When self-publishing on Amazon, what are some good ways to advertise your book that don't break the bank?
The main three are Amazon ads, Facebook ads, and bookbub ads ( the adverts not the featured deal). If you want to try email blasts freebooksy, bargainbooksy, and book barbarian are worth a look while still reasonably low cost Check out mark Dawson's podcast , the self publishing formula, what he doesn't know about advertising as an indie author isn't worth knowing
Don't forget about word of mouth. Whenever you self-publish, I'm sure you're going to excitedly run and tell everyone you know about it. However, go beyond that. Ask them to, after they read it and like it, share the book with a friend. Tell a neighbor about it. Bring it up in conversation. Word of mouth is the most trusted and one of the most effective forms of advertisement you can hope to achieve without a huge budget. While it may not get you to 1,000,000 sales, it'll get the ball rolling in the right direction.
The one proviso on that is that getting friends and family to buy it will screw up the also bought algorithm on Amazon if they don't usually read in your genre
No, no, no, it's not about 'pushing on personal relationships', its about leveraging your network Joking aside, it's generally better to develop a marketing strategy before you start advertising. Be clear on your goals and objectives. I say this because it's part of a publisher's job.
Also important to make sure that both your website, and your product pages on the zon are the best they can be in terms of blurb, cover, look inside and so forth. There's no point in paying to push people to a page that doesn't convert. Also if you are pushing to your website with Fb adds make sure you've a landing page with a clear call to action rather than dropping people on your front page and hoping for the best.
This isn't specific "Advertising a book" but some observations closely tied in with it... Consider that you're in it for the long haul. As was said, often the best advertisement for a novel out there is a new release. Often a series is superior to writing a series of standalone novels. And having more works out there makes other advertisements more effective (or at least cost efficient--such as bookbub or FB ads or book barbarian, etc.). If someone sees an advertisement for book one of your series, and picks it up, and enjoys it, there is a solid chance they will get the second novel and possibly the third novel--or other things you release in the future. Appearing on blogs that are genre related, and getting online reviews for the book can also be beneficial, but probably not as effective as one might hope. Reviews on Amazon and Goodreads can benefit a title, and may help too (there are probably threads that discuss this). In relation to releasing books, the faster you can do it (and put out a quality product), the better. If you're with a major publisher, one book a year or so can work, because they have a lot advantages that a self-published author doesn't (they also have disadvantages for the author, but this isn't the thread to discuss that). The point is, if you take eighteen months between putting books out, then virtually all momentum will be lost, and some readers will have moved on, and it's far more difficult to build it up again than it would be otherwise. Starting a mailing list can be a long-term benefit to an author. It is a direct avenue to let readers (in theory, ones who have an interest in your work because they signed up to received your newsletter) know of new releases. This can often give you an initial bump in sales which, on Amazon, is important. It gets you on the "also boughts" which is free and relatively effective advertising, if your novel managed to get matched up with some others that are popular (it takes a decent burst of sales for this to happen for you to show up on the other novels' "also boughts"). So there is some luck involved. Just like when an author sends off a manuscript to agents/editors in a bid for representation/publication, while that process is going on, the author needs to be working diligently on that next novel. Too often writers bank everything on that first manuscript, and wait and hope, or they put tons of marketing effort and focus on that first self-published title, such that their writing productivity ceases, or moves at a crawl. That's my two cents. Hope it helps.
Only in as much as I'm self published so I've learnt a lot from mark Dawson, Nick Stephenson, Bryan Cohen, and so on about marketing my books...
You can do boosted posts on FB for as little as $50 to an audience that you tailor by gender, age, geography and interests. You can actually do less, but I have learned my success metric is maybe around 1 out of 100 to 1 out of a 1000 for cold contacts, IF you boost an interesting and attractive ad. The advantage here is that you reach strangers, not your friends. If you are exclusively on Kindle, (Kindle Select) you can do a free giveaway once a quarter for five days. My book has reached very large numbers. The advantage is that you aren't spending money but getting your book before a very large audience, who will refer it to friends, and generate subsequent sales. This isn't the same as just setting the price to zero, there is some Amazon advertising behind it, though I don't know what it is. There is alsop Amazon sponsored products and pay per click options that don't cost much
