When you're moving elements into place, you can select the element and use the keyboard arrow keys to nudge it a pixel at a time.
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
That is SUCH a great tip, thank you - pinning for everyone else.
@foghamar
2 ай бұрын
I prefer the yellow
@jentelger8022
2 ай бұрын
If you're eyeballing placement, you can go into File --> Settings --> Show Rulers and Guides, and then select how many equally-spaced guides you'd like on the page as well as a ruler on the side that will allow you to place things on the same horizon lines. It cleans things up nicely!
@tannislaidlaw6096
2 ай бұрын
Yellow, for sure!
@elizabethbellauthor
2 ай бұрын
I like the yellow for Cry from the Grave!
@jimmelvin5717
2 ай бұрын
Hi David. This is Jim Melvin, author of Do You Believe in Monsters?. I just watched your video. Thank you so much for featuring my book! I thought the ad looked great! Personally, I would go with the red over the purple. 😀 Thanks again for all that you do for fellow authors.
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Glad you liked it and thanks for submitting your book! I suspect the red would get more clicks too, but I'd also probably test an alternative and let readers decide. I found a slightly better purple just after I stopped recording so I'll send that to you as well.
@jimmelvin5717
2 ай бұрын
@@DavidGaughran Thanks!!!
@heatherwebber537
2 ай бұрын
I agree... the purple didn't work for me.
@karenbbooth
2 ай бұрын
"Like an ad for a Norwegian dentist..." 😆
@elyssadolinger7237
2 ай бұрын
As a graphic designer this was infinitely interesting to watch. I liked the yellow in the first and would have found a bluer-toned neon red for the monster book. The pinky purple hurt me a bit, but I'm willing to concede color harmony for eye-catching-ness. Thanks for sharing what you know to the community.
@harrydale514
2 ай бұрын
Thanks for this David, great vid - looking forward to an episode on non-fiction covers.
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Coming soon!
@DariellePettem
2 ай бұрын
I prefer the red to the purple because I feel the purple clashes - but perhaps that is what you need to do to make it pop in an ad.
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Yeah this is my eternal, internal tug of war. Complement the color, or be a little more garish and get attention. Luckily I don't have to decide, per se, I can put both into the campaign and let readers pick which works best. God bless technology and/or laziness.
@jessicatvordi
2 ай бұрын
Looking forward to seeing what you say about those tricky covers-I've got one and have struggled to figure out how best to work with it! Thanks for the font tips!
@pbweill
Ай бұрын
Cheers David! Wishing you the very best.
@nathanhartle5515
2 ай бұрын
Hi! When one of the ads you've made here runs its course, would you make a new ad that also uses the book's cover as a background image? Or would you move on to other background images? Since many people run multiple ads for their books over time, it seems like they would run out of possibilities for using the book's cover as background image. Hope this question makes sense. Thanks for making these videos!
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Once you have nailed the design, it's super easy to make a bunch of alternates with different colors on the price button/info bar etc. However, the more fundamental problem is audience fatigure, which a refresh of the ad image will only partially help with - it will just buy you a little more time rather than solving that issue. What you really need to do is find new targets, or just let that audience rest for a while; it's saturated.
@nathanhartle5515
2 ай бұрын
@@DavidGaughran Thank you!
@allysonjeleyne8235
2 ай бұрын
This was great! Thanks for doing this!
@RasanaAtreya
2 ай бұрын
I ended up buying Carolyn Mahoney's book 😄
@jeevanicharika
2 ай бұрын
On very dark backgrounds, is it worth doing the glow in white or grey to make the book cover stand out more?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
IMO, it depends. In some genres like PNR, there might be nothing unusual about a glow around a book, or fantasy perhaps, in less fantastical genres it might just look weird. I'm not a fan anyway. I think there are better ways to solve that problem - usually by lightening the background somehow.
@snowflake1125
2 ай бұрын
Thank you so much!
@breemlew
2 ай бұрын
Really appreciating this series!
@reneewittman3294
2 ай бұрын
@DavidGaughran - Romance books sometimes have a steamy cover for the ebook and a symbol or item milder cover for the print edition so you can read it on the bus without being embarrassed or questioned.
@amynordhuesauthor
2 ай бұрын
Thank you for showing me how to make a great ad! I have a question. How should I structure the campaign to test various images against each other? I tried Creative Advantage but it seemed to favor one image.
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
I don't like Creative Advantage personally, or Facebook's own A/B testing, partly for that reason - it picks a winner too soon. As an old school digital marketer, I like to give something 1000 impressions before making a call and FB's system seems much more comfortable calling it way earlier than that. For a proper test, make sure you have separate campaigns (or separate ad sets with Campaign Budget Optimization switched off), and then simply run the ads manually and compare the results yourself. That's the kind of testing I do when first working with a book/series/author. Once initial testing is done and I have some grasp of what the target audience responds to, I'm happy just dumping both ad alternates in the same ad and letting the system decide which is better (or letting readers decide, if you prefer). It still makes the calls a little quickly, but will revist them over time, and even start showing the alternate ad when the first one starts to tire.
@pearlwands
2 ай бұрын
Where do you get that original artwork for the book? Just wondering. If I hire someone to do the cover, is it important to ask for the original background art?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Your cover designer should be able to easily provide the background art without lettering. In the cases where that's not possible, you might have been given a PSD file (Photoshop file) - in which case you can either open it in Photoshop and remove the lettering yourself, or use a free online tool to "crack" the cover and pull out the cover art layer. And if none of that is possible, and you can't just zoom in on the section of your cover design without text, then tune in next week when we'll be covering using alternatives for your background, such as stock photos, or something you make yourself in Canva.
@StephenBentley2834
20 күн бұрын
Havinfg watched both episodes, how do I get the cover art from my Amazon book covers? If I missed that, sorry, but I haven't seen instrurtions as to how to do that.
@becketurner
2 ай бұрын
I'm not a fan of the font for the number 9. It's hard for me to read. I prefer the yellow color. The 9's on the romcom are much easier to read.
@arbrador
2 ай бұрын
I'm learning so much about Canva and ad design! Question: Are we supposed to use the Facebook Ad or Facebook App Ad template in Canva?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
I think I mentioned this at the start of Episode 1, but I actually recommend choosing the Instagram post template, as that is the correct 1080 x 1080 pixel size. The Facebook Ad template is that letterbox format I mentioned in the other video - i.e. 1200 x 628 - which was popular a few years ago. The square ads perform better these days, due to their increased real estate on mobile.
@arbrador
2 ай бұрын
@@DavidGaughran Ah yes I remember that now!! I should have checked back to ep 1. I just did "magic resize" to IG square and my ad looks great following your instructions. Thanks David!!
@ElleEKay-dc1nc
2 ай бұрын
When the designer doesn't offer bold, try adding a thin outline to the text in the same color... it has a similar effect.
@EmilyMA13
2 ай бұрын
What would you put in the text box for a new book that doesn't have any reviews yet? A tagline or something similar?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
Tagline, yes. Spending time crafting a good tagline pays off in many ways. I also like using it in the ad text on Facebook. And the blurb on Amazon.
@seanhall6023
2 ай бұрын
How would you approach a newer genre like Litrpg? I have a book series but my ads don't seem to hit the mark
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
The tricky thing about Litrpg, and similar niches, is that it doesn't have a dedicated chart on Amazon (or didn't, last time I looked), so it's harder to use the charts as a guide - which is usually my first step, as that's a pretty objective way of seeing what designs readers in that niche are currently responding to. So you have to know the genre (and I don't know it so well), and you have to spend a little more time researching things like your covers, and then the ads that you make featuring those books too.
@seanhall6023
2 ай бұрын
@@DavidGaughran if you do another episode would you be willing to take a crack at it?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
@@seanhall6023I'll be doing lots more episodes so submit your cover and we will see!
@judithhudson1673
2 ай бұрын
Do you ever blur the background?
@dorothyshorne8323
2 ай бұрын
If a book isn't discounted, ($4.99 US for Mystery), would you put the price on the ad?
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
The very best thing to do is to test these things yourself and follow your own data, but here's what my data has shown across multiple genres. If you include the price, the CPC goes up and the CTR goes down BUT the conversion rate improves considerably. If you don't include the price, the CPC goes down and the CTR goes up BUT it really hurts the conversion rate. This effect is more pronounced the higher the price of the book, but is still surprisingly strong even if the price in question is only 99c. What I conclude from that personally is that if you don't include the price, people will assume it's free - or will otherwise pause when the get to your Amazon page, which is death to conversion with all the distractions there. If your book is free, cheap, or discounted, I think you should always include the price - that's a hook - and with the increased conversion rate I find it much more profitable. If your book is more expensive, and you include the price in the ad, then you are going to see far lower clickthrough rates, much higher click costs BUT it can still sometimes be more profitable. I recommend testing both ways at higher prices, but paying careful attention to conversion. Really, though, I prefer either reframing the ad if the book is $4.99 as "New" if it's a new release, and leaning on that instead of the price. And even more fundamentally, I prefer focusing my ad dollars on either (a) main series entry points which are cheap or free or (b) concentrating my spend around the times I run a sale or launch a book (when something will be typically discounted anyway). My overall strategy is to use cheap and free to attract new readers - my lever to grow audience - and then sell full price books via my list over time. I talk about it in this video: kzitem.info/news/bejne/y6qZl3p5pJt9npg
@blairdenholm4167
2 ай бұрын
Do you ever advocate 3d covers in ads? All the examples I've seen you give are 2d covers. Cheers!
@DavidGaughran
2 ай бұрын
I used to use 3D covers all the time - especially because they provide an easy solution to not getting the book lost in the background. But there are drawbacks. Will definitely cover this, in the next episode or the one after. Some 3d book generators look way more pro than others but I prefer the more flat approach these days and get better results with it most of the time - unless you are talking about something like a box set. But yeah, we'll definitely do a few 3D book covers, Kindle covers, and run through how to maket them look more pro. It can be a useful approach when you can't follow this method of using the cover art as background - something I also plan to cover next week.
@blairdenholm4167
2 ай бұрын
Awesome, thank you for that.
@PanarchyInTheUK
2 ай бұрын
I think the yellow price and tagline is much more attention-grabbing.
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