Beginner’s Guide to Facebook Marketing for Authors

If you ask most authors about Facebook advertising, they will report a negative experience. Either the interface was too confusing, or the ads didn’t gain any traction, or they got traction but didn’t result in any meaningful increase in sales. Bottom line: most amateur authors will tell you they spent too much time, or money, or both and got a disappointing return from the investment. 

This could tell us that Facebook ads are a mistake independent authors like us should avoid. 

Or…and this is more likely considering the success some authors and publishers experience with Facebook ads…it could tell us that most amateur authors are using Facebook ads wrong. 

This article is an attempt to cure that second possibility. Doing Facebook ads right requires some specific moves in three different phases:

• Before you run the ad
• While running the ad
• After the ad begins to show results

Each of these is a complex and deep enough field to do a whole blog post just on it, but for now we’re going to cover the basics. Later in this series, we’ll talk about intermediate and advanced options to fine-tune your approach. What’s in this report will be enough to get you started with your first set.

But First…

Why Facebook Ads?

With all the advertising options available for authors (Bookbub, Goodreads, Amazon, Google, paid reviews, banner ads, etc), why work with Facebook? We have a handful of very good answers to that question: