Can an Author Really Do Marketing Too?

Example of a common marketing graphics.

For traditionally published authors the marketing happens without much input.  Whatever ads are placed are done by the publisher who can adjust the price point at their discretion. This can be frustrating or blissful for an author depending on their viewpoint.  I swing between the two. I love not doing the work, but I hate it when I don’t think enough marketing is being done.

However, for independent author things are a bit different. While can we run ads and control the price point (yay!) I must also keep track of ad vendors, types of ads, marketing copy, all the things that a traditional publisher pays another human being to do. It can be overwhelming and impossible if an author doesn’t have the skillset to do these tasks.

What’s New from Amazon Marketing?

The problem is that for most other marketing vehicles—social media, newsletters, BookBub—text is always paired with a graphic. So when looking at my collection of already created marketing images, finding one with no text is impossible.  So now we’re making compelling custom graphics that tell the story—without words—and oh, yeah, it has to also crop to a square.

What did I do?

I figured for a few hours of work I could create some images and see if the ads really did make an impact.

For my San Juan Islands Mystery series I tried to pull imagery to match my heading: Deceit, deception, death… and a dog. The series is about Tish Yearly, her grandfather Tobias Yearly, and his Chocolate Lab Coats solving mysteries in the San Juan Islands. So I tried to select images that support the premise.

Interested? Buy at any online book retailer: https://books2read.com/AnUnseenCurrent

For my Shark Santoyo Crime Series with the heading, “An anything but typical new adult thriller” I used imagery that had already been created for Facebook.  The series features an unusual mobster who is faced with finding the bosses money or ending up in cement. His solution is creative and relies on a mysterious teenager who is fast with her mouth and even faster with a knife.

Interested? Buy or read on Kindle Unlimited: https://amzn.to/3NgCX2h

What were the results?

Surprisingly, I’ve seen a sharp uptick in people reading the Shark Santoyo series.  This delights me because I love the series. It was written during a phase that I wasn’t particularly interested in writing “to market” (crafting a book to meet specific genre expectations).  I wanted to write something gritty, action-packed, violent, AND funny.  All of those vibes combine to make something that’s a little hard to place genre-wise, so I love that people are enjoying it.

While I’m fortunate in that I do have the skillset to create graphics I’m not sure how Amazon expects most indie authors to fulfill these requirements.  Or perhaps, as per usual with the Zon, they don’t care—they have selected the course that’s best for them.  However, it does make me wonder what the future of indie publishing looks like.  As more indie writers become outclassed by the marketing environment, what will we need to do to adapt?

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Bethany Maines is the award-winning author of action-adventure and fantasy tales that focus on women who know when to apply lipstick and when to apply a foot to someone’s hind end. She can usually be found chasing after her daughter, or glued to the computer working on her next novel (or screenplay). You can also catch up with her on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and BookBub.