Amazon Advertising – An Author’s Advantage
Amazon
With all of the advertising opportunities out there, it was only a matter of time until a retail website like Amazon got themselves a piece of the action. Amazon currently offers a series of advertising opportunities to vendors of all kinds, but it’s their Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Ads that we’re particularly interested in today – and you should be too if you have a book that needs some TLC.
The process is actually very simple and similar to Facebook advertising if you’re at all familiar with that process. They do have one stipulation. During the period in which you’ll be running your ad, you must be registered as a KDP Select author. What this entails is a contract with Kindle ensuring them that you will distribute your book exclusively through them for the duration of your membership. Basically, you can’t sell your e-book anywhere else other than Amazon. Not on your website, not through Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. This sounds a bit limiting, but it’s not forever and you would be able to take full advantage of the KDP Ad program, which many authors have attributed to their increase in book sales. For more information on the benefits of being a KDP Select author, see our article at: http://www.kelseymcbridepr.com/the-benefits-of-kindle-unlimited/.
Should you choose to become a KDP Select author, a whole new range of possibilities open to you. You can set up your ad with a $100 minimum and start promoting your book using targeted audiences by genre or product. Let’s use that Grasshopper Tea Party example again. So you’ve written The Grasshopper’s Tea Party and are ready to advertise. You could select genres like picture books, nature, parenting, bugs, and/or specific products that are similar like The Very Hungry Caterpillar, Rainbow Fish, and Miss Spider’s Tea Party. People who have bought these items, anything like them, or have shown an interest by clicking on them would be targeted for an ad about The Grasshopper’s Tea Party. The ad could show up in a few different places including the sidebar of a desktop on Amazon.com or on readers’ Kindles themselves either as a banner along the bottom, or as a screensaver.
Amazon provides you with a detailed report of your ad’s performance at the end of your campaign so you can decide from there if you could widen your audience, target it to a smaller group, or try something completely new! For more information about Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing Ads, visit: https://advertising.amazon.com/kindle-select-ads?ref_=gw-dt. We’ve given you a lot to think about, I know, so take a moment, consider the options, and put those feelers out there!