The Writing Life: Why Bestselling Authors Advertise

Publishing is a complex business with thousands of new books entering the marketplace every day. Recently I was on a webcast with bestselling author Adam Grant and Markus Dohle, the CEO of Random House. They were talking about publishing and said now is one of the best times to be in publishing since Guttenberg invented the printing press.

With all of these books entering the market, authors need to understand several key factors:

*they need to be actively promoting their books in various places (something I've written about often in these entries on the writing life--just check this link).

*Readers need to hear about your book at least 8 to 12 times before they purchase your book

*Bestselling authors advertise to sell books and also to build their readers on their email list

There are many different websites like Goodreads, Facebook, BookBub, Amazon and others which will gladly take your money for you to advertise on them. I've watched many authors jump into these ads and in a short time (or longer), they discover they have wasted their limited financial resources on advertising. Their efforts have brought little results (sales) because they didn't learn the insider techniques on how to advertise.

While it is helpful to learn bestselling authors advertise on websites, I encourage you to use some common sense about how to apply this information to your own book marketing. From my experience, authors need to learn how to navigate the advertising from authors who are succeeding with it. One of the bestselling authors who is effective (generating sales) using advertising is Mark Dawson, who lives in the United Kingdom. He is a multi0bestselling novelist yet wants to help others succeed as well. He has created training courses with detailed insights about how to successfully use various book advertising programs. His courses are only open a few times a year and in general you have to get on a waiting list to get information about them.

Dawson's course, Ads for Authors is open now and only for a few weeks. (If you are reading this article later and the course is closed, get on the waiting list for the next opportunity.). I encourage you to watch this short video to hear what his students say about the course. Maybe you don't write fiction, this teaching is still for you and follow this link to watch short videos from different types of writers. Also you can go to the image below and scroll down to see various videos and authors.

I'm taking this Ads for Authors course and understand it takes consistent action to watch the instruction, then apply it to your writing life. The key is to add this training into your writing life, learn from someone who is using it successfully then apply the information to your own plans for book marketing and selling.

As I was writing this article, I learned on June 21, 2021, Mark Dawson is holding a free webinar with Carlyn Robertson from BookBub. They will be giving top tips for success with BookBub advertising. Follow this link to get registered.

Have you taken one of Mark Dawson's courses? Tell us about your experiences in the comments. Or maybe you want to tell us about your results using advertising for your books in the comments. I look forward to your comments.