THE Group for Authors! discussion

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Greetings all,

My name's Vinnie Apicella. I'm happy to be part of this group and appreciate the opportunities available to us here on Goodreads.

I'm a teacher, writer, and entrepreneur living in Beijing, China for the past several years. I'm originally from the US, in New York. I've been writing for more than 30 years in some form or another, but recently, I've become an official author self-publishing my first book, Escape from America: An Introspective Journey from America into China.

Thus far, it's been a busy but gratifying experience with all of the self-study involved and discovering all of these many outlets available to us, such as GR. Now that my book's gone "live" on several online shops, I've moved on to my marketing plan and trying to shift into "business" mode, so to speak. So far so good.

I do enjoy reading but will admit most of it comes from various online research or articles, and then industry-related materials. However, when personal time or travel presents itself I'll usually grab a traditional print book or use my e-reader.

Cheers guys, I look forward to interacting here in our group!

Welcome, Vinnie!
I've recently revived my own 'marketing plan', and so far it seems to be paying off.
Scary, though.
I've already paid Amazon more than $1600usd and been paid $2700.
Amazon owes me quite a bit more, so the return on investment appears promising, but since they collect from me on a weekly basis but pay on a next-month (audio sales) or two-month (ebooks, print, borrowed pages), investing is a leap-of-faith.

Hi Jack, and thanks for the welcome!

I appreciate your sharing that info with me, it's useful as I consider potential options going forward. I'll be exploring paid advertisements in the future as well, but at the moment, taking as many steps as I can to move things "organically" so to speak -- pretty steep hill to climb, but a good learning experience.

Amazon does sounds promising, I hope it continues to be going forward and please keep me posted as to how things progress.

Cheers,

Vinnie.

Will do.

I am the author of the Tony Mandolin Mysteries and the Milward Chronicles. My history with GR goes back to near its beginning, but I have tended more to lurk than participate. ANy new author looking for a publisher should get these two easily used and totally free tools, Grammarly as a grammar assistant (you still need to do the work but it is a superb help), and Draft2Digital for your manuscript distribution. D2D does the heavy lifting, getting your book into every outlet there is globally, and also helps with the ebook formatting. I just got a nice royalty deposit the other day from them.

I tried D2D, but after Amazon started the Kindle Unlimited I switched to Select. No question, I'm earning far more now than I would have had I remained with D2D.
One issue I had was with a subscription service that D2D sent my books to. Payment was late, in formation nearly nonexistent, so when Amazon started theirs I was ready.
My 20 novels (17 SF/F in 3 series, 3 History/Western) are doing very well, thanks to the advertising I'm doing. I earn roughly twice as much from borrows as from ebook/print sales, and I also derive a nice income from my audio sales.
All in all, I could, if necessary, live quite well on my book earnings. Fortunately, I have other income, so I use my book income to help my extended family with their finances.

Jack wrote: "I tried D2D, but after Amazon started the Kindle Unlimited I switched to Select. No question, I'm earning far more now than I would have had I remained with D2D.
One issue I had was with a subscrip..."

I'm glad you're having success.
How many hours/week are you doing "...the advertising I'm doing."?

How many hours total working on my business? I would guess at least four, frequently more.
About advertising, at least an hour.
I start out by checking how much my ads have cost me since the last billing. Right now, that's $12.63 since midnight yesterday, so figure almost 35 hours. Then I check my Royalties Estimator (all of this is free from Amazon) and I see that I earned an estimated $129.68 yesterday and so far today (10:46am, MST) $71.28.
So, pretty good return on investment.
Amazon bills me whenever my advertising costs hit $500. That was yesterday, which allowed me to start counting from midnight on. I logged in at 4:24am, at which time my income was $36.09, ad expense $2.98.
Another thing: when Amazon sends out the billing statement, it breaks costs down by book. The important things here are that I spent $34.84 promoting Darwin's World at an average cost per click of 0.48¢. Of my three most recent books, The Territory cost 0.41¢/click and cost me $177.40, Jacob Jennings 0.40¢/click and $98.17, and Edward Jennings was 0.48/click, $9.18.
So far, so good. I'm pushing Edward Jennings more because it's only been out about two weeks and has few if any reviews so far.
The problem was Wizard at Work, the second Wizard Series book; 0.75¢/click, $93.90. The other books earned back more than they cost in ancillary sales of other books in the three series, but Wizard at Work didn't. By coincidence, I went back and tweaked that ad earlier on the 20th. I was paying far too much for some targeting words, not enough for others, and that's something an author must do every day. Every single day.
Not necessarily change things, but look at costs and results.
This month, I've spent more than $1000 on ads for a projected income of ~$4100. I expect to spend a couple of hundred more before the month ends, when Amazon bills me for whatever I've spent since the last $500 billing.
I hope you are catching on; I spend a lot, but I also earn a lot, at least $2 for every $1 I spend.
Last year, I spent far less and earned a total of ~$18000; that was when I decided to really dig into learning how Amazon ads work.
That cost me at least $1000, hence not a cheap lesson. You're getting it free.
So: gathering that information, probably about an hour per day. Tweaking ads, maybe an hour, but once I have them doing what I want I won't have to spend as much time. Eventually, I expect to renew the ads by copying the previous information, waiting for Amazon to approve the new ad, and then archiving the old one. Time to do that, a minute, but old ads don't perform as well as fresh ones.
One more thing: the rules are, if you're getting clicks but no sales, revise the book's blurb. If you're getting few clicks, revise the ads.
Sales, you want your advertising cost of sales (ACOS) to be as low as possible. Mine are almost always more than 100%, which in theory would reveal I was paying more than what I earned. But because my advertised books are either the first or second in a series and because all are on Kindle Unlimited (Amazon doesn't count borrowed pages in ACOS calculations), the ads are profitable.
Good luck, Joseph! Stay in touch, and tell your friends that help is available on this thread.

Jack wrote: "How many hours total working on my business? I would guess at least four, frequently more.
About advertising, at least an hour.
I start out by checking how much my ads have cost me since the last ..."

Thanks for this wonderfully detailed, informative response.
Mind if I share it with another thread I'm involved with (or please do so yourself, if you wish)? - https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Feel free. The information is based on my personal experience.
Some sell their ad information; I don't need to, so I give my information away free. If you feel an impossible-to-ignore urge to pay me back, consider buying a book or reading one free through KU. Maybe even one of mine! :D
The information I provided applies to my books: science fiction, 'fantasy' if ESP falls into that category, and history-based westerns.
It's also worth noting that I have lots of good reviews (and some bad ones! :O ), a following, and 20 novels and a novella, plus compilations, for sale. Most are in audio and print editions too.
A caveat: my information applies to Amazon Ads.
Every time I've tried advertising on Facebook, I lost. On Bookbub, I got no results and no charge from my PPC ad. On Google Ads, lost my investment.

Jack wrote: "Feel free. The information is based on my personal experience.
Some sell their ad information; I don't need to, so I give my information away free. If you feel an impossible-to-ignore urge to pay ..."

Thankee and bless you.