June 20th, 2026   •   4 minute read   •   Issue #159

Most marketing advice for authors assumes you want to become a marketer.

You don't.

You want to be an author who makes a genuine living from your books. There is a difference, and most of the noise online ignores that difference.

I built my whole approach around that difference. I call it Strategic Laziness, and it is the most important idea in my business.

Despite the name, Strategic Laziness is not laziness. It is the refusal to do work that does not compound. It is choosing maximum impact for the minimum ongoing effort, because every hour you spend marketing is an hour you are not writing the next book.

From the outside, strategic laziness can look like you are barely doing anything. A couple of hours of work a week. No hustle posts. No grinding.

But the effort is absolutely there. You have just pointed it at a handful of things that pay you back forever, instead of dozens that don't.

The opposite of Strategic Laziness is not hard work. It is busy work.

The author who is on every platform, in every Facebook group, trying every new tactic, posting on TikTok, fiddling with their Amazon Ads at 11pm, and rewriting their blurb for the fourth time this week.

They are working very hard. They also tend to end up broke, at one of the two ends of the spectrum.

Some are financially broke. All that scattered effort never compounds into income, and the bank account never moves.

Others are time-broke. They are hitting decent revenue numbers, but they are working until midnight every night, willing their royalty dashboard upward, with no time left for the people they love, the hobbies they used to have, or the writing they got into this for in the first place. The money is there. The life isn't.

Both versions are the same problem. The work is not directed at things that compound.

Here is what I have learned, from teaching this and from running my own business the same way.

Do one thing at a time, in the right order

The order is foundations, then one ad platform mastered, then scale. Cover, blurb, book page, categories, keywords, pricing, email capture. Boring, unsexy, high leverage. You fix those once and they pay you for years.

Most authors skip the foundations and run ads first. Then they blame the ads. The ads were fine. The book page was the problem. You cannot pour traffic into a leaky bucket and call yourself a marketer.

Build assets, not activity

There is a difference between things that need you to keep showing up for forever, and things that work whether you show up or not.

A TikTok account needs you. So does an Instagram. So does a Facebook author group. Stop posting and the income stops.

An email list does not need you in the same way. A converting book page does not need you. A back matter funnel does not need you. A Facebook ad campaign that is profitable can run for a year with light supervision.

I would rather you spend a weekend setting up something that pays you for two years, than two years chasing tactics that pay you for a weekend.

Master one ad platform before adding the next

Most authors I meet are dabbling in three ad platforms and mastering none. A bit of Amazon, a bit of Facebook, a bit of BookBub. None of them profitable. All of them stressful.

Pick one. Get it working. Then, and only then, add the next.

For roughly 99% of fiction authors, that platform is Facebook. For non-fiction, it is Amazon. Master it. Get it profitable. Then look up.

You are not falling behind by ignoring the other platforms. You are getting ahead of every author who is trying to be everywhere at once.

Here is what Strategic Laziness looks like in practice.

A typical week is not eight hours of marketing. It is closer to two or three hours of real work on the things that actually move the needle in your business: ads, email list, the foundational pieces that still need attention.

The rest of your time is yours.

To write, yes. But also for the people you love. For the hobbies you let slide while you were trying to be a marketer. For the long walks, the books you keep meaning to read, the dinners you actually finish at the table. The life that has nothing to do with staring at a royalty dashboard at midnight, willing the numbers higher.

This is not theory. One author I work with spends under two hours a week on his ads and earns around $3,000 a month in profit from a single series. He is not hustling. He has done the foundational work once, mastered one ad platform, and stopped fiddling.

You will not get there in a weekend. The honest timeline is closer to 12 to 18 months to overtake the authors chasing every new hack. That sounds slow until you remember that those authors are still chasing hacks 12 months from now. You are not.

I have nothing against hard work. I work hard. So does every author I know who has built something that lasts.

But the goal is a writing career, not a marketing career. Strategic Laziness is the only way I know to grow one without sacrificing the other.

Your business is there to serve your life. Not the other way around. Strategic Laziness is the discipline that keeps it that way.

To Your Success
– Matt