Advanced Ads: Boosting Income

Best-selling indie authors share their advertising hacks

By Cathy Shouse  

Best-selling indie authors (also called self-published authors) who make an exceptional income will often share their secret sauce for success in one word: advertising. Yet that term has many layers. 

After you’ve learned the advertising basics, if you’re aiming to make the big bucks, you’ll need advanced strategies. Read on for the advertising hacks of some elite performers. Their ideas may surprise you.

Show Me the Money

Kirsten Oliphant earned her master of fine arts and, with five young children, she switched to writing contemporary romance. She debuted her Emma St. Clair pen name in December 2017 (she also writes YA urban fantasy as Sullivan Gray). Fast-forward to the end of January 2021, and her books had surpassed four million Kindle Unlimited page reads for the month and grossed $20,000, rising to $25,000 for February. Her latest, most-popular series starts with Falling for Your Best Friend’s Twin and is a romantic comedy. 

“I spend more money on Facebook and have more ads running on Amazon,” Oliphant said. “I almost always start with 99-cent launches and utilize paid email newsletter promo sites like Robin Reads, E-Reader News Today, and the Fussy Librarian.”

Charlotte Byrd (Tell Me to Stop) started out writing contemporary romance and took two courses on advertising. The second “skyrocketed” her career. 

“I had one book and book two was coming out in January 2016, and I made $3,000 in profit my first month investing about $2,000 and then $7,000 in profit the next month,” Byrd said. “My sales went up and down after that because I didn’t write in a series and didn’t have one specific brand, but I took Skye Warren’s Facebook course and that took my sales to a whole new level. In the last two years, I reached selling over one million books—all thanks to Facebook ads.”

Elana Johnson began her traditionally published career in 2011. In 2014, she began indie publishing and entered the contemporary romance genre the following year with a pen name. Her career took off. She writes under her own name for women’s fiction. Liz Isaacson is her pen name for Christian romances. Jessie Newton is mysteries. Though she’s been a six-figure-a-year author since 2016, in 2020 she made changes to bring her income to six-figures a month as Liz Isaacson. 

The first step was setting an income goal. “I definitely, 100 percent, believe there are things we tell ourselves that hold us back from pushing to get to the next level,” Johnson said. “For me, I didn’t think Christian romance could generate the same level of income as the sexy romance genres. I was wrong, and it wasn’t until I started believing that I had more room—a lot more room—to grow that I was willing to push that growth.” 

“Mindset definitely has something to do with the boost in sales,” Byrd said. “But so does the price point, the length of books and length of series, and ad spend, among other things.” 

The Chicken or the Egg?

Advertising propelled their numbers, but their books provided the foundation. They went beyond stellar writing. Before delving into ads, they knew their books were “to market.”

Oliphant said, “It’s important to have a genre-specific, professional cover and a blurb that lets readers know exactly what they’re getting and speaks to the right readership. Otherwise, you might think it’s the ads that don’t work, when it’s really an issue with your book.” 

“I’m writing romantic comedy not because it was trending,” Oliphant said. “I wrote it because I wanted to, and I studied the market hard. I happened to release right at the start of an emergence of more non-steamy romantic comedies, which really helped. But if you just follow along what you see is popular, readers may not follow you … Try things, but try to find what suits you and what your audiences love from you—meaning what they’re buying, not just what they are asking for—and then commit to writing that.” 

Johnson put it this way: “You always, always, have to deliver something readers want. In Blake Snyder’s book on screenwriting, he has a beat called ‘the promise of the premise.’ That’s what you have to do for readers. You’ve promised them something, and you better deliver.

“If you don’t, I hate to say it, but you can run ads all day long,” Johnson continued. “You can probably get them into the first one, but if you don’t deliver what they want, they won’t read through.”

Recovering and changes may sometimes help, or not.

“(But) some series are simply not going to be the racehorse that wins, no matter how much money you spend on it,” Johnson said.

Budgeting

Oliphant said, “As you invest in ads, you’re learning something, even if your ads fail! You’ll have some data, even if you didn’t get the sales you wanted … Start with $5 per day ads. Or less. You have to invest some, but you don’t need to get a credit card and max it out, hoping to get that back—please, don’t do that. 

“I would suggest starting with the paid email promos, especially the ones by genres. They already have done the work of building the audience for you, and there’s no learning curve. See how your books perform there and learn about ads before jumping into them.”

Reader Feedback and Genre Research

Johnson said, “I ask my readers what they like about my books and what they do not like. This has helped me the most with then delivering to them what they like. A lot of people can’t put their finger on what they like about something, but everyone has an opinion about what they don’t like.

“I ask them to tell me how their books make them feel and who their favorite authors and books are—and then I read those authors and those books to see what it is that they liked about them. Everything is so subjective, but the best thing to do is ask readers what they like, and then endeavor to give them more of what they like. 

“If you don’t have any readers to ask: Look at the best-selling books in your genre. Read five or six in a series, tracking what those books all have 
in common.”

Some Ad Strategies to Try

Byrd said, “I have stacked a BookBub and other promos sites like Free Books, Robin Reads, and Red Feather Romance to help with the ads. It’s good to spread these out over five days with the BookBub being the last to make sure you have an increasing number of sales each day, finishing strong on day five. This is best to do when you are having a sale or a limited-time promotion. This approach will tell the Amazon algorithm that your books are selling well, and they will start doing the promotions for you. Do not put them all on one day because the algorithm doesn’t like when there’s a huge spike in one day. 

“Also, make sure that you have one call to action at the end and do not put ‘The End’ at the end of the book. Instead, create a section break (***) and write the call to action like ‘Thank you for reading Title of Book 1. Can’t wait to find out what happens next? 1-Click Title of Book 2 here!’

“I now have a monthly ad budget running to all of my first-in-series free books, and they help drive new readers into my various series. I’d recommend spending more in a short time rather than spreading it all out. There’s a concept of failing fast. So, if your budget is $100, spend it within a week rather than a month, to test your ads and find out which ones are the ones working best.”

Melissa Storm/Molly Fitz (Merlin the Magical Fluff) credits ads with taking her from hobbyist into having a profitable business. “Facebook ads are instrumental to my big launch plans,” Storm said. “When I want to see a new release hit either the USA Today best-seller list, the Amazon top 100, or both, I begin by thoroughly testing the cover and book description with preorder ads. This allows me to rapidly scale on launch day. I also like to add extra juice by setting up an accelerated campaign, which, when done right, can have a similar effect to that of a BookBub featured deal.”

Book Pricing

Johnson said, “So, there are lots of ways to price a successful series. I have seven series wide, spread out across my three names, and, yes, I have perma-frees in many of those. I’m constantly pushing those and trying to grow the income based on the paid books that follow. This does work, but I’ve found it to be a slower strategy to building income levels. 

“And, to be clear, slower does not mean better or worse. It’s just slower. That’s all.

“Pricing book one at 99¢ in Kindle Unlimited seems to be very popular, and I’ve done this too. Again, it’s a slower approach. Why? Because you have to wait for people to read through that low-price (or free) funnel before you make any money.

“If your goal is to level up income in a faster way, the full-price book one is the way to go. This is what I learned when I really amped up my advertising about eighteen months ago. I was paying a ton for the advertising, and I wanted the income to come in faster. To do that, I raised the prices of my loss leaders from 99¢ to full price but kept the ads rolling. I also raised the prices on all the books in the series overall, moving them up $1 across the board … My full-priced books are being used to generate income from my existing fan base, as well as from new readers willing to pay full-price for books.”

Rapid Release

Releasing books in a shorter time frame can help, but there are many angles.

“I think a career can be built quicker with a quicker rapid release schedule,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t mean it’ll be better or that you’ll make more money. It just means quicker. I think if a genre is white hot, a rapid-release strategy of every two to four weeks can be more lucrative than waiting to release the books further apart. So, in that case, it might be more important than in another genre.”

Know When to Fold ‘em

Expecting a major uptick from ads that have been running three days isn’t realistic. Yet, hanging on with something clearly not working isn’t good either. Find your happy medium. Sometimes it’s best to stop trying new covers, recognize your book is a donkey instead of a racehorse, and just write another book.

“To be clear, I’ve panicked, turned the ads off, and declared ‘these don’t work for me,” Johnson said. “The difference might be that I then realized—no, that’s not true. I just haven’t figured out how to make these work for me.”

Appreciate Your Journey

With so much information about who is selling tons of books and raking in the dough, it’s easy to get discouraged. But experiences with ads are as individual as the authors who are investing in ads. Be sure to enjoy and celebrate the success you experience. Your growth journey is your own.

“I just want to say really quickly, you can watch all the authors in the world,” Johnson said. “You can do everything ‘right.’ You can set yourself up to achieve the highest level of success … and still not see the success someone else sees. One thing I’ve learned over my years of publishing: nothing is replicable. Sometimes I can’t even repeat my own successes. It’s frustrating, but it’s just one of those publishing punches we have to roll with, knead around, and then figure out the next step to take to try to find the success we’re looking for.”


Cathy Shouse’s articles have appeared in Family Fun, The Saturday Evening Post and Indianapolis Monthly, as well as the Romance Writers of America national magazine (Romance Writers Report). She writes contemporary romance and assists writers with promotion at every opportunity. Visit her website or find her on Twitter at @cathyshouse.