Hi there,

Welcome to a new edition of the Reedsy marketing newsletter! Today, I want to talk about Amazon Also Boughts. 

“Again?” you might ask, if you’ve been following this newsletter for a while (or if you’ve read the free book we published last year).

And you’d be right! I’ve talked quite a bit about the importance of Also Boughts in the past, and how easily they can kill any chances of success for a book if they’re “polluted” — this article by David Gaughran is a great introduction to the topic. 

But how can you, in practice, ensure that your Also Boughts never get polluted? 

Well, that’s what this newsletter is all about. I’m going to share my top three tactics to keep your Also Boughts as impeccable as your taste in marketing newsletters is 😉

#1: Advertising your pre-order on Amazon

Building your Also Boughts is like building a house: the most important bit is the foundation. Anything you try to build on top of a weak foundation is likely to crumble at the first sign of stress. And if you then need to fix it, you’ll first have to destroy everything you’ve built on top of it since then.

All of which is to say: if you pollute your Also Boughts early on, cleaning them up will cost you twice the effort of building the right Also Boughts foundation in the first place. 

So how do you build those first Also Boughts? It’s simple: by making sure your first copies are sold to readers who have bought the kind of books you want to have in your Also Boughts. And one of the easiest ways to achieve that is by running some light Amazon Ads — targeting these comp titles and comp authors — while your book is on preorder.

Now, you shouldn’t expect to make a positive return on your ads investment here, since advertising a pre order is much harder than advertising a book that is instantly available. However, ROI is not your goal here. Your sole goal is to build out those initial Also Boughts.

If you already have a solid mailing list of fans, then you don’t need to do this: you can just email them when the book is on preorder or when it launches, and they’ll populate those Also Boughts for you.

But if you don’t have that audience yet, laser-targeted Amazon Ads are your best bet. Once you have that first layer of relevant Also Boughts, the risk of polluting them when running a price promotion or Facebook ads is a lot lower.

#2: Cross-advertising your books and series

If you have several books out there in the same genre/niche — or even in the same series/universe — your ideal Also Boughts situation would be to have all your other books on the first Also Boughts page of every single one of your titles.

This would guarantee that you “own” your Also Boughts for each of your titles. Here’s one good example from fantasy author D.K. Holmberg:

The Also Boughts first feature the other books in the series, and then other books from other series from the same author.

This is something that can happen naturally as you progressively build a loyal fanbase in your genre, who follows you from one series to the next.

That said, there’s one way to accelerate the process: by cross-advertising your series on Amazon, i.e. running Amazon Ads for each series in which you target your other series (as keywords or individual products). For example, if you have series A and B out, you would set up:

• An Amazon Ads campaign advertising all the books in series A while targeting all the book titles and series title of series B as keywords (and potentially the ASINs of series B as well), and
• An Amazon Ads campaign advertising all the books in series B while targeting all the book titles and series title of series A as keywords (and potentially the ASINs of series A as well).

That way, readers looking for the next book in a given series will also see your other series, which will encourage cross-over.

#3: Newsletter swaps

Newsletter swaps are one of the most effective ways to boost sales, but they can be a bit of a double-edged sword when it comes to Also Boughts.

Swapping with an author in a different genre/niche, or who writes across several ones and doesn’t segment their list well, is one of the fastest and most effective ways to completely pollute your Also Boughts.

But if you swap with an author who writes in your niche — ideally, a close comp author who has a big, engaged list of readers — then your Also Boughts will rapidly populate with their books. And vice versa, because your book will show up in their books’ Also Boughts!

This is a great tactic to use in conjunction with a big price promotion, like a BookBub Featured Deal. Everyone knows that a BookBub Featured Deal is one of the most powerful ways to boost sales — but it comes at the cost of endangering your Also Boughts, as the audience they bring to your book is vast and varied. So you can think of this tactic as a safety net to make sure your Also Boughts withstand the stress of the promotion.

That’s it for this week! Also Boughts are, in my opinion, one of the most important and yet underestimated elements of Amazon visibility, so make sure to use those tips to keep them relevant throughout the lifetime of your books.

Happy writing, and happy marketing,

Ricardo

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