Royalties, ads, and the life behind your books. Read by over 15,000 authors.
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For a long time, Facebook Ads targeting meant picking a comparable-author interest from a drop-down and calling it done. Vince Flynn readers here, Lee Child there. Twelve interests, three saved audiences, an evening spent researching who Amazon says reads similar books.
That's been a waste of time for a few years now.
Meta has been de-emphasizing interest targeting since 2022. Advantage+ Audiences accelerated the shift.
August 15th, 2026  •  4 minute read  •  Issue #167
There's a number in Facebook Ads Manager that most authors watch obsessively.
Cost per click.
You'll see it posted in Facebook groups and forums. "Down to $0.12!" "Under 10 cents!" "Cracked it!"
And I get it.
It's a clean, simple number that goes up or down, and up feels bad and down feels good, and after a few weeks of running ads it becomes the number you check first when you open Ads Manager.
Here's the problem though. CPC is a vanity metric.
August 8th, 2026  •  4 minute read  •  Issue #166
"How do you analyze your Facebook Ads data, and how do you know when to scale, refresh the creative, or turn an ad off?"
That question landed in my inbox this week. It's a good one, and it comes up constantly for authors running Facebook Ads to sell books on Amazon. The honest answer starts with this:
Facebook cannot tell you if your ads are working.
August 1st, 2026  •  5 minute read  •  Issue #165
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 15,000+ 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 15,000 authors.
One letter a week. No spam, no nonsense. Unsubscribe anytime.
