The Uncertain Future of Amazon (and Indie) Advertising · 7:13pm Feb 21st, 2020
So this one’s been on my list to write about ever since Jungle launched. Things have been … pretty busy, which is why it’s taken this long to get to it. But no matter where I’ve been, or what I’ve been doing, this topic has weighed on the back of my mind (even when sick, lol).
Why? Well, because I think it may have a lot of impact on the publishing future going ahead.
Look, let’s all be on the same page here: Indie publishing is the juggernaut change that the book industry is dealing with right now. Traditional publishers are fast falling out of favor, doubling down on archaic models and methods that haven’t made financial sense in two decades, while authors jump ship to newer, smaller indie pubs or just go completely independent on their own. And right at the middle of this swirling maelstrom is … Amazon. The world’s largest bookstore. Who basically looked at publishing and said “Oh, how cute and quaint. Well, you keep doing that, but we’re offering the future.”
Okay, what they really did was throw their doors wide open, say “Hey, anyone can sell a book here, and here’s your 70% royalty,” and let logic do the rest. Because few authors were going to stick with a traditional publisher model where they owned nothing and worked for a royalty so small they’d need to sell a hundred books just to make $10 when they could instead keep all the rights and sell two books to make $10.
Anyway, that’s ancient history by now, and the market is well on its way through the reactionary shift to this change, with traditional publishers struggling to stay relevant through all sorts of questionable actions like cutting author royalties even further or attacking libraries.
But this isn’t about that. Well, sort of. That’s all background to bring us up to speed so I can get to the real meat of today’s topic: Amazon’s Advertising system.
The moment I read this, I was horrified. I mean, how many products do I look at in any store, online or brick-and-mortar, before I settle on the one I want? A half-dozen at least, more if we're talking about something I'm really interested in. Granted, I'm not usually accessing those through ads, but the point is that I don't buy the majority of the things I look at. I'd find it more realistic – and still a long shot – to get one buy every ten clicks. And I'm expected to pay for all those clicks?
That being said, I could see the benefit of taking the financial hit for, say, a month or two just to get word out that the book exists in the first place and hope it's enough to get the ball rolling. I mean, it is advertising, which is what you're paying for.
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Yeah, it's kind of a tough conundrum. And clearly extra moolah for Amazon, since they make money on every sale too (which is a bit ... self-serving).
It works, clearly, but it's left me with enough of an uneasy feeling that I can't rely on it.
Blegh. Promoting one's works is difficult and uncomfortable, and companies that would do it for you know this.
Good luck cutting the con crud.
Honestly, I'd be ecstatics with a buy per 2-3 clicks. I've had ad campaigns where I've spent upwards of a hundred dollars for literally zero purchases to show for it. The KU reads do keep trickling in, perhaps there's even a slight uptick after an ad campaign, but the purchases stay little to none.
I've tried really "wide" campaigns where I threw pretty much any tangentially-related keywords at the wall to see what sticks, and I've also tried laser-targeted ones that get several clicks per ~100 impressions, yet the results stay the same. It's been driving me up the wall, honestly. I don't know if I'm doing something severely wrong, or if it's simply a case of not having enough books out yet to be recognised as a for-realsies author / have the books naturally cross-promote each other by virtue of just existing.
That said, I also noticed the sudden rise in cost-per-click to several dollars and it does worry me. It's maddening. Interestingly though, I've found that certain keywords list their average winning price in a manageable 0.5 - 1 dollar range, and still win bids for $2+, and even conversely, words with expensive average wins still tend to get plenty of wins with <$1 bids. It really seems like a crapshoot which just adds to my confusion and frustration.
Like you say, though, the absolute worst part is that Amazon has all of us by our
ballswallets.