The Definition Of Insanity Is ......

Big businesses spend a lot of money on advertising. I think we all know that. They spend it because it works, otherwise they wouldn’t do it.
 
One of the reasons they spend so much on advertising is because they keep launching new advertising campaigns.
 
They will run a campaign for a few weeks or maybe a few months, then they’ll stop for a while. Then they’ll start a brand new campaign with different ads.
 
The ads may be similar, using the same characters or the same voices, but they will look different. The characters will be in a new setting, or the voices will be fronted by new images. But it’s the same product that is being advertised.
 
So why go to the expense of re-making ads so often? Why not just continue using the same campaign all the time?

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It’s because we, the public, get used to seeing an ad, so after a while we don’t pay it any attention. We need something fresh to make us watch the ad and hear the message once more.

It’s a bit like teenagers being told to tidy their rooms by their parents. If you thought that your teenager isn’t listening anymore, you are probably right. They’ve heard it so many times, they’ve “tuned out” the message.
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And we all do it.

Which is why advertisers spend so much money trying to attract our attention again by making new adverts.

So, what has this got to do with Indie authors? you may ask.
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I’m so glad you did.

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"But that will stop working after a few weeks."

Indie authors spend a lot of their time using social media to promote their books. It’s free unless you use the paid advertising facilities. The most common way to use it to promote work is to post a bit of blurb and a link to where the reader can find out more. The link then pulls the cover image through from the retail site so it can be seen on the social media site.
 
That’s fine if you don’t want to pay for advertising. But that will stop working after a few weeks.
 
Like adverts for big businesses, people will soon “tune out” your advert because once they’ve seen the cover, it is too familiar to bother with. They either bought the book several weeks ago, in which case they aren’t going to buy it again, or they are going to scroll past it.
 
So, the indie author has to do what the big businesses do. They have to “refresh” the message.
 
How can you, as an indie author, do that?
 
Well, the image is the first thing to look at.
 
Are you relying on the link in the post to reproduce the book’s cover from the sales page on Amazon, or another retailing site?
 
If you are, then you can’t change the image unless you change the actual cover.
 
But, actually, you can.

You can upload a new image into your Facebook, Twitter, Insta, etc post. That way it will take priority over the link to the sales page and will be the image that is seen. The link is still there for people to click on, but the image you use can be changed in multiple ways to keep the message fresh.
 
It also has the advantage that you can be more creative with the image and do things that a simple link to Amazon (or whatever) can never do.
 
You can create 3D images of your book’s cover.

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You can overlay the 3D image onto an atmospheric background, along with some text.
 
If the book is part of a series, you can show two or three covers side by side in a single image.
 
You can change the orientation of the image to make it more suitable for viewing on a phone or tablet.
 
Ultimately, you can create a “trailer” for your book, using video imagery alongside your book’s cover. That is really eye catching.

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By now, some of you will be asking “How can I, an impoverished author, create those sorts of images?”
 
Well, if you can use PowerPoint you can do some of that. You can even make videos if you download free apps like “Moviemaker”, which can join together images created in PowerPoint, accompanied by a narration, text or music.
 
If you want to invest in some software to help you, there is Photoshop, Canva and one we reviewed a couple of weeks ago, called Book Brush, which specialises in creating those sorts of images for authors. There are probably other packages available, but we’re not going to list them all.
 
Will it cost much? Well, somewhere between £100 - £200 ($110 - $220) will probably cover it.

​Immediately some of you will be saying “I can’t afford that.” To which I will reply “Can you afford not to sell any books?”
 
If your books aren’t selling, then  doing nothing is not an option.

Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results each time.
 
I’ll put it a slightly different way: If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. If you want a different outcome, you have to do something different.
 
That applies to life in general, of course, but this isn’t a philosophical blog. Just be assured that if your books aren’t selling using whatever methods you are using now, they will continue not to sell unless you change your methods.
 
And what you do has to be within both your ability and your control. Unless you want to contract an expensive marketing agency to promote your book, you have to do whatever it is within your power to do.

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"I know you don’t want to hear this but, by itself,  using social media for free is never going to turn anyone into a successful indie  author."

One of the ways you can do that is to change your post’s images and messages at regular intervals.
 
And to do that you need the right tools.
 
I will admit that there is an element of risk involved here. You may spend money on buying an app to help you create more or better images and you may not increase your book’s sales at the end of it.

But, on the upside, if it works and you sell more books, your investment will repay you, because you can use those apps time and again to create more and more new images.
 
But rest assured, if you don’t spend the money, nothing will happen anyway. Success doesn’t come for free, as any indie author who is selling a lot of books will tell you.
 
We are selling quite a lot of books because we are spending money. We aren’t a big business so we can’t afford to spend much. But if we didn’t spend anything, we wouldn’t sell enough books to cover our day-to-day running costs.
 
I know you don’t want to hear this but, by itself,  using social media for free is never going to turn anyone into a successful indie  author.
 
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