It is true that you have to spend money to make money, but how much money do we really have to spend? How much do you have to fork out before you see the upside of advertising? There are numerous media outlets currently used to advertise, but which ones are truly available to us (cost wise) and which ones truly work?

Well, it all depends on your target market. If you are trying to reach a local market then you can take advantage of the current lapse in funding for advertising in local radio, television stations and especially in print. Large companies are scaling back their advertising expenditures, so media outlets are cutting their rates opening up as space to smaller businesses. Has anyone noticed the steady increase in ads for local companies? Radio and television stations are hurting for money, and are cutting their rates to attract new customers and thus making ads more affordable. If you have a local market, take a look at your local media outlets and request a copy of their rates to see if an ad may be worth your time and money.

However, for most authors and publishers your target market consists of a group of people scattered throughout the world. Unless your book is very specific to a group of people, or to a certain region, how do you reach the masses and how can you get the best ROI?

Television advertising can get very costly. You have to work with larger networks to cover a large area of viewers, which can cost a lot of money. One option is to pick out a few markets where your target market seems to be clustered, but still this will cost money that people don’t have to spend right now. Another aspect to consider is that most consumers have blocked out television ads, as we are bombarded with them on a daily basis: meaning that they tune out commercials as they have become used to them. In all, the money may not even be worth it.

Radio advertising can be placed in the same boat as television, although it costs slightly less because you just have to produce a radio skit versus a television ad. But, again, which markets will you target? It may be better to use a PR person to get you coverage on a few stations, as well as satellite radio.

Newspaper ads require you to pay a lot of money for a small space. Even then you have to consider readership of newspapers on certain days of the week, distribution (weekend editions generally have a higher readership and are therefore more costly), and if you want to pay extra for color ads. In 2007, it cost over $40,000 for a full-page ad in the NY Times Book Review section and an extra $8,000 for a color ad. That cost doesn’t even take placement charges into account: you can have your ad page facing the bestsellers list for close to $1,000. That’s close to $50,000 for an ad that most people will glance at. It is widely known that people have shifted their reading habits to online publications, so advertising on a newspaper’s website may be a more viable option instead. Along the same lines, you can also find ads newsletters that have thousands of subscribers for little-to-no cost (including this one). Some newsletters need content, and will put pieces about new books for free.

Online ads are generally inexpensive. You can design targeted ads that reach groups of people easily. The nice thing about advertising online is that anyone can do it, and it fit any budget: $10 a day to $1,000. You can pay a fixed upfront price for an ad, or you pay per how many people view your ad, or you can pay for how many people click on your ad. Also, you can easily measure your results with impression and click-thru statistics. Advertising online is a simple and economical approach to reach your target market. Find websites that are genre specific, or that sell books, and look into their pricing structures.

As large publishers focus on their bottom lines, they have already started to streamline their business. We see this with continuing layoffs, cutting the so-called “fluff” out of day-to-day operations. What this means for you is that you will have one person with more of a workload, which equals less time to spend focused on your book. This coming year is a time to take marketing efforts into your own hands.