Wondering if you should spend money on ads in the land down under to try to sell your book? Here are tips to help you decide if you should advertise in Australia.
If you follow industry news, you know that last summer, Amazon KDP announced that it is offering print-on-demand services in Australia.
This is great news for Aussie authors, whose profits were being eaten up by having to print and ship from elsewhere in the world. But it also begs the question of whether indie authors should advertise on Amazon’s Australian platform to take advantage of this news.
Read on for our thoughts on this topic.
Amazon US is still the biggest Amazon distributor.
At Best Page Forward, we usually encourage authors to begin their advertising adventure with the Amazon US platform regardless of where in the world they are located.
The US platform is the world’s biggest online retailer, so you’re more likely to get sales if you advertise there than anywhere else. Remember: it’s about getting readers, and there are more readers on this platform than others, so it’s most logical to advertise here.
Custom Text vs Standard Ads
Amazon currently only allows custom text in US ads. That means that if you advertise elsewhere in the world, you won’t be able to write your own hook to go with your ad.
Standard ads rely exclusively on your cover and title to sell — there is no text whatsoever to entice readers to click. If you’ve done a good job with your keywords, this could still work, but in some cases it may be harder.
Consider Your Costs
In many cases, advertising outside of the US either costs more or nets you a lower return on your investment. For that reason, we usually don’t recommend doing it until your business is profitable.
Once you’re making money on the Amazon US platform (at least $500 in profit), you can consider scaling up, and one of the ways to do that is to expand your advertising to Amazon in other countries.
Want to advertise on Amazon without breaking the bank? Read this post!
What If I Don’t Live in the US?
Even if you don’t live in the US, it’s generally best to start advertising there because of Amazon US’ size. Keep in mind that you may have lots of readers overseas that you could miss out on if you don’t advertise on the US site, too.
You can always experiment and see what works for you and your business, but in most cases we’ve found it’s best to start with the US platform and then expand regardless of your country of origin.
At Best Page Forward, we love to help authors connect with readers and make money! You really can make a great living as an author.
Need more help with Amazon Ads? Click here to get our Top 10 Amazon Advertising tips!.