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This is the promised second part to my Can Facebook Really Help You Sell Books? post. It is written by romance author Barbara Hinske, who has done a great job with Facebook, as you will see.
I’m experimenting with FB ads myself, so hopefully there will be a third part in a month or so, with my own experience.
In the meantime, enjoy Barbara’s take on the subject.
Facebook Really Can Help You Sell Books
Thank you, Nicholas, for the chance to represent the loyal opposition. I hope your readers are encouraged and energized by my experience!
Facebook is the silver bullet for self-published authors: the great equalizer and the most accessible, democratic advertising platform in the world. I’ve come to this conclusion, not as a techno wizard but as a technophobe.
If you say you hate Facebook–that you need to write and don’t have time for Facebook–I get it. I began my Internet journey in March of 2014. For months, I felt like I was strapping on a pack and heading into Siberia each day—never knowing where I was going or if I would return. But I persisted and it gradually became easier and easier until, today, I’m finding it fun and very profitable. Here’s the takeaway–I’m not terribly skillful and I’m getting ROI on my Facebook ads of 50-300 percent. So take heart!
My Strategy
The first thing I’ve done was to grow my Facebook Author Page (my platform) to over 22,000 likes. I didn’t buy any of these from “like farms”. I have good, solid engagement on my page.
You may wonder how I did that. Here is my strategy:
1. Set up a Community Page
Set up and run a Facebook Community Page that amassed over 95,000 likes from people that I believe would also enjoy my books. I write in the Women’s Fiction/Romance/Mystery, Thriller, Suspense genres and I chose Downton Abbey Fans as my Facebook Community Page. Turns out that was a good choice for me. The Downton Abbey Fans Page exploded, with very engaged followers.
I post general Downton Abbey-related content on the Downton Abbey Fans Page 6-8 times a day and plan to post something once a day that will draw people over to my Facebook Author Page. The Downton Abbey Fans Page has also brought me additional opportunities that have enhanced my credibility as an author. I’m the Downton Abbey reviewer for UK entertainment giant Cultbox. I have my own page on Cultbox and have been invited to review other series for them (Home Fires, War and Peace).
2. Set up an Author Page
I post on my Facebook Author Page twice a day, almost always sharing content from my News Feed that I thought my readers would like. I understand that original content is king, but any creativity I have goes into my books. I follow 2 simple rules:
- Share content that has been liked/shared/commented on a lot—preferably with millions of views.
- Share content that keeps people on Facebook. If the post contains a link or video that takes the reader to a website or YouTube to view the content, I don’t share it. Facebook doesn’t like people to leave their party—would you?
3. Post shorts
I regularly post on Facebook short (100-300 words) installments of novellas that I call Facebook Bedtime Stories. I started with a mystery/thriller called The Night Train. It was very popular and on my best day, I received 37 email messages from fans of The Night Train. The Night Train is available on Amazon and all 3 of my Facebook Bedtime Stories are available on the blog tab on my website, barbarahinske.com
4. Built a Mailing List
I built my mailing list by running contests on both my Facebook Author Page and Downton Abbey Fans Page to generate signups for my mailing list. I never spent more than $40 on a prize. I generated a mailing list of 10,000, but my email open rates were so low that I culled the list down to 6,000. I don’t plan to gather subscribers by running contests in the future and I wouldn’t recommend using them now.
5. Attended courses
I read the Forbes article about fellow indie author Mark Dawson and his success with Facebook ads. I knew I had to find him. Luckily for me, he was just starting his online course Facebook Ads for Authors. With my robust Facebook footprint, I believed I would be successful.
I’ve employed many of Dawson’s recommendations and have achieved remarkable results on an ad spend of $1200/month. I send my ads to a lookalike audience of my Facebook Author Page, a lookalike audience of my mailing list, and a targeted audience of English-speaking women ages 45+ that like other authors in my genre and own Kindles or tablets. It’s critically important to accurately define your target audience—who reads your books—and know where they buy. If they aren’t likely to buy on their phone, don’t run your ad to mobile devices. I’m in the process of scaling up my ad spend. I suspect my ROI will decrease when I’m serving my ad to a larger audience, so I’m proceeding cautiously.
I’ve been able to drastically shorten my learning curve on all of this by taking 2 online courses and participating in the closed Facebook groups that offer membership in these groups for course participants:
- The masterclass on all things Facebook is FanPageTrafficAcademy. Mitch Gandy and Jesse Doubek are the ultimate experts and are so generous with their expertise and support. This is where you’ll learn about community pages, closed groups, conversion and retargeting, and more. They told me I could do it (over and over) and I did!
- Mark Dawson’s more focused Facebook Ads for Authors.
If you’ve made it through this article, I hope you’re encouraged and feel that success is within your control and your reach. It most certainly is. And it’ll be grand fun getting there. Now–let’s all sell books!
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Nice article!
Thank you so much, Harry 🙂
The more I read about people’s dynamic marketing campaigns, the more overwhelmed and daunted I feel — especially as I have no money to throw at advertising.
Sigh… That’s always a problem. You do need a starting capital, even if it’s a small one.
Scraping one together now 🙂
I’m cheering for you, Sarah! Believe me — I understand feeling overwhelmed. Power Editor broke for me last week — after spending 4 hours setting up ads to support my Countdown Deal, not one of then ran. For no reason that anyone could pinpoint. I had myself a big ole pity party, then got back to work!
How frustrating/exasperating. Poor you D:
From experience, Barbara, do you know which day is best to start a Countdown Deal between now and the 1st January?
Hi Sarah. I don’t know which day would be best. Good question. I’ll bet it makes a difference. I’m going to run my novella The Night Train on a CD — I call it my annual Stocking Stuffer Sale. Hmmm…thanks for bringing the issue to mind. If you find out, will you post?
Yes,. I’ll research into it and see if I can get a definitive answer.
Sorry to butt in like this, I just wanted to remind you of my post, the Holiday Cheat Sheet, which lists all the best dates for promoting between now and the New Year’s: https://nicholasrossis.me/2015/11/16/holiday-book-marketing-a-holiday-cheat-sheet/
Thanks. Brilliant, Nicholas. I must have missed that post.
Glad I could help 🙂
Argh…
Please, Sarah, don’t feel overwhelmed!! You can start with small dollars and grow it slowly. If you can spare $3 a day, you can make a start. And if you run short of money, you can turn off your ads for a while and restart them later. I’ve done that. And I’ve spent plenty of time feeling overwhelmed. Not fun. Please take heart!!
Thank you Barbara, for your sage advice. I think it was a case of already being overwhelmed by the race to get both versions of my book ready for publication by mid-December at the latest. Now they’re both published today, the marketing seems less overwhelming on its own. I promise to take heart 🙂
What a great an informative article!
Thank you! It was fascinating having Barbara’s take on things 🙂
Good article, Nicholas!! I have seen some success on FB but it depends on the genre as well. Besides…who has $1200.00 to put out every month on FB ads and the lessons from Mark Dawson which are not cheap. Good information to study, Nicholas!
Lol – a good point 😀
Just a quick reminder — when I’m spending $1200 on FB ads I’m getting $1800-$3600 in royalties from those ads. The only hard part is that I pay for the ads every time I spend $100 on FB but I don’t get the royalty revenue for 60 days. That’s one of the reasons I’m scaling my ad spend slowly.
I love high-class problems 🙂
Very interesting! I was taught not to use the mobile channel, but she seems to have had success with it.
My view so far (I’m still learning how to use FB ads) is that targeting is incredibly important. If you can use a well-known author to reduce your target audience your ROI will reflect it.
The only way to know what works for you is by running a trial. Not a cheap option, though 🙂
Exactly, Helen. I target Jan Karon and Debbie Macomber fans and that has been very successful for me. Except that I had mobsters in my books and they don’t always sit well with Karon’s fans. I’ve garnered some negative reviews because of these bad boys!
I know . . . invoking another author is a two-edged sword, isn’t it? Gets you a defined audience–but your books had better be just like theirs!
Very informative. Interesting to me how different people are really successful with different platforms. I’m saving this for the future 🙂
Glad you found it useful 🙂
I’ve always wondered how FB could be a “platform,” especially when you don’t have a lot of friends. Thanks for the info!
Hope you found it useful 🙂
I’ve done a few webinars with Mark Dawson, but his courses are very expensive. Yes, I believe FB has a huge audience. Matter of fact, I sell more books on FB than anywhere else. But there are SO many FB courses out there that a writer can go broke fast. I’ll definitely check out the Fan Page Traffic Academy, but I have a feeling it’ll be a grand to join. That said, I muddled through with a FB ad, targeting fans of similar authors, etc., and my website blew up. At the time Marred was only available for pre-release, so I sent visitors to my excerpt page. Thanks for the tips, Barbara!
I’d love to hear more about your experience, if you ever have the time 🙂
Basically, I market to groups. But I don’t shout “Buy My Book!” Instead, I market using the 5 W’s (my publisher taught me this). Why, When, Where, Who, What. Once you get used to chatting rather than selling it’s quite effective. You can use the inspiration behind the book, excerpts, reviews, or ask a question. People respond because everyone else is shouting “Buy My Book!” I really should write a post about it one of these days.
I should add, it’s a lot more work. And free!
Always a good thing 😀
Lol – you totally should 🙂
I’d love to read that post Sue.
Three things that jump out of this post.
1 – finding a Facebook page that connected with a lot of people. It must be harder for authors whose work won’t identify with a clearly defined reader demographic.
2 – posting to Facebook 6-8 times a day! Every day, every week!
3 – $1200 per month makes sense when you hit a ROI, but how do you build up to that. (I suppose this is where the other guy’s technique comes in handy.
I do like the way the technique has been laid out step by step and seeing the results after all that effort. ($1200 / month… WTF!)
As one commenter said, the techniques may work on other social media platforms, but even there, I still can’t get past that 6-8 times a day content posting. I’ve tried to do that with Twitter and WordPress (regular content, not necessarily 6-8 times a day), but I just dry up.
Remember that she only posts other people’s material. The key here is interaction; not production of original material. In other words, be real 🙂
I have an assistant that does my Downton Abbey posts for me, but I only share on my author page twice a day and it only takes a few minutes. I also interact with my commenters. I spend 15-30 minutes a day on FB. This won’t drain the life out of you!
An excellent post and I made sure to bookmark it for future ref! What an amazing entrepreneur Barbara is – what an inspiration, thank you for sharing this 🙂
So glad you found it useful! 🙂
Fantastic post, some great things I’d never even thought of
I’m so glad to hear that! 🙂
I am on Mark Dawson’s course. I’m probably the other end from you though. I have a budget of £2 per day to spend on ads. I’m still at the tweaking stage but I am getting 2-6 mailing list sign ups per day. I need to get it steady at 6 at the least and work from there. I have 500 people on my mailing list but this time last year I had 70. I write funny scifi, of course which makes things slow!
Cheers
MTM
Nice! I should put you in touch with a friend who writes funny fantasy and is making a killing on FB 🙂
Go for it! 😉
That is an intersting post. I just don’t think this is peculiar to FaceBook. This kind of tactics can work on any socials, in my opinion.
Personally, I don’t think there is a social that works better than others on selling books. Everything depends on the author, what they like, what’s effective for them, and also what they don’t like.
If you find the strategy that’s good for you, it will work on any social… in my opinion 😉
An excellent point. Although Facebook has the most sophisticated marketing tools compared to, say, Instagram.
Wow useful stuff!
Hey, don’t sound so surprised :b