The Mysteries of Advertising Continued:

PART 2: BookBub, throwing things on a wall and seeing what sticks

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Before I get down to the second part of my newsletter on BookBub, I have a couple of corrections concerning Shepherd.com. I mentioned an interview. It was more of an essay concerning my recommendations for books I enjoy in the gothic realm. If you didn't get a chance to read my suggestions, you might like to check them out now, or you may have other books to suggest in this genre, and if so, leave them under comments. If you're looking for different genres, Shepherd.com has you covered. The additional correction involves a specific author sign-up page I mentioned on the site; the only page for authors at this time is for authors to apply to make book suggestions to readers.

Again, a big thank you to Ben Fox for the invite, supporting authors, and his passion for books. He says on his online site, "I created Shepherd to add magic and serendipity to online book discovery. When I look for a new book online, it feels soulless. Online bookstores sell books like toothpaste or powdered gravy mix. Something about that is profoundly wrong." I concur entirely with Ben, and I hope you use his site and recommend it to your readers.

What makes a good BookBub ad? Damn, if I could figure this out the first month, and truthfully, it still feels like hit or miss, but here are some things I did pin down:

• I did better when pulling quotes from my book than using some of BookBub's other suggestions. They suggested using a book review quote or listing an award I received. I tried both. These received the lowest impressions of any of the ads I created. Again, I tried them several times, changing colors and typeface to no avail. Maybe, you'll have better luck.

• The second best ad used a reader’s quote.

• Feature your book cover in the ad. This seems self-explanatory, but believe it or not there were some well-performing ads that did not.

• One of my best-performing ads used a BookBubs background behind my book cover, which David Gaughan suggested wasn't a good idea. He said you should use visuals you provide as backgrounds. However, if you do, I suggest making them extremely plain or neutral. Don't detract from the book cover or do what David Gaughan suggests; make it the book cover again, but lighten it, making it transparent or use a darker background that doesn't detract from your cover in any way. I did that in the second and third best-performing ads.

• Make sure the ad has a call to action button. Read Now, Buy Now.

• If it's on sale, show that by slashing through the price. Make the price in red or another color that shows up. Ensure the call to action and the price are large and readable.

Final Takeaway on BookBub:

1. A super easy-to-use platform. You can use what they offer to build your ad or download your own creative. If you have Canva, you can use this to create your ad.

2. Bookbub makes it easy to target your readers: suspense, erotic, contemporary romance, etc., and then fine-tune it by authors that write books similar to yours.

3. You set your budget, either CPC or CPM, and run the dates you want to run the ad and you bid the dollar amount you want to pay if doing CPM.

4. You approve your ad. You don’t wait for Big Brother to approve it for you.

5. The ad runs, and you can edit, pause and stop it anytime. You can also check the ad and see the impressions it's getting and the percentage of CPC or CPM it's receiving. Everything is self-explanatory and accessible; if it isn't, articles are available. If that isn't enough, you can email them, and someone will get back to you quickly to walk you through it.

6. The most important part of the puzzle is finding authors you align with. Unfortunately, not every author on Amazon who is a natural tie-in is also on Bookbub, so that author’s readers can't be targeted. You may have to research BookBub and find other authors you align with there.

7. It does not take hours for the ad to run.

8. BookBub ads go out through their emails or appear on their website, and you get a report at the bottom of the screen that tells you if your advertising appears on both places or one.

9. Eventually, over time my ads lost impressions, effectiveness and results.

10. If you publish wide it makes sense to advertise somewhere besides Amazon. Since you are publishing wide, why would use them exclusively to market your book? BookBub is the most logical choice.

Compared to where I was a month ago, I've learned much. But in no way am I an expert. I've compiled a list of authors I can use to target. I came up with two ads that got strong impressions. I eventually created multiple campaigns that got sales results on book partners on Draft2Digital and modest ones on Amazon. It didn't cost me a lot to run the ads like it did the previous month when I was clueless. I like that I could pause them anytime, tweak the ad, target a different author, or delete authors.

This did not come natural to me. There were some ad's that I created that I thought would be winners that turned out to be duds and got little or no impressions, and others I thought were horrible that turned out to be the ones that worked. I really did feel like I was throwing things blindly to see what would stick. It will take many more months to get a handle on the platform and even more research to discover authors I align with that are on BookBub.

If I've left you inspired to learn more, here's a link to BookBub with a tutorial to watch to set up your first ad. It's straightforward. Watch it to learn more. BookBub provides many other materials on its site to guide you on your journey.

If you've had experience with BookBub, please share.

In July, I’m taking some training on Amazon. I won’t be writing about it until I put what I learn into action. Have a great July 4th!