by Kathryn Lively

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One of the ugly realities of being an author and enjoying success with book sales is that some time must be diverted away from writing an invested in marketing. People who have believed their greatest strengths were found in writing discover they must train themselves to become strong businesspeople as well. If you, like many new authors who debut a book with a small publisher and a very modest budget for promotion, are unable to afford the services of a PR firm, the brunt of marketing your book will fall upon you.

There is good news, however. With search engines placing heavy emphasis on content as they cache information for relevant search results, writers have the advantage of honing their skills toward creating superior websites, newsletters, and weblogs for promoting their works. Establishing relevant content early in the game can increase the opportunity for high search visibility, which in turn drives traffic to your site. Yet, in the competitive world of book sales, you will know that other authors apply these same techniques. A reader using broad terms in a search engine will discover a multitude of possibilities, and you want to be certain you are among them on the first page of Google, Yahoo, and MSN.

In addition to organic SEO practices, some authors might consider investing in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising to boost traffic to their websites or to any point of sale for their books. PPC is an Internet advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks and portals, and search engines for the purpose of allowing websites to advertise for high visibility. Google Adwords is perhaps the best known PPC program. Do any type of search in Google and you will notice special shaded ads on top of the results page and a strip of ads down the right column. Those are Adwords ads. Advertisers also have the option of having their ads appear on other websites that accept Google Adsense banners and advertising blocks.

Every time an Internet user clicks on an ad, the advertiser pays for that click. How much is paid is determined by the amount of money bid on for the keyword used in the initial search in Google. With Google Adsense listings, the fee is usually fixed, starting at twenty-five cents a click.

Let's say you have written a mystery novel about the Lincoln presidency and wish to promote it with a PPC campaign. You want your ad to be found on searches relevant to mystery books, President Lincoln, and the Civil War. When you sign up for Google Adwords (or Yahoo! Search Marketing, or any other PPC program), you have the option to bid on an infinite number of keywords relating to your book. You can set a ceiling monthly budget for your advertising, and develop your bids from there.

In preparing your pay-per-click program, you find that bids to be found on your target search phrases range from five cents to twenty-five cents per click:

• mystery novels - minimum of $.05 per click
• books about lincoln - minimum of $.05 per click
• lincoln books - minimum of $.10 per click
• mysteries - minimum of $.25 per click

Bidding anywhere in that range, or above, for each keyword will allow your ad to be seen in sponsored results every time a user enters lthe above keywords in search. For every time a user clicks on the link to your site, you must pay however much you bid for the phrase, be it two cents or twenty. If, in a day, three people clicked your ad after searching on "lincoln books," you pay thirty cents for the day. One good rule of thumb with PPC advertising is that the more general your term, the more you can expect to bid on it. If you decide to invest in PPC advertising, be judicious in your choice of keyword bids.

Some pay per click progams allow advertisers to set a monthly spending limit. For example, if you want to spend no more than fifty dollars a month for your ad, you can set that limit and bid accordingly. Assuming each keyword bid made is only two cents per click, this allows you a maximum of 2500 clicks for your ad. Once the ad has been clicked through 2500 times in the month, your ad no longer appears in search results until the next month. If your ad is clicked through less than 2500 times that month, you only pay for the click throughs, not the overall impressions.

The key to a successful pay per click campaign lies in knowing which search terms to bid upon, how much to spend, and knowing which search terms are best relevant to your book. If your books is targeted toward a specific audience, like a self-help manual or a very centralized fiction genre, consider using narrow phrases for search, words you would expect your readers to use to find books like yours. If you wish to reach a wider audience, you may consider more generalized terms, though some may require large bids.

Is PPC helpful for the author, though? As a marketing tool, it can be helpful in bringing potential readers to your site, and with regards to spending PPC can be more cost effective than placing banner ads on book websites or spending money on print advertising. Given that sites like Google and Yahoo are among the most visited on the Internet, the opportunity for exposure of your book and brand is increased greatly even if people don't click through to your ads. Just having your ad pop on the first page of search results can imprint your brand in the mind of a reader, who may try to find you later through organic search.

Ultimately, however, the true test of any advertising campaign lies in the end result. Once the reader is through to your site, you have the responsibility to keep them there and entice them into buying the book. Make your site attractive to visitors and make all points of sale evident, before you consider spending money to advertis. One suggestion for authors interested in PPC as opposed to more traditional advertising methods is to do it for one month and compare how much was spent to how much in royalties were made. Naturally, if you make more than you spend, PPC can be a worthwhile investment.

Pay per click programs offer helpful keywords tools to help with bidding, so it is quite user-friendly for the novice. Research the popular sites in your field, know the search algorithms, and bid with care.

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