Best Marketing Investments for Indie Authors: The Reaching More Readers Podcast with Dale L. Roberts and Holly Greenland

In this month's episode of Reaching More Readers, Holly Greenland shares new research suggesting that financial investments in marketing do pay off for many self-published authors. But where should you make those marketing investments, and how can you ensure you're spending wisely? Dale L. Roberts and Holly discuss their views and experiences, offering practical tips to help you make informed decisions.

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Listen to the Podcast: Marketing Investments

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Show Notes

• How to Get Started with Amazon Ads
• Are Book Promotion Sites Right for Me?
• How to Avoid Indie Author Scams

About the Hosts

Dale L. Roberts is a self-publishing advocate, award-winning author, and video content creator. Dale’s inherent passion for life fuels his self-publishing advocacy both in print and online. After publishing over 50 titles and becoming an international bestselling author on Amazon, Dale started his YouTube channel, Self-Publishing with Dale. Selected by Feedspot and LA Weekly as one of the best sources in self-publishing of 2022, Dale cemented his position as the indie-author community's go-to authority. You can find Dale on his website or YouTube

Holly Greenland is a self-published author, content writer and strategic communications consultant. She has worked in marketing and communications for nearly twenty years, including at the BBC, UK Parliament, and award-winning agency Social & Local. Holly is currently completing a Publishing PhD with Kingston University in London, investigating the factors that increase the likelihood of indie author success. Find out more about Holly's writing on her website or connect on LinkedIn.

Read the Transcripts to the Podcast

Dale L. Roberts: Welcome to the monthly segment of Reaching More Readers, brought to you by the Alliance of Independent Authors. I'm Dale L Roberts.

Holly Greenland: And I'm Holly Greenland. Hello.

Dale L. Roberts: We'll be discussing some of the best practices for marketing and promoting your book.

Holly has been on quite an adventure, in fact for the past year that we've known each other I've seen her working her face off on her PhD, and her thesis has just been quite the project, and I was hoping she would share a little bit of data with us today that is pertinent to our discussion of marketing and promotion.

So, first of all, let's back it up. Holly lay the groundwork, like what got you into your PhD? What was the thesis like and all that stuff?

Holly Greenland: So, when I was indie publishing my first book, I was meeting loads and loads of different authors, doing all my research and everything, and I started to think, what are the things that are making some people successful and some people not? Why are some people drawn to it? Why are other people not? So, I was looking for data out there, basically, and there was so little. I was really shocked.

So, I came up with this idea of, actually, I could do a big sort of research project, and who would I do that for? What does that mean? I was put in touch with a brilliant supervisor at Kingston University. She's called, Alison Bavistock, and she's one of the few people that's done some actual academic research on this. So, someone just linked me up really, it happens a lot, I think, for writers. So, she's got a background in publishing and has looked at the self-published community before.

So, I proposed this idea and then before I knew it, middle of COVID, off I was going on a three-year, as you say, adventure into the whole world of indie publishing, which has been really fascinating.

The biggest part of it was a big survey, which some of our listeners may have even filled out through the Alliance of Independent Authors or some of the other sites and forums that shared it, and had nearly a thousand authors complete the survey overall.

So, it's a big data set and over 600 of those were indie authors self-publishing their work, and I got just the most amazing amount of data.

But I should probably say, at the moment I'm just at this phase, anyone out there has done a PhD, where you've submitted but you're waiting for your final external examiner, so I can't reveal everything right now, but there were a few little bits I thought, okay, I think Dale might be interested in this. So, I thought I'd share it. Shall I give you a few little snippets?

Dale L. Roberts: Absolutely, I think it's very interesting. First of all, let's address the fact that you had to manage a thousand different data points, not to mention all these sub points. What was that process like for you?

Holly Greenland: It was crazy. As part of going through the process, because with any kind of academic writing you've got to go through a sort of ethical process before you even get going, so that was a big process. Then actually writing the survey, getting it out there, sharing it.

Amazing community that came back, the indie author community, which was brilliant. I think people were quite shocked, actually, in terms of academic circles, how many people responded.

But yeah, the amount of data is crazy. So, I did a course within the course with UCL, which is another London university, in statistics, because then I needed to know, how do I work out what's actually statistically valid out of all the data I had?

And I asked a lot. So, I was asking about people's personality types, so they had to fill in about 50 questions just on that section, all of the demographics, and then one of the sections which I thought I'd talk about today was about people's previous experience and their current investments. Which was something that really interested me, because obviously I've got background in marketing and comms and had in my head, actually that must be a massive benefit to people, and I do see that in the community. I don't know if you do. Where people say, oh, if only I had experience in marketing, it would help me no end.

Dale L. Roberts: The famously will say, I'm not a great marketer, I'm not a great marketer, and I think with the data you're going to share, because spoiler alert, already shared some of this information with me before we went on here, I think it's very interesting because what you're going to share is going to singe some people's eyebrows and really surprise people.

Holly Greenland: Yeah, absolutely. So, one of the questions we asked was very specifically, have you had a previous or current job in marketing? And when we correlated that to people who are finding success, commercial success, because obviously success can mean all sorts of things for indie authors, but if you're thinking specifically about commercial success, so people who were making the money they needed to live and making a profit.

So, there was a way that we factored in what commercial success meant. People who had a job current or past in marketing did not correlate to a higher likelihood of success. So, it may well have helped them, but there was no statistical evidence actually having that experience improved your likelihood of success. So, people without that experience are just as likely to find success, which I think is actually really heartening. So yeah, there may be positives that may just not be statistically significant, but in fact, everyone can make a success of marketing their work and finding commercial success.

So, that I thought was really interesting. I don't know what you think about that.

Dale L. Roberts: Yeah, you would think somebody with a marketing background would be able to just absolutely crush it in this business if they're going into this, and I'm sure there are a ton of people out there. I know a copywriter, she does marketing herself, she just absolutely crushes it with her stuff. I just assumed that every marketer would have that unfair advantage over authors that don't have it.

So, what do you think is the secret sauce? What is that difference maker then? Because obviously if we don't have that background in marketing, what's that difference, because obviously it seems like it's a level playing field?

Holly Greenland: Yeah, so one of the things we're finding through personality through other elements, was that it seems to be people who have a real kind of grit and resilience that are potentially breaking through or maybe making the difference if they're lacking in some areas. So, things like marketing. So, that's one thing I think is quite interesting.

Another reason I think it may be that having that background might be great, but you can get past it, is that there is so much information out there, because indie authorship is such a community, and we did find that in the comments as well.

A lot of the reasons that people were self-publishing rather than going through a publisher, and bearing in mind about 50% of the people that answered hadn't even approached an agent or a publisher, they weren't people doing this, as some people seem to think, oh, it's some sort of last resort. No, that didn't seem to be what we found. It was a conscious choice.

So, these are people who are going in with their eyes open and doing their research, finding ALLi, finding communities, and learning what they can to get over any of those issues.

Now, one thing we did find had a slight impact on the likelihood of your commercial success was investing some money in marketing services. Now, this didn't mean that people that weren't were not finding success, but there was evidence that it could increase your likelihood for some people.

So, I thought that was really interesting, and we didn't ask how much money which maybe if we did it again, you might look into that a little bit more deeply.

But because this was a bit of a surprise for us, we just asked around where your investments were. There were really two that made the biggest difference. One, not to do with marketing, but something that I think we probably all recognize, which was proofing. So, investing some money in proofing for those people probably who haven't got, you feel that?

Dale L. Roberts: I agree. It just makes a huge bit of difference.

There's so much, and there is the marketing aspect. I think a lot of people always think that marketing equates to throwing a lot of money to get your book out there, but it sometimes has a lot to do with the packaging, and yeah, proofing makes a big world of a difference.

A good professional cover design, that's marketing. It's placement in the right way and showcasing it so that way, the ideal reader is hooked on something like this.

Holly Greenland: That was an interesting one, actually, because we asked specifically about cover design, and although it didn't come up as having a significant impact, that was really because so many of our responders had invested in their cover.

So, we were still coming out with a recommendation that for most people, it is a worthwhile investment to invest in the cover. Particularly the way that we're moving now, unless you've got skills or free access to high quality covers, it did seem that is almost a pre-requisite.

So, that was an interesting one. Yes, it didn't come up statistically, but overall, it seemed to still be important.

Dale L. Roberts: Interesting. How do you do your book covers? Are you doing them yourself or do you hire a professional?

Holly Greenland: For the mystery series, I have a professional designer who designs cover. Having said it doesn't make a big impact, because I work in marketing there was a designer that I loved her work, so she's designed the covers of those.

Then I worked with an illustrator for the middle grade book, who was brilliant, who was just great. She's called Onyinye Iwu, so that people can find her if they wanted to have a look at her work, she's very good. But yeah, an illustrator who doesn't actually do a lot of cover design, she's just an illustrator that I knew.

But yeah, brilliant work out there for covers, and not massively expensive if you can find the right people and work on something, and have a tight brief, I would say, as well so that you're not going backwards and forwards using lots of time.

Yeah, I have invested in those.

Dale L. Roberts: A dialled in brief for sure. I think there's a lot of people that just throw a title, a subtitle, an author name at them and go, yeah, just make something, try to make sense of this.

Holly Greenland: That's where you can waste a lot of time and money, I think.

Dale L. Roberts: Absolutely. For sure, because I've always been a big proponent of hiring professional cover designers because that is the biggest barrier of entry, because if you don't know what you're doing, it's going to show immediately. Everybody does judge that book by its cover, and that is the biggest marketing aspect that can really be a game changer for you.

I wonder if this story was a little bit different for Holly, all right? Let's say you didn't have the discretionary expense to spend on this. By the way, how much did you end up investing on a cover, if you don't mind sharing?

Holly Greenland: Oh, I think it was in the low hundreds.

Dale L. Roberts: Okay, so about a hundred pounds or so. So, that's pretty reasonable in my opinion. Because I spend anywhere from as low as five bucks over on Fiverr to as much as about a couple hundred bucks with MiblArt, one of my favourite ones. Now, this is not my way of telling everybody, you got to go there, ALLi endorses these folks. No, it's not that. It's just something I'm using here. I just know that I'm garbage at doing cover design.

So, if you were put in a position that financially you couldn't afford it, would you do it yourself or would you try to find a way to get the funds to get it and if so, how would you get those funds?

Holly Greenland: Oh, that's a good question. I think things have changed, even in the few years since I was first looking at cover designs. Things like Canva, other kind of design products where you can bring in images that you can get from even websites like over here, we use Unsplash that has some sort of free imagery.

So, say you were going to use photography, ideally always credit the photographers, particularly if you're using the free ones that they put onto those sites, because I think that is important that people are still getting credit for their work, and obviously these are all where you can see that they are freely available.

So, there are lots of ways that you can make them yourselves. I might be tempted to have a go myself now that I've learned a lot about it, but I think I would probably still try and invest, and just saving up those little bits of money to invest in key bits of the assets and the marketing to go alongside your launch.

I don't think it has to be a lot of money. So yeah, we did find investment was important. We don't know how much that was, but my feeling is, and actually this is a question I've got for you, what are the things right now that have still got kind of bang for your buck at the moment, particularly at a kind of lower end?

So, people who are thinking, oh, okay, I haven't invested, maybe I will give it a little go. And we've said this before, or only ever spend what you can afford. Always try things iteratively. Stop if it's not working. But one thing that I've found is still working for me, because I am still exclusive at the moment, although I hope to change that, with Amazon, is Amazon ads do still make a difference for me at a very low amount that I spend a day when I have them running.

That's something that I think is still working. Are there any things at the moment for you that you think that is actually still a good place to invest your money for marketing?

Dale L. Roberts: Oh, absolutely. If you are publishing your book to Amazon, and you have a little bit of a discretionary expense, and I'll expand on what I mean by a little bit here in just a second, but if you have a little bit of an investment to spend in Amazon advertising to put your book and showcase it in front of the customers in a more ideal situations or placement, then do it, for sure.

I just recommend, first of all, if you're going to do Amazon advertising, study it, learn. They have entire certification courses that you can get for free. You don't have to spend any money, just get into your Amazon ads dashboard. You can do it by way of your marketing tab within the KDP dashboard or you can also, if you're not using KDP for distribution, you can do it through Author Central that you can get into Amazon advertising.

But once you set it up, you've got all your payment details in the billing, you just go over to the top right corner. There's a circle with a question mark in the middle of it. Click on that and it has training courses on it. Click that. Go through it. Study it. It's really good. A lot of it's reading, so you're going to be going through, doing a lot of reading, short quizzes and things, but it will help you understand it better.

But I would say this, you can start, and I know there's a lot of people that cringe when I share something like this, but it's just for the purposes of learning. You could start with a one dollar per day budget. You keep your cost per click embarrassingly low. We're talking like 10 to 15 cents. You're probably not going to get very much traction initially, but it's going to at least give you an idea of how the system works.

If in a perfect world, this is what I learned from the advertising certification course, is $10 a day is generally the best range you're going to want to shoot for in something like that. So, you're looking at about roughly up to $300 per month on something like that.

Now, if you're cringing and you're going Dale, I can't afford that, then walk it back. Figure out what's going to work for you. I just shared with you, just before we hit record, about how Dave Chesson just fired out, the Kindlepreneur if you will, had fired out an email sharing some of his findings in that the Amazon advertising, yeah, it's a pay to play world.

What this does is, when you're using Amazon ads, you are further training Amazon's algorithms to serve your book to the most ideal reader, because without the ads it's just got to figure it out based on the keywords you select, the categories you select, and all that type of data, and also the “also-boughts”, anytime there's other books that are bought within your niche along with your book.

So, that right there, is okay, but it gets better when you start using Amazon ads. Unfortunately, I have to be totally anecdotal on this one because Kindlepreneur did the whole deep dive on something like that, but it is super interesting to hear that coming from an ads expert like him. And it's not like Dave is just talking out his rear end, because he actually has a former employee of Amazon advertising.

So, that person's going to probably check him if he's full of doo-doo, I've got to keep this one PG, family friendly.

This is very interesting because now what it does is, the Amazon ads, you go in and you further start to tailor exactly the audience you want it to be served to, the targets, the keywords, it could be the categories, it could be the products. All those things make a huge difference to showcase your book in the best possible way.

So, this is something that lends a little bit more credibility to exactly what I've said, of just starting out with a dollar per day, keep that cost per click low. Sure, you're not going to be making thousands of dollars with a dollar per day. I'm just going to guarantee you. You might be lucky to get a dollar back. You might be lucky to get $3 back, but it's going to at least get it to where you're learning the process, and in the same instance, you're training the Amazon algorithms, if that makes sense.

Holly Greenland: I do think, because there's a kind of word of mouth, for particularly some of the genres, that getting it out there to the right people, even if you're not making a lot of money from some of those sales, it will be starting to get into the right groups. You never know who's going to pick that up. Try it out, see how it goes.

One of the things I still hear about, I'm a part of a lot of forums and communities and things, is investing in things like the BookBub deals. I don't know what you think about that, the feature deal kind of elements.

I think we talked once before about these sort of promotion sites and deals and things like that, so there's a lot more information out there, but that's one that still keeps coming up.

Dale L. Roberts: It really is. It's the holy grail of book marketing. I will tell you, if you can land a featured deal with BookBub, get the money, try to make it work. I've only ever heard once of a person just breaking even.

Everybody else I've always heard get tons and tons of downloads, whether it's on the free promotions or it's through like a discounted promotion of some sort, they're always seeing a return on investment because as soon as that free promo is done, it somehow influences the algorithms to serve out your book to even more people, so then that victory train keeps rolling.

Free book promotions aren't quite what they used to be, but they still can be effective in getting your book into the right reader's hands. Especially if you've got a backlog of books, it's going to get people to where they get a taste test of exactly what you're doing, but BookBub, oh my gosh.

Let me tell you, BookBub has turned me down. I literally have to go see a therapist about it on a regular basis, because I'm like, why can't I be good enough for you, BookBub? But it's true. They get thousands upon thousands of authors that apply for these things. So, they do have to be very selective with who they're sharing with their audience and when, because they have such a massive email list of voracious readers for various genres that they do have to be selective.

So, there's never any hate, put towards them, but it is a pretty penny to invest in BookBub. Now, they always recommend, and they fall back on it, when they do reject you, it's almost like they want to cushion the fall for you. They're like, but we've got the pay per click ads. Come on, big guy, you got this. Pay per click ads.

I haven't played with those just yet. David Gaughran has been a very big proponent. By the way, if you guys have never heard of David Gaughran, look him up. Fantastic, love him. He just started doing some YouTube videos more recently, and I love exactly all the stuff that he's shared, but he's a great resource for BookBub ads, and I believe he even put out a book about it as well.

Holly Greenland: Oh, that's worth knowing, because yeah, I hear about them, I desire them, I've never actually got involved in them. That would maybe increase my chances if I actually had to go.

And then any other, I know we're getting to the end of our time, remind me the other cheaper options out there for little bits of marketing, investing, and maybe a bit of extra support, places people can look initially if they're thinking, okay, this is the time I'm going to invest a bit of money.

What do we think are the places to go and look to?

Dale L. Roberts: I definitely would say still check all services through ALLi's Watchdog List, and that is probably one of the best ways to do it. The Watchdog List is going to make your life a lot easier. They go through and they scrutinize all of the different brand service products and companies based on the criteria that we love to adhere to at ALLi, and so I would say check that list.

Now, a few off the top of my head, I do know Written Word Media is one of those that's on it, as well as Cravebooks. Those two are relatively inexpensive. It just depends on what you're going to select from, because Written Word Media has so many different promotional avenues. It's crazy the number of things that they have.

Cravebooks is a little cheaper than Written Word Media. I've used both of them with great results and I didn't need to burn a hole in my bank account in order to do it.

Now, if for some reason those tend to be a little too expensive for you, you can always look into this, gasp, I know everybody's going to probably cringe just a little bit when I say this, Fiverr. Fiverr is a great platform to look into.

Now, take this with a pinch of salt, obviously, because much like any type of marketing and promotion, nothing is one size fits all, and do not invest what you can't stand to lose. So, I've done some Fiverr promotional gigs, had some great success, and some people go, and they try to use it, and they saw no success whatsoever.

By the way, not all the gigs are $5. A lot of people just assume it's always five bucks. It's not like it was in its early days.

They spend $20 and they didn't see a return on investment. Unfortunately, that's just one of those situations of, I can't promise the same results for you that I would get, or vice versa. You might find something that works really well for you.

A lot of marketing and promotion comes down to a little bit of trial and error. It's figuring out, okay, what kind of budget do I have that I could be able to spend this. I would say that if you're on training wheels, you can always test Fiverr, take it for a run, see exactly what you want to do. I just recommend that, first of all, make sure this person has reviews. I look for a seller who has level 1 or level 2, or top-rated seller, any of those badges on them means that they've been around the block. I look at those reviews and I want to see what people are having a problem with. If there's a bunch of low reviews, are they saying these gigs are late or I didn't see any results, then you might want to proceed with caution.

I actually loved one of them. I spent five dollars on it, and anytime that I’ve done a book promotion of some sort, what they do is they find all of the different book promotion sites that are 100% free and they submit it on my behalf. That part, that saves me a lot of time.

I actually shared this with my buddy Ross Brand, and he was just like, why didn't you share this with me a long time ago? I would've used this! And I was just like, I'm sorry, Ross, I can't remember every last little thing that I talk about in my videos, but yeah, there are aspects that you can look into.

Again, just check those sellers to make sure that they're good, because there are going to be some wolves in sheep's skin. Fiverr doesn't vet every single freelancer on their platform. In the event that you find something unsatisfactory, leave a low review, or you can even ask for a refund because Fiverr's been known to do something like that where they're like, Ooh, yeah, they didn't do what they were supposed to do, here's your money back. They'll typically credit you and you can use it on another gig.

Holly Greenland: I'm so glad you reminded me of the ALLi Watchdog desk, because it is so important. We've been doing quite a lot of content at ALLi at the moment about scams that are going around, phishing scams, all sorts of things that just leave a bad taste in your mouth, don't they?

You have to be so careful as soon as you're investing money or you're taking someone up on something. So, the watchdog desk is such a good point, and also, yeah, anywhere you can look where you can see the reviews, make sure you're looking at them and checking it out, and not investing too much before you've had a go and seen if it works for you. Because I think with any of these marketing options you can be caught out. If you are though, don't take it to heart, I would also say. I think you can feel embarrassed or stupid if you think, oh, actually, do you know what, in retrospect, that was never going to have paid off for me.

Like you say, you put $20 down and then you think, oh, but you've just got to pick yourself back up. Because when you're indie publishing, it's all on your shoulders and you're going to sometimes take a wrong turn. Get back on it, resilience, go back to the resilience.

Dale L. Roberts: For sure.

One last thing I would probably add to this is word of mouth. Ask around author communities if you happen to be. Any ALLi member who's inside the ALLi member forum, ask around. I've got a discord community, 100% free that you can join in. Ask. It never hurts, because someone might be able to tell you, and again you've just got to weigh those options.

I would say though, Holly, if you ever get cold-prospected by a company via email, and you didn't sign up for any email newsletter through them, throw that stuff in spam. Just get it out of there, because good marketing companies like BookBub, Written Word Media and Cravebooks, and so on, do not cold prospect because they're spending time trying to get results for authors and not trying to gather more authors. That's just not their bag. That's something you want to avoid altogether.

But boy, we went a little long in today's episode, but hopefully everybody got a lot of good information. I think the big, mind-blowing situation to me was when you shared how marketers don't have an edge over somebody without the marketing background. That's really cool.

Holly Greenland: Very frustrating for me. I thought that was going to making me my millions, but no, people catch up really quick.

Dale L. Roberts: As we start to wrap things up, we want to thank you, of course, as per usual, if you're listening to this, please, if you have any kind of questions, concerns, comments, you happen to be an ALLi member inside the forum, go ahead and ping either one of us. Holly or I will be, of course, hanging out there and you can always just hit us up. We're happy to cover any of those questions.

In the meantime, any last thoughts before we go ahead and disconnect today's podcast?

Holly Greenland: No, just think about what's going to be your first step into marketing if you're new in, and if you've been around for a while, maybe try something else, mix it up a bit, tiny little investments, test things out, and see what works for you.

I guess that's my big tip to take away from today.

Dale L. Roberts: On behalf of Holly Greenland, this is Dale. We both appreciate you tuning in, and we'll catch you in next month's Reaching More Readers.