As part of this short series on the three pillars of book promotion, we’re looking at paid ads. There are three key platforms authors should advertise on, ideally utilising all of them. Today, we’re starting with Facebook.
Facebook ads are about relevance, testing, and long term value. They work at every stage of an author career, but only if they’re used for the right job and within the right system.
They’re powerful for one main reason: targeting.
Like it or not, Facebook knows an extraordinary amount about its users, including what they buy and what they’re interested in. Utilised properly, this means we can place our books in front of readers who already love authors similar to us. That applies whether we’re launching our first book or scaling an established backlist.
This is relevance.
For newer authors, Facebook ads typically work best as an introduction, a simple “hello, this is me” message. Successful ads here tend to send readers to a low friction entry point such as a free first in series, a heavily discounted box set, or a strong standalone with a clear genre hook. Consumers are far less likely to trust a brand (us) or product (our books) that’s new to them, so the goal at this stage is visibility, list building, and momentum rather than immediate profit.
New authors with a limited backlist or only a handful of standalones may lose money on early ad campaigns. In these cases, profits from book sales may well not outweigh ad costs. That doesn’t automatically mean the ads are failing. When used deliberately, ad spend at this stage becomes part of the cost of producing the book, alongside editing, cover design, and formatting etc.
For more established authors who’ve largely overcome this trust barrier, the role of Facebook ads shifts.
They become a way to stay visible to existing fans while still finding new readers, to maintain consistent sales between releases, and to support launches. So, Facebook ads are used to direct and stabilise demand that already exists.
At this stage, ad spend should generally be profitable, when campaigns are structured correctly and aligned with the wider catalogue.
Overall, the process is simple in principle. We buy attention, capture or reengage the reader, and build long term value through an ongoing reader relationship.
In practice, this is where most authors struggle.
Facebook ads require testing, but testing without a framework gets expensive quickly (Facebook loves to spend our budget!). Creative fatigue is real - the feed is full of ads these days, so an image has to capture attention and be fresh.
The dashboard is complex. Meta regularly introduces new AI tools that are never designed with book marketing in mind (books are quite a niche product compared to Meta’s other clients). Audiences that work today might not work in three months, especially as targeting options continue to change or disappear (like eliminating author names, grrr). Copy and images need refreshing. Offers may need adjusting.
Most wasted ad spend comes from running campaigns without a clear structure, without knowing what to test next, and without understanding how the pieces fit together. Scattergun approaches usually just cost us money.
Once we understand the system, Facebook stops feeling unpredictable and becomes repeatable.
During the next post we’ll dive into the second of the three key ad platforms, Amazon, which operates completely differently to Facebook (of course it does!).
In the meantime, if you want to learn more about running Facebook ads for yourself, click here:
See you in a few days!
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