Advertising Works (sort-of)
I’m prepping to launch Seeker (StarFighter Book 2) in three weeks, so I started dusting off and updating the product pages for Sagitta (book 1) and Hrain (standalone novel). I’ve also experimented with some ads. Anyone who has published eBooks on Amazon knows that the initial hype and sales that comes with a new release drops off over time, and for no-name authors, you quickly get lost in the millions of books, selling basically nothing for years unless you constantly publish other books or advertise.
In my case, I published two novels in two years, and then did nothing for four years, so sales fell off the cliff. A little while ago, I started messing with Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads. These worked, but they were not cost effective at all. Since then, I’ve been testing some Facebook ads loosely following Matthew J. Holmes’ strategy that he uses to advertise his wife’s fantasy series. So far I haven’t been able to get a positive Return on Ad Spend (RoAS), but I have noticed a significant uptick in sales of both Sagitta and Hrain. In the past few weeks, Sagitta’s ranking has climbed out of obscurity, and the trickle of sales and KENP reads has become something much more steady. In fact, the book now ranks in the top 10 in the Teen & Young Adult Space Opera eBooks category (very niche, I know).
That’s not bad, and I’m hoping the massive increase in rankings (shown in the next image) will result in more attention from Amazon’s algorithm for all of my books, including the soon-to-be-launched Seeker. It’s currently costing me about $30 a day in Facebook ads to maintain this ranking, with only ten bucks a day coming in from sales, so here’s to hoping the launch of Seeker is the boon this series needs!
(And yes, if you’re paying attention, you just read that I’m losing $20/day on this book-writing endeavor. Please buy my books lol.)
Sagitta Bestseller’s Rank over Time:
StarFighter Science Fiction 