Should You Sell Books or Give Them Away?
That depends. Most authors want to sell books, and for this article (I’m going to talk about selling non-fiction books) they don’t want to give them away. But, the truth is that most authors will make a lot more money if they give their books away or offer them for free + shipping and create back-end programs and/or services to sell. But you have to understand what you need to have in place or have access to, to be successful for each model.
So, let’s start by looking at only selling books with no backend.
If you want to make real money, you have to write a lot of books and market them on a regular basis, which can be done several ways.
The first way is with paid advertising. (Today, I’m going to talk about making money from books with paid ads. Next week, I’ll talk about marketing your books using free strategies, and then the following week, I’ll start talking about making money by giving your books away.)
First, if you want to make money as an author, you have to write a LOT of books. You have to set them up properly, of course, so people want to buy them and can find them. Then you have to decide what your strategy is going to be and execute it.
If you have a little bit of money to spend, you can run AMS ads. You don’t have to spend a lot of money to get started, you can spend just $5 a day to start, and you can increase your ad spend as you start making money with your ads. And Amazon has automatic targeting, so you don’t have to worry about targeting your ads to start. Also, make sure that you promote the ebook version of your book to create a positive ROI. (Return on investment)
But, be aware that it is not set it and forget it. Sometimes, the ads work for a time, and then they don’t, at which point you will have to recalibrate them. But, they do work when you know how to use them.
I am not an expert on AMS ads, but my friend and colleague, Derek Doepker is. And he can run them for you, or if you’re a do-it-yourselfer, he has a program on how to use them, which you can check out at: http://ebookbestsellersecrets.com/AutomaticSalesEllen/ *
One caveat, Derek suggests that you do a bestseller launch first, which I’ll talk more about in another newsletter.
You can also run Facebook ads or Google ads. However, it will cost more to run them than AMS ads, and you will have to figure out who to target. (Christen and I spent $5,000 to learn how to run Google ads, and we never got it to work, plus they are more expensive so I don’t recommend going that route if you’re new to the game.)
Also, it is not recommended that you run them yourself if you don’t know what you’re doing because it can get very expensive very fast without getting the results you’re looking for. But, it will also cost a pretty penny to have someone run them for you, and it doesn’t always work right away, so you have to be prepared to test, tweak and keep spending money to have them work.
So I’d go with AMS ads to start. And, if you want to move into Facebook and/or Google ads, find a good coach or mentor to learn the ropes or as I said, hire an experienced professional to do it for you and be prepared to spend some bucks.
*This is my affiliate link, and I will make an affiliate commission if you purchase through this link.