Since I published my first book four and a half years ago, I’ve rarely known what I should do about marketing. It’s not for a lack of guidance. Just last week, I had 5 emails and 3 DMs on social platforms from people anxious to have me sign up for their marketing services. All these folks say they can help make my book more visible.
It would help to have a more visible book. Currently, I’ve got friends and acquaintances who don’t know I’ve published a book (5 books, actually).
Yeah, I keep that secret well.
That’s friends and acquaintances. Strangers? Yeah, right. It’s bad enough that once I even got snarky with one of the kids I teach math to. He found out I also write novels and asked if I’m a famous novelist. I asked if he’d ever heard of me before taking the class, and when he said no, I suggested he draw his own conclusion. His friends laughed, and he looked a little hurt. I knew I should have been kinder. He’s a good kid, and he meant well. But it’s a sore subject.
You see, even though I’ve sold some books and found a few fans (so exciting when people you don’t know love what you’ve written!) my work hasn’t caught on the way I secretly hoped it would. And I have done some marketing. Some of those emails in my in-box came there by invitation. I actively seek help with getting my name (or at least a book’s name) out there. I’ve put out a website and a newsletter. I’ve cultivated a social media presence and done book launches and trailers and promo stacks and advertising. I’ve done a book tour and a podcast. I’ve revamped book blurbs and covers and metadata…
Some of these things have moved the needle a bit on sales. Unfortunately, none of them has netted a positive return on investment (ROI).
It’s not that hard to calculate, at least in theory. Take the amount of money you’ve made as the result of a particular promo and subtract off the price it cost to run the promo. That’s how much money the promo made for you—your ROI.
As an indie author, it’s relatively easy to figure out the first part of the data calculation—look at your stats on how many books you’ve sold that you can reasonably attribute to the promotion, and multiply that number by your royalty rate. If you’re in KU (Kindle Unlimited), you can add in your estimated payments out of that fund, too. If you’re traditionally published, it may be a bit harder to get real-time numbers of sales, but you may be able to estimate based on what’s happening to your sales rankings.
Once you figure out how much you’ve made, subtract your costs (you should have receipts somewhere). Money made (by the promo) – money spent (on the promo) = ROI.
If you run multiple promotions at the same time (as you do with promo stacks), it can get trickier to separate the ROI of each one, but you might be able to correlate the data from the promo people (how many clicks your ad or feature got) with the sales data. It’s not guaranteed that the proportion of clicks will be roughly the same as the proportion of sales, but it’s not a totally unreasonable assumption to make, either. If 900 people clicked on a Freebooksy feature and 100 people clicked on a Facebook ad during that time, probably 9 out of 10 downloads can be attributed to the Freebooksy feature and only 1 out of 10 to the ad.
At any rate, I’ve done the math (what math teacher wouldn’t have?), and the math tells me I’m losing money.
Clearly, I need help.
But I’m not convinced the people most anxious to help me are the best ones to do it. They’re aggressive. Pushy. Maybe that works for them.
Frankly, I would rather die in oblivion than be aggressive or pushy.
And the authors I love (whose books I buy!) don’t come off that way. There has to be another, better approach. So, I’m on a journey to find it. I’ll start by analyzing a few of those things that sort of worked (even if they didn’t net positive) and then try out some new stuff. I’ll post any new insights in a future post. (It won’t all be math every time, I promise.)
And if something’s working for you, please share in the comments! I’m sure I’m not the only one who could use the help.
[Image created on Canva (by R. L. S. Hoff). Elements from towfiqu barbhuiya; Hulinska Yevheniia; Ivan Oasadchya; and lucas_zb with Getty Images]
* * * *
R.L.S. Hoff is a Christian with a fabulous family who teaches high school math and writes mostly young adult science fiction and fantasy. She lives in a multi-cultural household where she often has to remind one child to learn English because it’s important for life in the US, and the other two children that they must learn Mandarin because it is and always will be their brother’s native language. When she’s not writing or working at (so far) more profitable gigs, she enjoys reading, gardening, and baking bread. You can find more about her and her books at her website or follow her on Facebook, Instagram or Bluesky.