in other ways. In the last few years Amazon has started allowing indie authors to advertise their ebooks on the site. It's a complex system. My guess is that it was developed for people selling things like socks or cookware on Amazon, and the indie authors were just tossed into the mix, without an accounting department or experienced advertising executives to figure out if it's working.
I've been giving it a try myself to see if I can get some new readers. I've got great long-time readers, but adding new ones is always good. Specifically I'm advertising "The Starlight Raven," with the hope that it will lure new readers both into the rest of Antonia's series and into my other books as well.
It's an odd kind of advertising. It works through "key words," things someone browsing Amazon might enter into the search bar, things like "fantasy" or "wizards and witches" or the names of other writers in the same genre. As soon as someone enters a keyword, the Amazon computers begin an "auction." Authors who want to advertise their books have already decided how much they are willing to bid on that key word (maybe 50 cents). Highest bids win! and those authors' books get displayed as "sponsored products."
(Except it's also confused by the computers' "algorithms" for "relevance," which also come into play when deciding which books are shown and are Very Secret.)
If the author's book is displayed, it's an "impression." An impression is free. If the potential reader searching with that key word actually clicks the ad to learn more about the advertised book, which almost none of them do, that's a "click." The writer is charged their bid price for an impression that leads to a click. Experienced advertisers say you can expect maybe 1 click per 1,000 impressions. Then only one out of 5 or 10 clicks leads directly to a sale.
As you can see, you want a lot of impressions, which means you need to bid high. If you bid $5, you'll almost certainly get lots of impressions and lots of clicks! But remember that every click is costing you $5, and the majority of clicks do not result in a sale, and you're only getting $3 royalties from a sale... Okay, now you see why everyone is not bidding $5.
You can also see why new authors with just one book should not bother trying to advertise. Let's say each click is 50 cents, 10 clicks would therefore be $5, you're getting $3 per sale... You're not losing money as fast as on a $5 click, but you're still not breaking even. This program only works if a reader reads the book, loves it, and happily buys more of the author's books (ones not advertised).
Readers of course have no idea all of this is going on. They see (and mostly ignore) books labeled as "sponsored." They have no idea about bids. But suppose someone sees a sponsored product book with a weird and messy cover and clicks out of curiosity? They look at the Look Inside, to see if the interior is as bad as the cover. Yep, it is! They don't buy it and never will. The author is still out 50 cents.
This is why Step One in advertising an indie book (or any other product) is to make sure it's top-notch in every way.
© C. Dale Brittain 2021
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