Where To Start: Facebook Ads or Amazon Ads?

Hey,


Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads are the go-to advertising platforms for most authors, and for good reason – they can work like gangbusters!

However, there's a lot of noise out there about which Ad platform is best, which one you should start with, which one is right for your genre, etc.

So, today, I want to break this topic down to its most basic fundamentals.

Why?

I just think that as humans, we have a tendency to overcomplicate things so much so that they become far more complicated than they need to be.

Simple wins for me, every single time.

One caveat here is that advertising of any kind is purely there as a means to drive traffic to your books.

Your book has to sell your book.

No amount of advertising is going to sell a poor-quality book.

I'm going to break down this newsletter into 3 different types of Authors:

– Brand new author, never run any Ads before

– Established author, but has relied mostly on organic sales or marketing other than Ads

– Long-standing author with some experience in Ads, but ready to take things up a notch

Let's begin...

Brand New Author

If you're a brand new author, with 2-3 books to your name, then start with Facebook Ads.

Here's why:

– Can send a LOT of traffic to your books very quickly

– Generally, cheaper to run than Amazon Ads

– Less of a learning curve

– Allows you to get traction within a matter of days

I would recommend having at least 2 books published (or ready to publish) before you start advertising, especially if profit is your goal.

Yes, it's possible to make 1 book profitable, but you'd better have written an AMAZING book and get it into the top of the bestseller charts quickly if profit is your goal.

Otherwise, you're going to break even at best, because you have no other books for readers to buy or borrow once they finish your first book, therefore, you only have the sale of one book to make all your royalties. That's a lot hanging on one book.

Established Author

Let's say you have a few books published already, either a 3+ standalone books, or at least 1 complete/near complete series. However, up until this point you've relied on organic sales and marketing other than advertising, such as newsletter swaps, promo sites, group promos, etc.

If this is you, I would again, start with Facebook Ads, for the same reasons as I outlined for the brand new author:

– Can send a LOT of traffic to your books very quickly

– Generally, cheaper to run than Amazon Ads

– Less of a learning curve

– Allows you to get traction within a matter of days

However, if you have the budget, I would also recommend starting some low-budget Amazon Ads, especially some campaigns that protect your Author Brand on Amazon (i.e. targeting your own pen name, book titles and series titles).

Having established yourself already on Amazon with a few books to your name, you're likely going to have some readers coming to Amazon specifically to look for your books. You can get directly in front of them with brand protection campaigns.

You can read this article here about why I highly recommend running these brand protection campaigns with Amazon Ads.

Long-Standing Author

If this is you, you likely have 5+ books to your name, maybe 2-3+ series, and you've perhaps dabbled with advertising before, but you've never really got your head around it, never had a system to follow and you feel ready to start taking this publishing business of yours seriously.

Once again, Facebook Ads will provide you with some almost immediate traction, generate sales and page reads and start getting much more exposure for your books.

However, with a good number of books under your belt, I would also seriously consider running some Amazon Ads, in particular:

– Brand Protection Campaigns

– Automatic Targeting Campaign

– Category Targeting Campaign

And focus your budget on either your bestselling standalone book or Book 1 of your bestselling series.

Some Final Thoughts

Ultimately, the main difference between Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads is this...

Facebook Ads doesn't take sales history and bestseller rank into account. Amazon Ads does.

So, if your books are ranked over 50,000 in the Kindle/Books Store, then Facebook Ads will allow you to start making an impact on that sales history and bestseller rank within a few days.

Once you're selling at least 2-3 books per day, and have been for at least 3-4 weeks, that's when I'd recommend layering on Amazon Ads, if you have the budget, as Amazon's algorithm will see that you've been consistently selling well for a few weeks and will be more inclined to show your Ads.

If you start running Amazon Ads to a book ranked at 459,954 in the Kindle or Books Store, Amazon is going to throttle the reach of your Ads because it doesn't believe you're going to sell many books as there's just so little evidence of it (sales history).

Amazon would rather show readers Ads that have proven themselves to sell.

And from all the Ads I've seen and worked on, running Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads side-by-side works incredibly well for every author.

So, when you have the time and budget available, I highly, highly recommend running both Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads at the same time.

To Your Success

– Matt