Dear O'Abby: Why is book marketing so hard?

 Dear O'Abby,

I'm an author with a few books out, but none of them seem to sell much.  I've experimented with various ways of marketing my books, but none of them have been very successful and I've ended up spending more on marketing than I've got back in sales.  Which is not sustainable.

Why is this so hard?

Kind regards,

Sales-less

Dear Sales-less,

Book marketing is hard.  People don't want or expect to pay a whole lot for a book (especially an ebook), so the cost of marketing a book often can't be built into the price.  Usually you'd expect around 10% of the cost of a product to be put aside for marketing; with a .99c ebook, that 10% isn't worth much.

We're also working in a very crowded market.  Millions of new books are published every year, and these new books have to compete with all the billions of books that already exist in the world too.  It takes a lot to be heard in all that noise.

Then there's the fact that most people only read 4-10 books a year.  If you read 100+ books a year, you're more likely to be willing to take risk on something new and different and unknown.  If you only read five, you're likely to be more selective and to ensure the book you invest time and money into is something you'll enjoy.  These readers tend to return to authors they know and love, read series, and make decisions on what to read based on reviews, public opinion and from having seen the book advertised to them several times across different platforms.

All of this makes selling a book as a new author very difficult. In my opinion, the most important thing to do is to generate positive reviews. Without a significant number of four and five star reviews on Amazon, your book is basically invisible to the majority of readers.  And yes, I agree that sucks, but unfortunately, that's the reality we live in.  Any marketing you do needs to drive people who read your book to leave reviews so your book becomes more visible.

You also need to build fans, the people who will eagerly anticipate your next book, and purchase it without much thought just because they have enjoyed your previous books.  It's very hard to earn much with a single book in your catalogue.  There's a reason so many authors write series...

So, yeah...  That's why book marketing is so hard.

X O'Abby