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BookBub Ads – What the FAQ?

Updated by David Gaughran 27 May 2021. Marketing, Resources • 22 Comments.

BookBub is a wonderfully passionate community of over ten million book buyers – and its ad platform is the only one at this scale which is exclusively made up of readers. BookBub Ads is unique in lots of other ways too and I’ve received hundreds of questions from authors over the last few months who are confused about one aspect or another. Today, we’ll look at the most frequent issues… and give you solutions to all those problems.

I’ve been using BookBub Ads for two or three years, I’ve been covering the platform in some depth for my mailing list for well over a year at this point, my dedicated book came out a few months ago, and the course… I can’t quite remember when that launched. Around the same time?

I’ve also run some giant campaigns for authors in a range of genres, as well as my own ads, and compared data and strategies with hundreds of other authors writing every kind of book imaginable. These are the issues and questions which come up most frequently. Read More…

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How To Find Your Comp Authors

Updated by David Gaughran 30 March 2021. Marketing, Publishing • 16 Comments.

Knowing your comp authors is increasingly important these days, but writers tend to tie themselves into knots with the concept. Today, I’ll explain a very simple way to cut through all the noise and determine your true comp authors, but also detail why that line-up should change considerably depending on the context.

Comp Authors Explained
Let’s start with the basics before scaling up the complexity and getting deep into ads: “comp author” is publishing shorthand for “comparable author.” You might also hear people these days in indieworld using it in phrases like “know your comps,” or “target your comp authors.” Or you might come across the phrase “comp title” more frequently in traditional publishing.

Originally, the phrase was used by publishing professionals as shorthand to describe a given author’s voice in marketing communications and sales pitches. An agent might shop your book to a publisher describing your sizzling romantic suspense as “EL James meets Lisa Jackson,” and the acquiring editor will know right away that she’s in for a dark, twisty story where the sex isn’t just open door – the windows are probably open too. Read More…

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Moving from Mailchimp to MailerLite: A Guide

Updated by David Gaughran 4 March 2021. Marketing, Resources • 69 Comments.

Mailchimp made some major changes recently which were received very negatively – causing many users to flee into the arms of alternatives like MailerLite.

I moved to MailerLite myself last month and have been very happy with the change but there are a few things you need to watch out for, whether you have multiple, big lists with lots of automations, or are still growing on the free plans. This post should guide you through all the issues.

First we run over the differences between Mailchimp and MailerLite – things like free plans, pricing, features, and integrations, and which of those differences really matter. Next we look at the steps involved in physically moving your list across to MailerLite. This is actually the easiest part of the whole process, but there are important things to look out for. With that taken care of, we move on to more advanced topics like switching over your automations, what to do about those pesky website forms and sign-up links, and also how to sweep up any stray Mailchimp forms out there in the wild so you don’t have precious reader sign-ups going to the wrong place. That last part can be tricky. Read More…

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Time To Ditch Mailchimp?

Updated by David Gaughran 4 March 2021. Marketing, Publishing, Resources • 348 Comments.

Mailchimp attracted extreme criticism this week when it became clear how its new marketing services would impact its core email offering — particularly in terms of pricing — leading many long-time users to start explore alternatives (including this one).

I have been a loyal and happy Mailchimp customer for over eight years. I have also recommended Mailchimp to thousands of other authors. There have always been cheaper services, or those with more bells-and-whistles when it comes to advanced automation options and the like, but — for me at least — Mailchimp was always the perfect combination of price, user friendliness, and reliability.

Until yesterday. Read More…

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Reader Targeting Influences Everything

Updated by David Gaughran 13 April 2021. Marketing, Publishing • 10 Comments.

Reader Targeting is yet another concept we have to juggle. It’s no wonder many writers take to the drink, or otherwise lose the run of themselves. Or can be a little… kooky. We have to wrestle with a number of contradictory notions all the time — it’s enough to make anyone batty.

The most obvious is with the writing itself: we need at least some level of ego to push something out into the world and ask money for it. But we also must have the requisite critical faculties to see what’s wrong with it and to motivate ourselves to fix it, and to otherwise work on our craft until the things we make are as good as we need them to be.

(As a famous editor once put it — Nan Talese maybe? — those first few years, when our taste is much more developed than our skills, are tough.)

The experienced author isn’t done with these trying dichotomies though; one in particular that we all continue to struggle with is between our artistic natures, and our commercial sensibilities. It’s not so much about what to write or how to write it — most pros can navigate that part. The battlegrounds are elsewhere, things like cover design, series titles, descriptions, branding.

And one more surprising, perhaps: reader targeting. Read More…

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How To Build An Author Platform

Updated by David Gaughran 3 April 2021. Marketing, Publishing • 15 Comments.

What is an author platform? Which elements should it contain? And is any of this stuff more important than just writing another book? Perhaps not. But certain aspects of an author platform are important tools for reaching readers and, especially, for holding on to them.

The topic can be confusing as everyone seems to be mean something different by the term. And then this problem is compounded by a lot of terrible advice proliferating, quite frankly. Number-chasing nonsense which doesn’t serve anyone.

Even the term “platform” seems to be quite nebulous and elastic — fertile ground for snake-oil salesmen. Let’s nail that down first: Read More…

BookBub Ads Expert Is Here To Help

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Marketing, Resources • 21 Comments.

Many people try BookBub Ads and fail. There is a learning curve – no doubt about that. If you tried the platform without adequately preparing, and without knowing how the system works, you probably got cleaned out. I still have scars from my first time. But it doesn’t have to be like that.

BookBub Ads Expert will show you a whole range of uses for Bookbub Ads, from supporting a launch or reviving backlist, to boosting a permafree, creating an international audience, or pushing an entire series at once. And there’s also lots of ninja tricks and killer moves to take your ad game to the next level. Read More…

Book of the Year for Authors: Newsletter Ninja

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Marketing, Resources • 16 Comments.

I’ve been self-publishing for seven years. That’s quite a long period to be screwing up almost the entire time, but I managed it! My whole approach to email was backwards. I did all the don’ts, ignored all the warnings, missed out on so many opportunities to build myself a happy and engaged audience of readers that it causes me literal pain when I think about it. I don’t say this to elicit sympathy. Rather, I hope that my long experience of doing exactly the wrong things can act as a deterrent—a giant sign made of bones spelling out “Here Be Wolves.”

What did I do exactly? I only emailed people when I had a new release. I thought I was being considerate and not clogging up everyone’s inboxes when, in reality, I was only turning up at their door when I wanted something: their money. This was compounded by my slow production speed, particularly with those painstakingly researched historical novels I seem to enjoy writing for some reason. That problem was further exacerbated by working in more than one genre, so the books came out even slower and the emails were even less frequent. Clearly, I felt I wasn’t antagonizing my most loyal readers enough with this set-up, so I decided to have one Frankenlist—my fiction and non-fiction peeps all lumped together—neatly ensuring that everyone really wouldn’t care about at least 50% of the (increasingly infrequent) messages I was sending out. Read More…

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Clever Tips For Using BookBub Ads

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Marketing • 1 Comment.

BookBub Ads is the platform where I’ve seen most growth in the last year, to the point where it is rivaling Facebook on some campaigns, especially when you factor in the higher conversion rates you usually see. This means that the amount of ad money I can spend effectively on BookBub — and by that I mean get an immediate return on investment — has quadrupled in the last twelve months.

This might sound incredible, in the literal sense, to anyone who hasn’t cracked BookBub Ads yet. It can be an unusual platform for those more used to Facebook or Amazon Ads, leading to an unexpected learning curve, perhaps. But I find that if you take the time to understand what works on BookBub, it’s the most responsive and consistent ad platform out there. Getting over that first hump is where many authors seem to struggle though. I know that from running an eight-part series on BookBub Ads to my mailing list earlier this year.

Well, there’s help on the way. I’ll have a book called BookBub Ads Expert coming very soon — make sure to sign up to my list to hear about that first and get an exclusive launch discount that will be offered nowhere else — and I have a wonderful guest post today to give you a headstart while you’re waiting for that. Read More…

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How To Make A Pretty Facebook Page

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Marketing, Resources • 4 Comments.

Most web traffic is now mobile, but we can forget that when thinking how to make a pretty Facebook Page, leading to ugly header images that are cropped in weird ways — a terrible first impression to prospective new readers.

The tipping point with mobile was probably reached some time in late 2016 or early 2017, yet here we are in 2018, often still optimizing for desktop, when most of our customers are accessing our web pages and viewing our ads on mobile devices of some description — not just phones but tablets of all kinds too.

When I was redesigning this website, I was very conscious of that and made sure it was responsive and looked good for all screen sizes. And that requires more than just the screen resizing and things still being legible and images rendering correctly and buttons still working and navigation still easy. You also have to think about things like sign-up pages and sidebars and all that other stuff too. Read More…

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7 Ways To Market Children’s Books

Updated by David Gaughran 22 January 2022. Marketing • 12 Comments.

When I discovered self-publishing back in 2010 it was, as for many, a dream come true after the familiar cycle of sending out manuscripts only to get a rejection six or seven weeks later. At last I would be able to get my children’s stories out and take the world by storm!

Except, of course, it doesn’t work like that…

As we all know, books don’t sell themselves and Amazon and the other platforms (not to mention bricks and mortar bookshops) won’t sell our books without our help. Of course, a great story, great cover, compelling blurb, appropriate metadata and category selection are all critical to get us off to the right start. However, to introduce and sell your title to your target market – and, crucially, keep it in their line of sight – you also need a robust marketing plan that includes a mix of social media, advertising, email marketing, traditional PR, and (for some more than others) live events.

For authors who just want to be writers, this is a tall order at the best of times. And, for children’s authors, it’s even taller… Read More…

Kindle Unlimited has proved to be a lucrative program for many authors, but has also attracted the kindle hacks crowd who are only interested in kindle hacks and scamming kdp select

Kindle Unlimited – A Cheater Magnet

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 83 Comments.

For a month or two, though, things improved. The charts cleaned up. Real, actual authors — not faceless book stuffers powered by ghostwriters — started surfacing again. Readers were saying that it was easier to find good books in the charts. I noticed the difference myself in July when helping someone with a launch; it seemed to take less of a push to get in the Top 100. I stopped paying attention to what the scammers were doing. Life was good.

It seems like Amazon stopped paying attention too. It was far harder to get into the Top 100 in September, and a quick look at the charts showed why. Many of those “authors” from Chance Carter’s mastermind circle who inexplicably survived the purges of June/July — grotesque characters like RR Banks — were suddenly charting again. En masse. With multiple books each, simultaneously.

They had figured out a new hole in the fence. I looked at the Contemporary Romance charts for the first time in a while and all the real authors were being pushed down again, while all the ghostwritten trash was swamping the Kindle Store once more. Read More…

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Click Here For Success

Updated by David Gaughran 29 January 2021. Bewares, Marketing • 28 Comments.

Think And Grow Lich is the only automated system on the market today for those who want to create their own course about how to sell your course on how to market a course. This blog post is a one-time only SPECIAL OFFER: for 100% off the regular price of $5,000 you can get all the secrets without making those twelve easy payments!

Have you been slaving away without much reward? Are you sick of putting in all the time and effort to learn something when you could have just skipped that step? You need Think And Grow Lich.

Using our patented SkullMasque technology, we can directly map your flexible ethics and ruthless approach directly onto the neural patterns of your own newly raised undead army, who will then spam customers on your behalf so you can relax on the beach and write disingenuous articles about how you made your money! Read More…

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How To Advertise And Sell More Books

Updated by David Gaughran 5 April 2021. Marketing, Resources • 31 Comments.

I have a wonderful guest post today from author Nicholas Erik – a skilled marketer with a keen analytical mind, who will show you how to analyze the profitability of your paid ads, so you can sell more books. It’s easily the longest post we’ve had here – over 4,000 words – but it’s worth settling in for this excellent, comprehensive guide which will have something useful for all self-publishers, from beginners to experts. Here’s Nick with more:

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As the title might suggest, this guide is all about how to analyze the profitability of your paid ads to help you sell more books. The step-by-step system outlined within is effective for both promo sites and pay-per-click (PPC) platforms such as Facebook Ads, Amazon Advertising, and BookBub.

If you follow the steps in this guide, you’ll have solid numbers on which to base your advertising decisions—instead of making guesses regarding their profitability. Read More…