Are Amazon Ads a Money Suck?

Courtesy Jane Friedman

I’ve been actively advertising my books on Amazon’s advertising platform for a couple years now. Originally it was called AMS which stood for Amazon Marketing Services but now it’s called simply, Amazon Ads. Who gives a crap what they call it? Anyway, I digress. 

Unlike the books I publish with real publishers, including the Amazon Publishing imprint, Thomas & Mercer, I also have a stable of 40+ books, novellas, and short stories that don’t move unless you put them in front of potential buyers. The old rule applies here. How can anyone buy your product if they don’t know it exists?

Enter Amazon Ads. Back in the early days, a few of us made some serious bucks selling eBooks on Kindle. I’d sold hundreds of thousands of them, and this led to some major publishing deals. But as the 2010s faded, many of us were finding it harder and harder to sell our books. Theoretically anyway, Amazon Ads could regain the visibility we’d lost with the influx of thousands of new authors.

Not knowing what I was doing, I created sponsored ads for a whole bunch of my books and while sales picked up, it soon became apparent that I was spending more than I was making. Time to educate myself. I took a course on Ads for Authors and it educated me on the ins and outs of making effective ads. It also told me how much to spend or not to spend. So far so good. But it also taught me something that was far more important. Advertising on Amazon is not necessarily driven by feeding it cash, it is driven by analyzing the data.

Now here’s where things get real sticky for me. I am not a spread sheet guy. I am not a data analyst. I cringe when it comes to math, and I am so dumb, I didn’t even know what an ACOS was before I took the course. ACOS is the most important statistic to pay attention to, because it tells you the Average Cost per click. That is, how much you’re paying every time someone clicks on your ad. If you’re ACOS is above %100 percent, you are losing money. In theory that is. BUTTTT…and this is a big but…if you’re in Kindle Unlimited, an ACOS a little above 100% is okay since it doesn’t count page reads.

Anyway, it turned out that for two years, my average ACOS was something like 600%. No wonder I was shaking my head at how much money was going out as opposed to coming in. So what to do?

I’m now stopping every ad that doesn’t have an average ACOS of 200% or lower. I’m going for a baseline here. I’m also going to concentrate only on books that are pilots of a long tail series. That way, I might attract readers who will give me a read through. I will also check my ads every day, as opposed to once per week. As I begin to achieve some success, I will scale up, and right the ship, as they say. After all, I’m in this to make some money, not hand it over to Mr. Bezos.

Be careful with Amazon Ads. Do them wrong, and you will lose your shirt and your pants. Do them right, and you can make build a nice little fortune.  

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM

The Golden Age of Writing Is Still Here...

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
     

The Death of the Indie Publisher is Upon Us

Not to be all doom and gloom lately folks, but now that 2019 is half over, it's become plainly obvious (or maybe I've just woken up to the sad reality), that what I once was able to count on as a steady, almost passive income from my indie books is rapidly eroding.

The big question is why.
The simple answer is ads (and this only one part of the answer, but for now, let's focus on this).

I've been using paid Amazon ads for a while now. I've also used Facebook and Book Bub ads. In fact, I just spent over $200 on a Facebook ad that ran just last week for maybe five days (don't tell the wife. Oh wait, I'm not married), and it hardly moved the needle. I'm not entirely sure what distinguishes a good ad from a bad ad, but if I had to guess, successful ads are the ones authors pour tons of money into (I'm talking thousands), as opposed to the ones authors put only hundreds or less into.

In other words, if you're not breaking the bank by upping your ad spend by thousands each month, your books are going to go unnoticed. My guess is that indie authors are also competing with ad budgets of medium and major publishers. For the first time in a long time, I'm beginning to think that what was once the savior of the fiction writing industry--the one thing that could provide an author with a steady income stream that would keep him writing for a living forever and ever, proved but a dream.

No way can I compete with the ad budgets of those who can afford to spend five, six, or even ten thousand per month on ads. Ain't gonna happen. I suppose I could invest in one of those $600 courses some authors are offering up for learning how to use Amazon Ads, but I can bet this will only serve to confuse me more. Besides, if an author is really doing that great with the ads, why go to the trouble of creating time consuming courses? Maybe the question answers itself.

So where does this leave me (us!)?

I guess I could go wide, and move all my indie books back over to Draft2Digital. I already have all my short stories there. But, lets face it, iBooks, Barnes & Nobles, Kobo, and the like don't have nearly the selling power of Amazon, even without the ads.

I could invest more in monthly promos like KND and Book Bub. I already spend hundreds per month on a marketing dude, and he does a great job getting me all sorts of promos. But even during a year where I've enjoyed several Book Bub promos, you can only go to the various wells so many times with your $0.99 promo books. You can only give away so many free books, and believe me, I've given away hundreds of thousands.

Maybe I could increase my subscriber list. I'm steadily doing this, but now Mailchimp is charging even for those who unsubscribe which is like tossing salt in the wound and then viscously pinching it.

I could write more books and just try to win the battle with the power of numbers. But producing a great book not only takes time it takes cash, and now that the return on investment for said book isn't half of what it was even three years ago, it's a speculative gamble at best.

Or, I could make a profound return to the traditional way of doing things, and once again rely on advances and the marketing prowess of a publisher. I'm already doing that, but rather than place a major portion of my energies on the indie side of things, I might concentrate more on the traditional. Like I said, I'll soon have news of a new deal in the making, and without that, I might be ready to pull my toe nails out.

2019 has definitely been a watershed year thus far for the indie publishing world. I predict thousands will drop out, hang it up, and look for work. Luckily, the economy is booming. Luckily I invest in Bitcoin!

I also predict many will once again go back to seeking out an agent who will hopefully nail a book deal or two. Personally, I'm going to stick to hybrid publishing, and continue trying to take advantage of both systems. I do this in the hope that eventually, things will change for the better. Hope is a four letter word, folks.

These are the times that try writer's nerves and separate the men from the boys, the women from the girls. Who's got staying power? Who will survive the storm? Methinks the casualties will be staggering.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
   
  

Marketing: The Time Suck

I work all the time. In fact, I'm sometimes like the crotchety writer dude played by Jack Nicholson in that movie from the late 1990s, As Good As It Gets. There's a scene in which he tells Helen Hunt, "I work all the time." The point being, Don't bug me. Writers are a funny bunch in that they don't feel right unless they are putting words on a page, good words or bad words.

But lately, I feel like despite the stellar word count, the marketing has been getting in the way. The social media, the interviews, the setting up of promos, the website updates, the newsletters, the compiling of subscribers and, if you're like me, answering as many fan emails as you can possibly answer without your fingers falling off from all the typing. I like my fans. They support me. Therefore, I like to give them the personal treatment.

Now, marketing your work doesn't apply only to your independently published books and stories. It also applies to the traditional stuff. In some cases, I find myself pushing the traditional stuff more, since the publishers just don't have the time or the budget to keep pushing Zandri books, especially the ones I can't even get my own mother to buy.

Some authors rely on Amazon ads or Facebook ads. They pour a bunch of money into the ad budget then create numerous ad-sets and forget about it. But like I intuited in a previous post, these ads can be a money suck if not monitored closely enough. Some authors hire virtual assistants to handle the marketing overflow. I've done this in the past and it never really works out, because you lose control over your messaging when someone else is producing it. Some authors do nothing. Their marketing is boiled down to consistent output. Write, publish, rinse, repeat. There's that rule again. The more books and stories you create, the better chance you have of making a decent monthly and semi-annual profit.

I believe that making more words is the inevitable answer. Writing stories day in and day out without hesitation. But how can one keep up with that kind of grueling pace? you ask. Simple. Some people never miss a day of work in a forty year career, minus vacations of course. Why should a writer be any different? Here's how I do it. I tell myself I'm working for a Hollywood studio, like Fox or Disney. They give me a room and a typewriter, and my boss tells me, "I want a story on my desk by the end of the week, or no paycheck." See, it's not so difficult when you look at it from that POV.

Anyway, this was supposed to be about marketing. But it all comes down to the writing, doesn't it?
Write, publish, rinse, repeat.
Everything else is secondary.

Grab my new novel THE ASHES

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
   

Moneysuck Or Do Facebook Ads Really Work?

Or, simply throwing your money away...

I've created a monster.
No, really...I now have something like 25 novels, novellas, and collections in print (see, I can't even keep track of the specific amount), about half of them with traditional publishers and the other under my own imprint, Bear Media. Like hungry little children, all these books need to be fed, or they will wither and die. That means, advertising. Sure, the best method for selling a book is still word of mouth, but I'm not only hoping to sell a few copies from out of my local indie bookstore, I'm selling to a global audience (Now you see why I do very few book signings). That means paid advertising like Facebook Ads.

I first heard about the possibilities of these little digital devils when I was in Italy sometime around XMas, 2015. I thought, well how hard can this be? I went to You Tube, looked at a tutorial on creating an ad set (the demographics, the budget, the copy, the image...), and I was off. Since then I've spent close to $10K on FB ads, and here's the thing: I'm not sure they work.

That said, I'm certain my books have landed millions, and I mean, millions of impressions. And quite a few clicks which I can only assume translates into sales. Or some sales at least. But for sure, I cannot attribute $10K worth of book sales to $10K worth of ads, which in the end would be a wash anyway. Taken a step further, I am most definitely not making a profit on these ads.

So why then, do I do the illogical thing and keep them going?

The answer lies in the impressions. Product recognition. What I'm hoping for is that when enough people finally recognize the novels I'm advertising, they will warm up to the idea of taking a chance on giving them a go. So I guess I can say, my investment in FB ads is more of a long-term thing. Right now, I'm the bakery that's giving away free cookies and cakes. That's not to say, I'm not learning how to optimize these ads better so that I'm not tossing money away. Numerous courses exist on creating the perfect ad, but they are expensive, and I'm not entirely sure the investment in time would be worth it.

In fact, I've been experimenting with Amazon ads as of late, and I find these effective in terms of dollars and cents (You are charged only per click, as opposed to FB ads where you spend exactly what you pledge per day). To a lesser degree in effectiveness are Book Bub ads.

In the end, I still believe the best way to push your books on the global market is to write more and more of them. Anyone who follows the Vox knows the mantra by now. Write. Publish. Rinse. Repeat.

But you still have to get the word out.

And this means advertising. So, if you're planning on using FB ads, make sure you spend only what you can afford, and experiment with them. Tweak them until the click rate is less than .05 per click. Anything more than that and you'll see your profits being eaten away like a cancer that thrives on healthy cells.

WWW.VINCENTZANDRI.COM
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