I was stupid and spent money advertising my very first book, 9 Years Yearning, before I published the next two books in the series. This was a total waste.

Fortunately I had the money to spend (because I never quit my day job as an SEO writer), but, I still chafe at spending money I do not need to when I could use that on something with an immediate payoff, like more books about my hero Genghis Khan.

And after I did decide to start running Amazon ads, I still wasted some money, and I don’t want you to make the same mistakes.

First things first; I am not an expert at all. I will freely admit I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time. But I want to share my mistakes and successes in hopes that it will be helpful to you.

Let’s dive in.

Don’t advertise your first book.

I talked about this in my post about marketing pitfalls so we won’t go into it here. Check out that post for more details, but basically, readers don’t have anywhere to jump after they read your book, and they are unlikely to remember you when your next book comes out.

If they’ve read two or three books of yours, you will be more cemented in their minds, and they will be willing to check back. They might follow you on Amazon to get alerted about new releases or preorder anything you have available right then.

Start saving up money for marketing expenses as soon as possible, preferably before you finish the first book.

Again, you will not be spending on ads yet, but we don’t want you nosediving all the way into the red and not recouping any losses.

I saved up as much as possible from my day job before publishing, and I am so glad I did. My publishing business is bleeding money right now even though I am making sales almost every day.

This is perfectly normal, and it is not a sign that my approach isn’t working. Most businesses operate at a steep loss for five years or more; I’ve only been doing this for about a year and a half. There’s plenty yet to do.

My profit margins will continue to improve as the Eirenic Verses progresses simply because I will have more to sell and my clickthrough rates will go up. After I finish the series, I’ll write other things and advertise the first book of those. Then people have multiple series from me to enjoy, and each ad will get at least 5 sales.

If you can afford it, have a marketing company set up your ads.

…. But know that you will have to make some adjustments to their work.

Once I got to Funeral of Hopes, I was finally ready to dip my toes into advertising. Now I had four books to tempt readers with!

I will note that Saint Luridalr and the Peony Phoenix, because it is listed as side content, has not been getting as many sales because readers can’t just click and buy it immediately after finishing 9 Years Yearning. But that’s okay because it is free on most platforms, so it is naturally losing money.

Anyway, reading about marketing was making my head spin. I was intimidated by everything I needed to know and was not sure where to begin.

So I outsourced it. This gave me a starting point to refine and adjust as necessary.

While the marketing team did a good job, they made some strange choices that I had to fix. For example, they added CDs and audiobooks to my title comparison ads for some reason? They also comped me to myself several times, which, while flattering, was not helpful.

And they included some straight romances in my category ads. Heterosexual people looking for girl + guy are not going to jump over to guy + guy, or they will do so very rarely. I eliminated those, added more LGBTQ novels, and saw improvements.

So expect that after they set things up for you, you will have to make some fixes simply because they do not know your book as well as you do, and they have a ton of other clients to work with so they’re not agonizing over your ads. Still, this gives you a foundation.

Honestly, once I started to get the hang of things, I began enjoying the advertising process. I check my ads every day and play around with them once a week; you don’t want to adjust them too often or it screws up the algorithm. I like looking for new comps, identifying high-performing keywords, and pressing pause on those that are destroying my budget.

Maybe you won’t ever start to like Amazon ads, but you will start tolerating them the more you do it. I wouldn’t have even done any ads if I didn’t have that starting material designed for me by a professional.

Comps and keywords remain important even if you are self-publishing.

Being self-published, I figured I didn’t have to worry about comps. This was true for a little bit, but it became my downfall when I was fixing my ads. I just didn’t know what I should put in as category and ASIN targets, but these are crucial to finding your audience.

Readers want to be suggested their next read so they don’t have to search out everything themselves. If you don’t know what they were reading first, you can’t be that suggestion.

Now, you do have help in this endeavor. Once your ads have been set up for about two weeks, the Amazon algorithm will begin analyzing your campaign and identifying which products are closest aligned with yours. Then you can add them all to your campaigns with the click of a button, or even export them to different ad groups so you don’t have to replicate your work.

Another good tool is Publisher Rocket, which has a one-time license fee; no subscriptions here! This tool connects to the internet and checks for new comps once you input your own book, and it will also analyze keywords and identify those that are best for your project.

The company that designed Publisher Rocket, Kindlepreneur, also has a bunch of fantastic resources and ebooks for book advertising. If you buy Publisher Rocket, they’ll send you several free ebooks. I love their blog and newsletter; it’s full of great advice.

Back to the point. Be sure to check out what categories it suggests for your book so you can make adjustments if your own choices aren’t quite right. Also, Amazon lets you put in up to seven keywords right off the bat: you can audit whether these are the most high-value ones and then adjust them on the book’s listing.

Do not target highly competitive keywords, even if they are making you a few sales.

This will decimate your budget. For a while, I was spending a quarter of my advertising budget on one single keyword: “romantic fantasy.”

Romantic fantasy is huge right now and there are thousands of traditionally published authors, with the war chests of the Big 5, who are also targeting this keyword. And they’re doing it better than you are because they have professional advertising teams to back them up.

So, pick some less competitive keywords. You can use SEO tools like Ahrefs or Semrush to review keywords and pick out a few in the middle range that can become your primary targets.

Publisher Rocket helps here, too, because you might actually have to target some weird/mispelled keywords, like “fre fantasy book” or “fantsy.” These are not only less competitive, but if you’re able to catch these readers, they will be delighted to find you.

Also, find other selfpub/small authors who have a decent, but not bestselling, following and add them to your target keywords. Not only does this help you grab sales based off their reputation, but you’re helping that author refine their own ads based on who clicks your ad from their name.

Funnily enough, I get a fair few sales from people who found me through ads on danmei product pages, like The Scum Villain’s Self-Saving System or Heaven Official’s Blessing. I mean, it makes sense: my characters do look like they belong in an anime. And they are gay.

I like those books too. My readers have exceptional taste.

Play with your pricing a bit to see what your sweet spot is.

This is something interesting that not a lot of people discuss, but I’ve seen it firsthand in my sales.

Originally, 9 Years Yearning was a cool $0.99. And I got no sales.

You’d imagine that people would want to read a $0.99 book. They get a few hours of content for much cheaper than an iced coffee! Of course they’ll jump on it.

Not really.

Readers assume that a $0.99 book is bad, likely unedited. These are the kinds of crappy books that you take a chance on because you’re bored and broke. That’s not a good way to get people excited about your work.

While you should not price as high as tradpub, pricing higher tells people that your book is quality; it hints that you’ve poured a lot of money into this endeavor and done the best that you can.

Of course, this assumes that your book is quality. Make it perfect before you sell at all. And don’t publish before you’re ready.

I got a big sales bump from raising prices on 9 Years Yearning and the other books, which seems impossible. My sales jumped significantly after price adjustments; I honestly thought it was a fluke at first, but sales continued to rise day after day.

And, frankly, I felt a bit guilty. The book is only 31,000 words, so it feels like I’m ripping people off. But people are willing to pay that much, so I will accept that.

My comp titles were all priced around there, too, helping it align with market pressures. Pricing too low dilutes the pool for everyone and drags pricing down, so you’re hurting other authors too.

And you’re losing money because consumers would have been willing to pay more. Just that one extra dollar dropped my Advertising Cost of Sales (ACOS) to a more acceptable level.

However, I then found that people balked at slightly higher prices for my other books, as they likely assumed without checking that they are similarly sized. So now I have to price all my other books the same as 9 Years Yearning. While that’s a bit frustrating, I suppose it’s to be expected, and I’ll eat the cost.

Keep putting yourself out there through other avenues, too.

I didn’t make this mistake – after all, I still have a blog, a newsletter, and social media accounts – but many others have. They will set up their Amazon ads, sit back, and not do anything else to market themselves.

But this is a problem, especially if you are using wide distribution (as you should be if you’re writing anything other than romance or thrillers). Many of your readers may be coming from elsewhere; some even may be real-life friends, acquaintances, old classmates and coworkers, or friends of friends.

If you’re not enticing them with good content on your blog, a newletter, social media posts, or in-person conversations, then they will not find you because they’re not actively searching for books at that very second. So keep talking about your stuff.

Yes, self-published authors have to wear a lot of hats, but there is help out there. I work with a team consisting of a cover designer, several beta readers, the marketing company mentioned above, and a variety of services like Booksprout, WordPress, and Canva.

You do not have to do this all alone, nor should you. The pressure will drive you crazy.

Traditional publishing has full teams that are dedicated to polishing a few books at a time, everyone managing one element of the book. It is almost impossible to do every single thing involved in successful self-publishing all by yourself.

And again, you will operate at a loss for several years or more. This is totally normal. You are not failing if you’re not receiving an immediate return on investment. Very few businesses start making money in the first five years; they had investors pay their expenses or they saved up for it all by themselves.

Your success is my success. We can uplift one another through hard work and careful adjustment of our advertising strategies. I want you to sell a metric buttload of books – and maybe you’ll comp me in your ads. That’d be a huge honor!

Get out there and conquer the Amazon. I’m cheering you on.