Peter Laurent's Blog - Posts Tagged "project-wonderful"
Book Advertising - My Results
Hi there, as promised here are my thoughts on advertising strategies for your baby er, book. I hope this can help some of the relatively unknown gems hiding out there!
First of all, there is no way to know for sure how many "clicks" your online ads get will turn into actual sales.
It seems that word of mouth is and always will be king when it comes to books (which is another reason why reviews are so helpful).
But it can't help to raise awareness of its existence a little bit, while I'm busy writing!
I've got three campaigns going for The Covert Academy at the moment. One on Goodreads, one on Project Wonderful and one on Google Adwords.
All three use a prepay system, you pay what you want then define the price per click or how often the ad is shown (though Adwords has the option to just spend forever).
The basic DIY option on Goodreads is simple and clean. It ties in nicely with word of mouth too, because if someone sees your ad, and adds the book to their shelf, then their friends can see that too.
However Goodreads uses an algorithm based on how many clicks you get a day to decide how often to show your ad. It ends up with days or weeks when you get little visibility and not much you can do about it, but when you do get a few clicks your ad can skyrocket. I noticed the most sales on those days in the last couple of months.
Project Wonderful works on a similar system to Goodreads, with a nice clean interface, except you have slightly more options. You can have an ad with an image of anything you choose, not just a book cover. PW uses a bidding system where you bid for how often your ad is shown rather than the number of clicks. Consequently I get a lot of clicks on these ads, but far fewer people will be buyers since the range of websites available to advertise on is quite limited for books.
Finally, Google Adwords is the most in-depth and complicated option. I have gotten the highest "Click-through-rate" on here than any other. Adwords targets your ads very specifically to customers. However it is the most expensive option (rarely shows your ad if you pay less the $5 a day).
Overall I would stick with Goodreads advertising, at least you know that every "view" and "click" is aimed at someone interested in books in general!
A small update regarding my writing progress: I've done 20,000 words for book 2 but have hardly scratched the surface of my plot summary. So it's either going to be a very long book or I need to cut out a lot of filler maybe.
I'm also writing a short story based on a background character from The Covert Academy, which will weave in and out of the story of the novel and hopefully bridge the two novels without being required reading, if that makes sense. I'm aiming to get this out in early June!
Thanks for reading, I hope that info helped someone!
-Petes
First of all, there is no way to know for sure how many "clicks" your online ads get will turn into actual sales.
It seems that word of mouth is and always will be king when it comes to books (which is another reason why reviews are so helpful).
But it can't help to raise awareness of its existence a little bit, while I'm busy writing!
I've got three campaigns going for The Covert Academy at the moment. One on Goodreads, one on Project Wonderful and one on Google Adwords.
All three use a prepay system, you pay what you want then define the price per click or how often the ad is shown (though Adwords has the option to just spend forever).
The basic DIY option on Goodreads is simple and clean. It ties in nicely with word of mouth too, because if someone sees your ad, and adds the book to their shelf, then their friends can see that too.
However Goodreads uses an algorithm based on how many clicks you get a day to decide how often to show your ad. It ends up with days or weeks when you get little visibility and not much you can do about it, but when you do get a few clicks your ad can skyrocket. I noticed the most sales on those days in the last couple of months.
Project Wonderful works on a similar system to Goodreads, with a nice clean interface, except you have slightly more options. You can have an ad with an image of anything you choose, not just a book cover. PW uses a bidding system where you bid for how often your ad is shown rather than the number of clicks. Consequently I get a lot of clicks on these ads, but far fewer people will be buyers since the range of websites available to advertise on is quite limited for books.
Finally, Google Adwords is the most in-depth and complicated option. I have gotten the highest "Click-through-rate" on here than any other. Adwords targets your ads very specifically to customers. However it is the most expensive option (rarely shows your ad if you pay less the $5 a day).
Overall I would stick with Goodreads advertising, at least you know that every "view" and "click" is aimed at someone interested in books in general!
A small update regarding my writing progress: I've done 20,000 words for book 2 but have hardly scratched the surface of my plot summary. So it's either going to be a very long book or I need to cut out a lot of filler maybe.
I'm also writing a short story based on a background character from The Covert Academy, which will weave in and out of the story of the novel and hopefully bridge the two novels without being required reading, if that makes sense. I'm aiming to get this out in early June!
Thanks for reading, I hope that info helped someone!
-Petes
