Is it worth setting up book ads on Amazon? I’ve tried it a couple times now for a couple different titles of mine and I’m not convinced yet.

I have a book (The Red Velvet Box) that is set around the holidays – Thanksgiving and Christmas – so I thought I’d give it another try seeing that it’s around that time of the year. I’ve tried an Amazon ad before with my award-winning MG novel: Intrigue in Istanbul. I can no longer see that campaign so I can’t tell you how it went other than what I remember. And what I remember is my current campaign is garnering more interest but the sales are still just so so.

Here is the Amazon speak:
262,916 impressions – which means it’s showed up that many times on Amazon and from what I understand, that has to do with how much you pay/click for a certain key word.

I’ve got 90 key words –  key word doesn’t have to be just one word – (most gurus say you should have many more, but I got tired of trying to find more after I hit 90) and I started paying 25 cents/click/word(s). That didn’t get me many impressions, but it did tell me which key words were getting impressions so I upped the fee/word .40 or .50/word(s) on those specific words and the impressions increased A LOT!

So it’s run for about a week. I’ve spend between $3 and $4/ day (I’ve changed it a couple times). It’s had 100 clicks (on my specific ad) and I’ve spent $30.15 for $2.99 in sales. And those sales figures are the full sales, not my cut which is 70% of that.

So…so far I’m not that impressed.

Now, maybe my ad is not catchy enough. I looked at other bestselling books in my genre to help me decide on my ad copy, but I’m not a marketer, so maybe this could be improved and I’d sell more books. Or maybe my genre and age group (middle grade mystery adventure) is not a big seller. I do know mysteries sell – it’s one of the top 5, but for middle graders????

Now, it is the holidays, and people will be getting tablets and ereaders as gifts and maybe trolling Amazon for good books. I’m going to keep my ad going until January 7th, so we’ll see how it goes.

Here is Amazon’s info/marketing page for Amazon ads,   and remember this is marketing, even though it’s appears to educational, which is also is. The ads are not hard to set up but if you want to try putting up an ad, check your site every day to make sure it’s working the way you want. And don’t go over your budget. Give yourself a set budget and stick to it. Amazon wants you to be excited about any sales but if you don’t have the money to spend, don’t spend it!!

Wishing you and yours peace-filled holidays!

CKBooks Publishing
Where Publishing Dreams Become Reality