Apologies for the delay in posting my activities! March has so far been a month of expanding my knowledge base, which means a slowdown in results as I take new skills onboard and skim off tactics that haven’t proved cost-effective. It’s frustrating, but just as with my writing practice, I do notice that these periods of expanded ability often do take a while to gain some forward momentum as all the new pieces are worked into your existing practice. I’m remaining hopeful and still going for a three-day action plan on more doable projects concurrent to these ongoing, more long-term items. I spent a lot of time creating lookalike audiences from people who like my page, but none of it worked the way I entered the info into FB’s ads manager.
Facebook Ads Update
I am planning to sign up for Mark Dawson’s paid FB ads course, as the FB ads platform is very unfriendly and seems to suck my time like a Dyson. Needless to say, I was determined to get some results without wasting a lot of money, so I kept tinkering and using whichever interests and demo targeting I could. I managed to get my relevance up to a 3, but that was a poorly performing ad over all. Not so sure the relevancy score works with lower-performing ads, so all signs point to more knowledge before tackling this big hurdle. In the meanwhile, movie lookalike audience pages (“Movies liked by Women who like Daniella Brodsky, Novelist) were probably too small to net a result, and didn’t garner any clicks. Again, there is no magic bullet. Final result to date: slow, incremental exposure leads to a trickle of extra sales, which does improve ranking, and therefore visibility, but need to find the right recipe, which is going to take time, and I believe, a free book giveaway for my ads. I realize it can be a book that is otherwise charged for (if you don’t find it via my ads or subscriber page), so that you aren’t actually “losing” money on a permafree, but using it as an incentive for targeted subscribers, who will go onto read your other books, while selling it to everyone else on your regular platforms. This is not new info, but the sort of info that translates differently once you try these things out for yourself. Hopefully I’ve wasted time enough so you won’t have to (at least not in the same way!). Don’t be as hesitant as myself to start with the giveaway for your ads/subscriber list; everyone’s doing it because it works. Results on this soon!
Bookbub
I wanted to score another bookbub. I’ve heard that in preparation for promo applications successful authors update their descriptions, tweak things to get a leg up, so I’m giving it a shot. Can’t hurt to improve my description anyway (and counts as an actionable!). The only books of mine eligible for a bookbub right now are DIARY OF A WORKING GIRL and PRINCESS OF PARK AVENUE (priced correctly, hasn’t been available for a cheaper price than I’m planning to advertise during the last 90 days, hasn’t recently been run on bookbub). Now, I want to make some changes to DIARY as it’s currently published (more on this to come), and so I’m going with PRINCESS. I have a feeling the chick lit category is difficult to break into in bookbub as it’s new and smaller, but we’ll have a go. If it’s rejected, it won’t be the first time. I do feel my first bookbub acceptance was partially a successful application because it was free, so I’m not sure how this will go as a 0.99cent promo, and I’d like to give myself the best shot. I feel that this is the best way to make money from a bookbub now. While free runs will raise your visibility, they are an expensive way to do so, and therefore, I’m not comfortable doing this frequently. So, to get my paid promo accepted, ideally I’d change the font on the cover, but that isn’t happening presently…So, here’s what I did to change Princess of Park Avenue description:
Spruce Up Your Book Description
I moved my NYPOST quote to the top and added some bold intros with simple HTML tags. If I can do it, you can do it; here’s amazon’s help page: amazon. You simply place the opening and closing tags around your text and voila! You’ve got bold, or italic, or whatever you HTML’d.
What I wanted to do with the rewrite is to show this book is satire, so I went a bit more cheeky and sarcastic in the description. Also, I needed to change out reiew quotes because though those featured are glowing, the sources are obscure.
ORIGINAL:
How far would you go to forget Mr. Wrong?
Anyone can see Lorraine Machuchi is no ordinary Brooklyn girl. Anyone except for Lorraine, that is. She’s been too busy obsessing over Tommy Lupo to notice. Living day to day on his confusing midnight phone calls and big-haired memories of their relationship in the early nineties, she’s given up any opportunity of leaving Brooklyn. And though she never saw the home she loves as a failure, there are lots of folks she’s pissed off by staying put—her mother, her dead grandmother’s ghost, not to mention the old Italian ladies who shake their heads at her in the pork store. And what’s worse, the very guy she tossed everything away for just told her he’ll never wind up with her—a girl who’s not going anywhere.
…Okay, so you might disapprove of her motive—changing for a guy. But then you probably haven’t seen Tommy with three shirt buttons undone. Besides, when Lorraine crosses the bridge to Manhattan she begins to realize she’s got a lot to offer. She starts coloring hair at a swank salon where they actually appreciate a little talent, even if you have to bend some rules to use it. She gets a fabulous Park Avenue sublet, even if it does involve chasing around a dog/horse named Pooh-Pooh. She meets a guy who’s actually…perfect, even if she might be too hung up on Mr. Wrong to notice. She’s asked to become the newest member of the Princesses, an elite group of Park Avenue’s most powerful socialites, even if the reasoning behind it might be a little fishy. Sure, their $400 cashmere sweaters, charity balls for poor girls with small boobs, and ‘sexy’ yoga are a bit over-the-top, but a Brooklyn girl can learn a lot by discovering her own inner princess…
“Princess of Park Avenue is a delicious self-indulgent treat right up there with a leisurely soak in an aromatherapy infused bubble bath with scented candles…It would be cliché to say that Princess is a ‘good read’ but truth be told, it’s not only good, it’s fabulously fantastic.”
— Karen Marie Shelton, HairBoutique.com
“Daniella Brodsky…charms us with her second novel…Princess of Park Avenue is an entertaining and amusing book that will remind any of us who have found ourselves lost in a relationship with a man that the real ‘us’ still exists and we only have to look in order to find her.”
— Amie Taylor, Bookreporter.com
“OMG!!! I LOVED IT!!! I think I read it in 3 nights, and drove with it in my purse, reading it at red lights. I have not had a book like that in some time.”
—rosie-brown-eyes.blogspot.com
Some Quick Marketing Actionables
I tinkered more with five-year age spreads for my FB adsets, which didn’t seem to make much difference. And true to what I always hear, my own mailing list inspired the best sales results. An email campaign entitled, “Book Launching at $0.99 For a Limited Time,” netted 8 sales and a spike in KU pages read (check out mailchimp’s subject line researcher, which helped me choose this language). Now, more than ever,it’s clear I need to get my landing page and giveaway sorted ASAP, so I can grow this group and therefore the power of the responses.
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