S01E02: When marketing is unmasked

In this week’s episode, Samantha and Matilda break down their own marketing attempts in 2023, and discuss what worked and what didn't, covering what marketing ideas they have for the next 12 months. 

By next week, Sam and Matilda will come back together to break down their understanding of Facebook ads; what their experience is with the system, and how they plan on getting results. 

Where to find Sam and Matilda:

SAM IG: @sammowrimo

Website: www.samantha-cummings.com

Book to start with: The Deathless - https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deathless-Frances-June/dp/B0915V5L6F

Most recent book: Curse of the Wild (Moons & Magic Book 1) https://amzn.eu/d/fVXwW3j

MATILDA IG: @matildaswiftauthor

Website: MatildaSwift.com

Book to start with: https://books2read.com/TheSlayoftheLand (book #1 of The Heathervale Mysteries)

Most recent book: https://books2read.com/ButterLatethanNever (book #3 of The Slippery Spoon Mysteries)

Mentioned on the show:

Matilda’s cover designer for both the new and original Heathervale Mysteries covers: http://goonwrite.com/

The source of much knowledge, especially which promo sites are worthwhile, David Gaughran: https://davidgaughran.com/best-promo-sites-books/

Cozy mystery author extraordinaire, Tonya Kappes: https://tonyakappes.com/

Next Level Authors Podcast: https://www.danielwillcocks.com/podcasts/nextlevelauthors/

Rebel Author Podcast: https://sachablack.co.uk/the-rebel-author-podcast/

Wish I’d Known Then…For Writers: https://wishidknownforwriters.com/

Bookfunnel: https://bookfunnel.com/

Transcript:

Welcome to your next step of the Self Publishing Mountain.

I'm Matilda Swift, author of Quintessentially British Cozy Mysteries.

And I'm Samantha Cummings, author of Young Adult Books About Magic, Myths and Monsters.

I've written the books, changed their covers, tweaked their blurbs, tried tools from a dozen ads courses, and I'm still not seeing success.

Now, we're working together to plot and plan our way from barely making ends meet to pulling in a living wage.

Join us on our journey where we'll be mastering the pen to snag that paycheck.

Hello and welcome to Pen to Paycheck Authors podcast.

I'm Matilda Swift, here with my co-host, Sam Cummings, and we're here to write our way to financial success.

We're two indie authors with over a dozen books between us and still a long way to go towards the quit the day job dream.

If that sounds familiar, listen along for our Mastery Through Missteps journey.

Each week, we cover a topic to help along the way.

This week's topic is going to be marketing audits.

But before that, let's do our wins and whinges of the week.

Sam, what is yours?

I have had quite a good win this week.

I had tasked myself with finishing a week through one of the books I'm working on to start editing, to get it published in the next couple of months.

And I finished it, which to me is like a huge win, because I am a bit of a slow reader.

So, I read it in a week, feeling good.

My winch of the week is the fact that I didn't get a lot of writing done this week.

And I started the year on a high and wrote loads.

And then the second week, I feel like I fell at the first official hurdle.

So, you know, like take, take what I can get, but didn't get as many words written as I really hoped I would.

How about you?

I think I'm going to do the classic combination win and winch.

I just like this week has gone really quickly.

I've had a really busy week in my personal life.

It's my brother's fiancee's hen do, so went away for the weekend for that.

I have started all sorts of like new projects that are just sort of writing adjacent, but not really writing relate, like writing 100 percent.

And they just thought they took a lot of time.

And I feel like I didn't know where the week's gone.

I definitely did lots of things with it.

I think I'm underappreciating that.

So it's been a week, maybe where I'm at right now.

Yeah, I think January is just that kind of month.

So how did you do with this week's plan to put together your marketing audit for last year?

So it was a really good topic because I was like, I put it off for a week thinking, I don't think I did very much last year.

I really think I just did a couple of things and, you know, I kind of have a background awareness of how well they did.

I did my usual things.

And then when it came to write it down, I did loads of things and I did loads of things that I think I have done a couple of times, some of them, I maybe haven't thought enough critically about them.

And I did lots of things that I think if you were going to just reel off kind of off top of your head, what your marketing activities were, you maybe wouldn't include, but I want to bracket them inside marketing because they were done with the purpose of kind of putting my book out there.

So it was really useful to do.

And I think it is a good activity, the one that I maybe want to do quarterly.

It also made me think that actually I want to keep a better log of my marketing activities.

So yeah, I will maybe get into specifics in a minute, but did you have any sort of similar experience doing yours?

I released a book last year, and I did like the generic stuff that you would do for a book release.

But I feel like, like you're just saying, I didn't keep track of anything that I did.

And that's like my biggest lesson.

Looking back at what I've done is that I don't know how helpful any of the stuff was because I just like, threw spaghetti at the wall and walked away.

That seems like a huge lesson.

That's so obvious.

Yeah, it's just so tedious to track it.

And I've got some things where I've like half tracked things.

So a couple of things I'm going to talk about in a minute.

I found tabs on various programs that I use, where I had tracked a little bit and then I hadn't really tracked the full effect of something.

And in fact, I would say that's maybe everything I spent money on.

I half tracked it and then got bored.

I haven't got bored necessarily, but I just, it needed slightly more attention than I really have time to give it.

And some of it is just like, I think a lot of things I do, I don't have a process.

I don't have a system in place.

I really, really want to do that this year.

That is maybe my big lesson for this year.

I don't even have a process set up for the formatting and uploading of books, which I was listening to an old episode of, I think, Next Level Authors or Rebel Author Podcast, one of the Sasha Burke podcasts.

And she was talking about how she had got to maybe book 17 or 18.

And she was like, I finally made myself a process document for how I do this.

So I felt a little bit better because I have got, I think I'm coming to book 11 or 12.

And I have had on my master to do list for quite a while, write a process document for how you do formatting and uploading.

And every time I do, I think, that was quick and easy.

I'll remember that for next time.

And every time I come to do it, I think, well, how do I log in to this?

What's my first step?

What do I need?

And it's just such a waste of brain energy.

So I do really want to set these processes.

I think having our masterminds, we have these monthly whole day sessions as well.

I think if we can use some of those to do writing up processes for things that we hate.

Just having somebody sort of sit with you and just, I mean, it's stuff that's really easy as well.

It's not hard.

It's just so boring.

And I'm tired from working and from writing.

But I don't want to sit down and write out the process of how do you format and upload a book?

Because I think, I'll just remember that.

It's just such a waste of my brain energy.

Yeah.

You think like, oh, how hard can it be?

I'll get back to it and it'll just make sense.

And you're like, you come to do it.

And you're like, no, my brain has completely dropped this information.

I've learnt so many things along the way.

Yeah, I know.

And it's so close to being memorable.

It's just too many steps.

So I think the same for marketing.

I think lots of things that I put down this list that I realised I had done last year, I'm not sure if I would redo them.

And I'm not sure if a part of it is because it's a faff.

It's just a lot of thinking about the process, going through the process, making the same mistakes I made before because I didn't write down how I did it.

And I also didn't write down if it made enough profit to do it.

I've done a bit of scouring through records and things where I could figure out what happened.

And I think for the couple of things I spent significant money on, which we'll talk about in a minute, I've broken even and that's all.

And that's kind of, it's an okay stage to be at, right?

Because I'm still early enough in my career where it's really important to be building readership.

And that is great.

I'm hoping that if I broke even on a particular campaign that I was running, hopefully maybe a percentage of those people will go down the line and keep reading other books.

So anything beyond that is profit.

But it just feels like there's no way to get to a next level with that.

So yeah, so I'll talk through my things that I did, I guess just before we get on to that, and then is there anything else that you kind of thought conceptually about this audit before we get into the kind of bits and pieces of like the integrity of platforms you used?

No, other than the fact that, I mean, this has come to light since we've started doing our mastermind sort of things, is how much I just focus on the writing part, and I've never focused on the marketing part, and I've already learnt so much from you before, you know, up until this point since we started, that it's so clear that I have just literally done nothing, and you have tried everything.

So I'm like, I'm getting to say, I'm getting to hear you say, this didn't work, it was such a waste of time.

I'm just like, okay, I won't do that.

But then I think sometimes it has just not worked for me in the way that I've done it.

So I think it's helpful to have two people, you know, talk about different sides of something.

Yes, yeah, so yeah, I feel like for anybody listening, who might be thinking, like, I have never tried advertising.

I'm basically there.

I mean, I have done advertising, but nothing like, not as in depth as Matilda has.

So I'm here to learn as well.

Yeah, so I think it was helpful to think about what all the different things I would count as marketing are, because it was not what I had originally planned, or not what I originally considered I would write down.

So I had originally written down my newsletter and social media, because that is really obvious marketing.

Newsletter is a non-negotiable for me.

I think it is the only reason that I have really made any money on books at all.

So when I very first started in 2019, I had a prequel novella that I put up on Book Funnel.

I was put up on Story Origin, I had that for a little while, but I really like Book Funnel.

I think the team is fantastic.

And I think it's, at least for cozy writers, there's a lot of groups on there.

It's very active.

So I put a prequel novella on Book Funnel, and I did that in the August of 2019.

And I joined some promos, I had a newsletter, people signed up.

Then I put my first book out in October of 2019, and people bought it, which just felt like magic.

That's what's supposed to happen.

Yeah, and I know that if you go without a newsletter, and you just put a book out on Amazon, it can just sink without a trace, because there's no way people will know about it.

There's absolutely no way, and that's understandable.

Like, I don't know how.

You know, I think sometimes people do put books out, and I definitely would have done that if I hadn't had a friend who was in self-publishing to say, this is a common process, this is what you should do.

And it must be so dispiriting.

And I can really imagine myself having done that.

I can imagine myself quitting after doing that.

So I felt very fortunate.

I had a readership, I had people buy the book, and it wasn't the enormous numbers, but I had specifically told my family and friends, don't buy this book because you'll mess with the algorithm.

So I knew that anybody who bought the book was like a stranger, a stranger who had decided that they liked the free book I gave them, and it's a 20,000 word, maybe slightly longer, 20,000, 30,000 word novella that was actually really useful to write because it kind of gave me more of a sense of the world and the backstory.

So people had read that and they thought, I love this so much, I will pay money for a longer next book, which felt great.

So and I've continued doing book funnel.

I had the same prequel novella I've put into different promos.

I have also got a second series.

So last week I mentioned the Heads of Veil Mysteries, which is the one I started with.

I've also got a series called the Slippery Spoon Mysteries, which has now got three books.

And I wasn't planning to write a novella for that, but in fact, something I'll come on to in a little bit triggered me to write a novella for it.

And I put that on Book Funnel.

And so it's really good to have two different books.

I give them both away to my readership.

When you sign up to a newsletter, you get a link to both of them.

When you come in organically, through a link in the back of my book, you can go to either series and you get sent the book from the other series.

And they're both in Book Funnel promos.

So yeah, my newsletter, I think, I really enjoy writing my newsletter.

I know a lot of people don't.

I think because I have genuine interests that are very in line with the cozy audience's interests, I find it very easy to write a rewarding email, which I'll get nice replies to.

So cozy readers are generally on the older side, usually women, again, not always, and definitely the demographics are changing.

But I am an old woman at heart.

I love baking.

I love little walks in the countryside.

I love beautiful old buildings.

I love books.

I love arts and crafts, anything that's just cozy and lovely.

I like a little village with a cake shop in it.

And I happen to live in just adorable villages all the time with lovely cake shops in them.

So it's very easy for me to do.

Most cozy readers are American.

So places that I go and take for granted, like this year or last year, I went to the Ball at Chatsworth House, which is a beautiful grand house, which was the setting for the 1995 Pride and Prejudice.

It was Pemberley there, I think.

So, you know, stunning.

And I got to go to Ball there, which it was fantastic.

And I thought it was fantastic.

And then I will also post that to my newsletter and give people a really nice glimpse into the world that they would not be able to see because they're too far away.

So I really like writing my newsletter.

It has about 40% open rates, depending on whether it's something where I'm promoting something or just giving some photographs and sharing some things.

It's about 4 to 10% take-through rate.

So good engagement.

It feels rewarding to write it.

Again, I would really struggle if I were writing a newsletter that didn't get good engagement because I think it would be hard to stay motivated.

But I've done this year and I would always keep doing that.

And so yeah, the newsletter is key, I think.

So I'd written that down first.

Then I have a new one, social platform that I bother with, Instagram.

I like it.

I like photographs again.

I can take pictures of nice English villages.

I am not as consistent as I would like.

I also think it has no impact on sales.

Realistically, I cannot imagine anything more than a few people click through, but I can see the stats.

A few people click through to the free book that's linked on there.

But not enough to say it's worthwhile doing as a marketing effort.

But I think it's a way to engage people who maybe don't read a newsletter.

I also put the feed on my website so people can see it there.

It feels like a nice way to do some engagement without really having to be very organized.

But it doesn't move the needle at all.

Then I wrote on two things that are quite similar, which again I hadn't thought about when I instantly thought of marketing audit and there were two things where I was invited to contribute something by other Cozy Authors, which Cozy Authors have a great community.

So I was invited to contribute to two things which I think I had different hopes for for each of them.

And I have had surprising results.

So I'll talk a little bit about those.

I did an anthology that was under a Kickstarter, so it was great to kind of learn a bit about Kickstarter and joining someone's anthology, who was very keen on Kickstarter, was a great way to learn about it.

At some point, I would maybe have to do a Kickstarter.

I know they can be really good if you've got a good readership.

I don't think it's naturally in my wheelhouse of things I like to do, so this is a nice way to enter it.

We did an anthology of Cozy Short Stories that are set around New Year.

It didn't sell huge amount of copies, but that's kind of fine.

It was nice to have something to promote.

I have had a really lovely email from someone who read a story in that, saying that they were looking forward to other books, so I put a Slippery Spoon story in there.

So yeah, really nice.

And I like writing the short stories.

I'll get the rights back to that at some point, so I'll put it in my newsletter, give another freebie that way.

So all useful, but again, didn't move the needle.

And then one that I maybe had expected to move the needle that didn't, as much as I had hoped, Prolific Works, which used to be called Insta Freebie, which is kind of a competitor for Book Funnel, or I think they want it to be, but it doesn't have a group promo as Book Funnel has, so definitely for a cozy author, it isn't worth a subscription for me currently.

They do have a good discount off Mailer Lite, which I do use, so I did consider keeping their subscription.

They gave us a free subscription for a while, or discounted one to do this promo, that I'll tell you about.

Yeah, it was good.

The staff support was good.

So they're trying to invite, I think, people from different genres to do a big group promo.

And they do a lot of promotion on their side as well.

And the hope is that you get newsletter signups.

So it's just like a book funnel group promo, but it's like a closed group of people who are selected by somebody very big in the field.

And ours was organized by Tonya Capas.

And Tonya Capas is a big cozy author, but if you're not familiar with her, whatever genre you write, find out more.

She is a marketing queen.

She tries everything.

She is very engaged.

She is really the best example of someone who loves and knows her readership and really serves them with what they want.

So yeah, she's a very, very big cozy author, but she's incredibly personable and really making connections.

She's a person who makes a lot of connections.

She sends out birthday cards to all her readers.

She sends out thousands of birthday cards every month.

Some people just know what, it's just their personality type to be so open.

And that is such a lovely thing that there are people out there who are like that.

And I think she's a great example of someone who, she just does things that she loves doing.

So there's nothing, there's no pushing on her part.

Not forced.

There are plenty of things that she doesn't do.

But she just really leans into stuff.

And she loves making community and she loves making people happy and engaging people.

So I think she's a really good example of someone who, she's a really early adopter of lots of things.

She will try anything and she will share whatever she learns.

And she's really friendly.

She's got a really lovely southern accent.

So she's always nice to engage them in any way.

You can list her on some podcasts.

I have done an interview with her.

So because I was invited by her to be in this group promo.

I had definitely imagined that I would get more readers coming through from it.

You didn't have to sign up for the newsletters to get the book.

So that's maybe part of it.

But there were a lot of books in the promo.

I definitely feel like free books is getting less effective.

I don't know.

I really hate when people say that.

I hate when we bring these big sweeping generalizations of like, it's not how it was in the olden days.

But I think I was surprised that it wasn't more effective.

Maybe that's all I'll say.

But it meant that I wrote a novella for my Slippery Spoon series, which was useful and I'm glad I did.

And I find it helpful to have a novella to give an entry to a series.

And I should always do that.

And it's quick and easy as well.

It was very, like 20,000 words.

It was a nice, easy one.

It gives you good knowledge of the series and it gives you something to share with readers when they are not in the series yet.

So I did both of those.

And I also had three launches which were their marketing efforts.

So I had two books in the same series that came out in May and November, so the Slippery Spoon series that I put the novella out for.

They're called In Deep Truffle and Better Late Than Never.

No, Butter Late Than Never.

So those came out.

I love a crazy pun.

When the third book came out, I did a promo with all sorts of sites.

David Gogren has the best list of up-to-date promo sites.

So if you go on to Google David Gogren promo sites, he has always got a very good up-to-date list.

And he's also just generally informative and nice.

He's got a lovely Irish accent.

So I really listened to anything by him.

So I looked at his list.

Again, this is part of me not having things automated.

I looked at his list.

I thought back at my old results.

I looked at what promo sites I should use.

I tried to book them.

I was a bit late for some.

I had to remove things around.

I accidentally booked on the same day.

It was a headache.

But I booked a promo.

It was my first one, in fact, of having a 99 cents rather than a free.

I've done a couple of free giveaways before.

So all sorts of giveaways sites like e-reader news today and Robin Reed.

So I think I picked five sites like that in the end.

I gave a book one for 99 cents.

And in fact, I also put book two as 99 cents just to see if I could have a knock on effect.

It did with those two books together.

I about broke even on the giveaway.

It's my smaller series.

It's the one that I haven't really done as much marketing for, so it was good to break even and then hope that other readers will continue.

I will do those again.

I think I want to think a bit more strategically about it.

I am, as always, trying to get bookbubs.

Apply every month for all the books, and nothing happens.

So I'll just keep working on that, keep applying to what everyone says.

Yeah, I think it's a good thing just to note about doing all these book deals and things, because this isn't really something.

Like I say, I'm somebody who just did the writing, published the books, carried on, started writing again, but I didn't know, because I'm terrible at the admin side of writing, which is why we're doing all this, because I'm just like the head in the sand person.

I didn't know that there were websites that you could go and do deals on.

I was just like, I do a deal on Amazon, that's it.

So-

Oh, okay.

Like, I like as somebody who just was just doing a very narrow field of, I write a book, I put it on Amazon.

I tell people about it and I expect to get money back.

Yeah, like the whole spreading out and doing deals and stuff was like, when you told me about all those sites, I was just like, I'd heard of them, but I hadn't really thought about it.

I mean, yeah, maybe it's useful to recap those as well.

So there are all sorts of-

Yes.

There are newsletters, really.

There are newsletters of companies who have built up lists of readers who want deals for books.

And there are dozens, in fact, there are dozens and some of them are teeny tiny ones where you spend $10 to get a place in their newsletter.

They're often very genre specific, the smaller ones.

But they're priced in a way that-

because they know how many clicks they get, they know how many opens they get.

They're priced in a way that I think they know that you're breaking even, if you're doing a giveaway for a discount.

So yeah, dozens of these sites, they become more and less effective over time.

I think.

Do I know why?

I don't know.

I guess at some points, some newsletters make certain choices.

They might make deals with certain authors or who knows why.

But over time, things become more or less effective or they put their prices up so you're not quite breaking even if people get sick of it.

But they definitely change.

So there's a few big ones.

So I was just going to say like book trends change so often now that I imagine it's hard for people to really know like what direction to go in.

So it's all like everything's competitive now because all the genres are competitive.

Yeah.

And I think and some of them are selective and some of them are not.

So the ones that are selective, maybe they are selecting books that are slightly off trend, who knows.

They've got really, really variable prices.

I think that's what's interesting is for me, I have found that the price does not always equal the value.

And I think that's why I also want to do a better tracking of it is that actually, I think some of them are overpriced.

And you get a spot in their newsletter, you want to stack them, so you want to do one every day for five days or four days.

And you want to have it, again, David Gogran's got great videos on this, that will put links to the show notes.

You want to have it so that you are always increasing in number, so the most reliable, big download number newsletter is your last one.

And I do let me bookbob, but obviously, you know, I have not sold my first born child to the bookbob gods yet, but I'm not running that out.

And I think people just say, just keep re-applying, you know.

I think I think I was listening to Wish I'd Known.

I think Jamie Albright said she's never got a bookbob, which, you know, suggests that it's absolutely hard to predict you will get one.

If Jamie Albright's not got one, I feel less bad about not having got one either.

But then you'll see, I think the Cozy Selection is really interesting.

You will see some people who are putting in a fourth book in a series.

It doesn't have a great looking cover.

It doesn't have more than three reviews.

The ranking is low.

You just think, how have they picked that book?

Anyway, the Mysteries are on Bookbob.

Yes.

Not for me to discern.

Yes.

But anyway, so you can keep applying for that.

But in the meantime, there are all these other websites for you to try.

Then you put your book in.

So I did do that and it was my first time doing a 99 cents.

I would say the best thing I did from the year before last was do a free giveaway without using those sites, just using my own newsletter to get a sense of where my benchmark is.

Because your own newsletter is a resource in itself.

And I think last year when I did a newsletter only giveaway, I think it was even for a book that I had been out.

It's been out for a while.

I think I'd given it away before.

I think I got a thousand downloads just from it being on Amazon and from telling my newsletter.

So I think it's worth knowing that benchmark before you start giving money to other sites to do it as well.

Because you can easily watch a snacking.

I think I spent $260.

And I broke even on that, but I didn't make any more kind of in the period that I was tracking.

So you want to be careful.

You're not throwing away money on that and it's easy to do.

So I did that.

I feel like I've talked for a long time about these.

I've got two other things, one of which will come into your Mordy town next week.

I think it was really surprising how much I got to talk about actually.

And one is one that I had, I literally put in at the last minute, which was, I had forgotten, I recovered my Heatherville Mysteries series.

I bought nine covers, which was expensive.

I can imagine.

I got nine covers.

And the thing that spurred me on to do it was that I've had this like chicken and egg thing in my head for a long time, thinking I don't, and the book covers, when I bought the original first, very first one of the series, I knew they were not on trend.

They were slightly, they were slightly out of date.

And not in a way that looked bad, but the trends move quite quickly in Cozy Covers.

And they were just slightly, not quite looking cozy enough.

And I had to buy this first cover at the very last minute.

And thank goodness for my cover designer.

It was absolute, you know, miracle that I managed to get the cover.

I had been let down by cover designer very last minute.

And I absolutely loved my cover designer for being able to fit me in and having a pre-made that worked and making another book cover to fit in the series.

So I use Go On Right, which if you look on the website, it looks like Goon Right, but it is Go On Right, who has great pre-mades, really good communication, absolutely lovely person who is in fact from very near where I live right now.

But so he did my covers and I think they were not, they just fit the themes of the book rather than me picking them because they were 100 percent the trendiest looking cozy cover.

So I knew at some point I have to re-cover them.

But once you've got three books in a series, then that's three books to re-cover.

And then now I've got lots of books in the series.

It's a lot of books to re-cover.

So I've just shot myself in the foot basically.

It's what I did.

I've been too lazy to have done this all of the year before.

Again, it's one of those things that is just a lot to think about.

So you just keep putting off thinking, I'll just do one more book and I can't fit it in right now.

And I got to the stage where I have got a box set, I've got a prequel, I've got a set of short stories.

So I think I've got eight covers.

I can't, but anyway, too many, too many.

And I had the chicken and egg situation where I didn't want to start advertising until I had a more appealing looking set of covers.

And then I didn't want to get a more appealing set of covers because I was lazy.

Not really chicken and egg, but it meant I kept putting off advertising basically because I hadn't got the right covers.

And so I have recovered them.

I really like the covers.

They're definitely more on trend.

They fit better in the Cozy.

Bestseller lists, if you see them up there, they look more contemporary.

And there's a couple of old series still using the style that I had, but they are long running, much more famous authors than me, so I couldn't really get away with keep using that style.

It's a little bit annoying because the Cozy books, they can move quite quickly and they can move in response to very big people in the market, which means that often people just hop on one bandwagon and it will pass on quite quickly.

Quite a lot of, I was surprised, number of Cozy authors make their own covers and in a fantastically skilled way, like you wouldn't know who it is, I happen to know who it is, but I think you couldn't guess at looking at them.

So that means that they can respond to changes very quickly.

So it keeps the cover market moving a lot.

And I love design.

So I often think, I should just start making my own covers, but that is an attraction I do not need.

And I love my cover designer.

I think when I wanted to read my covers, I thought I'll make a mockup.

I can't quite capture in descriptions what I want it to look like.

So I'll make a mockup for him.

That will help him.

And I made something look like a five-year-old had made it.

Maybe when they're quite tired and like in need of a nap.

It did not look good.

I should not become a cover designer.

But I did, I read those.

I think it definitely made me feel more confident about doing adverts because I felt like I'd put myself in the best position possible.

I also used the fact that I was, I was doing Facebook adverts.

That's the last thing I will talk about.

But in fact, we'll come back to that.

I used the opportunity of doing Facebook adverts to really work on things that I've been putting off for a long time.

So I redid the blurbs.

I did them again and again and again.

I added A plus content, which I've been meaning to for quite a while.

It's quite popular and Cozy.

Again, I don't think it moves the needle, but I think it's useful to do and distill your series.

And it looks like you're fitting in the genre a little bit better.

So it's maybe not a big thing to do, but it's not insignificant.

And doing blurb just meant I got to do more market research as well.

So it was useful.

I don't think I would have started advertising if I hadn't got the new covers.

So I think I need to do it, but I don't see a return on investment yet.

But I do really like the new covers.

So I like it.

Yeah, so that is everything apart from Facebook adverts.

But I think we will come on to talk about that in a little bit.

But kind of my overall thing for Facebook adverts is, it was a lot of work.

I did a lot of edits and changes and iterations of the same adverts.

And I think I probably just about broke even.

And that felt really dispiriting for the work.

But I know that is the process.

The process is figure out what works for you and your books.

It takes a long time.

Once you've got it, you need to do less work on it.

But I don't have the time to get to that stage yet.

But I will.

You will, definitely.

So I've talked for absolutely ages.

I'm so sorry.

But hopefully it was helpful.

It was.

What was in your...

For me, it's been very helpful.

My marketing...

Because last year, I think I just published one book.

I might have published two.

Like I've already forgotten.

That is part of your marketing.

So that shouldn't have been in the audit.

I know.

Well, I wrote down one, but I actually think it might have been two.

But this is the thing.

I have no idea.

Like the last two or three years have merged into one in my brain because of COVID.

So I've really struggled to stay on top of time and stuff.

So last year, I hardly did any marketing, apart from obviously releasing a book.

I did some good...

Or two.

Or two, maybe.

But I did the whole, got a book cover designed, looked at other people's blurbs from the same genre and did all of that stuff.

So it was more things like behind the scenes and stuff that I felt was really helpful.

So learning how to write a blurb that matched blurbs of books within my genre, which I think I did.

I like the blurb of my book.

I definitely think that I could use more buzzwords now.

Like looking back, but that was, you know, that's continuous research that I will be putting into my, what I'm calling my writer's Bible.

Where I'm going to be keeping track of all the ads and stuff.

The one thing that I wanted to talk about, because I did some Instagram ads and all that fun stuff, but didn't track any metrics.

And I haven't really tracked anything, but you talked about your newsletter and saying that if you didn't have a lot of people reading or any clicks, it would be really demoralizing.

And that's where I am.

So I have a very small newsletter and I don't really get any click-throughs.

I'm on your newsletter list and it's a really good newsletter, so you should get more people reading that.

I know I don't do a good job of getting people to sign up, but I love writing newsletters and that's always something that like you said, you like writing them, you don't shy away from them.

I love it.

I love writing newsletters.

I love talking to myself in email form, which is what I feel like I'm doing.

But I really need to get my list up and running.

And yeah, that's been something that I've been, towards the end of last year, it was trying more and more.

And I have had email sign ups.

And I did a 99p deal on Amazon at the end of the year.

And I got a couple of downloads from that, which was really nice.

And I've just, just seeing things come through from very minimal effort shows me that if I've actually put maximum effort in, I could actually get traction.

And that's like...

What do you do at the moment to get people on your newsletter?

Literally post it on Instagram or Facebook.

That's it.

Because I use Instagram and Facebook as my main sources.

Because Facebook...

I do get interaction on Facebook, which is like strange because I know that Facebook is a little bit of a dead place at the moment.

But I do get people interacting.

It depends on your genre, so Cozy...

It does depend...

.

weeders on Facebook.

Yeah.

Because I write young adults, I wouldn't expect that many people to be interested.

And it's not loads, but I do get people signing up from Facebook.

Instagram is my main source.

And I'm trying to get into TikTok, and I did really well at the first half of the year, and then I ran out of juice.

I was just done.

So I'm kind of having to reassess my motivation and energy levels.

But yeah, Instagram is where the place...

because that's where everybody is who's reading young adult books.

It's Instagram and TikTok.

So I have had good sign ups from those places.

I just haven't put in enough effort on...

because I'm just such a scatterbrained person, I do little bits of effort in different places, and I don't narrow my focus.

And I feel like if I narrowed my focus, and then kept track of it, and could see what happened, it would guide me in the right direction.

That's so hard, though, when there's a million things you could be doing.

Yeah, and that's the thing, I've always just focused on the writing, so doing all the other stuff has just always been in the back of my mind, like, yeah, I'll do that.

When I have more readers, I'll do that.

But really, I should do that to get more readers.

So it's this weird...

there's just this weird circle of chicken and egg.

If I do this, this will happen.

But really, this will happen if I do this.

So it's all all the fun stuff when you think back and think, oh, yeah, I can see, I can see, looking back now, I can see why I'm still at the level I'm at.

Because I've really been stopping myself from stepping forward.

And also to bring up like the elephant in the room for a lot of people.

Money is just not very forthcoming.

And not just from selling books, but just in terms of I don't have a lot of money in my savings because cost of living crisis.

So I don't have a lot of money to put into advertising.

And that's like a huge thing that I'm kind of going through at the moment with like mental blocks and trying to figure out how much can I actually afford and all that fun stuff.

Yeah.

And there's definitely like anytime you do a course in it, there's always people saying like, don't spend money, you can't afford to lose.

But you know what?

I don't have money that I'm just thinking, I don't need this.

I'd love to give it to Mark Zuckerberg.

You know, he probably would love it more than me.

Yeah.

I'm never sat around thinking I've got money to lose.

I've got money I can lose.

I think I'm in a very fortunate position.

I've got money I could if I had to lose, but I don't want to.

I definitely don't invest more money in advertising.

I think it's useful as a learning experience.

And I'm not...

I don't know how you get the confidence to put money in and think even when you're losing it, hand over fist, you think, you know, I'm finding out about it.

I'm seeding the market.

You know, there's no way I can feel confident about that.

I need to have a return on the investment.

Even if it's like long term, if I see it coming in over three months, I will be happy to say I'll put in longer term money.

But there's no way I can do without any sense coming back.

Yeah.

Which I think is why it's really important for us to, like both of us to have a clear view of effort versus return, like return of investment, but just return of a lot of things as well, like energy as well, because you put so much energy into things, like you want it to be actually feeding you back, you want to feel like you're doing something and it's having an effect in some way.

And like the money might come, but maybe like, maybe you just get loads more followers.

And in some ways, like on social media, people always say, don't you know, your social media following isn't like what you should be focused on.

But sometimes you have to focus on the easier metrics to get to make you feel more confident trying to get the ones that pay the bills.

Yeah.

Because if you know, a thousand people started following you last week on a social media platform, you think actually maybe people are interested in what I'm talking about.

Yeah.

I should take a punt on my books.

Whereas if you think, no one's ever downloaded this book, am I going to advertise it?

No.

Or what's the magic number that you say, I've got enough interest in this book, this book's got a high enough rating on Amazon, enough people have reviewed it fondly.

I don't know.

I think there's very hard to, especially as I think we talked about this last week, especially as a woman, I think it is really hard to say, I worked hard on this and everyone will love it because I'm amazing.

Really what you're going to say is like, please, please take a look at this for me.

I hope you don't hate it.

I want some cheese.

I really don't like the energy and I really hate that and that feels like though, it's your most creative thing that you've done, it's the things most exposing to you as you're writing.

So how do you go in and say, I'm just going to spend loads of money as people are going to love it.

I don't have that mindset and I think it's very hard for women to have that mindset.

I don't think it's impossible, but I think it is, again, takes energy to get into that mindset of feeling like, I am worth taking a punt and I'm worth putting some money behind.

That's energy pennies.

Then you're spending money pennies as well.

It does just feel really hard to do, especially when you're trying to juggle 10,000 other things.

But that does bring us on to our next topic for next week, which we have agreed to do.

I'm just going to bring up the info on that.

My computer has been a bit slow.

Yes.

So for next week's topic, we have decided to do an advertising understanding check-in, where we look specifically at things like Facebook, which is the biggest non-Amazon advertising platform.

So we're going to look at Facebook and just check in what we know about it, what we understand about it, and what gaps we've got.

Because it is so easy to take another course or just dive in.

And I think just doing that without necessarily thinking about it logically and putting together a plan can lead to a lot of money and energy getting lost.

So next week topic is an advertising understanding, which we're going to figure out we need to know before we do some serious advertising this year.

What are your thoughts already on this?

As somebody who has been working in digital marketing for like seven or eight years, I'm so like tired of Facebook.

Let's go the other way.

I thought you could say, I'm so confident.

I love it.

So no, the thing is not saying like, I can't say what brands that I've done advertisements for because of confidentiality, but there are people out there who are doing it really well and getting good numbers back from it.

And as somebody who has run a lot of campaigns, the biggest thing that I know about Facebook is continuous growth only comes from continuous ads.

So you have to...

It's not what I want to hear.

I know.

You have to train.

I mean, this is something that I've been doing on social media recently.

I hate using this, but train the algorithm is a term that I've kind of run into recently.

And it is annoying, but you have to continuously tell Facebook what you want people to do, where you want them to go, that you want them to click things, and you have to teach the machine to do it.

And that takes a long time, and it takes commitment, and it takes...

I mean, it takes money, but yeah, it takes like a lot of just continued effort.

And that's where a lot of people fall down, because who has the continued effort?

But that's something that I really want to figure out.

If I can automate, even mentally automate, an advertising strategy, and just know, like, teach it to myself, and have it in the back of my mind, so I don't even have to think about it, that would be like the best.

That is, I mean, I'm very much looking forward to next week.

I kind of heard that level of detail.

I definitely know that you have done lots of Facebook advertising for work, but I think it sounds like, you know, exactly what we need to know.

So I have talked a lot this week, so hopefully next week.

Next week is a You Talk A Lot episode.

I'll have a presentation for those who are watching the video.

I'll put a whiteboard up.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

No, I definitely won't.

I think I'm really looking forward to comparing our knowledge and understanding, because I think I have looked at it in a really self-publishing, focused method, a more, you know, style.

And I have done courses, I have tried things, and I still feel like I am guessing at best.

Not even guessing.

I am just trying, seeing what I understand.

And like, I could well be clicking exactly the wrong things, and that feels horrible to not know.

Or I could be really close to doing when I give up, and I do not know how to judge that.

I hate to tell it to you, but you are probably really close.

You have just probably given up.

You have given up too soon.

No, I want to hear that.

That is fantastic.

That is exactly what I want to hear.

I think that is what it is.

I think a lot of things with Facebook and which we will obviously talk about is all about your determination to stay in the game.

I mean, that is self-publishing in a nutshell, right?

Everyone is like, write the next book, you need to have 20 books.

Yeah.

Okay.

I mean, there's a good topic then for next week.

So we will leave it here.

It's been a very long episode, but I guess I don't know why we thought marketing audits would be a short second episode.

Clearly, that is a big topic.

It's all of marketing for a year.

That's what we did.

But that's really great.

I'm very much looking forward to talking about advertising with you specifically next week.

I guess that's what we know.

But until then, I will say goodbye.

Yes, goodbye and see everybody.

Everybody will listen to us next week.

Bye.

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