Here at New Shelves we spent November and December running over 300 Amazon ads for authors and their books.

We learned SO MUCH!

Here are some of the things we learned:

• Authors who advertise 1-2 titles with keywords get A LOT more sales than authors that promote more than 3 titles at a time.
• Amazon reports that the average click rate vs. impressions for all ads is 33%. But the click vs. impressions for BOOKS is just over 6%.
• Our non-fiction authors achieved a 24% click rate on average
• Our fiction authors achieved a 9% click rate on average
• We learned that the more specific a book topic was, the higher the sales
• Fiction titles that were general fiction (or women’s fiction) did not sell ANYWHERE NEAR as many copies as the titles that were in a specific genre such as thriller, mystery, etc…)
• Non-fiction titles that were general inspiration or general in topic did not sell anywhere near as many copies as the titles that were more specific in focus (divorce, parenting, diet)
• It is VITAL to run several ads for the same titles at the same time to optimize your ad dollars and get a higher rate of sales.
• The exception to this revelation was ROMANCE. Romance titles had a lower than average click to impressions rate (5%) and a MUCH lower sales rate than ANY other genre we advertised. (We are theorizing that there are SO many free and low-cost romance titles that romance shoppers are harder to convince to purchase regularly priced books)

So there are the things we learned. We are going to run another set of ads with these facts and knowledge for another set of authors and titles. We will let you know how it goes!

If you want to sign up for our February ad campaigns, we are taking 25 authors for February. Click below to learn more: