Marketing My Book
Publishing a book with Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) is just the start. Once it’s live, they encourage you to advertise on Amazon sites. Setting up your sales page is completely free—just like their publishing service—and you only incur costs once your book sells. Even then, the royalties are generous: 60% (minus print costs) for paperbacks and hardcovers, and a whopping 70% for eBooks. Compared to traditional or vanity publishing, it’s an excellent deal.
But here’s the truth—marketing a book is, without a doubt, the hardest part!
With traditional publishers, they handle the marketing for you: social media campaigns, email blasts, and everything in between. Of course, this comes at a cost, and nothing in the world of marketing is ever truly free. But for independent authors, the challenge is different—it’s all up to 'you' to get your book noticed.
Publishing your book and having it displayed on Amazon’s “shop floor” (your sales page) doesn’t guarantee that readers will pick it from the millions of other titles and buy a copy. That realization hits hard. This is where expenses come into play.
I tried Amazon’s advertising system, bidding on ad space in hopes of boosting my visibility. Let me tell you—it’s expensive! I spent more than I’d hoped and saw little return on my investment. Enter Bryan Cohen’s Ads Profit Challenge—a genuine game-changer. His approach taught me how to advertise smartly, spending less while reaching more readers. While it’s called the “Profit Challenge,” it’s absolutely that—a challenge! But with his insights, I started to see results.
Still, my sales mostly came from word of mouth, and even that has its limits. I wondered, “What’s wrong with my book? Why isn’t anyone buying it?”
Bryan Cohen’s Ad School helped me dig deeper and pinpoint the issues. The first hurdle was figuring out the right genres for my book—a daunting task given that "Joan - Put on a Happy Face" covers so many tropes.
Some examples include:
- A young girl loses her mother at an impressionable age.
- She defies her father’s wishes by marrying an older, vagrant actor.
- As a young mother, she battles postnatal depression while her husband is consumed by work.
- She uses play therapy to help her son express himself.
- A shy girl transforms into a fierce, confident woman through her experiences as a travelling performer.
- Her husband falls into addiction, becoming irresponsible and lazy.
- He strikes her, leaving her for dead and abducting their son.
- Guilt over killing his best friend pushes him into madness.
- As an immortal, he grapples with PTSD, unable to find peace or death despite his yearning for it.
And the list goes on. Identifying a starting point was overwhelming, but I took it step by step.
Next, we evaluated my book cover. Sometimes, the cover itself can affect sales. After much thought, I gave my book a makeover, and the new cover captured its essence more effectively.
Which Cover Do You Prefer?
Let me know in the comments, email authorcmmottershead@gmail.com—I’d love to hear your thoughts!
In the meantime, here’s the link to the paperback version:
"Joan - Put on a Happy Face" by Carol M Mottershead
Happy reading!
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