How Much Does It Cost to Market a Book?

 

Estimates of book marketing costs vary widely. There is no "correct" figure. Really, the sky's the limit. The issue for many of us Poors™ is not how much to spend, but how little and still move books. It's a toughie!

Admittedly, this article was written by a book marketer, so that was her focus. But how many of us can afford to hire our own marketer? I also feel that some of her DIY estimates are too high. At the other end of the spectrum exists those who dazzle us with cheapness. That's unrealistic, too. My advice as a Poor™ would be to do as much as you can yourself, which is going to require research and education; and save your scant budget for the things that matter most.

It's impossible to judge how many sales an author will make. I, like everyone else, imagined my novel becoming a bestseller. I knew it was good, but "goodness" won't even buy me a...comb or a tube of lip balm. (Trust me.) Some factors are somewhat calculable, such as your royalty rate. If you publish with KDP, your book priced under $2.99 nets you a 35% royalty rate, while any price above that equals 70%. Call me cuckoo, but whenever I decide to spend money on marketing, I calculate the number of copies I will need to move in order to break even. (Free promotions, naturally, serve purposes other than making money.)

Tradeoffs, when you have a very limited budget, are absolutely necessary. Yes, I could buy writing software, such as Atticus, for $147.00, or I can write with Word, which is already installed on my computer. I could pay for Scrivener, which has a lot of bells and whistles, such as the ability to rearrange scenes and store multiple drafts, create character bibles and setting descriptions, and apparently much more. If this is something you would find useful, it's relatively inexpensive (everything is relative). I personally don't have trouble keeping all these things straight in my mind, and if I want to do alternate drafts, I can do them in Word and just assign appropriate file names to them. I'm also told that Scrivener has a steep learning curve, which is an automatic "no" from me. Not purchasing it saves me $59 (for the basic program).

For keyword and category research, you can buy Publisher Rocket for $199.00. While I think it would be great to have, there is no way I could justify spending that kind of money. And a salient point: it claims to uncover hidden sub-genres, but that feels like hype. Believe me, I've tried and tried to drill down my categories, but if they're "hidden", they're useless. You can only choose what's visible.** 

**Note: At one time an author could contact KDP and ask its staff to assign specific categories. That's no longer an option.

Thus, as a Poor, I research keywords the old-fashioned way, either by plopping various search terms into the Amazon search bar or (and this is better) by asking AI. In lieu of being able to choose specific sub-genres, for me long-tail keywords are my only alternative. Because I would never be able to come up with long-tail keywords to plug into the search bar, AI has helped me with suggestions. You don't have to blindly accept its recommendations, but they at least give you a jumping-off point. And it's free.

To recruit ARC readers, you can go with BookSprout ($9.00 for up to 25 ARC readers), BookSirens ($10.00 per book plus $2.00 for each reader), a NetGalley co-op for around $75.00), and others, such as Hidden Gems, StoryOrigin, Voracious Readers Only (which is currently on hold), OR you can recruit readers on your own for free. ARC readers can be great for getting those first important Amazon (and Goodreads, I suppose) reviews, but you get what you get. If you solicit ARC readers, be picky. Make sure they're fans of your genre and not just looking for a free book. If you have the option, take a peek at their previous reviews. I used Goodreads groups to find readers for a couple of my books, which netted me only a handful of volunteers and just about that many reviews. Facebook groups are touted as another option.

What about a newsletter? If a newsletter feels valuable to you, Mailerlite is free for authors with up to 250 subscribers. One caution: When you sign up, you immediately get 14-day access to the site's formatted templates, but continuing with the free plan nets you one blank template. I found that a bit misleading. And the "self-build" is clunky to work with. Other free services include Kit, with which you can manage up to 10,000 subscribers for free, beehiiv, (up to 2,500 subscribers) and, of course, Substack. I have no knowledge of the pros and cons of either Kit or beehiiv, but I did at one time use Substack for my newsletter, and it wasn't to my personal taste. Again, everything is subjective; some authors love it.

So far in this hypothetical journey, I've spent $0.00 (by recruiting my own ARC readers). 

But spending some money is necessary. And #1 on that list is my book cover. Yes, you can design your own. Canva is the go-to app for that. I have a paid subscription; thus, I don't know how extensive the free features are, but you can likely design at least a rudimentary cover for free. I've created several covers with Canva (starting with the fourth one here) and they're "okay". But these were for novellas that didn't have much chance in hell of selling, so I refused to spend money on their covers. 

Canva has many book cover templates from which to choose. Once I learned more about cover design, I began choosing from templates that had the typography I wanted, then I uploaded images from Pixabay (both free and royalty-free) and replaced the template's image with my own. Typography is super-important and the hardest piece to get right. With Running From Herself I began with one of my own designs, which was a mistake. I wasted my scant marketing resources buying promos that featured my bad cover, then wondered why I got so little engagement.

Don't skimp on your cover! Once I understood how vital a professional cover was, I researched a lot of companies, but I kept coming back to Miblart. For $270, Miblart will design both an ebook and paperback cover ($220 for just an ebook). For its expertise, it's virtually impossible to find anything cheaper. You can certainly spend more--a lot more--by hiring a free-lance designer or by using a company such as Damonza (awesome designs, but way above my budget). 

And you can buy pre-made covers and/or hire GetCovers (for as little as $10.00 for an ebook). I used GetCovers for my two novella anthologies and paid $35.00 each in order to have both ebook and paperback covers. Because its services are so inexpensive, the author is supplying them with raw data, which means stock images that you must pick out yourself. I was ignorant of the fact that its designers can combine multiple images, but for my purposes I really only needed one decent pic or illustration (see the second and third covers here). My covers aren't awful, but they don't exactly zing, and the typography is plain. However, the company does allows for multiple revisions. I perhaps could have been pickier; instead I just went with them.

One factor that may only become evident when comparing your homemade or cheap cover to a professionally designed one is light. Running From Herself's cover is eye-catching due to its luminscence, whereas my other covers have a matte effect. You want your cover to be eye-catching!

So, a book cover should be your major expense. It's the first thing potential buyers spot, so it had better be good.

So far in this hypothetical journey, I've spent $270.00 (just referencing my main book). 

The blurb is the second thing potential buyers see; that is, if your cover spurs them to explore further. You can hire a blurb writer, such as Book Blurb Magic for $295.00. Jessie Cunniffe is good at what she does and I've studied her (free) tips. But again, her services are beyond my financial reach. There are other blurb writers out there who charge comparable fees as well. For free, you can toil at writing your own blurb. And "toil" it is. I've written multiple versions of my blurb, was never satisfied with any of them; had an X volunteer write one for me, used a modified AI version at one time--you name it, I've tried it. To be honest, I'm still dissatisfied, but I doubt I ever would be. (Maybe it's the story.) In the end, I used a combination of AI and me. AI for the structure, me for the humanization. DON'T simply accept an AI-written blurb. It comes across as machine written (which it obviously is). 

If you don't/can't hire a professional blurb writer, you'll need to invest sweat equity into the process. 

Which brings us to advertising. There is far too much to say about paid ads/promos than is practical for one post. Bottom line, though, your book isn't simply going to be "discovered" without you drawing attention to it. One estimate is that 7,500 ebooks are uploaded to KDP every day. I've published books with zero advertising and my sales numbers reflect that. 

Neither Amazon ads nor Facebook ads ever worked for me, but they do work for others. Experts advise A/B (or "split") ad testing, and that's all great, but impractical for those of us with small budgets. I can't afford to spend money "to see what works". What if neither A nor B works? Wouldn't I have been just as well off sticking with one of them? If you're going to buy Facebook or Amazon ads, you have to do some homework. You need to really learn best practices. Plus, be ready to pull your ad if it's not producing. Don't throw good money after bad.

I've been asked by a follower or two what actually works. There's no magic answer, and believe me, I've looked for one. I can tell you what's "sort of" worked for me:

BargainBooksy ~ An advantage to a Bargain Booksy promo is that it's tailored to genre. Thus, readers who sign up for its newsletter choose the genre(s) they're most interested in, and that's the newsletter they receive. This is far superior to blind marketing. An author can also view the number of newsletter subscribers per genre. The promo price varies, often greatly, by genre with the most popular being the most expensive. Luckily (?) for me, a women's fiction promo only costs $30.00, and that includes 348,000 readers who are specifically looking for women's fiction.

FreeBooksy ~ Yes, you're paying to give away free downloads, but if your goal is to rise in sales rank, a FreeBooksy promo combined with other freebies, such as a KDP free book promotion, can accomplish that, if only for a very brief period. For whatever reason, it also drives KU (Kindle Unlimited) page reads, and those do amount to a few dollars for the author. My comparatively unpopular genre costs $60.00 for a promo (401,000 subscribers). You can choose whether to give your book away to not (but you probably will at some point; that's just the nature of the biz), but be aware that I've never once gotten a review from a free book, if that's what you're hoping for.

BookRaid ~ can work to a degree. It's an economical option because the author pays per click, with a minimum charge of $1 and the max, $60.00. The cost per click depends on your book's price (from 15 cents for a free book to 60 for a book priced at $2.99). There's really little to use by trying it. If your book's a hit, yes, you'll pay $60, but you'll also have a hit.

The Fussy Librarian ~ another inexpensive option. Its most expensive promo is $22.00. I used it once for Running From Herself with zero results, but in their defense, I was still using my bad cover image at the time. Fussy Librarian is one of the best known book promotion sites, with approximately 120,000 subscribers for its bargain newsletter and almost 600,000 for its free one, so it does carry a certain cachet.

I'm not going to ignore the elephant in the room, BookBub. At one time, BookBub was basically the granddaddy of them all, and it still has 15-20 million subscribers. An author's chances of getting a featured deal are practically nil and completely nil if you only distribute through KDP, so an author is left with purchasing an ad. 

To familiarize yourself with how its ads work, you really need to view David Gaughran's video tutorial. I followed his instructions to the letter, and the process is quite involved. Obviously, I couldn't afford to spend a lot of money on an ad, but I've spent $30-$40 on each one. In order to increase your chances of clicks and preferably sales, you need to target comp authors--but not wildly successful ones; more mid-range. That in itself is a tall order. I went to Goodreads and began reading descriptions of novels in my genre, and it was a slog. Then when I found a few, I had to find out just how successful these authors were. So, that's one target. Then you need to decide which countries you want your ad to appear in. Then you need to target the right demographics. Then comes the ad itself. You are presented with maybe three different ad setups, which include room for your book cover and one or two very brief lines of text. Get that elevator pitch ready! Then shorten it...a lot.

It's important to know that BookBub caters to traditional publishing companies. Its main goal is to promote well-known books at bargain prices. Thus, its ads are very nicely done.

Example:

 

Here's the type of ad nobodies like you and me get:

 

Note the difference. (I'm sure this is a great book, by the way.) The indie author's book is tacked onto the very end of the newsletter, signaling it's an afterthought, "but we'll still take your money."

The last BookBub ad I ran netted zero sales. I won't be back.

Thus, in my hypothetical journey, I've spent $270.00 for a cover, plus $30.00 for a BargainBooksy promotion, plus $22.00 for Fussy Librarian, and between $1.00 and (generously) $10.00 for a BookRaid promo. My grand total rounds out to $325.00.

So, it is possible to market a book with very little money if you're willing to do much of the work yourself or rely on free resources. 

I didn't bring editing into the picture, since that's not technically a marketing element, but some would argue otherwise. Rough estimate: If you want to hire a developmental editor, whew! On average, it'll cost you between $2,000 and $4,500 for an 80,000-word manuscript. Get outta here! Maybe an editor is considered necessary, but so is my ability to buy groceries and pay my mortgage. For me, editing my own books was a no-brainer. If the book suffers because of that, well, I did the best I could do.

Look at it this way: If you start making money from sales, you can always up your expenditures. But at least test the waters before you go further.

I have an actual life and a creative life. My actual life has to take precedence.