ad results October 2022
Let’s have a look at my bestselling books of October 2022. Thanks for reading, everyone!
No major surprises there. FROSTBORN OMNIBUS ONE made the list because I did a sale on it in September, and it really took off on Google Play, which was nice. CLOAK GAMES: OMNIBUS ONE also made the list because I’ve been pushing it with ads.
Speaking of ads, let’s see how Facebook ads did this month! For every $1 I spent advertising a series, here is what I got back.
CLOAK GAMES: $3.69
THE GHOSTS: $3.95
FROSTBORN: $3.92
SEVENFOLD SWORD: $9.18
MALISON\DRAGONTIARNA: $5.73
DEMONSOULED: $1.43
I should note that I stopped advertising SEVENFOLD SWORD to put that budget towards MALISON/DRAGONTIARNA for November, which is why the ratio for SEVENFOLD SWORD is so high. If you stop advertising a free book, there’s usually something of a tail as people who read the free book move into the rest of the series before it drops off. DEMONSOULED was disappointingly low, but I’m in the process of updating all the covers to a consistent look, so hopefully that will help for November.
And the commercial failure (so far) of the Metaverse has had one beneficial effect – Facebook is a lot less ban-happy this election season! Back from like August 2020 to December 2020, if you made practically any change to any ad settings, your account got randomly banned and it took weeks to get it reversed. I’ve heard far fewer reports of that this year. Why, it’s like Facebook’s parent company is suddenly desperate for revenue. 🙂
Here’s how my Amazon ads did for October. Remember, for an Amazon ad to turn a profit, it typically needs to generate a sale between every 6 to 8 clicks.
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE, 1 sale for every 0.6 clicks, $12.70 back for every $1 spent.
CLOAK OF DRAGONS, 1 sale for every 2.17 clicks, $2.76 back for every $1 spent.
DRAGONSKULL: SWORD OF THE SQUIRE did shockingly well. The reason for that is DRAGONSKULL: FURY OF THE BARBARIANS sold so many copies. (Thanks everyone!) That drew a lot of eyeballs that looked at the DRAGONSKULL series as a whole and tried out the first book, which means that the Amazon ads all performed better because relevancy is one of the metrics that controls ads on Amazon. It can be a nasty chicken-and-egg problem, since the best way to get an Amazon ad to work is to get more people buying the book, but the whole point of an Amazon ad is to get people to buy the book. But if you can get inside that cycle, it works really well.
One of the reasons I talk about this is because it’s National Novel Writing Month, and a lot of people who finish their books are going to get on the Agent/Publisher Submission Treadmill. I contend it is better to self-publish and learn digital marketing.
Yes, it’s work to learn all this stuff, but on the scale of human endeavors, it’s a lot easier than digging ditches or brain surgery. And trying to get a publishing deal is like attempting to win the lottery. It could work, but you’re better off going into business for yourself.
Finally, thanks for reading, everyone!
-JM