Writing, requires the wearing of many hats. Its tempting to focus on honing your craft and leaving everything else to the professionals. It was one of those lessons hammered into us during our MBA days — outsource everything that isn’t a core competence and focus on what you are good at.
The real world challenge, however is that we still need to find semi-competent sources to outsource the other processes to. Bear in mind, these are still essential processes, they are just not ones where we have an edge and so we tend to rely on those who claim they are good at their jobs.
For ‘Shadows Rising’ I chose one particular agency. In retrospect, I should have done a little more research before selecting them. But on the surface, they seemed good enough and I figured what’s the worst that could happen?
Turns out, quite a bit.
I worked with them for social media posts and Amazon Ads. I have no real complaints about the social media post aspects — there were challenges but nothing that couldn’t be resolved. It was an iterative process but ultimately the outputs (particularly the static ones) were exactly as promised. It was a good experience working with that team and I would happily do so again.
This wasn’t the case with the Amazon Ads.
To start off, the agency had a management fee of 25K INR (USD 300 )per month, with a minimum spend of 3 months. That should by itself have been a red flag. See, debut authors especially in trad publishing don’t make much in earnings — 8% is the industry standard. So on a book that is sold for say INR 300 ($3.5) you can expect to earn INR 16 (0.28 cents) Which means you would need to sell 1560 books just to cover the management fee per month. Self published books can of course make a lot more money but when it comes to trad publishing, their production costs tend to be pretty high — built in to their model is the assumption that only 1 out of every 10 new authors will actually earn back their advance. (this is a worldwide phenomenon, not just confined to India)
This 75K INR is also not counting the actual money that gets spent on ads. The logic, as it was explained was that we pump in money in the beginning and once the books start selling, the Amazon algorithm recognizes the book as something that’s doing well and starts pushing the book to more users on its own.
So, why did this not raise a red flag? For one thing I wasn't sure how it worked. I understand the logic behind ads to drive sales , particularly if the challenge is to drive awareness — the underlying assumption here being that ‘reasonable’ sales will take place. Can reasonable be defined? The agency wouldn’t guarantee anything — though ideally what might have been more convincing is either a one month trial or an escalating management fee. Insisting on three months in advance with zero guarantees on performance? I should have suspected something right away.
So..Month 1. I put in 15K INR and said..let’s see how it works. Was happy to sink the entire advance received into Amazon ads if this made a difference. The agency said they were unable to share the details of their plan because that’s a trade secret ie what keywords they would use, what specific bids etc. Naively, I agreed, thinking they knew what they were doing.
At the end of the first month, a total of 4 books were sold.
The explanation given was that competition in the category is fierce and people are spending lakhs — 15k INR wasn’t going to cut it. Fair enough, but then maybe this should have been communicated earlier? I can’t spend lakhs every month and I had asked for what budgets would work and had only been told to put as much as I can.
A meeting with the founder yielded no tangible wayforward except to put in a minimum of 25k INR to see results. Fair enough.
I put in another 25K INR for month 2 and requested some indication of what they are doing — I don’t really care about the proprietary secrets of an Amazon ads strategy that isn’t doing the job, but I would at least want to know that I’m not throwing good money after bad.
They sent me a generic plan generated by ChatGpt!
Here are actual quotes from the plan..
Creating a comprehensive strategy for Amazon Ads can greatly enhance your book’s visibility and reach. Here’s a breakdown of the strategy you outlined:
By incorporating these elements into your Amazon Ads strategy, you can effectively target relevant audiences, increase visibility for your book titles, and drive conversions. Regular monitoring and optimization will be crucial for ongoing success in maximizing the impact of your advertising efforts.
I should probably mention at this stage that I have some exposure to AI and LLM’s (large Language models) since 2018. I can recognize machine generated language pretty easily. Anybody can, for at this stage of AI progress, there are specific patterns in the phrasing. This kind of ham fisted copy and paste is just incompetence at this point.
In Month 2, we had sold a total of 6 books.
Lets recap.
10 books sold in total ie INR 300 *10 = Rs 3000 worth of sales (Rs 160 of which comes to me)
A total of 75K INR (paid in advance) + 40K spent on ads = INR 1.15 Lakhs (USD 1375)
What can we learn from this shit show?
a) Maybe the person on that end is competent, but I have my doubts based on the plan they sent across which is as generic as it comes. He’s literally defined a bunch of different amazon ad types and tried to pass it off as an ad strategy.
Auto ads -Monitoring and analyzing the performance of your ads regularly.
- Adjusting targeting parameters, ad copy, and bidding strategies to maximize ROI.
- Staying up-to-date with Amazon’s advertising features and best practices to adapt your strategy accordingly.
It’s no secret at this stage that whatever they are doing isn’t working. The logical, damage control option would be to perhaps demonstrate some transparency in the failed ad strategy so we know what’s gone wrong. At the very least I would expect something that says
“This is what worked for the 10 books that got sold.”
“These keywords did well.”
“These keywords failed.”
“There were more clickthroughs for this genre..”
Instead i get this…
(We are)adjusting targeting parameters, ad copy, and bidding strategies to maximize ROI.
- Staying up-to-date with Amazon’s advertising features and best practices to adapt your strategy accordingly.
A first year management student can write the above — it’s basically fluff which tells you nothing new.
b) Maybe the book is terrible — That’s a genuine possibility and I’ve been mentally prepared for that. Every author I know gears themselves up for the possibility that their work might be likeable only to them and their moms. I have to say based on interactions with readers online, people who’ve read it have said very positive things about it. So, maybe its not about the book itself.
c)Maybe Amazon ads is not the right medium. I think this is also inaccurate, given that different authors have been successful on this platform. The key difference? They used other agencies to run the ads or they did it themselves.
I still have a month to go and maybe these numbers will change drastically. If they do, then I will update this article with the new numbers. If not, well, then lesson learnt and next time, I’ll look for other options.
A couple of people have suggested that I name the agency in question so others can learn from the experience. I’m not planning to do that. I share the blame for hiring them in the first place . That money could have made a world of a difference to marketing if used properly. I should have thought it through.
If you want to know what the fuss is all about, check out the book here. Do read the reviews coz they are incredible.
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