Evaluating Amazon Book Promo Campaigns

ByPhyllis Zimbler Miller

With two years of experimenting with different social media elements for promoting Kindle ebooks on
Amazon, I have come to some conclusions:


Most importantly, doing nothing means almost no sales (unless you are already famous).

To have sales, you must continually expend time and money in promoting ebooks.

Free ebooks via Amazon’s KDP Select program coupled with advertising on free and paid sites for this promotion and announcing via social media sites can result in very large downloads depending on the book, its reviews, and other factors.

When an author slacks off from constant promotional activities, sales plummet. This is especially true as the search engine benefits of large numbers of downloads or sales fade quickly, depending on which Amazon algorithms are used for which particular Amazon book list.

Cross-promotional activities with other authors can be beneficial, particularly if the books by different authors are in the same or related genres. Again, though, this takes effort and must be undertaken on an ongoing basis.

One of the biggest problems is that success with free downloads during a KDP Select promotion can be hazardous for the Amazon ranking of a book.

This happened with my women’s friendship novel MRS LIEUTENANT, which had a huge number of downloads during one promotion, mostly due to a paid ad on BookBub. But this also meant that the downloads included many readers who were not the target audience for the book.

This then resulted in some negative reviews, which brings the overall ranking of a book down on Amazon. Thus even though MRS. LIEUTENANT mostly gets great reviews, the few negative reviews really impacted the book’s ranking.

At the moment I am re-evaluating whether the effort (time and money) it takes for a non-famous book author to get her books purchased on Amazon has a large enough ROI to be worth it.

Please feel free to weigh in below on this topic.

P.S. As I don’t currently have any Kindle books on free promotion, you may read my writing on Wattpad with two works-in-progress:

The Cold War memoir TALES OF AN AMERICAN OCCUPYING GERMANY at http://budurl.com/TAintro

The dystopian thriller THE MOTHER SIEGE at http://budurl.com/MSintro

© 2013 Miller Mosaic LLC

Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of fiction and nonfiction books/ebooks, including TOP TIPS FOR HOW TO PUBLISH AND MARKET YOUR BOOK IN THE AGE OF AMAZON and the romantic suspense spy thriller CIA FALL GUY.

11 Comments

  1. Unless you are someone like James Petterson or Stephen King the likelihood of major ROI just doesn’t seem to be worth the time or the money.

    Unknown writers need to work from an author’s platform building a list of potential readers.

    Every author should remember to build a thick skin and work hard on being a salesperson for their book because publishing houses won’t like they did decades ago.

    1. Robert —

      Your advice about a thick skin is really important! It takes so much effort to write and publish a book, and then non-authors can so easily knock our effort. (Think Goodreads, for example, where people can give a low rating without even having to write a single review sentence. All they have to do is click the number of stars.)

      Thanks for leaving this encouraging comment — much appreciated.

    1. Una —

      Glad you liked the post.

      And to clarify — low reviews hurt the review ranking. There’s no way of knowing how the review ranking affects the other search engine algorithms on Amazon. Considering that the review ranking is at the top of each book’s Amazon page, I suspect that people do look at that ranking.

  3. Hey Phyllis,

    Your comment – “Most importantly, doing nothing means almost no sales (unless you are already famous).” – is spot on.

    Too many authors put in sporadic efforts. What it really takes is constant, disciplined experimentation to see what works for the author.

    With regard to ROI … I’m not sure if one can approach book writing (especially fiction book writing) as a business. My own guess (correct me if I’ve not written any fiction) is that a person writes fiction as a desire for self-expression … to tell the story because it needed to be told.

    The marketing and promotion is an optional add-on which is again, probably, the result of an emotional need to get the word out there.

    What do you think?

    Happy New Year.

    Vikram

  4. (making the comment again as the previous comment had an error)
    Hey Phyllis,

    Your comment – “Most importantly, doing nothing means almost no sales (unless you are already famous).” – is spot on.

    Too many authors put in sporadic efforts. What it really takes is constant, disciplined experimentation to see what works for the author.

    With regard to ROI … I’m not sure if one can approach book writing (especially fiction book writing) as a business. My own guess (correct me if I’m wrong as I’ve not written any fiction) is that a person writes fiction as a desire for self-expression … to tell the story because it needed to be told.

    The marketing and promotion is an optional add-on which is again, probably, the result of an emotional need to get the word out there.

    What do you think?

    Happy New Year.

    Vikram

    1. Vikram —

      Thank you so much for leaving this comment.

      I do agree that fiction authors write their stories because the authors want to tell these stories. But once written, the stories need to find their audiences.

      Thus marketing is not an option but a necessity.

      And sometimes when faced with this necessity, authors may decide it is not worth first writing the story when so much time must be spent finding the audiences for the story.

      1. Phyllis,

        I agree with you about the need to promote, and I’m afraid I don’t do enough of it. I think your statement–“At the moment I am re-evaluating whether the effort (time and money) it takes for a non-famous book author to get her books purchased on Amazon has a large enough ROI to be worth it.”– pretty much says it all.

        My best advice to any author is to keep writing, hone your skills, promote as your time, money and creativity allows … and don’t give up on your dream!

        1. Jerrye — Thanks so much for leaving this comment and for your insightful “best advice.”

          Hopefully the “little bits” of promotion we do find time to undertake may add up to an overall bigger promotional effort.

  5. I agree with you, Phyllis. ROI for a relatively unknown author trying to sell through Amazon is beyond a herculean task. It is not a business for the faint of heart, or for those with no energy to do the marketing on their own. With so many hundreds of thousands of new choices per genre in any given year, it almost requires a miracle to have significant sales or to break even. It seems to worsen by the month. Unless an author is adept at publicity or can afford a publicist, making sales is equivalent to perpetually trying to roll a boulder up a mountain like Sisyphus. Algorithms are not an author’s friend, only Amazon’s.

    1. Terry —

      I love your insightful comment, especially ” … making sales is equivalent to perpetually trying to roll a boulder up a mountain like Sisyphus.”

      Thanks so much for stopping by,
      Phyllis

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