How to Craft the Ultimate Book Marketing Plan

How to craft the ultimate
book marketing plan

Clear branding
Simple CTA
Lead magnet
Links to all the
retailers
Mailchimp/Mailerlite
Segmented lists
Automated sequences
Link to it from your
website & books
Right categories
Right keywords
Strong blurb
Author page
Reviews
Define your
audience and
channels*
Pre-launch strategy
Post-launch strategy
*ARCs (Bookfunnel), crowdfunding, Facebook ads, promotions, giveaways, PR, blog tours, social, content/SEO

APRIL 2018 @REEDSYHQ
Why a marketing plan?
“I spent far too long being completely unfocused, and it was only
when I wrote a marketing plan with very specific aims and objectives
that things started to happen. Suddenly people noticed my book —
the tactics were working. And then it got to number 1 in the Kindle
chart and stayed there for four weeks.”
— Rachel Abbott, former #1 author on Amazon.co.uk

What should you include in your launch plan?
● Amazon Page Metadata: categories, keywords, blurb, cover.
● Securing reviews: street team, blogger outreach.
● Admin: updating backlist, website, mailing list automations.
● Price promotion: when, where, why.
● Advertising: Facebook, AMS, Bookbub.

Amazon Page Metadata

Amazon Page Metadata
● Categories: 2 categories for any ebook. 1 for print.
● Keywords: 7 keywords.
● Blurb: what readers read before they purchase.
● Cover: the thing readers judge a book by, even though they shouldn’t.
● Amazon look-inside: the second thing readers read before they
purchase.

How to pick the right Amazon categories
1. Stop thinking about the book as your labor of love.
2. Start thinking about the book as a retail product.
3. Start thinking from a reader perspective.
4. Start using data rather than hunches to make decisions.

How to find a full list of Amazon Categories
Go to amazon.com/kindle-ebooks and scroll down

How to analyse Amazon Categories
What to look for when “judging” an Amazon category:
Question
Is the category big enough?
Do I stand a chance to reach
#1?
Do I stand a chance to be in
the first 6?
What is the predominance
of the top 3?
Metric
How are the top 10 books
selling?
How many copies does book
#1 sell?
selling?
selling compared to 4-6?
Method
ABSR of top 10
Ranking of book #1
ABSR of top 6
ABSR top 3 / ABSR top 6

How to find the ABSR of a book

Case study: Ruthless
If I believe I can sell max 100 copies a day at launch, I could go for:
● YA > Historical > Medieval
● YA > Historical > Europe
● YA > Romance > Historical
● History > Europe > Italy
● History > Europe > medieval

A tool to make your research easier: KDP Rocket

Keyword research? It’s the same thing
Amazon Searches: KDP Rocket
estimate based on Google data and
Amazon auto-complete.
Average Earning: Average of
sales*price for top books ranking for
the keyword.
Competitors: Number of books in
the search results for the keyword.
Competition Grade: estimate based
on ABSR of top books ranking for
the keyword.
Earning/Competition: what you
should filter your results by.

How to find keyword ideas?

Secret tip: how to get listed in a 3rd category
How is this possible?
1
2
3

Secret tip: categories with keyword requirements
Click on the image to go to that KDP page

The blurb: where writing meets copywriting
● Step 1: Introduce your main
character(s)
● Step 2: Set the stage for your
primary conflict
● Step 3: Establish the stakes
● Step 4: Show the reader why
this book is for them
Read and analyze the blurbs of all the bestselling books in your genre!

The blurb: getting that first line right

The blurb: using html formatting
<b>This text is bold</b>
<i>This text is italic</i>

Amazon Look-inside: the last step

Securing reviews for your launch

How to build your street team
“As a self-published author, your street team is a group of people who can
provide feedback and get the ball rolling with word-of-mouth. At a very basic
level, this usually means writing reviews of your book.”

Where to find your first gangers
● Friends and family (who read books in your genre)
● Facebook communities of readers in your genre
● Writer feedback forums: Absolute Write, Scribophile.
● Amazon & Goodreads reviewers in your genre.
● Other indie (or trad pubbed) authors in your genre.

Where to find your first gangers

Engaging with your street team
● The street team goes in a separate, dedicated mailing list.
● Your street team gets exclusives (cover reveals) and bonus content
(e.g. deleted scenes).
● Your street team receives free Advance Review Copies at least a
month before launch.
○ Invite them to let you know about any remaining typos;
○ Set a special price at launch so they can buy your book;
○ Send them an email at launch so they buy and post a review.

Using Bookfunnel to deliver your ARCs
Upload EPUB, MOBI & PDF files
to Bookfunnel.
Bookfunnel generates a
“download page” for your book.
Send your readers to the
download page.
Readers indicate their device
and receive the right file and
instructions for uploading it.

How to grow your street team over time

Finding book review blogs
https://blog.reedsy.com/book-review-blogs

Admin: updating backlist, website & automations.
Back matter Website Automation

Tips to simplify your admin life
● Use Draft2Digital’s “automated back-matter tool”.
● Have your website on a CMS and learn how to use it (don’t rely on
your website designer).
● Keep your mailing list automations in folders and use templates which
you can update across all your automations.
● If you publish several books a year and earn a good living from writing,
consider hiring a virtual assistant (VA).

Double case-study: Ruthless & Love Me Not
● Standalone
● Kindle Unlimited
● Historical Fiction
● No mailing list
● Trilogy
● Kindle Unlimited
● Romance / Magical
Realism
● No mailing list
We’re going to assume that:
● both books/series have an optimal Amazon presence (metadata)
● both authors have gathered a street team of 30+ readers.

Step 1: Set up a mailing list

Step 1: Set up a mailing list
● Have the newsletter sign up form front
and center on your website;
● Add a link to your website or sign up
form on all your social media bios, and on
your Amazon Author Central page.
● Add links to your sign up form in the first
page of the back matter of all your
ebooks;
● Add the same link in your front matter as
well, to capture “Look inside” browsers.

Step 2: Create a “reader magnet” (optional)
“Reader Magnets are something of value that you give to your readers
in exchange for an email address.” — Nick Stephenson
● A free ebook (novel, novella, short story)
● Bonus fictional content (deleted scenes)
● Illustrations or designs
● Paperback(s) giveaway

Step 3: Build a “welcome automation”
Example of welcome automation for Ruthless:
When? Email Objective
Immediately “Get your freebie” (Bookfunnel) Deliver the freebie
2 days after “Fun facts I discovered doing research for this book” Engage the readers
3 days after “Did you know I’ve also written these other books?” Get them to buy
3 days after Reader poll: “Am I a new-to-you author, or are we old
friends?”
Segment your list

Step 4: Schedule a price promotion
“In a nutshell, running a price promotion is dropping your book to a
discount price and spreading it around the web at that price. ” — Chloe
Kizer, Written Word Media
● You want traffic on Amazon at launch
● Price promotions are the best way to get traffic
● Your street team will be able to purchase at a discount
● You want to revive sales across your series
● All the more important if you’re in KU

Step 4: Schedule a price promotion
Example of scheduled price promo for Love Me Not:
$0.99 for 5 days $1.99 for 7 days Pre-order at $8.99

Step 5: Promote your price promotion
https://blog.reedsy.com/book-promotion-services

Step 5: Promote your price promotion
Bookbub ads
Facebook ads
AMS ads
Bargainbooksy
E-Reader News Today
Bookbub ads
Facebook carousel ads
AMS ads
Kindle Nation Daily
Robin Reads
Book Barbarian
The Fussy Librarian

Step 6: Start playing with Facebook ads

Facebook ads: target big trad authors

Facebook ads: some ground rules
● Ad image: use as little text as possible. Ad images not featuring your
cover can sometimes work better (not for carousel ads).
● Keep your headline short and powerful. Use the “text” field to put the
blurb about your book.
● Plot-focused blurbs tend to work better for male audiences. Character
ones work better for female audiences.
● Put all your big name comps in one audience, and use it to run A/B tests
on your ad image and copy until you find the perfect combination.

Step 7: Test AMS Sponsored Product ads

AMS Sponsored Product ads: some ground rules
● Creatives: the only think you can play with is the ad copy. Set up a few
ads with different copy so you can quickly determine a winner.
● Keyword targeting: it’s very hard to spend money on AMS. So plug in
200+ keywords to start with and review on a weekly basis.
● Reporting: Amazon attributes sales after 7 days. So wait 2 weeks before
killing a campaign/keyword.
● AMS reporting doesn’t include audio sales, KU reads or sales resulting
from a ranking boost.

AMS Sponsored Product ads: Finding keywords
Also-boughts +
also-authors +
Yasiv
KDP Rocket
Spreadsheet
AMS “manual keyword
targeting”

AMS Reporting and ACoS calculation
How to calculate your ROI:
● If your book is > $2.99, an
ACoS < 70% means you’re
making money;
● If your book is < $2.99, an
ACoS > 35% means you’re
probably money.
BUT, there are other factors to
consider:
● Read-through;
● Impressions (branding);
● Kindle Unlimited.

Step 8: Test Bookbub CPM ads
These are not the typical Bookbub
Featured Deals that are almost
impossible to get nowadays.
These are self-serve ads which you
can target at any competing authors
and Bookbub categories.
They tend to be more flexible than
Facebook and AMS ads and easier to
get results with.

Testing Bookbub CPM ads: some ground rules
● Creatives: Don’t use Bookbub’s tool. Ask your designer or try your hand
creating something on Canva. Display your cover, the deal, and a clear
CTA.
● Targeting: Stick with Amazon US for testing purposes. Add in authors and
categories until you reach a “Defined” audience.
● Bid: Testing is all about serving fast and getting quick results. Put in a bid
that easily exceeds the higher end of the range BookBub is suggesting.
● Budget: put an end date in of tomorrow (to force yourself to check in and
adapt). As for the budget, $10 or $15 will suffice to run a good test.

Side note: have you thought about read-through?
First book: $0.99
Second book: $2.99
Amazon AMS ad yields you an ACoS of 50%.
Are you making money or losing money?
…

For all your ads: Don’t forget read-through!!!
First book: $0.99
Second book: $2.99
Amazon AMS ad yields you an ACoS of 50%.
If we suppose that even just 10% of the readers who buy book 1 will
buy book 2, you’re actually making money.
…
cost/sale = $0.50
earnings/sale = $0.35 + 10%*70%*$2.99 = $0.64

How to calculate read-through
The read through (RT) of book 2 in a series is the ratio between the readers
who read book 1 and the readers who read book 1 and 2.
RT of book 2 = sales book 2 / sales book 1
etc.
● RT is generally expressed as a percentage
● When estimating RT, make sure you use a significant data set
● A good read-through for a series is anything over 65%

How to calculate your reader’s LTV
LTV = Life Time Value (of a customer) = the total profit a reader makes you
as they make their way through your series.
LTV = E1 + E2*RT2 + E3*RT3 + … + En*RTn
Where:
● En are your earnings on each sale of book #n in your series (i.e. price of
book #n multiplied royalty rate)
● RTn is the read-through between book #1 and book #n

Factoring in Kindle Unlimited sales
If you’re in Kindle Unlimited, your ads might trigger “reads” rather
than sales. So the previous formula doesn’t work: You need to
account for KU reads in your ROI calculations.
LTV = LTVsales + LTVreads
The question is: how likely is it that your ads are going to trigger a
read vs a sale? You can actually determine that…

The idea is to analyse your ratio between KU reads and sales. For
this, you need to estimate the number of total “KU full reads” you’re
getting on each book.
KU full reads = Total Pages Read / KNPC Value
You then use this value to calculate a ratio between sales and full
reads.
KU/sales ratio = KU full reads / Sales

To keep this simple, I recommend you calculate your KU/sales ratio
for all books in your series, and then take the average. You finally
have all the tools to calculate the real LTV of a reader:
LTVsales+KU = LTVsales + LTVsales * KU/Sales ratio
This is the value you should use to determine whether a give an is
making or costing you money.
LTVsales+KU = LTVsales + LTVKU

Step 9: Putting it all together to plan the launch
Bookbub ads
Facebook ads
AMS ads
Bargainbooksy
E-Reader News Today
Bookbub ads
AMS ads
Kindle Nation Daily
Robin Reads
Book Barbarian
The Fussy Librarian

I know I need ~100 sales a day at launch to reach and stick to #1 in
my category. So I plan my launch accordingly.
Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7
Street team:
30
Mailing list: 50 Robin Reads:
30
Newsletter
swap: 50
Facebook: 60 Newsletter
swap: 20
Facebook: 60
Kindle Nation
Daily: 50
Book Gorilla:
20
Facebook: 25 The Fussy
Librarian: 25
AMS: 20 Facebook: 50 AMS: 20
Facebook: 15 Facebook: 15 AMS: 15 Facebook: 15 Bookbub: 20 AMS: 20 Bookbub: 20
AMS: 5 AMS: 15 Bookbub: 15 AMS: 10 Bookbub: 10
Cost: $200 Cost: $200 Cost: $250 Cost: $150 Cost: $400 Cost: $200 Cost: $300

● I will spend $1,700 on promoting my launch of book 2;
● I expect to make $1000 back through sales of book 2;
● Assuming my KU/Sales ratio is 1, I can expect to get 700 KU full
reads, which I estimate will make me $700;
● I can reasonably expect to sell an additional 500 copies as a result of
my rank boost, which will earn me $700;
● Assuming a read-through of 30% between books 2 and 3, I can
expect to earn $2,300 at launch of book 3.
After launch of book 3, this promotion will have earned me $3,000.

Further resources on book marketing
Amazon Decoded, by
David Gaughran
Help! My Facebook
Ads Suck! by
Michael Cooper
Mark Dawson’s Ads
for Authors course

Reedsy Learning: 35 free courses waiting for you
35 free courses. 30,000 students enrolled. 5 minutes a day.
https://blog.reedsy.com/learningAPRIL 2018 @REEDSYHQ

Reedsy Learning: 35 free courses waiting for you

How to Craft the Ultimate Book Marketing Plan

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