I recently wrote that traditional authors should not pay for advertising, and I'm getting some strong reaction from authors. Even if you're not traditionally published, how and where should you spend your marketing dollars?

I was emailing an author who wanted my help running Amazon ads for a book her publisher was putting on sale for $2 over the holidays. I started writing her back, and the email got longer and longer until it turned into a blog post.

Since she's traditionally published, it's technically not even possible to do this. But even if it were, it would still be a bad idea, for two reasons.

Reason #1: Traditionally published authors don't have the sales information they need to succeed.

Thomas: As a traditionally published author, you don't have access to the sales information you need. Say you buy a blog tour or some Facebook ads on December 15th. You have no idea how many books you sold that day. Your publisher won't tell you, and may never tell you. There's often no way to know if the promotion worked.

The result is that traditionally published authors' marketing tends to be sloppy. They have superstitions about what works, but no way to confirm it, because they don't have the sales data. They're the wrong people to be spending the money, because they can't tell what's working and what's not.

Jim: We're friends with Randy Ingermanson, who's part of a private email loop where an author once said Facebook advertising was working fantastically. Randy asked how she knew. She said she was getting a lot of comments and activity. That's not the same as knowing sales were made. The honest answer is always, "I just feel like it is." You simply can't know.

Thomas: There are some ways to find out. If you use a special Amazon affiliate code for a promotion, you can track how many Amazon sales came from it. But the whole point of being traditionally published is getting into bookstores, and that's the data you don't have. Even when it's available, few authors bother setting up a special affiliate key for a specific promotion.

That's the first problem. The second is even worse.

Reason #2 The math doesn't work.

Thomas: To explain why, let's walk through how traditional publishing works. Say I'm your publisher and I love your book. I want to publish it, so I pay you a $10,000 advance.

Here's the catch. That's not $10,000 on top of your royalties. It's an advance, meaning I pay you zero dollars in royalties until your book earns back that $10,000. So if I convince you to spend $5,000 on ads, and you sell 5,000 books at a $1 royalty each, how much money do you get for spending that $5,000?

Jim: Nothing, since you're traditionally published. The best explanation I've heard is that an advance is a small business loan that, if you can't pay back, they won't come after you for. But every dollar you earn goes back to them until you reach that $10,000.

Thomas: Exactly. And 90% of books never earn out their advance, which means the advance is the only money the author ever sees. Whatever the author spends on marketing comes directly out of that advance. If an author gets a $10,000 advance and spends $6,000 on marketing, they're being paid $4,000 for writing a book. That's not enough to pay rent, let alone put a kid through college.

Publishers often pressure authors to spend on marketing because it's a way to pay them less for the same work. It doesn't even make sense from a data standpoint, since the publisher is in a better position to spend those dollars wisely.

Now say your book does earn out its advance. Does the math work then? Still no. Take a fictional author, Barbara. She gets a 25% royalty on an e-book that sells for $7.99, so she makes $2 a copy. She buys Facebook ads, and 10% of the people who click go on to buy the book, meaning she needs 10 clicks to sell one copy. At 25 cents a click, a fairly typical price, she's spending $2.50 to acquire a reader. Off a $2 royalty, she's losing 50 cents per reader.

Jim: But she'll make it up in volume.

Thomas: She'd get a better return putting that money in a Vegas slot machine. Slot machines pay back around 90% of what you put in. This pays back less. It's a bad investment.

Jim: The same problem shows up at book signings. Most authors realize by now that signings aren't a great way to make money, but they can still feel like an ego boost, until you do your first one and three out of 20 people who stop by your table actually buy the book. Unless you're J.K. Rowling, that math doesn't improve much. If you sell five books and take home $5, think about what your time was worth for those two and a half hours, plus gas.

Thomas: Your time is worth money too. As an author, you could be earning $20 to $50 an hour editing someone else's writing, so that's the bar your time should clear. If you spend half an hour on Facebook, you need to be getting at least $25 of value out of it, or you should be doing something more valuable with that time. And the science shows that social media makes you unhappier and less productive, so it's rarely the best use of that half hour anyway.

Publishers don't send authors to book signings to help them sell books. They send them to strengthen the publisher's relationship with that bookstore. It's a favor to the publisher, not a sales strategy.

Jim: True, and if you drop by a store, introduce yourself, and sign the copies on the shelf, those books can't be returned anymore. That's good for the publisher and good for you.

Thomas: It's also a small time investment. You're in and out in 10 minutes, and even at $50 an hour, you only need $10 of value back to make it worth it.

Jim: I want to push back a little. If I'm traditionally published and my publisher sees me putting real effort into interviews, video, or Facebook Live, doesn't that make them more likely to sign me again next time?

Thomas: I worked as a marketing director at a publisher. I didn't care how much effort an author put in, only how many copies sold. If your marketing is effective and sells books, that absolutely helps you get signed again. But there are no points for effort alone.

That said, you shouldn't spend zero time on marketing. Investing in your website, running e-mail promotions, and building a strong book launch are worth it, even with the advance math factored in, because you also want your book read. Sometimes a publisher won't spend money on marketing a book until they already see it succeeding, which means you may have to spend your own money just to earn theirs. That's part of why traditional publishing so often doesn't add up. Flip the numbers around for indie authors, and it's a different story.

Indie Authors Have Better Marketing Options

Thomas: Let's run Barbara's numbers again, but this time she's self-published through KDP. Her first problem is solved, since she now has near real-time access to her sales data. On December 16th, she can see exactly how many books she sold the day before, compare it to the day before that, and see whether a blog tour or a BookBub promotion actually moved the needle.

The numbers themselves are better too. Say her e-book sells for $4.99, less than her traditionally published price, but her royalty is 70%, or $3.49 a copy. If it still costs her $2.50 to acquire a reader, she's now making $1 per reader instead of losing 50 cents. That's real margin she can reinvest in acquiring more readers.

Jim: And she gets immediate feedback, so she knows in days, not never, whether to change course.

Thomas: Right. Marketing without data is like driving without looking through the windshield. People say marketing never works, but driving doesn't work either if your windshield is covered in snow. You have to clear it before you can see the road, or you'll crash no matter how good a driver you are.

Jim: So traditionally published authors don't have a defroster, and indie authors do.

Thomas: Traditional publishing still works, and plenty of authors make good money at it, but usually the ones who succeed spend their time writing more books while the publisher markets them. Authors who pour time and money into marketing are often the ones whose books aren't selling well to begin with, and it becomes a spiral that makes it harder to stay traditionally published. But if your publisher sees success, they'll often be the ones spending the marketing money, not you.

What about hybrid authors?

Jim: Five years ago, being both traditionally and independently published was unusual. Now it seems like everyone, myself included, is doing both.

Thomas: If you're hybrid (traditionally and indie published), advertising starts to make sense, even for your traditionally published books. Say Barbara is losing 50 cents a reader on her traditional book, but half of those readers go on to buy one of her indie books at a $5 margin. She's still coming out $4 ahead net, because those readers eventually reach her higher-margin books.

I think hybrid is the best strategy overall. Your publisher gives you credibility and access to bookstores, while your independent books let you keep more of what you earn. And having traditional books draws the attention that makes your indie titles easier to sell.

Jim: Right, and your books are really a very thick brochure for each other. You already spend money on postcards or bookmarks to do that job, so think of a traditionally published book the same way, as fifty cents spent putting a brochure in someone's hands that drives sales to your indie titles, and vice versa. Work with your publisher on this. It can be a symbiotic relationship that benefits both of you.

Thomas: I know one author with a traditionally published trilogy and an independently published trilogy in the same story world, with crossover characters. She's transparent with her publisher, and it's written into her contract. Readers of her indie books go on to read her traditional ones, so her publisher is fine with it. She had to negotiate hard for that, since publishers usually require indie work to use different characters or a different world entirely. But for her, it's paying off, and hybrid is giving her the best of both.