{"id":6119,"date":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/grimdark-or-noblebright\/"},"modified":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-03-13T12:00:00","slug":"grimdark-or-noblebright","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/grimdark-or-noblebright\/","title":{"rendered":"Grimdark or Noblebright"},"content":{"rendered":"

My book of the moment is Amazon Ads Unleashed<\/em> \u2013 a very useful guide to advertising your book on Amazon. Couple of warnings before you rush out and buy it. First, it\u2019s written for more advanced users. If you just want a basic tour of Amazon ads, this isn\u2019t the book for you. If a basic guide is what you\u2019re after, you should head over to our Self-Pub course, which is free to JW members.<\/p>\n

The second warning is that Amazon advertising in general works only for indie authors. If you\u2019re traditionally published, your per-book royalties will be so small that it\u2019ll be hard to make ads work for you. Not just that, but there are other problems with the way trad publishers price and market their books which mean conversion rates are likely to be poor.<\/p>\n

So in a way, what I\u2019m about to say won\u2019t be of direct relevance to many of you \u2026 except that the heart of it is relevant to absolutely all of you.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what Robert Ryan, author of that Amazon Ads<\/em> book, has to say about his own genre:<\/p>\n

In my case, I might run an epic fantasy category ad. This targets all books listed in this category. That\u2019s a lot. A whopping lot\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

But I write traditional-style epic fantasy. The category, though, is a mixed bag of other things. First there\u2019s grimdark versus noblebright \u2013 the more traditional flavour of epic fantasy. People tend to read one or the other. Much less often they read both. So, in a category ad, my noblebright books are being shown indiscriminately to grimdark readers. And those folks are numerous\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

But things get worse. Extremely popular just at the moment is reverse-harem fantasy. It should have its own category, but it gets lumped in epic fantasy\u2026 And if reverse harem isn\u2019t enough, litrpg fiction (literary role playing fiction) is thrown in with epic fantasy too.<\/em><\/p>\n

My noblebright book ad could be shown on all these books in a category ad. It potentially gets a massive impression volume, but perhaps only twenty percent of the impressions are on similar noblebright books. And that\u2019s where the readers I want to reach are mostly hanging out.<\/em><\/p>\n

The point Ryan is making here is that seeking a wide audience for your books will always mean that you are chasing one that converts badly.<\/p>\n

Those reverse harem readers just won\u2019t buy your Tolkein-style fantasy. It\u2019s just not what they want.<\/p>\n

And, OK, that sounds like it\u2019s just a lesson in how to use Amazon ads. But it\u2019s not. It\u2019s a lesson in book marketing, period.<\/p>\n

You can\u2019t make money by advertising your books widely on Amazon. Or via Facebook. Or via Bookbub.<\/p>\n

If you seek to build your mailing list via large, indiscriminate giveaways, you will end up with a mailing list full of junk.<\/p>\n

If you seek to boost your Facebook likes by posting funny cat videos (assuming you are not an author of funny cat books), you will end up with a Facebook profile that is absolutely useless for any marketing purpose.<\/p>\n

If you go on a blog tour of 35 different blogs, where 34 of them are not perfectly attuned to the kind of book you write, you will be wasting your effort at least 97.1% of the time.<\/p>\n

And so on.<\/p>\n

Any kind of book marketing is about finding your most passionate audience and finding ways to make that audience adhere to you. (Of which, by far the most effective tool, is simply: write good books. If you can do that, the rest of your marketing challenge becomes a lot, lot simpler.)<\/p>\n

In a funny way, what we think of as advertising \u2013 the Superbowl ad, or huge outdoor posters advertising beers or cars \u2013 is the exact reverse of what you should be thinking about. Those ads are aimed at everybody, and they work because Mercedes (let\u2019s say) wants to target everyone. Either people are potential Mercedes buyers (so great; they get some effective advertising.) Or they are not potential Mercedes buyers, in which case they are being taught what the meaning of the brand is \u2026 which means that everyone knows \u2026 which means that Mercedes buyers know everyone around them will understand the brand meaning of the car they drive. That actively deepens the commitment of those Mercedes buyers, because there would be nothing stupider than paying top dollar for a car if people didn\u2019t know it was a top dollar car.<\/p>\n

Your book just isn\u2019t like that. Your market is a niche in a niche in a niche and you just don\u2019t need to establish some universal brand value. You need to find and talk to your readers. That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s so easy to be tempted by the numbers. \u201cIf I wrote on this blog, I could get in front of X,000 readers.\u201d \u201cIf I ran this ad, I could accumulate X,000 impressions.\u201d And so on.<\/p>\n

That way of thinking is always wrong.<\/p>\n

Passion and specificity matters in book marketing perhaps almost more than in any other market you are able to think of. How come? Because books are utterly individual. Your market isn\u2019t the market for fiction. Or the market for adult fiction. Or the market for fantasy. Or the market for epic fantasy. If you start to think of yourself as in the market for noblebright epic fantasy, you are getting closer. But is your book about warriors? Or a coming of age story? Or medieval tinted? Or what? Truth is, you are probably in a niche of a niche of a niche.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s good \u2013 because that\u2019s where passion, and readers, and success lies.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s it from me. We\u2019ve got a brilliant self-pub day in London tomorrow. Hope to see loads of you there. If you haven\u2019t yet bought tickets (shame on you!), you can turn up at the door and we\u2019ll see if we like the cut of your jib. Details here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Till soon.<\/p>\n

What do you think? How do you market your work? What works, what doesn’t? And are you more grimdark or noblebright?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My book of the moment is Amazon Ads Unleashed \u2013 a very useful guide to advertising your book on Amazon. Couple of warnings before you rush out and buy it. First, it\u2019s written for more advanced users. If you just want a basic tour of Amazon ads, this isn\u2019t the book for you. If a<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/grimdark-or-noblebright\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Grimdark or Noblebright – Jericho Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"My book of the moment is Amazon Ads Unleashed \u2013 a very useful guide to advertising your book on Amazon. 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