Latest / If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion / How to Lose Money on Amazon Ads and Still Win Big with Steve Sarner

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How to Lose Money on Amazon Ads and Still Win Big with Steve Sarner · If I'm Being Honest: Straight Talk About Book Publishing & Promotion

• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Hey everybody, uh this is Joel Pitney.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this is the If I'm Being Honest podcast.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Today's guft is Steve Starner.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Joel.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh today we're gonna be talking about uh an area of expertise that Steve has, which is how to use digital marketing of all kinds to start selling books and a lot of questions around all that.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I met Steve at a conference recently, I believe it was at Author Nation in Las Vegas, where he was there representing his company, uh, where he's he's the director of Author Success.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's a company called uh Shelf Life.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um he uh before that he worked in Amazon's books department and he was one of the founders of Goodreads.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: So Steve is uh Steve's uh a longtime industry veteran and he has a lot to share.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm sad to have you on the show, Steve.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it's great to be here.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_02: I really enjoyed meeting your author nation and learning about uh your firm and uh delighted to be here to chat a little bit about what we do at uh Shelf Life and just kind of talk about the industry in general and how we can help authors uh with their author journey.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Excellent.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: So before diving in, I just want to remind everybody if you're if you enjoy the podcast, you find this information useful, um, please leave us a review and uh subscribe to us on whatever podcast or platform that you're engaging with us.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um it helps us find more people who need uh the useful information that we're trying to share here.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: So um, Steve, so I think maybe we'll start off.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I want to talk a little bit about what do you do now?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: What does Shelf Life do?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: What do you do for authors?
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: So Shelf Life um its core business is managing Amazon advertising campaigns uh for authors.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's where we got our start seven years ago.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's where I met Alex Strotheed, our CEO and founder when I was at Goodreads.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: We're in a book marketing panel together, um, speaking similar in a situation like this, an educational event.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: And um I was representing Goodreads and what Goodreads could do for authors.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh I was listening to Alex talk, and I was like going, he knows more about Amazon ads than most people at Amazon.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: I should get to know this guy.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: So um we became professional friends, and when I left Amazon in 23, I joined Alex, and we've been growing the agency ever since.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, our agency's really kind of focused on, uh, has been focused on nonfiction authors over the last seven years and helping them uh market their books and manage their campaigns on Amazon.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: We've expanded into some other areas, but that's still our core business uh and foundation.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're also helping some fiction authors these days as well, so we're excited to be in the fiction business too.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, the majority of our business is nonfiction authors.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_02: The majority of our authors um are basically using their book primarily to support their other business lines, whether it's speaking, brand awareness building, consulting, online courses, you know, they look to us to really help them market the book to find the ideal readers, the right readers that help them accelerate their other business lines in a you know at the most cost-efficient uh way possible with Amazon ads.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a lot of questions I want to ask you about that later.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: I thought maybe we could start with a little 101.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, for anybody out there who already knows all this, forgive us.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: But um one of the first questions I get when people talk to me about us helping them publish their book or do promotions are what about Amazon ads?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: What about Amazon ads?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I read I should do Amazon ads.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I've tried Amazon ads, I took a course on Amazon ads.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: I read a book about Amazon ads.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: What about Amazon ads?
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what uh just to kind of start, what is what are Amazon ads?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so Amazon ads, you know, uh um Amazon kind of invented retail media, as they call it.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_02: It basically it's ads in on the site uh with Amazon.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's like think about like point-to-purchase ads when you go into a bookstore.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: Same type of concept only online.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um there's three primary types of ads that uh relate to books.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's sponsored products, um, which is basically the book cover that you see in a carousel usually as you're browsing any book on Amazon.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_02: Then there's uh brand display and product display uh ads as well, which offer some video opportunities and things of that nature.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_02: But really the primary workhorse of Amazon ads is product uh sponsored product ads on Amazon.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_02: And one of the key things uh on Amazon ads, for those who are familiar with Google and Facebook, they're similar in nature because they are a dynamic auction for pay-per-click, meaning you do not pay for Amazon to show your book as an impression.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: You only pay if somebody clicks on your book and goes to your book detail page to consider purchasing it.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um and those clicks can range anywhere from a low of 20 cents to 75 cents to a dollar to two dollars or more.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_02: It's all dynamic auctioned, all on demand.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that's one of the key components of uh effectively managing Amazon ad campaigns is is uh making sure you're you're optimizing what you're bidding uh for all kinds of different reasons uh to you know to help sell and move your book and get it to and also get it displayed in the first place.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so so um when you know Amazon ads, when you're when you're looking at those, it's basically it's a way for you as the owner of a publishing account for a book to actively promote your ads to targeted readers based on their keyword searches within Amazon's search engine or at in relationship to related products or other books.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're bidding how much money you're willing to spend to get a click from a search result or on a or on a related product.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it's you know, it's not demo uh targeted, it is targeted, it's intent targeted, as I call it.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: So it's if you're not sorting by demographic.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're not like looking for men between the age of 42 and 78 who have a household income of$150,000 or more.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: You're exactly you're focusing on what they actually want to do or what they like.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what they're searching for, what kind of book they're searching for, which subject, what problem they're trying to solve, or maybe they're they know they want to read a book on finance or or in business from a certain author or title, and then you want to align your book with that author title, a comparable title or competitive title or author, so that your book shows up on that page too.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_02: So those are the things that you're targeting uh and and working to get your book appearing on on in those search terms and those uh comparable product pages.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's interesting.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So uh so to me, you know, you know, when you when you just hear it that way, it's like, oh, sign me up, let's do this, right?
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sign me up.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to be in search results for related keywords, I want to be in related books, but it's not that simple, right?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, my company, we've experimented with Amazon ads, we've worked with other companies like yours.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is very difficult to figure out how to do it in a way where you are earning as much money from your ad campaigns as you are spending on them.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's a huge challenge.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, we have well over a hundred authors we work with today, Joel.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: And uh only about 25% of them are we able to realize break-even or positive return on their ad spend.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um and those are And you guys are really good at what you do.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and and those are pretty established authors too.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_02: So they've got a lot going for them more than just the ad campaigns.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: Um, 75%, the vast majority, are actually losing money on their Amazon ads, but they are selling more books, and they don't see it so much as losing money as the fact that they're getting their book out into more readers.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_02: It lifts their overall sales too.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's more than just the ads, the ads can help you know motivate and signal the Amazon algorithm and flywheel so your book becomes uh recommended more organically as well.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_02: So overall sales can lift, and um, most importantly for for that 75% of our authors, their goal is driving other business goals in addition to just selling books.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's it's interesting, Steve.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: That it was on that point.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: I actually felt quite relieved the first time you and I spoke because uh again, like I've said, we've worked on Amazon ads for years.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, almost, you know, probably seven or eight years we've been trying to do Amazon ads.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: We've done it in-house, we've partnered with people, and we were we were probably getting results that were around what you were getting, which is we almost never broke even.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we might spend a hundred dollars in a week to promote the book, and that would result in eighty dollars worth of our royalty percentage after the bookseller takes it out.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: That's and yeah, that's what we're gonna get in the royalty.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I was gonna say gross sales at 80 would be good for the books.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just spitballing here.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Those aren't real numbers.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: And but when I talk to you, you you explained, hey, even even us who are really good at what we do, um we're getting numbers that are that look like that that on the surface sound quite depressing.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: Like why on earth would I just pour money down this hole?
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: But but like you said, there the the Amazon ads game is not about that first sale, it's about everything else that happens after that.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: So let's go.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you you talked about a few of those things.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um talk a little bit more about the uh monetizing beyond the sale of that first book.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: How are you seeing authors do that?
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I would say that we you know, as I break up our um our portfolio of clients, um there's a good percentage who are just you know professional speakers.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um we have we have um authors who are um expert in their field, and one of their key goals for us is one of the fun goals they have on this, is they they don't care whether we sell one book a month for them or a thousand books a month.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_02: All they want is to be in the top three, if not number one, in a certain Amazon category.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: As you know, there's thousands of Amazon subcategories, um, many of which you don't have to sell that many books to be up in the top ranking for them.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: And some of these specialists, be it in medicine or law or uh or certain areas of um expertise in accounting and things of that nature, they base their speaking proposals on the fact that they're the number one author, or at least in the top five, but typically the number one author in a certain subcategory on Amazon.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_02: And um, and and that's that's their goal.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_02: They they say, you know, we can, you know, using third-party software and our own data, um, we can determine about where you how many books you're gonna need to sell to, you know, be in that number one spot in that subcategory.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we basically mu manage our campaigns and formulate them around the fact of selling enough books to make that happen for them so they then can point to the fact when they're speaking proposals that they are uh best-selling author in this particular area of expertise.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: No, that that's that's super interesting.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So so there's a big brand bump you get from having a certain sales rank on Amazon, and that brand bump can can can benefit you in other ways.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what are some other ways that you see people monetizing a sale beyond the royalties they make?
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, um a lot of times people ring people into their community and you know they do a really nice job in their book on the subject that are on, and they add QR codes and calls to actions within the book itself, like, you know, if you find this interesting, you'd like to learn more, um, you know, go to this page, and there could be a workbook or there could be uh some other bonus material that they receive for you know going online from the book, and then that draws them into you know the whole community or the offering and gets them involved.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes it's um it's a free offer to put them subscriber into the the uh author's email list, and you know, from there they can nurture uh people into further into their their uh community and or product set.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so they might have consulting services, they might have a course, they might have a some kind of a subscriber model, so they know that you know every 10% of people who buy their book might end up paying them more money for something else.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: And and when you start to work out the math, it's worth it even to lose a little bit of money on the sale of that book through ads.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, just to take it even beyond ads, we have a program that's called event reader seeding.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um and what we mean by that is our our our philosophy with our authors is we want to seed the market.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_02: In other words, get books in the hands of real readers, whether they buy it or we give it to them.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_02: People who um really uh are looking for their book, looking for their solution, and things of that nature.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: And the um we'll actually go out and um like I just work with an author today.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he has a book that is on education and educational reform type of um matters, and he's a consultant in this area, and he has a process and a system that school districts will purchase uh for his consulting services to help them implement what he does.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_02: And we're basically going to go out and look for events where school board um influencers, decision makers, principals, and school administrators would be attending, which are thousands of them, small and large.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And we broker a program with the event planner where we actually give the book away.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is costing him, you know, printing, shipping, and our fee anywhere from$15 to$25 per book.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: So he's not making that money, it's costing him that much, but he's getting the book in the hands of people that can then turn around and potentially become a customer worth tens of thousands of dollars to him.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is these this is great.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm where I'm going in my head with this is uh you know, if if you have something like this, if you have a speaking uh business where being being you know number one in the category helps you get more speeds, if you're like this gentleman and you have you have ways to earn tens of thousands of dollars off of someone who likes your book, um, that's fabulous.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: What about what about other authors who maybe don't have those things, especially fiction, I would say.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when you're running Amazon ads where all you really have is royalties, you don't have a way to upsell outside of your book.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what what have you seen for Amazon ads there?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, fiction is a completely different animal because there that you're you're unl unless you just it's a passion product, and we do have some authors who are just passionate about getting their book out there, but right, but the vast majority of your fiction authors are they're in it for the profit, uh, and they want to write and they want writing to be, you know, either supplement their income or be their income.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: And um fiction is um there's we've found that there's a formula that works really, really well, um, but you kind of have to fit in this formula, and that formula is you have to one have a series.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um so at least three books, better if you have five.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Seven is even is or nine is ideal.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then also what's really important for Amazon ads to work most effectively is if you're in Kindle Unlimited.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_02: And there's you know controversy whether people want to do that or not.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_02: But if you're gonna go down the path of really running Amazon ads and trying to make money with fiction, I would highly recommend that you go into Kindle Unlimited with a series, and that's where you basically just drive readers into that first book of the series and capture them, and then you watch the read-through and the follow-on lifetime value for for the reader.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and we have author clients that are making literally tens of thousands of dollars a month um on very successful series, and there's other authors I'm aware of out there who are making very big money.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, of course, you have to have a great book and a great series, and and they're doing a lot of things.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_02: I go to that saying, right?
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_02: They're doing a lot of other things too.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: They they've got their community, they've got their newsletter, they've got their you know, readers, but they're supplementing it with Amazon ads, and what they look to us or their own ad campaigns to do is help them fill that funnel with new readers.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_02: So they've got the people already on their on the subscriber list and things like that.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So those people are anxiously waiting for their next book.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: They need to find more readers who love the genre, and that's where you go out and again, keyword search, uh key keywords, uh comparable titles, and you know, searching for that.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's also a place where uh oftentimes the Facebook and Meta is an effective way to um um promote those fiction books and bring them into the series as well.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_02: And again, you're not really um you're not making money, you're probably losing money on on some ads for that first book, second book, but then you're looking at the long tail and the overall read-through on Kindle Unlimited and the sales of the follow-on books um to really get the lifetime value of of what your reader looks like.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And and it can be quite lucrative.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, it once you put it that way, the math starts to look pretty good, right?
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: On one book, the math doesn't look so good, right?
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_01: You might lose you might lose five or ten dollars just to get a sale.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: You might be spending far more than you're making, but if you've got seven books and you know that if you can get someone to buy your first book, uh they've got a 50% chance of reading through your series.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly how you're gonna be able to get the right.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna make a lot of money.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, looking for what's your read-through percentage?
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, from book one to two, we've got 80%, from two to three, it's 70%.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, those are huge numbers when you when you start really feeding that funnel.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: We see the same uh Halo effect with nonfiction.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: You know, somebody has a lead nonfiction book uh that that brings people into getting to know that that that author, and then they have follow-on um complimentary books.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, the the one lead book helps uh Halo effect and and sells the other books too, and it also lifts up organically with the Amazon algorithm recommending those books organically uh more frequently as well.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So would you say, I mean, uh you know, I don't I don't mean to paint, you know, to to make you do too definitive an answer here, but yeah, would you say that if you don't have if you're a if you're a non-fiction author and you don't have a way to monetize beyond a sale of your book, and if you're a fiction author and you only have one book, you don't have a series, should you wait to do Amazon ads until you've developed something like that?
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um I'm gonna say no, and I'm telling I'm gonna tell you why.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: Uh you should at least try Amazon ads.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not saying you should retain somebody like ourselves or somebody like that where there's gonna be, you know, a huge management fee or even a small management fee for that matter.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um it's gonna be costly.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_02: But um, even running a small basic campaign on your own, uh, which is doable, just to keep your book alive and and have Amazon recognize it so it doesn't just completely fall off the radar, I think it's worth trying.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think you should, I would, you know, I've I I talk to a lot of authors, many authors just not ready for for our services because um they don't have enough reviews, they their their covers not right, there's you know, all kinds of different things, things that companies like yours help help authors prevent making those mistakes by getting all those elements right.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_02: Because you want to be right out of the gate with a with a good-looking book and and all the all the metadata and all the foundation that goes into writing a book that catches a lot of people off guard when they think, oh, I just gotta write a good book.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: No, there's a lot more to it, and that's that's why people like you exist.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but I I really feel strongly that you know, running just budgeting and say, like I'm gonna put$500,$1,000 in Amazon ads for the first six months and run a small, modest campaign just to find readers and bring them into the book, that could help you in the long run, you know, and and perhaps get some momentum and also supplement anything you're doing outside of Amazon ads, like podcast or blogging or interviews or media.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um, all those things can holistically, you know, keep the book going, especially if you also have a good program in place to keep ratings and reviews coming in.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so and but the likelihood of you breaking even is is slim.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what?
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_02: You'll make some money back.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, the other cool thing about Amazon ads, I I think is one of the best things, whether you lose money or make money, you know what your ad dollars did for you.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_02: And you don't get that with a lot of other um advertising and promotional vehicles.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's one thing I like about that as well.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And just to it just to expand on that a little bit, um, with an Amazon, you know, if you do a Google ad, for instance, so your your an ad for your book shows up in a Google search, you can track the clicks and then through some sophisticated processes, even potentially find out if that resulted in a sale.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_01: But the data is hard to get and it's pretty fuzzy.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas with Amazon, it'll tell you exactly how many sales you got from the amount of money you spent, right?
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, and the beauty of it too is it is incredibly granular as well.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_02: You can drill down and find out exactly which keyword search terms are driving the most impression, the most clicks, and the most conversions, and then you can add more budget to those.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the kind of services that we provide as an agency doing that work.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's very doable, but it's not easy, and it's not it's not intuitive.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's you know, and you if you don't like spreadsheets, you don't want to do that at all.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, leave it to the book nerds, right?
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_01: Unless you are one yourself.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, exactly.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_02: We we have clients that are you know CPAs and um former CFOs or existing CFOs that you know under that they live in that world.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_02: And we explain it to them.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_02: They they go, Oh, yeah, I see exactly what's going on here.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_02: And he goes, And I don't want to have the time to figure this out and do it right.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you guys do it.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so um it's it's it's certainly all doable.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, for the for the independent author who just wants to dabble in it, there's something called an automatic campaign, uh, which is so simple to set up.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's basically you tell Amazon, here's my book, and you know, I've worked with Joel and and Sadie and team, and they've they've got my metadata right, and everything looks right.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_02: So Amazon understands what this book is for and who's it for, and readers are giving it ratings and reviews.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna just set an auto campaign.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna spend$300 a month, about$10 a day.
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_02: And Um, I'm gonna let Amazon find readers for it.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what?
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_02: I put books on I've had friends who have said, like, here's here's what you do.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they've they haven't broken even on royalties, but they've broken even on ad spend for sales, you know, running auto campaigns.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_02: So it's costing them, you know, they spend 300 and they make 200 in royalties, it's costing them$100 a month, but it's also lifting their overall sales.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: So right.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: There, there, there's there's there's something there to give it a try, if nothing else.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's great advice.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and one thing you've mentioned this a couple of times, and I think it's worth just highlighting.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if you do dabble in Amazon ads, it's really important to understand the numbers you're looking at.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so Amazon is gonna report the effectiveness of your campaign in terms of just total retail dollars.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've spent if you if you spend fifty dollars and you sell 10 books and your books cost$15, right, right, you're gonna$10 times 10, 10 books times$15, you're gonna get$150, right?
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_01: From the$50 you spent.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: So you're like, yeah, I crushed it,$100 profit.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Not so fast.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: No, right, right.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: As anybody who knows, if you know, if you're self-publishing your title, you're gonna be making 60% of retail minus your printing costs.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: So Amazon's gonna take$40 off the top, then you get that remaining 60 minus your printing cost.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: So on a$15 book, you're probably gonna be making more like six or seven dollars.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so if you spent fifty dollars, that that's sixty or seventy dollars.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: And if you spent fifty to get that, you know, so now you made ten dollars.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So it's important to have to know what percentage of your retail you're actually receiving um when you're calculating your campaigns.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's great if you're if you you know you hit that number, that's a great sign.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_02: That means you've got something that uh that is is is popular and is working, it's resonating, but you're absolutely right.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_02: You got to take the math to the next level to really see exactly where you are in terms of profit loss.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's cool.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Steve, I mean, we've covered a lot here.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_01: This has been super useful.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and again, if people are in if people have enjoyed this, please please subscribe to the podcast and share it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you can subscribe on all the platforms where you can engage with us.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um one thing I like to ask people on this show, um, it's a big we're brand new, brand new show.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: We're called If I'm being honest.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I always like to ask you, you know, what is if you're being honest about something about Amazon ads, what's the what's that thing?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_01: What's that kind of, you know, maybe not quite sure you want to be that honest, but but you know, what what do people need to know?
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_01: What's what's the kind of honest straight take on Amazon ads from your perspective?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: The honest straight take is it's really hard to make money with them.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's no doubt about that.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_02: And um it's uh it's not easy, um, but and depending on your goals, uh, it's it's worth giving it a try.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um and the other thing, my other thing being honest, is I as an author myself, I cannot believe, and I don't have to say this to your audience, they they know it themselves, how much stuff you get inbound, you know, pitching different ideas and things of that nature.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'd be very skeptical and very wary uh of a lot of things uh that that are out there in the book book world, and you know, really do your due diligence um and and ask for um you know references and testimonials.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: Um I think it's really, really important.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: That's great.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: I love that advice.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I thank you for doing that.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think that's one of the missions of this show is that I think in all aspects of book publishing and promotion, there's people are being inundated with a lot of false promises and inflated expectations and sometimes downright lies.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to bring we like bringing in people like you who can tell people, you know, we're not we're not we're not trying to create pessimism or skepticism.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: You you can succeed at doing this, but you always want to start on a on uh from a point of reality.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Can I take on a quick tangent on being honest?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do it.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: So this is kind of fun because if you were talking to me as an speaking specifically in nonfiction authors right now, uh, a year ago, and you said, Steve, be honest, you know, how important is Goodreads to a nonfiction author?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: Uh would have said you should have your profile and you should have it fleshed out and you should and you should just be present there and then really not worry about it.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: Set it and forget it.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not that critical to a nonfiction author.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: You asked me that today, the world has changed considerably.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um two things have happened.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: One, Amazon is integrating and incorporating Goodreads into the Amazon shopping experience more and more.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, just in January last month, Audible implemented and integrated the Goodreads want-to-read shelf into uh Audible members' um libraries.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: So they can quickly see, well, what's on my Goodreads um want to read shelf to to listen to next?
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: And and and they they'll see it and and it just makes it that much less friction and that much of a more powerful point of purchase opportunity, which didn't exist a year ago.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: So um that's number one reason why Goodreads is more important.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: But number two, and so just to clarify on that, that means you want to have a lot of and you want to have a lot of reviews on Goodreads that show up on your Amazon profile buy uh book page, whether it regardless of the format.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, the reviews and ratings are incorporated, which is another conversion point to metrics, and people you know trust Goodreads reviews more than Amazon in some cases.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: But even beyond that, in the actual shopping experience, like if you're on Audible and you're like, what's my next book?
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, this is my Goodreads Want to read list, is integrated into Audible now.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_02: Let me look at that.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_02: So I don't have to go to Goodreads and look at my list, it's already in Audible.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: So it's just really reduced the friction in terms of you know the opportunity for somebody to listen or buy a book.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: So that's important.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_02: But uh perhaps even more important um is that all of the artificial intelligence large language models utilize Goodreads data because it's open, whereas a lot of the Amazon, other Amazon data is not, but the Goodreads data is much more open to the uh large language models, and it's a primary source of data for ChatGPT, Gemini, uh, Grok, and all the others.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: Interesting.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so if you have a more fleshed out, more ratings, more reviews, more want-to-reads, and just more activity um on Goodreads for your book, you're gonna have a leg up when somebody types into ChatGPT and says, uh, give me a good recommendation for a book on this subject.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_02: Or they even take a photo of the books on their bookshelf and say, What's another book that's like this that I should read?
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: ChatGPT will come back with recommendations.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: They're gonna look at a lot of stuff, not just Goodreads, but Goodreads is gonna be something one of the one of the major components of of their decision on their recommendation.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: So that just another thing I thought was worth mentioning.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_02: Um, oh, that's super interesting.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Now you want to make now you're getting me thinking.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: I love it.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_02: So it didn't used to be as important, but now it's more important than ever to optimize not just your Amazon presence, which I saw Sadie's um um session that that she did on your show, which was uh outstanding and I highly recommend uh watching her um recent um um video on all the different things that are really important to help you optimize your Amazon presence, which is really critical.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, paying attention to metadata categories and things of that nature, um, and and doing so on Goodreads Now is important as well.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: Well, great, Steve.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's been wonderful talking to you.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where can people find out more about your company and what you have to offer?
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_02: You bet, Joel.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so you can find us at get shelflife.com.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: And um, we have a book on Amazon called Before the Best Seller.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in fact, anybody that sees this and on your show or any of your clients, Joel, just have them send me an email with their name and address, and we'll be happy to ship a copy for free.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that's one of our ways of getting our word out.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: That's our own uh book seeding thing.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: We've uhwesome.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: We've given away over 2,000 copies to authors uh in the last year.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_02: And uh we a lot of people find a lot of value from it and um a lot of ideas in there.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: So um we we welcome people to uh to give us a hollow there or find us at get shuffle.com.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Awesome.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you very much.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll include all that information in the notes and everything.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: So excellent.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Steve, thanks for being on the show with us.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm looking forward to our next conversation.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: Like watching the