Book Marketing 101

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These are just the basics. The most successful marketing campaigns will always be looking for creative and new ways to find more readers. 

There are two components to selling books

  1. Conversion. The % of viewers who purchase your book.
  2. Traffic. The number of people who visit your Amazon product or landing page.

Before you start putting effort into promoting a book, it’s important to make sure your conversion % is as high as possible so you aren’t wasting effort and advertising expense.

Improving Conversion

  1. Book cover: One of the most important factors. Before you design your cover you can test options using A/B split tested ads to see which concept has the highest click-through-rate (or lowest CPC). If you’re trying to decide which stock image to use as the base for your cover, try testing a few options while sending people to a landing page where they can enter their email address to get a free review copy of the book when it’s out. This will allow you to get extra benefit from your ads while optimizing the book details.
  2. Book description: These can also be tested with A/B split tests. Good things to have are:
    • Short, big, bold tag line to catch the eye.
    • Series of leading hooks, each drawing the reader in while instilling a mystery they will need to read the book to answer.
    • A short description of the book which should clearly establish the genre.
    • Snippets from your most positive reviews.
    • A direct call to action with promise of the benefit they’ll receive such as “Read now to…” “Buy now and…” “Grab a copy to discover…” etc.
    • An excuse to add relevant genre search keywords into the description. (I use an “About Haunted House Publishing” section of my Author Profile to stuff as many keyword phrases as I can).
  3. Reviews: 5-10 positive reviews are enough to give a book credibility. Try distributing 250+ advanced copies to achieve this, and only give review copies to people who join a list which allows you to proactively contact them. Not only is this a good way of getting more subscribers, but people are much more likely to leave a review if you’re able to follow up with them in a few weeks and remind them.
  4. Credibility Boosters: Are you a bestselling author? Has your work won any awards or been featured on large websites or youtube channels? If you can’t think of anything, consider relating your book to something famous to make it more relatable. Example “Fans of Stephen King will love…”

Generating Traffic

Once your book is ready to show off, it’s time to get as many eyeballs on it as possible. I like to start off with a .99 cent discounted launch or free days scheduled through KDP select.

  1. 7 Keywords: Use these for the lowest competition, highest traffic, long-tail keywords you can find to match your book.
  2. 10 Categories: KDP only allows you to select 3 which are visible, but you can Contact KDP and request your book be added up to 10 categories that fit your genre. I use KDP ROCKET for both generating keywords and categories (as well as Amazon Ad keywords), and highly recommend it.
  3. Use book promotion websites, your email list, social media promotions, and anything else you can think of to concentrate as many discounted sales or free downloads as possible within a 2-3 day window. This will rank you high in all your categories, get you on #1 new release lists, rank you higher with keyword searches, and starts generating organic traffic from Amazon.
  4. Full price sales: Once your concentrated promotions have finished you can set the book to full price (2.99+ to earn the 70% royalties). Now you want to keep the rank as high as possible for as long as you can. FB ads, Amazon Ads, Bookbub ads, Reddit ads, twitter ads, podcast interviews, writing free content for social media, are all good tools.
    Submit your book to Bookclubs and cross-promote with other authors. Bookfunnel.com is an effective way to find other authors in similar genres, and agree to promote each other’s work to your readers. All of these efforts will have the most benefit directly after the visibility granted from the ranking spike of the concentrated paid advertising sales.
  5. Optimizing Ads: 
    When optimizing ads, keep split testing with different media, descriptions, and audiences until you get the cheapest ad possible. ASSUMING that your description and cover is good, I find:
    .60+ CPC is going to kill you.
    .40-.60 CPC is okay for visibility or ranking spikes, but you’re unlikely to make a strong ROI.
    .20-.40 CPC is great and can be run for a long time.
  6. KDP Countdown: Every few months you can schedule another .99 cent countdown if you’re exclusive to Amazon. Spike the rank, run the ads, wash and repeat. If everything has been done properly and people enjoy the book, it will continue to sell on Amazon from its organic traffic even without continuous promoting.
  7. Write more books: The #1 way to promote all your books is simply to get more out there, and learn along the way. The more books you have in a series, the more cost effective your advertising is, and the more sustainable an income it can be.