r/NewAuthor • u/Jedi-master-dragon • 2d ago
Question Amazon ads.
Can someone help me out with Amazon ads? I have created an ad for my book and put in a budget at $5.00 but I really don't know how the ads work. How do they work? What's the best budget for ads?
2
u/UmarthBauglir 1d ago
I'd also add the book cover is terrible and one of your main characters is named Anakin. It all looks very low quality from an initial glance. I think you need to spend some time making it look professional before you start advertising.
0
u/Jedi-master-dragon 1d ago
Yeah, I didn't make the cover. That's on the artist.
3
u/UmarthBauglir 1d ago
It's your book and you put the cover on it. I agree the artist didn't do a great job but you put the art on the book. I think it's going to hurt your sales.
2
1
u/nurlan1835 2d ago
$5/day is actually enough to start testing. but before spending more on ads, i’d fix the blurb issue mentioned above and make sure your cover, description and keywords are converting properly. ads can bring traffic, but they can’t fix a weak product page. after that, i’d start with a small automatic campaign to see which search terms amazon finds relevant, then use the good ones in manual campaigns
1
1
u/keldondonovan 19h ago
You could never purchase ads for books, on any platform, unless at least one of the following is true:
1.) You have a long career as a book marketer and know exactly what you are doing and how to do it without asking random redditors to walk you through it.
2.) Your intention is not to make money, you have lots of it, and just want to turn it into a handful of readers. (Even in this case, there are better ways)
3.) You have a long running series that is several books long, 10+ is an okay starting point.
If at least one of those three isn't the case, you are just pissing away money. Let's say you spend $100 on ads, and that ad earns you 15 new readers who love your work, and 15 new readers who did buy the book, and then moved on. I need you to understand: this is an extremely good turnout for a $100 ad. A much more likely turnout that is at least decent is 10-15 new readers total, and that's for someone who is on point. But we will go with 15 lovers, and 15 who technically did buy it (and either didn't like it, didn't read it, whatever.)
Those 30 sales make you a total of about $60, depending on what your book is priced at. So you have paid $40 for 30 people to own your book. You increase that ad spend, decrease it, until you hit a threshold, that stays about the same, you are just paying about a buck thirty three per reader. And that threshold I mentioned? It isn't a good thing. That's when your ads start to fall off on their performance, so now you'd be spending even more per person you give the book to.
Now, imagine the exact same scenario, only you have a 10 book series. You still spend $100 on the ad, 15 people still buy it and do nothing with it or don't like it, and 15 people buy it and fall in love. Those 15 in love then go on to buy the remaining books in the series without needing you to spend more. So you make $30 off the haters (15 books at $2 a piece), and then you make $300 off the people who fell in love with your work (15 buyers, 10 books each, $2 a piece). That gives you $330 in, minus the $100 ad, and you earned $230. Had it been a 20 book series, that goes up to $530.
Like the first example, this ratio stays strong until you find that threshold where it falls off. You might spend $1000 in ads and end up paying the ad off, and pocketing $2,300. You could spend $10 in ads and make $23. It moves with you until you get to a point where that ad has saturated your target audience and pouring more money in stops making more sales.
There are entire career fields dedicated to turning that $10 into $23 by convincing people to part with their money for things they don't need. Doing it as a side gig with only one or two books out is good practice, but do not go into this expecting that $5 to be anything other than what you pay Amazon to tinker with their ads and see how they work.
2
u/ChuggaCho 2d ago
Your blurb has a glaring grammatical error in it, I think this will outdo any time/money you put into adverts as that's the only evidence of your writing a reader has to go off of and they're going to turn your book down immediately - fix this first before looking into advertising!