For a recent article in IBPA’s The Independent, Linda Carlson put the question of which advertising works to independent publishers and got some interesting, and insightful answers.

Linda’s questions focussed on:

• Print Media Coverage
• Paid Reviews
• Giveaways and Deep Discounts
• Public Relations, and
• Online Ads

The consensus from those responding were were singularly unenthusiastic about online ads. An example being Devorah Fox’s comments, president of Mike Byrnes & Associates in Port Aransas, TX, who reported:

“When we hit 100 likes on our Facebook author page we received $50 in free Facebook advertising. We used it to advertise our book The Lost King with an ad that—per Facebook—could be seen by 22 million people and a Sponsored Story that targeted 940 users. There wasn’t a single click-through, and we can’t attribute a single sale to it.”

The full report is available at: IBPA online – Marketing whatever you have to market – promotion opportunities and issues – part 2

Back in November 2013 I wrote about a recent poll  conducted for USAToday and Bookish, a website designed to help people find and buy books, which asked readers what factors created interest in a particular book for them. The poll got the following responses:

• 57% – their own opinion of the writer’s previous work;
• 43% – opinions of a relative and friend (ie “word of mouth”);
• 17% – professional reviewers and other writers;
• 16% – the book cover; and
• 10% – internet opinions by non-professionals (10%).

In short, people are interested in a book based on previous knowledge of the author’s work, word of mouth, or professional reviewers. Advertising simply doesn’t get a look in. And if you don’t believe that then you need to consider the click-through rates we get on our own adverts:

• Click Through Rate = 0.05%, i.e. for every 2000 views of an advertisement, we expect to get 1 person clicking the advertisement to visit our site; and
• Click Rate = 2%, i.e. for every 50 people visiting our site we expect to get 1 sale.

Back in May 2014, for a series of blog-ad designed to be viewed 86,000 times we were paying $330. That probably gave us 43 click-throughs, and some where between one and two sales. It simply doesn’t make financial sense. For more information you can read my previous post on this ([p2p type=”slug” value=”marketing-for-authors-what-to-expect-from-click-through-and-conversion-rates”][/p2p]).

So does online advertising work for eBooks work? In a word – no.

If, however, given this information you still want to undertake some social marketing then you may want to check out the article in the same edition of The Independent:
IBPA online – A practical guide to social media advertising part 1

For more information about the USAToday poll, and another poll conducted by ebookfairies you can read my previous posts concerning them at:

• [p2p type=”slug” value=”how-people-chose-what-ebook-to-read-part-1″][/p2p]
• [p2p type=”slug” value=”how-people-chose-what-ebook-to-read-part-2″][/p2p]