Most first-book marketing is sizzle. You are paying for steak.
We do not sell advertising, publicity or promotion, and we take nothing from anyone we send you to. What we sell is an honest read on where your book actually stands — and a short, ordered list of what is worth doing next.
The conflict of interest we do not have.
Almost everyone who tells a first-time author how to spend their marketing budget earns money from the answer. Ad agencies recommend ads. Publicists recommend publicity. Vanity presses recommend the package on the next page of their brochure.
We earn nothing from any of it. That is not a moral position, it is a structural one — and it is the only reason our answer is worth anything.
An assessment
- A read of your cover at thumbnail size against the books you are actually competing with
- A line-by-line look at your listing — description, categories, keywords, price
- A competitive shelf comparison in your category
- A prioritised action list: what to fix first, what to fix later, what to ignore
- An honest answer on whether paid promotion makes sense for this book yet
Anything downstream
- Advertising management, on any platform
- Publicity, press releases or media placement
- Review services, of any kind, ever
- Social media management or content packages
- Referral fees, affiliate commissions or kickbacks from anyone we name
You cannot advertise your way past a bad first impression.
Paid promotion buys attention. It does not buy interest. Every click lands on the same three things — a thumbnail, a first line, and a price — and if those are not doing their job, the ad has bought you a visitor who leaves.
This is why the order matters more than the budget. Money spent at step four before steps one to three are right is not an investment, it is a measurement of how many people did not buy.
It has to work at the size of a postage stamp, in a grid of competitors, on a phone. That is the only place it is ever seen before a decision is made.
Description, categories, keywords, price. This is free to change and it is where most first books are quietly losing.
An email list is the only audience nobody can take away from you or charge you to reach again.
Only once the three above are working. Otherwise you are paying to send people to a page that is not converting.
What authors actually spend, by what they actually earn.
Written Word Media surveys thousands of independent authors each year. Their 2025 survey asked what authors spend on marketing each month and cross-referenced it against monthly income. The pattern is the useful part.
Figures reported in the 2025 Indie Author Survey, Written Word Media. Average monthly spend across all respondents was about $636. These are what authors reported spending, not a recommendation — we are not financial advisors and your book is not an average.
Read the table from the bottom up, not the top down. The high spenders are not high earners because they spend. They spend because they already earn, and they are reinvesting from proceeds. Copying the spending of a $10,000-a-month author while earning $80 a month is the single most expensive mistake a first-time author can make, and it is the one the industry is built to encourage.
What the legitimate promotion actually costs.
These are real, published prices from the best known book-promotion service in the business. We name them because their pricing is public and verifiable, not because we have any relationship with them — we do not.
Note what the price tracks. It is not the quality of your book. It is the size of the mailing list in your category.
Featured Deal pricing published by BookBub, spanning free through $3-plus list prices. Prices change; check the live page before budgeting.
Two things follow from this. A children’s picture book can reach the same promotional tier for a fraction of what a historical novel pays, which is a real advantage if that is your category. And a four-figure spend on a first book in a crowded adult category is a bet, not a plan — one that has to be made with money you can afford to lose entirely.
Anybody who quotes you a promotional package without showing you the underlying list prices is charging you a markup you cannot see.
Six things that should end the conversation.
Writer Beware, run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, has tracked publishing scams for over two decades. Their guidance on vanity and subsidy publishers describes a consistent pattern, and marketing packages are where it most often shows up.
Legitimate services do not cold-call authors who have just published. A company that found you on a retailer listing and phoned to offer marketing found you because you are a lead, not because they read your book.
If you cannot see what each component costs and where it is actually placed, you cannot tell what is being marked up. Writer Beware lists vague pricing and unspecified deliverables among the classic warning signs.
Nobody can guarantee reviews, rankings, bestseller status or sales. Guaranteed reviews in particular violate retailer policy and can get your title removed.
A deadline that exists only in the sales call. Writer Beware specifically flags heavy incentives to buy add-on services that are nominally optional.
Where a company earns its money from author fees rather than book sales, it has little incentive to invest in whether the book actually sells. That is the structural definition of a vanity operation.
The most expensive version of this pitch. Real rights interest arrives through agents and does not require you to pay a fee up front.
Before a single dollar of spend, this is the thinking.
Every book we take on starts with a Design Brief — a written argument about what the book is, who it is for, and what its cover has to accomplish. It exists before any design work, and it is the document a marketing decision should be made against.
A few extracts, from a sample brief.
Why this comes first
You cannot judge whether an advertisement is working if you were never clear about who it was supposed to reach. Most of what gets sold to first-time authors as “marketing strategy” is this document, with a price tag and less specificity.
The brief is part of the design work. It is not a separate line item and we do not charge for it.
One sentence, written before anything is designed. If a cover, a description or an advertisement cannot be traced back to this line, it is decoration.
What this manuscript actually is
This manuscript reads as children’s picture book fiction, specifically a sports-themed story for early readers or read-aloud audiences aged approximately 4–8. No stated genre was provided by the author, but the text is unambiguously children’s illustrated fiction.
Note the tone. The brief says what the manuscript is, including where the author left a field blank, rather than flattering the author about what they hoped it was.
A starting point, not a research result
Amazon gives you seven keyword slots. These seven are built from your manuscript — a starting point, not a research result.
That sentence is in every brief we write. Nobody outside the platform has live search-volume data, and any service that tells you otherwise is selling confidence rather than information.
Three directions, not a finished cover
These three directions are starting points, not finished covers. Bring your reactions — including the ones you cannot explain — to your design review call. Your designer will take the direction you respond to and build the real thing.
Nothing here is decided. The worst outcome is you being polite about a cover you do not love.
What you actually receive.
A written assessment and a call to walk through it. No dashboard, no retainer, no monthly anything.
Where these numbers come from.
Every figure on this page is sourced and linked. Check them — that is the point of publishing them.
- 2025 Indie Author Survey — Written Word MediaReported monthly marketing spend by income band, average spend across respondents, and the relationship between email list size and income.
- Featured Deals Pricing — BookBubPublished Featured Deal prices by category and list price. First-party pricing, updated by the vendor.
- Vanity, Subsidy and Hybrid Publishers — Writer Beware, SFWAWarning signs for author-fee publishing and paid marketing add-ons, maintained by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
- What Is Vanity Publishing — Alliance of Independent AuthorsThe self-publishing trade body’s definition and its watchdog guidance on assessing publishing and marketing services.
Find out where your book actually stands.
A free, no-obligation conversation first. If an assessment is not what your book needs, we will say so on that call.