Ten years ago you could indie publish a novel, set the price at 0.99 and watch it rise to the top of the Amazon charts. This, almost brainless marketing tactic, is what resulted in my selling hundreds of thousands of eBooks, which led to some pretty lucrative publishing deals. It also meant that I went from making zero money with my fiction, to making a nice living. And that's after having scored a major six-figure, two book deal (the majority of those funds went to finance my first divorce, but I'll save that for another blog).
Fast forward ten years and simply setting your indie books at 0.99 is no longer a valid marketing strategy. In fact, so many books proliferate the marketplace now, that an author needs to be a little more creative when it comes to rising above all that white noise. After a couple of down years, this month (July) will be one of my best on record. Not only have I signed a "nice" deal with Oceanview Publishing for the September 2020 publication of arguably my best standalone to date, The Girl Who Wasn't There (the ink isn't dry on the contract and my first advance check arrived yesterday), I've made some significant changes in how I go about marketing my indie list.
For the longest time, I avoided educating myself on Amazon Ads. I would simply throw together some keywords, create an ad, and then wait to see if it stuck. Bad way to go about advertising, it turns out, but a good way to stuff Mr. Bezos's already stuffed pockets. Finally, I decided to invest in Mark Dawson' Ads for Authors course (no I am not an affiliate, just a fan), and it most definitely proved one hell of an investment. It's not that I didn't know what I was doing when it came to Amazon ads, it's more like I was blind to their possibilities and rather careless in my tactics, kind of like a parent who tells his kids to fend for themselves for supper. For instance, I might look at the ACOS (ad cost) and if the percentage of ad spend was more than I was receiving in sales profit, which was almost always the case, I would immediately stop the ad. But Mark's course spells out, in detail, how even a negative ad spend can still prove profitable. Just this little tidbit of info alone has become rather valuable to my overall strategy. It was a wake up call.
The course has also taught me another valuable lesson in terms of scaling my ads. Don't just create them and forget them. Tweak them, find out which keywords are working and which aren't. Most of all, if your ad is proving profitable, copy it and scale it. I've also created a separate portfolio for each book which makes a huge difference when it comes to both organizing my ads and determining what's working and what's not.
But Amazon Ads are only a part of the story. I use a marketing manager to take care of my promos. I have a Book Bub for The Shroud Key this month thanks to his efforts, and he is presently seeking ways to boost audio sales. Add to that a subscriber list that should hit my first 10K by the end of the year (some authors have hundreds of thousands of subscribers!!!!), and things are most definitely looking up. My overall philosophy is a simple one. If many hybrid and indie authors are making mid-six and even seven figure incomes, why can't I? I'm currently writing on average a novel per month. I have the material, the reviews, and the street cred (The Thriller Award, the bestseller lists, the sales, etc.). Now it's a matter of scaling my business way up.
Being a hybrid author is most definitely not as easy as it was back in 2010 or 2011. You have to chop through the thick bush in order to reach the valley of good and plenty. A little education definitely goes a long way, and I can see myself reaching my financial goals so long as I continue to adjust to the times and continue to view my writing as not only an art, but a long term freelance career (Free being the key word here. I haven't worked a real job in 20 years and don't intend to ever go back).
The golden age of writing is still here. In fact, it never left. You just have to make more of an effort to seek it out.
WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
Excellent advice. I am writing again, and beginning to market my best novel to date. Hopefully, the one I am writing now will prove to be just as good. However, a writer needs to be just as sharp with his or her writing as they are with their prose. Thank You for this advice, Vince.
ReplyDeleteGreat to hear you're back at it and killing it...keep it up!
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