Read Time: 3.5 Minutes

Every now and then I send a survey to my audience (thank you if you've responded to any of these; your answers help more than you know).

I've done this a bunch of times over the years. Different questions, different angles. Heard from thousands of authors. And the responses always teach me something.

But there's one question I keep coming back to:

"What's your biggest challenge right now?"

I always expect the usual suspects: Facebook Ads not converting. Amazon Ads eating budgets. Not enough reviews. That kind of thing.

But when I actually sat down and read through the responses properly — not skimming, really reading — I felt like an idiot.

What They Actually Said

The number one answer wasn't about any ad platform.

It wasn't about budgets or algorithms or click-through rates.

Over and over, in different words but the same feeling, authors were telling me the same thing:

"I don't know what to do first."

"There's tons of information out there and I don't understand it."

"I understand the information but I don't know how to use it."

"I know too much about too many things, which spreads my time and effort so thin, nothing matters."

That last one hit hard because I've felt this way multiple times over the past few years.

Read it again:

I know too much about too many things, which spreads my time and effort so thin, nothing matters.

That's not a Facebook Ads problem. That's not an Amazon Ads problem. That's a completely different problem. And I'd been ignoring it.

The Ads Guy Problem

For the past five years, some folks have referred to me as "the ads guy."

And look, I'm proud of that. My courses have helped a lot of people sell a lot of books. And change their writing from a hobby to a fully fledged author business.

But here's what I missed.

I was teaching people how to drive a car before they'd built the engine. Before they'd even picked a destination.

Authors were coming to me wanting to run Facebook Ads, and I'd teach them how to run Facebook Ads.

Job done.

Except it wasn't, because many of them had blurbs that didn't hook anyone, covers that blended into the background, no email list, no reader magnet, and no idea whether their book was even positioned for the right audience.

Then when the ads didn't work, they blamed the platform. Or themselves.

Neither was the real problem.

The Uncomfortable Bit

This was hard to sit with. Because it meant that some of the authors I'd been teaching over the years might have gotten better results if I'd told them to stop. To step back. To sort out their foundations before spending a penny on ads.

But I didn't, because I was the ads guy. That's what I taught. That's what people came to me for.

One response from the survey has stuck with me for a long time now; here's what they wrote:

"There is a ton of information out there and it is easy to go down rabbit holes. Step by step approaches are better. Easy to understand, realistic, and doable marketing plans that don't cost a fortune."

Step by step. Realistic. Doable.

Not "teach me the advanced Facebook Ads retargeting strategy." Not "show me how to scale to $500 a day on Amazon."

Just... tell me what to do. In what order. And make it something I can actually fit into my life.

What Changed?

I stopped thinking about myself as the person who teaches advertising platforms and started thinking about what authors actually need to get from where they are to where they want to be.

And for most authors — especially those not yet earning a consistent income from their books — the answer isn't another ads course.

It's knowing what to focus on right now. This week. Today. And what to ignore until later.

It's getting your cover right before you worry about your click-through rate. Building an email list before you try to scale ad spend. Writing a blurb that actually sells your book before testing fifty different ad images.

Boring? Maybe. But the boring stuff is what makes everything else work (especially the ads).

The Thing Nobody Wants To Hear

Advertising is an amplifier. That's all it is.

If your book is well-positioned, your cover looks the part, your blurb hooks the right readers, and you've got a way to capture those readers for the long term — ads will pour petrol on that fire.

But if any of those things are off? Ads will just burn through your money faster and make you feel worse about the whole thing.

The authors I've seen get the best results aren't the ones who mastered every ad platform. They're the ones who got their foundations right first, then layered advertising on top.

Not as sexy as "I cracked the Facebook algorithm." But a lot more effective.

Your Homework

Before you touch an ad dashboard this week, I want you to do something.

Go to your book's product page on Amazon. Pretend you've never seen it before. Pretend you just stumbled across it while browsing.

Now ask yourself three questions:

Question 1: Does the cover make me want to click? Not "do I like it" — would a stranger scrolling past actually stop?

Question 2: Does the blurb make me want to read the book? Or does it read like a plot summary that could be any book in the genre?

Question 3: If someone bought this book and loved it, is there a way for them to hear from me again? A reader magnet in the back matter? An email signup? Anything?

If the answer to any of those is no, or even "I'm not sure," that's your next project. Not a new ad campaign. Not a new platform. Just fix that one thing.

It's not flashy. But it's the stuff that actually moves the needle.

That's it for this week.

Thank you for reading. See you next Saturday.

To Your Success
– Matt