Can Amazon Ads work for a new release?

[The Bass Bagwhan]

I'm researching Amazon Ads and thinking of dabbling, and one idea is to give them a try when I launch a new book soon. But a couple of how-to blogs suggest that you need at least 10, if not 20, reviews for any such ad to have any success. I guess that means that although your ad might work well, when shoppers click on it and discover it's a new release without reviews or ratings, they won't take the risk.

Has anybody had any experience along these lines? Advertising a new release? (Not part of a series, by the way)

Thanks.

[TimothyEllis]

But a couple of how-to blogs suggest that you need at least 10, if not 20, reviews for any such ad to have any success.

That's basically rubbish. The 'need reviews' myth.

Every book releases without reviews, and quite often the first reviews don't appear for a day.  So every book sells without reviews for a good part of day 1. And that's not including pre-orders, and does include KU. Pre-Orders give you a big boost though.

The ad will either work or it won't. And that depends on the ad, cover, blurb, sample, and price.

[R. C.]

Well, this is a topic near-and-dear to my wallet.  I use Amazon ADs, and FB, and Google, and Taboola, for my new releases and the results have been less than stellar. However, what's life without self-inflicted punishment?

Focusing on Amazon, my latest effort is seeing improved results for what I think are these reasons:

1) My following is growing. Across all platforms I have a few thousand followers. Amazon/Kindle followers improve new release visibility.
2) Spending more per-click for pre-sales ADs. The eBook doesn't drop until the 27th, but I have already had several paperback sales. (Still a negative ROI)
3) I am pushing the book at a pre-order discount.

This effort has more pre-orders than all my prior pre-sales efforts combined.

Conclusion: If you have enough follower mass, and money for clicks, Amazon ADs for new release can be successful.

R.C.

The book: Tule Fog

[Anarchist]

All other variables remaining the same, an ad with reviews will always outperform an ad without reviews.

Anyone who suggests otherwise is either ignorant or basing their claims on a tiny - and therefore statistically irrelevant - dataset (e.g. spending $20 to make $40).

I have many titles and billions of impressions in AMS (you can extrapolate other key metrics from there).

[Crystal]

Amazon ads are slow to warm up. They require a lot of time and coaxing. This makes it hard to advertise new releases without a very aggressive CPC bid.

IMO, the lack of reviews is a minor problem (and easy to solve--find some ARCs). The need for ads to warm up is a big problem with only one solution (bid higher).

[The Bass Bagwhan]

Thanks everyone, it looks it's worth gambling some dollars. My existing success targets historical fiction readers, which I think is more in line with FB's majority demographic these days, whereas the next book is a psychological thriller and might (might) benefit from the AMS marketplace better.

For the same reasons, I can't help feeling I need an alternative to FB. It's not going away soon, but it's spiralling somewhat.

[alhawke]

Amazon ads are slow to warm up. They require a lot of time and coaxing.

I agree. I don't use amazon ads for launch because of this. This differs with Bookbub ads where the ads can take off within a day (Facebook too, so I've heard).

For the same reasons, I can't help feeling I need an alternative to FB. It's not going away soon, but it's spiralling somewhat.

Have you tried BookBub ads?

[The Bass Bagwhan]

 
[quote/]
Have you tried BookBub ads?
[/quote]
Bookbub ads ... actually, no. Never even looked at them because my Bookbub understanding is still locked in the "old days" of having to apply for them. Your experience? ( Or anyone's?). I'll check them out.

[The Bass Bagwhan]

Interesting that Reedsy  warns against using Bookbub ads for anything but freebie or 99 cent promotions because the Bookbub community are only interested in exactly that — it doesn't care about full priced books.

[R. C.]

... This differs with Bookbub ads where the ads can take off within a day (Facebook too, so I've heard)...

My experience (opinion?) is:

Bookbub has become saturated and is less effective than it was a year ago. Be very picky in choosing your categories/authors.

Facebook ADs have a large bump early and a long tail with diminishing value. It is much more difficult to effectively narrow your target audience on FB.

R.C.

[Bill Hiatt]

Targeting was always my problem with FB ads. Unlike Amazon, where you can connect to audiences for any genre or even specific author, in FB you're stuck with whatever categories they happen to have based on their user data. It's been a while, but I remember that it was easy to choose fantasy but not easy to focus on a subgenre. It was easy to choose some book-related categories, but a lot more of them explicitly connected to movies and/or TV. If tight focus makes an ad better--and it almost certainly does--that's harder to achieve with FB.

I found FB ads effective for FB-related tasks (like liking a page, though that's now effectively useless), but I never saw much transfer to actual sales. It was especially "interesting" in the negative sense to get emails from FB telling me my ad was more effective than 90% of FB ads. I remember thinking, "Wow, if this is effective looks like, I'd sure hate to see ineffective."

[LilyBLily]

Interesting that Reedsy  warns against using Bookbub ads for anything but freebie or 99 cent promotions because the Bookbub community are only interested in exactly that — it doesn't care about full priced books.

That was proved soon after BB launched its CPC ads. Bookbub ads of any kind should be for discounted books. You might want to play games and use the discount price points trad pubs use for their books--$1.99 or $2.99--but that's a risk.

[R. C.]

Interesting that Reedsy  warns against using Bookbub ads for anything but freebie or 99 cent promotions because the Bookbub community are only interested in exactly that — it doesn't care about full priced books.

That was proved soon after BB launched its CPC ads. Bookbub ads of any kind should be for discounted books. You might want to play games and use the discount price points trad pubs use for their books--$1.99 or $2.99--but that's a risk.

This.

R.C.

[alhawke]

Interesting that Reedsy  warns against using Bookbub ads for anything but freebie or 99 cent promotions because the Bookbub community are only interested in exactly that — it doesn't care about full priced books.

I can tell you guys that what they're saying is absolutely false. I sell books daily with BookBub ads. Full price $3.99. The trick with Bookbub is you have to experiment with your own creative. And, like AMS, you have to experiment a lot. The best BB ad is always the simplest.

Back to new releases and AMS, one thing I've wondered about is how effective out-bidding competition in similar books would do with a new book. In other words, what if you set AMS to the lowest bid possible to get it seen along the first carousel? That gets it seen every time readers reach the product page. The advertising costs would be high, but it could be worth it with subsequent sales, particularly with books in series??

I'm experimenting with this again with AMS. In order to get my book seen on the first page, I had to set it at $1.25 per click.  I suspect my experiment will fail. But I'm curious to see if I get a sudden spike in sales from the visibility alone. And I think many writers are operating at a loss with one or two of their books just for this visibility, making the bid so high that it isn't worth it for anyone else. In simpler words, I think AMS is too competitive to make any headway (unless you find a sweet spot and are willing to fork out a high bid and luck out). But I'm personally bitter with AMS after failing multiple times in the past.

[Crystal]

I have not gotten BookBub ads to work, yet. They are very tricky in crowded categories. But you do have an audience of people who are actively looking for books, so you can get a much better conversion if you get your ad just right.

[Bill Hiatt]

Ah, if only we had more information. It would be interesting to know what percentage of people actually get it right and have good sales, particularly with full-priced books. It doesn't surprise me that someone gets it to work every so often, but if it doesn't work for most people, even after experimentation with the specifics of the ad, that's a difficult situation.

[The Bass Bagwhan]

Well, I got my cover design finalised this morning, so it'll be uploaded and I'll give it a few days to go live everywhere ... and this grand experiment will commence. I'll run my standard FB ad for a week while I research the alternatives further.