Meet book advertising experts
Book advertising helps authors both find new readers and grow their existing audience. A book marketer can work their magic on ad campaigns and increase your book sales.
On Reedsy, meet book marketers who define branding for authors like James Patterson and R.F. Kuang, know the ins and outs of Amazon and Meta, and help new authors hit #1 on bestseller lists.
Tara L.
Available to hire
I am a children's, middle-grade, and YA book marketing expert with twenty-five years of experience in the Big Ten and freelancing.
Ricardo F.
Available to hire
Reedsy co-founder by day. By night: *only* taking on private clients for DIRECT SALES consultations, setup, and advertising.
Mamie S.
Available to hire
Customer-focused and strategy-driven digital marketer with 10 years of experience at Abrams Books and Simon and Schuster.
Chris B.
Available to hire
Marketing strategist bringing decades of experience in the music industry to book marketing, coaching over 300 authors around the world.
Brian B.
Available to hire
I 've helped hundreds of authors manage their Amazon and BookBub Ads campaigns
How can advertising help me?
We all know what advertising is: paying a fee to have your product placed in front of potential customers. As an author, however, it’s easy to make the wrong decisions and be lured into bad “advertising opportunities.”
Book marketers help you make the right decisions. They are versed in all aspects of advertising, including:
- Ad creation. Your book cover is your #1 advertising asset, but advertising experts can iterate on different copy and imagery.
- Targeting audiences. What is your target audience? What platforms do they frequent? How can you make sure that the right readers are seeing your book? Marketers understand how to build and target specific audiences.
- Measuring profitability. Ads cost money. Professional marketers will test several ads and then focus their efforts on those that bring a positive return on investment (ROI).
What are the different types of advertising for books?
The first distinction you should make is between digital ads and print ads. Print ads are served through print media (newspapers, magazines, catalogs, etc.). Digital ads can be served on any digital platform. With digital advertising, you can easily track results and determine cost per click, cost per conversion (signup or sale), ROI (return on investment), etc.
The advertising experts on Reedsy generally specialize in digital advertising because of the medium’s easy trackability, though some are equally familiar with print ads.
Different forms of digital advertising have proven to work well for selling books. Here are some of the platforms to consider:
- Meta advertising. Facebook and Instagram allow you to target very specific categories of people, such as fans of other authors, precise demographics (age, employer, work title, etc.), and even locations. These ads are also easy to test and scale: you can start with a budget as low as $5 and gradually increase your monetary commitment if your return on investment is positive. Read more.
- Amazon advertising. Amazon allows you to show ads about your book directly on other book pages and search result pages. Since their main US rollout in 2017, they’ve become the most effective advertising venue for authors. Read more.
- Bookbub advertising. Bookbub rolled out a self-serve ad platform in 2016, and it has greatly improved since then. It’s a less competitive playing field than Meta or Amazon, but it does have its quirks. Read more.
- Other social media advertising. Though Meta is arguably the best social media advertising platform, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube are worth checking out, depending on your audience. X is great for targeting hashtags, while LinkedIn is excellent for targeting professional networks.
- Discount/promotion advertising. If you’re running a discount or free promotion on one of your books, you can apply to have it advertised in the newsletters of platforms such as Bookbub, Freebooksy/Bargainbooksy, Book Gorilla, The Fussy Librarian, Pixel of Ink, BookSends, etc. Find a full list of promo sites here.
Of course, there are other types of advertising, like search advertising (Google Adwords), Goodreads advertising, banner ads on websites, display network advertising, etc. These aren’t yet known to produce the same effective results for most authors. However, they could be just as effective (or more) if you write in a certain niche.
