Book Marketing – Page 3 – Read First Chapter.com

Book Marketing – How to Recruit ARC Readers

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF RECRUITING ARC READERS?

Most authors know that ARC stands for Advanced Reader Copies or Advanced Review Copies. I don't think the debate on this is settled yet.

There are multiple reasons to recruit ARC readers:

ARC readers can offer you valuable feedback about the book.
They can also be a group of readers who may give you your first five or ten reviews, depending upon how many ARC readers you are able to recruit.
Announcing you are looking for ARC readers is a first step in your book marketing campaign. This is a good way to post on a website or social media about the upcoming eBook.
By announcing there will be a new release soon enough, you will create the buzz about your book.

WHEN SHOULD I OFFER MY BOOK TO ARC READERS?

It all begins when you get the book back from the editor. Make all the changes in the eBook within two to three days after receiving it from the editor.

I'll explain below why it's not recommended to give an "early pre-edited copy" to the readers -- which is how I learned to do it. But I paid the price. More on this below.

After the edits are done, its now time to list it as a pre-order on Amazon and/or as an ARC copy.

I've heard horror stories from some authors about setting it up for pre-order and then not making the deadline! BUT, since you are not setting the book as a pre-order until it is actually in Final Manuscript form, you don't have to sweat it at all.

Setting your eBook up for preorder on Amazon is the first buzz you will create about your new eBook. It's an event to be announced on a website and social media. This will let your present readership know there's a book coming soon.

CAUTION FOR NEWBIES AND BEGINNER SELF-PUBLISHERS:

Don’t get impatient and offer the eBook before the last edit. I was told to do this and make "use" of the time the editor had the book. However, I paid the price for this, and it's a tall price, one that follows me forever.

When you offer your ARC book it will be for free. Many readers will take advantage of the free eBook and download it -- with or without any intention of being an actual ARC reader. They may not read it right away. But this version of your book lives on their Kindle or other eReader.

After you get your final manuscript back from the editor, there will ALWAYS be things that you missed, even if you proofread it twenty times!

So when the reader gets around to reading your eBook, they won't remember they downloaded an early ARC copy. They will think this book was released with these very typos and/or other foibles that you missed! Very often, readers see read when they see typos. And they very often mention it in the feedback! This is what I mean by it will follow you forever. So don't do it!

RECRUITING ARC READERS IS A MARKETING STRATEGY IN AND OF ITSELF:

Recruiting ARC readers can also be a marketing strategy because who doesn’t like freebies & giveaways? Giveaways and Freebies have a way of capturing everyone’s attention. With a great eye-catching graphic, this can create interest and general buzz about your upcoming book.

It's also an opportunity to recruit more readers.

If you make a few different graphics to go along with your invitation to sign up as an ARC reader, this is something you can post several times over the six to eight weeks before your book is actually released. By having several different graphics, it prevents your posts from appearing too repetitive.

HOW DO I DO IT?

It all sounds good. How do I do it?

It starts with a calendar and a final manuscript.

Using your calendar, set your true release date for 8 weeks out for a beginner or 6 weeks out if you’ve done this before.

EIGHT WEEKS? REALLY?

Why so long? You need to give yourself time to recruit readers and you need to give the readers at least two weeks to finish the book. You want to recruit as many readers as you can. This is the best way to get at least a few reviews when your book is initially released.

Newbies will be anxious to upload and release, but there will be enough for you to do in the 6 to 8 weeks while you recruit and give your ARC readers time to read the book.

THINGS TO DO DURING THE RECRUITMENT TIME:

While the book is awaiting release, you can upload to Amazon as a pre-order. This acts as an announcement that your book is coming. Its an opportunity to post about it on social media, on your website, and in your newsletter.
Add this new book and a link to it to your Other Books by Author page. Don’t forget to add it to earlier books. You want every ‘read-through’ advantage you can set up.
Create a review link. What’s a review link? It’s a link that takes the reader from your Note to Reader page directly to Amazon to leave you a review.
Work on your eBook cover. Then work on the back cover graphics for the Paperback and Hardcover.
Create at least four different graphics about the new book to post to social media. Remember, you’ll need graphics for the following events:

Recruiting ARC Readers
Announcement of Pre-Orders at Amazon or wherever you sell your books
Announcement of your eBook cover art
Announcement of Only 7 Days before Release.
Announcement of Release of your eBook
Newsletter, social media and website graphics
Graphics with quotes from your book and eye-catching graphics.

WHAT IS THE WORK FLOW REGARDING RECRUITING ARC READERS?

Step One in Recruiting ARC Readers is you need a Graphic and a Form.

Here is a small graphic ad I added to my monthly newsletter for a recent eBook asking for Advanced Copy Readers.

I tell them that if they find any errors in the book and email me, I will add them to my acknowledgement page. I actually got several signups with this approach.

Now, about this little button that says “Click here to get download!”

Behind this button is the magic of computer coding and integrations between Bookfunnel and Mailchimp. In the video below, I take a few minutes to go into how things work regarding this download button.

But if you don't have a website or mailing service yet, don't despair, there are other types of forms that are available. I give one easy example in the video below.

YOU CAN SEND THE FORM FROM A WORDPRESS WEBSITE WITH EASE:

My website and millions of other websites are built on WordPress. WordPress is a platform and many coders release what are called plug-ins. They give different functionalities to the website.

One of these plugins is called Contract Form 7. You can easily use this form to offer and keep track of ARC readers. I do a demonstration of this in the video below.

PREPARE THE PROPER COPIES:

In order to send the eBooks to your ARC readers, you will need to have your final manuscript in an ePub format and a PDF format. Once you get an email from the form you set up, send these two copies to the readers.

ePubs are able to be read on most eBook readers and PDFs can be ready by anyone with a computer.

BE AND STAY ORGANIZED:

If I can offer just one final tip to newbies from the things I did that went wrong when I was a newbie -- it would be to be and stay organized with this.

Because these signups and emails and names will trickle in one at a time, it's too easy to start filing them all over the place. I had some in a special folder that I forgot about, I put them on a list I thought I would remember but I didn't. So now I keep a list of my ARC readers on my "Info - BOOK NAME" file (a notepad document) for each book. I keep them way at the bottom so I can find them when it's time to send a thank you and an invitation to leave me a review.

Book Marketing for Authors with Mailchimp

BEFORE WE GO TO MAILCHIMP:

This blog post is geared specifically for book marketers in the examples I use, but the information is relevant to anyone who is interested in learning how to use Mailchimp as a marketing tool.

Before we go to Mailchimp, it's important to know where Mailchimp fits into the whole picture. So let's take a closer look at how Mailchimp comes into play when you are selling and/or giving books away.

LETS LOOK CLOSELY AT AN EMAIL PROMOTION AT BOOKFUNNEL:

Above is a diagram of how once you upload a book at Bookfunnel, and a reader clicks on it, the diagram shows how the $20 a year package handles the email and how the $100 a year program handles it.

As you can see, there is one manual step of downloading the emails from Bookfunnel and then uploading them into your email list at Mailchimp. If you are a brand new author or a brand new marketer, if you know how to copy and paste, you can move emails from Bookfunnel to Mailchimp.

LET'S LOOK CLOSELY AT A SALES PROMOTION AT BOOKFUNNEL:

I added this diagram to show new book marketers that entering sales promotion is not the same as giving books away. When readers click on your giveaway books, that's when they sign up for your newsletter.

If you enter your book into a sales promotion, the readers go directly to your book to purchase it. I mention this because, as a newbie, I went through a long period where I entered too many sales promotions and not enough giveaways!

As anyone in marketing will tell you, people unsubscribe from time to time. So it's important to continually build your email list. With this knowledge, hopefully you won't make the same mistake I did.

MAILCHIMP - IS THERE REALLY A FREE TRIAL?

There is a 30 day free trial at Mailchimp. You have limited access to some of the bells and whistles, but there is 30 days where it will cost you nothing. However, as soon as you click on this button, you will be taken to the page that compares all of their pricing packages.

MAILCHIMP - PRICING AND WHAT YOU NEED TO REALLY KNOW:

The process of growing a sizeable book marketing email list takes a lot longer than 30 days, so it's best that you know what is behind the other packages that we will focus on.

The free plan only allows you to collect up to 500 emails. That's a lot for a beginner, but you will be surprised how quickly you can accumulate over 500 emails. The next package is called the Essentials package. This one costs $13.00 a month or slightly over $100 a year. This is the plan I have been using.

This plan allows you to build a list up to 2500 emails. Once you grow over that amount, it begins to charge a little more for every 5o to 100 emails after that. Once you grow past 3,000, then this becomes an expense. Hopefully by then you will be selling enough books to cover your monthly business costs.

Here is a close-up of the Essentials plan. This plan works well for me as a book marketing platform for the following reasons:

It allows me to integrate Bookfunnel with Mailchimp and it also allows me to integrate Mailchimp with my WordPress website. This type of integration doesn't come with the first plan.
You can have up to 3 separate audiences. An audience is a fancy word for email list. Now, it may be easier for you to keep one list and separate the emails using Tags. For example: I write mystery romance and also vampire books. You can use a tag entitled "vampires" and one entitled "mystery" and this would be enough to function with one list but target each segment by using a tag.
This plan also allows up to three users in case you have a family member who helps you with marketing or you want to hire someone down the road.
You do get more templates with this plan, but as I go into in the video below, having more templates is really no big deal. Most people follow a very similar template for a weekly or monthly newsletter.

MAILCHIMP ALLOWS ONE AUDIENCE BUT . . .

I already touched on how to use Tags to segment off your one audience list. Above I have a snapshot from the video and it shows an example of some of the tags I have used with my giveaways both at Bookfunnel, SiteOrigin and my website at readfirstchapter.com.

How to Start a Mailing List with Bookfunnel

WHAT WILL WE COVER?

We’re going to cover how to sign up, what the dashboard looks like, how to upload your books, where to find the promotions to enter, what an author swap is and how to find one. I’ll show you a few examples using my own books.

IT ALL STARTS AT BOOKFUNNEL:

Go to bookfunnel.com and sign up for an account. Here is a screen shot from the first page. I've fiddled with it to show the actual address and the logo, but it will look similar to this picture here.

It's important to read the rest of the blog first so you know which plan or package you want to sign up for.

BOOKFUNNEL HAS THREE PACKAGES:

The first package called First-Time Author costs $2o per year. This is good enough for a new author or anyone else operating on a shoe string. With the $20 package, you are entitled to one pen name, and up to 500 downloads per month.

With this $20 package, you can't coordinate your email list with a mail program. However, that's not a problem because all of the emails are saved for you and you can download them from the dashboard. Then you can easily upload to Mailchimp using a simple copy and paste.

The next package is $100 a year. That comes out to $8.33 a month. With this plan, you can have up to 3 pen names and up to 5,000 downloads. But the most important benefit to this plan is that you can integrate Bookfunnel with Mailchimp or several of the other popular mail programs out there. This gives you the ability to put this entire thing on autopilot. This is the plan that I use. This also gives you the right or ability to sponsor your own promotions.

LET'S LOOK AT THE DASHBOARD AT BOOKFUNNEL:

Above is a snapshot from the Bookfunnel dash board. This keeps a daily count of how many downloads and clicks you have gotten from your giveaways and books that were entered into the various promotions.

There are links on this page in order to download the emails. So if you choose to get the least expensive plan, this is where you will go to download your emails. Bookfunnel prepares them into a CSV file and you can save and/or open these in Excel or Google Docs.

THE BOOKS TAB:

The Books Tab keeps track of the eBooks you have uploaded and how many downloads there have been. There are drop-down links (in the orange boxes) to edit your books information and also to reupload copies.

I have perma-free books as well as Amazon Kindle Unlimited books. I usually have an advanced reader copy being given away also. So I use the Giveaway pages as well as the Sales pages. I always insist that the readers give their emails to get the books.

Some authors are very touchy about giving away eBooks, but I believe giving away the books is the best, easiest and most cost-effective way of building a readership there is.

LET'S LOOK AT A BOOK PAGE - THE DETAILS

This is a screen shot from one of the books pages. In order to upload an eBook to Bookfunnel, you will need:

eBook Bookcover – high resolution
Short blurb about the book.
ePub copy of your book
mobi copy of your book
pdf copy of your book

To offer a free-download, you will need to upload the book files as shown here. To enter promotions for sales of your book, you will need to create a landing page.

HOW TO CONVERT A WORD DOCUMENT TO EPUB AND MOBI:

Above is a Google Chrome Extension that you can find in the Chrome Web Store. This one allows you to convert almost any document. However, it allows you to convert word documents to epubs and mobi formats.

LET'S LOOK AT AN EXAMPLE OF A GIVEAWAY PAGE:

This is what a Free download page looks like. When you enter your book into a promotion and someone clicks on it, they see this page.

You choose the header, subheader and the book description.

In order to get the free book, they must sign up to your newsletter, and then verify their email. Then Bookfunnel delivers the book. Bookfunnel then either holds the email in a list that you download ($20 membership level) or it sends it to your list at Mailchimp ($100 membership).

LET'S LOOK AT AN EXAMPLE OF A SALES LANDING PAGE:

The books you list for sale will need to be set up on what Bookfunnel calls "sales pages". This was a bit confusing for me when I was new. To create a giveaway page, that seems to be as easy as just uploading your book and choosing to require the readers to sign up with an email. It's one or two clicks and you are done.

But the sales page, you need to click over in the menu on Sales Page. Then you will be led through with a widget to create your sales page. It's easy peasy. The confusing part for me was that I kept forgetting to click on "Create a Landing Page."

LET'S FOCUS ON BOOK PROMOTIONS:

Above is a screen shot of the promotion genres that are at Bookfunnel every month. These are numerous promotions in each of these categories. When you click on the plus-signs, a longer list of promotions opens up in each of these categories. As you can see, just about every genre of fiction and non-fiction is covered.

The numbers in the parentheses are how many promotions are available in that category. Below we'll look at a category close up.

MYSTERY SUSPENSE PROMOTION CLOSE UP:

Above is an example of some of the promotions in the Mystery & Suspense category.

There are promotions for Sales, Amazon, Kobo, and some for Giveaways and also Kindle Unlimited.

I’ve been using Bookfunnel for about three years now and I’ve built a mailing list of 3,000 or so readers. In my humble opinion, this is the easiest way for a self-published author to market their books.

WHAT ARE BOOK SWAPS?

Bookfunnel also offers “Book Swaps”. A book swap is when you agree to feature someone else’s book in your newsletter and they agree to feature one of your books. This is a great way to get even more readers to see your eBooks.

Below is an example of a “Weekly Feature” panel from one of my own Author Swaps.

THAT'S ALL YOU NEED!

That’s all you need to know in order to sign up with Bookfunnel to start a readership list today.

Whether you are marketing books or anything else, a mailing list is the most personal way to keep in contact with your client and/or customer base.

In our next video, I’ll show you all you need to know to sign up with Mailchimp.com, which is the other piece of this mailing list puzzle.

BELOW IS VIDEO ON BOOKFUNNEL:

Book Marketing – Is it Necessary?

EVEN PUBLISHING HOUSES ARE NOTICING:

Do you want to be a published author and work with a leading publisher? Or do you want the freedom of self-publishing? Either way, you will need to learn to do at least some book marketing.

As I've watched other YouTube authors grow, I've noticed that most of the girls and guys who have built a sizeable social media following on their own have gotten publishing deals. I can tell from being in the business world in general that this is now something that publishing houses look for. They want authors with initiative.

Authors who create an online presence are also proving that they are serious and career-minded. This too is something that the publishing houses look for. The idea of signing a young author with a lifetime of work to be published is a dream come true.

KDP PUBLISHING HAS CHANGED THE PUBLISHING LANDSCAPE

Gone are the days where the high-end and huge publishing houses are the gatekeepers to being published. They used to do everything but the writing for authors. Amazon KDP broke that model. KDP offered anyone the chance to publish a book. At first it disrupted the publishing business, and within a year or two, it completely took over the publishing industry. You know they took it over when even the publishing houses are advertising and selling on Amazon.

The big publishing houses could have been KDP, but they clung to the power and control of the gatekeeping model until it was too late. The last I heard, they were even having trouble holding onto their experienced editors because now even the editors are finding freelance work on their own.

EASY BOOK PUBLISHING FOR CAMERA-SHY INTROVERTS:

Don't worry if you are camera shy or introverted. The type of book marketing I'm suggesting here is for introverts. People who have these big boisterous personalities don't need anyone to help them gain a readership. Social media was designed for the extroverts -- even the narcissists!

The first phase of the marketing will be starting and slowly building a newsletter list. The next phase is to give away your book or market your book in other ways. Your choices will depend upon your budget. There are choices for those on a shoestring and also choices for busy people who want to buy services to move things along faster.

The following marketing strategies are all painless book marketing strategies. Even the shyest introvert can do these strategies as they don't require anything confrontive or aggressive. The trick is consistency. These strategies work if you are able to keep at them everyday and every week. They are so simple that adding them to any busy person's daily to do list will be a breeze. I know as an introvert myself that most introverts are capable of great consistency.

DIY BOOK MARKETING - OVERVIEW

Above is a small diagram I prepared to give you an overview of how this first level of marketing works. In the beginning, this is totally free. It only begis to cost a bit of money when you build a readership of over 500 or 1,000 people. But then you will be selling books, so it will all even out.

When I was starting out, I was thrown by the term 'newsletter'. Every author video I watched suggested sending a newsletter. I didn't realize that 'newsletter' is subject to interpretation. I live a very quiet life and wouldn't have enough personal information to put into a newsletter. So that was a big obstacle for me.

However, in time, I started sending book promotion emails, offering not only my book, but other authors' books in the promotions. So whatever you choose to send when building your newsletter can be unique to you. You can decide what your newsletter will be.

For example: There are cozy mystery writers who write books about the food industry or baking. Those authors can include recipes or other things that would fit in their book theme. Mystery writers can send around some information about home security, or police stats. You can decide to add whatever it is that you are really interested in.

I send around a newsletter with eBook promotions that I enter or host on Bookfunnel.com and Siteorigin.com. I also alert my readership when my books are offered free on Amazon.com. I would recommend both of these websites.

WHY BUILD A MAILING LIST?

It's important to be clear that when building an email list, that email list is your readership following. You may have free book searches who get on your list, and they may unsubscribe after a month or two. But the readers who like your books and look forward to hearing from you will remain loyal to you. You are cultivating a following. You need to see marketing as a slow and steady way to build this readership and maintain a monthly or bi-monthly contact with them.

I recommend the first step to sign up at Mailchimp.com or any of the other free mailing list companies. There are many of them now. I don't believe Mailchimp is the cheapest choice like it was once was. They used to allow you free access up until your mailing list grew to 2,000 people. I'll have to do a search to see what other companies are out there. When I do, I'll do another blog post.

HOW DO I GET PEOPLE TO SIGN UP?

When you join Bookfunnel and SiteOrigin, you can offer your book as a free download. Promotions on these sites are for free giveaways, or book sales or Kindle Unlimited eBooks, or permafree books at other retailers. There are many, many choices. Each promotion is different.

By giving away your book, a person who wants the book must sign up to your newsletter list. Because this signup is handled by Mailchimp (or whoever your mailing list company will be) you just create the email from a template and the mailing service signs people up. It has them verify their email and they are signed up and you now have permission to send them follow up emails.

Consistently sending out new promotional emails and having people continue to sign up will allow you to slowly but consistently grow your readership. Adding this level of marketing into your weekly schedule is enough consistency to build a sizeable reader list. You will be amazed at how fast you can build.

OTHER STRATEGIES FOR BOOK MARKETING

OFFER ADVANCED READER COPIES:

Each book goes through the same cycle. It's written, and it finally goes off to an editor. Then when it comes back, you have changes to be made. At some point before you publish the book, you can offer it as an Advance Reader Copy. This is where you offer a free copy of the book for an honest review.

It's a good idea to give yourself at least 6 to 8 weeks before publication to gather readers so that when your book is published, you will be able to get reviews on the day or day after its published.

This is a great strategy and again, it's free. It's a way to not only build your reader email list, but also get reviews on your newly published books.

OFFER 1ST IN BOOK SERIES FOR FREE:

Another way to continually build a mailing list is to write novels in book series. There are many authors who started out offering their first book for free and then sold the other books in the series. This is a great way to allow readers to try out your books, see if they like your writing style.

Even Amazon will allow you to 'price match' for a free book on their platform. There are some conditions that have to be met, but nothing that's hard.

Most series has a certain read-through rate. If your books are good, you will have a high read-through rate and readers will be happy to spend on the follow up books. I'll also show you in follow up blog posts how to add a link to the next book, along with adding a link to leave a review for the book they just finished. It's all marketing and it all works.

WHERE SHOULD YOU BEGIN?

Join Bookfunnel.com, SiteOrigin.com and Mailchimp.com. That's enough for the first six months to a year, especially if you only have one book. Give away that first book or offer it on sale through Bookfunnel and SiteOrigin. Within a year, you will build a mailing list anywhere from 500 to 5,000 emails. I know it sounds impossible, but the trick is consistency. Every month you need to continually offer your books for giveaway or sales.

WHY SHOULD I GIVE THEM AWAY?

The main reason you should give away your early books is that unless you have a readership already, like JK Rowling or Stephen King do, then you are competing with those authors. Why would a reader buy one of your books when they can buy a book by a well-proven experienced author? That's the main reason to be willing to give away books in order to build a readership.

Don't think of it as giving away your book for nothing. Think of yourself as using the book as a free way to build the first twelve bricks of your future readership. It's all in the way you choose to look at things.

Gimp For Authors – How to Make a Professional Banner

WHY GIMP?

I used Photoshop in the past, which is a great tool. They have a subscription where you get to use the latest tools in their whole suite of products, but the price starts at $50 a month. When I was doing web design, that was fine. But now I'm retired and I'm on a fixed income; so now $50 a month is no longer okay!

Gimp is an open source software that is free. They do take donations as they have a team of developers who put this together for 'people of the world'. They are part of the group of unsung heroes who get no acclaim in the media. So if you want to think about making a donation to them, you can do that here. You can also download the software here.

Gimp is similar to but different from Photoshop. These companies copyright and trademark many of their "techniques" so everything has to be done slightly differently and called a different name. So there is a tiny learning curve in trading Photoshop for Gimp, but it's well worth it.

MARKETING WITH GRAPHICS

As a self-published author, all marketing for my books falls to me. I can outsource it, but that costs money too. I have figured out, after publishing 11 novels, where my money is best spent. The answer is on line-editing, which costs between $400 to $500 or more depending upon how long your book is.

So learning to make graphics is very important for the self-published author. Using Gimp can make this easy for you as you can reuse some of the same templates. It's easy enough to learn as authors and writers only need to know how to make book covers, social media graphics and website banners.

BOOKFUNNEL AND SITEORIGIN:

Two of the most popular websites to give away or sell your book is through bookfunnel.com and siteoriginapp.com. These two companies offer the opportunity to join other authors in featuring your book. Everyone has a 'share date' and they share the promotion with their newsletter list and also with their social media following. It's a win/win for everyone.

HOW TO MAKE THE BANNER - WRITTEN INSTRUCTIONS

I have a video below that shows how easy it is. I'll post the written instructions here in case you want to keep them handy!

Open a new document.
Make the dimensions 1500 px wide and 500 px tall.
Change the ppi to 300
Expand the Advanced options and choose a transparency background.
Right-click (RC) on the background layer and choose 'fill with background color'.
Get a royalty-free graphic from depositphotos.com or pixabay.com. Save to your computer and note where you are putting it so you can find it for the next step.
Open as a layer. It will pull the picture into your project. It will most likely be way too big.
Using your mouse, hold down control and scroll up or down to zoom out on the new picture layer. Then go over and click on the scale tool.
Once you have activated the scale tool, hold down the control key and grab a corner of the photo (you may only see the yellow dotted line). Drag it in to resize it on the background layer. Let go.
Click on M to activate the move tool, or click on it in the toolbox. Move the graphic into the center of your background, or wherever you want it.
Click on the Text tool and pull out a text box. Click inside the box and begin to type your headline. Use Control A to surround all the text to resize it or change the color. Make however many text layers you need. Once you click on the text tool, it automatically puts it on its own layer.
To align to the center: Click on your background layer. Make sure the tool panel is open. (Double click the tool itself to bring up the tools panel for that align tool) Chose to assign the reference point to be the selected layer. Then click on the individual elements within the graphic and align them to the center.
Once you are done with your graphic and are happy with it, you have two choices to save it. (1) You can "Save as" and this will save the Gimp document that you can open next time and just change the picture and headlines. I would suggest you save at least one of these to reuse. (2) If you want to use the headline or graphic elsewhere, you want to save it as a jpg or png file. Use Export As and then choose the folder and name for the graphic.
That's it! Easy-peasy -- well, maybe the second or third time you do it it will be easy.

HOW TO MAKE THE BANNER VIDEO

What You Need to Set Up a PPC Campaign on Amazon

Log into your KDP account at Amazon and click on the tab for Marketing. Your first choice will be to choose between a sponsored ad or a lock screen ad.

Today we are going with a Sponsored Ad Campaign. This is the one where you can use similar products and/or keywords.

Create Your First PPC Campaign:

Once you choose the Sponsored Product Campaign, the following screen (or one similar to it, depending upon when you are reading this):

The campaign name will only be seen by you, so make it a name that you can identify. I chose to name mine "Groomed - Sponsored Product - First Week" so that I will remember this is my first one. I also chose automatic targeting so that I can see what Amazon and it's huge database of keywords will throw up for me. This was recommended by NomadMillionaire on YouTube who is a pro at PPC, so I am following his lead.

You will need to determine how much you are willing to pay for this campaign. I chose $15 dollars a day to start. This will give me a chance to see what kind of action $100 a week can bring.

CAMPAIGN-BUILDING STRATEGY

Since the second choice, Dynamic bids, up and down delivers more sales, I chose to go with this one. This one week will give me an idea of how far up and down Amazon feels comfortable to go. The other two choices can be manipulated by PPC pros, which I'm not right now!

Choose an Amazon PPC Format:

I decided to go with the standard ad because I haven't researched custom text ads, so I will see what Amazon does using just a standard ad.

Name an Ad Group and Choose a Book/Product:

In NomadMilliionaries's video that I referenced in our last blog post, he left the Ad Group Name to the default of Ad Group 1, so I did the same. I didn't come across any tips regarding this in the other videos I watched, so I'm just going to see what it looks like after I have a few ads going and see if naming this in some other way will work better in the future.

You will be logged into your KDP account, so it will throw up all of your own products for you to choose, which I am doing with my new book Groomed for Marriage by R. Shannon but you can also choose a product by an ASIN number. Most people who have found their way to this blog post will be fellow book marketers, so I won't go into ASIN numbers.

Automatic Targeting & Negative Keyword Targeting

A default bid comes up with this box too and although I think .75 is too high for one bid, I am accepting it as I am also testing Amazon's algorithms to see what comes out. This will only be for a week, so I have control over the overall spending.

I will want to find out how to use negative keywords in order to prevent my book from coming up with people who are searching for the actual crime known as grooming but this first week will give me an idea if that will even be a problem or if Amazon's artificial intelligence can already recognize fiction from non-fiction searches which it probably can.

Should You Advertise Your New Book on Amazon

What I Learned in my First Week of Publication:

Once I finished my first Novel, Groomed for Marriage, I launched it on BookFunell to give it away in order to build a reader list. My expectations were low; I would have been happy to have given away 50 copies. Well, to my astonishment, I wound up giving away over 600 copies of the book. These are people who chose to sign up to down the full book for free.

So when I published Groomed for Marriage for $2.99, I thought it was so cheap that maybe I would have at least a few sales. Crickets!

So my first lesson was: BookFunnel is great for giveaways and building a list of readers, but FREE it's own animal.

Switching to Plan B:

So then my plan was to let the two weeks of my paid book promotion on BookFunnel run its course, which would have given me the cleanest feedback. I would have known how many copies I was able to sell from BookFunnel at $2.99 with no PPC marketing at Amazon. But even if I waited, let's say I sold 5, that wouldn't have been enough for me to stick with BookFunnel for a paid book as I already learned about Free being it's own animal.

So I decided that as a new author, I wanted to explore Pay Per Click advertisements to see what was entailed. I did the research and the purpose of these next few posts will be to share my findings and save you the research time.

Pay Per Click as an Investment:

I watched lots of videos on YouTube regarding Amazon ads. Many people have been doing it for a long time and had great tips. Although all of these experts stressed the importance of profit vs. return on investment, which of course is crucial in any business, I am choosing to see my first two months of advertising as an investment.

An Overview of your PPC Goals:

The best video I saw, geared for beginners, was the one below by Nomad Millionaire. It is from 2018, but Nomad explains PPC from a bird's eye view and this is important for beginnings to understand the strategy right from the beginning.

So you will need a credit card, your book information, a computer, and you will need to be logged into your kdp.amazon.com account. You will be ready to launch your first broad campaign.

Crash Course in NomadMillionaire's video:

Pay Per Click is an advertising program offered by Amazon that allows users to bid for ad placements. Amazon searches are all based on keywords and other secret algorithms. By choosing to start with a broad campaign, you get to ferret out all of the keywords that Amazon already knows about your product.

Once you have 7 days of running this broad campaign, you can begin to look at the broad campaign and figure out what keywords and initiating click throughs and which ones are leading to actual purchases. Those keywords you then will add to a manual campaign.

Nomad goes a little bit into his 'pricing strategies' that you may want to listen to, but it will all come down to how much you are willing to spend.

Next post we'll pick up with actually starting my first broad campaign and see where it takes up in the 7 day watch period.

How to Submit Novel to CatholicReads.com

WHY SUBMIT YOUR BOOK TO CATHOLICREADS.COM

If you are writing novels with a Catholic or Christian theme or backdrop, you may want to consider submitting the book to CatholicReads.com for review. They have a list of over 600 people who are signed up as already interested in Catholic books and Christian books. This is a niche market and one that may be a good fit for your novel.

SUBMISSION RULES:

Book is priced at 50% off or less
Must be on a combination: ebook & paperback or Paperback and Hardcover
Sale period is minimum of 24 hours and maximum of 2 weeks
It can be on any online store or on your own website
Books don’t have to be religious, but they need to be Christian and Catholic friendly.
You can submit more than one book at a time.
If it is part of a series, you need to request that they review the first book.
If they don’t agree to review your book on the first submission, they are not likely to review any other books by the author. (Pretty harsh???)

WHAT DOES CATHOLICREADS.COM DO FOR THE AUTHOR?

Once they review and accept your book, they will send the book in one fo their emails that they send to the list of over 600 Catholic and Christian-friendly book readers. This will lead to book sales, and/or author recognition.

Submission is easy, although it can be a little time consuming and it is best to know the rules and steps of submission which I am going over here for your review and convenience.

HOW TO ACTUALLY SUBMIT THE BOOK:

1. You need to go to their reviewers page (the about page on the website) and pick the person you think would most enjoy your book and jot down their name(s). In other words, if you have a romance novel, you probably wouldn’t want a science fiction fan to be the one to read and review your book.

2. Email readcatholic@gmail.com with the submission line: “Submission: Book Title”.

3. DO NOT ATTACH YOUR BOOK TO THE EMAIL. They will ask for it later in the process.

WHAT TO INCLUDE IN THE EMAIL:

1. Name of Book
2. Book Blurb (You may want to choose your longer book blurb to give the reviewer a little more information that would convince them that your book would be a good read and a good fit for their reader base.)
3. Why you think it would be a good fit for the Catholic Reads audience.
4. List of the themes explored in your book. (Confession, sin, annulment, abortion, etc.)
5. If you think this book would be particularly fit for a specific reviewer on
our team, let us know. (Choose a person you think is a good fit for your book. The reviewers are on the About Page of the website.)
6. If your novel is part of a series, you need to mention that as well.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER SUBMISSION?

They will contact you with a request for the book once the submission has reached the top of their list. You can email and ask what number your submission is on the list.

Once your book passes that process, then you will be contacted about submitting the copy of the book, AFTER the vetting process.

WHERE IN THE MARKETING PROCESS IS CATHOLICREADS.COM?

Because you will be offering the book for a reduced amount, it should be before you join Kindle Unlimited and you may decide to run this the minute you get it back from the proofreader and it is ready for final publication. This could be the first thing after the Proofreader is finished, as you are making the changes to the book as there is a waiting period.