So...yeah. Let's talk the 'Zon.
Come closer, dear readers, and I’ll tell you a fable,
of two tragic covers and the “too sexy” label.
Oh boy. Always dangerous when talking about “The Zon” but, here we go. Some of you might have noticed that I had a bit of a backsy/forthsy with the book covers of Memento Mori.
They started off as a sexy couple.
Then they changed to the girl on her own in a graveyard.
Then…they changed back.
(Some y’all have very a confused paperback series, and I’m really sorry about that. PS: Contact me and I’ll send you a new first book free of charge if I’ve offended your bookshelf.)
Aaaanyway.
So…
What the hell, Kat? Why?
Easy. Publishing is about marketing.
We don’t want it to be true. Nobody wants it to be true. Everybody wants publishing to be a functional, happy little meritocracy where everybody gets the sales they deserve and nothing more.
Lawl.
The world of self-publishing isn’t so much about publishing, as it is marketing. Oh, sure, I spend about 5% of my author-y time formatting and uploading manuscripts, chasing down typos and uploading them, and managing my KDP dashboard. So it’s part of it. But it’s hardly enough work to be worth mentioning.
I would guess that in the time I spend working on books, it breaks down to about… 40% writing, 35% marketing, 10% graphics & covers, 10% finance & accounting, and 5% actually pushing buttons in Vellum or on my KDP dashboard.
Wait. You spend nearly as much time marketing as you do writing?
Yeah. Yeah I do. Between social media, Facebook Ads, Amazon Ads, networking with other authors, website nonsense, etc? Honestly, I probably should spend more time marketing than I do. But I also have a full time+ job.
And I’m not alone.
If you publish a book and whip it out into the void…what happens? It sits in the void. There are thousands and thousands and thousands of authors trying to make their way in a very loud industry. And what is marketing, if not learning to shout louder than the next guy?
So…marketing. In this case, the culprit was our dear friend Amazon Marketing Services, or AMS. AMS is a powerful tool that puts your ads right in front of people already browsing for a purchase. (This is clutch. Facebook ads hope to spark the interest to buy, where on-page ads in Amazon hit a group of people already willing to buy.) They’re tricky to run, trickier to master, and there are entire, very expensive courses that you can take about how to fiddle with buttons and bids and what-not.
I’m very bad at AMS ads. Very, very bad.
Whatever.
So, with Facebook ads being a wild ride in abject f*ckery since they updated their layout last September, I decided to put more weight (read: money) behind AMS. So…I submitted ads for Memento Mori with this cover, and was told…
NEIN! TOO SEXY!
Rejected.
What? Seriously?
Meanwhile, ads that are far sexier roll by my screen all the time. People in the same pose. Hell, sometimes even the same couple, just Photoshopped differently. (The joys of relying on stock photography.)
So why me?
Dunno. Probably never will. And honestly, when it comes to the ‘Zon, it doesn’t really matter. I could have fought it, sent them links to similar books with similar/sexier covers, and either 1) succeed in getting my ads reinstated or 2) succeed in getting those other authors’ ads pulled.
So, I said, screw it. Not worth it.
But why is it too sexy, you might ask? Certainly, the fact that he’s shirtless isn’t it. Every damn romance book in the world has some jacked-up, probably blue-tinted, tattooed, sometimes faceless, set of 12-pacs flexing on it. And the shirtless dude isn’t the issue here. So what is?
It takes two to tango.
(This is also why RH is stuck in the Erotica Dungeon. Amazon hates the tango, let alone the conga line.)
Amazon is perfectly fine with readers drooling over a beefsteak slapped on the cover of a book, as long as it’s just Mr. Washboard Faceless Beefsteak. Once you add in a dance partner?
Can’t imply that there might be romance in a romance book!
I mean, let’s be honest. I’m pretty sure the only reason Amazon allows romance/erotica on their website in the first place is because of how @!%@!@!$ing much money there is in the industry.
There are long rules about what’ll get your book canned from Amazon ads when it comes to romance. Kissing. Lying down. Amorous embraces. (This is the one that got me, I think.) Implied nudity. And a lot of times, it’s “the bot said he wasn’t blue enough.” (Alien romances get around this frequently because the image scanners don’t register it as flesh.)
Around the same time, Facebook canceled my ads for Memento Mori for the same reason. Too adult. OK! OK. Fine. Fine. I give up. I’ll change the damn covers! So I spent about $40 on stock photos, and about two days, and I rebuilt entire new covers for the series. Not because I liked them more. Not because I agreed with them. But because…
Marketing is a fickle god.
And I, like all authors, worship at its feet.
So, then, this happened. I resubmitted for ads, got approved, and we were off to the races!
Woo! Marketing!
Now I just sit back, watch the clicks roll in, and then we’re in the money, right?
Right?
Right?!
Nope. Hard nope on that, Bucky.
Memento Mori sells like trash.
Probably one of my lowest-selling series of all time. Why? Bad marketing? (Probably.) But also, it’s just not on vogue. It’s not in season. There hasn’t been a major NYT bestseller about Necromancers, and there hasn’t been a blockbuster movie. In short, right now, nobody wants to f*ck a necromancer. (:Cue sounds of Gideon crying in the background.:)
That, and I have a small reader base, I’m not in any author cliques, and maybe I’m just “not that good.” (See above comment about meritocracy.) Or lightning hasn’t struck. Or whatever.
There’s a thousand reasons why one book tanks over another.
Fine. It’s fine. It’s all fine. I don’t care. I write for the art. I don’t mind if nobody reads it. It’s for me! I write for my own enjoyment, not for others, and I don’t care if a series doesn’t sell. :pained whine:
SO, ANYWAY.
Memento Mori doesn’t sell. It certainly doesn’t pay for the ads. So I pull the ads, because flushing money on a series that’s not selling is just…I learned that lesson already on Steel Rose and Halfway Between.
And since I’m not running ads? Because nobody’s reading it?
Screw you, ‘Zon, I’m putting my original covers back on. I don’t even wanna market with you, anyway! So there! Take that!
:Goes to cry in a corner with my precious, precious, unread baby: