Taking the Next Step

Writing a novel is a lot of hard work. So much so, that when you finally complete one, get it edited, get a cover designed, and publish it, you can be tempted to bask in the accomplishment. But then it hits you that the work of writing and publishing a novel isn’t nearly as difficult as what comes next: selling it.

Sure, you’ll instantly sell a few dozen copies to friends and family. But then what? There are 48.5 million books available on Amazon. Approximately 1,000 new titles are added to that stack every single day. So the odds of perfect strangers “discovering” your books on Amazon range from slim to none — and for most people, it’s none.

I have been trying to do something about this. In my quest to break through, I have learned some interesting things. For example, advertising is essential; if the world isn’t going to somehow find you on it own, you need to present yourself to the world through ads. Just about everyone is on social media these days. But when it comes to advertising, not all social media is created equal. Meta (Facebook and Instagram) gets sixty-nine cents of every dollar spent on advertising on social media. Google is a distant second, at twenty-four cents. You Tube, Pinterest, TikTok, and all the others get less than three cents apiece. So I’m going to follow the smart money onto Facebook.

For the last several months, I’ve been methodically testing different elements of book ads. Headlines. Series taglines. Reviews. I’ve been showing them to people who are hopefully within my target audience and measuring the results. What is the click-through rate with this headline, or that review? What is the cost-per-click?

Recently, I added images to the things I was testing. I used previously winning examples of the headlines, taglines, and reviews, and paired them with pictures. Some of the pictures were designed to capture the atmosphere of the books. Others were random abstract images. Still others were author photos. I was surprised by which pictures worked. Some of my absolute favorites only got so-so results. while some that I didn’t expect much from got phenomenal results. But that’s why I’m testing, to see what the audience actually responds to, rather than what I think they will respond to.

I’ve finally assembled some complete ads, and I’m testing them now. If they pass muster, I will roll them out at scale. I’m starting with ads for Kindred Spirits, my most recent book. I’ll go back and do ads for Fighting Back next, going through the whole testing program for that book as well. Lastly, I’ll do testing for my nonfiction book Making Mammon Serve You, so that I am consistently advertising for all three books. And by early next year, I expect to have published my fourth book (and third novel), tentatively titled The Long Game. It’s crucial to have multiple books for people to buy, because it costs $12 to $20 in advertising to make one new customer. If I am only selling one book to these buyers at $19.95, I might not make much of a profit. This is especially true if people are buying e-books, which cost a good deal less than print books.

I thought you might like to see some of the ad pictures that didn’t quite make the cut. Again, these ads were all developed for Kindred Spirits. For starters, I wanted to play around with the “church hurt” theme, which actually runs across the whole series.

I thought the first one was catchy, representing a typical reader. And I thought of the second one as an arresting portrayal of Roz, the main character. But the market was meh on both of them. People did like the “There is no hurt like church hurt” line. So I used it with a different image, and it worked.

Likewise, I tried a few variants featuring quotes from reviews. These ones didn’t quite do it.

The first pic is of the French King Bridge, a Massachusetts bridge that actually figures into the plot of the story. The second is just an abstract of city lights. The third might represent a typical reader. None of them tested particularly well. But all three review quotes did phenomenally well when paired with different pictures.

So now I’ve assembled the winners, and am a week or two away from running real, complete ads. Once they’re up and running, I’ll go straight to building ads for my other books. In the meantime, I need to get my website and my Shopify store whipped into shape. Both are very rudimentary right now, and I’ll need to change that before my ads start sending buyers there.

It’ll be a steep learning curve, learning all the technology and that goes into running an e-commerce business. Which is why I say that writing the book is not the hard part. Not by a long shot. But the warm glow of having published a book has long since worn off. Now I need to get serious about selling it. Speaking of which: if by chance you haven’t read my books, I encourage you to give one a try. Start with Kindred Spirits. Even though the website is not”prettied up” yet, you can buy it here at jharrisonwrites.com/books. I promise you haven’t read anything quite like it!