David Gaughran's Blog, page 8
July 4, 2018
Granular Targeting 101
I’m pretty experienced with digital advertising at this point but when I got my interview for Google AdWords back in 2003 I had to… Google it to figure out what they did. And I still got it wrong!
I was quite lucky that I first interviewed with Overture (the former name of the digital advertising division of Google’s one-time rival, Yahoo) because I had absolutely no idea how these kind of ad platforms worked, let alone best practices. But I learned fast—Google’s training was excellent.
One t...
June 10, 2018
Cassandra Dee and Mosaic Book Stuffing
The Amazon charts continue to be plagued by book stuffing, ten days into the new regime. Aside from one rather notable head on a pike — Chance Carter appears to have had his account shut down, but quite possibly for other actions — book stuffers are continuing largely as normal, only making minor tweaks to their presentation, simply appending the words “Collection” or “Compilation” to their titles and covers. And not even bothering to do that on all their (still) stuffed books.
The stuffers a...
June 5, 2018
The Blog Subscription Blues
The 2,000 or so non-Wordpress users who are subscribed to this blog by email seem to be having no issues (please tell me if that’s not the case!). The 42,000 or so WordPress users who follow this blog are another matter and your subscription could be futzed up. I know some of you are getting two notifications, and some aren’t getting any at all. I think I have it figured out, and you might need to fiddle with your WordPress subscription settings.
Because WordPress does a few funny things with...
June 3, 2018
Amazon Faces Test Of Book Stuffing Policy
Amazon quietly rolled out new content guidelines on Friday to tackle the plague of book stuffing, along with some new metadata rules which all seem to be aimed at cleaning up the Kindle Store – something long overdue. However, one infamous book stuffer is already bragging about a loophole. This is a huge test for Amazon’s new policy and whether KDP will actually enforce it.
There was a push among some authors a few weeks back to get Amazon to lower the max payout size in Kindle Unlimited to 1...
June 2, 2018
When #Cockygate And #Tiffanygate Collide
#Cockygate has been rolling for a month now and is quite multifaceted — touching on some pretty existential issues for writers, and indeed all creatives. This post from lawyer Marc Whipple tracks the beginning, in case you have been in a coma for the last month. The story also broke out into the mainstream briefly where it was covered by Vox and The Guardian, among others.
More recent developments are as follows. Multiple authors made creative stands against Faleena Hopkins’ extremely questio...
May 31, 2018
Favorite Things: Blog Highlights 2011-2018
I thought I'd get the new blog rolling with two posts in one day. Why not, I'm the captain of this ship, dammit. You may have missed the monster post on Marketing in 2018 as it went out in the wee hours this morning — still stress testing traffic levels gradually on the new site. Speaking of...
I'm not one for anniversaries or the like, as my long-suffering partner will attest. And I generally save sentimentality for the saloon. Look forwards, not backwards, and all that palaver. But I did in...
May 30, 2018
Marketing Uncovered: How To Sell Books
Marketing is more complicated than ever, but the tools we have for reaching readers are fantastic these days, and the rewards for reaching the summit of Mount Discovery are simply immense. Even worth this long-ass intro I'm about to drop! Sometimes we forget. I hear people complaining that things are down across the board and Amazon is squeezing the margin out of everyone, or that the Golden Era is over.
Sorry, it’s not true. The game has changed, and you might need to retool your approach, b...
May 22, 2018
Moving Blog House – Update Your Subscription!
[image error]Just a quick note to say that I’ve launched a fancy new website at DavidGaughran.com which is going to house this here blog. In fact, all existing posts (and comments!) have already been successfully ported across so all that remains to do – aside from a few kinks to iron out at the new home – is to move all YOU across.
You shouldn’t need to update any links as everything will be redirected from here when I pull down the shutters in a day or two, but blog subscribers are a different matter. I...
April 29, 2018
Welcome to the Superfan Factory
It’s almost exactly a year since I gave a talk at a conference in Austin which introduced a concept I call “The Reader Journey” – which is a bookish version of a new marketing paradigm that is helping companies understand their customers better, and how to tailor their marketing accordingly.
I’ve spent the last twelve months researching and testing and experimenting, and then organizing all this information into a structure which will help you understand exactly who you are writing for, plus...
April 24, 2018
PSA: ReviewMeta Is Not Accurate
[image error]There’s an article doing the rounds at the moment from the Washington Post suggesting that the Amazon is undergoing some kind of fake review crisis. There are problems with Amazon reviews, of course, but this article is based on some pretty flawed data. At least in how it pertains to the world of books, which is what I know, and what I’ll focus on here. I can’t speak to the world of diet supplements or fake tan or giant tubs of lube – alas.
The article’s claims are largely based on a flaky si...
