A $200 book launch budget, line by line

Most self-published authors launch with somewhere between nothing and a few hundred dollars. This is how to spend $200 in an order that compounds, so each line makes the next one work better. The amounts are for a typical genre novel; shift them for non-fiction, where reviews cost more and ads cost less.

$100: ten to twenty verified reviews

Reviews go first because everything after depends on them. Ads sent to a page with no stars burn money; a free promotion run on a page with no reviews gets downloads and no sales afterwards. At $5 per review, $100 buys twenty verified reviews; at $8, twelve. Either number moves a listing from 'nobody has read this' to 'this is a real book', which is the threshold that matters for conversion.

Spend this two weeks before launch so reviews post in launch week, not a month later.

$30: a thumbnail test of your cover

Your cover is seen at 100 pixels wide, next to twenty others. A paid poll on a cover-testing site, or a $30 round of ads with the cover as the only variable, tells you in two days whether it reads at that size. If it does not, fix it before the launch traffic arrives; nothing else on this list survives a cover that does not read.

$50: a first ad test, after reviews are up

Amazon Ads at $5 a day for ten days, automatic targeting, on the launch-week listing with its new reviews. The point is not profit yet; it is data. You find out your click cost and your conversion rate, and whether the book sells at all with cold traffic. Authors who skip the reviews step and go straight to ads learn the same lesson for ten times the price.

$20: a newsletter promotion slot

The small genre newsletters that advertise discounted books for $10 to $25 a slot are the best value in indie marketing once a listing has reviews. Book one for launch week with the book at $0.99. The sales rank bump is temporary; the reviews from readers who bought at $0.99 are not.

$0: things that cost nothing and work

• A back-matter review request with the direct link.
• Your Amazon Author Central page, filled in, with a photo.
• Categories and keywords chosen by looking at what the top books in your niche actually use.
• An A+ content section on the listing. Free, and it lifts conversion noticeably.
• Goodreads: claim your author profile and add the book, so reviewers have somewhere to cross-post.

Things not worth paying for

• Press releases. Nobody in book buying reads them.
• Social media follower boosts. Bought followers do not buy books.
• Any service that promises a star rating. It is the one purchase that can cost you the listing.