Does Twitter Advertising Work?

Twitter LogoAs I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been trying to put more focus on marketing my writing. So far, I’ve written two books, but I’ve had a hard time generating sales.  The reviews for my first novel, The Wannabe Vampire were good.  My second, Shampires, didn’t get the publicity or reviews it deserved, because my life pretty much imploded right after TWV was released.

Since then, I’ve been trying to play catch-up.  I decided to try a Twitter promotion, as offered by Books Go Social,  in the hopes that it would increase sales.

Before I write about Twitter’s effectiveness as an advertising platform, I think it’s important to understand why Shampires wasn’t promoted.  Here’s part of what I wrote in the acknowledgements which sums up what happened:

In the 26 months since The Wannabe Vampire was published, I have faced a number of personal and professional challenges.   Shortly after my first book was released, my spouse of 13 years asked me for a divorce.   A few months later, my editor was taken ill, and my family experienced some of the profound and painful difficulties associated with the adoption of an older child.

Shampires was the unfortunate victim of all this craziness.  Even though the final draft was completed in early 2013, the book wasn’t published on Amazon until well over a year later in August of 2014.  I didn’t do any marketing — no press releases, no blog tours, no requests for reviews, no nothing, because I was still wrapped up in dealing with my personal business.

In retrospect, I probably should have waited to release Shampires until I’d gotten my sh*t together a little better.  Of course when I released the book I didn’t think that I’d still be dealing with so much emotional, personal, financial, and professional fallout.   One never plans to be mired in gobbledegook.  It just happens.

So here I am, nine months later with a “new” book that hasn’t been promoted.  Since most reviewers want hot-off-the press stuff, I haven’t tried to shop the book around to sites that would normally review it.  Instead, I decided to try my hand at advertising.

My first attempt was to try some targeted ads on Facebook.  Rather than do a lot of direct marketing of Shampires, since it didn’t have many reviews, I thought I’d refocus my efforts on TWV in the hopes that people who liked that title would read the second in my series.  It worked, and I sold copies of both, but it turned out to be a very expensive proposition.  For every dollar I earned, I spent about $4.61 in advertising.

I didn’t go into the business of writing to become wealthy or famous (though I wouldn’t say “no” if either were offered) but I’d like this endeavor to come close to breaking even.  Clearly, Facebook wasn’t the way to go.

After doing a lot of Googling, I ran across the two companion web sites Books Go Social and The Book Promoter.  I read their stuff, saw that their authors were making sales, and thought it might work for me.  Even better, they offered a money-back guarantee.

I forked over $119 for a three-week Twitter promotion, downloaded their free guide on how to make e-books more marketable, followed their instructions to the best of my ability, signed up for a Twitter account, and waited.

I’ll admit, I was excited. The folks at Books Go Social were saying that one of their authors had sold 5,000 books in a 24 hour period!  While I didn’t think I’d be that lucky, I figured with those numbers I could easily make back the cost of the advertising.

As soon as the promotion started, my Twitter feed began to fill with my tweet, which also carried a link to my book on Amazon:

Pursued by a ghost obsessed stalker, Michael Alexander is NOT your typical vampire.

The message went out over and over and over again.  It got some re-tweets.  It got some favorites.  A few people started following my Twitter account.  I started following people back and thanking them for their re-tweets.  I started watching my KDP and Createspace sales reports.

You know what happened?

Nothing.  * Insert the sound of crickets chirping here. *

Big fat goose egg.

My sales had been in a slump because I’d stopped all forms of marketing prior to running the targeted Facebook ads.  My author’s web site and blog had been offline for months because the server hosting it had died.  I hadn’t posted much to my Facebook page.  Any increase in sales would have been noticeable.

A week after the promotion started, I was staring at the incontrovertible fact that even after a zillion tweets, I hadn’t sold anything.  I e-mailed Books Go Social and asked for a copy of their click report.

They sent me a screen snapshot that indicated that from April 18 – April 23, my tweet had received a total of 1,242 clicks.  Supposedly, they were sending my message to a total of 426,000+ people and that the response was “above average.”

A click through rate of 0.002%?  That didn’t seem all that great to me, especially when not one of my clicks had resulted in a sale.  When I asked for further advice, I was given the following:

We looked at your amazon page and our suggestion would be to consider changing the cover, and shortening the title a bit.

I don’t know, but the suggestions seemed pretty generic.  Shorten the title? Sure, but it’s only three words long.  Perhaps I should delete the word “the.”  Would that make a difference in sales?  Swap out my professionally-designed cover?  Okay, but that’s not something that can be done in an instant, and I think what I have fits very well with the theme of the book.

I wrote back asking for specific advice.  Change the title, how?  Change the book cover, how?  This stuff matters.  Here’s the response I got:

I suggest removing the teen/YAs from the cover and making it darker and edgier.

This title, and how well it is doing, should be considered in the search for a better way to pitch:

[link to book, removed out of fairness to the author]

The book in question had a title that was ten words long. So much for short titles.  As for the cover art, it looked to me like it had come from one of those pre-designed book covers you find on the Internet.  It wasn’t bad, but it didn’t look especially stunning to me.

What really knocked me to the floor, though, was that the book in question was a 99-cent short story about werewolves.  I don’t know, but it felt insincere to compare the marking efforts of a short story to those needed for a book.

(After reading the critical reviews of the title, I learned that the author split a novel into eight different pieces, each sold separately.)

Darker and edgier will attract a wider audience. The current covers looks ok, but I think you need something stronger.

Take a look at these cover designs to see what a cover can be like:

[link to a graphic designer, also removed]

That lady designs covers too, for a modest fee. Tell her I sent you.

The graphic artist in question looked like she was decent enough, though most of her cover designs seemed rather repetitive.  It seemed awfully convenient that they were using my lack of sales to pitch a graphic design buddy of theirs.

Oh, and the “modest fee?”  It worked out to €250, or $278 USD for an e-book and print cover.  The designer offers the use of two images from a stock photo site and three rounds of revisions.  While I don’t think that’s an outrageous price, it’s not chump change, either.

In my case, swapping out the cover isn’t a trivial doing.  I will need to re-edit my manuscript, since I give credit to the original cover designer in my acknowledgements, and update it on KDP and Createspace.  While I may take that advice under consideration, it’s not a project I’m going to undertake in the middle of a three-week promotion.

So, what else could I do?  Not immediately realizing that the book in question was a short story, I thought that perhaps the issue was pricing.  I decided to kick off a Kindle Countdown deal.  I told Books Go Social that I would run one over the weekend of May 1-3, and they said they would tweet about it.  (They didn’t.)

By Sunday afternoon, I looked at my KDP report for the length of my promotion, and saw that I had sold one book, which I don’t think came from my Twitter campaign.  How do I know this? Earlier in the week I’d been speaking to a professional contact about ebooks, and she had asked me how to set up the Kindle Reader on her iPad.  She told me that if I’d help her, she’d buy my book.  Saturday morning, I e-mailed her instructions and a link to my discounted title, and shortly after I sent her that e-mail, the sale appeared on my KDP report.

Odds are that one sale came from my real-life contact and not my Twitter campaign.  I’ll ask her when I see her later this week, and then I’ll know for sure.

Even if I give credit to Books Go Social for my one sale, the economics of their campaign does not work.  After spending $119, I earned a stunning 66 cents in royalties.  On Sunday, I asked them to cancel my promotion and to refund my money.

In fairness, I must acknowledge that Books Go Social answered my request promptly.  They promised to refund my money later today since Monday was a holiday in Ireland.

So are paid Twitter promotions useful to unknown authors trying to get their name out there?  I don’t think so.  I’m going to guess that Twitter might be more useful if you are trying to market to a list of followers that you’ve carefully cultivated yourself over time.  Buying fans doesn’t work.

And, for what it’s worth, it looks like I’m not the only person who hasn’t found these types of promotions helpful.  Here’s a thread I found on the Kindle Direct Publishing community forum that echoes my experience.  Someone named Lyn wrote:

Hi, I have used a couple of paid options including BGS. I only paid their minimum option and they, together with the other ones I used did not generate any sales. BGS do however have an active, free, facebook page. It is helpful to join this but I certainly wouldn’t pay again for services. I think it is easy to get caught up in the hype and there are a lot of people out there willing to take money off “authors.” The reality is it is hard/impossible to claw back and the best advice I have received is do it yourself as best you can, and get on with the next novel.

That’s probably good advice.

Edited 5/5/2015 9:16 AM: Books Go Social issued my refund this morning.  Even though they didn’t help me increase my sales, at least I got my money back.  Thumbs up on that score.

Edited 5/19/2015 11:31 AM: I heard from my professional contact.  It turned out she had not purchased the one book sold on Saturday.  I guess Books Go Social can claim credit for the 66 cents I made that day.

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