Effective methods of book promotion

What doesn't Work

• Some book promotion sites
• Buy my book adverts on Amazon, Google, Facebook, Twitter
• Email

What Works

• Adverts featuring humour
• Some book promotion sites
• Adverts on Amazon
• Adverts on Google
• Facebook adverts
• email

Huh! What works is often also what doesn't work. How is that? Let's deal with each seperately.

Adverts Featuring Humour

I'll deal with this on a separate page of examples

Amazon Adverts

Think about your book cover. An Amazon advert will display it like this:

This is what Amazon thinks I may buy from the selection of adverts they have been paid to display.
They'll also show:

and other categories such as 'Top rated', 'Best sellers', 'Most wished for', 'Most gifted' and 'Recommended for you'.

Notice how little information you are given? If a book attracts attention the user will be expected to click on it to find out more. This makes an interesting cover vital!

Let's assume that the cover image for 'Shuggie Bain' catches your attention and it's clicked on. You'll then see:

Immediatly you'll see it's a Booker prizewinner, has sold a million copies and it's just £1.99 for the Kindle edition. It has review information and two lines of author 'Description' which leaves you with the desire to 'Read more'. Would this extra information make you click the link or even buy it? If you do, you'll find the rest of the description is:

Personally, I think the first part of the last paragraph should have been the first paragraph making that read:

Why? Because this would be visible immediately and let prospective readers know that this is a book portraying the catestrophic effect of poverty on some families.

Think carefully about the book description visible immediately after the cover image catches attention. It must have a powerful effect if the book is to sell.

---

Did the publisher's choice of keywords help?

In this case - not in the slightest! The publisher, Picador, seems to have made little use of them. I checked with KDP Rocket and calibre to see what keywords were used. KDP Rocket shows keywords that might actually find the book at Amazon. The calibre keyword method finds the tags actually used in the epub source file submitted. Here they are:

Seems to me that the publisher has relied on reviews and its Booker Prize success to promote the book.

Google Adverts

What can a prospective reader find using a Google Search?

If they know the book title, for example 'Shuggie Bain' then typing in a few letters of it can often find results. Even if someone spells the title wrongly and types 'suggie' Google, because it's  an intelligent search engine (unlike Amazon) will still find it.

But what if the title and author of the book are not known? Doing a Google search for "books UK poverty fiction" finds this:

Scrolling the sponsored listings sideways finds Shuggie Bain as the 13th entry. To be sure of success an author needs his/her book to appear without scrolling sideways. Examining the keywords of 'Poor' finds an impressive list of keywords used.

As you can see, Google shows very little of the book in sponsored search results. Again   you must select from the thumbnail images to find more detail. Which would you choose? 

Book promotion sites

There are thousands of these but not all of them are effective. Those which are effective tend to cost  more to promote there. The clear leader is Bookbub but it's very expensive to promote there. Because it's so successful,  there's a high demand for promotion slots and not all requests for promotion there will be approved.

When looking for promotion sites my first port of call is to go to Dave Chesson's Kindlepreneur website and use his list of promotion sites. You'll need to subscribe to the Kindlepreneur website to see his favourites - well worth doing..

Facebook Adverts

If you go on Facebook and place a link to your book cover and it's image don't expect to get many sales. 'Buy my book' adverts simply don't work. You need to craft an advert which catches the eye with an image and makes the reader click to find out more.

Spend some time learning about Facebook advertising. Your first source shoulf be the advertising management pages at Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/business/m/ads-manager 

Facebook will ask you to set a campaign objective and offer a choice of:
Awareness, 
Traffic, 
Engagement,
Leads,
App promotion,
Sales

An author should choose 'Traffic' and direct clicks to either their chosen book retail site or  to their author website. 

Next consult some of the experts on Facebook advertising:

• Kindlepreneur
• David Gaughran

Twitter/X Adverts

What works for Facebook, often can be tweaked to work on Twitter/X 

Word of mouth

Ask your readers  to help you promote your books by talking about them on social media. 

As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

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