Kevin chats with Mal Cooper, author of Help! My Facebook Ads Suck.

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Kevin Tumlinson:          00:00                Hey slingers, welcome to another week of the word Slinger podcast. And a, we're going to ask the question today. Delicate question. Do your Facebook ads suck? We're going to talk about that and more with Mal Cooper. Hang around. Hey, how are you doing on money? I know that's a touchy subject, but, uh, I got some that may help you out. See, I'm using an app called acorns and it helps me manage some investing. Uh, put some money back, get a little interest. It's kind of nice to watch my money grow. So I want to share that with you. Go to Kevin tomlinson.com/acorns and you'll get some free money. See you there.

Announcer:                   00:48                It's the Wordslinger Podcast where story matters. Build your brand, write your book, redefine who you are. It's all about the story here. What's yours? Now here's the guy who invented pants, optional—Kevin Tumlinson, the Wordslinger!

Kevin Tumlinson:          01:12                Well, I am Kevin comes into the word slicker first. First.

Kevin Tumlinson:          01:16                First I want to say thank you for, uh, coming back around, uh, after I've been gone for like the past three or four weeks. Um, and that's, uh, that was not unexpected. I did tell everybody I was going to be at conferences and, uh, that sort of thing. Uh, specifically I was at new ink for Oh, a week or so, a little over, and then I had to fly to Colorado and then I had a whole bunch of other stuff that happened in between, including getting sick, get the, uh, travelers crud. Um, and so I'm a, I'm kinda on the men from that. Um, I think there's some residual stuff going here and my voice probably. Um, but I had a great time with the conferences, learned a lot, uh, did some pretty cool stuff. Uh, lots of stories came out of that. Now I'll probably share a few here and there.

Kevin Tumlinson:          02:09                Not today though. Not, not the, uh, not the lengthy ones. Maybe on the, another episode. So maybe on the 200. Uh, so we're at one 99 right now. We're 199 episodes, so we got the big two. Oh, coming up. Uh, I'm, I'm kind of excited about that. I need to F I need to find a way to make that one special. Yeah, that's something, something unique. We'll see. We'll see. We'll see. Um, so, uh, while at Nick, I got a chance to hang out with today's guest, uh, mal Cooper. Now, uh, I'm gonna, I'm just gonna preface this and say that, uh, I chatted with mal back in, uh, February, 2019, um, February 25th to be precise about it. Um, this was prior to certain, uh, shifts in, um, uh, mouse lifestyle, we'll say. So I do, I do refer to her as a Michael in the interview.

Kevin Tumlinson:          03:03                I don't want to give offense to anybody. I know she's cool with it. So, um, but this was prior to, uh, the changes. So, uh, and I don't want to put too fine a point on that. I just wanted to call it out because a, it, you know, if you happen to know now, you know, that, um, this, there's a, there are things that have progressed. So, um, now all that aside, I know that sounded awkward. I didn't mean for any of that sounded awkward. Um, Matt was a good friend of mine. Uh, we have known each other for years and, uh, I was really happy to, uh, to have her on the show and to talk about, uh, your Facebook ads suck, which there is a second edition coming out soon, I'm told. So I'm sorry this took so long. Now, by the way, if you're listening, uh, to, to get around to putting this up, um, but you know, things happen, I prerecord these well in advance, so I've got like a year's worth of interviews in the can to, uh, so today, you know, I don't have to scramble for a guest or something.

Kevin Tumlinson:          04:06                Uh, maybe it's time to rethink that policy. I want to make sure that everybody gets their, their exposure, uh, in a timely manner. So, uh, we'll look at it. I'm always tinkering with the show. You know, how it goes. Uh, so anyway, I'm not going to keep you from this interview. We talk about Facebook ads and some other things, uh, really truly interesting things that I think you'll enjoy and get something out of. I hope you enjoy this episode and, um, stick around on the other side. We'll, I'll have a few words,

Kevin Tumlinson:          04:35                words to cap this off. And uh, other than that, I'll see you there. Hey, thanks for tuning into another great interview. I can't wait to do this one. Uh, I met Michael Cooper, uh,

Kevin Tumlinson:          04:47                yeah, a couple of years ago now, right Michael at a and D book fast I think. And we've had lots of opportunities to chat. Uh, occasionally we don't see eye to eye on certain aspects of the business, which is why it's good to chat with each other. And actually I've learned quite a bit from you and especially your book, uh, which was signed to me as, uh, uh, uh, I don't want to use the word, but it was signed to me to indicate that I was not a unicorn and he was not a unicorn. Uh, there was an expletive in there somewhere, but thanks for, uh, thanks for coming on the show, Michael. You bet. Thanks for having me. And the book I was just referencing by the way, was help my Facebook ads suck. That was the right. Yeah. Yep. So things going pretty well with that one.

Mal Cooper:                  05:31                Yeah, it's, I mean, I probably need to update it to be honest, but, um, I think if I were to update the book, most of what I would say it is don't pay attention to all the new shiny stuff and just do ads, you know, the way that makes that make sense. Yeah. We've got so much stuff right now. They're trying to promote, you know, ways to turn images into video and all sorts of things like that. And my advice that would probably update the book with is ignore all of that until you're really good at running regular image ads and then start experimenting with [inaudible].

Kevin Tumlinson:          05:58                I think that's, that's good advice. And you know, Facebook's little ad crew, they harass you over it. I don't know if you've gotten the sales pitches and the sales calls and I did like a 30 minute a walk through the guy who was trying to convince me to start using more video. And I'm like, yeah, I mean I, I'm all for video, but it takes more time to produce so

Mal Cooper:                  06:21                well that, and it's, if you make a mistake, it's an expensive mistake. Exactly right. You had the just does nothing. You might've dropped a couple of hundred dollars on that and you get nothing out of it. Whereas image ads, you can pay a buck a picture.

Kevin Tumlinson:          06:32                Right, right. So I think we're, we're putting the cart in front of the horse. Uh, right now cause I want to talk to you about sort of your, how you got into the business, what you're, what you're doing. Why don't you tell me a little bit your, uh, cause you write under MD Cooper, right? That's at least one pen name. Uh, do you have other been pinned names? Nope. That's it. That's all I do. That's all you do all day in and out. Uh, so tell me how you got into the businessman.

Mal Cooper:                  06:58                So I mean I like a lot of folks I've been writing since I was a kid. Um, for me, it started when I finished Lord of the rings and I didn't want the story to stop. So I started writing my own stuff, um, as are playing around with maps and whatnot. And for me, maps and setting are where I get a lot of my ideas. So I started like copying the Lord of the rings, maps are in the books and drawing my own. I started making my own maps and I started thinking about who would live in these places and what they would do and, and um, and that's where the story started coming from. Factors a map up on my wall that you can kind of see behind. I did that when I was 19 years old. One of map I love, it's um, massive. It's probably got, I want to say it's probably got about four or 500, um, cities and names and nations and all sorts of stuff all over it. And someday I'm gonna write, that's a fantasy morals and then I'm going to write that story. Right.

Kevin Tumlinson:          07:45                I was gonna ask, I was gonna ask you if that was one you were already writing in. But you haven't written anything in that yet?

Mal Cooper:                  07:50                I haven't yet. No, but that one, that one I will. It's um, I wrote about one book when I was like 21, and of course I didn't know what I was doing back then, so it's kind of garbage, so I have to throw it out and start over. It was like any, anything you do, a lot of practice makes perfect. And um, I'm pretty sure that the, the thing that changed with her science fiction was watching, um, Firefly and I realized that you could take science fiction, you could have a lot of fun with it,

Kevin Tumlinson:          08:16                right? Yeah. Hey, Brown coat for life here man.

Mal Cooper:                  08:18                That's right. So that's what got me going is that, and I, uh, I put up my first published, my self published my first book in 2012. Yep. And um, between 2012 and June of 2016, I put out three books and since November of 2016, I've put out an additional 70 books.

Kevin Tumlinson:          08:36                Wow. That is prolific, man. That's people prolific you, you've run laps around me now. I wrote a lot people that, but I decided to do something. I just sort of throw myself into [inaudible]. Yeah. What was your career prior to writing? I was a software developer. Okay. And then eventually

Mal Cooper:                  08:56                I'd be, I moved into management and I was actually a CTO and a CIO of, of a couple of different companies. Yeah. Yeah. So you're driven and you, you understand the whole entrepreneurial mindset. Oh yeah. Yeah. I've worked in entrepreneur and startups and entrepreneurial businesses almost my entire life. So I'm used to that thing where like if you wear lots of hats and, and you do whatever you have to do to make your succeed, cause my, my belief is no one else is going to succeed for you. So if you want to do great things, you've just got to buckle down and do them. Yeah. So what, okay, so what did you bring into, uh, your author business from that world? That that's been very useful because you are doing this full time. Yup. Yeah. I've been doing this full time now since January 1st, 2017. Okay.

Mal Cooper:                  09:37                I think like for me a lot of it was um, I was one of those software developers that possessed the unknown and rare skill where I could talk to clients, sales people and other software developers, right. Which, which is pretty rare and usually what caused me to end up in management, even though I kind of hated being in management. But I feel like I have a fairly good ability to take a technical issue or something, something that's got a lot of, I love specific technical detail detail to it and make it interesting to anybody. Got an I and I was able to do that in, in um, in my career. In fact, when we would do conferences, I was like the number one booth babe. I was like the one that would always be in the booth. Like if we were to go to conference that had like a, a conference floor.

Mal Cooper:                  10:18                If there was like three days, I would be in the booth 20, you know, the whole time for a whole three days talking to people. And I think that same skill to be able to take, talk about technical things and make it into a fun story and interesting for them for whoever I'm speaking to came out really well with writing science fiction. Right? Cause I write, I write hard science fiction, which is very much about the science and getting, getting the details right. But I also do it in a way where I tell a really fun story and I will consider myself to where we were almost like an evangelist of hard science where it's like I'm going to have to tell you this story where everything actually obeys the laws of physics or extrapolates on the known laws of physics but then as a fun yard as well and, and, and is a bit like Firefly and then it's a fun space, shoot them up, up story.

Mal Cooper:                  10:58                But also, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't make anybody cringe when they, when they hear about certain aspects of the science that are in it. Right. And you've been pretty successful at this so far. I've done a lot, right? Yeah. I mean that's not a question, it's more a statement, but you have been pretty successful at this, have you not? I, I, I've, I've done all right. Yeah, I'm going, I'm going wide now, which, which I'm guessing your, your um, audience knows what that means. So my, my rank on Amazon. Yeah. Actually, um, so probably for about two years I was in the top 50 science fiction authors on Amazon. Um, I've gone down a bit now because I'm going wide so I don't get the Kau bore was boosting me up as much as I used to. So now I'm like around 53 or so. But I figured that's been, that's pretty. And the fact I'm going wide and financially I'm doing just as well as I did before. I consider that to be pretty good too. Yeah, that is good. That's a so,

Kevin Tumlinson:          11:54                I mean, not all my scifi and fancy books are wide. They do okay. But not great. My, uh, because the thriller series is kind of new. I've been running in K you'd kind of build it up. So I'm going to be taking those wide once I hit around 12 bucks. Right. So I'm very keen to hear your strategy on how you, how you're making this, this transition and how you're making it successfully.

Mal Cooper:                  12:21                Well I think the, one of the things that I found is really interesting. So I took my first series wide. Um, I think it was January of 20. Yeah. I was actually just January, 2018 that I did that is why I call Rica and for whatever reason it never did that well NKU, I put out two books in Kau and they almost got no K you read. So I figured this is a great one to try taking wide. And it now is my, it now vies with my flagship series for the most revenue. Obviously it's sell it. The funny thing though, that sells less, but because I'm not getting those K U reads and all these books for four 99 and making 70% off the books, I'm actually making as much money as a series of sales. Almost twice as many. Yeah. And the issue of thing is I make I, and all of this is just on Amazon. This isn't counting the wide money just on Amazon. This series is now actually almost beating my flagship K U series.

Kevin Tumlinson:          13:13                Oh, you're getting all those sales just on Amazon. What, what about the other channels?

Mal Cooper:                  13:18                The other channels? Um, they bring me about 2000 a month on this series, which is not huge, but it's, it's sort of the interesting thing is that my, my fear was that the Amazon money would all dry up, but instead the Amazon money has increased. Um, I feel like that is partially because I have a readership that will buy the books regardless. I think a lot of new folks starting out may not have that going for them because you might, you don't have these breeders that will already buying the books. But I've, I've worked really hard on, on, on cultivating, um, a readership, like a pebble by. Yeah. And I've also also done it. Part of what I've had done that is I focus more on advertising to readers of authors who are not in coop. Right. So I want to be my AMS ads, whatnot. I target non K U authors so I can find people who, who will buy books versus borrow them.

Kevin Tumlinson:          14:01                Yeah, I think a, and when, you know, my Facebook ads in particular were always aimed at some of those were K U authors. Uh, but, but largely I was aiming at authors who I knew were having a success rate with the audience I was targeting and we're selling, not giving things away. So even though they're NKU, I knew that they were making actual sales. So I think that's a good strategy. So your, your, how about the new stuff? Are you going out when you're, when you say you're taking the series, why do you take the entire series and go, why are you, do you do a, a, a slow trickle release?

Mal Cooper:                  14:38                Well, I've only actually ever finished one series, so I've, I have 20, 23 series and they're all currently ongoing. Yeah, that's insane, man. Well, I guess actually I have two series up I've wrapped too. Um, so I have done some, but what I did is the one series that, um, when book free came out, I moved the whole thing wide and it's been wild ever since. So when the book new book comes out, it's wide right off the bat. Okay. Um, I've then taken my original series, the Intrepid saga and that is now wide. I'm taking one of the prequel series wide and then this year I'm launching two more series brand new series and they're going to launch wide. They're not going to be in K you ever. Okay. Um, and one of them actually is going to be a Cobo exclusive initially as well.

Kevin Tumlinson:          15:20                Really? Do you get a lot of traction on Kobo?

Mal Cooper:                  15:24                I do as well on Kobo as I do on all the other wide retailers combined.

Kevin Tumlinson:          15:28                Oh wow. Oh that's good. Impressive. Yeah. Most for most people and me included, it's always Apple. I um, Oh my God. Number three, I do better on Barnes and noble than, than, than Apple. And I, and I advertise to Apple and I still don't do as well. I don't run any ads for Barnes noble. And they outsell Apple for me. That is very interesting. I know. It's like I'm living in this bizarro world. Yeah. You're almost the exact opposite of everyone else I talked to cause nobody gets sales in Barnes and noble. [inaudible] non-existent. I know. It's, I didn't understand either. I'm like, I'm like, I'm like pumping money into ads on Apple. Like okay I'm barely breaking even is kind of what I worked out read through. Eventually it'll, it'll be all right. But um, the Barnes noble was actually starting to beat Apple month over month and running zero ads.

Kevin Tumlinson:          16:11                So I actually killed my ads for Apple. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I don't do any advertising to push anything to Apple. Of course I told you before we started, I kind of curtailed all my ads a while. I do a kind of baseline and figure anything out. But um, you know, I was getting a lot of Apple promotions and then I was getting, I actually hit hit number one in Saifai on Apple for time and then that led exactly nowhere cause their, the way their promotional system works, you know, it's like big deal. That's never happened. No one even knows anymore. Yeah, exactly. I find it. So I run ads for a, for Coldwell, both in the UK and Canada has, where I run my Kobo ads there. They're both just set at $5 a day ads. But I've had that smart though, because that's their, their biggest targets. Like they're not big. So you write ads for Coldwell U S and nothing will happen. Right, right. You know,

Mal Cooper:                  17:07                but, um, but yeah, in Canada, I've been, I've had two to three books in a top 10 for Saifai in Coldwell Canada now for a year and a half.

Kevin Tumlinson:          17:15                Okay. So that's impressive.

Mal Cooper:                  17:17                It's working out well for me. And I'm like, I'm doing, I'm probably this month I'll probably actually do $1,500 on Kobo without any releases.

Kevin Tumlinson:          17:23                Yeah. Yeah. That's a, it's not huge dollars, but no, but I mean, nice. It adds to the pool and, um, and especially if it's, it's consistent. I mean, you know, 50 a hundred dollars, two to two grand, that's nothing to sneeze at. I mean that's, that's a nice, you know, for a lot of authors they'd take that as their monthly overall. So I mean that's a mortgage payment. Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I remember for long time that I was capping it like 1500 to 2000 for, for a real long time, especially wide. And then, you know, when things broke over big, I was really grateful for it. But I still think in my brain, I'm trying to think of $1,500 as being a, a nice chunk of change. So like I said, it is really thinking about is someone just walked up to you and handed you $1,500. You count that as a damn good day. That's all you're getting. This is all I'm giving you for the month, but that's it. You know, he'd still celebrate, go out and buy dinners, steaks. Oh yeah. Happy. Yeah. So, um, okay. I think I, okay. I, and what I was hitting at there is do you, when you released the series wide and now you're taking them wide, you're not, so you're not doing like a new whole new launch, right? You're just now you just go wide. You don't [inaudible] there's no like transition for you from K you to wide.

Mal Cooper:                  18:54                It depends on the series. There's a couple of my series where I told the readers I'm going to finish out with a thing and Kau. Okay. So those ones are going to be NKU some of them probably until the middle of next year. Right. And then they'll make their way wide as well. Um,

Kevin Tumlinson:          19:07                but I want to see how that works cause the strategy, I'm, I'm going with the decided I would try to do 12 books in that series and then go back to the beginning and take those wide one month at a time and a while. I continued to write 12 more books right in that series. And the hope there is to kind of get the best of both worlds. Keeps keep grabbing Kau dollars. Why also please a wider audience who are asking for the book. Some people have written pissed off that they're not able to buy those books on Kobo or whatever.

Mal Cooper:                  19:40                Some respects, I am doing a similar thing because all of my books are in the same universe. Okay. So these books that I am taking wide do lead into other books, you know, so, so as, as I really what you're doing book by book, I'm almost doing series by series of yeah, my

Kevin Tumlinson:          19:56                series. Yeah. Rub it in lounge. Yeah. Sorry. I think you still might actually be outselling me right now. You've been doing really well from what I've seen. I've been doing very well and I am very pleased with how it's going. I don't know if I'm out selling anybody. I don't try. I don't put myself up against anybody, but I'm for, you know, comparing my year over year, uh, it, you know, things have been phenomenal. So I think I'm doing OK. I'm bombed, I'm buying RVs and uh, you know, we're looking at buying a house and we're looking at a whole bunch of this stuff off of booking com. I never could say that back in like 2013. So that's pretty awesome. So, uh, uh, I want to talk to you now. Well we'll talk about anything you want to talk about, but one of the things I do want to come around on is talking about like the Facebook ads and stuff. That's, that was one of the things that, uh, when I initially invited you on the shows was uh, uh, cause that's something people get sort of flustered over and get intimidated over. So, but you wrote a book that kind of makes it pretty simple I think. Uh, and it's a lot cheaper than the courses that people, some people are charging for. Uh,

Mal Cooper:                  21:02                that was part of my goal. I didn't, I felt like the information was basically, I think all information is out there and you can probably find it in lots of forums. So I didn't want to charge a lot of money for it, but I Al, but there's also so much misinformation out there.

Kevin Tumlinson:          21:14                Right. And I kind of like the boiled down approach that you took. You know, cause it is, it's when I tell people to essentially, cause I, everyone always asks like what their marketing strategies should be. And I say, you know, you should pick one thing, master that one thing. And when you've mastered that, then you add the next thing. Yeah. That's pretty much,

Mal Cooper:                  21:34                you could spend all day, every day just spreading yourself across all the different things you could do and get no traction, not right.

Kevin Tumlinson:          21:41                Exactly right. Yeah. Believe me, that's what I did for the first like five years. Uh, and it's exhausting. So, but you can you walk a little, I don't want to spoil the book for anybody. Everybody should go buy it. And by the way, everyone links in the show notes, but uh, what's the, um, what's kind of the basics of the, of your process?

Mal Cooper:                  22:02                Well, I think there's the very first thing that that drives me nuts when I'm, when people talk about advertising, well I guess a lot of it was born on people saying it's not working when they're running ads. And so my first question was, well, how do you know what's not working? Right? And a lot of times you're just like, well, I'm not a millionaire the next day. Um, so and varying degrees of that, but they're not, they were expecting, you know, the, the red seat apart and you know, the Israelites to come through and whatever other great things were supposed to happen. But that's not the way advertising really works unless you have a massive budget that you can throw at it. Most of you gotta build it up, you gotta understand what's working and go slow. But you also have to understand what a sale is worth.

Mal Cooper:                  22:38                Like I've, I came up in software development and a lot of times it was startups. So I had a very good understanding of, of the effort that I was gonna put in and what that was gonna return for the company. Right? So, and we knew like if we brought a customer on and they, we knew what, what on average customers would buy, and then we could say, okay, well we put this much effort into this feature. The customers that are paying for it will actually make it profitable versus like maybe if it was this particular tier in the business, we said we put this much effort in the feature. It was never be profitable because the customers don't pay enough. You know, we had, I had a very good understanding of, of that sort of thing. And so I looked all these authors, I realized these authors have no idea what prophet was, what it looked like for them. Right. And, and, and since most of us writing series, that main idea is, okay, if I sell a book one, what's my read through and what's that? What's that turned into in dollars if my readers, you know, cause the readthrough will drop off. There's just no two ways about it. Right. Um, so you, well, except for in certain cases like Lee child, some has some books now that do better than is sold more books recently than as original books I've ever sold. But that's right. That's different than what a lot of authors,

Kevin Tumlinson:          23:35                very awesome has film deals with Tom cruise and

Mal Cooper:                  23:38                yeah, that, that skews things. But by and large, you know, series read through will drop off, but you can calculate it what's worth, and for me right now, if I sell a book, one of one of my books, it's worth about $120. Yeah. Um, in, in read through, which is pretty freaking awesome. Yeah. Most series we're at with around maybe three to five books, it's only worth about seven or eight bucks, right? If you spell book one, if something book one's at 99 cents and book one's more 99 cents, it might be worth as much as 10 bucks. Right? Um, so you have to say to yourself, okay, if I'm spending more than $10 to sell a book, I'm losing money. But people don't really didn't understand that. They didn't know where their break even was. A lot of my thing is just about understanding that first, right, what the sale of a book is worth.

Mal Cooper:                  24:18                And then from there it's really just saying, now create an ad that's an image, not a video, not a carousel, nothing fancy. Just an image with text and, and write that text. Like you would write a blurb as my main argument because I, Oh, I explained to him like this is your one chance to show people that you are an author and you can tell a story. So my argument is that unless you're selling a deal, then if you're selling a deal, you use more traditional ad copy cause you're not selling you the book, you're selling the price, right? But if you're selling a, if it's a regular ad, you want to keep running, you're selling the book and you're selling your skill as a writer. So I w I, I advocate very strongly that people write longer copy and they write copy that, that um, that tells a bit of a story and Tice the reader, get them, get them to click that link, get them go the Amazon page.

Mal Cooper:                  25:01                Amazon page should not be the same thing as your ad because you want to take them through a journey. Um, and then just work on that until you get ads that actually work well. And then you can start to experiment with video and you can start to do fancier things and whatnot, but it's really about mastering that, that single image ad. And then my other main piece of advice to stop using your book covers. It's about putting text in the picture, and I still, I still think like half of the author ads I see, there's texting in the picture and Amazon even says, we will show your ad to fewer people and charge you more money if you put text in the picture. Right. It used to be that they wouldn't show it at all. They'd be like, Nope, we're not, we're not gonna let you run this ad with text in there.

Mal Cooper:                  25:38                And then eventually they gave in. They're like, fine, you can put text on the image, but they still say like Ray show in this, anybody we're charging more money and all these offers. Keep doing it. If I can do one thing, it would just be to convince all authors just to put pictures up and stop putting text on the picture. That's what the words above and below are four. Yeah. You've got all these spots where you get, because in traditional advertising it's going to newspaper and magazine. There's no image in texts section. It's all part of the image. But on Facebook you've got specific places to put the text. So put your texts there.

Kevin Tumlinson:          26:07                Yeah, that's a, the ads that have worked best for me and I do, I have, I've started using um, animated images do well cause I can do them too fast to grab the eye. Right. And they're, and they're subtle. I don't do anything. I try not to go overboard with them but they, they get attention and they, they, they get people to check it out. Um, yeah I, I've stopped putting, occasionally I ended up with a cover in an image just because [inaudible]

Mal Cooper:                  26:33                in a hurry or whatever. I think that I don't do a cover image when I'm, when I'm putting a a post up on my, on my page and then I boost it for all them people who liked all my page. Right. Cause cause for them I'm letting them know this is a book you've been waiting for. Here's the book. Like, I'm reiterating to them that this is a book. I'm trying to grab new eyeballs, then I don't, I don't do that. Yeah.

Kevin Tumlinson:          26:55                And you're targeting, uh, I think we discussed this already. You're targeting guys who are not in Kau, uh, they write in your genre, right. I mean, it's not,

Mal Cooper:                  27:05                yeah. Like guys like John Scalzi and trad pop guys like Larry Nivon and the like, you know,

Kevin Tumlinson:          27:11                great. Those are, those guys are getting expensive, man. I don't know how well I don't do Saifai anymore, so I don't really target those guys anymore. But like the people aren't Lee child and you know, cloud Cussler and those guys are kind of getting, they're not cheap to targeted anymore.

Mal Cooper:                  27:25                Yeah. Well, I, I recommended this night I shot myself in the foot, but what I do is I do target a lot of golden era Saifai authors, um, cause people don't think to target them and they're all available on Facebook. And I told everybody this and then my ad cost went up. Yeah. I don't regret doing that, but yeah.

Kevin Tumlinson:          27:43                Well we, you know, we do that. I've, that's really, I understand that entirely. I mean, cause that's, you know, I share everything and I think sometimes to our detriment, we all share everything, but it's also how we figure out new ways to do things. Uh, and eventually it's not going to be a secret forever anyway. We already know. That's right. Yeah. Somebody is going to figure it out. Uh, yeah, there aren't a whole lot of golden era, um, archeological thriller writers. Uh, I've got five Cussler basically Clive Cussler. That's pretty much it. And uh, but what, and no one's out searching for the authors that actually think would be the perfect targets, which are the, uh, pulp fiction era guys and searching for those. And that's too bad, you know, cause I think that would be perfect, but it doesn't work because I think it's perfect. It works because this is what people were looking for.

Mal Cooper:                  28:38                That is a really important thing is that lots of times you'll spend, you'll spend hours building the perfect ad and the perfect audience, whatnot. And you'll think this is going to be the one that's just going to nail it. It's going to be, people are going to see this ad, they're going to love it, they're going to convert and it does nothing. Yeah. And then some crummy one you threw up, you know, and like five minutes ends up being amazing. Yeah. That's so much of it too is it's not, it's not always what, it's very hard to predict what people are going to like. It's true. Which is why you have to do a lot of it.

Kevin Tumlinson:          29:04                So I wanted to ask you, um, because I remember there was a time in Mark Dawson's whole course where he actually was not fond of the promoted posts, uh, boosted posts. Uh, do you ha, well, how do you feel about that? About the boosted posts versus ads?

Mal Cooper:                  29:21                I generally recommend against boosted posts. Um, although the reasoning for doing so is diminished. It used to be that you couldn't put a button on the boosting posts. Now you can, and now you can, and I have to, I should double check this, but I'm pretty sure that a boosted post still, if you click the image, it just enlarges the image. Okay. It doesn't actually you to the, to the destination. And I think that's still the main argument against using a boosted post. Where'd you do your regular ad? They click the image, they go where you want them to go. Where's the boosted post? It just makes the image bigger and then you pay for that because I'm supposed to pay for interactions. So you're paying, I'm clicking the image and just getting a bigger version of the image. That's a very good point. Yeah. And I think that's still the main reason why I don't, I don't run them, but I, I get lazy sometimes when I just do sales and announcements and what not. I just put a post up and I, and I boost it and cause for no many cases for those people, it's an awareness situation. Right. You know, I just want them to know the new books out and, and if they want they're going to go get it.

Kevin Tumlinson:          30:17                What if the, uh, what if that image is actually coming in from the preview of a landing page you're, you're promoting.

Mal Cooper:                  30:25                I think that is the scenario where it will, like if you don't put an image in specifically, you just put a Lincoln and then it auto populates it, then I believe that it will, that will take them right to it. Okay. But if you specifically have put in an image, then it doesn't, it doesn't,

Kevin Tumlinson:          30:39                right. Yeah. That is a frustration that I've had with, with a Facebook in general is that a lot of posts that I put up, I'd rather the, I'd rather your click go to a page, even if I'm not promoting it, like sometimes I'm just sharing the image because the preview didn't pull that image. Right. That's was very frustrating to try to share something. And you know,

Mal Cooper:                  31:01                on the downside though is if you, if you, um, if you do the thing that pulls in the preview, the preview Facebook shows those to less people. Okay. Like we put an Amazon link, it's got the book and then the blurb and whatnot. It'll show those to fewer people than it shows just a straight image too.

Kevin Tumlinson:          31:17                That's interesting. Why do you think that is?

Mal Cooper:                  31:19                Um, it's has, I mean I've only done this anecdotally, I've done some tests where I did some side by side comparisons of different things and I found that the, the straight up images got shown to more people. I'm guessing it's just part of their logic that they think people will, people like images more than previews.

Kevin Tumlinson:          31:35                Right. It goes against, you know, like a hundred years of advertising.

Mal Cooper:                  31:40                Well, Facebook's thing is that Facebook doesn't want posts to look like ads. Yeah. Cause that's cause right now they've hit add saturation and they have to make it so as much of the advertising content looks like, like regular posts as possible. Right. Um, and I think that's, I think that that possibly incorrectly drives too much of the way they do things.

Kevin Tumlinson:          31:59                Yeah. I think you're right. I think on that,

Mal Cooper:                  32:01                I think if you want to, I think that many cases show it as long as I'm right in front that you're ever having a book is a good idea. But on Facebook, if you show a picture of a book, they'll show it to your people so you can't show a book. Right. Whereas other advertising mediums, I would absolutely show a cover of the book cover. But on Facebook it hurts you because of just the way they price and show the show the content.

Kevin Tumlinson:          32:20                So when you're, uh, when you're on, when you're running ads on Facebook, is your goal more a sales or list building or you know, what's your sort of motive?

Mal Cooper:                  32:30                I don't, I don't believe in using Facebook for list building. I think it's, um,

Kevin Tumlinson:          32:34                see, this is where you and I, we talked about this at any book Fest and this is where you and I were,

Speaker 6:                    32:40                were at odds. One of the rare things that you and I don't agree on in my reasons, it just comes down to cost per lead. Yeah. Um, you know, when you're, when you're, when you're, you're probably gonna spend about 15 cents to 30 cents per email address if you're using Facebook ads to get email addresses. And when I do multi-author promotions, where I work with, um, with groups like scifi bridge or whatnot, I'm paying one to 2 cents per email address. Right. So, so it's like, it's between seven and 15 times more expensive to use ads to get those email addresses. Right. But then you, well, we're not going to go into that,

Mal Cooper:                  33:17                that the email addresses are more less valuable because they're shared with more people and whatnot.

Speaker 6:                    33:21                Yeah. And I, my, my whole goal in a list building is always to, you know, come, it really comes back to that how what you, and I forget how you defined it, but the, you know, how much is that reader worth? Like right over lifetime. And, uh, I feel like I can qualify leads better with Facebook ads that are meant to get them on a list rather than sell to them directly. Because I do feel like your genre is different too, because I don't feel like you have a lot of, well, that's true cost alternatives to get these email addresses. That's true. And my, my TAC for scifi was different than this. Yeah. Like in five, five there are dozens of groups that are running these, these multi-author promotions and whatnot and giveaways and all sorts of things that can get you in lots of email addresses.

Speaker 6:                    34:03                I don't think there's as much of that and friller is there. We'll do, we'll do some of that. There are a few us that band together and do that, but we will because we have so much crossover already. It's almost not worthwhile. If it's the same people. You're not getting anything out of the same folks. Right. I could probably do every week. I could probably do one with entirely or or, or largely different people inside. Yeah. Yeah. See I can totally see that. I can totally see that there's a, we're a smaller group so yeah, see that's interesting and that's something I don't, we don't talk about much is that there are differences in the genres and yeah, romance has its advantages over all the genres and Saifai has its advantages.

Mal Cooper:                  34:40                Most of the doors got some interesting advantages too because thriller, you can write things in a non serial series and still do really well and you guys can price higher. Yeah. You know, it's science. If you look at, even if you look at trad pub science fiction now they're having to price down to four 99, five 99. Right. In a lot of cases.

Speaker 6:                    34:58                Yeah. It's taken a lot of flack from my scifi stuff because it was serialized, right. Uh, the way it was because of the way it was serialized. Um, and I don't get any complaints about it now, so yeah,

Mal Cooper:                  35:11                it is. It is very different than the others I was talking to some people about, about, they were, they were sort of decrying the idea of tropes. I'm like, no, you have to get people to close. You know, if you go to the, when you go to buy a burger at a restaurant, you expect that burger to be a certain way. If only if you get a burger and there's a banana in it, you're not going to be happy. You know, want cheese, not a banana as the same thing with your, with the audiences, you know, they, they're looking for a certain type of story and if you don't give it to them and you have a problem, so it's, and that's a big thing.

Speaker 6:                    35:38                And different genres specifically cater to different tropes. Yeah. Like how you're talking about writing to market and Michael? I guess so. Yeah. I liked trying new market. I would, I never think about his writing to market though. I just think about it as like telling this story that people want to hear. Yeah. Meeting expectations is not a bad thing. No. When you're in any business and, but writers in particular and if you think that those guys, the golden age guys you're talking about, if you think that they were not writing the market, they were absolutely right in market. Yeah. And they had the magazine system to know if it was working or not. Exactly right. We have to be like, but it'd be like, you know, if you went to an Italian restaurant and they started serving you Mexican food, yeah. You'd be like, what the heck is this?

Speaker 6:                    36:19                I came here for Italian, I came here for fettuccine and you're giving me a taco, you know, stifling my creativity. Yeah. That's like, yes, the cook might want to make whatever he wants, but he can't, he's right Italian restaurant. Yes. To make it, tell him he has to open another restaurant and then pin them back to food is how the world works. If you know what, if you want me to understand anything, you need to explain it to me in terms of food. If you want me to understand the, uh, the, uh, value of a reader, how many chicken wings can I buy with each reader? That's what I need to know.

Speaker 6:                    36:58                Like that chicken wing, uh, philosophy of, of income and [inaudible] is a whole KFC family size. I'll see. I haven't had lunch, man. Now I gotta wrap this up and I got a head for a KFC now. Uh, so we're, we're at time, which is actually really unfortunate because, um, I've all, I always enjoy talking to you and I feel like, uh, when we're at conferences we kind of get pulled in different directions. Uh, but we always somehow end up with that moment where we get to sit around with a couple of drinks and, and uh, we do, yeah. Each other. So that's good. Are you a, you're going to be an indie book Fest this year? Yeah, I'll be at, I'm going to Indy book fast. I'm going to a space coast, which is a month before any book fast. Okay. Um, and that's actually all the Cape Canaveral, so I was me.

Speaker 6:                    37:46                Pretty cool. Yeah. Hotel is like, like you can see the launchpads for the hotel thing. Are we having to it? Dan and I need to talk. Um, we've been kinda shuffling conference duties a little. I think I'm going to be at both indeed book Fest and make again, I'll be Nick this year. I'm finally going. Oh good. You're going to, that's a very different conference. Diane Capri has been trying to get me to go there for some time and yeah. And uh, I finally decided that my argument against being member of Nick was like all the benefits I felt that I got from [inaudible], but I have decided this, if it doesn't give me any benefits, so yeah man. Alright. No I don't, I'm not going to trash [inaudible] but I gotta say that I was kinda disappointed, but uh, you know, whatever that simple does offer some great advantages to its, uh, to its members. Yeah. I think there's

Mal Cooper:                  38:36                a lot, there's a lot, a lot of people can get a lot of things out of it. There just wasn't a lot for me to get out of it.

Kevin Tumlinson:          38:39                So yeah, that's the way I felt too. A and M I am a single member and I, um, you know, maybe I need to go and look closer. Maybe there's some stuff on this and I don't know. I don't know. Is, you know, makes a pretty big conference and it's, it's, it's everyone who shows up there is, they're not trying to get into publishing. They are successfully publishing.

Mal Cooper:                  39:03                I feel a lot of times, and I don't mind doing this cause I mean I'm, I'm, I'm speaking at a lot of conferences this year. Um, I like giving back and trying to help people and get a leg up, but I feel like I need to go somewhere where I can

Kevin Tumlinson:          39:14                that sponge and exactly. Yeah. Cause that's what, you know, I hit like 10 or 12 of these things a year and a, they're almost always about me helping the authors. This, this one is one that even though I am there as a, I'm typically there as a vendor. Yeah. I get, I get more out of that conference and the San Francisco, San Francisco writer's conference the same way. Okay. I feel like that's a good one too. So if you're looking for another one to add, it's, it skews very traditional and it does have, it's sort of entry level folks looking for agents and that sort of thing. The uh, the tracks there were really had been really good.

Mal Cooper:                  39:50                I'm doing, I'm the new England, a speculative fiction writers conference in April as well. Okay. That's Portland, Maine. And then I'm also doing one called inkers con. I'm in Dallas at the beginning of may in Dallas. I should try to go to that. It's, I forget, I forget who runs it now. It's actually a fairly big group of romance authors that run it. And they actually invited me to, uh, to come and talk about ads and stuff. Oh, excellent. All cause we get like completely out of my, I'd be like, probably like, I'll be like the only science fiction author in the entire place

Kevin Tumlinson:          40:21                maybe. But there's, it's getting to where there's not as much of a distinction anymore, you know, cause there's romance writers or they're starting to own other genres. They are actually,

Mal Cooper:                  40:33                I'm actually working on a science OSI Phi romance book right now. So I'm in training, I'm trying to go the other way.

Kevin Tumlinson:          40:38                I, uh, just recently, I'm not gonna reveal who it was. I just recently interviewed a romance thriller writer and, uh, I'm like, if you guys take over these yannaras like none of the rest of us gonna have any hope.

Mal Cooper:                  40:53                Well, I feel like, I feel like science fiction is one that's hard to like, at least the hard military science fiction is a lot harder to break into because you have to know all of the actual real world rules behind these things. Yeah, yeah. Do you want to write military science fiction and you start having, um, you started having Marines call the, the uh, the staff Sergeant staff, you're going to run into a problem, you know? Yes. We staff Sergeant, if it's army, he can be staff, but if they're Marines, he gassed to be staff Sergeant. You know, there's like all these little, little tiny rules that are everywhere.

Kevin Tumlinson:          41:20                Yeah. These are things that you really, you need to know this stuff.

Mal Cooper:                  41:25                Yup. I'd be the type of science fiction I write. If you don't know the maximum effective length, a range of a laser beam in space have problems cause it's

Speaker 6:                    41:34                not infinite. The beam Cove of the beam will break apart and you lose beam cohesion. So at a certain range it doesn't damage anymore. Yeah. I mean, thrillers have the, we have that. I mean, people, people get on me. If I get a fact of history wrong. That's true. Yep. I put the wrong type of grass in central America near the, uh, the sight of, of uh, the tomb that I explored in my intent, uh, that, that type of grass grows much further South. I know this now. There you go. Yeah, you're right. There is stuff like that everywhere. I knew for like certain genres and maybe not, and actually I've talked to some science, some thriller authors and they're like, I had to like learn how quickly a body decomposes under these specific conditions and stuff like that. This is, that's the stuff that makes this fun for me.

Speaker 6:                    42:18                Like learning this stuff is part is probably half the reason I started writing in the first place. So when I was talking, when I was doing software, I think this is the same sort of ideas like we always talked about, like in software, there's really no way to stop someone else from copying you. In this day and age, you can't, you can't patent software very well. If you were to patent software by a time it's patented, it's obsolete. Right? So, so you, you always have to worry that someone else who's gonna eat your lunch. And when I would always argue is that the only thing you can do to stay ahead is, is quality. You can't, you can build a new product overnight, but you can't build a quality product overnight. And I feel like that's the same thing with writing too is that is that you can, anybody can write a story like anyone write a quality story and that maybe isn't just the pros.

Speaker 6:                    42:57                That's you know, your research and how you understand how well you understand storytelling in the world and everything like that too. So that's, that's what my main focus is, is to tell, tell a story that's, that's uh, has good pros, really good science and is internally consistent. Um, cause that's the thing that drives me nuts about science fiction was not internally consistent. Yeah. One time it took four days to get there. The next time it took two days to get there. It's like to me too. I thought just for our call, I remembered that I'd written something into today's scenes that contradicts something I'd re written the day before. And uh, so now it's going to bug me until I sit back down this afternoon. Get back to it. Yeah. Don't forget. Well, it's a, it's a literal night and day thing. Like I have, I carry two characters interacting remotely in two different scenes.

Speaker 6:                    43:48                One of them is the middle of the night and the other one is the middle of the day. So that's a problem in the world. They're not on the other side of the world. They're only in two different time zones in the U S Oh yeah. Then you got a problem. It was a dumb mistake. Yeah. Let's see. I'm catching it now. I re I recognized it now. That's the point. That is as far better than yours, by the way. Hey, dumb ass. Yep. When is noon in Boston? I'm in Sanford. Right? All right. Hey man, uh, I'm really enjoyed talking to you. Um, we'll, we will talk again, uh, IRL as, as the kids say, yeah, we've already determined that you and I are old old timers, uh, most of the day and that, sorry thing. So where can people find you and your mini series? Uh, the main place is a on fourteen.com. It's a E O N fourteen.com.

Speaker 6:                    44:49                Um, and also if you just go on Facebook and you just search for a on 14 fans, you'll find the fan group, which is where a lot of the fans hang out. And we talked story and science and science fiction there. The fans actually, my group, they post way more than I do. They probably post like five to 10 times a day. Yeah. It's a really active group talking about a lot of fun stuff all the time. I really need to cultivate that. Uh, but a lot of my fans are, you know, all timers. Right. Mine are too. I would say the armor my fans is about 50 to 60 years old. Yeah, that's about right. Yeah. That's funny. That's funny. I honestly just think it's because they have more time on their hands. Well that could be, I think I'm, I think I'm going to start encouraging that cause I don't really push that.

Speaker 6:                    45:27                But I think it would be fun to have. I just didn't want to manage it. Once you get going, it takes, I mean, ideally it takes on a life of its own, which is what mine is. I don't, I've only, I think I only have ever had to remove three posts. I've never had to kick anyone out of the groups. So it's like, it runs pretty well. All right. All right. Oh, I will, I will take a look at that. I'll get a little closer to that. I think it'd be great. All right. Uh, so everybody else, uh, thank you for sticking around. I hope you enjoyed this interview and, uh, we're sure to have some stuff going on after this, so stick around for that. Right now.

Kevin Tumlinson:          45:59                You're probably hearing the groovy thing is that you may dance in place at will and we'll see ya. Others.

Kevin Tumlinson:          46:10                Well, I hope you enjoyed that interview with mal Cooper. And, uh, I hope you got something useful, uh, to help in your Facebook ad campaigns and, uh, you know, the way you're marketing your books, you know, marketing our work is the, it's the number one question. Um, whenever I do webinars and ask me anythings and you know, uh, when I talk at conferences, that's, that's the thing on everybody's mind. How do I market the work? Meaning, how can I find readers to buy this stuff? You know, you put your heart and soul into these books. Um, and it's challenging to find a way to get readers to discover it. Uh, I have a lot of theories on ways that, uh, can enhance that and make it a little easier. But nobody so far, uh, no one in my circles at least has come up with any kind of magic formula that makes it happen just on demand every time.

Kevin Tumlinson:          47:02                Uh, but there's a lot of really cool and interesting things going on with, uh, ad platforms right now. Facebook is one. Um, Amazon's a Amazon marketing services or whatever they're calling it now. It's still referred to I think is AMS. Um, that is another way, uh, that you can reach readers directly on the Amazon platform. Something that I've been playing around with a lot lately is BookBub ads. Um, you know, I've been, I talked with David Gakuin and, uh, earnest DMC Walton link and they really convinced me to dive in. I, and some of you may know, I actually have avoided, I think I even mentioned this in an interview. I have avoided advertising for quite some time. Uh, mostly just trying to figure out the organic side of how to promote my business. How do I get readers to just naturally discover the work that's always been very important to me.

Kevin Tumlinson:          47:55                Uh, cause I want to be able to answer that question for people who have no advertising budgets. You know, if you don't have money, you can't pay for ads. So, um, I wanted to be able to talk to people in that level. I think I've, you know, found some tricks, uh, to do that mostly in the form of content marketing. Um, building up your mailing list is, is paramount. Uh, you know, these are things you've probably heard, you've heard this stuff before. Um, so I'm not, I'm not, I'm not going to go into too much detail about it just yet, but, uh, I have talked about in past episodes, I'll talk about it in future episodes. Um, but the BookBub ads platform is a pretty incredible, it's for, it's a fairly simple and straightforward way to do advertising, uh, but it's robust in its reach, which is really interesting because you're advertising to folks who are, uh, subscribers to the service.

Kevin Tumlinson:          48:48                They get the newsletters, it's on their site, it's in the, uh, newsletters. Um, and there are all kinds of tricks for, uh, you know, getting yourself in front of these folks. So looking very closely at that as I learn, you will learn. I'll tell you everything that I discover as I go. Uh, so just give me some time and, and I, I know there's always some inpatients, um, but I do recommend reading David Cochrane's, um, uh, BookBub ads, uh, book. Uh, what is the title? The exact title here. I'm looking at my, I'm looking at my phone now so that I can give you an exact title. Uh, it is BookBub ads expert by David Gutterman and uh, yeah, definitely check that out. Um, I'm learning a lot from that. You can also learn a lot from his blog. Uh, his is not the only approach. Ernest Dempsey's approaches is a very different, um, and, and Dempsey doesn't have anything official out yet.

Kevin Tumlinson:          49:43                Maybe I should bring him on the show and talk to them about BookBub ads. What do you think of that? It'd be fun to have Ernie back on the show. So, uh, I'm going to do that. I'm, I'm not, I'm going to reach out to him right after this. So beyond that, um, I am, if you are attending conferences, I am going to be at 20 books, Vegas, um, in November. So I think that's November 11th, I think at a Sam's town, a casino in Vegas, a great conference. I'm going to be talking about bootstrapping your author career, which you've heard me talk about on this show in the past. In fact, that's why I'm talking about it. Um, after I did that episode, uh, Michael Andrew, he approached me about, uh, talking about that very topic at 20 books. So very much looking forward to, um, to that experience.

Kevin Tumlinson:          50:36                Um, and to, uh, you know, sharing what I, my insights. I owed them a presentation, which is sitting on my desktop right now. Um, you want, what can I say? I, I do like a hundred presentations a year now. Uh, sometimes I like to relax a little. Uh, but anyway, we're gonna, I'm gonna get that finished up probably today. Get it to them. Um, if you're gonna be at that conference, definitely come in and check out the panel. I will also, uh, be, well, I think that's pretty much my last conference for the year. I think. Um, I'll still be traveling. Some, got some interesting stuff coming up and I've talked to you guys about, uh, us getting on the road full time. Uh, do lots of interesting things happening in preparation for that, so that we'll all be a future episode, uh, or two or three or several, who knows.

Kevin Tumlinson:          51:28                Uh, but anyway, thank you so much for tuning in. I hope, um, I hope you get something amazing out of this episode. Uh, I hope I'm inspiring, informing, educating, and entertaining you. Uh, those are my four pillars, uh, the four mission pillars of, uh, of my business here. I hope you're getting a, that kind of blessing out of the show. I know, I, uh, I know there's been a gap. Uh, there will be gaps in this time of year, especially in conferences in holidays. Uh, but I'm gonna try to pop in as often as I can and I'm gonna try to get that 200 200th episode in before the end of the year for sure. So I'm looking forward to that. Uh, so stick around. Stay tuned, swing back by. God bless you. I hope you have a wonderful weekend and have a wonderful week ahead and I'll see all of you next time.