How effective are Facebook ads for books?

Writers often write for both the love of writing and the love of sharing story. There are dedicated pockets of people that would love to see and hear from you during your process. There are options for reaching more people on various social platforms. There’s one place that seems to be a hub of social content, Facebook.

In this post we’ll dive into Facebook Ads for Authors and why it could be a great opportunity to build your author platform.

Many authors I initially followed on social for their insightful content and became a fan of their work as a byproduct.

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Whether you write fiction or nonfiction, story is the core of writing. Fiction creates plots and characters, nonfiction tells stories about real people.

But either way, story is at the core of writing. 

Writing your story is a huge accomplishment in and of itself. Writing a book takes hours of time, commitment, and a strong work ethic. 

Writing a book is also a huge step in the process of being a writer. Obvious, right? If you want to be a writer, well, you need to write books! 

But if you want to be a writer who brings in readers, it’s essential to get eyes on your book. Drawing in loyal readers is an entirely other aspects of writing. Your target audience is the perfect fit for your work. Others are versatile and will write to market in order to get in front of readers.

But stories are meant to be shared. That’s half the fun of writing. And while you could spend hours going from bookstore to bookstore, asking them to carry your book, there are simple options that reach much, much further and do so much, much faster.

So, if you’ve written a book and are wondering how to get more eyes on it, Facebook ads may be the option for you. It’s true, you should invest in yourself, this is one way to do so in your author career.

The more people who hear about your book, the more potential readers you will have. The more potential readers you have, the better chance you have of converting those potentials into actual readers, and even fans who come back for more. 

So, let’s talk about how to get your book in front of more people. 

Why make Facebook ads for your book?

Word of mouth is one of the best ways to hit book sales. The more people who read your book and love it, leave reviews, talk to their friends about it, etc., the more news of your book spreads, the more new readers you bring in. 

However, getting those initial readers is an important step of creating those word of mouth conversations.

Most authors have experienced low book sales, there is a entire framework for fixing it once it happens, but realize that having an ads budget will help you avoid that phase potentially.

The more information you have about your book, the larger your chances of reaching more readers.

If you write your book and publish it on Amazon with no thought for marketing, while it’s possible you may land on a bestseller list, it’s not as likely as if you were marketing it. 

One way to get your book in front of a lot of eyes and potential buyers is with

Let’s talk about marketing through ads. 

Do Facebook Ads Work For Books?

Ads that are created in a tasteful way with a viewer-first mindset are likely to help you land more sales for your book. 

When you pay for an ad, you broaden your potential to reach a larger audience. You can even target a demographic based on age, interests, location, etc. Overall, ads allow you to broaden your potential of reaching your target audience, if you know who that audience is. 

Before creating your Facebook ad, consider your ideal reader so you can better target them with these questions:

• How old are they?
• What are their hobbies?
• Where do they spend time online? 
• What apps do they use?
• What topics are they interested in? 

When you create an ad, you can target specific demographics. If you are an entrepreneur who has successfully started and launched a business and just published a book on how to succeed in a start-up in your 20s, targeting retired-age readers is not as likely to work for you.

Of course, maybe these retirees have grandchildren who are entrepreneurs and they purchase your book for their grandkids…but ideally, you want to target your readers if you want your ad to work for your book. 

How Much Does It Cost To Advertise A Book On Facebook?

The cost of ads on Facebook really depends on how much you want to invest. If you’re new to using ads, you may want to consider starting small, investing ten dollars in ads, letting it run for a while, and tracking your success.

If this goes well and you start making sales, you may want to invest more. Don’t forget to track your progress and see what works and what doesn’t. Early on, you may experience quite a bit of trial and error. This is to be expected. Simply make small changes as you go, and don’t be afraid to try new things. 

The cost of Facebook ads can be defined by the overall amount spent as well as the cost of each result (such as a pay-per-click). 

Facebook for Business says that you have control over what’s spent through the budget you decide on. 

“You control your cost per result through your bid strategy. In addition, we offer other ways to ensure you spend no more than you want to:

• Campaign spending limit. Set a maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a given advertising campaign.
• Account spending limit. Set a maximum amount you’re willing to spend across all the campaigns you’re running.”

You can also choose different strategies: Lowest cost strategy and or Highest value strategy. 

Before deciding how much you want to spend, look into both strategies, determine which one will most likely get you the greatest return on your investment, and then make your ad purchases. 

Facebook Ad Ideas For Your Book

Now that you know more about ads and which ones you should look into, it’s time to consider different marketing ideas for your specific book. 

Ads broaden your audience, but if they don’t connect with your audience enough that they take action, your returns will be low and other than raising awareness, your investment will not garner the returns it could have. 

When considering what types of ad to create, go through this list and some ideas to get you started: 

• What is your elevator pitch? 
• What about your book is unique to books that are similar to it?
• How does your book take a new angle on the topic or story? 
• How is your protagonist unique (fiction)?
• How is your story unique (nonfiction)?
• If you saw this ad, would you click it? 

Next, consider the format of your ad:

• Do you want to use a single image?
• Would a video work better?
• Do you want a multi-image format? 

Tip: When creating your ad, keep your target audience’s communication style at the forefront of your mind. Does your audience prefer photo or video? Formal or informal language/speech? What time of day are they most likely to see your ad and respond to it? 

Bonus: Ads For Book Launch Teams

If you have not yet released your book, and you still have several weeks until your release date, you may want to consider creating Facebook ads for a book launch team. 

A book launch team is a group of people, usually created in an online, private Facebook group, who help you promote your book by sharing graphics, other promotional material, and writing reviews. 

A great way to target team members is by creating Facebook ads for your launch team.

Simply create an ad, target the type of person you want to help launch your book (fellow writers, entrepreneurs, etc.) and create a short application for them to fill out and submit. 

A launch team will help you reach countless more people, without having to pay a cent more than you spend on creating your launch team. 

Spending X amount of money on ads that bring in a team with large followings can broaden your reach and enable you to build your audience. 

In Conclusion…

The actual process of writing a book takes little to zero monetary investment. You simply sit down and either write or type. 

Writing a book takes time investment, that’s for sure, but taking a big financial risk to write your book is not usually necessary. 

However, if you spent the last several weeks or months pouring yourself into the process of creating a book, blank page to finished product, it’s worth it to share your work with readers. 

Facebook ads take little investment to test and learn from and can broaden your audience by hundreds and thousands. 

Tip: As you work on your first Facebook ad, make sure your author Facebook page is up-to-date and you’ve posted fresh content. This way if someone sees your ad and looks you up, you look like the hard-working writer you are, and not like someone who has little to no social media presence. 

Writers often write for both the love of writing and the love of sharing story. Story is at the core of writing. But stories are meant to be shared. 

It’s time to broaden your audience. It’s time to let the world know your book exists. You can reach people across states, countries, and oceans with Facebook ads. 

You can draw in readers who never would have heard about your book if you didn’t take a small risk and invest in an ad. 

You wrote your story, and it’s meant to be shared. 

It’s time to get those readers.

It’s time to take your book from written, to published, to shared. 

Want to learn more?

Check out this free video training on how to sell more books!

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