Testing the Ad Waters

After that initial 90-day spike, the book sales have dropped, as predicted. The Facebook friends have made their purchases and already got tired of my constant hype. The family members have also contributed their love and support, but even they have become less likey to click like on my book posts. But it's not fair! Right? There's still millions of people out there who don't even know about my awesome book! And there's only one way to tell them... Spend! That! Money! Yep, most reviews cost money, and of course, so do the ads.

I googled Chicago Trib, but they wanted thousands. Even the small town paper of Freeport, IL, is now owned by a giant corporation that requires $1000 minimum. So, of course, I turned to the infinite reaches of the internet. I read some blogs and found BookBub. Not sure how it works but you can name your price (like $3 for one click) and they'll aution that price like eBay. I tried paying $20 and I got about 10 clicks. What's more important I got thousands of impressions, so at least people saw my cover, whether they clicked it or not. Cons are I'm pretty sure that only sold 3 ebooks, which made me about a dollar. (But hey--NOT in it for the money here! Just want people to read it!) Also the ad seems to be running dry. It went from 1,000 hits a day to more recently 100 hits, for no apparent reason. Dunno. Then I gave Instagram $20 to see what they could do. Cool thing about them is I could pinpoint Freeport, and run exclusively there, which is the setting of the book and naturally my initial target audience. I switched my Insta account to pro and "promoted" a cool photo of my book, got a thousand impressions, seen by 800 people, and got few followers, a handfull of likes, and 8 clicks. My guess is I sold 2 paperbacks in relation to the ad, but it's hard to be sure. That's all so far. I think I'm like Insta better, just because I know I'm hitting Freeport. BookBub is nice because they're avid readers, but I don't like how my ad fades off for no reason. Plus, most my clicks were in England for some reason. I guess the site is more popular there... Any ad suggestions let me know. It's a great book, just gotta get the word out.