Royalties, ads, and the life behind your books. Read by over 17,000 authors.
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Your first $500 on Facebook Ads isn’t buying sales.
It’s buying answers.
I know that’s not what most of us hope for when we set aside an ad budget. We picture the $500 going out and roughly $500 coming back, maybe a little more. Break-even by the end of the month, then we turn the dial up.
It almost never goes that way. And I think that’s where a lot of good books get left behind.
October 31st, 2026  •  4 minute read  •  Issue #178
Most authors running ads can’t say for sure whether they’re working.
It isn’t for want of looking. Checking the ads dashboard, checking the royalties dashboard, multiple times per day. The trouble is that nobody ever told us what “working” was supposed to look like, so every number could be good news or bad news, depending on the day.
Without a finish line, two things tend to happen.
Some authors stop too soon. A week of spend, a handful of sales, and the verdict comes in: “ads don’t work for my books.”
Others push on too fast. The ads are losing money, but surely a bigger budget will sort it out, so the daily spend goes up and the losses grow with it.
Both come from the same gap, and I think the fix is simpler than most of us expect.
October 24th, 2026  •  4 minute read  •  Issue #177
I have some version of this conversation most weeks.
An author shares their ads with me, and they’re spending about $10 a day, which is a perfectly good place to be. Then I look at where it’s going.
A few dollars on Facebook Ads for book one, a few on Amazon Ads for the new release, a little on BookBub Ads for the boxed set, and whatever’s left goes to the book from three years ago that deserves a second chance.
Four books, three platforms, ten dollars.
And I get it, I really do. It feels responsible. Every book gets a bit of help, the risk is spread out, and nothing gets left behind.
But a month later, they’re looking at four sets of numbers, and none of them are big enough to tell them anything.
So the first thing I usually suggest is backing fewer books. Not more. Fewer.
October 17th, 2026  •  5 minute read  •  Issue #176
My journey into the world of self-publishing was far from conventional...
It all started when I began marketing my wife's books back in 2020. Since then, we've sold more than 350,000 copies of her books and generated over $750,000 in royalties.
I continue to run my wife's author business, but I also help other authors get the foundations of their book business right, then use marketing and advertising to position their books in front of their ideal readers, sell more copies and build a thriving and sustainable career as an author.
And I want to help you do the same.
Join 17,000+ authors building a business on their own terms.
One letter a week. 5-minute read. No spam, no nonsense. Unsubscribe anytime.
Royalties, ads, and the life behind your books - without the grind. Read by over 17,000 authors.
One letter a week. No spam, no nonsense. Unsubscribe anytime.
