May 2023 Newsletter

Welcome back Elli Twy Fam, this is Justin with our latest newsletter!

Current Events

We've got some good news to share—the first draft of Shades of Resilience has been sent to our editor! What a journey it has been. I have some ideas for the book cover reveal on Instagram, but will share when the time is right. There definitely will be an interactive component. Hopefully it works, but if not better luck next time.

Writing Discussion

Over the last few newsletters, we've covered our general process from start to finish for projects to sales and profit margins. For this newsletter, I want to discuss another key element for any self-published author—ads.

We play a lot of 1980s and 1990s music at work. Whenever "The Lady in Red" by Chris de Burgh comes on, I instantly think of the Smart Ones commercials from the late 90s showcasing their low calorie food alternatives.

Almost every person alive in 1999 reenacted this exchange on a daily basis: "So what's up, B?" "Nothin' man, just watching a game, havin' a Bud." "True, true." "Wazzzzaaap!?" For the young ones in the audience, that was a famous Budweiser commercial.

Another ad I distinctly remember was a commercial for Mountain Dew where Channing Tatum flips a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am while driving and grabs a guy's can of Mountain Dew while upside down. Bonus points for that ad since "Crawling in the Dark" by Hoobastank is playing in the background.

Marketing is the art of business. All these years later, I still fondly remember these commercials and the brands they were associated with. Selling books is no different. With all the different ways the Internet has intruded in our lives, the opportunities to advertise are endless. Of the many options between running ad campaigns with Google Adsense, Facebook, Instagram, or some variation thereof, today we'll take a look at Amazon Ads.

Amazon has a very powerful algorithm that ranks books based on sales, reviews, and traffic. When you put up a book on Amazon KDP, part of the process is choosing keywords and product categories that best match your book. Choosing the right keywords and categories is essential to help the algorithm rank your book appropriately and showing it to the right demographic. If people are seeing your book but are not interested, this can hurt your ranking.

The other way to increase exposure is to run ads on Amazon. There are two main types—manual keyword and auto. Auto ads use the algorithm to determine what audience would be most successful in getting you sales. Manual keyword ad campaigns involves uploading keywords that correspond to your book. For both auto and manual ads, you have to set a price for the "bid" or the price you pay each time someone clicks the ad. In general, it's best to set a low daily budget, like $10 so that you don't end up with some crazy bill at the end of the month. Start low and go slow. As time goes on, I review which keywords are working well and remove the ones that aren't.

The Head in the Sky, was the first book we tried to use Amazon Ads on without really doing much research beforehand. The ACOS (Average Cost of Sales) is a ratio of how much you're spending on ads vs. sales. The lower the ACOS the better your campaign is. The ACOS on this campaign was bonkers and eventually I turned it off. After actually taking the time to watch some YouTube videos, we learned from those early mistakes.

For Manju's Kerala Christmas, we spent about $130 on ads but generated $164 in sales, at least for the time period of the report. We ran both manual keyword and auto ads for this book. Interestingly, the Amazon algorithm really kicked in well for the auto ads and knew exactly the best demographic to present the book to get sales. There were some days during the holiday season where we were getting 20-30 sales a day. Perhaps children's books are easier to market than poetry collections!

Writing Inspiration

In keeping with the throwback theme, I've been in an early 90s mood with my music lately. The song "Pets" off of Porno for Pyro's debut album (Perry Farrel's band after Jane's Addiction broke up in 1991) is one I can't help replaying over and over again. There's something hypnotic about that song, beyond the interesting lyrics of how humans would make great pets for an alien race. It takes me back to a simpler time of Super Nintendo, Playstation, endless summers of biking around our hometown, and the hours spent on our first Windows 95 PC and "surfing the Web" with a 56K modem.

Sometimes I long for that world where social media wasn't always in your face. When you weren't obsessed with posting things and instead enjoying the moment, not scrolling through mindless TikTok challenges that end up in ER visits. Roger Waters, the lyrical brains behind Pink Floyd, explored that concept for his 1992 solo album, Amused to Death. The final stanza on the album was prophetic.

"They repeated every test

They checked out all the data on their lists

And then, the alien anthropologists

Admitted they were still perplexed

But on eliminating every other reason

For our sad demise

They logged the only explanation left

This species has amused itself to death

No tears to cry, no feelings left

This species has amused itself to death"

Happy Writing!

Elli Twy Publishing