I set up an Amazon ad for a book of mine recently as an experiment. I’d listened to a webinar on the subject, hosted by Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn, and Mark Dawson of the Self-Publishing Formula.

As it’s relatively cheap—you only pay for the ads that get clicked on—I thought I’d give it a go. My Book Katie and the Deelans has not sold well on Amazon. There are millions of books out there, and the competition is fierce. I wanted to give the book a chance to stand out a little more.

I opted for the ads that appear when you type in certain search terms, such as ‘harry potter’ and JK Rowling, as my book is similar. I paid for fifteen keywords in total, $0.50 per keyword.

I let the advert run for ten days. In that time, it made 134,212 impressions (i.e. the number of times it was seen), resulted in 49 clicks, and cost me $12.97. No sales, though!

I did learn from my experience. Not that many people clicked on the ad in the first place, suggesting it wasn’t that appealing. Was the wording wrong, or as I suspect, the cover not attractive enough?

Those who did click didn’t buy. I did re-write the blurb half way through the campaign, but that didn’t make any difference. I also got rid of the book’s prologue, as it didn’t relate entirely to the whole book so anyone sampling the contents might not have got the right feel for the book.

What about social proof? The book has five-star reviews, but not enough reviews in general. Reviews are what most buyers want these days, especially if you’re an unknown quantity.

I’ve known for a long time the book needs sorting. It needs rewriting, and it needs copy editing. It could do with a new cover and a different blurb. The Amazon campaign reinforced all these points.

Would I use Amazon ads again? Absolutely. I certainly plan to use it for the next book. I did find out what were the most useful keywords from my list of fifteen (JK Rowling, harry potter and Rick Riordan). The campaign didn’t cost me a lot of money, and it was worth finding out about.

*Pic thanks to the Blue Diamond Gallery