Using Paid Ads to Drive More Book Sales

Podcast 42 min read

Publish & Prosper Episode #104
Published January 28, 2026
Listen on: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | YouTube | Complete List of Channels

In this episode, Lauren & Matt cover five different types of paid ads that can help you sell more books. We review the pros, cons, and best practices for:

🔍 Paid Search
🗣️ Paid Social Media Campaigns
📧 Email & Newsletter Sponsorships
🎙️ Pre-Roll & Mid-Roll Ads
📖 Trade Publication Print Ads

Episode Chapters

[2:14] - Paid Search
[12:52] - Paid Social Media Ads
[22:39] - Sponsored Emails & Newsletters
[29:44] - Pre-Roll & Mid-Roll Ads
[38:04] - Print Ads
[47:20] - Paid Promo Companies
[48:59] - Episode Wrap Up

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Complete Episode Transcript

Lauren: Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Publish & Prosper. Today we are gonna be talking about how to use paid ads to drive more book sales. Which is something that I think we all want.
Matt: More book sales?
Lauren: More book sales.
Matt: Yes, absolutely.
Lauren: Not paid ads.
Matt: Yeah. We don't wanna do paid ads.
Lauren: It's – yeah, it's not fun. And I think that for a lot of people, if you're not really sure either where to start –
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: – or where to prioritize –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – it can be really overwhelming.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Yeah.
Lauren: So, I think we're gonna kind of present a high level overview of some different types of paid ads. What scenarios under which they are suited for different types of books, or types of creators, or types of businesses. Where you're gonna get like, the most benefit from them. And where you might say, okay, well, as cool as this is, it might not be super relevant to me, so I'll pass on this one and try something else instead.
Matt: Yeah. And that's really key when you're talking about a marketing tactic that costs money.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: This is the one area where you can really bleed yourself dry quickly if you're not paying attention. Or if you don't know what you're doing.
Lauren: Absolutely. If you're not doing it right, you're just wasting money.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You're just setting money on fire. So it's, it's either worth it to do it right or not worth it to do it.
Matt: Yeah, because if you do it right, you can actually sell a lot.
Lauren: Yeah. We've seen some incredibly successful paid ad campaigns of different types and different varieties.
Matt: Yeah. Well let's jump in to how we can help people sell copies of their book.
Lauren: Let's do it. We're gonna power through this as much as possible because there is a lot of content to talk about here. We're gonna try to take a look at five different types of paid ads. Definitely gonna be looking at, at some paid search options, paid social media ads. Sponsored emails or sponsored newsletters. Audio or video ads like pre-roll and mid-roll ads –
Matt: For podcasts.
Lauren: For podcasts or YouTube channels, something like that. And even print ads.
Matt: Especially print ads.
Lauren: Yeah.

[2:14] - Paid Search

Matt: We'll start off with paid search. I'll say outta the gate, if you're gonna try to put some money into paid options, paid search is not the easiest one to start with, so. The easiest one to start with will probably be social media.
Lauren: Probably.
Matt: This one can get very complicated very quickly. There's a lot of different components to paid search, which is why it can get complicated so fast. The first thing that you have to remember, really pay attention to, is your budget. And it's hard to pick a low budget and feel like you're gonna make an impact and stick to it. The number one mistake people make with paid search and their budgets is when they pick a budget or they, or they look at their marketing spend and say, okay, you know, I can afford to spend ten dollars a day, and that's it. At first you think, okay this is great. You start building your campaign, or campaigns plural, and then you realize, or you start thinking like, well. Ten dollars a day doesn't seem like much. Or Google's telling me if I up this to thirty dollars a day I'll get 80,000 more impressions. The hardest thing is to stick to your budget and not be influenced by what the tool is to – cause of course Google wants you to spend more money.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Stick to your budget. That's the most important thing upfront.
Lauren: With any of these, honestly. I would say across the board, any of these different ad types, that's a really important detail. And especially pay attention to the ones that have dynamic pricing.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like sponsoring an email newsletter or like a trade publication, like an actual print ad in a trade publication, is probably gonna be a flat fee. But something like paid search or social ads or something like that, the budget is flexible.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Is dynamic. And it's very easy for it to run away really, really quickly because you're not paying attention to what you're spending on it. Or you think you're just like, oh, I'm just adding a dollar a day. And you're not thinking about the fact that –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – a dollar a day adds up very quickly over time.
Matt: That's how they get you though.
Lauren: Oh yeah.
Matt: They can get you to think about just the daily, like…
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: You know, you don't stop, oftentimes, and do the monthly math. So when you calculate that over a monthly spread, it really starts to add up. And so, like you said, and like we were talking about, that could get away from you real fast. Now, because you do set a budget inside of Google Ads, you know, once it hits it, it hits it.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And it, it pretty much stops. So the downside of that is if, if for some reason you're having really good success with your ad, your campaign, whatever you're doing, and you're not paying attention, you could hit your budget very quickly and then your ad just stops showing. And so in that scenario, it makes a lot of sense to be paying attention. Because you may want to add more budget. If you're seeing a lot of success, if it's just going, you know, wildfire, then yeah, you wanna hop back in and increase that budget.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: The general rule of paid search, especially Google Ads, if it's giving you a return of almost 200%, it's paying for itself. Just go ahead and give it more budget. If you're spending ten dollars a day and based on those ads alone, you're selling three to five books a day, you're making your money back.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: Easily.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Especially if you have a nice profit margin cause you're selling direct or something. Then yeah, double that. If it's working really well, okay, switch it to twenty dollars a day. So again, just keep an eye on that spend to revenue ratio.
Lauren: Keep an eye on it in general. Again, with the same thing with the budget, any of these dynamic ad options that you can make changes as it's live, as it's active. You should be paying close attention to it. At least in the beginning. You know, if it's something that you're trying to set up, an evergreen campaign that you can just kind of let it run in the background, promoting your book for you while you're doing other things. That's great. Plenty of people do that. That's totally fine.
Matt: Yup.
Lauren: But at least in the initial setup days, in the first few days and weeks that you're running it, you're gonna wanna keep a close eye on it, just so that you can get a better understanding of exactly how to adjust the different elements of it to get it right where you want it to be, and then you can set it and forget it from there.
Matt: Paid search really is a very analytical and spreadsheet-driven type of tactic.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: If you're that type of person that likes that, it's a good one. Because you can literally make changes in your Google Ads account and see results within minutes to hours. Good or bad, by the way. So if you're the, if you're the kind of person that likes spreadsheets, and really lives in a world of data and analytics, and doesn't mind – That was weird.
Lauren: I know. I don’t like that.
Matt: Our console board just made some really weird noise.
Lauren: It’s haunted.
Matt: Hopefully it’s not about to catch on fire. So, you know, in that vein, in terms of books – We’d say this is really good for nonfiction, especially if it's content that is geared towards something a little more educational. You're teaching something, or more of a how to style book, versus something that's very broad and conceptual.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's also something that's best suited for books or brands that are as niche as possible with their content. If you are an individual small business owner and you are trying to fight with a modest budget for certain keywords. You are not gonna be able to fight the big dogs for some like, really broad search terms or ad terms.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Or space on the front page of Google. But if you're doing something that like, you're one of the few people that is providing specifically that kind of content in that niche, you have a better chance of fighting for top space within those ad searches, at not an exorbitant amount of money per day.
Matt: Yeah. I mean, you don't want to go out there with your modest budget and be bidding on a keyword of like…murder mystery.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Good luck.
Lauren: Right. Yeah.
Matt: But if you could string together keywords that would essentially have you in a space that is, you know, some of these categories that exist right now…they are pretty niche. And you still have a good chance of finding your way to the top of the search engine results. So yeah, that's a good point. You know, when I started in marketing, a long time ago, I started in search. And you had to do everything manually in Google Ads. Everything. It was a nightmare. And you literally were working out of that Google Ads console all day, every day. It was terrible. But fun. I, I liked it. Now in Google Ads so much of it is just automated. Which is great, to a degree. You’re gonna give it keywords. It'll help you find more keywords. It'll help you niche down to tighter keywords. You can just give it a couple of headlines and a couple of other descriptive sentences and it'll dynamically put the ads together on the fly, based on that searcher's profile or history of searching, to create an ad that they think will perform the best with that searcher. Which is really great. And so it really takes a lot of the work out of you having to create twenty-seven different ad variations. It really just does a lot for you. The downside of that is if you are that person that really likes that control and you feel like you have a really good handle on your audience, on that search traffic, then you lose some of that control. So, again, Google ads these days, it's so easy to set up campaigns and stuff. It really does most of it for you. You can still do it manually, but I definitely would not recommend that for anybody who's not done that, you know. And probably done it for a living. Like, it's not fun. It's complicated. You can very easily miss something. I think you said earlier, like it's very easy to mess something up. If you don't do it right you're screwed out of the gate.
Lauren: Yeah. Which is another one of the reasons that you wanna make sure you're checking that campaign performance regularly in the beginning, because if you screwed something up, you don't wanna wait until two weeks and $2,000 later before you realize.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's all different ways that can happen but that's, yeah. It’s not all doom and gloom, right?
Lauren: No.
Matt: So, you know, we've warned you that there are ways that it can get very expensive. It can be very competitive depending on the keywords that you're trying to compete in. And you know, it does require that you pay close attention to it. But there's a lot of pros to it as well. For all the hype that exists around ChatGPT or any of these other generative search options, Google search is still used a boatload.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Like, to the tune of billions per day. So it's not like it's going anywhere anytime soon. You can reach a very large swath of people using Google Ads. And again, if you're doing it right, you're gonna hit the right people. I don't know, I just, maybe because I started in it, like I'm comfortable with it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I still see a lot of the good in it. And again, if you're a nonfiction creator and you really want to try to get your book out there to a broader audience. It's worth a month or two of experimenting with it, couple hundred bucks, whatever you can do. You never know. It might really pay off for you.
Lauren: It is a good thing to have as evergreen promotional content. It might not be something that is a super effective way for you to announce a book launch or a specific event or something that is –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – a time-sensitive thing. There are different channels that I would use for that overpaid search, but if it's something that you want just like a general, like I wanna keep this running book promotion, brand promotion, something that's gonna steadily and consistently keep attention on my content. It's a great option. But maybe not entry level, at the same time. Which does seem counterintuitive, maybe, that I would start this episode with a more difficult topic. But I organized these where I put your area of expertise first and then my area of expertise second. And then from there, who knows what we're doing?
Matt: It's also good, you know, again, for those who really like analytics, measurable results.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Immediate results. You know, a lot of the stuff that we're gonna talk about and just in general, you know, there are times where you put something out there into the world through some sort of marketing tactic, and it's not always easily measurable.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Having something where every button you push, every lever you pull, every knob that you twist, there's an immediate effect, and it's measurable. For a lot of people there's something very appealing about that. So.
Lauren: I think there's also – and this might be a good way to, to shift us into the social media ads next. I think that paid search is more tactical and practical than creative. I don't mean that there's like no creativity involved in it whatsoever. Cause there is.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: You do have to like, think about appropriate copy or keywords or whatever. Like there are absolutely ways that you can get creative within this. But if you're somebody who's like, I can't even make an Instagram post without getting help from somebody, because graphics are not my forte, or video is not my forte. Or MS Paint is the extent of my like, graphic design ability. Like, that's okay with paid search. You don't need to be creating the coolest, greatest graphics and video content of all time. You can still do really effective things without a creative bone in your body.
Matt: Yeah, again, it is truly for those who are numbers driven. They make it so easy for you now, like I said. So yeah. I think there's a lot of benefits to it, but you just have to be careful.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: And I agree, that is a good segue into social media.

[12:52] - Paid Social Ads

Lauren: Yep.
Matt: Which, not my forte.
Lauren: That's okay, cause that was mine for a while.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Social media is…there's kind of two different types of social ads and we could get very, very nitty gritty into this and I’m not going to. But when we're talking about paid ads on social, there's promoted posts where you're just putting money behind a post that you've shared organically on your own social channels, or an actual dedicated campaign
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That is something that doesn't live natively on your specific profiles, but is an ad campaign that you've created within the ad manager for whatever these channels are. There's benefits to each of those. There's definitely like different approaches to both of those, and it's gonna vary by platform and vary by what your goals are for individual content and channels. If you're specifically trying to reach new audiences of potential readers –
Matt: Qualified buyers.
Lauren: Qualified buyers.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Absolutely. People that haven't heard of you but would be immediately drawn in by your, your book cover, your copy, your content, like something surface level that they can right away look at it and see, ooh, I am interested in this. I understand without having to question it why I am getting this ad. I mean, varies from platform to platform, but almost all of the social channels you can get really, really granular with your audience targeting. And I think that's one of the really great pros for social media ads.
Matt: And there's never been a medium where ads have been as accepted as they are –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: By the general everyday user and consumer now, like.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Now it's so acceptable for ads in social media, particularly done really well on Instagram. Like, I can't tell you how many times, and I beat myself up about every time though, that I've bought something on Instagram.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: Cause the ad was just…it didn't bother me it was in my feed. It fit me like, like you said, you know, whatever the brand was, even the platform itself is really good about pairing this content up with you and what your likes are, cause clearly it knows, right? And the experience is so easy.
Lauren: Yup.
Matt: So, yeah. I mean, that's why I said earlier too, when we were talking about paid search, I would start with paid social.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Because it's just so easy right now. If you do it right, like…
Lauren: It is much more entry level than paid search. And it is something that if you're careful and you pay attention and you're smart with how you do it, you can easily – $5 a day. Like, just a few dollars a day on this thing.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You know, it might not totally move the needle, but it might be enough to at least get some like, top of the funnel, general interest. We see it all the time with the targeting that you're able to do and specifically things like lookalike audiences, people that are fans of this content, or people that follow this creator. You can go in –
Matt: Well it's also where a tool like SparkToro comes in really critical.
Lauren: Absolutely. Incredibly useful here.
Matt: To do your research outside of the platform. Bring that back into the platform to help when you're doing stuff like creating like audiences or clone audiences or things like that. There are a lot of ways to really expand on what the platform already offers you for building the audiences for your ads.
Lauren: Yeah. Also to that point, paid social ads are not something that you need to invest in new software if you don't want to. There are tools that can help you, like SparkToro or something like that, but all of these ad campaigns can be built within the individual social channels.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You do have to have an ad account within them, but you should be doing that anyway if you're a business. Your social profiles should be business accounts. It's also a great way to AB test different creative elements. So maybe if you wanted to do a banner ad or something, you're content in a newsletter or something like that, that's gonna be a little bit more expensive. And you want to test three different ad creatives and see which one is gonna be the highest performing before you insert that into something else. Social's a great way to just put a little bit of money behind three different ads, nothing else is different about them, and see which one performs the best –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – after a couple weeks. But then of course, you know, just like with the paid search, it can absolutely get a little unwieldy if you try to do too much. The budget can definitely run away from you if you're not paying attention to it. And it is something that can be pretty high maintenance. You'll see ad fatigue happen really quickly, where you might have an ad do really well for the first week and then you think like, yeah, this is doing great, I'm gonna boost the budget on this. But then you didn't change the audience, so your ad is just getting delivered –
Matt: To the same people, yeah.
Lauren: – to the same people, and they're getting sick of it.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And they'll very quickly shift from oh, this looks cool to like, oh my God, if I see this one more time, I'm gonna stab somebody.
Matt: That's one of the biggest mistakes people make with brand awareness campaigns versus buying campaigns. Like if you're gonna try a campaign just for brand awareness, there's a point in time where you cross the line from brand awareness to brand fatigue. And that's really important to understand. And so, yeah, maybe start with a brand awareness campaign, then switch over to an actual buy campaign. Driving everybody to your product listing page on your website. Cause you should be selling direct when you're doing all these things. You know, that's the other thing too. I – see, I told myself I wasn't gonna talk about Amazon when we got on here. But, you know one of the biggest mistakes people make too, in any type of paid ad scenario, is they drive everybody to Amazon –
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: – to buy their book. So you're spending money to capture traffic, but then you're turning around and driving them right over to Amazon. It doesn't make any sense.
Lauren: I know.
Matt: If you're gonna spend money on building an audience, drive them back to your home base. Collect that customer information. I just, I – I never understood that. It's crazy.
Lauren: I totally agree. I think the two biggest mistakes that people make are that, absolutely, driving them to somewhere that isn't their owned space. That's absurd. And then forgetting to update. I can't tell you –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like, I've seen a genuinely shocking number of ads in the last two weeks that still have Black Friday copy –
Matt: Yes.
Lauren: – and pre-holiday copy.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And I'm like…it's January. You don't have an excuse for this anymore. You should have updated this a month ago.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: It's something that requires awareness and maintenance. But is also something that can be very effective and a great testing tool. You can do a lot of things with it. Obviously we're not gonna get into the individual platform by platform, because they vary wildly. There are some really, really, really smart people out there that specialize in specific social media channel ad campaigns.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So go check them out.
Matt: Agreed. How do you track your social media ads? What's a good metric versus a bad metric?
Lauren: Oh, that's a great question. I would say do it, honestly, just within the individual channels. I always also kind of found that no matter what third party tool I was using, it was never quite as accurate as just the actual platforms themselves.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: The ad managers within the platforms themselves. Which is also then better, because if you do see something that you're like, oh, I wanna tweak that and fix that, it's a lot easier to do that within the tool itself than it is in a third party tool. But you're gonna be looking at… I think a lot of times people make the mistake of like, you're looking at impressions. Like, they wanna see, oh wow, a million people saw this ad. Okay, a million people saw that ad. How many people clicked on it? How many people went to your website from there? Can you see a return on ad spend? You're gonna wanna look at those like actual engagement metrics, not just the…a thousand people watched this video. Cool. What did that do for you?
Matt: I'm gonna take a step further.
Lauren: Go ahead.
Matt: I'm gonna make it easy for the ones who are just starting. If you’re using social media ads, or any other paid ads, for that matter. If you're using it to sell books, there is one metric that matters, and that’s book sales.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: That’s it. Are you selling books from those ads that you placed? It's the only way you're gonna tell that it's worth the money. It's the only way that you're gonna be able to calculate an ROAS, or a return on ad spend, that is valuable for you. And you have to be able to measure that, right?
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So you can't be sending them over to Amazon. Because the minute they buy the book on Amazon, you're not gonna know if they came from your social media ad. You'll have no idea. That's my hot take on it.
Lauren: No notes.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Can't disagree with that at all.
Matt: Again, these are all important metrics –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – and they should be talked about. But for this episode and for the premise that we're doing this to sell books, don't get caught up in the vanity stuff. Don't even get caught up in some of the non-vanity stuff. Did you sell books off that ad? That’s it.
Lauren: I would actually recommend, one of the things that I would do when I was doing very specific paid ads on social was, you can customize the information in the metric tables when you're looking at your ad campaigns. And I would clear out every single thing that wasn't our top goal and then whatever was supporting that goal. Because I did not need to get distracted by –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – the other metrics that were going on there. If my goal is to sell more books, I don't care about how many people followed me because they saw this ad.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That's not relevant. And that information's not gonna go away. I'm not deleting it, I'm just removing it from my field of view.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So, pro tip there.
Matt: Yeah, that's a good point. Just to wrap up paid social media ads. Which again, I think, I think is the easiest way –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – to start with paid ads. It's probably the safest way. And again, if your goal is just to sell books, it's very easy to see if it's working or not. So far we've gone through paid search and social media and it's still relatively the same advice, right
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Pick a budget, stick to it, watch your metrics.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: And quite frankly, the only metric you're really concerned with is book sales.

[22:39] - Sponsored Emails & Newsletters

Matt: So, next one's sponsored emails.
Lauren: Which is something a little different than these two. You know, there are plenty of different types –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – of, of paid search, paid social ads, banner ads, interstitial ads, whatever you wanna look at there. But if you wanna get a little different with your ad content. Sponsored emails, paid placement in another brand or creator's email content. Whether that is as a sponsor, as a guest contributor, things like that. Some way for you to get in front of a targeted, qualified audience, but is not earned promo, it is something that you're paying for.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. And, and again, and we'll talk about this, there are services that you can utilize for that.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: But you know, you can find these on your own too.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: I mean, there are a lot of people who have built their newsletter empires to very large degrees. And they offer that. Like, you can come in and you can buy space in their email newsletter for your product or your book or whatever that might be. And it's a great way to find a new audience, to tap into a new group of people that might not otherwise see your ads or your organic content that you create.
Lauren: Not just a really great way to, to get in front of an audience, a new audience, but an audience that you know is a qualified audience. Because even with the very nuanced audience targeting that you can do with paid search and paid social, you're still not guaranteed to get in front of a truly, truly qualified audience. They're still top of the funnel, for the most part. But sponsored emails, you are choosing what emails to have your book put in. You're choosing the audience of people. I'm not going to publish a hockey romance and ask Matt to include that in his newsletter to marketing experts. That would be insane. I might get really lucky and there's one or two hockey nerds in that audience, but for the most part, probably not. But I could go and have BookRiot put it in their weekly romance roundup. That would be a qualified audience. That would be people that specifically signed up with the intention of getting news about new romance novels.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: The people that are getting those emails are actively confirmed interested in that content type. Even if they don't know who you are.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't mean you shouldn't, like we said, search for parallel matches.
Lauren: Sure.
Matt: Right?
Lauren: Of course.
Matt: So, if… I don't know, if I wrote a horror novel, running an ad or a sponsored piece of content in a newsletter that goes out to people who are interested in horror movies –
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: – or gory studio makeup effects.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know? I mean, there are parallels where it still makes sense. Like, there's an overlap there in the audience. Just can't be as distant as the one you gave. Like, if I have a newsletter that's for marketing experts… Yeah, you shouldn't run your ad for your hockey romance. And quite frankly, I shouldn't let you –
Lauren: No.
Matt: – run an ad in my newsletter for hockey romance. So, yeah, I think there's opportunities there to expand that audience. And unlike some of the other sort of channels that we've talked about, you do have a little bit of extra runway there for parallel audiences. There is a little bit of a venn diagram where the two audiences might meet in the middle and it makes sense, and you might end up with some very highly qualified purchasers –
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: – out of that, so.
Lauren: Well, and it's also something that, unlike the previous two that we've talked about, it is something that you can kind of be more creative with the exact content that you're putting in there. That's something that you would work out specifically with whatever brand or newsletter you’re buying into.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: In some cases it is, you're getting dedicated space of: this email is sponsored by…three lines of copy and that's it. Or the highlight book of the week in this email is this, and you're not getting any additional ad space in there.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: There's a very specific thing. But maybe what you're buying in there is guest contributor space and it's not that much of a leap to say, hey, I'm gonna write a mini blog post about the overlap that I see between my audience and this audience. And if you wanna learn more about that, check out my book here.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I thought it of a good one.
Lauren: Yeah?
Matt: If you write horror, and somebody else has a paranormal newsletter.
Lauren: Yeah, absolutely.
Matt: That's a good parallel.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: I was trying to think of something that was like…yeah. Anyways. Yeah. Great. I –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Sorry, that was a side tangent.
Lauren: No, that's okay.
Matt: That’s what happens when you get old.
Lauren: It's all right. I totally understand. It is something, like I mentioned earlier, where the budgets are usually gonna be like, pretty dynamic for the other types of ads where it's X per day or per week or whatever. Sponsored emails are generally something that are more of a flat rate one time set purchase
Matt: Yeah, per flight. Yeah.
Lauren: Yeah. So that's a great way for you to, to have a better understanding of exactly what you're gonna spend on it. There's not gonna be hidden fees in there, anything like that. It also could be a huge range, like literally somewhere between like, $50 and $500 depending on the newsletter, depending on the size of the audience. So it's a good way to, if you have a finite amount of money that you're like, I have exactly this much money and I wanna spend it on one really qualified ad or audience, this is a great option for that.
Matt: Yeah. I have seen some go up a little more than 500 dollars too, but.
Lauren: Oh sure. Yeah.
Matt: Anyways, but in general, yeah. I think depending on their audience size, if they want to charge $750 for a nice feature content spot and their newsletter goes out to 20,000 people, you know? I don't think that's a bad deal. But the only way to know is to try it.
Lauren: Right.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Do your research though, make sure you're doing that. Because you want to make sure that you know who their audience is, but you also wanna make sure that you know that their audience is actually an engaged and qualified audience. If somebody has 20,000 people on their email subscriber list, that's great. But if they have a 0.2% open rate, not so great.
Matt: Yeah. So unlike what we talked about or what I said with social media, there are some metrics that do matter with email.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Right? Because they have to open the email in order –
Lauren: Right.
Matt: – to be able to click and buy your book. So it's definitely important, when collaborating or working with an email newsletter, to know what their open rates are.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Click through rates are somewhat whatever. But open rates are very important. Yeah, if they've got 20,000 subscribers, but their open rate is 1% – which is also very extreme, I think the averages sit anywhere from like 25 to 45% open rates. If anybody's got a higher than 45% open rate, on average across all their sends, they're doing really well.
Lauren: If you are trying to partner with somebody that this is a regular thing for them, that they do paid space –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – in a newsletter, this is all information that they should –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – volunteer upfront. Like this is not a hidden gotcha moment here. Because that is part of their part of the process. We want you to know that it is worth it for you to buy into ad space on this. Here are all the metrics that I can give you to convince you that it's a good idea for you.
Matt: Yep. And if they don't, it's a red flag.
Lauren: Yes, absolutely. If they don't provide that information. Don't, just don't do it.
Matt: Yeah.

[29:44] - Pre-Roll & Mid-Roll Ads

Matt: Alright, so.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: If you wanna buy some time on our podcast with a pre-roll ad, you can. You can’t.
Lauren: You can't.
Matt: But other podcasts you can.
Lauren: Yes you can.
Matt: Should we sell space on our podcast?
Lauren: I think that we would have to choose very, very specifically who we wanted it to be. And by that I mean –
Matt: Disney.
Lauren: – if you are not a Disney creator, don't bother reaching out to us. But there are some really great opportunities –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – in other areas to have video or audio ads. So pre-roll and mid-roll ads, if you're not familiar with it, pre-roll is what plays before a video or before a podcast starts.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: The mid-roll ones are the, the ones that literally interrupt –
Matt: Somewhere near the middle.
Lauren: – in the middle.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: You can choose one or the other. Depending on –
Matt: Or both.
Lauren: – how you're doing it. For sure.
Matt: A lot of podcasts they'll let you create the ad yourself. And a lot of them won't. You’ll give them the copy, they will create the ad, and you'll get some sort of final approval over it. Either way is fine, by the way. Don't get bent if some podcast doesn't want to let you create the ad itself. They just want you to hand over some written copy. It's almost better, I think –
Lauren: I – yes, I was gonna say, I think it's actually –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – better to have the host read it in their, like, have the host read the ad for you.
Matt: Sometimes, yeah. Now again, as an author or creator, you may be very good at that. You may be very good at creating video and audio content. And so, in that sense, I would still push back a little and say hey, well let me send you a few samples of stuff I already do. You know, there are times where you're gonna feel like – and you may be right – that the way you do it is better for your audience.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: But, nine times out of ten, if it's a good podcast, if they're like – so I listen to Joe Pulizzi’s podcast every Friday. It's a marketing podcast called This Old Marketing. And what they do, it's really fun. You know, they have to run HubSpot ads now, because they're a HubSpot podcast. And so what Robert does is he creates the ads for HubSpot. And they're, they're funny, they're really good. He uses a bunch of different things like Sora and some other stuff, and so… He'll typically create some sort of song, cause he is super into music.
Lauren: Fun.
Matt: And the one from this past Friday, it was a rap song that Sora created. But it's all about HubSpot and marketing and like… So, I mean, again, depending on the podcast, who they are, how long they've been around, what resources they have, they're just gonna create a better ad than you are. They understand their audience more than you do. I mean, that's why you're going to them to begin with, is for their audience. So if they're the ones that want to create it, just let em do it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: You know? You'll get some approval over it.
Lauren: There’s also different ways to approach this, which also could influence whether you choose to create your own or have the hosts do it. You can just use a podcast platform tool like Spotify or Buzzsprout and upload your own ads to it. And then it's similar to, like, a paid social ad or something where you are putting in keywords or on YouTube, you upload the content, you put in keywords and it chooses where to run those ads. But the other thing you can do is contract directly with podcast networks. So, like Matt said HubSpot or Wondery or Exactly Right, or the different networks that exist. You can sign an ad contract with them and they'll place it within their – and in that case, it's probably gonna be the hosts reading it –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – and not an ad that you created.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So depending on how you approach this, there are different ways.
Matt: Those are also the more expensive ones.
Lauren: Yes, of course.
Matt: So. This is also a lot like email. You know, there's so many podcasts out there about so many different things and it's very easy to get very niche with them. And you can experiment and have fun with parallels.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So again, if I wrote a horror book and I want to do a little bit of pre-roll mid-roll advertising on podcasts, I'm gonna go look for podcasts that talk about true crime that might be in line with what my horror book is about, or things like that. So it doesn't have to be a book podcast, it doesn't have to be a podcast for authors or even just for readers. You know, look for those parallels where you may be able to get into that area of an audience that you might not otherwise have an option or a choice or an ability to get in front of.
Lauren: Again, this is one of those things where it's like, if you want to think outside the box a little bit, and you want to try something that isn't just paid search or paid social, like these are, these are alternatives. And it is something that I think could be a fun opportunity for you to get creative, and do something new. Or new to you, maybe. But it's also definitely something that you're gonna have to…like, there's a lot going on there, so you're gonna have to figure it out. It's not something that you can just wake up one morning and say, I think today I'm gonna create midroll ads for a podcast. And by the end of the day that day you're gonna have those live out in the world.
Matt: Yeah. But also similar to email, what you're buying is the trust that that creator's built with their audience, right? So if I have a newsletter for marketers and I've got 20,000 subscribers, I've earned their trust. And so to a degree, that's what somebody who wanted to put a sponsor ad in my newsletter would be purchasing as well.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: My subscribers are trusting that if I'm putting somebody in my newsletter, their content is valuable, or whatever that may be. It's kind of the same for podcasts.
Lauren: Absolutely.
Matt: For the most part. Now, I think the last drawback we'll talk about with podcasts and then move on, is that unlike most of these other paid types of ads, it can be very hard to track the ROI on a podcast.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Because it is something you listen to, and unless you're going to the show notes of a podcast and clicking on the links in them, which not a lot of people do.
Lauren: Can confirm.
Matt: Yeah. It's hard to track, you know? So with a podcast what we would suggest is you need to be selling direct. As you should for all of these. But when you are selling direct, you can create coupon codes.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Right? So if you're selling off Shopify or Wix or whatever, you can create a coupon code that is specific to that podcast. So if they're coming from that podcast and they use coupon code, whatever, they'll get 10% off the book, or they'll get free shipping on the book, however you decide to set it up. That allows you to help track the return on that podcast spend. There's not a lot of other ways to really track the return on a podcast ad, which is one of the main and one of the only drawbacks.
Lauren: This is, I think, much more of a brand awareness than sales thing.
Matt: Could be.
Lauren: But it is absolutely, there are still ways for it to move the needle, for sure. We also talked about it a little bit in the episode that we did on building a landing page –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – for your book. You know, like Matt said, absolutely promo codes. And if you are somebody who listens to podcasts other than this one, you've definitely heard that.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: It’s always…promo code murder for My Favorite Murder, or promo code whatever for getting X amount off your first HelloFresh order.
Matt: That's right.
Lauren: Right? You know.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But the other thing that you can do there is if you have a very distinct landing page that is just like book title dot com slash podcast, then you know that any traffic that came to that landing page, that came to that website, came from that podcast ad.
Matt: For the most part.
Lauren: There was one example that you gave in that landing page episode, and it was like Fidelity or something, that it was like –
Matt: It was terrible, yeah.
Lauren: Like it had the, the backslashes, and –
Matt: Yeah. One of my podcasts that I listen to, they do a monthly sponsor.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: So whoever is the sponsor is the sponsor for that whole month. And every morning when they’d read the sponsor copy, they would read the URL that you're supposed to go to. And it was just insane. It was like fidelity dot com forward slash you know investments forward slash podcast forward slash marketing brew daily forward slash save ten forward slash. Like it was like – who in the right mind, whether you're driving or not, is listening is like typing, like, come on dude.
Lauren: Yeah let me just pull the car over and type this out really quick.
Matt: Oh my gosh, yeah. I’m gonna get a ticket or get in an accident –
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: – listening to this thing –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – or trying to remember it. But yeah, be smart about it.
Lauren: You said something in there that was a really good point too.
Matt: Oh then by all means, please touch on it.
Lauren: For a lot of these, it is more than a single episode sponsorship.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like, it's like you're sponsoring for a whole month. And also if you're contracting with a specific network or a specific podcast, and you're not just using like, YouTube ads to place dynamic ads in there.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Then it is evergreen content. Because it's built into the episode itself. So a year from now when people are going back and listening to that old podcast episode, your ad is still gonna be in there.
Matt: Yeah.

[38:04] - Print Ads

Matt: Alright. Lastly, not least.
Lauren: Definitely not least.
Matt: But not a whole lot of time for it.
Lauren: That's okay, we’ll make time.
Matt: Print ads in trade publications.
Lauren: Yes. Which might sound crazy.
Matt: Well I think three years ago, five years ago, definitely ten years ago, it would sound way crazier. But there's been a resurgence of magazines now. There are obviously industry trade magazines that are very specific to publishing, whether it's fiction or nonfiction or just publishing in general. There's just a lot of print that's out again.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: With the opportunities to advertise in it. I love print, I love the stability and the, the longevity of it. The fact that if you run a half page ad in a, let's say Publisher's Weekly, that ad is always in that issue, right? Wherever that issue ends up, whether it's on somebody's desk or at somebody's house or you know, it doesn't matter, like that ad is in there.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: It's a part of that issue for forever, for the most part. I think print is a great opportunity to reach a new audience. You know, there are people who, let's say, are into whatever genre that might be, or just writing, or… Again, go parallel. If I wrote a horror book, you know, or I write horror, there are a lot of magazines out there that are aligned with that genre. Taking an ad out in that magazine to support your upcoming launch, or the book you launched three months ago that the sales are starting to wane, that's not a bad idea depending on the cost of that print ad.
Lauren: Yeah. I think that they can be used very effectively. I think that they can be something that's a lot of fun too, because you get to design a creative. Not all the time. Sometimes it's actually gonna be placement in a list or just the blurb –
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: – and the cover of your book or something.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: But there are a lot of times that you can do some really fun ads and designs with that. But I think it's also not just an opportunity to get your book in front of a new audience, people that are qualified fans of whatever the magazine or trade publication is. But it's also a great way to get your book in front of some of the more traditional gatekeepers that exist and influencers that exist in the publishing industry.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: So, we talked about this –
Matt: and other industries.
Lauren: Oh yes. Depending on what your –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – content is. But if you're looking for ways to get your book into a library, if you're looking for ways to get your book into a bookstore, if you're looking for ways to get your books in front of the people that are responsible for making those selections, having an ad in Publishers Weekly is not gonna hurt.
Matt: No.
Lauren: And even if it is, like, you know…we think about sometimes like, social media ads and we'll go, ugh. Everyone knows it's sponsored content, it's a paid ad, people aren't gonna pay attention to it. That is not the case when it comes to print trade publications, especially in the book industry. Because at the very least you're saying like, I am somebody who takes this seriously. I'm invested in it. I believe this is worth putting in front of people. And the people that are reading that are still gonna look at it. They're not gonna automatically –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – dismiss it just because it's an ad.
Matt: So the TLDR there is: just add value. That's all. If your content is valuable, if somebody finds value in it, whether the value is entertainment, education, whatever, it doesn't matter. If you're adding value, and they feel like it's worth their time to read it, it doesn't matter if it's a sponsored ad or not. Nobody cares. It's also like the difference between a self-published book and a traditional published book these days. If you hand me a book and you say, Matt, you're gonna love this book. It's a short story, a novella. It's horror. It's right up your alley. It's an amazing book. I'm not gonna ask you if it's self-published or traditionally published. I'm not even gonna ask you if you're being paid to put this book in my hands. You might be. If you said it's a good book, I'm gonna check it out.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: If I read the back of the cover of the book and the blurb catches me immediately or hooks me, I'm gonna read it. I don't care how it was published or who published it.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: It's the same. I mean, I look through industry magazines, and if I see a headline or content that looks interesting, I just start reading it. It might say sponsored ad above it, or sponsored content. I don't care. But if it's interesting, if it adds value to my day-to-day or whatever that might be, then it doesn't matter to me. I think these days people just want value for their time.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: If you're gonna spend five minutes reading a blog article, you want it to add value to your life. Again, that value could be you got a couple of chuckles out of it and you just needed a laugh. Great. The value could be it taught you how to…I don't know, program your TV remote control. So now you can actually watch shows with the volume where you want it. It doesn’t matter, like –
Lauren: What a concept.
Matt: If it provides value, it provides value.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: And if it doesn't, great. You just burned a bridge that you'll never get to build back. So. Whatever.
Lauren: Speaking of providing value, don't just assume that by magazine we mean like a paid subscription magazine.
Matt: Oh yeah.
Lauren: Because there's also things like event magazines.
Matt: Sure.
Lauren: And things like that –
Matt: Sorry, we're saying that more as a product type.
Lauren: Yes. Yes.
Matt: But yeah, you're right.
Lauren: But I think every single event that we have been at. There's always some point during the day where there's downtime.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: And your brain is fried because you've been talking to people all day. And I will sit at that booth and I will read cover to cover whatever magazine was there. If it's the daily book magazine –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: – magazine that gets put out, or the specific event program, whatever it is. Over the course of that event, I will read that thing cover to cover because it's there, it's in front of me, and it's something to focus on other than giving the same spiel over and over and over again to people.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: So that is incredibly valuable real estate.
Matt: Yeah. Go to your local library and other places too. There’s always some sort of local magazines, or zines, or like newspapers that cover the arts or literature or stuff like that. Where you could probably find space in there too, whether it's an ad or like you said, just a couple of lines or whatever it might be. But those are also extremely low cost ways to really get your book into the hands of other people.
Lauren: Yeah. And in the same way as newsletters and the pre-roll and midroll ads, a great opportunity for parallel connections. Not just this is my new fiction book and it's going in Fiction Books USA Magazine.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Like it’s –
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: It's a good opportunity –
Matt: Yep.
Lauren: – for you to find tangentially-related or connected spaces for you to share that content.
Matt: Yeah. Finding new audience is the key.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: Right? Nobody wants to fight for the same audience every day, every week, every month. If you can find new ways to get in the hands of new readers, in ways that you never thought you would've been able to before, by just switching up the format by which you're appearing in front of them.
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: You know, whether that's a print magazine or podcast ad or a YouTube ad, or whatever it might be, I think that's the real win here.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Real quick, pros and cons for print ads. The pros, you know again, like email, like podcast, oftentimes some of these industry magazines and other types of print content carry a high level of credibility. Some of them they've been around for a long time, or they have a very well known and trusted editorial team. So again, even though it might say sponsored content, people come to trust even that sponsored content, cause they know there's an editorial team behind it that's really paying attention and looking out for their readers. And also, like I said earlier, what I love about it is it's evergreen, it’s legacy. It's just there. You know what I mean? Somebody can pick that magazine up two years from now and your ad is right there in that magazine, or that newspaper, whatever it is. The cons are that depending on the industry and what type of a periodical it might be, it can be very expensive. On top of that, if it's something where you actually need to design an ad, that can also get expensive. If you're not a designer, it means you need to probably pay somebody to help you design – cause again, you want to catch their eye. You want to add value, you want it to be something worthy. So you'll probably need to pay a designer. Or if you're lucky, and you have a friend that's a designer or a creator, it's a good chance to cross-collaborate. And like podcasts it can be very hard to track the return on a print ad or a piece of print content. There's no clickable link. I mean, most of them have a digital version online, but the point here is that it's print and there's nothing to click. You can use a code, you know, a discount code, but outside of that it's just generally better for branding and awareness.
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: So.
Lauren: There's also opportunities sometimes for you to bundle print and digital ads.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: If it's a publication that does…whether it's print and newsletter, or print and digital versions on their website, or something, they might be open to like, yeah, we'll do a paid ad here and a paid ad here, and you can do both.
Matt: What's also really cool about print, and we know this cause we work with Publishers Weekly, a lot of them, especially the more established magazines and industry trade magazines, they have an editorial calendar that's pretty much set at the beginning of the year.
Lauren: Yes.
Matt: So you could actually know like, what that issue's gonna be themed or devoted to, for let's say October. Publishers Weekly will have a cookbook issue. If you just released a cookbook, great. You could get in for that issue or – So it's really cool to plan around certain things like that too.
Lauren: That's worth noting, if this is something that you're interested in, do not expect that you're gonna buy ad space in next week's magazine.
Matt: Probably not, yeah.
Lauren: You are going to have to be like, thinking a couple of months ahead at the very least. But yes, there are some really good opportunities there to say, ooh, okay. Like, yeah, you're right. I don't really want my horror novel in the cookbooks edition, but I would love to have my horror novel in the late September edition.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: That goes out right before Halloween.
Matt: Yeah.

[47:20] - Paid Promo Companies & Solutions

Matt: So in the interest of time we'll have to speed through this last part.
Lauren: That's okay. We can do it.
Matt: There are organizations, companies and brands that you can work with for dedicated promotional emails, stuff like that. The ones that we know and that we trust and that we're friends with, that we talk about regularly, are people like Written Word Media, who have several different platforms for being able to market your book. Free Booksy, Bargain Booksy, Red Feather Romance. BookFunnel’s also a really great platform for being able to build email lists and cross promote via email lists, especially with other authors. And then BookBub.
Lauren: Which is also a great opportunity for selling your books to dedicated readers.
Matt: Right.
Lauren: Like this is a newsletter that goes out that people specifically signed up for daily or weekly emails about new books, books that are on a limited time promo right now.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Great opportunity for you to market a fiction series. That's actually what I think BookBub is best used for. But all three of these have pros and cons in terms of fiction and nonfiction, better suited for one or the other, or opportunities for both. So we will link all three of them in the show notes that you can really dig into them and, and learn more about them if that's something that you're interested in.
Matt: Yeah.
Lauren: Because as much as everything that we talked about in this episode, we kind of made it sound like this is something that you have to go out and seek on your own, and do yourself. Here are three examples of companies that will work with you and help you do that instead of you doing it all on your own.
Matt: Written Word Media actually has a self-service option too, for some of their stuff. Which is really cool if you're ready to just jump in and do it too.

[48:59] - Episode Wrap Up

Matt: I think the TLDR here is if you've not done any paid ads at all and you want to experiment or try some, I think the easiest, cheapest, and safest place to start would be social media.
Lauren: I agree with that.
Matt: And then, you know, if you have some luck with that, keep at it for a little while and then think about potentially trying one or two other areas. But I think right now they’ve made it pretty easy and –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: Man, I'll tell you, I have bought a lot of stuff off Instagram lately that I hate to admit, so.
Lauren: Same, same. I think you're right about that. I agree with that. And I think if you find yourself this year, either you're seeing some, some dips in your sales numbers after the holiday season, or if you're not sure what to do with your backlist titles for a little while, or if you've got a new book coming out this year and you want to really push the launch on that as much as possible. We talk a lot about earned promo opportunities, ways to do different marketing strategies and optimize your marketing strategies that are not paid. But if this is the year that you wanna try experimenting with paid ads and you haven't already. Hopefully one of the five that we talked about in here sounds like something that would be a good fit for you.
Matt: All right, since we wanna get nominated next year on the Golden Globes –
Lauren: Yeah.
Matt: – for podcasts, please go give us a review.
Lauren: Please do.
Matt: Subscribe and like –
Lauren: Yep.
Matt: – and do all things that you should do for a podcast that you like. If you don't like us, don't do any of those things. You can just send us an email and tell us you don’t like us.
Lauren: At podcast@lulu.com.
Matt: Yeah, you can do that.
Lauren: Alright. We'll be back next week with another new episode.
Matt: Later.
Lauren: Thanks for listening.