Amazon Advertising For Books With Geoff Affleck

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Creative Penn Podcast for Writers

Episode: Amazon Advertising For Books With Geoff Affleck
Host: Joanna Penn
Guest: Geoff Affleck
Date: September 29, 2025
Theme: Practical strategies for Amazon advertising, optimizing book pages, and what every author should know before spending money on ads

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Joanna Penn interviews Geoff Affleck—best-selling nonfiction author, self-publishing consultant, and Amazon ads expert—on how authors can effectively leverage Amazon Advertising. The discussion dives deeply into the foundational work authors must do before ever running ads, the evolving nature of organic reach, the role of A+ (A plus) content, and practical tips for both new and seasoned indie authors. The conversation is candid, realistic, and filled with actionable suggestions for anyone seeking to market their books on Amazon.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Guest Introduction and Journey into Publishing

• [20:29] Geoff's Background
  • Originally from corporate marketing, got involved in book publishing over 15 years ago through working with bestselling personal development authors (notably from "The Secret").
  • Realized his passion was more about production and marketing than writing itself.
  • Has focused on self-publishing, book launches, and Amazon marketing for the past 8 years.

2. What Authors Need BEFORE Advertising

• [23:00] The Prerequisites for Advertising

  • Many authors jump into ads hoping for a "magic bullet" without having essentials in place.

  • Geoff outlines seven core elements for an Amazon book page that must be optimized:

    1. Book Cover: Has to stand out as a thumbnail and be genre-appropriate.
    2. Keywords: Critical for Amazon’s algorithm; must be chosen thoughtfully for discoverability.
    3. Title & Subtitle: Subtitles especially helpful for genre/trope cues and algorithm triggers.
    4. Reviews: Number and quality of reviews/star ratings impact conversion rates.
    5. Blurb: Should be around 200 words, with a strong hook, bold headline, short paragraphs, and call to action.
    6. A+ Content (from the publisher section): Visually engaging graphics can increase conversion and provide SEO benefits.
    7. Price & Categories: Pricing impacts perceptions and categories must be relevant.

  • Quote:
    "With Amazon ads you have to think about the conversions...if you're going to generate clicks to your book page, you have to be confident that a reasonable percentage of those clicks will turn into orders."
    — Geoff Affleck [23:20]

3. Deep Dive: A+ Content (A Plus)

• [28:35] Is A+ Content Worth the Effort?

  • Visually engaging banners under "From the Publisher" can boost conversion when designed well.

  • Helpful for series and children’s authors; can be used to establish trust and authority.

  • Pro tip: Professionally designed graphics are essential—bad design can hurt sales.

  • Free to add via KDP but requires effort and attention to design.

  • Quote:
    “If you’re not doing it, you’re sort of leaving something on the table that with not much effort you could do.”
    — Geoff Affleck [31:11]

4. The Current Reality of Organic Reach on Amazon

• [33:10] Can You Sell Books Without Advertising?
  • For most new authors, organic reach is extremely limited due to marketplace saturation.
  • Exceptions exist for those with a large platform, but most need to run ads for discoverability.
  • Amazon Ads are seen as putting your book “in the soup aisle, where people are shopping,” as opposed to impulse purchases that might occur via Facebook ads.

5. What Types of Books Amazon Ads Work Best For

• [36:26] Maximizing Your ROI

  • Series or multiple standalones work best due to read-through potential.

  • Standalones can succeed if they convert well, but uncommon, low-volume niches are harder.

  • KU (Kindle Unlimited) books get a boost; ads can drive page reads as well as sales.

  • For cross-genre books or less straightforward categories, advertising is more challenging.

  • Quote:
    “Series can work very, very well with Amazon ads...because if [readers] enjoy your books, they're going to want to read more.”
    — Geoff Affleck [36:29]

6. When Should You Start Advertising?

• [39:23] Launches, Reviews, and Timing

  • Ads can support launches—even with few reviews—especially since Amazon tags new releases with a "Just Released" banner.

  • For ongoing success, monitor performance and continue optimizing product pages.

  • Small advertising budgets can help gain momentum, but caution is necessary to avoid overspending.

  • Quote:
    "If you want the book to have a chance, you've got to invest in marketing somehow."
    — Geoff Affleck [40:54]

7. Maintaining and Updating Your Backlist

• [42:13] For Experienced Authors
  • With large backlists, keeping product pages updated is vital.
  • Review and refresh blurbs, categories, and especially keywords regularly.
  • Use tools like Publisher Rocket, and get outside feedback to avoid becoming “too close” to your own work.

8. Manual vs. Auto Amazon Ads

• [47:31] How to Structure Your Campaigns

  • Auto ads: Amazon chooses where your book is displayed—less control, potentially fewer impressions.

  • Manual ads: More effective; authors select keywords (author names, titles, tropes, etc.) and products (categories/ASINs) specifically related to their book.

  • Start with manual ads for better traction; adjust over time as data comes in.

  • Quote:
    "When you're starting out, manual's the way to go. Because you will get more traction with manual ads."
    — Geoff Affleck [51:11]

9. Managing Your Own Ads: Time and Approach

• [51:13] How Often Should You Check Ads?
  • Weekly, not daily—save yourself the stress!
  • Set budget limits to avoid surprises.
  • Regularly evaluate which keywords are driving clicks and sales; adjust or pause unproductive ones.

10. When and Why to Use a Professional Service

• [54:06] What Geoff’s Team Offers
  • Full management of ad campaigns, including research, setup, ongoing analysis, and hands-on optimization.
  • First evaluate the author’s product page with written recommendations before launching ads.
  • Accessible to both self-published and traditionally published authors (the latter via Author Central).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On publishing basics:
  “So much stuff does go into it and a lot of it is basics like it's basic marketing, like 101. But yeah, it's still hard.”
  — Joanna Penn [46:34]

• On cross-genre challenges:
  “Many of the sort of standard approaches don't work on Amazon when you write cross genre because it is really hard...it doesn't fit the boxes so well.”
  — Joanna Penn [46:36]

• On professional design for A+ content:
  “If readers see sort of amateurish graphic design, they subconsciously think, well, geez, well, what's the writing like?”
  — Geoff Affleck [32:15]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• [20:29] Guest introduction and background
• [23:00] Seven essential book page elements before advertising
• [28:35] Deep dive into A+ Content
• [33:10] Does organic reach still exist on Amazon?
• [36:26] What genres and book types perform best with ads
• [39:23] Timing: advertising at launch and with low reviews
• [42:13] Managing and updating big backlists
• [47:31] Manual vs. Auto Amazon ads
• [51:13] How often to monitor your ads
• [54:06] What Geoff’s managed ad service does and how to find him

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Final Takeaways

• Advertising is not a substitute for a weak product page. Optimize your Amazon page before spending money on ads.
• A+ Content is an untapped advantage for most indies. Worth learning, but invest in professional design.
• For most authors, especially new ones, organic reach is limited. Ads are often a necessity.
• Start small and scale—track, adjust, and get outside input.
• Manual targeting provides more value and learning opportunities than auto ads.
• Professional help can save you time and boost your ROI, but even the best ads can't compensate for poor fundamentals.

Learn more and connect with Geoff Affleck at: jeffaffleck.com

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For Authors Looking to Advertise...

This episode is a valuable resource for demystifying Amazon ads and understanding the foundational work required to actually make them pay off. If you’re considering a marketing push, take the time to apply Geoff and Joanna’s advice to your book pages first—the potential ROI boost is worth it!

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[This summary skips the episode’s intro, outro, sponsor ads, and personal updates, focusing only on the actionable content from Joanna Penn and Geoff Affleck.]

Transcript

[A]

Welcome to the Creative Pen Podcast. I'm Joanna Penn, thriller author and creative entrepreneur, bringing you interviews, inspiration and information on writing, craft and creative business. You can find the episode show notes, your free author blueprint and lots [e-mail] and that's Pen with a double N. And here's the show. Hello creatives, I'm Johanna Penn and this is episode number 830 of the podcast and it is Sunday 28th September 2025 as I record this still with the end of a head cold, which is why I'm a little breathless today. But hey, it proves it's human me and not my voice clone. You can't get much more human than a streaming head cold. So in today's show I'm talking to Geoff Affleck about what you need to have in place before you even consider advertising advertising. Whether organic reach even exists anymore. Is A plus content worth it? And some tips for Amazon Advertising. So that's coming up in the Interview section in Writing and publishing and book marketing things. Well, if you use TikTok in the US or you're outside the US and your main market is the US there's been a development in the sale of TikTok US as reported by the BBC and various other places. It's been over a year since the supposed ban and shutdown of TikTok that never happened, but now President Trump likes it anyway and won't be shutting it down. It won't be disappearing. But it has been reported that a deal is being done, and once it's done, TikTok's algorithm, the technology that determines what users see in their feed, will be copied and retrained using US user data and stored in the US as part of a deal to secure the app's future in the country. A White House official said that TikTok's recommendation system will be audited by Oracle and operated by a new joint venture involving U.S. investors. To meet requirements for the sale. The BBC quotes a social media analyst saying material or even perceived changes to the content, algorithm or app policies could prompt massive shifts in user behaviour. While the details of the deal still aren't clear, if a US only algorithm cuts US TikTok users off from content in the rest of the world, that could degrade the user experience. This is an understatement, in my opinion, and I wanted to bring it up as so many authors and so much of the publishing industry right now is dependent on TikTok and BookTok as a marketing avenue. So I worked in IT and coding and systems back in the day. I did 13 years as an IT consultant and from my experience in software implementation I have good news which is it will probably take ages and a lot longer than people expect, so I wouldn't expect this to change next week, but certainly in the next year something will change. The bad news I think is that if they rewrite the algorithm or tweak or do whatever, they could break what makes it so effective somehow, which I think is a bit of a secret anyway, as in people don't really know. It's very fast changing. Also, apparently President Trump has said that all kinds of content will be allowed, but who knows if there is a different app for TikTok US? I imagine it will be quite different and might be more tradwife than spicy which might impact the dominance of Romantasy depending on how it goes with the various political changes in the usa. So who knows what will happen. But I wanted to bring it up because this is something that I know has been hanging over those of you who successfully use TikTok. Change is the only certainty. Now of course it could be a potential new start if they do create a new app. I suppose you could have a separate app for us and a different one for the rest of the world. But yes, if you depend on TikTok, then make sure you're also posting onto another platform like Instagram or YouTube shorts. And primarily try to send people to your email list because of course then you can contact them whatever happens. Now if you sell direct you get customer data anyway, but if you don't, if you direct people to Amazon or other stores, try to get people onto your email list so you can sell to them later if things change. But as I said, good news is that it will probably take a lot longer than they expect to get this sorted. In other publishing things written Word Media has an article on special editions, what they are and how to use them strategically. Now you know I'm a fan of hardback special editions for my Kickstarters and the print order has now gone into Book Vault for the Buried and the Drowned. I'll be going up to the factory to sign those in a few weeks time. But this article goes beyond just things like that. The article says a special edition is a version of your book that offers something extra or exclusive compared to your standard edition. It might be a new format, exclusive content, author notes or behind the scenes commentary, custom cover design or illustration, sprayed edges, spreadges as they're known, foil and other special physical book elements or digital perks like extra downloads. Special editions often appeal to your most loyal fans, those readers who want to own everything you've written and cherish your work as a collectible. But they also have marketing potential. Some ideas of when you could use them to reignite interest in a backlist title. A special edition is a great excuse to talk about it again. Offer something to superfans with special editions rewarding loyalty for a special experience. Create a premium product. Higher priced editions can can provide more margin per sale. Readers are willing to pay more for a version that is unique or collectible. They give scarcity when something is available for a limited time. Exclusivity Being one of the few who owns a signed hardcover or annotated ebook builds a sense of belonging and emotional connection. A special edition feels like a love letter from the author. Wouldn't go quite that far, but certainly when I feel as deeply as I do about my special Editions, I do have a deep connection for those of you who buy them. In short, special editions work because they feel special and emotional resonance is a powerful marketing tool. So the article has lots more ideas around the different kinds of special editions, what to include and why it matters, pricing and positioning, distribution options and promotional ideas. Is it worth doing Special Editions? Yes, if they align with your goals and your readers. Because it is a labor of love, it requires time, attention to detail and a strong understanding of what your audience values. But when done well, it can deepen your relationship with readers, reinvigorate a title and open up new income streams. I'll add to this if you're traditionally published or you are going into a traditional deal, make sure you retain your special edition rights. Specifically, this is what enabled Brandon Sanderson to do his first Kickstarter which made $6 million for a special leather bound edition of the Way of Kings for the 10th anniversary of that book that was back in 2020 and then that encouraged him to do his $41 million campaign post pandemic. So yes, special Editions are a broad church. It's hard to define what they are, but if you retain them in your contract, you could do something later on which is very creative, will please your fans and make you some money. Also in self publishing things. Dale L. Roberts from Self Publishing with Dale, who many of you will know launches a Kickstarter this week which includes updated books on keywords, marketing and promotion and getting book reviews. Just go to Kickstarter and search Self Pub with Dale links in the show notes. But yes, Dale is a fixture in the self publishing community. He's very helpful and enthusiastic. And yeah, so that's self publishing with Dale on Kickstarter. Also, to inspire you over on my books and travel podcast this week I talk to author and ex archaeologist Sean McLachlan about Egypt beyond the pyramids. Now we do talk a bit about places to visit, but we go much more into how we can look below the surface to find what's hidden, what we might leave behind as a civilization when we're gone and the intangibility of digital. Shaun also writes post APOC as well as historical. So we ended up speculating on whether we are just stuck in the loops of history and empires rising and falling. And we talk about places that might disappear before it's too late and how we need to go visit them. And it is far more than a travel episode. So if you're interested in that kind of thing, have a listen. But I also think it's a really good example of fiction adjacent content. So if you're wondering about pitching for podcasts, not specifically my shows, but anybody's shows, then this kind of discussion makes it fun for the host and also the audience. I think if you have a listen you'll be like, oh, this is quite a different discussion than where we could have started. And to be fair, Shaun pitched talking about Egypt and I asked some questions around the post APOC side. But I think that's what you need to think if you are pitching your self for a podcast. Think beyond just your book. Think about themes and things that the host might be interested in. So you can listen to that on my Books and Travel podcast. Just search Books and travel wherever you're listening to this or go to booksandtravel page for the backlist. So in personal news, it's been a big week, which is possibly why I got sick. But last weekend I did a British powerlifting competition. I did the same one last year. If you, if you're a regular listener. You know I've been into powerlifting for a few years now and having turned 50 I am now in the M2 category. I was the only one in my category and weight class, I was in the 63 kilo category, M2. So I did win because I was the only one. But I did beat last year's total. My squat has actually improved a lot. It is three lifts to competition standard. You have to wear a singlet and all this gear. And there are pictures on my Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor if you want to have a look. I did 60 kilogram squats, so almost body weight 35kg bench press and 95kg deadlift which I was really happy with. So yes, we all need to stay strong. But ladies, it is especially important for us post menopause as we lose muscle mass every year unless we keep building it. So I want to encourage everyone to lift weights that is every everyone should be lifting some heavy objects now and then. Plus it is really fun and you feel good and I know there's lots of lifters out there in the audience and I want to encourage everyone else I also started my new Master's degree this week and for anyone who missed it, I am doing a Master's in Death, Religion and Culture at the University of Winchester. It is a full time online course and I'm doing it alongside my author business. So for the first time in 14 years I'm not a full time author. Similar similar to most of you. So good news, I'm already loving it, which I'm pleased about as I was a little worried about whether I would cope getting back into academic study and a very different form of writing actually. But I'm enjoying it. It's playing a different game and I'm already finding loads of ideas in the reading and I'm very glad. I am already extremely organized when it comes to noting down ideas. So I have my Things app where I have lots of different folders and also scrivener. So I capture everything that pops into my brain and there's a lot popping into my brain. So I really want this to be a refresh and a way for me to explore the themes I already write about and I can tell it's going to give me so much more. This makes me excited about what I will write over this year and also once it's finished, because I often find that my deeper writing comes after a period of input. So the other thing I wanted to mention this is I did a deep clean in my office as part of the prep. Now we moved into this house in 2019 so I I haven't changed things since 2019. The biggest thing I did was get rid of my enormous audio booth that has dominated this room. So the room I'm in, it's like a single bedroom. It would be like a child's bedroom, but there's no bed in it. It's just an office. And I've had probably a third of the room taken up by a huge audio booth made from carpentry wood and sound blankets. But the technology on audio has changed so I don't need all of that anymore. I will be doing an article on the Patreon once I've tried out the new system, but it is good to have a much bigger room again. I got rid of lots of things decluttered, got rid of old books to make room for new ones and I started a new journal. I use Luke term a five plain paper hardback journals and starting a new journal is always a good thing to do when you start a new phase. I also wanted to mention beginner's mind, which sometimes means approaching things with a new perspective, but it can literally also mean beginners. And starting at the university has meant navigating all of their online resources and new terminology and systems and acronyms and trying to use like the one source for all the journals and then the reference thing and all of that. And I had a bit of a brain explosion and I was like oh my goodness, how am I meant to do all this? And it reminded me of how it must feel coming into self publishing, which is new terminology and systems and tools and words that people say that you don't understand and companies you don't know who to trust and so many things. I mean it's the same if you start a new job or move to a new city or any kind of change. It takes time to figure out how everything works. So I also just wanted to mention again my successful self publishing 4th edition. The ebook and audiobook are free on my store creativepennbooks.com and it's also in print as well, in large print. But it just reminded me of how hard these things can be and self publishing is itself pretty sprawling these days. Yes. So question for you this week as we move into the final quarter of the year. We've only got three months left and I kind of don't count December because it turns into just craziness. But the question for you this week do you need to have a bit of a clean out of a space? It might be a physical space or mental space in order to move on to the next thing. It doesn't have to be as big a deal as starting a degree or moving house, but could a clear out help you? Let me know, Leave a comment or email me joannathecreativepenn.com so thanks for your emails and comments and photos this week, Jim said. I thought I would have no interest in the interview with the children's book author Darcy Patterson. I was pleasantly surprised. It was good and had advice any author could use, which I'm really pleased about.

[B]

Thanks Jim.

[A]

And this one made me laugh A different Jim on my 14 years as an Author Entrepreneur article which was on the blog and I talked a bit about it last week, this Jim said, I've read you and recommended your site to so many people interested in self publishing that I had begun to think of you as an institution rather than a person. So thanks for this reminder. Everyone needs a break and a change of direction. Good luck with yours. I love that. I think it's hilarious that you were thinking of me as an institution. No, it's still just me. Just me here in my room with my cats. Or I've got Noisette, the little black one next to me here. Also Shane said on 14 years seemingly we have entered the season of change and pivoting. It's probably a natural progression. After being a full time writer for so long, I feel the need to go deeper, explore a different kind of writing and tackle new things as well. I'm happy to learn I'm not alone. This article is so inspiring. Oh, I'm glad. Thanks Shane. And yeah, we all need to fill the well. Fill the creative well as Julia Cameron in the writer's way. The artist way. Sorry, the the artist way. Wonderful book. And filling the well. We all have to do it at some point and I'm certainly not empty, but I'm getting to that point and I'm not burned out. I just need a change. As I said, I'm not stopping. I'll still be continuing. Just be a bit different. And Benjamin sent pictures saying this is my favourite graveyard God Set in small town America, nestled between a seminary and an old church. The stone walls and broken headstones set up so many potential stories in my mind. That is lovely. So please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@the creativepenn.com or on the YouTube channel, or email me. Send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. JoannaTheCreativePenn.com and answer that question I asked you about clearing space. I love to hear from you. It makes this more of a conversation. So today's show is sponsored by my wonderful patrons. Thanks to the 16 new patrons who've joined in the last week and thanks to everyone who's been supporting for months and years. And I appreciate everyone who pops in for a month or two and then goes again. Every little helps. If you join the community, you get access to all my backlist videos and audio covering topics on writing, craft, author business, tutorials on AI tools and more. Last week I shared my monthly Q and A and I've also had a survey running on what patrons want from me in the community so I can better serve with content behind the scenes. And there's quite a lot of it. Now the Patreon is a monthly subscription, the equivalent of buying me a black coffee a month or a couple of coffees if you're feeling generous. So if you get value from the show and you want more, come on over and join us at patreon.com thecreativepen that's P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com thecreativepen Right, let's get into the interview.

[B]

Jeff Affleck is a best selling non fiction author, self publishing consultant and Amazon.

[A]

Ads expert, working with authors to produce.

[B]

And promote their books through his business, Authorpreneur Publishing. Jeff is originally Australian but now lives in Canada.

[A]

So welcome to the show, Jeff.

[C]

Yes, hi Joe, thanks for having me here. It's great.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

No, this is an interesting topic. But first up, tell us a bit more about you and how you got into writing and self publishing and why you decided to move into author services.

[C]

Okay, sure. It was about 15 years ago that I started getting involved in this industry. I had always been involved in marketing and in more of a corporate job and I got involved in personal development for myself just for personal growth and managed to connect up with some New York Times best selling authors who appeared in the movie the Secret. Do you ever.

[B]

Oh yes, wonderful, wonderful time. Yeah, right.

[C]

So I worked as a marketing director for a couple of these authors who were part of that movie and as a result got exposed to the world of traditional publishing because they had New York Times best selling books. We started a course where we would invite people to come and learn about. Basically the premise was we'll teach you how to become a best selling self help authority. And I was the marketing guy mostly talking about building their author platforms and became really interested in the self publishing side of it because that was really the door that most of these authors would come into rather than traditional and had to learn very quickly about self publishing. So this was as I mentioned, probably now 2012 or thereabouts. And so as I learned about self publishing, we decided to self publish a book ourselves, the four of us. And since then I've just continued to, to be really enamored by the, the whole industry and I realized quickly that I'm not really an author. I've co authored a number of books but writing is not my passion, although copywriting is, but not story writing. And, but I really love the production side of it and the book launches, the, the marketing, especially with Amazon. And so that's really where I focused in my business over the last eight years or so.

[B]

That's so funny with the Secret brings back those days. I, I remember reading that and it's where I really first learned about affirmations. And yes, my first. Well, my, the affirmation that really changed my life was I said I am creative, I am an author. And I said that years before I actually that happened. So I, I know, it's funny now, isn't it? We kind of look back and I don't think it's been tarnished, but there's not so much a sort of halo around the law of attraction stuff. But at the time like that really made such a big hit and a lot of the mindset stuff around it.

[A]

I still feel is valuable.

[C]

Absolutely.

[A]

You know what I mean?

[B]

It's I.

[A]

That whole self help side.

[B]

So let's get into the advertising stuff. But before we get into that, I feel like a lot of authors jump into ads like they're some kind of magic bullet. But what are the basic things that an author needs to get right? And we're going to focus on Amazon today. The basic things that an author needs to get right with their Amazon book sales page before they even think about this.

[C]

Right? Yeah, absolutely. And this, this is the starting point and should be the starting point for anyone who's looking to publish a book, let alone promote it or spend money on it. With Amazon ads you have to think about the conversions and what I mean by that is that if you're going to generate clicks to your book page, you have to be confident that a reasonable percentage of those clicks will turn into orders. Or if you're in Kindle Unlimited, you know, Kindle unlim page reads. And the number that we look for is 10%. So if you get 10 clicks from an ad, you want to get one sale or the equivalent of that in page reads. So it's really important to optimize your Amazon page. Some people call it a product page or a book listing so that when people land they're going to be attracted to buying your book. Right. Just makes sense, doesn't it? And there are about seven elements that we focus on that that you really need to get right and you need to get all of them right. Sometimes just having one of them a little bit off can, can skew it. And I, I could do a two hour talk on this, but I'll just sort of highlight it.

[B]

A quick introduction.

[C]

Obviously the the first one is the book cover and that's the one that actually helps generate ad clicks because people don't see a lot about your book. They just see the COVID the title, how many reviews you have, and so on. And if it looks interesting, they'll click on it. So if you've got a cover that stands out as a little thumbnail on like an Amazon ad th, you're more likely to get a higher click through rate on your ads, which means more traffic. So that's, that's super important. And of course the COVID has to be aligned with the genre and be legible and, and all of that. So the COVID is one and here's one that a lot of people I noticed amiss and it's, it's the attention to keywords. You probably know that when you self publish there's seven keywords you can put in, in the metadata when you upload your book to Amazon. Right. Most people don't give a lot of thought to that, put in some words and hope that that's okay. But keywords are really important and it's a whole thing to learn how to get them right. But finding keywords that are popular yet not too competitive is the key because that's what Amazon, what their algorithm looks at when it's deciding whether your book's going to show up or not on a search are the keywords. And it's really important to get at least one good keyword phrase into your title and more often into your subtitle. I see a lot of authors, they'll publish a novel with a title and then leave the subtitle blank. So adding a subtitle that describes a little bit about the genre and, or a trope. So a billionaire office romance could be a subtitle for a romance novel that tells the reader something, but it also tells the algorithm than something. That is one of the most important fields I find. And if you, if you're only relying on your seven keywords, I think you're potentially missing out on, on organic traffic. But anyway, moving on beyond that, obviously people look at how many reviews you have, what the quality is of the average star rating. Those are super important. And so doing whatever you can to boost the number of reviews and ratings early on will give your, your conversion rate a big boost. So beyond that though, we've got to have a strong blur with a. You know, usually there's a whole structure for blurbs, but not too long back, even a few years ago, we were writing longer blurbs. Now it's around 200 words. A really strong headline with a hook. Bolded is nice. Short paragraphs, the right elements and then a call to action. So I won't go in any further than that. But that is key. But beyond that, a lot of people don't read blurbs. They kind of skim them. That's why shorter is often a little bit better. But increasingly a content is another way to supplement the blurb. So it's kind of like an additional blurb where we can put graphics up on the page that will help the reader understand more about the book and some reasons why they should buy it. Finally, I think price is really important. Can't be too high or even too low. Can sometimes be a dissuader because price and qualities are often correlated and gotta have make sure your books are in the right categories. That's really important to categories that are relevant. Sometimes I see people and even people in who are helping other authors put their books in categories that just aren't relevant in order to try to game the system and get bestseller. That just doesn't work.

[B]

Yeah, that again feels like a tactic from like 15 years ago.

[C]

I know. Let's just put it here in basket weaving.

[B]

Even though it's a basket weaving romance. I mean that's fine but yeah, that is interesting. Lots of things to come back on here but the a content. Your team helped me do some A plus content for my how to write a Novel and I think as a a buyer, like as a reader, I never ever, ever I'm never scrolling down that far and so I had some hesitation of all this for but to talk a bit more about it and why you think that it is a good idea to have.

[C]

Right? Yeah. Well, first of all, for anyone who's not familiar with a content, it doesn't say that word anywhere on on the your book page. But if you notice as you're browsing on Amazon you'll see the section called from the publisher. So that's what we're referring to. And it's usually you go below the book description, below the first couple of carousels of ads or suggestions and then you'll see it there and it'll be snugged in just above the editorial review section. What it is is it's kind of like a magazine style layout of banners and images. You can have up to five rows of them and you can choose few as one or as many as five different banners. There are different layouts and it's all template driven on the back end of Amazon through Your KDP account. It's also available to traditional publishers using Amazon Advantage. So I think the only time you can't really use it is let's say you publish with IngramSpark or say drafted digital. You won't be able to apply Amazon A content to your books. So anyway, lots of different layouts available, including for non fiction you can do side by side sort of charts and this type of thing. You can provide a. For a series, you can provide a series layout where people can see all the books in your series or up to six anyway and then click directly through to the different books. But I think other than being visually appealing provided, and this is really important, is that they must be designed well. You design them outside of Amazon usually. Although Amazon does have some sort of an AI image generator. Last time I checked it wasn't very good. So I don't use it. But I get a professional graphic designer to design the graphics and then we upload them ourselves. We find that generally speaking it will help increase your conversion rate because as people skim the book blurb, maybe don't take it all in, it gives you another chance to connect with them. It's visually appealing, so. So it tends to stop shoppers from scrolling because it's a little more interesting. So it's something that they can quickly read and perhaps even get more of an emotional connection to the book. You can use it to build trust and authority for the author in a way that you can't really do in the blurb. As I mentioned, you can showcase the series and it gives you an SEO boost because behind each image you get to input more keywords. And we all know that Amazon is basically just a big search engine. Search engines are driven by keywords. So you can have, in addition to the seven boxes on your book listing, you can add more keywords on the back end of your Amazon A plus content. So I think for most authors it's worth doing. It can work very well for series authors, children's authors, because you can show the visuals of the inside of the book. And I, I feel like if you, if you're not doing it, you're sort of leaving something on the table that with not much effort you could, you could do.

[B]

Yeah. And I think, and another important thing, it is free. I mean obviously if you hire someone to, to make the images that costs money, but actually you can just add it onto your KDP account per book and per country as well. It has to be done per country.

[C]

Yeah, that is a bit of a pain.

[B]

But it is a pain. It's not a great interface to be fair, but it is free.

[C]

Absolutely not. And I will, I will say that some authors that I've come across have done their own a content using say one of those design tools like Canva or something, which can be great if you are a graphic designer. I've seen some pretty poor a content design and that can detract from the book and can actually impact your sales negatively. Because I think if readers see sort of amateurish graphic design, they subconsciously think, well, geez, well, what's the writing like? Yeah, I mean I really caution you to your listeners to get a professional designer. It doesn't have to be expensive, $100 or something and, and you get some good design.

[B]

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so let's just come coming to the advertising. So we're going to assume now that we've got our page sorted with all those things. And I know some people who have haven't sort of heard, might have heard this before, like goodness me, that's a lot to do before just clicking on an ad. But as you say, it's not just a magic bullet. But let's do as a bigger question. Do we really have to advertise? Like people in back in the old.

[A]

Days could just upload a book on.

[B]

On Amazon and it would sell. Is that possible anymore? Is organic reach a reality?

[C]

I. I don't really think so. Well, for new authors, for most authors who don't have a platform, say a large email list, social media following and so on, it's pretty hard to get noticed. I don't know what, what you've heard. I think it's something like 5,000 books a day are published on Amazon or something.

[B]

Yeah, it is ridiculous.

[C]

You know, it's just crazy. Right? So you've got all this clutter that you've got to cut through. I came across someone last week who'd done nothing. He'd published his book in July and, and he said, oh, I think, I think we've done all right. We sold 1800 copies so far. I said oh my God, that's really good. That's really good. It's his first book and no advertising. What did you do? Oh, well, I've got a pretty big email list, so. Ah, right. So we all know that that's important but if you don't have something like that. And he's probably tapped out his email list by now. So now we're doing the things we just talked about, optimizing the product page and then starting Amazon Ads because eventually your email list is going to run dry. So with the absence of a platform or some other way to promote your book, Amazon ads are the, I think the best way to have your book put in front of thousands, even millions of shoppers over time. And usually we see it takes about a thousand times to get a click. So in other words, your ads show a thousand times you get a click. That's, that's average, sometimes better, sometimes worse. So you've got to get lots of impressions of your ads to get a small number of clicks, to get a small number of sales. So I think it's important unless you've got something else that works for you. Some authors do really well with Facebook ads and I think that's great too. But to me Amazon ads is like this. You're going to the supermarket and you're looking for soup. You go to the soup aisle and you look at the soup and then you, another can of soup catches your eye. And you know what, that's interesting. I think I'll try that one. Whereas something like, like a Facebook ad is more like you're at the supermarket and you're looking for corn and then you're at the checkout, you happen to see candy or something, some gum, and so you go, oh, impulse buy. It's not really what you were on Facebook looking for was your next book. It's sort of a random thing thing and it does seem to work for some authors.

[B]

Yeah, I mean as you say, there's lots of different options. I mean even like podcasting, you can't track clicks from podcasts because it's more of a brand building approach and people.

[A]

Go look for stuff.

[B]

But it's definitely way to, to market. So there's lots of different options. But as we said, we're focusing on on Amazon ads. So your team helped me with some non fiction books. So and I thought one of the things that thought was great about your approach is on your, even on your website you're really clear about what books ads work best for and what they don't work well for. So let's start with the good stuff. So what are Amazon ads good for? What are the kinds of books they work best for?

[C]

Yeah, they work best for series or perhaps if you have multiple standalones. So the reason of course is read through you usually it, you're usually going to spend a little more, perhaps break even on getting those initial readers. But if they enjoy your books, they're going to read, they're going to want to read more and Usually they're not clicking on an ad for the second, third, fourth, fifth book. They're going to just find it directly and that becomes an organic sale with full royalties. So series can work very, very well. Well with, with Amazon ads, I think in general, any book where the book page converts from clicks to order. So that can be the book one in a series which perhaps has a low price to entice the reader, but it can also be a standalone. It could be a standalone nonfiction, could be a standalone novel as long as it converts. We've got some, some examples where we just know that for every six clicks that this author gets, there's a sale. It just happens over and over again. Prob. Because they've got a great product page and good reviews. And I think you sometimes it doesn't work as well if you're in a very low volume niche. Something that's just really obscure and that's more because there's just not much traffic. Yeah. So I think those are the, those are probably the best answers I can give for you.

[B]

What about ku?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. Amazon ads will certainly drive up your ku. We've got some authors who, one in particular is doing 150,000 monthly page reads on Ku from her ad clicks, but a million and a half monthly overall. So the ad clicks are just driving people into book one and then they just keep on reading.

[B]

So what about, what about. Because you mentioned their series but for example, there are some genres where most of the series in a genre might be in ku. And then if you're trying to advertise a book that's not in Kuwait, it might not work so well.

[C]

Yeah, we find works either way. It really varies from case to case, but Amazon ads on the dashboard, it does track your page reads that you generate from the ads as well as the orders that you generate. So you can really effectively see the impact of the ads. Exactly how many page reads came from Your ads? Ads vs or vs orders and what.

[B]

I mean you mentioned reviews briefly. But if a book is only got a couple of reviews or, or many authors still who are new to self publishing especially think that they should be advertising at launch doing Amazon ads. But you don't really have any reviews at launch. So when is the best time to be advertising?

[C]

Right. Well one, one thing about advertising at launch, it can help you certainly get your, your, your book, your brand out there with all of the, the different impressions of your ads. And Amazon gives you like a little banner on your ads when your book is new that says just released it's a little gray banner goes right above the COVID And I think even if you have low reviews because you have the just release banner on just above the book, shoppers might be a little more forgiving about the low number of reviews because it's obviously just released. So when we do book launches, I almost always include Amazon ads in the book launch. It might not be a really high budget, but just to continue to do everything we can to get that initial traffic. Because what we're trying to do with a launch is we're trying to. I think there's really three things. One is get the Amazon algorithm to notice your book and figure out how it fits into the Amazon universe. Number two is to get as many reviews as you can quickly. And number three is royalties because without the first two, long term royalties are just not going to happen. So I think Amazon ads play an important role in, in helping the algorithm understand your book.

[B]

But if, if someone is brand new, it's their first book, is that a good fit or are we really looking at. You need a couple of books to make advertising worth the money?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, it's a good question. I think with, with new authors in a way today you have to be prepared either to invest in your book in, in book marketing, it's kind of like I often use the analogy of, of a rocket launch. Rockets burn a lot of fuel to get off the ground. Without the fuel they stay on the ground. So there's that, that consideration is that if, if you want the book to have a chance, you've got to invest in, in marketing somehow. Whether it's Amazon ads or whether it's paid third party book promotions through the different book promotion websites or Facebook or TikTok or whatever you are able to do, email, whatever you can do. Right. You know, a small Amazon ads budget can help. Even if you're not doing $20 a day, which is what we would normally recommend, you might find that you can start to generate some sales with a much smaller budget and very conservative bids or cost per click. Perhaps you're only spending $3 a day and you're only picking up a couple of sales a week or something. But it's something, you've just got to do something to get that, that initial inertia going. Otherwise the Amazon algorithm will just basically drop you like a hot potato.

[B]

So, so let, so that's new authors, but then authors who've been around a while, like myself, who have, have big backlists. And as you're talking about the seven things we need to Have. And I know there's people listening in the same place as me. They're like, well, we've got 40 books, 50 books, 100 books.

[A]

This is way too depressing.

[B]

And I mean, I actually went in, I was in my KDP dashboard like yesterday and I realized that a whole load of my sales descriptions had reformatted to some old version that I know. And I'm like. And then I realized that the last time I touched them was a number of years ago. And I didn't even know when that happened, but it made me laugh. And then I looked down at my keywords and my categories and so when, if we want to keep things moving, like how often should we be reviewing these fields? If we've been going a while, like, when do we refresh categories? When do we refresh keywords?

[C]

Yeah, good, good idea. Yeah, about. I think it was, perhaps it was a year and a half ago Amazon changed their category rules where you used to be able to have 10 and 3. So some authors who grandfathered into the old 10 category system, it may be well enough just to leave that alone because it's great to have to be across all of those categories. I think keywords is probably the most important thing to look at. Well, I'll say. And book blur for sure, because that's very much customer facing. Keywords aren't customer facing. They their Amazon algorithm facing. And I was just listening to Dave Chesson last week with a webinar that he presented on Amazon's new algorithm and he stressed the importance of finding the right keywords, but also the importance of having the keywords in your book blurb. And it must be done in a way that doesn't sound like it was just written by AI or something. So that's probably one area to really take a good look at. And you publish. A rocket is a great tool for researching the best keywords. Look up other books and see what keywords those books are ranking for. And therefore that might be a good set of keywords for you. So it is something worth doing. And spending an hour or two on as well as book blurb is also worth spending time on for sure.

[B]

Yeah, yeah. It's one of these things that just the more you write, the more you publish. And then the backlist becomes this kind of sprawling thing. Especially when you're wide like I am and then you have all these different formats and platforms and you just. Yeah. You figure how traditional publishers forget to maintain things. It's kind of obvious when you realize how. How many books they Manage.

[C]

And you mentioned formatting issues with book blurbs and that's. That's quite common too. And because Amazon's little WYSIWYG where you enter your. Your book description isn't perfect and it does strange things. So you've really got to. After you publish your book description, make sure you look at it on your Amazon page and check the formatting. I can't tell you how many times I've seen all bold or. Oh yeah, all bold, large heading, no spaces between the paragraphs or whatever. So you've got to really check your output as well. And there are tools out there that can generate the HTML so that you can put it in directly that way. Get some eyeballs on your product pages, whether it's yours but better off off someone else's or even better someone who, someone like me who does this for a living. Get some opinions on what our customers seeing when they come to your product page because usually as an author you're too close to it and you can't see the forest for the trees, so to speak. So get some other opinions on what do you think about my blurb and the COVID and is it clear? Because it might be clear to you, but it might not be clear to someone who's never heard of your. Your book before.

[A]

Absolutely, yeah.

[B]

There, there are so many things and I. That's partly why I wanted to talk to you because I feel like the people just say advertising, like paid ads, as if it is going to solve all the problems of selling books and yet so much stuff does go into it and a lot of it is basics like it's basic marketing, like 101.

[A]

But yeah, it's still hard.

[B]

It's still hard and particularly for cross genre books, a lot of my fiction I found that many of the sort of standard approaches don't work on Amazon when you write cross genre because it is really hard to. It's just in the categories and the keywords. It just, it doesn't fit the boxes so well.

[C]

Tough one for sure.

[B]

Yeah, it is. So, so I folk. But my answer to that is to focus on the books that are more easily marketed. That's another trick, isn't it? You don't have to market every single book.

[C]

Oh no, you don't. No, just.

[B]

Just market the ones that are going to make you the most money and the ones that are more easily marketed on this platform. So for me Amazon ads work best for my non fiction because it's really.

[A]

Obvious what it is.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that's. That makes Sense.

[A]

Absolutely, yeah.

[B]

So I did want to ask you because I've used a combination of auto ads and manual targeting. So can you explain to people what's the difference with that and when my auto ads work and when might not?

[C]

Absolutely. So with Amazon ads, the way that they work is it's all about something called targeting and targeting. You can think of it like this. Which other books on Amazon do you want to piggyback on? Which ones are like yours? Because if you can find books that are like yours, then when someone's browsing that book, they'll see your ad, they'll click on it and they might buy your book. So we want to target and there's really two, three ways of targeting your ads. One is automatic, automatic, or often just called auto ads. Amazon decides where it thinks your ads should be displayed. So you have no control over where they show up. You just trust the algorithm understands your book and will put it in the right place. Now usually it's going to put it in, advertise it on books that are in the same category as you. That's sort of the default. And that can waste, that can result in some wasted reach because it might just not be really zeroing in on books that are like yours, especially if you're in a little bit of a broader category. The other thing we find with auto ads is that quite often you don't get that many impressions. Impressions is how many times your ads are displayed. When you have low impressions, you have lower clicks, and when you have lower clicks, you have lower sales. So while auto ads can be a sort of a time saver, they don't take much research to set up. You just fill in the boxes and click the button and off they go. Usually they don't have a terrific result until such time as the algorithm really understands your book. So we don't set up auto ads at the beginning. When we work with authors. We wait until we feel like the algorithm has a better understanding of the the book. So what do we do? We do manual campaigns. And manual campaigns are, as the name suggests, where you have to tell the algorithm where to display your ads. And there are two types of manual campaigns. One's called a keywords campaign and the other is a products campaign. And keywords, as the name implies, is you would enter in, let's say 50 keywords that you want to use for your ads. And they could be be author names of comps, they could be other book titles or series titles, and they could be genre or, or trope related terms or even character types, etc. So if you have a combination of those things, which you should, which you have to manually research by perhaps looking at the also bots for your book that are showing up on your product page, using Publisher Rocket is a great tool, or even AI can help you come up with your keywords. And then the second kind of manual ad is the product ad. And with that ad, we're targeting specific categories of books and also specific asins, Asin being a product number. So you find the ASIN of a book like yours and you target it. We might target five categories and 20 ASINs to start with something like that. With those ads, we find that we usually get better results because we're in control of where the ads are showing up. So, yeah, it's one of those things. It's easy to show than tell. But if you just remember there's auto and manual, there's two types of manual. When you're starting out, manual's the way to go. Because you will get more traction with manual ads.

[B]

Yeah, and I think another issue with the manual advertising, certainly for anyone who's like me, who's just not that interested in data, this is, this is where it becomes difficult. People are like, oh my goodness, this is so difficult. And so if people are manually doing their own ads, should they. Do they have to log in every day to check things? What are the sort of time requirements if you want to do your own ads?

[C]

Yeah, not. Not every day. Although at the beginning, it's hard to resist the temptation sometimes to log in every day. It's, it's a bit like when you, you know, I remember when I first started buying stocks for investments. I check the stock price every day, but you drive yourself mad every time it would go down. You get all stressed out and then we get up and get all excited. So probably once a week is, is a better time frame, maybe a little bit more than the first in the first week. But you can set some parameters to make sure that your ads don't run away. That's important. You can set a daily budget, you can set monthly budget, and then when your ads hit those, those upper limits, they'll just stop. So that's really good. So you don't want to have that problem where you suddenly get a huge bill that you weren't expecting. And you also want to check on them to make sure that you haven't perhaps accidentally bid too high on one of your targets. Every target, you set a dollar or pound or euro amount for how much you're willing to pay for a click on that target. And sometimes if you're a little bit careless, you can accidentally do bid too much because they'll, they'll may default to a suggested bid which might be $2. Well imagine you're paying $2 for a click and you're making, maybe you're only making $2 on a sale. You could be really upside down on, on your advertising. So do you know, do take care, make sure nothing's gone awry. You also want to be checking to see which which of those targets are getting the clicks and the sales and then adjusting bids up and down according to accordingly. If one of your targets is really working for you and you might want to increase the amount that you're willing to bid, that'll make your ad show up at closer to the top, which is going to get you more clicks. And similarly, if you have got targets that are eating cash, they're getting clicks but not sales. You may want to turn those off. We usually use a rule of thumb of 20. When we get 20 clicks, we haven't had any orders, we'll turn it off off. So it does need. You do need to do some adjustments and usually twice a month or so is enough, enough time between adjustments.

[B]

Yeah. So obviously authors can do their own ads. It's, it's just available. People can log into their KDP dashboard and you can use per book or there's just one marketing link for, for the whole thing. You can go in and manage it all there.

[A]

But, but if people want help, what.

[B]

Does your team offer?

[C]

Yeah, sure. Yeah. So everyone can do Amazon ads even whether you're self published or even if you're traditionally published, you can still run Amazon ads. That's just fine. I should just mention those who are traditionally published won't have a KDP dashboard, but you can get into Amazon ads through your Author Central account under the Marketing and Reports tab. We offer a managed Amazon ad service. Have been doing that since 2019. Basically, you turn over your ads to us. We access your ads account through what is known as editor access, which basically is a permission that you grant us. So we can log into your ads account through my account. We don't need your password. We can't go shopping and buy anything on your Amazon. And we do the handle the setup of the ads, including all the keyword and target research, set up the ads and then monitor, analyze and optimize regularly. And we'll provide support for authors as well. And in particular we'll take a good look at your product page back to the beginning of that conversation. That's actually our first step before we even run the ads is we'll have a session with you. One of my team will evaluate your product page and make written recommendations about what we ought to to. We recommend that you would improve before you even start advertising and then give you the guidance on what to do. And if you can't do it yourself, we can help you with those things usually too.

[B]

So fantastic. Where can people find you and everything you do online?

[C]

Thanks. My website has everything there, all our pricing and everything is up Front. It's jeff affleck.com or you can go jeffleck.com ads that goes directly to the the Amazon ads page on my website.

[B]

Brilliant. Well thanks so much for your time Jeff. That was great.

[C]

Yeah, thanks Joe. I appreciate you having me on today.

[A]

So I hope you found the discussion with Jeff interesting and even if you don't want to do paid ads, all his tips around optimizing your Amazon book sales page are important and also important on other stores as well as your own store. If you sell direct, correct advertising is pointless if the basics aren't sorted. Let me know what you think of the interview or answer the question I asked around whether you need a clean out in order to move on or any comments about what I cover in the show. Please leave a comment on the podcast show notes@wcreative pen.com or on the YouTube channel or email me joannathecreativepenn.com send me pictures of where you're listening or your favourite cemetery or churchyard. Next Monday I'm talking about how to pivot careers, co write books and stay connected as a remote creative with Pilar or T. In the meantime, happy writing and I'll see you next time. Thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful. You can find the backlist episodes and show [e-mail] podcast and you can get your free authority [e-mail] blueprint if you'd like to connect, you can find me on Facebook and x hecreative Pen or on Instagram and Facebook fpenauthor Happy writing and I'll see you next time.