How to market a self-published book: what to do first, and what to skip

I've worked with over 350 indie authors since 2019, mostly in sci-fi and fantasy. Most of the lists on this topic give you 50 ideas and no order. This one gives you nine steps, and the order is the point.

Why most self-published books don't sell

I hear some version of this every week: "My book has one review. I put $1,000 into Facebook ads and got five sales."

My answer is always the same. Stop the bleeding. Cut the ads off.

It's rarely the writing. The problem is that the marketing happened in the wrong order. The ads sent people to a page that couldn't convert. The cover didn't look like the genre, the blurb read like a summary, and there were no reviews to back it up. Every click cost money and went nowhere.

Readers answer two questions on your Amazon page in a few seconds: Is this book good? and Will I enjoy it? If the page can't answer both, no amount of ad spend will fix it.

So we fix the storefront first, then turn on traffic. Ads come last, on purpose.

Step 1: Know your shelf

Before you touch your cover, figure out exactly which shelf your book sits on and what readers on that shelf expect to see.

Search Amazon for your tropes and themes, not just your genre. Think "found family space opera" or "portal fantasy with a heist," not just "fantasy." Then list 15 to 30 books that match yours. At least half of them should have an Amazon Best Sellers Rank under 50,000. That rank works like golf: the lower the better.

From that list, pick five to ten authors who are selling right now. Those are your comps. Your comps are how you'll say "readers of these books will enjoy mine" in your blurb, your ads and your targeting.

Two tips:

• Don't ignore traditionally published books. You're not reinventing the wheel. You're seeing what works.
• Look your comps up in the Facebook Ads Library. If an author in your space is running ads, you can see what they're testing.

Get the shelf wrong and you pay for it later: wasted clicks, then rough reviews from readers who came for something else.

Step 2: A cover that belongs on that shelf

Your cover has two jobs. It sets expectations, and it gets people to click. (Well, three jobs. It also holds the book together.)

Most authors judge their cover full size on a desktop screen, zooming in on the details. Readers never see it that way. They see a thumbnail the size of a postage stamp.

The thumbnail test: pull up your genre's bestseller page on Amazon, drop your cover in among the others, and ask two questions. Does it belong on this page? Does it still stand out? It costs nothing and can save a launch.

A cover that matches the genre makes a big, big difference. I've seen a new genre-specific cover bring in up to three times more readers for the exact same ad spend.

You don't need to spend $1,000. What I've seen at each price:

• About $15: premade covers from places like GetCovers (affiliate link). Fine for testing.
• About $200: MiBlart (affiliate link). The best bang for your buck.
• $600 to $2,000: freelance designers. Past this range you hit diminishing returns.

And unless you're a designer, don't make it yourself. Being a writer and being a graphic designer are two very different skills.

Step 3: A book description that sells

Your cover gets someone to click. Your blurb gets them to buy.

The blurb is the biggest lever you have, and the easiest to pull. It's the Amazon description, not the back of the paperback, so it takes about three clicks to change. When ads underperform, the blurb is the first thing I check because it's the easiest thing to diagnose.

Most authors write summaries. A blurb is sales copy. It sells an experience and a feeling, not a plot outline. I teach a four-layer blurb:

Aim for 150 to 170 words, emotion first. The full breakdown, with three before and after rewrites and a template, is in how to write a book blurb that sells.

Step 4: Categories and keywords

Categories and keywords are the free visibility Amazon gives you. Most authors pick the obvious categories. The right ones can put you on bestseller lists your competition hasn't found.

Categories: look for ones with enough traffic to matter and little enough competition that you can win. You're never locked in. You can change them later.

Keywords: you get seven backend slots, plus your subtitle. I look for phrases with:

• Over 100 Amazon searches a month
• A low competition score (I use Publisher Rocket, affiliate link, and aim for under 50)

Ask yourself: "If someone types this into Amazon, do I want my book to show up?" Leave out other authors' names, "bestseller," "free" and "Kindle Unlimited."

Over the years I've lost faith in backend keywords because you can't track them. I still believe in the subtitle. Set this up once, spend an hour or two on it, and reuse it across the series.

Step 5: Price it to sell

From all my testing, the sweet spot for a first-in-series ebook is $3.99 or $4.99. Later books can go to $5.99.

I don't want a book to live at 99 cents. It's fine for a short price promotion. As a permanent price it earns far too little, readers expect lower quality, and read-through is lower. At the top end, stay at or below $9.99, because above that Amazon's royalty drops from 70% to 35%.

Charging more doesn't mean earning more. At $10 you get far fewer sales.

Your paperback helps here too. With fiction, about 98% of sales are ebooks. A $19.99 paperback sitting next to a $4.99 ebook makes the ebook look like a great deal.

Step 6: Your first 5 to 10 reviews

Amazon has no rule that says you need 10 reviews. But 10 reviews versus one or two makes a big, big difference to a cold reader deciding whether to take a chance.

My working minimum before cold ads is 5 reviews, ideally 10. Not 100. Getting those first five to ten is the hardest part.

Where they come from:

• Early readers. Friends and family, your email list, and review services like BookSirens, Hidden Gems, Booksprout and a NetGalley co-op.
• Editorial reviews. Readers' Favorite (affiliate link) is my favorite. These go at the top of your blurb as credibility.
• The quiet paperback launch. More on this in Step 7.

Skip the expensive review services. The cost per review is far too high.

Once ads are running, the math takes over. Across 11 books I tracked, between 2% and 11% of readers left a rating or review, and the average was 7%. So 100 sales brings in about seven ratings, and about a quarter of those are written reviews. Books that leaned heavily on 99-cent promos sat near the bottom of that range.

Once you have your first ten, stop hunting for reviews and start getting readers. The percentage does the rest.

Step 7: Launch in the right order

I call this "Paper First, Digital Blast."

1. Soft launch the paperback, about 30 days early. No announcement and no ads. Its job is to collect your first Amazon reviews and buy you some breathing room to build your ads. I don't recommend advertising the paperback. It's mostly wasted ad spend.
2. Hard launch the ebook once you have your reviews, ideally 10. The reviews are already on the page on day one, so you can promote right away.
3. Turn everything on at once. Facebook ads, Amazon ads, and a Goodreads giveaway go live the same day.
4. Use the 30-day window. For the first 30 days you're eligible for Hot New Release in your categories. To push for it, stack temporary price promotions and the Goodreads giveaway, and if you're in Kindle Unlimited, book BookBub's New & Kindle Unlimited deal for week two or three.

Pause your Facebook ads during 99-cent promos. The promo sales muddle the data.

If you have a Book 2, put it on pre-order before the Book 1 hard launch. The answer to a cliffhanger is a pre-order link on the very next page.

Step 8: Paid ads (and which ones)

Now your page can convert, so ads finally make sense.

Facebook ads are the main driver of sales. They get most of the budget, around 80 to 90%. Clicks run about 15 to 30 cents, and the ads reach readers who love books like yours. My full playbook is in Facebook ads for books: the sci-fi and fantasy playbook.

Amazon ads get the other 10 to 20%. Their clicks cost more, 80 cents to $1.20, and the cost per new reader is almost always higher. I still run them, because nothing beats the data. The keywords and comps that convert on Amazon sharpen your Facebook targeting. The two feed each other. More in my real-numbers guide to Amazon ads.

Test images, not just copy. Start with five to eight images. Still images beat video almost every time, and most of the time your least favorite image will perform best. Don't trust your eye. I give each image 200 clicks, then look at which ones actually sold before switching anything back on.

What "working" looks like: 1.5% to 4% of Facebook clicks turning into Amazon sales. On Amazon ads, about 5% is good and 10% is excellent.

Change one thing at a time, then give it two to three weeks. And skip Instagram placements. Conversion rates are about the same, but the clicks cost more, so almost 98% of the time the cost per new reader comes out higher than Facebook.

Step 9: Measure cost per new reader

This is the number that decides everything. I measure everything by cost per new reader: what you spend in ads, divided by the new readers it brings in.

It's not clicks, and it's not likes. Once you have this number, every decision gets easier. Keep doing what brings it down, and cut what doesn't.

A healthy range across my clients is $2 to $10 per new reader. Around $3 is where profitability starts to show up.

Then compare it with value per new reader, what each new reader is worth to you across the whole series. Read-through drives most of that. A healthy rate from book to book is 50% to 70%. I break both numbers down in cost per new reader vs value per new reader.

This is why Book 1 isn't meant to be profitable on its own. It's your market test. Every reader you win for Book 1 is worth three books, not one. For the authors I work with, the flip tends to come around Book 3. That's a pattern I've seen, not a guarantee. It's also why a three-book series is the sweet spot.

One more thing: attribution undercounts. For every sale I can trace to a Facebook ad, I usually see another 1.6 to 3.2 show up that I can't trace. I call these ghost sales.

A real example: an epic fantasy series I work with ran Facebook ads for two months after fixing the page. Book 1 got 165 sales directly attributed to the ads, and once ghost sales were counted, the cost worked out to about $3 per new reader. Book 2 launches next month to readers who are already waiting for it.

What to skip

This is where I'll save you the most money. I've watched authors spend on all of these.

• Influencers. Across 30 influencers and $2,800, one author got five sales, which is $560 a sale. Across 52 influencers and $5,300, another got 12 sales. Do I recommend influencers? I can't say no loudly enough.
• Bookmarks and QR codes. Close to a thousand bookmarks handed out. Not one sale.
• Posting every day on social media. One author posted three times a week on Instagram for nine months and got three sales. Another got 500,000 views and 13 sales. Not all your followers even see your posts. An email list is by far the better place to spend that time.
• Big marketing packages. One author spent almost $10,000 on a package and got three sales. Another paid $10,570 and got one. These companies prey on authors' lack of knowledge and on their emotions. If someone can't tell you their cost per new reader, walk away.
• Goodreads, mostly. Goodreads is useful for one thing: the giveaway.

The minimum is the launch plan above plus ads. Everything else is extra.

How to sell more books on Amazon

Amazon is where around 98% of an indie fiction author's sales happen, so most of this article already applies. Five Amazon-specific things:

1. Stay in KDP Select for your first 90 days. Promoting one book on one platform is overwhelming enough. In most fiction categories, 70 to 80% or more of books are in Kindle Unlimited, so that's what readers expect. The full math is in KDP Select pros and cons.
2. Use Amazon Attribution links in your Facebook ads, so you can see which ads turn into sales. Here's the free setup.
3. Watch your Best Sellers Rank against your comps. If they're under 50,000 and you're not, go back to the cover and blurb before you spend more.
4. Chase Hot New Release in your first 30 days with stacked promos.
5. Publish the next book. Amazon rewards series. The best way to sell more of Book 1 is to have a Book 2. (If you're still deciding how long it should be, here's how long a novel should be by genre.)

What it costs

There are three honest routes. For every number in the industry, see how much book marketing costs.

For perspective: when BookScan's lead analyst looked at new releases from the ten biggest US publishers, about half sold fewer than 1,000 print copies. A big publisher behind you is no guarantee either. Spending more isn't the goal. Spending in the right order is.

Frequently asked questions