Today’s edition covers:

• Amazon algorithm changes and how it might impact you.

• 🚨Warning: Author scams are at an all-time high.

• New feature: Stats for members’ Book Boost perk

• New feature: We are beta testing book ads

• Need book marketing help? Let’s do a call.

• November roadmap & traffic updates

• Ben's updates and reading list

Fun Size! 🦥

• 🥳 What are your favorite three reads of 2025? Submit your picks here and get a beautiful page to share with friends and fans. Plus, this feeds into our big explore page, which helps everyone. How does this help me promote my book? Details here.

• Anonymously ask Ben a question, and he will answer it in the next newsletter edition.

• We now have 4,974 book series published on the website, and we are working to add thousands more. If you want us to add your book series, please email [email protected], and we will bump it to the top of the list.

Amazon algorithm changes and how it might impact you.

Over the last 7 weeks, many authors and small publishers have reported declines in sales and in Amazon rankings. This seems to be due to a change in how Amazon’s algorithm is working.

What changed?

Amazon doesn’t share this info, but here is what experts think is happening:

• Amazon is placing less weight on paid advertising when it surfaces books in its algorithm (and sales ranking).

• Amazon is placing greater emphasis on organic engagement and external traffic to your book page.

• Amazon is placing greater emphasis on consistent reader engagement, and a higher percentage of readers are finishing your entire series.

• Some people think that metadata might matter more. I am not sure I agree, but if it is true, that would be great (I’ll be watching).

What could this mean if this data pans out?

It means that Amazon ads won’t bump organic sales the way they did. That could lower ad costs for everyone to a more sane level. However, I have my doubts there, as books are hard to break even on ROI (especially because they are each someone’s dream).

It could also be good, as it rewards authors with books readers love if the way they measure engagement works. For example, if you have a small fantasy series, and it gets consistent read-through of the entire series, maybe Amazon will push it up the rankings and help you reach more and more fans (which they want, because readers are finding books they love, reading more, buying more). I would love to see this, and I’ll be watching to see which engagement data they're using.

It means Amazon wants to reward authors who encourage readers to buy through its platform, which hurts authors who do direct sales or are trying to escape its black hole.

What to learn more?

• Breakdown by Dale at Self-Publishing with Dale.

• Writers and Publisher Network talks about this.

• Author Update talks about this on their podcast.

• Breakdown over at Self Publishing Advice.

• Matthew J. Holmes talks about what he thinks it means.

• Joe Solari has a super deep dive to understand these systems and their history here.

What are you seeing? Any changes up or down in the last 6 weeks?

Reply and let me know 😀 

🚨Warning: Author scams are at an all-time high.

Authors are receiving deeply personalized emails from fake publicists, book marketers, book clubs, and fans. Be very careful right now!

Why is this happening?

AI makes it very easy for scammers to write personalized pitches with details about your book. Be very wary right now, and feel free to email me if you want a second opinion on something.

Want to learn more?

Writer Beware has a great article on what is going on (read it here). I also highly recommend subscribing to Writer Beware, as they offer a valuable resource for authors.

📊 Stats for members’ Book Boost perk

One of the perks our members receive is Book Boost ads for their book(s). We show their book to 100-200 of the most likely readers to thank them for supporting our mission to build this platform.

What did we add?

We added automated stats so that authors can see how many readers saw their ad, the clicks they got, and their click-through-rate. We send the email on the 15th and 1st of every month.

Here is an example showing what it looks like:

Membership costs roughly what a fancy coffee costs each month, and authors get a lot of perks (with more coming 😀 ).

📚 We are beta testing book ads!

Background: We used to have ugly display ads on the website. I hated them, but they helped fund our costs. I decided to remove them last year and replace them with our own book ad system. Now, we are finally ready to test that system!

We are launching test campaigns with ~5 members. I’ll share what we learn over the coming months/years as we experiment with different formats to hook readers.

What is the cost during testing?

During beta testing, I'm offering a 50% discount to members who want to help us test this ad platform. I’ll share details on what I’m seeing every few weeks on an individual basis.

• So during beta testing, $10/month for 5,000 ad views each month

• $20/month for 10,000 ad views. 

• $50 per month for 25,000 ad views. 

• $100 per month for 50,000 ad views. 

Long term, I'm aiming for $4 per 1,000 ad impressions. This is based on data from Book Boost ads that marketable books will have a 1% or greater click rate (which puts the cost per click at around 40 cents). I've also been hoping we end up being quite a bit cheaper than Amazon, FB, Bookbub, etc, on a per-click basis while getting authors in front of real readers actively looking for their next read. 

100% of what we make goes toward our mission and the platform we are building for authors and readers. Check out our roadmap to see what we are building next!

Quick FAQ:

Do ads work for any book?

No, some books don’t work for any type of paid marketing. I will warn you if I think that is the case and explain why (you can always overrule me, or we can do a small test to see). The best books to market are those in a clear genre with high conversion rate factors. Those are the ones you want to use to build your fan base and pull them into your back catalog.

☎️ Need book marketing help? Let’s talk!

Recently, I’ve talked with authors about the following…

• Reviewed their Amazon listing for what could be improved

• Reviewed their book cover and how that fits in with their genre

• Talked about possible outside-the-box book marketing they could be doing

• Reviewed book marketing options and what is/isn’t working

• Talk about pay-per-click ads on Amazon and Facebook, and what to try

• I walked them through the full-reader app we are building and how that will help authors in the long term.

• Explained how aspects of Shepherd work and answered questions they have about the different formats.

This is one of many perks for members; membership is only $50 a year, and everything we raise goes toward our mission to help authors and readers.

Once you sign up for a membership, you can schedule a time 😀.

My November Roadmap Update (For Authors)

What did we finish and ship?

• We finished adding email automation for the stats of our Book Boost perk for members (100% done).

• We launched our paid ad feature and are now testing it with authors (100% done).

What are we working on?

• Phase 1 of our full reader app (like Goodreads but smarter and deeply personalized). This is a massive project, and we are working to launch the MVP. We are currently building a full book database, frontend components, and backend logic. (15% done)

• We are upgrading our Book Boost perk to improve the ad format for authors and launch the “new book” perk for our members (30% done).

• We are improving our books-like engine (75% done). I’ll share more on this as we finish this work. It is paused until we finish upgrading the Book Boost perk.

What are we building after that?

• We will add personalization to the favorite three reads of the year program. This will make it more interactive for readers and better surface readers who read like them.

• The bulk of our time will be focused on improving the MVP of our full reader app as we work toward a public launch! This also includes revamping our genre and topic system. It needs a significant revamp to improve genre/topic accuracy.

Browse our full roadmap here.

Traffic, bookstore clicks, and sales

For last month:

• We had 174,000+ visitors.

• We had 10,400+ clicks to bookstore partners this month. 

• Of those, 1,600+ were clicks to an author’s promoted book.

Last year, we had a total of 3.2 million visitors.

Detailed stats on our traffic, clicks, sales, and demographics.

What else is going on?

Fall is here! It is rainy, cold, and sliding toward Winter. My son and I are trying to get my wife to let us put up our Christmas tree now, as the more Christmas trees, the better.

Beyond that, I had some “fun” dental surgery, but I am slowly recovering and looking a little less like a chipmunk every day. I look forward to eating non-pureed food for every meal 😁.

What am I reading?

I just finished...

• I, Robot Soldier by Joel R. Dennstedt - This was a nice little sci-fi read. It reminded me of a classic short novella by Asimov or Heinlein. It is from the perspective of a robot waking up from a global armageddon and finding a little girl whose prime directive is his mission now.

• Rosemary and Rue by Seanan McGuire - A super fun urban fantasy. I was looking for something similar to Dresden (urban fantasy), and the vibe matched.

I am reading...

• The Dragonbone Chair by Tad Williams - I’ve been recommended this one several times within fantasy groups. The writing is beautiful, but the story pacing is very slow, and I am not sure this one is a match for my Book DNA. I am about 75% done and enjoying it, but only in small bursts. I am going to keep going and see what I think once it finishes. The world is amazing.

• The Whale Road by Robert Low - I am looking forward to a good Viking historical fiction. I just started this last night.

• The last book in the Sun Eater series came out today!!! This is one of the best science fiction series I’ve read in the past 10 years, and I can’t wait to finish the series. I’m going to start it as soon as I finish The Whale Road.

Thanks, Ben

P.S. From a Fall trip to Italy and a glorious sunset.