Blame it on sleep deprivation, new technology or simply a bad click, but it seems I launched a Google ad campaign for Vampire Road last week.
Good thing I set a ten dollar per-day maximum or I might have needed to run to the bank for a loan.
The funny thing is that I should have known something was up because my novel started selling one or two copies a day. I know this shouldn’t sound so amazing, but I hadn’t done any serious marketing, not even to my friends and family. This is a great vampire novel, but I only want sell it to people who will like it. If your preferred summer reading is Margaret Atwood, this isn’t a novel you’d want. Although who knows, maybe you’ll enjoy it when no one’s looking. 😉
The upshot is that I haven’t begged my mother or older brother or even my sister-in-law to buy this novel, so the sales weren’t coming from that end of my life.
The other big clue I should have observed was the Amazon suggestions. You know: People who bought this novel also bought…just about anything with a vampire or a zombie. Where did these readers come from? How did they stumble across my novel? Now I have the answer. They Googled Vampire Novels or one of the other keywords I’ve got running and my ad popped up.
Are the ads worth it? If I was looking to make money from Vampire Road then absolutely not, but what I’m trying to do is build a fan base that will buy the next two novels in the series. So far the ad words campaign has been pretty inexpensive, but it won’t be my only marketing avenue, and I will shut it down after a few weeks.
I’ve just begun marketing–well, it turns out I began last week. I just didn’t know it.
