October 10th, 2026   •   4 minute read   •   Issue #175

A few years ago, there was a study done where researchers asked a group of people who worry a great deal to write down their worries every day for ten days.

A few weeks later, they asked them to look back and mark which of those worries had actually come true.

91% hadn't.

I think most of us recognize the shape of it. The things we lie awake over rarely turn out the exact way we feared, and a surprising amount of the time they don't happen at all.

I think about this study a lot, because of a worry I hear from authors almost every week. You probably know the voice:

"Put $100 into ads. Sell nothing. Feel stupid. Never try again."

The Worry Is Fair

I don't want to brush past this, because it's a perfectly legitimate fear.

Some ads don't work.

I've had weeks where I spent around $400 on ads and had very little to show for it.

When I started BookBub Ads, I burned through $694 in my first five weeks, because I was treating it like Facebook Ads and it doesn't behave like Facebook Ads.

So yes, you can spend money on ads and not get it back.

But the worry in your mind pictures that money vanishing into a black hole, gone for good, with nothing to show for it. That isn't what happens though.

You're Buying Answers

Every dollar you spend on ads is an answer to a question.

Does this cover make readers stop scrolling? Does the book page turn interest into sales? Which readers respond, and which don't? Is this book ready for traffic, or does something need fixing first?

Take a romance novelist who spends $5 a day on Facebook Ads for ten days. Lots of people click, but very few buy. On paper, she's "lost" $50.

But look at what she's learned. Her ads are doing their job, because people are clicking. Something on the book page isn't working though, because they aren't buying once they get there. That points her straight at the cover, the blurb, the price or the reviews, and it's cost her $50 to find out rather than $500.

The same goes for a business coach testing Amazon Ads on his first book. Impressions but no clicks tells him to look at the cover and title. Clicks but no sales tells him to look at the book product page.

And that $694 I spent on BookBub Ads? It taught me that the audiences are smaller, that ads tire faster, and that the image matters more than the targeting. Once I'd learned that, the full-price BookBub Ads went on to convert at 7% to 15%. I wouldn't have got there without those five expensive weeks.

What You Expect Is What You'll Find

So why do ads still feel like a black hole to so many of us?

I'm no psychologist, but there's an idea I keep coming back to.

When you buy a new car, you suddenly start seeing the same make and model everywhere. There aren't more of them on the road than there were last week. Your brain has simply started noticing them.

That's because your brain works like a filter.

There's far more going on around us than you could ever take in, so your brain lets most of it pass by and puts forward whatever it thinks matters to you.

And once you believe something, it does the same with the evidence: it notices what agrees with your belief and skims past what doesn't.

If you've heard of the reticular activating system, the RAS, this is what it's usually credited with.

Worry works the same way. If you go into ads believing "this will lose me money", the first day without a sale becomes proof. The clicks, the comments and the readers who did buy all fade into the background.

Go in believing you're buying answers, and you'll look for answers instead. Same spend, same results, very different conclusion.

Make The Worry Smaller

None of this means throwing money at ads and hoping.

What helps, at least for me, is shrinking it down to something you can live with before you spend a penny.

→ Get the foundations right first. A cover that fits the genre, an enticing blurb, a price that readers of your genre expect to pay, and all the other elements of a solid book product page. Most of the money authors lose on ads is lost to a book that wasn't ready for ads.

→ Decide what you're happy to spend to learn. Treat it as the cost of finding out, not a bet you need to win. Advertising is an investment, not an expense.

→ Know the question you're asking. "Will this work?" is too big. "Will readers click on this cover?" is something a small budget can answer.

Done that way, the worst case stops being "I lost my money." It becomes "I spent what I planned to spend, and I found out something I didn't know before I spent it."

Where This Came From For Me

When I started running ads on my wife's books in 2020, I was spending about £10 a day, and every penny of it felt enormous.

I was winging it, and plenty of what I tried didn't work. But each thing that didn't work told me something, and the next test was a little better because of it.

So if ads are something you've been putting off, here's something to try this weekend.

Write down the one question you'd most like answered about your book, and the amount you'd be comfortable spending to find out.

You might be surprised how small both of them are.

That's it for this week.

Thanks for reading. See you next Saturday.

To Your Success
– Matt