This post is part of the Publishing Resources Guide. Read more about Advertising.
Pay-Per-Click advertising can be very powerful. You can use it to target readers on Facebook that love your genre and read on a particular platform. Or target readers on Amazon searching for books like yours. Or target authors similar to you on Bookbub to bring in readers who like similar books. Pay-per-click ads can get you traction – they can also cost you a lot of money. Some platforms will spend large sums of money quickly, regardless of how they’re performing. So you have to pay attention, and do your homework before starting advertising.
I believe pay-per-click ads should be the last thing you try, after you’ve gotten everything else I’ve discussed previously on the guide squared away. Ads are an accelerator for your sales, but if your marketing machine isn’t already in good working order ads will just spend your money without getting you any results. So you need to make sure your covers and book descriptions are good, and that you have enough of a backlist of books to give you a return on investment. The thing is, your profit margin with ads is going to be slim, so there’s a good chance you won’t make much money on the book you’re advertising once you’ve spent the money on ads. You’re relying on selling other books in your series or catalog to make your money. If you’ve only got one or two books, that’s difficult to do. So consider waiting to run ads until you have several books, or a couple of completed series.
Here’s a good intro post to assess if your book is ready for ads: Are Paid Ads Worth It? An Author’s Guide.
If you’re ready to try advertising, here are some resources to help you.
General Ads Courses
- SelfPublishingFormula.com: Ads For Authors (affiliate link). Covers ads for Facebook, Amazon, BookBub, Instagram, Pinterest, and other Social Media advertising opportunities.
Amazon Ads
- Kindlepreneur.com: Free course for Amazon Ads
- The 5 Day Amazon Ad Profit Challenge – this opens periodically (maybe quarterly?) and is also free
BookBub Ads
- BookBub Ads Expert by David Gaughran (affiliate link). This is an excellent resource for learning about BookBub ads.
- A FaceBook post on Wide for the Win that talks about the different ways authors use BB ads, depending on whether you’re in KU or Wide.
Facebook Ads
- SelfPublishingFormula.com: List building For Authors using Facebook Ads (Free course. Scroll down for it)
- FaceBook Ads for Authors (With Mark Dawson): this is a blog post over at Kindlepreneur that gives a rundown of the Ads For Authors link I gave in the general ads courses section. If you want a little glimpse into the FaceBook side of that course read this.
- YourFirst10KReaders.com: Building a Facebook Ads Growth Machine
This blog is supported by my readers. If you found this post, or the guide, helpful and want to show some support you can do that at PayPal: PayPal.me/RebeccaDaltonAuthor
Thank you!