Hi there,

Welcome to a new edition of Reedsy’s marketing newsletter! I try to send these every week, but after 90+ newsletters I have to admit I don’t always have a good topic to write about, so the frequency can fluctuate.

Today I do have a juicy topic for you, though: advertising. I’ve written about advertising quite a bit in the past — and even dedicated 9 chapters to Facebook, Amazon and BookBub ads in my free book. That’s because ads are still one of the most common marketing tactics employed by authors and publishers alike… to the point that many feel that a book cannot succeed anymore without advertising.

And that’s what I want to address today: is running continuous ads really necessary if you want to make a living as an indie author nowadays? The answer is more complicated than just “yes or no,” and to get to it, we first need to do a quick dive into Greek mythology.

Sisyphus and his boulder

I imagine you’re familiar with the myth of Sisyphus, who, as a punishment for his trickery, was condemned by Zeus to roll a boulder up a hill for eternity — only for it to roll down every time he nears the top. 

Well, this struggle is one that you can easily face with advertising.

For the purpose of our metaphor, let me explain that:

• the boulder is the book,
• Sisyphus represents the ads, and
• the hill is the Amazon rank.

You want your book to sell and climb in the Amazon rank, so you push it with ads. But you gradually have to spend more, and more, to get it higher up — and when you stop the ads, the rank often rolls down as fast as Sisyphus’ boulder.

Of course, as long as you make back in sales what you’re speeding on ads, it can be a financially viable strategy. But it’s also a dangerous one, as you basically rely on advertising platforms to keep that boulder up — and advertising platforms are fickle beings, far less reliable than our friend Sisyphus.

So what do you need for this strategy to actually be sustainable? It’s simple: word of mouth.

The secret of successful advertising is word of mouth

To go back to our metaphor, word of mouth could represent the steepness of the hill’s slope.

The more readers enjoy and recommend your book to others, the easier the slope: you don’t have to push the book as hard through ads, because the sales generated by these ads will in turn generate other sales through word of mouth.

You’re not picturing it? Okay, let’s imagine two authors. Both have the same advertising strategy and results: they each need to spend around $5 on ads to generate one sale of their book. However, author A has no word of mouth whatsoever, while one third of author B’s readers tend to enjoy the book so much that they recommend it to a friend.

When author A spends $15 on ads, they generate three sales. When author B spends $15 on ads, the ads generate three sales as well, but word of mouth generates an extra fourth one. And now you can see how author B’s road to advertising success is much less steep.

In some very rare cases (blockbuster bestsellers), books generate such strong word of mouth that they can actually snowball up the ranks, on their own. This happens when every reader who picks it up recommends it to more than one other reader on average — hence the snowball effect. 

Of course, that almost never happens nowadays, so it shouldn’t be something to plan or shoot for — but it’s a good illustration of just how powerful word of mouth can be.

Which brings us to the advertising secret I mentioned earlier: the very best thing you can do for your ads to be more successful is to write really good books that readers will want to recommend to their friends. Hire an editor, work with beta readers, know your market, and only release books that you’re fairly certain readers will enjoy.

Of course, learning about advertising, becoming better at it, or hiring a professional advertiser are important as well, but nothing will beat the importance of the book itself.

You can be the best advertiser in the world, if the book you’re trying to market isn’t carried by word of mouth, you’ll truly feel like Sisyphus rolling it up the hill.

Happy writing, and happy advertising,

Ricardo

Copyright © 2025 Reedsy, All rights reserved.