If learning and managing all the intricacies of Amazon’s advertising engine in order to promote your book/s seems just too hard, perhaps you might consider hiring a consultant through the outsourcing websites Fiverr and Upwork. You can check reviews of each consultant’s work in order to see if any of them might be a good fit. Packages start at quite low rates, so you could experiment without committing huge amounts of money.
Learn about Amazon Algorithms for Free
“Amazon is more than just a retailer: it is a search engine as well as a book discoverability website. In fact, it’s the world’s leading search engine for books, where the majority of buyers go to find their next read.”
Reedsy is offering a short, free introductory course for those interested in using Amazon advertising for their books. The course covers the following topics:
The fundamentals of how the algorithms work
How to optimize your product page for the algorithm
How to pick the right categories and keywords
How to ascend the various lists on the Kindle store
The right way to launch your book
Books Go Social service for Independent Authors
Books Go Social occupies a niche I have been interested in for a while — helping independent authors unfamiliar with social media to promote their books.
They offer:
Assistance with Amazon advertising
Editing of book descriptions
Netgalley campaigns
Assistance with email campaigns
Facebook advertising
Focus on the UK and US markets only, the two largest English speaking markets
According to their introduction: “Our Amazon and Facebook Ads for authors have received over three hundred million impressions (views) by readers. You will reach more readers with us. We advertise books on Amazon US and UK and have 11 Twitter accounts with 450,867 real followers (Nov, 2021 count). We also can email your book offers to 150,000+ readers. And our YouTube channel has 1,000+ followers who can see any book trailer or video interview you send us.”
“We know where the most effective places to run ads are for your book, and how to build your long-term monthly royalties and your career as a writer.”
Google Reviews are generally positive, and the business responds to comments. A representative sample: “I've used Books Go Social the past few years for a number of services, and they consistently over-deliver. The Books Go Social team is fast and efficient at helping authors figure out how to move their books into the marketplace and get them selling.”
The package prices are not exorbitant, and may be worth trying when you have done your due diligence…
Amazon Advertising and Book Marketing
Two books from Reedsy, both by Ricardo Fayet. A good entry-level introduction into the mysterious world of online book marketing…
How to change your mindset and sell more books with less effort.;
How to write books that guarantee a lasting, profitable career;
How to get Amazon's Kindle Store to market your book for you;
How to get thousands of readers into your mailing list before you even release the book;
How to propel your book to the top of the charts at launch; and
How to automate your marketing so that you can spend less time marketing and more time writing,
In this second book of the popular Reedsy Marketing Guides series, you will learn:
The fundamental guiding principles of advertising books on Amazon,
How to build a comprehensive list of product and keyword targets,
What type of ad campaign will best suit your book,
How to optimize your click-through-rate to boost delivery,
How to optimize your campaigns for profit, and
How to scale and progressively grow your spend while keeping your profit levels.
Amazon KDP and payments: an Odyssey
For Amazon KDP authors struggling to figure out how to aggregate their royalties, see the note below from an independent author:
“At last, I found someone at Amazon KDP who knows their job. I have now tagged all Amazon marketplaces to have royalties paid into my US$ Amazon account, e.g. outstanding UK royalties have now been sent to my US$ KDP account, as well as German and Canadian royalties. It is, therefore, now easy to transfer all that money to my Payoneer US$ account so that I can get paid into my Australian account – PHEW!”
For context, and earlier email from the same author:
I am now experiencing a separate crisis with Amazon, who are not paying me my due royalties. They have told me they have only paid Australian royalties by EFT but cannot pay me for all the other markets, which must be paid by cheque until royalties reach 100 in each currency. I have asked them how I will achieve those thresholds when I have, for instance, only sold one in Germany, and I am unlikely to sell anymore there - do they, therefore, keep my money? It’s very frustrating, and the whole exercise with Amazon is proving a nightmare. I have spent A$2035 on Amazon AD’s with a supposed return of A$474.36, of which I have only received A$153.28. I’m still waiting for an answer from them.
and more…
At this stage, I have read every word on both Amazon’s KDP and Payoneer’s websites. I have determined that Americans set up both sites specifically for Americans – so much for a Global Company.
Having now signed up for Payoneer, I find they can deal with EFT payments to Amazon USA, UK and Australia but forget Canada and Germany, where I have sold a few. Those few royalty amounts have gone into the Amazon coffers, given I will never reach the CN$100 and €100 thresholds.
I’ve written to Payoneer customer service to find out how they will arrange payments of my royalties from different Amazon markets, into my Payoneer account, and then into my bank account here in Australia – 5 days minimum response. Both websites state that once I have set up a Payoneer account, Payoneer will email Amazon and arrange payments to route through them - Mmm!
and
Payoneer has now advised that I can transfer currencies from one of my Payoneer Receiving accounts to another currency account. I can directly transfer €8.53 from my Eurozone Receiving account to my US$ Receiving account with a balance of US$44.53, thereby making the US$ account greater than US$50 (US$53.35), meaning I can now withdraw it to my account here in Australia. Phew! Getting that solution from them was like pulling teeth. However, I will leave it all alone until the new year in case any more royalties arrive in those accounts, but since I have canned my Amazon AD campaign there shouldn’t be much of that if anything.
What remains now is £36.40 sitting in my Amazon.co.uk account, which I cannot transfer to my Payoneer account as Payoneer doesn’t have an arrangement with a UK bank. So back to Amazon KDP with that one.
Dealing with Amazon KDP can certainly be a very frustrating experience, with Amazon making it extremely difficult to speak to an actual human.
Here’s a very long list of customer service issues with Amazon KDP.
David Gaughran's email archive
The ever-helpful David Gaughran keeps his email newsletter archives here. It is an extensive trove of practical advice relating to BookBub, Amazon advertising, Facebook advertising, marketing with email and launching a book. David says:
“Welcome to the email archive – where I store all the most useful emails from my weekly marketing newsletter. I’ve grouped them into various topic areas so you can dive into the subjects of most interest to you.”
And don’t forget to sign up to his newsletter here.
Anatomy of a Fiverr / Amazon KDP Advertising Campaign
If you are interested in running an Amazon campaign for your title/s on that platform, but would prefer to use a third party to manage the process, here is one author’s results and associated comments:
Fiverr allocated “bestbooks2020” who is managing my Amazon advertisements. They ran the first campaign in the Australian market only. That campaign ended yesterday. At the same time, I went onto Kindle Unlimited for 90 days.
Here are the results as of today:
Since launch;
Sales = 30 – <title 01> = 22 Kindle, 7 paperback. <title 02> = 1 Kindle. Royalties due = $145.75.
KENP READ (Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read)
<title 01> = 6,988 in Australia, 175 in the USA = 7,163
<title 02> = 138 in Australia, 1 in the UK = 139
Total = 7,302
As I’ve had it explained, KENP READS can be from actual downloads or from reading the first few pages.
I have initiated two more AD Campaigns through bestbooks2020 for the UK and US markets. So it will be interesting to see how that goes. Two, three-day Ads in each market cost me circa $157 each. I was initially going to run AD campaigns for all three books simultaneously in both markets, but that would cost me $900+ (maybe another time).
Update
KindleUnlimited
KEDP READS = 12,874 (11,522 for <title 01>, 1,352 for <title 02>, 0 for <title 03>). Amazon’s technical team are looking at <title 03’s> results to find out what is going wrong. Given the nature of the beast, it’s impossible to have 0 results for <title 03>.
Sales:
A total of 39, being 31 x Kindle and 7 x paperback.
The Amazon AD campaign Fiverr ran in Australia only resulted in 61 clicks for the first three-day blitz and 84 for the second, and a bill today from Amazon for $177.01.
The Amazon AD Campaigns start this Thursday in the UK and USA, Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. Given the cost for Australia, I’m now nervous about how much that will cost me, albeit I can pull the plug on it at any time. I will monitor daily.
Amazon advertising and BookBub
Practical suggestions from a very active and savvy independent author:
Four years ago, I fluked winning a FREE Featured Deal. I had five other books at the time, and the sell-through, and KUs were great (250,000/month). On top of this I received an additional 70 reviews for the Featured book, most of them 5-star. At the time I knew next to nothing about BookBub and expected to keep on winning Featured Deals. Was I in for a sad awakening!
Fast forward to July 2019 when I sold a mere 100 books and had a miserable 14,809 KUs. To make matters worse, I had more than doubled my number of books. There are many reasons why the preceding occurred, but the main one was that I did no promoting either via social media or paid advertising. I should say that writing is not my prime source of income, which is just as well, because if it were, I’d be starving. That said, I have a certain amount of pride and set out to remedy the foregoing.
I decided I’d actively advertise my books in promoters’ newsletters but would not spend more than $150 per month. The results to date, while not great, are promising. I’ll sell more than 200 books in October, and my KUs will nudge 30,000. The increase in revenue more than covered my advertising costs, and my numbers are up 100%. The idea now is to compound them at the same rate for the next four months.
I have not applied for a BookBub Deal this calendar year but soon will. If I’m successful, BB will be the exception to my $150 rule. I will not accept an international Deal and am of the belief that without the U.S., BB’s Deals, even with sell-through and KUs are still likely to be losers. The U.S. is critical.
The struggle that I have had is finding six suitable promoters for the seven-day Amazon countdown period. Outside of BookBub, ENT is the absolute standout. I don’t advertise the day after ENT ($45), as I’m still getting good sales and KUs from the day prior. The next-best promoter is BookRaid because it’s cheap (about 18 cents a click and usually less than $3) and is good for approximately 10 sales. Let’s say I’m promoting a book with a rank of #300,000 … it won’t be attractive to ENT’s subscribers, but by using BookRaid on the first day and another small promoter (say Authors XP at $20) on the second day, I can lower the ranking to sub #40,000 by the time ENT’s promo kicks in on the third and fourth days. Now it gets hard as I have three days to go and a remaining budget of about $82. The promoters available are eReaderIQ, FKBT, ManyBooks, The Fussy Librarian, Robin Reads, Just Kindle Books, Book Rebel, Book Gorilla, and Book Cave. I have had reasonable success with eReaderIQ ($20), FKBT ($30), and ManyBooks ($29). I might be tempted to replace FKBT with Book Gorilla ($50), but it would blow my budget by $17, and I’d need another 25 sales to justify it, and that’s unlikely.
Finally, I tried Amazon ads when they were first introduced in the U.S. with moderate success, but the competition was too hot (Mark Dawson spent $50,000 on Amazon Ads last month). However, Amazon has just introduced ads in the U.K., and I have 10 running, and they’re doing okay. I’m running them for two reasons … first-mover advantage and currently I hardly make any sales in the U.K.