Ads from the ongoing
Clarkesworld campaign.
(size reduced)

I’ve run three online ad campaigns to try to get the word out on my newest novel, The Red: First Light, published last March. For those new to me or my website, the novel is a very near-future, high-tech, military science fiction thriller — and it’s indie-published, so I’m on my own for publicity.

I had a couple of good publicity opportunities when TRFL was released. This helped sales in the first six weeks, although the novel never got anywhere near qualifying as an “indie success story.” So, having no luck getting the book reviewed***, I decided to experiment with online ads.

(***Update: The Red: First Light has since been reviewed at both Tor.com and Locus Online.)

I’m going to guess that most of you reading this never click on online ads. I’ve clicked on a few, but it’s rare. So why would I even consider spending meaningful amounts of money on web ads? I had a few reasons:

1. I HAD TO DO SOMETHING –this was a big reason. “Something is better than nothing” & “Try stuff” — Right? Yes, it costs money. On the other hand I’ve already made a huge investment just in the time devoted to writing the book. What’s a few hundred dollars more?

2. I’m not entirely unknown in the field. In the mid-nineties through the early 2000s I had six hard science fiction novels published by Bantam and Tor. I have a couple of awards. I’ve had short fiction published recently in Asimov’s, Analog, Lightspeed, and Nightmare. My thought was that I might be able to capture the gaze of readers who’d enjoyed my books during my “first career” and were interested in what I was doing now, along with those who’d read some of my recent short fiction, and might be curious about what else I’m up to. This was the factor that really convinced me to try it.

3. I had some awesome blurbs from name writers that might help sell the book — but the value of those blurbs was limited if the only people who saw them were those who visited my website. So the possibility of putting those blurbs in front of a new audience was the third main factor in my decision to try advertising.

So, where to run the ads? I didn’t even think about Google or Facebook. Both seem too random for me. I also didn’t consider some of the popular indie discounters like BookBub, because I’m not ready to mark down the price of a new novel that far, especially when there isn’t a sequel behind it to promote (yet).

Instead, I decided to spend my money at popular sites catering to genre readers.

My first choice was Locus Online — the online associate of the venerable print magazine that covers the SFF field. The publication is read by publishers, agents, writers, booksellers, and devoted genre readers, so it seemed like a good place to start. “Influencers” — those who influence the reading habits of others — surely read Locus. Maybe I could catch an influencer’s eye? I ran an ad there for the month of May. It was a rotating gif, with a detail from the cover of TRFL on the first panel, and quotes from Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Vonda N. McIntyre on the next two panels. This produced click-throughs at a fairly steady if not spectacular rate for the entire month. The ad ran on the front page only.

My second ad run was at SF Signal. Lots of very interested genres readers here! The site has reviews, podcasts, and opinion pieces and updates continually. There were two big positives at SF Signal: the ad ran on every page, and the site was willing to sell a short ad run — meaning I didn’t have to pay for an entire month. So I ran an ad for two weeks in June. This was also a rotating gif with the same three panels as the Locus ad, though at a different size. There was an initial low peak of traffic, followed by a steady-if-not-spectacular number of referrals to the end of the run.

My third ad run is still ongoing at Clarkesworld — so go visit and take a look! Clarkesworld is a highly respected publisher of short genre fiction — and I’ve never been published there. That means it’s a whole new audience for me, right? (One must look at the bright side.) CW was a little different from the others, because instead of paying for an ad, I paid for an ad block. I had to buy the entire month, but I was able to run multiple ads in the space that I had purchased. The ad block is displayed on every page, with one of my four ads randomly appearing in the space. You can see reduced versions of the ads at the top of this post, and if you click through, you can see the landing pages. Two of the ads are for The Red: First Light, featuring different blurbs. The other ads are for books I’d like to push. This resulted in a large initial surge of traffic that declined after a few days to that steady-if-not-spectacular rate I’ve mentioned before.

So was it worth it? Yes and no.

Yes — all three sites produced what seemed to me a decent click-through rate (if not spectacular)

No — conversions, those that actually clicked from my landing page to a bookseller, were low, and my rate of sales was not significantly increased. In my pessimistic moments, I begin to suspect that a lot of the traffic I received was from other writers wondering if online ads are worth it.

Yes — There is a saying in advertising that a customer needs to hear-of/encounter a product at least three times before they buy. So the ads have succeeded in getting my name in front of potential future buyers. THIS IS A HUGE FACTOR FOR ME. I can’t emphasize this enough. Readers can’t buy a book they’ve never heard of. Some books get boosted by Amazon’s “if you read that you might like this” recommendations, but so far that hasn’t been a big help to me.

Would I do it again? Yes — simply for the reason stated above, getting the word out.

Would I recommend it for other writers? Not necessarily. Online ads were a reasonable gamble for me because I once sort-of-had a name in the field along with a small but enthusiastic contingent of readers … who probably assumed I fell off the edge of the world circa 2003 … but who might be willing to give me another chance. Also, the cost of the ads was within my reach. If it’s a question of paying rent or buying an ad, my advice is to pay your rent.

Also, I have the web-skillz to create my own ads. The experiment gets harder to justify if you have to pay someone to make the ads for you.

But if you can afford it, it’s something to think about — and I like the idea of spending my advertising dollars on websites that do a wonderful job of promoting the genre.

I should also mention that I got an okay from artist Bruce Jensen before abusing his wonderful cover art for The Bohr Maker. PLEASE RESPECT YOUR ARTIST! Just because you have the right to use an image on a book cover, that doesn’t mean you have the right to manipulate it in an ad, so make sure first. (For the other two books, I own the copyright on the art.)

And finally, I want to say that all three websites were wonderful to work with. The people who handled the ads were flexible and responsive and the one little issue I had was promptly fixed, and on a Saturday!

Posted on: Friday, September 13th, 2013 at 12:04 pm
Categories: Promotion.
Tags: advertising, online ads