Pro Book Marketing Tips for Amazon and Beyond with Franklin Goldberg of Amplify Marketers

In this week’s special episode sponsored by Amplify Marketing, Marissa has a fascinating chat with company founder, Franklin Goldberg, about getting books into the hands and hearts of readers. Discussed in this jam-packed episode about marketing: how every book needs to be looked at individually depending on a complex set of variables, the most effective ways to market books, the difference between interruption and interception as pertaining to marketing, the complex Amazon marketing system and why it can be worth the effort, the importance of search and keywords, how to leverage Facebook and other social media platforms with testimonials, excerpts, and freebies, the importance of packaging quality and cover design, common marketing mistakes, how marketing your backlist can be even more successful than focusing on new releases, and so much more. 

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Transcript

[00:10] Marissa: Hello and welcome to the Happy writer. This is a podcast that aims to bring readers more books to enjoy and to help authors find more joy in their writing. I am your host, Marissa Meyer. Thank you so much for joining me. We are very grateful to amplify marketers for sponsoring today's episode. If you are a writer or a publisher looking to find new ways to market your books or promote yourself on Amazon and beyond, please check out amplifymarketers.com to find out how they can help and keep listening for lots of insider tips and best marketing practices. One thing that is making me happy this week, my traveling cloak. I know. Who has a traveling cloak anymore? Well, I do, because when I was a teenager, my mom, who happens to be an exceptional seamstress, she made me this gorgeous black velvet, floor length traveling cloak. It has a hood, it's lined in white satin. It is stunning. And she made it for me just because I wanted one. I mean, I was always reading fantasy literature, and I loved the Lord of the rings movies and played dungeons and dragons, and I had all these dreams of going on epic quests. And of course, you can't go on an epic quest without a traveling cloak. Anyway, I still have it. It doesn't leave my closet very often. But I did get to wear it to a Dungeons and Dragons panel this last weekend for Emerald City Comic Con. And I really love this piece of clothing. Wearing it made me feel like, I don't know, like more me. So naturally. Think we need to bring back the traveling cloak. I don't understand why it went out of fashion. I think it is time for a comeback, and that is my fashion spiel for the day. I am also so happy to be talking to today's guest. He has led marketing and sales teams in publishing, software, and retail and is the founder of our sponsor, amplify marketing services. Please welcome Franklin Goldberg.

[02:16] Franklin: Thank you. I'm so happy to be here, and I love the way that you start each of these episodes by saying something that you're happy about. That's actually how I start every one of our business meetings at amplify. I start by saying, hello, happy people. And I say that because I hope that our team is happy and loves what they do. So I'm just trying to set the spirit for our week when we get together and talk about what's ahead.

[02:40] Marissa: I love that. What a great way to run a business.

[02:44] Franklin: Yeah. And it's easy to be happy because we love what we do. We are a team of book lovers and book professionals. I was just thinking about that in preparation for this podcast that on average the employee at amplify marketing services reads between 50 and 150 books a year. So we are the market for a lot of publishers and authors because we're power readers and we really love being able to help publishers and authors get their books in front of and into the hands and hearts of the people they wrote them for.

[03:19] Marissa: I love that. I so appreciate that book people are our people, of course, on this podcast. And I love how you say it's easy to be happy when you do what you love, because that's like my entire philosophy in a nutshell.

[03:36] Franklin: I'm also happy to be here today because I'm somewhat starstruck to be speaking to you. My family is full of your super fans, I would say to this day my daughter tells me that the best birthday present she ever received was on her 16th birthday when you wished her a sweet, happy sweet 16 through Instagram. That was six years ago. She's now 22. And that was just a few weeks ago. Or a few weeks from now it will be six years past. But that really made her day that year.

[04:11] Marissa: That makes me happy to hear. Tell her hello and another happy birthday from me.

[04:16] Franklin: I will, thank you.

[04:18] Marissa: Okay, Franklin, the first thing I want to ask, I want to ask all of my guests, I want to hear your origin story. How did you get into books, into publishing, into marketing, and what made you want to start this company?

[04:31] Franklin: Yeah, that's a great question. I've always been a power reader throughout most of my life. I've read between two and three books a month and I love reading and it's a space I'm very comfortable with and familiar with. So I started an online bookstore that I ran for about twelve years where I pretty much just used that to feed my own habit. I would buy books, read them, and then sell them as used and take the money and buy more books. It was just a side hustle really for that twelve years. But then I was really excited to then transition into working for publishers where I no longer had to buy all the books that I wanted to help get in the hands of other people. We had warehouses full of them and all I had to do was find the right readers for each of them. So it's been a really exciting career. I've been doing this for 25 years. I started my online bookstore in April of 1999. So that's almost exactly 25 years ago.

[05:30] Marissa: Oh, wow. Yeah.

[05:32] Franklin: And I've been able to work for Harper Collins and a number of other publishers. But about five years back, I really became motivated to take what I've learned and bring it to more than just one team of one company. I wanted to be able to bring those things to help more publishers and more teams within those publishing companies. We've also worked with a lot of authors directly, too, which has been really gratifying.

[05:55] Marissa: All right, so tell us, what is amplify marketers? What exactly do you do?

[06:00] Franklin: We're split somewhat 50 50. About half of what we do is in the nonprofit space, and that's just something that we've developed a lot of experience and skill in. But the other half is helping publishers with their book marketing. So we do a lot of Amazon advertising. That's the specialty we've invested the most in. But we also help with all ad platforms. So whether it's Facebook or Google or Hulu or Spotify, Pinterest, just about every ad platform out there we work with. And we try to help the author and the publisher understand where their audience is and how to reach them within those places in the most native way, the way that makes the most sense in those platforms.

[06:44] Marissa: I mean, that is the question. I feel like it's so timely to be talking to you, to be having this conversation, because just this last weekend, as I mentioned, I was at Emerald City Comic Con and I went out to dinner with some author friends, and we're chatting, and one of them, the first time I'd met her, and she's a newish author, I think her second book just came out. And she know, Marissa, you've been around, your books have done really how what marketing is working? And I was like, I have no idea. I feel like over the years, I have done a lot to market and promote my books and myself. My publisher, of course, has done a ton, but it always kind of has that vibe of like, I don't know, we're just trying a bunch of different stuff and nobody really knows what's actually working. I'm really excited to hear your thoughts on this. And just for starters, you mentioned helping authors and publishers figure out where their people are and how to reach them. And that is the goal, ultimately. So for an author, how can we know or at least get some idea of where it's actually worthwhile to invest our time and money and energy when it comes to marketing?

[08:09] Franklin: I hate to give an answer that I'm about to give, but it does depend so much on your content and your platform and how much of a following you have online and in which channels they follow you. But that is so true. We've worked with some household name authors, and we've worked with some new authors, and everywhere in between, and the way that you would market something today, you could take all of those strategies, giving away the preorder pins or poster, or doing a fan fiction contest or a fan art contest. I mean, and it wouldn't work for someone else who is in a different space, somebody who does nonfiction, or someone who is fairly new and doesn't have much name recognition yet. So, so much of it would vary based on the unique situation of each book. And that's what makes book marketing so fun, is because every book has to be looked at differently. So because we've invested so much in each of these ad platforms, we get all kinds of clients that don't fit cleanly in the nonprofit or the publisher space. So we have office furniture clients and pinball machine clients and all kinds of things. And one thing that is so true, though, is book marketing is much more complex because, for example, we advertise for smart light bulbs. And when you think about it, how complex is it of a customer looking for a smart light bulb? But when it comes to a book, there are tens of thousands of ways someone might look for a book based on its genre or its historical setting or the author style. There's so many different things that you have to customize to that campaign where you can pretty simply just set up a few ways of trying to reach someone looking for a light bulb. It's still important. You have to do everything right to sell light bulbs. But the book market is, in our opinion, the most complicated of all categories and markets and sectors to do marketing for. It's exciting, though, because there are ways to do it. It's just got to be customized to each book and the market that it has. But generally, we would say that one of the most effective ways to promote your books is through Amazon advertising. And the main reason for that is you know where the person searching on Amazon is in their mindset. They're in a buying mindset. They're there shopping, and they're searching for something, often without looking for an author's name or a book title. They're searching with genre searches, genre terms, or subgenre terms, and they just want to know what their next great read is in that category so we can get in front of them knowing they're not just browsing, kind of like on Google, maybe looking for a free article to read or some kind of free content to access. They're actually wanting to buy something. So that's the best way to spend your money to intercept the people ready to purchase a book. That's a good point, but let's say you have a book people aren't necessarily even searching for because you're kind of a niche area where it's somewhat new. Like, I remember a few years ago there was a book of a book about amish vampires in space. Do you remember that one? Did you hear about it?

[11:33] Marissa: You didn't know you needed.

[11:36] Franklin: No one's searching for that on Amazon. So how do you take a book where no one is really looking for it and make sure that people become aware of it? And in those cases, I would recommend something that's more interruptive than interceptive. So Amazon, you're intercepting them while they're shopping. Facebook is more of an interruption, but you can still try to reach the right people in it. So if they're not searching in high volume for something you've written, then the other way to do it is through Facebook ads or some type of social media or other types of advertising. I could talk about this for so long, but I don't want to get ahead of myself or of you.

[12:13] Marissa: No, I think that's a great two kind of different directions that a writer or a publisher could go in based on the book itself and the potential reader that they're trying to find. I myself have never looked into Amazon ads. I've been lucky that my publisher has always done that sort of thing for me. But I was talking to Joanne, our social media behind the scenes guru, and she has looked into it, and she has lots of self published friends who have attempted to get these ads on Amazon. And I hear that it can be a pretty complicated, pretty confusing thing to try to get into. Would you agree with, is it intended to be kind of complicated, or do people just need the right tools for this?

[13:06] Franklin: There really aren't any tools designed for book advertising on Amazon. There are a lot of third party tools that we've used. Some are very expensive, like $10,000 a month just to software, and none of them have worked because they're just not made for the way books have to be promoted. They typically want you to have four or five items you're selling with maybe ten or 20 different strategies, but we'll have hundreds of thousands of strategies that we put together for an entire publishing company, and it's just too much data for the software to work with. But you're talking about one individual author. In this case, it is a really complex ad channel or ad platform. They have what they call automatic ads, but even those have different settings that need to be set correctly for them to work well. So the best thing that we would recommend for someone who wants to do this on their own for themselves would be to check out our website, amplifymarketers.com, and go to the articles page. We have a number of free articles that give as much guidance as we can, but it's something you'll have to commit yourself to figuring out if it's not something you can afford to do or encourage your publisher to do. Yeah, if that's something that your publisher isn't managing for you, or if you're a self published author, then it'll take some time to learn the tool itself of how to advertise and just stay on top of it and don't give up because it can be really effective. But if you just throw a little bit of money on it and get disappointed that you didn't get a good return on your investment in a matter of weeks, then it's probably not going to be something you end up believing in. But if you read some of our articles and get your head around how it works, and you're just patient with your investments, realizing you might waste a little bit initially till you learn how to do it, well, if you're willing to commit to it, I think anyone can figure it out over time. I'd like to say this if it's okay to jump in here as to why it is important, because about 65% of product searches start on Amazon. And when it comes to the book category, though, it's even higher because Amazon started as a book retailer, so a much higher percentage than that. Probably over 80% of book searches start on Amazon, and about 65% of people who search for a book on Amazon will click on something that is early in the search results. But if you're searching on Google, or, I'm sorry, if you're searching on Amazon for amish fiction, to use that one again, the majority of what you'll see is going to be ads. So if you're not investing something in advertising your book, or if your publisher isn't, you don't even have a chance to be in that top 65% chance of getting a sale because what we call your organic listing or your unpaid product listing is so pushed down that fewer people are seeing it. So in the past, it used to be the best book would show up when people search for something that was relevant to the book's content. But now it's the best advertised book that shows up. Interesting.

[16:23] Marissa: Yeah.

[16:24] Franklin: It has to have something put behind it to be able to be in one of those top spots. But usually the top seven books in an Amazon search for a book are ads.

[16:33] Marissa: Oh, that's so fascinating. And these are like, so I'm trying to picture like when you're on Amazon, they're ones that have like the little sponsored.

[16:41] Franklin: Yep.

[16:42] Marissa: Yeah. And so, okay, that obviously makes sense. What, are there other ways that if somebody feels like the ads aren't working or they don't have the money to put behind this right now, what else can an author do to get discovered on Amazon? I hear people talk about keywords or SEO and I don't honestly even know what that stands for.

[17:05] Franklin: Yeah. That is one of the core factors that will affect whether your books are discovered if you're not advertising, but even if you are, the words that the customer is using in their search, if those same words are found somewhere in the product's metadata or what I basically mean by that is if it's in the book title subtitle, series name or your description. And then the last place is called off page keywords or backend keywords, which are kind of behind the scenes. They're not something anyone reads. But Amazon uses it as kind of the last of all the places to gather if something's relevant for the way someone's searching. So that's the most important thing. And we've helped optimize hundreds of books for publishers over the last five years because this is so important. One good way to do that would be to go to the book category on Amazon and search. Easter Basket stuffers says it's about Easter right now, but you have to first choose that book category, not just look at all Amazon products. And it's interesting. What you'll see is a number of books that aren't necessarily the best. Easter basket stuffer. That happens to be a book, but it's a book with the word Easter basket stuffer in the. Okay, so that's how Amazon will help know that something is relevant and they want to serve up the books to people who are looking for that type of content. But the thing that they give the most weight to is the words in your title subtitle or your series name. So we encourage authors and publishers to think through that as early on as they can. This is something much more true of someone who doesn't have as large of a platform as others. If people are already searching for your name and your book titles and the series name of your books, you're going to do quite well in Amazon. In those cases, you could have a one word or a two word book title with just like a colon and then a novel or something like that. But if you're new and people aren't searching for it, and all you have is a two or three word book title, as far as how the system works in Amazon, it's not giving them enough information to know if the book's relevant for what people are looking for. So for newer authors or authors who don't have a lot of people searching for them by name, we recommend thinking of the words that your audience that you wrote it for would search for. When they're doing a generic, we call it non branded search. They're looking for their next read. And in your case, they're looking for a fairy tale retelling story. Or for others, it might be a regency romance or a time jump book or a family saga. Whatever they're looking for, figure out where that should fit in your product page. Whether it's the title that's the most heavily weighted, that's the best place to put it, but it's sometimes funky to fit it there. So if you can't fit it there, maybe put it in your series name, because that has a lot of weight as well. And if you can't put it there, try to find a way to put it in your description. And if it just doesn't even work there, put it in those backend keywords. But they do need to be there. Amazon needs that to know that your book is relevant to those searches. And there are a lot of people searching paranormal women's fiction and alien invasion and coming of age fantasy and military action thriller. And be specific. There are people who happen to really like a certain genre. They like where the crotad sing, and they're interested in more coming of age southern historical fiction. So make sure you have those words somewhere for them to be scraped by Amazon's machines and plug that in. When someone is looking for that, it can help with the ads as well, because when Amazon knows that your book has the same kind of words people are using in their search, they'll let your ad show up much cheaper than if it didn't.

[21:15] Marissa: Oh, interesting.

[21:16] Franklin: Like 90% cheaper.

[21:18] Marissa: Wow. Who knew that?

[21:20] Franklin: Yeah, that's one of the biggest things we help with is where can you put those words so it proves it's relevant to Amazon because when they trust your book to be relevant, they want it to show up. They do want a book to sell. They want the right books to show up so they'll reward you for having the right books somewhere in your product details.

[21:40] Marissa: That is so interesting. Well, and it's all very logical as you're talking about it. And you're thinking about, of course, how is an algorithm going to know what books to show up in this search if you don't tell it that this is what the book is and what it fits into. But it's funny how so many of us, we are writers, we are thinking about the story, we're thinking about the pitch. We're not necessarily thinking, oh, I need to make sure to include the genre or these specific keywords. That's so much more part of a marketing brain than necessarily the creative part of the process.

[22:23] Franklin: I'm going to hesitate to say this, but I think it's worth saying that because I know that you need to be driven by your own creative brain, and that's very true. But if you're just starting out thinking of what your next book should be that you want to write, it wouldn't hurt to pull some data in to know where the highest volume of searches are, not just over a certain month, but over the course of a year, and kind of shape it as much as your vision is already set, or if it isn't set yet, try to shape it for what you know people are looking for, even if it might just mean adding a part to it that makes it accurately relevant to a term that you know from the data has a significant amount of people looking for, and you can find that out from a tool called helium ten. We don't have any kind of sponsorship relationship with them, but that's a software tool that will give you the estimated search volume for any word you want to check on Amazon.

[23:24] Marissa: I am definitely writing that down.

[23:26] Franklin: Yeah, it's a great tool. It also has a free Google Chrome extension that will let you see where your Amazon rank has changed like three times. It will pull the numbers every day and how much Amazon's changed the consumer's discounted price. So it's really cool. You can look, and then you go back over the time of your promotion of a book and you say, oh, I appeared on this podcast on that day and that's the day my bestseller rank improved. Or I ran an ad during that window on Hulu for my book. And clearly it made a difference because there was a spike there and you don't have to go in and check it every day. It'll record that from the history of when your book was first put on Amazon. So it's a great tool.

[24:10] Marissa: That is so interesting because that's the other half of the equation. Like, first, how do you figure out what to do to market or promote yourself? But then the back end is, how do I know if it worked?

[24:22] Franklin: Right?

[24:23] Marissa: Okay, so those are great tips for Amazon. What about trying to market outside of Amazon?

[24:31] Franklin: There are ways.

[24:32] Marissa: If that's just too broad of a.

[24:34] Franklin: Question, I would say the best way to leverage Facebook today, especially if you're an author and you don't necessarily sell the books yourself, but you want to raise awareness of it, the best way to use Facebook is. Well, I'll list a few of the best ways to do it. One is to establish social proof that your book is worth reading. So that would be either testimonials or endorsements or reviews that you were given permission to share. And you can even make that the image of your Facebook or Instagram or social media post where you just add a design in the background, put your book cover somewhere where it's visible, and then put the quote itself in a large, readable format. People want to hear not what you have to say about your book, whether you're the author or the publisher. They like to know what other people have said and doesn't even matter if they're well known. Just have someone else say something that's accurate about your book and share that. And that's a great way to get people to look twice where if you just put your book cover with a buy now kind of message on Facebook, it's not going to get very good engagement. Another way to leverage Facebook would be to take some of your best excerpts and quotes. Or if you have a really great summary that's short, clear and compelling about your book and just use that as the image itself. And other ways to leverage it well, would be promoting a webinar where you want to talk about your upcoming book live with your audience. That can be a great way to leverage social media. And I'm not speaking of ads even. It could just be something you share for free, organically. But I would kind of wrap that part up by saying basically anything free that you want to give away is great to do through social media. So think of what additional things you can offer your audience that you can give away for free. Even if you have to invest some money or time in creating that, look at it as a better use of your money even than advertising. If you make something really great that you can give away for free, it will get shared and people will comment on it, and it'll get a lot more exposure even than some of your ad dollars might give it. And in the case of a nonfiction book in particular, it could be a discussion guide or a small group resource to help people work through the book in a book club. Or it could just be like, say you wrote a cookbook. It could be some extra content or something that isn't contained within it. But think of something really valuable. Maybe spend some significant amount of time and energy building it as though it was a part of the entire book launch, and then give it away. It's shocking how much that generosity will benefit you as an author.

[27:27] Marissa: It is funny how much people really love free stuff.

[27:31] Franklin: Yeah.

[27:32] Marissa: So you've mentioned Facebook a number of times, and I think that's interesting. Know, talking to lots of different authors, I feel like most of us are on Instagram. Some people who are really camera friendly love TikTok. I just don't hear authors talking all that much about Facebook anymore. Do you still feel like that's one of the major players when it comes to marketing?

[27:55] Franklin: I think that in some ways, Facebook is the new McDonald's, where everybody loves to hate on it, but we all still go there. They stay in business for a reason at McDonald's. And when it comes to Facebook, they've actually gotten pretty smart with how they reach different younger people. Even now with Facebook Marketplace and Facebook groups in particular for my children, I have four kids that are all in their twenty s and under, and they don't use Facebook like I do or others do my age, but they are on it every day because of the groups that that's the only place they can connect with their community, or because they're shopping for something on Facebook Marketplace. And those are places where you can intercept your is. When I say Facebook, I always mean Instagram with it, because as an advertiser, when you promote something on Facebook, it goes to both. I would like to add that Facebook is performing better for us than it ever has, and as an ad channel. So I think I was mentioning how Facebook and Instagram are really the same ad platform, and so is messenger. All of Meta's platforms are combined when you run a Facebook ad, so I usually just refer to Facebook, but it's giving you placement in all of Meta's real estate, and it's doing better in ads for all of our partners than we've ever gotten before. And we run many hundreds of ads at a time on Facebook, and they've stripped away a lot of the things advertisers used to have. So a lot of people have gone away from it, but their machine learning and their algorithms and their AI have made it very smart. So it's easier than ever and more effective than ever to get in front of the right people. So we do recommend it. Not everybody can do TikTok successfully. You really have to know that platform and know what's native and what people expect from it to do that. Well, same thing with YouTube shorts. So I think it's easier for most authors to figure out how to communicate on Facebook than it is. But if they're dynamic and they know how to do short form content like that, that can capture an audience and communicate something in a way that could lead to the purchase of their book, then they should pursue it. But I think there's more potential in Facebook and Meta's platforms for most people to get involved.

[30:21] Marissa: Yeah, no, I think that's true. I think TikTok is absolutely not for everybody. I know. I refuse, I refuse to be on it. That sounds like torture to me to have to make these short little videos. So you've talked about how you largely work with publishers, occasionally authors. What would you say are some of the differences between how a publisher should be marketing versus an author, and maybe even break it down to an author that is with a publisher versus an author who is self publishing? And that might be too big of a question, but just some of the basic things that a publisher would do differently than an author.

[31:06] Franklin: Again, it depends on the platform that the author has, but a publisher can be really effective at getting you a lot of publicity, book signings, even television appearances. If you're an author that is well enough known, and that you're writing on a subject that can get you a place on Good Morning America or something like that. So publishers are very good at doing publicity in a way that most authors just don't have those connections or the know how to figure out how to get on anything on television, or even into some of the larger podcasts where they might be able to raise awareness of their books. But I would say that publishers, though, lean heavily on the author to do a lot of the heavy lifting for promoting their own books. So it's more important than ever that when a publisher is negotiating with an author, they want to hear the author come with some of their own ideas and plans for what they're going to do. So it's definitely a two way street. They do a lot, but they definitely need the author to know themselves, which podcasts are the right ones for their audience. And how to engage their audience on each platform that makes the most sense. The more that an author can come to a publisher with a defined audience and a knowledge of how to reach them, the more likely they will be to get a publishing deal. If you just come and kind of expect the publisher to figure all that out, you're giving them a little too much to think about where it might be easier for them to pull the trigger and sign a deal with you if they see that you understand your audience and you can help them figure out how to reach them. A self published author is. Yeah, it's a very different thing. I'm a self published author myself, so the only reason I'm self published is because I work with so many different publishers. I felt like I would offend all the others if I went with one. I recommend whenever possible to consider working with a publisher. They do bring a lot of value, and my experience as a self published author makes that even more true. It's challenging. There's a lot that you have to get right.

[33:22] Marissa: Yeah, no, it really is so hard to self publish, and of course there are people that do it with so much grace and are very successful. But it is hard to wear all of the different hats and to know where to put your time on any given day. Do you work on the next book? Do you work on marketing? Do you work on building your platform? It's a lot to take on.

[33:46] Franklin: Yes, it certainly is. And there are other sides to it that I think are easier to forget when you're making that decision. But even the best written book on a given subject, if it has a poor typesetting or a poor binding because of the manufacturing process, it's not going to take off as well if it falls apart or if it's hard to read. Readers are awful when it comes to their tolerance of small print. If they can't comfortably read a book, it doesn't matter how well it was written. So it's important to get those things right. And most publishers have figured that out. How to get the most efficient type setting that's also readable and comfortable. So there are so many different aspects, even the quality that goes into the COVID design, that's such a big factor. We talked earlier about how to get the right words in your book title and description to align with what people are looking for. But it's also so important that it look like the kind of book they want to read.

[34:47] Marissa: Yeah.

[34:47] Franklin: So I always encourage authors to look through the books that are most similar to theirs and think through what can be adapted to adopt the tone and feel of the COVID designs and even the font treatments on the COVID so that this book looks like it belongs in that space? How can this book look like it should sit next to where the crowd ads sing and would be the kind of book they should read next after that one, even if it's not by the same author or publisher, it just looks like the same kind of thing.

[35:17] Marissa: Yeah, that's a great point.

[35:20] Franklin: Publishers have gotten really good at that. They do still invest a lot in their creative talent, and that's a big draw. That's tough for a self published author to do.

[35:31] Marissa: Yeah. No, and it's hard to know sometimes where our limitations are. And of course, finances are often a big factor, and it can be hard to know. Okay. Is it worth it to hire an editor, a copy editor, a typesetter, a designer, an illustrator, all of these various factors. But I think you make really great points that as readers, we have an expectation, and if a work doesn't meet that expectation, then there's going to be a disappointment there, right?

[36:00] Franklin: Yes. It isn't for everybody. I know a lot of people have been very successful as self published authors from the very beginning, and some of them eventually choose to work with a publisher. Some of them don't. Some of them go back and forth. But it's definitely something to think long and hard about.

[36:20] Marissa: Yeah. And of course, it's so hard, too, to think like we all want to believe. It's the story, right? It's the story that I have poured my heart into, that I've worked so hard on my craft, on my characters, on a suspenseful plot, all of these elements. And it can be humbling to think like that's all going to get missed if the packaging isn't right. But it is also important to keep in mind that the packaging really does play a huge role.

[36:48] Franklin: It definitely does. And that's something that I was shocked about when I entered the publishing industry. Just how much effort goes into that creative process. There's always a creative director with the team, and then there are a number of people on the COVID review committee, and it's all about subjective personalities, and sometimes there are surveys where people are voting on different ones, but it is a very thorough process that publishers go through.

[37:15] Marissa: Yeah.

[37:16] Franklin: I should also say that I don't know of many people in the industry that don't also love books. All the publishers I've worked with have a real passion for what they do. That's part of why I love being in this space. I get to be with book lovers all day, every day.

[37:31] Marissa: Yeah. I feel that you get into books for a reason. People don't get into books to become famous or millionaires. It's for the love of books. All right, so that would cover, I think, maybe some potential pitfalls for self published writers. What would you say are some pitfalls, some mistakes that you see people making, whether it's publishers or authors, when it comes to promoting, I would say one.

[38:01] Franklin: Of the biggest mistakes is to focus on it in just a short burst. So whether it's 90 days or six months, sometimes you might get a little bit longer of a promotional window around a book. But in many ways, the real potential for a book is when it's already started to get a foothold with that grassroots kind of movement of the first fans of that book. So even though I know how publishers have to have a budget and they have to have it set and it has to end at some point, they've got to stop investing in a book. But I think it would be wiser to figure out how you can spread that out, not just throughout the whole first year, but even years to come. Backlist, we call it backlist. I don't know if that's a common household word, but backlist are the books that are no longer new releases, and yet they're the ones that are the easiest to promote and advertise. Because they have all those things I've talked about before, like the social proof that you could use in a Facebook post or an Instagram post of someone else's review. When you have hundreds or thousands of reviews on Amazon with a 4.8 star rating or something like that, that's when it's got the most potential to sell. Because people know right from a glance this book is accepted by a large number of people. And it's probably a good book. That's how I judge a lot of the books that I'm reading. I want to wait and see what others have thought of it. So once a book has built up enough history like that and enough reviews and people are talking about it, that's when it's time to throw fuel on the fire instead of backing off on the pedal. So I think that's one of the biggest misses that I see. And I just think somehow there's got to be a way to look at it as a longer term strategy, both for the publishing company and the author and as an advertiser. That's when you get the best results. I've talked a little bit about that trust factor that Amazon needs to trust your book is relevant. It's not just that your books have the words in your description that people are using in their search. The other part of that equation is actually a formula we use. It's called relevance plus authority equals trust with Amazon. So relevance is the words that they're using are in your book, somewhere in the book description. But the authority part that really kicks that trust into high gear is that when people see your book, they purchase it. So it's got to have that authority. So when Amazon has this history of a year's worth of people buying from the same kind of searches, they know it's relevant, they know it has authority and they'll trust it so much they'll give you that ad space really cheap and your dollars will go a lot further. So that's the challenge we have to try to balance with publishers who have a commitment to the author to give it a big push, like trying to get on the New York Times bestseller list and other bestseller list. Those are super important, but I wish that they would somehow find a way to save some money to spread that out at least a year.

[41:11] Marissa: Yeah, no, that's such a great point. And even for us authors, it's not that you forget about your backlist, but there's always so much focus on, okay, what's the next book? And now I'm promoting that and that book is launching. And as soon as that book is launched, okay, what's the next one? But you make some really excellent points about backlist and of course we want all of our books to sell forever. Ideally, yeah.

[41:41] Franklin: That's actually how a lot of digital marketing works. I have a relatively new YouTube channel that I've done just for personal goals that I have professionally to try to get better with speaking to a camera and to understand YouTube as a channel for our clients. But I found that it's some of the oldest content that somehow takes off and Google starts to trust it more and show it in search results or on the home screen. When people log into, it's that. It's true pretty much everywhere that most people don't necessarily care that it's the latest book. They want to know that it's a trusted book with a history that proves they should pay attention to it. Unless it's a book that is very time sensitive about a current event or something, it matters very little to most readers when something was published. So it has fresh life every time someone discovers it and talks about it.

[42:40] Marissa: Yeah. All right, a couple last questions before our bonus round. So you sent us this really fascinating infographic and we are going to be putting it up on our Instagram page so people can go and check it out for themselves. But just briefly tell our listeners, what is this infographic and why should authors be paying attention to some of these statistics?

[43:05] Franklin: Yes, this is a year in review for book publishers and authors for 2023, and we collect this type of information every day whenever we see a change that impacts not just the advertising on Amazon for books, but even the user experience. Like when look inside changed. I don't know if anybody noticed that, but it used to have this little icon that said look inside right on the book cover that's not there anymore. Instead of clicking on the book cover to read inside, that behavior now just zooms in on the book cover and it moved to now be where you have to go to this button beneath the book cover to read a sample. So things like that are minor, but they affect the user experience. And any author or publisher should be aware of those changes so they can pivot with it. So all year long we collect all the changes and then this was our first annual year in review, but we'll be doing this every year going forward. And we hope the infographic style makes it a little more interesting than just a bullet point list of changes. But it's such an important channel for discoverability of books. I think anyone in the book space, author, publisher, should be as aware of these changes as they can be. I hope it's helpful to our audience and your audience.

[44:25] Marissa: Yeah, well, I know reading some of them I was very fascinated by.

[44:30] Franklin: Really good. I'm so glad it was helpful.

[44:34] Marissa: And then, okay, if there's somebody listening, maybe they're an author who has a book coming out with a publisher, or maybe they're on the self publishing path and they're hearing us talk and they're thinking, it sounds really great to have a marketing service helping me through this. What should they do to look more into amplify marketers? And what could someone expect from working with you?

[44:59] Franklin: Yeah, that's a great question. The easiest way to get in touch with us is to go to amplifymarketers.com and then click on the let's talk button on the top right corner. It just opens up my calendar and lets you schedule an appointment to connect with me, and there's no cost for that. I'm glad to just have a chance to talk with anyone who wants to explore how they can market their books, whether it's a publisher or an author. And our company's core value is generosity. We want to be authentically generous, and that means we love to give free help to anyone who wants to know more about book marketing. So if we can just help you out with some tips in a call, that's fine. If it turns into something that you want to hire us to do or partner with us on, that's fine, too. But we're just wanting to make a difference in the book space for as many people as we can.

[45:49] Marissa: I like that. I want a core value. What is my core value? Generosity is a good one. I like that too. I might make that mine, too. Okay, Franklin, next, our bonus round. I want to know what book makes you happy.

[46:09] Franklin: That's a great one.

[46:10] Marissa: This is especially hard for people who work with books because you can't say any of your own clients because they can sound biased.

[46:17] Franklin: My favorite category of book is usually the memoir category, and I enjoy any type of memoir, especially when it's a celebrity or someone that I've respected and I get to kind of see into their lives in a way that you really can't in any other format other than their memoir. I guess the book this year that's made me the most happy is Patrick Stewart's making it so, because I have admired him as a celebrity and an actor in so many different roles from Star Trek Next Generation to X Men and so many things that he starred in. But to read his life story was just extremely fascinating. And it definitely was a book that in every chapter I found myself being entertained and very happy to get to know someone like that more deeply.

[47:09] Marissa: Oh my gosh. I have not read it, but I love him.

[47:12] Franklin: Matthew McConaughey's book right now, green Lights, and that one is quite fascinating too, but I haven't finished it yet, so I can't say whether that's made me the happiest this year.

[47:22] Marissa: What is something that you're working on next that you're most excited about?

[47:26] Franklin: Well, we've been blessed this year with a lot of opportunities for growth as a company, and we're adding more staff right now. And the thing I'm most excited about with having a new staff person, I hope to secure them as an employee here soon. Making an offer to them is the ability to create more of our own content. So I want to be able to give out more free, valuable resources that will help authors and publishers and that can help us get better at our craft. So I'm always driven to figure out more. And since our space is always changing. That's a never ending pursuit. So to have someone whose role will be largely devoted to that kind of research, to just making sure we don't miss any new trends or new opportunities, and then figuring out how to create content that shares that effectively, either through infographics, articles or free ebooks, we just genuinely are excited about helping others get better at this book space.

[48:25] Marissa: Lastly, where can people find you?

[48:28] Franklin: Amplifymarketers.com is our website where you can find a number of articles. We'll be publishing more in the future, but right now there are quite a few dedicated to publishing, so that's a great place to start. We have a YouTube channel as well for amplify marketers, which is something you can access through our website.

[48:47] Marissa: Awesome. Well, Franklin, thank you so much for joining me today.

[48:51] Franklin: Thank you. It has been a lot of fun. Thank you for inviting me, writers and.

[48:55] Marissa: Publishers, we hope you will check out amplify marketing for more information on how Franklin and his team can help you get your books discovered and sold. Again, the address was amplifymarketers.com. Next week I will be chatting with Stephanie Cunert about her YA contemporary pieces of a girl. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe and follow us on Instagram at Marissa Meyer, author and at Happy Writer podcast. Until next time, stay inspired, keep writing, and whatever life throws at you today. I hope that now you're feeling a little bit happier.