Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains Bookshop.org links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a couple of pennies (at no extra charge to you) while you support independent bookstores. 

My friend Jenny recently asked what I thought about paying to have her new book recommended by influencers in her book’s category, parenting.

Jenny had two opportunities to pay an influencer to recommend her book. Each offered a variety of packages at different price points.

At the core of each package was a collection of recommended books.

Influencers create recommended reading lists

One of the influencers referred to their book recommendation list as a “book club.” Club members aren’t readers, though. They’re authors paying to get their books included on that list.

The other opportunity is a website its two owners refer to as an online magazine. They describe the site’s book collection as “a new platform on the site where we will be curating and showcasing the best books for parents and parents-to-be.”

In both cases, Jenny would pay an influencer to recommend her book. When influencers charge authors a fee to do this, it’s influencer marketing.

What is influencer marketing?

You have probably seen influencer marketing in action on Instagram, TikTok, and other social networks. An individual with a large following mentions a product by name. The product might be apparel, cookware, or a recipe ingredient, for example.

SproutSocial defines influencer marketing as “a type of social media marketing that uses endorsements and product mentions from influencers – individuals who have a dedicated social following and are viewed as experts within their niche.”

The FTC requires that influencers receiving anything of value to mention a product disclose that information when referencing the brand in a post, story, and so on. “Anything of value” includes products (“We’ll give you this jewelry to wear if you’ll photograph yourself wearing it and post the images”) and money.

This applies to you, me, and Kim Kardashian. That’s the Kim Kardashian who had to pay investors $1.26 million when she didn’t disclose that she was paid to promote a specific crypto security on Instagram.

The law requires transparency

Why is disclosure required? It’s about transparency.

If I’m recommending a product to you, you need to know that I’m being paid to recommend it. That information could influence how seriously you take my recommendation, right?

These rules apply to affiliate marketing, too. The FTC not only mandates disclosure, it requires that affiliates must state that it’s an affiliate link before the link, not after it.

This means that influencers charging authors a fee to recommend their books must disclose that paid relationship. This applies to any:

• Collection (club, list, whatever) of recommended books
• Newsletter mention
• Online magazine article the author writes and pays for so they can include their book title in the writer bio

Neither of the influencers Jenny heard from include these disclosures in their sponsored content.

Both say they’re selective about what they recommend – they wouldn’t recommend just any book, for example – but is that enough?

How important is transparency for you?

I’m a big fan of transparency. That means I wouldn’t pay an influencer to recommend my book without disclosure.

It’s about more than playing by the rules (and avoiding fines). I wouldn’t pay even if there were no FTC rules.

For me, it comes down to your connection with your reader.

How would you feel if you paid Influencer A to be on their recommended books list, then received a message from a reader expressing disappointment when they learned you paid for, rather than earned, your way onto that list?

Or, would you feel OK about doing the humble brag on social media about what an honor it is to be selected for that influencer’s “best books” list?

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Ask yourself: How might my readers react if they learn I paid an influencer to recommend my book?

There’s no right or wrong answer to that question. It’s about what works for you.

Questions to ask when considering influencer opportunities

My response to Jenny about the opportunity for her popular new parenting book, “Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World that Misunderstands Males,” went beyond my discomfort with the lack of transparency, though.

(Jenny knew the offers “felt icky,” but hadn’t realized that it was because the influencers weren’t revealing they were paid until I mentioned that to her.)

The promotional materials used to pitch Jenny on a pay-for-placement package were heavy on what she was paying for, but light on why that was a good idea.

With that in mind, ask these six questions when weighing whether you want to pay an influencer to recommend your book. It will help you make an informed decision.

(The influencers didn’t include any of this in their pitches to Jenny.)

• What’s the website’s traffic?

You want to make sure people will see what you’re paying for online. Because what’s considered “good traffic” varies according to niche, I can’t offer guidelines. Ask the influencer to compare their traffic to the most popular sites.

• How are they promoting this to readers?

One of the influencers Jenny was talking to uses her Instagram account to promote her book club to authors, not readers. That’s going to help the influencer earn money, but it’s not going to help Jenny reach readers.

I wouldn’t pay for an opportunity the influencer wasn’t actively promoting to readers.

• How many newsletter subscribers does the influencer or site have, and what’s the newsletter open rate?

This question is specifically for opportunities to have your book recommended in a newsletter, but it can apply to other situations as well. It gives you a sense of platform and reach.

Typically, the fee is linked to the number of subscribers. PracticalEcommerce notes that a parenting tips newsletter might charge $15 to $25 per thousand subscribers. This is a higher rate than general interest newsletters because the audience is more targeted. That makes it more valuable to advertisers.

(And no matter what they call it, when you’re paying to have your book recommended in a newsletter, even when the recommendation doesn’t look like an ad, it’s an ad.)

MailChimp reports that the average email open rate across all industries is 21%.

• Do they accept all books, or do they screen for quality?

This is important because presenting your book alongside low-quality options won’t help your brand. And it could hurt it.

• How do they meet FTC requirements for disclosing payment?

You can answer this question by reviewing examples provided. (No examples provided? Ask for them.) If transparency isn’t important to you, or the opportunity is so good that you don’t care about disclosures, skip this step.

• What are authors saying about the program?

You want to see testimonials. If the program is so new that there aren’t any, the influencer should be charging a reduced rate until there’s traction – and should say so.

Other factors to consider before you pay

In addition to answering these questions, take into account how long your book has been available. With a pub date of April 4, 2023, “Building Boys: Raising Great Guys in a World that Misunderstands Males” is so new that Jenny and her publisher don’t need to pay these types of placements now.

Also consider how well it’s selling. Jenny’s book is doing great. It doesn’t need an advertising boost yet.

Once Jenny and her publisher have completed launch plan activities in coming weeks and months, they should solicit reader reviews. They will need them in place on sales pages before doing any type of paid promotion because reviews are the social proof readers need to see before buying.

(If you’re struggling to get reader reviews, use my Reader Book Review Forms — there’s one for fiction, another for nonfiction. They make it easy for your fans to write a meaningful review in just minutes.)

An alternative influencer approach

It’s important to understand that many influencers use a different approach to these “best of” product lists and newsletter recommendations.

Instead of charging authors and publishers to screen (or not screen) and then recommend (or not recommend) a book, they use a more authentic approach.

These influencers earn money from their recommendations by using an Amazon Associates or Bookshop.org affiliate link that gives them a small commission on each book sold through the link. They make less money with this approach, but they retain their followers’ trust.

What’s right for you and your book?

Nobody can answer that question for you, but asking the right questions will help you make informed decisions about the opportunities available to you.

How do you decide where and when to spend your marketing dollars? Please tell us in a comment.

Today’s guest blogger is Wendy Raebeck, a frequent commenter here who always adds to the conversation with insights and wit. When Wendy commented recently about how she’s mastering Amazon ads so she can sell more books, I asked her to write a guest post about what she’s doing. In addition to being the author of eight books, Wendy has written more than 100 newspaper articles as a freelance journalist. A former actress and yoga instructor, she says her most formative and spiritual experiences involved living without electricity and running water on Spanish and Greek islands. 

Mastering Amazon ads one tweak at a time: One author’s success story

By Wendy Raebeck

Creatively, I’m a bit rogue. (Mom’s reply to my childhood questions was always, “Use your imagination.”) I design my own covers, don’t “write for the market,” love paperbacks, rarely do giveaways or big discounts, am totally DIY except for the obligatory edits, and price my books higher than most indies.

On the other hand, I seem more determined to cover all the bases than most.

Including “Ta Ta for Now – the Movie,” which I’m about to release, I have eight books out, and am here to report that there really can be a point where the head-bashing begins paying off. If you hang in.

Oh, you’ll still have a line-up of challenges! But if you roll up your sleeves, Amazon ads might possibly lift your spirits.

Mastering Amazon ads requires knowing your readers

Familiarizing oneself with the Amazon ad algorithms is pure grit – feels financially dicey, too – but for the more motivated among us (ideally, with more than one book out), learning the ABCs can take you higher.

My present focus with mastering Amazon ads is on “targeting” and “relevance.” Though this terminology is Advertising 101, the practical application demands a mental shift. As Sandra recently pointed out, it feels counterintuitive not to target “everyone.” Indeed, I always found myself defaulting to, “But how can I be sure Andy, my mechanic, wouldn’t love this book? He’s into all kinds of things.”

Our intuition prompts us to cast a wide net, because you never know. But “relevance” and “targeting” mean fishing for likely readers, not possible (or unlikely) ones.

Sure, as in dating, we could probably get along with almost anybody if stranded on a remote island…but readers aren’t stranded. They have choices.

So Andy reads about cars and motorcycles, not the high jinks of wily women. And even if every two-legged on the planet might, theoretically, enjoy my book (if forced at gunpoint to read it on a long flight), trying to re-route other-genre readers in hopes they’ll switch over is…less than strategic.

As I wrote in “Surviving Self-Publishing or Why Ernest Hemingway Committed Suicide,” “If your email list is comprised of 4th-graders from the class you teach and cab-drivers from your summer trip to Egypt, you’re off point. Think quality over quantity.” “Targeting” also acknowledges that “our tribe” isn’t an already-existing group out there, but non-existent until we create it.

Target with trial and error

So how do we “target”? No simple answer, but mostly through trial and error. As we try out different keywords, categories, and titles of other books (similar to our own in some way) in our ads, we study where shoppers are biting and where they’re buying.

And we eventually hone in on which bait or hooks (targets) are enticing card-carrying buyers to place orders.

With my hippie book, for example, I started out with keywords like “hitchhiking,” “wild and crazy,” and “free spirit.” But I learned these aren’t terms readers search for on Amazon. I’m better off jumping on the coattails of someone typing in “John Lennon,” “60s culture,” or, believe it or not, Prince Harry’s memoir. My buyers read memoirs, they don’t hitchhike.

Get my drift? Mind games. (But…Dad’s reply to my childhood questions was always, “You can figure it out.”)

Amazon ads help sell more books

So…we all know (or are) agoraphobic authors unwilling or unready to hit the ads trenches. But, sadly, in today’s publishing landscape, it’s pay-to-play. Jury’s not only in, it left the courthouse a few years back.

However, those willing to accept this woeful reality, and who possess the gumption/time/energy, can conceivably experience improved sales through advertising. Not high numbers necessarily, and not right off the bat, but an uptick! Not to mention genuine free exposure from thousands of “impressions” flashing your ads across Amazon.

I’ve been doing Amazon ads two years now, summoned in by the endearing Bryan Cohen and his free course (that I’ve taken four times). I also follow Matthew Holmes, another stand-up ads guru proffering excellent tips in a weekly blog. Amazon ads, in my opinion, are impossible to master solo, and I highly recommend Bryan and Matthew (and others, too) as entry portals. (Bryan’s free course starts again April 19. I’ll be there.)

Once you’re a vassal in Jeff Bezos’ fiefdom – and have decoded your ads charts and created some campaigns – your biggest challenge will be juggling the dreaded “spend” vs. your bona fide sales.

Mastering Amazon ads means paying attention

Here, attentiveness and diligence are musts.

But this vigilance has kept me profitable from the start. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I’m by no means killin’ it, plus, I’m super careful, but my author aim has always been to just continue scaling profit while adding fun new books. I’ve met this goal since my first release in 2012 – assisted lately by the ads.

What sold me on mastering Amazon ads was when I let them lapse in September 2022 because I was too busy elsewhere. Guess what. My sales dropped off completely – not just Amazon e-book sales, but all my e-book and paperback sales from all venues! (The chart below reflects just e-book sales and just Amazon – but I sell more paperbacks than e-books, and my whole train stopped when I ceased my ads!)

After that, tracking and tweaking ad performance became a top priority, despite the tedium. Point is, if one can develop a patience variant heretofore unimagined, some know-how will follow, and things might percolate.

It’s a pay-to-play publishing world

I’m writing this because I believe authors (especially multi-title ones) must grasp the pay-to-play paradigm self-publishing has morphed into. Despite the overwhelm, old hat to you anyway, I don’t see any other avenues through today’s crowded marketplace. (Except Facebook – where your servitude is to Zuck instead.)

C’est la guerre. Our best approach, I think, is to make marketing fun. And, though the advance team has long advised precisely that, it still takes ages to embrace it – “Oh-h-h, like actually enjoy myself? Hmm.”

Yep, jump in the pool.

And jump into my tribe; check out the escapist literature at WendyRaebeck.com and sign onto my email list there (get two free stories). If you’re an appropriate reader, that is. Oh, okay, Andy, if you insist.

Do you have questions for Wendy about her experiences with Amazon ads? Please ask them in a comment. 

Our guest blogger today is Randi Minetor, the author of more than 80 books, including seven in the Death in the National Parks series—nonfiction books about people who visit national (and some state) parks and do not survive the experience. She also writes about U.S. travel, hiking in New York State, birds, nature, historic cities, and a wide range of general interest topics. Be sure to read Randi’s other articles here, “I wish I hadn’t done that: Tales from the book promotion road” and “Amazon sales rank: What the heck does it mean?“

Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links, which means if you click on them and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission (at no extra charge to you).

Can a Facebook ad really sell books? One nonfiction author says “Yes!”

By Randi Minetor

Minutes after I created my Books by Randi and Nic Minetor business page on Facebook, I started receiving messages encouraging me to “boost” a post by making it a paid advertisement.

I dismissed the idea at first. The common wisdom I’ve heard since the 2002 release of my first book is that paid advertising doesn’t sell books.

The world of social media, however, gives us a whole new perspective on advertising, turning it from a broad-spectrum, mass-market enterprise into a highly targeted messaging system.

With that in mind, I decided to give a Facebook ad a whirl to promote my latest nonfiction book, Death in the Everglades: Accidents, Foolhardiness and Mayhem in South Florida, to see if I could raise its visibility during the holiday season.

Creating a Facebook ad, step by step

First, I used the book’s promotional copy to create a post on my page,  For the image, I used MockupShots, the wonderful tool Sandra Beckwith recommends that drops a book cover into any of the thousands of templates available on its site.

The click-through “call to action” went to the book’s page on Amazon.

Once I clicked “Boost Post,” it took me to the Create Ads page. I added a “Shop Now” button and moved on to the most critical part of the process: selecting the audience.

Here’s where Facebook advertising offers advantages I have not found in other online ad programs. Facebook suggests what it calls an “advantage audience” that it selects, but this is likely too broad for most books.

Instead of using this default, I selected that advantage I mentioned, “People you choose through targeting.” That allowed me to create my perfect niche: people ages 18 to 65+, living in Florida, who have expressed an interest in the Everglades, South Florida, camping, hiking, outdoors, hunting, or national parks.

Next, I chose my daily budget. I started conservatively at $12 per day for 10 days.

Facebook told me that about 1,800 people per day would see the ad. Advertisers only pay for the actual clicks on the ad, however, so I thought it very likely that this would not cost me much.

Results and tweaks

So you can imagine my surprise when I launched the ad in early December and the numbers started to come in.

In the first seven days, nearly 30,000 people saw my ad, and 408 clicked on the link. I watched my Amazon ranking numbers rise out of the basement, and the book became #1 in the Miami Florida Travel Books and Florida Keys Travel Books categories.

With 12 days to go before Christmas, I decided to run the ad again, right up through December 23. This time, I looked at the graph provided in the Ad Center and found that nearly all of the audience who interacted with the ad were older than 40—so I adjusted my audience target accordingly.

Fewer people—19,300—saw the ad, but the closer targeting generated twice as many clicks (see below).

When I looked at my actual sales on Bookscan a week later, more than 400 copies of Death in the Everglades had sold in just three weeks. (By contrast, other books in the series usually sell about 30 copies per week during the holiday season.)

Equally important, the momentum continued into January. People shared the ad on Facebook nearly 100 times, so it has continued to enjoy robust sales—especially rewarding for a niche book about true crime and accidents in South Florida.

And all it cost was about $270.

Pro tips for a Facebook ad that will sell books

I learned a lot through this process. Here are my five top tips for creating Facebook ads that sell.

1. Put your book cover in a great environment.

Displaying your book cover on a plain white background won’t make the book look exciting and special.

Thanks to MockupShots, we don’t have to spend a small fortune or a long afternoon photographing our books in movie-set conditions. It took me ten minutes to browse and pick an engaging template.

2. Punch up your sales text.

This came easily to me because I used to run an advertising agency, and I spent much of my career writing marketing copy.

I took the book’s back cover copy (which I had written) and boiled it down to a few clipped, declarative sentences with a throat-grabbing opening. You’ve got maybe three seconds to catch the eye of a reader scrolling through Facebook, so make that first sentence count.

3. Location, location, location.

Define your audience first by geography if you can—where the book takes place, or where your most avid readers may be clustered.

Ads that target the entire U.S. will not be effective at $12 per day—you’ll need to spend a lot more money to reach enough people to make a difference. Try to narrow that geography.

4. Target your readers.

Facebook is all about uniting people with similar interests, so use that to your advantage.

You can type in any topic to find your people: book genres (romance, fantasy, travel, true crime, etc.), hobbies, interests, professions, travel preferences, political views, religions, or other categories relevant to your subject.

Knowing your ideal audience’s age range can help as well—that turned out to be my biggest success secret. The more you can pinpoint your niche, the more effective your ad will be in reaching your target.

5. Set a realistic budget.

You can decide to spend as little as $1 per day, but don’t expect results from such a small expenditure. I found $12–$15 per day for 10 days to be very effective for a book with a fairly narrow audience.

If you’re promoting a book with a much broader reach, it may take more money to find them. Keep in mind that if the ad doesn’t seem to be helping you sell books, you can halt it with a single click and not spend another penny.

My nearly effortless ad campaign has given Death in the Everglades the visibility I need to peddle it to podcasts and blogs throughout the state.

The bottom line: If you know your audience well, you can reach a very specific group fairly economically using Facebook ads and see your sales rise.

Have you used Facebook ads for your book? What did you learn from the experience? 

The service’s website points out that you can then add “as featured in FOX, CBS, NBC” with the corresponding network logos to your website.

Instant credibility, right?

Or . . . is it?

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What’s the deal?

The young marketer offering this opportunity charges $97. That’s not a lot of money to pay for this “as seen on” credential if this is something that is very important to you.

And I realize that for some, it’s very, very important.

I had my suspicions about the offer, though.

So did the author who contacted me.

That’s why I emailed the promoter. I didn’t doubt his claim and guarantee. I just didn’t think it was legitimate, by-the-book publicity.

What’s publicity?

More on what I learned in a minute. First, it helps to understand publicity, since this is presented as a “PR package.”

Publicity, a subset of public relations (PR), is news media exposure. The current buzz phrase for it is “earned media.” It’s journalistic content that mentions you that you didn’t pay for.

For example, you might be interviewed for an article or a radio or TV segment, or you or your book are mentioned in a short news item in a newspaper or an online news outlet.

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Have you ever sent a press release that got picked up by media outlets? That’s publicity.

With publicity, you can’t control what gets used or when, but because there’s an implied editorial endorsement when you’re interviewed, quoted, or mentioned, it’s at least 10 times more credible than advertising. In other words, consumers are more impressed by publicity than by advertising.

Consumers are more impressed by publicity than by advertising.Click to tweetWhat’s advertising?

Unlike earned media, advertising is paid media. Because you pay for space or air time, you control what’s in the ad and when it appears.

Most of us can recognize an ad when we see one, whether it’s while watching TV or skimming an online news site. Sometimes, advertisers blur the line between advertising and publicity by paying for content that reads like a news article. That’s known as “native advertising.”

When it’s not obvious that it’s an ad, as is usually the case with native advertising, the Federal Trade Commission requires advertisers to disclose that it’s sponsored, or paid for, content.

I’ve written a fair amount of native advertising content for my local daily newspaper as freelance writer. In this article for a hearing center that I wrote, you’ll see a “Story from . . . “ disclaimer at the top. At the end, there’s notification that the newspaper’s editorial staff didn’t contribute to the article.

This is transparency.

What does it have to do with this “as seen on” offer?

So here’s the deal. The conventional use of “as seen on” or “featured on” with media logos refers to legitimate, bona fide publicity. It means that you were interviewed or mentioned by a journalist at that media outlet.

That’s not what this $97 “PR package” (his words, not mine) offer is about.

You’re paying $97 for advertising on a local network affiliate’s website.

After paying the fee, you complete a questionnaire. The marketer then pays a local TV station to place your Q&A (he calls it an article) on its website. It runs on the site with this disclaimer: Sponsored: Advertising Content.

Let’s talk book marketing and integrity

Paying for this type of placement on a local TV station’s website and claiming on your own website and marketing materials that you’ve been “featured on” Fox, CBS, or NBC or whatever is the same thing as buying an ad in People magazine and claiming you were featured in the pages of People.

I mean, technically, it’s accurate.

But it’s not what the average consumer thinks when they see “as featured in” – and for good reason. For most, it means that you are so good at what you do that a journalist chose to interview or feature you.

When we see those media logos on your site, we don’t know that you’ve paid a local TV station to run native advertising.

Think about it: What would you say if someone said to you, “Wow! Can I watch your appearance online?”

(By the way, you can add “as featured on” with logos to your site legitimately. And in a few weeks, I’ll tell you about a course I’ve created that will teach you how.)

What do you think?

Do you think translating paid space on a local TV station’s website to “as featured on” with network logos is misleading?

Do you think it’s ethical?

Do you think that authors and others who pay for this type of advertising have integrity?

The dude making the offer

I’m sure the young entrepreneur selling this service thinks it’s all on the up-and-up. He graduated from college in 2019, and might simply be too young and inexperienced to grasp that he’s basically helping people deceive their followers and connections.

I’ll add that he did respond promptly when I emailed him to ask how he could guarantee network television exposure. Rather than ignore my polite message or reply with lots of doublespeak, he explained the Q&A process (which is clearly outlined on his website, too) and provided three links to examples.

He’s not lying to customers, and I give him credit for that. And if people are willing to pay him so they can deceive their fans, why should I care?

Who cares?

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I don’t care what his customers do.

But they aren’t people I would intentionally do business with.

Would you?

I’m a big fan of transparency. And I don’t like to be deceived. It makes me feel silly and foolish – and I do plenty of that on my own.

Plus, I couldn’t get away with deceiving you. I learned that lesson in college, when I tried to break the dining hall’s rules by smuggling a sandwich out in my purse.

Busted.

But that’s just me. What do you think? Are you comfortable paying for a Q&A on a local TV station’s website, then telling your readers you were featured on a major network?

Where do you stand? Please tell us in a comment. I’d like to learn from you.