Books for Authors: Mastering Amazon Ads, An Author's Guide by Brian D. Meeks

I've been failing as an author.

Okay, my husband would say I'm being melodramatic, and he's right. At the time of this writing, my biopunk novel, Adaline, has been downloaded 8,500 times in just over 20 weeks. That's not failing.

BUT, I have been struggling with my advertising spend. In late 2018, I figured out how to buy space on people's mailing lists and websites, which is how I got most of those 8,500 downloads. But I've had the worst luck in creating profitable ads on Amazon and Facebook.

After working my butt off to do so/so with Facebook ads, (and seeking help from the book Help! My Facebook Ads Suck by Michael Cooper), I decided to tackle AMS ad services. For months, I was running a couple of ads here, a couple of ads there, and not getting any kind of positive results. My best ad was running at a -70% return. Not good.

I turned to the advice of my fellow authors on Reddit, Facebook and Kboards, and kept seeing Brian D. Meeks' book, Mastering Amazon Ads, An Author's Guide, pop up as a recommendation. I figured I didn't have anything to lose, and bought a copy. (I got the paperback because I have a hard time getting Post-It notes to stick to e-book pages.)

I can honestly say, the insight the author includes in this book on how to run profitable ad campaigns was eye-opening. The first thing I learned, was that I was bidding too much for ads. Two times too much. The second thing I discovered is that Amazon's ad placement is nothing like Facebook's. It's actually hard to hit your spend budget on AMS advertising, so having one or two ads, even if they're good ones, probably won't yield you the millions of impressions and thousands of clicks that you're expecting. 

Now, as always seems to happen with me, Amazon changed their ad platform smack-dab in the middle of me reading this book, removing Product Placement Ads (although I notice that there's a beta test going on to move them to the Sponsored Product Ads page as an extra option), and adding Landing Page ads instead. I worried that maybe that was going to throw Brian's advice off.

But, my fears were quickly averted. Most of what Mastering Amazon Ads tells you to do (test, test, test) can be used on any of the ad types. And I'm happy to say that using his techniques, I ran my first profitable ad, to the tune of a positive 80% ROI.

Now, before you decide that this book is going to make you piles of money, I'll temper my boastful statement by saying that my total ad spend was only $2.17, so even with a positive return on investment, I'm not rolling in the money yet. But, I think I have an idea of how to scale the ads so six months from now I'll be in a better position financially, and in the spirit of that optimism I can say that Mastering Amazon Ads; An Author's Guide is worth reading.

You can get your copy on Amazon by clicking here.

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