Free Guide: Building Your Advertising Foundation

Without a solid foundation, any form of advertising won't work.

Why? 

Advertising is purely there to drive traffic to your book product page. Relevant traffic, yes, but, at the end of the day, your book sells your book.

More specifically, there are 5 assets on your book product page that will impact how many readers go ahead and buy or borrow your books:

- Book Description
- Book Cover
- Price
- Reviews/Ratings
- Look Inside

Without making these 5 assets the absolute best they can be, driving oodles of traffic to your book product page with any form of advertising or marketing, is going to be a complete and utter waste of time and money.

Let's dive into each of these assets a little more to ensure your books are primed and ready for advertising and ultimately, sell books.

#1 Book Description

A tantalizing book description is going to be, in my opinion, the biggest conversion driver.

This where you have the opportunity to tease potential readers what your book is about, just enough to leave them wanting more and the next (and only) logical step for them to take is to buy your book.

Book descriptions are of course, subjective, and different methods work for different genres. Ultimately though, it comes down to letting your potential readers know what they will get out of reading your book.

They are investing money in your book, yes, but they will also be investing time in your book; it could be 1 hour, it could 20+ hours. And time is a finite resource. We can always make more money, we can't make more time. 

So let readers know why your book is worth their time through a compelling book description.

#2 Book Cover

Against popular belief... readers do judge a book by its cover.

Speaking specifically to Amazon Ads, they look just like organic placements within the Amazon ecosystem; so much so, that many readers don't even realize that there are Advertisements on Amazon!

The reason your book cover is so important is because it forms part of your Amazon Ad Creative, as you can see from the screenshot below.

To generate clicks on your Amazon Ads (which is what you need to make sales), your book cover needs to be compelling and on-genre.

If it doesn't meet the readers expectation in relation to the type of book they're looking for, you're unlikely to get many, if any, clicks and therefore, sales are going to be low to non-existent too.

And with a platform such as Facebook Ads, some element of your book cover ALWAYS works well as your image. So, a strong, on-genre book cover is going to help drive traffic and sell books.

#3 Price

With so many books available on Amazon, the price of your book needs to meet 4 criteria:

1. It's in the average price range for your genre

2. It isn't priced so cheap that it de-values your brand

3. It isn't too expensive for the format (i.e. Kindle, Paperback, Hardback)

4. It provides you with a solid return on investment (particularly when you're advertising)

It's a tricky balance to find and it will take some testing to discover the sweet spot of good conversions (i.e. sales) and profitable advertising. 

There are many different pricing strategies authors use, but just because it works for one author, doesn't mean it's going to work for all authors.

So, think about what sort of price would work for you, test it for 30-60 days, track the results, then test another price point if you're not happy with the results.

And don't forget about read-through to the other books in your series/catalog. 

If you're a non-fiction author, think about any backend products or services you may have on offer and what role your book(s) are playing in achieving your goals.

When writing in a series, it often makes sense to price Book 1 at a lower price point, to entice readers into the series. Then you can stagger a price increase for each book in the series, capping out at a maximum of, usually, $5.99 for Kindle books.

As an example, here's how you could price your series like this:

- Book 1: $0.99

- Book 2: $1.99

- Book 3: $2.99

- Book 4: $3.99

- Book 5: $4.99

- Book 6: $5.99

There's no right or wrong way to price your books; only what works for you and your readers.

#4 Reviews/Ratings

Amazon recommend having at least 15+ reviews/ratings on your book before you start using Amazon Ads. 

Personally, I see better results from all forms of advertising or marketing, from a conversion standpoint, when a book has 100+ reviews/ratings.

Very few readers want to be the first person to try out a new book if no one else has read it before.

They are going to be investing money into the book, yes, but also time. And time is our most valuable asset.

If you see a book with 3 five-star reviews and a book with 3,456 four-star reviews, which one are you most likely to buy?

If you're like most people, you're going to be drawn to the book with 3,456 four-star reviews.

Ok, so the overall rating isn't as good, but it's still a four-star book and over 3,000 people have read it, so there's more evidence here for our brains that we will enjoy this book.

The book with 3 five-star reviews is just too much of a risk.

So, the more social proof your books have, the better your advertising will perform.

#5 Look-Inside

Amazon allows readers to read the first 10% of a book before they make their purchase.

This is huge. And a prime opportunity to show readers that your book is worth their investment of time and money.

To make sure you provide potential readers with the best possible reading experience, your books need to be in the best possible shape they can be. This includes:

- No spelling mistakes

- No grammar mistakes

- Professionally formatted

If readers pick up on errors within the first few pages, it's unlikely they're going to buy or borrow your book, because the quality of the writing, content or formatting, is letting you down.

First impressions count.

TL;DR (Too Long, Didn't Read)

5 Assets to pay attention to on your book product page to help improve the conversion rate of your advertising:

#1: Book Description

#2: Book Cover

#3: Price

#4: Reviews/Ratings

#5: Look-Inside

That's all for today. You got this.