The way I used FB for my (non-writing related business) was to use FB advertising, which directed people to my FB business page. From there, I advertised my book and products, and used that to interact with customers. More to the point, it gained likes for my business page, which then allowed me to promote posts for my new products. Essentially, it replaced a mailing list, and the cost of acquisition was cheap as well. I found the ROI to be miles higher than any other platform, such as Google advertising.
this is true - it is never a good idea to build on rented ground (although make sure you back up both site and list since your host and EMS are rented ground too)... however in order to build the list you have to attract customers in the first place... that is where the FB ads come in (this is especially true for someone not self publishing... self publishjers have the option to link their sites and offers in the back matter of their books and also to participate in book funnel promos and newsletter swaps with other authors... as someone seeking a trad deal those routes are closed to you) ETA: In response to Nao's post the troublewith relying on a FB page instead of a list is when FB change the rules for some reason (a classic case would be that they altered the rules and under the new ones found your content unacceptable for some reason) you don't have the contact details for those customers, since the data belongs to zuck and his merry men
I get your point - use it as an ad channel. This relates to my comments above about the role of publishers seems to be changing rapidly. Or getting more diverse, or whatever. Some of the publishers I chatted with over the last couple of years feel that the above is something the author is *expected* to do, and they can support it. For example, one of them pretty flatly explained how they would give me a stack of ARCs for my publicist, a stack of first run copies for launch promotions like giveaways, and that they would not be doing anything like email lists because obviously I would be doing all that - they wouldn't take me on unless I already had established web presence and a following. They saw their job as giving me physical books for whatever marketing ideas I came up with. Note: none of these publishers are big five. Canada must have a thousand of these smaller publishers, they do seem to vary with how they share the work with the author.
which brings us back to the question of 'what is they do for 90% of your royalties' It doesn't really concern me because I chose to self publish, but if was going to sign a deal where i had to do most of the marketing (and probably got 90% o fuck all as an advance), i would want the royalties split to reflect that division of labour. they cannot (or at least should not) claim 90% because 'that's how it always is' while also claiming that 'things have changed'
At the moment, I'm still thinking 'distribution' and not all publishers are this hands-off. I just need to take my time and shop around, is my thinking at the moment. I do have colleagues in several writing groups who've published through various channels, none from the Big Five, but about half have gone through trad publishing, no two experiences alike. Some are with publishers that have been very supportive, some not. But a good portion of the ones with trad publishing and agents have woken up one morning to a call about an opportunity they've never heard of and suddenly there was more money coming in. Just as an example, a poet colleague got an email from her agent saying they've closed a deal with the Toronto metro public transit to put her poems on unused ad panels. That was a nice $10k last year. Unfortunately, none of them can recommend their agents or publishers at the moment because I'm alone in these groups as a genre writer. They've been successful doing poetry, science textbooks, history textbooks, romance, and cookbooks. Unfortunately their agents and publishers just don't accept genre at the moment. In contrast, my genre colleagues are either in the process of digesting rejection letters, or have had their fill of rejection letters and are self publishing. By the sound of it, their average time on social media is about 3 hours per day, maybe 20 hours per week, flogging their books or handling support. That's not what I want to do for a writing career, so I'm trying to build another solution that suits my values and life goals. I'm on the same page, yeah. This is why I'm glad to have a few years' runway to learn the ropes, it will help to have good context when the time comes to pull the trigger on actually publishing. I will hopefully be able to avoid the freeloading publishing houses and maybe negotiate the best balance of residuals vs support.
3 hours a day sounds like a lot ... from a purely advertising perspective I spend maybe an hour once a week creating ads (AMs, FB, and BB) and about ten minutes a day checking that all is as it should be... I don't use social media for organic sales but i spend may be an hour a day using it to network with other authors and stuff - plus Ive got the side hustle writing sales blurbs, the administration of which through fiverr and upwork takes a bit of time of course I moderate the indie author mindset facebook group as well as moderating here so that time doesn't include the time spent trying to stop people from killing each other over the correct use of the oxford comma, or stopping trolls from trashing the place for shits and giggles. The other thing that is worth saying is that using paid adds its much harder to make a good ROI as a trad author... currently on AMS i'm converting at may be ten clicks to a sale (which is a good ratio - the average of the people i know is close to 20:1).. that means that if i'm bidding say 20c each sale costs me $2... as a self published author i get $2.70 from amazon for every $3.99 ebook sold (course ive got 8 books so i also benefit from read through and so on).. if you are only getting 25% of your royalties, which is typical for ebooks in a trad deal, then for every 3.99 book sold you get circa $1... that would effectively mean i could only bid 10c maximum to break even, and you don't get much traction at 10c This is also why paying a marketting company to manage your ads is often a non starter... their fee would eat the 70c per sale unless you were selling an awful lot of books...
I see what you're saying, yeah. The different percentage royalties dramatically impact the ROI calculation for an author's justification to invest time toward marketing.
Based on conversations with them, I get the impression the 20hs/wk includes research into platform algorithms and responding to them by posting tactically across a dozen platforms, not just FB. Probably research on SEO for Google and Amazon, too. But that doesn't include rejigging blurbs and cover art to respond to those changes, especially Amazon. They routinely complain that they are still trying to squeeze more sales out of a book they published 6mos ago. In contrast, my production model feels more like I should be finishing a complete rough draft every 3mos, but probably I'm not getting it yet.
Anyone who says they understand how the algos work is lying - those are closely guarded secrets... there also nothing you can do posting across platforms to influence algos (and tbh organic sales are pretty limited anyway)
So many answers. I just joined and have been fascinated with the answers to this question. My associate/partner is the writer and the "rest of the details" fall on my shoulders. We started self-publishing 4 years ago after a poor experience with a Traditional Publisher". I started immediately prior to publishing the first book to use social media to drive traffic to the Author Website and build an eager audience. Social Media sent over 1,000,000 eager fans to the site where they spent average 14-minute spreading and commenting. We post Chapters as written and when books were published immediate and continued sales are very satisfactory. Have had several Authors who contribute to the weekly Call-In Talks Show experience similar results. If time is critical a person may want to form a relationship with someone who can manage the Social Side
