Advertising for Indie Authors – Part 2: Amazon Marketing Services

You sell books on Amazon. It makes sense to advertise on Amazon as well. Amazon Marketing Services lets you create ads that run on Amazon pages. While people are looking for books similar to yours, an ad will display on the page which hopefully entices them to click over to your book.

For an ad campaign I created for Redwood: Servant of the State, I chose to run the ad based on interests. My targeted interests were Teen and Young Adult, and Science Fiction and Fantasy.

I budgeted $125, and limited the time for a month total, running from about mid-May to mid-June. Here’s the stats for the run:

amazon marketing 1

Over 45,000 impressions looks impressive, but out of all those page views you’ll note only 39 people clicked on the ad, and of those only one person bought a book which was selling for $1.35 at the time. While the run didn’t go over the budget by a long shot, ultimately it did cost $23.50 to sell the one book. Here’s what the ad looked like:

amazon marketing 2While it was fun to have an ad for my book running alongside some other great books on Amazon, the return on investment proved weak. Things that could possibly improve the return might be a better ad. The basic ad only allows two lines of copy above an image of the cover. Perhaps different verbiage would lead to more clicks, and thus more sales.

Advertising for Indie Authors – Part 1

As an indie author, I have the dilemma shared by others as to how to get the word out about my books. Naturally, I feel I’ve produced good works of fiction, but since I’m starting a “brand” or “business” from scratch featuring my name on these books, I have no ready or apparent avenues with which to support getting the word out.

I know I’m not alone. In my circle of friends, people have dutifully downloaded my books and offered encouragement, support, and advice. A friend of a friend self published a few years ago, and his book has languished online. Our mutual friend put us in contact with one another. His questions: How do you get sales? How do you advertise your books? How do you get the word out about what you’ve written?

In thinking about these questions, I thought it might be useful to record my advertising efforts on this site, for better or worse. Perhaps this might help other new indies facing similar questions about spreading the word regarding their books.

I certainly haven’t found the magic bullet yet, but perhaps my experiences can lead authors toward productive advertising avenues, and maybe help them avoid ones that are not so useful.

So stay tuned, and I’ll share what I’ve discovered so far.