Ads work best when you think like a reader
By: Ginger | Posted on March 4, 2022
Great fiction novels are often filled with a roster of unique and believable characters, each with their own backstory that define how they react to the events of the story. As the author of that book, your job is figuring out what those actions and reactions would be, even when they might be very different than how you, personally, would behave in that same situation. One way to do that is by imagining yourself as that character, viewing the world through their eyes and colored by their history instead of your own. As Ginger explains this week, when it comes to improving the sales of a poorly performing book, you can actually rely on some of those same skills. Instead of looking at your ads in terms of what you meant or hoped for them to convey, you should take a walk through the same buying journey that your readers… Read More >
3 Advertising on Amazon Myths Busted for 2022
By: Ginger | Posted on February 25, 2022
Sometimes it’s worth revisiting even the most generally accepted beliefs to make sure that they still hold true. This is especially so with technology, because although we may regularly visit a website or use a service, improvements can be made behind the scenes and pushed out to us without our ever knowing. Advertising on Amazon is one of those things. When it launched, the platform had all sorts of issues and limitations that authors eventually learned to work around, often through online discussions with other users. Those discussions not only helped authors navigate the issues to get the most out of each Amazon ad they created, but raised awareness of the platform deficiencies in such a way that they became a kind of conventional wisdom. But despite Amazon’s continued improvement of their ad platform, fixing many of those early flaws, belief in their continued existence still persist within the… Read More >
Selling books on social media is about being yourself
By: Ginger | Posted on February 18, 2022
Not everyone has time, energy or interest in maintaining a social media presence for themselves, much less a separate one for their pen name (if the two happen to be different). And while there are plenty of paths to success, one of the most common shared elements I’ve noticed between successful authors that I’ve worked with is that they not only pay attention to social media, but they do it right. That means being personal and personable in your posts, instead of just using the medium as an afterthought or only when you have a new book to sell. That approach may work for businesses, but authors are selling stories that are often a part of themselves, which means your social media has to reflect that by creating a more personal connection with your readers. It sounds daunting, but as Ginger describes below, there are ways to make it easier…. Read More >
How to know when to change your book cover
By: Ginger | Posted on February 11, 2022
Every book and story is different, but if I had to pick a single element that was most commonly at fault for poor sales, I would point to covers without any hesitation. We all know that we shouldn’t choose a book by it’s cover, but most readers do it anyway, and for good reason. Whether browsing top 100 lists, scrolling through search results or just looking at also bought recommendations, few people have time to drill into every option to read blurbs or analyze reviews. Instead, they narrow the list down to just a handful that warrant further investigation, and the easiest and most obvious criteria available to do that is the cover. Images that catch a reader’s eye and spark their interest are the ones they’ll be drawn to first, giving those books a huge advantage over ones with less appealing covers. Of course, there are many reasons why… Read More >
The Hidden Gems Author Podcast is officially live!
By: Craig | Posted on February 4, 2022
The self-publishing landscape is constantly evolving, and the most successful authors understand that no matter what level they’re at in their career, there is always more to learn. This blog has (and will continue to be) a great forum for helping us share information on new ways to improve your writing or book marketing, but these days a lot of people prefer content that they can consume on the go, or while doing other things – which explains the growing popularity of the audiobook and podcast formats. That’s why Roland (Ginger) and I have launched the new Hidden Gems Author Podcast. Every Thursday, you’ll be able to listen to us discuss new topics with greater depth than is possible in the blog, and often with guests that are either experts in the subject, or have been affected by whatever issue it is we’re discussing. There is so much to learn… Read More >
Boxed Sets – are they worth it?
By: Ginger | Posted on January 28, 2022
Once you’ve written and self-published three or more books, you have the opportunity to package them together into a ‘boxed set’ for sale as an altogether new product – but is it worth the effort? As with anything, there are pros and cons to consider, so Ginger is here to walk you through everything you need to think about to make the right decision for you and your career. Everybody loves value – that’s why we shop at places like Costco and BJ’s Wholesale Club. If there’s an item you use regularly, it’s a no-brainer to buy ‘in bulk’ and save a ton of money over buying the product individually. The same can be said of books! On Amazon’s Top 100 lists, you’ll frequently see boxed sets of books for sale, even if they’re ebooks and the ‘boxed’ part of it is purely esoteric. But is gathering a bunch… Read More >
Creating a Lookalike audience that actually buys!
By: Ginger | Posted on January 21, 2022
Creating a Lookalike audience for your Facebook ads is far more useful than simply trying to advertise to FB users as a whole, even when you try to narrow that group down by the specific demographics you’re targeting or the interests you think your potential readers might all share. But creating that Lookalike from your entire mailing list isn’t nearly as effective as creating it from a more refined subset of that list, and when it comes to sending out ads looking to sell copies of your book, the subscribers you want to focus on are the ones most likely to buy a copy. Figuring out which ones those are, however, can be tricky. Luckily, Ginger has some advice on the best way to do that. Last month, I wrote a blog post about how the Apple IOS 14.5 update had disrupted the performance of a lot of authors’… Read More >
An easy way to generate keywords for non-fiction
By: Ginger | Posted on December 31, 2021
When it comes to finding relevant search keywords for your book, not all of the techniques you may be familiar with work for all types of books. How readers search for the book they’re interested in is a big factor in how you come up with your keyword list, and this is specifically relevant when it comes to whether your book is fiction or non-fiction. To generate keywords for non-fiction books, it’s not simply a matter of finding similar authors or analyzing the also bought list. Fortunately, there are tools available that can help, and Ginger is here to give you some tips on which ones to use and how to use them. Advertising on Amazon has a notoriously steep learning curve. However, if you self-publish non-fiction books, there is one tool at your disposal that can help shortcut a lot of the hard work. The secret to effective… Read More >
Should you advertise direct to your Series Page?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 24, 2021
It’s an unfortunate reality that many authors cringe when they hear that Amazon has made yet another change to their storefront with regards to how product pages are displayed or laid out. After all, it seems like more often than not those changes are more of a benefit to Amazon than to the actual author whose book is being sold on that page. So it’s a welcome relief to learn that they’ve finally added something that is actually useful. For authors that like to write books as part of a series, Amazon now allows more customization around how your series landing page looks and acts, making it a much more powerful tool for selling multiple books. Here’s Ginger with how you can start taking advantage of this! It’s a pretty well-established fact that the most successful self-published authors tend to write multiple books – often as part of a… Read More >
Has Apple’s recent update killed your Facebook ad performance?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 17, 2021
One of the constants of being a self-published author is that just when you think you have this game all figured out, one of the other players goes and changes the rules and throws everyone back a few steps. This time, it wasn’t one of the usual suspects making our lives more difficult, and what was done wasn’t targeting authors at all, but many of us have been negatively affected nonetheless. I’m taking about Apple’s recent ‘Do Not Track’ 14.5 iOS update. Designed to improve the privacy of Apple users, one of the side effects has been that authors everywhere are seeing their Facebook ad performance drop significantly. Today, Ginger goes into some detail about why this is happening, and some of the things you can do to try and compensate for it. Earlier this year, Apple announced that their IOS 14.5 update would include a “Do Not Track”… Read More >
