Is your book relevant to your audience?

This is the first, and foremost item in the list we need to look at when advertising on Amazon. It will be a decisive factor in terms of how much you pay per click, in the exposure you get, and in the time you invest in these ads. 

When does Amazon consider a book relevant? It’s pretty straightforward: When people tend to purchase / borrow your book when they get to your book page. 

If Amazon determines that your book is not relevant for your target audience, then good luck getting a positive outcome from this platform.

So if you want Amazon to help you make money from your books, you have to consider if they are relevant for the audience you are writing it for.

The following three initial questions can already help us determine whether our book is likely to be relevant or not: 

• Q1: Is my book written for a clear, straightforward audience (example: epic fantasy for adults / historical romance / space opera)? Take into account the patterns in the narration, the MC, the tropes to compare it with other books in the genre.

• Q2: If the response to the prior question is positive — are the elements of my book page aligned with this audience: my cover, my blurb and my price?

• Q3: If the response to the prior question is positive — is the audience I am targeting wide enough? Take into account the ranking of top books in the genre. If most have a ranking higher than 50,000, then the answer to this is probably no.
  

A good way to respond to these questions is by comparing your book to the top 100 bestsellers in your categories. Find below the recommendations depending on your response:

	YES	NO
Q1: Clear target audience?	​Great! Next question.	It will be hard to market. Recommendation: Rework the book to fit the audience.
Q2: Book page aligned to market?	​Great! Next question.	It will be hard to market. Recommendation: Align book elements to what the audience is buying.
Q3: Is the audience I'm targeting big enough?	Good potential to advertise.	​Can advertise, but reach may be limited.

Note that this advice is useful not only for Amazon, but for any other advertising platform you want to use. Publishing your book is an entirely different thing from marketing it. You can publish plenty of books, but this does not mean that other people will purchase them, even if you advertise them.

In order to have a good chance at being successful with ads in general, it is important to align our book's relevance to the audience we are targeting, or no matter how much money we spend, we will not see the return. In Amazon Advertising specifically, if your book is not relevant, the ad will barely get impressions or will only get them at a dear price per click.

For those of you that have answered YES to all these questions, started advertising your book on Amazon and still don’t seem to get your clicks to convert to sales or borrows, pay attention to your data. Some examples of what could be happening depending on what you see:

• No impressions at all? Perhaps the keywords / targets are barely searched for. 

• Lots of impressions and no clicks? The ad cover or title is likely not working for the targets/keywords you are using. 

• Lots of clicks and no sales / borrows? The book page is not aligned to the market you are targeting. 

• Lots of promo orders and free downloads but barely any reviews? Something about the content is not clicking with the audience. It does not matter if the few you got were great.
  

Of course, this is just general advice — other factors can enter into play, or maybe Amazon is just not the right platform for you — but it can help guide us to the next steps we should try with our books. 

Next steps

If you are convinced that you book is 100% relevant then the next best step is to follow good practices when you create Amazon Ads campaigns.