I'm leaving my strategies here in case any other author wants to use them or has any other pointers to employ that I missed.
First off, I started with this article outlining Goodreads advertising strategies. Basically it boils down to running several ads at the same time, each one targeting a particular demographic rather than just a general genre blanket ad such as "fantasy."
So I identified several aspects of my book that I think it stands out in: 1. Gunpowder Fantasy, 2. Strong female protagonist, 3. Self-published, 4 Epic fantasy WITHOUT elves/ dwarves.
With those in place, I identified authors that fit said categories using our own bestfantasybooks lists of subgenres (THANK YOU for providing that) as well as lists of "best" off of Goodreads, eg. Django Wexler as a fellow Gunpowder Fantasy author, Sarah J Maas as writing strong female protags, Will Wight as someone who's successful as a digital self-publisher (the idea being his audience might be more open to a new self-publisher), etc.
Note: I made sure there were at least 30 authors for each of these five categories (yeah, I know I only listed four, but the fifth is a catchall combining all these into one).
Now to the ads themselves, I focus grouped a whole bunch of taglines on this forum (again, thank you), and selected the top five; even though two of them had very little to do with my book (give people what they want, I say). These top five I matched to each of my categories (eg. "Marta Childress: Spy, Traitor, Soldier, Savior" aimed at my "strong female protagonist" group of authors). The tagline that had very little to do with my book, I used for the catchall.
The pretty great thing about the Goodreads ad campaign is that it can be done on the cheap. As in I only put $10 USD into it initially and it's been running for about six weeks with loads left over. You can also set your maxes for what you'll be willing to pay per click, as well as daily limits.
Now I will note that my clickthrough rate is pretty abysmal at around .2%. However, my goal is not so much getting people to click on it (because, come on, who actually clicks on ads on Goodreads?), more to make sure people in these demos are seeing my book cover on the regular.
As such, I'm much more interested in my total views, which has been 44,000 in 48 days as of the writing of this. That's a little over 900 views per day, though I should note those totals are spread throughout all five of my ads. Some days ad #1 does most of the legwork, and other days it's ad #5; but for the most part my views have stayed steady at an average of around 900 per day. And, interestingly enough (or not), that seems independent on what my bid for clicks is: I've experimented with prices ranging from $.35 to $.75 per click and the needle has moved not one bit. So I'm sticking with an average of $.45 just for the hell of it.
So there you go. Please let me know if this is useful or if you know of a better strategy.
First off, I started with this article outlining Goodreads advertising strategies. Basically it boils down to running several ads at the same time, each one targeting a particular demographic rather than just a general genre blanket ad such as "fantasy."
So I identified several aspects of my book that I think it stands out in: 1. Gunpowder Fantasy, 2. Strong female protagonist, 3. Self-published, 4 Epic fantasy WITHOUT elves/ dwarves.
With those in place, I identified authors that fit said categories using our own bestfantasybooks lists of subgenres (THANK YOU for providing that) as well as lists of "best" off of Goodreads, eg. Django Wexler as a fellow Gunpowder Fantasy author, Sarah J Maas as writing strong female protags, Will Wight as someone who's successful as a digital self-publisher (the idea being his audience might be more open to a new self-publisher), etc.
Note: I made sure there were at least 30 authors for each of these five categories (yeah, I know I only listed four, but the fifth is a catchall combining all these into one).
Now to the ads themselves, I focus grouped a whole bunch of taglines on this forum (again, thank you), and selected the top five; even though two of them had very little to do with my book (give people what they want, I say). These top five I matched to each of my categories (eg. "Marta Childress: Spy, Traitor, Soldier, Savior" aimed at my "strong female protagonist" group of authors). The tagline that had very little to do with my book, I used for the catchall.
The pretty great thing about the Goodreads ad campaign is that it can be done on the cheap. As in I only put $10 USD into it initially and it's been running for about six weeks with loads left over. You can also set your maxes for what you'll be willing to pay per click, as well as daily limits.
Now I will note that my clickthrough rate is pretty abysmal at around .2%. However, my goal is not so much getting people to click on it (because, come on, who actually clicks on ads on Goodreads?), more to make sure people in these demos are seeing my book cover on the regular.
As such, I'm much more interested in my total views, which has been 44,000 in 48 days as of the writing of this. That's a little over 900 views per day, though I should note those totals are spread throughout all five of my ads. Some days ad #1 does most of the legwork, and other days it's ad #5; but for the most part my views have stayed steady at an average of around 900 per day. And, interestingly enough (or not), that seems independent on what my bid for clicks is: I've experimented with prices ranging from $.35 to $.75 per click and the needle has moved not one bit. So I'm sticking with an average of $.45 just for the hell of it.
So there you go. Please let me know if this is useful or if you know of a better strategy.
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