book marketing for indies

So… how did November marketing go?

Well, let’s just say it was an adventure—and not entirely by choice. Remember how I had to discontinue my Amazon ads because of that delightful bank card fiasco? Yeah. So November was a full-on freeballing-it month. No ads. No fancy targeting. Just me, my social media posts, a couple of emails, and some strategic free book promos thrown into the universe like confetti.

With limited tools, I leaned hard into my strongest performers: Abuelita ¿Qué Vamos A Hacer Hoy?, Let’s Make Rosca de Reyes, and the Exploring Traditional Herbal Remedies in Mexico series. I decided to make the ebooks free over the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend. Counterintuitive? Maybe. But hear me out.

Kids’ books? People love a physical copy.

Pick up your copy today!

Herbal books? Herbalists want pages they can touch, smell like paper, and flip through with a cup of tea in hand.

The perfect gift for the herbalist in your life

So the strategy was simple: let readers try them for free digitally, fall in love, and (fingers crossed) come back for the print versions either for themselves or as gifts. Will that work? It’s too early in December to know, but we’ll see.

As for downloads… I didn’t get as many as I would’ve liked. But I’m hopeful that the ones I did get were from the right people like the families, teachers, herbalists, and curious readers who actually want and need these books.

Marketing without ads is definitely a challenge, but it’s also oddly empowering to see what happens when you rely on creativity instead of algorithms. On to December and whatever magic (or mischief) it brings!

When Ads Stop Working (and Trying Something New)

I’ve dabbled in Facebook ads before, but they’re just not for me. Instagram ads? Same story since my following there isn’t large enough to make a noticeable dent in sales.

Amazon ads, on the other hand, have historically been worth the investment. With the tracking tools Amazon provides, I could see they were bringing in results. But earlier this year, Amazon made some changes that threw a wrench into my progress.

In January, proposed tariffs put a halt to shipping print books from the U.S. (where mine are printed) to other countries. This completely shut down the small but steady stream of sales I had in Mexico. The trickle went dry. Worse still, I can’t even order author copies to Mexico, where I live, which is an issue I’ll have to find a workaround for.

Then in June, Amazon raised print prices and changed its royalty structure so that only books priced above $9.99 qualified for the 70% royalty rate. That meant I had to raise my print book prices. But knowing this would push some readers out of the market, I made nearly all of my titles available as Kindle ebooks for KU reads.

The results? Immediate, but not encouraging. KU page reads shot up, but print sales plummeted. I had my worst sales month ever.

Because of this, I’ve decided to reduce my overall ad budget. I’m keeping my Amazon ads for now, but they’re not pulling their weight. And given that Amazon reported a 41% drop in sales during July’s Prime Day compared to last year, it’s clear I’m not the only one seeing a slowdown.

So, I decided to try something different.

In July, Ultimate Bundles was running their Ultimate Healthy Living Bundle, and I just managed to get my submission in before the deadline. I offered my book The Mexican Apothecary: Traditional Cold and Flu Herbal Remedies as an ebook, which is one of my books that isn’t available in ebook form on Amazon.

I didn’t expect to sell many bundles (and I didn’t), but that wasn’t my main goal. My real aim was to introduce my work to a new audience, people interested in healthy living and herbs, who might not otherwise have discovered me. My hope is that some of them will enjoy the book enough to check out my main series, Exploring Traditional Herbal Remedies in Mexico.

The writing life is full of experiments, and this was one of them. Here’s hoping August brings more traction.

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Book Hawking: A Beginner’s Guide to Marketing Your Self-Published Book is your roadmap to turning your hidden gem into a must-read!