The question of Facebook ads vs Amazon ads gets asked as if one has to win. Neither does. They do different jobs, and running the wrong one for where your book actually is wastes money faster than not advertising at all. Amazon catches readers who are already shopping for a book. Facebook puts your book in front of readers who weren’t looking yet. Which one you should be spending on depends on your catalog, your genre, and what you’re trying to get out of the spend, not on which platform has the better reputation this year.
Here’s what each one is genuinely good at, what it costs, and how to decide where your budget goes.
What Amazon ads are good at
Amazon ads put your book in front of someone who is already on Amazon, already browsing books, and already holding a payment method. The intent match is higher than any other channel, which is why practitioners generally say to advertise here first. In 2026 the Books category still sits among the lowest cost-per-click of any category on the platform, and the ceiling for scale is high, with some authors spending well into the thousands per month profitably.
The number to watch is ACOS, the percentage of ad revenue you spend to earn it. A common target is 50 to 70 percent for a profitable campaign once it’s out of the learning phase, though 80 to 100 percent is normal in the first month or two while the campaign settles. If you write a series, you can afford a higher ACOS on book one, because a reader who starts the series is likely to buy the rest. That read-through is the whole reason series authors can advertise more aggressively than standalone authors. I explain how to read that number in what series read-through rate actually tells you.
What Facebook ads are good at
Facebook, now Meta, reaches readers while they browse their feed, before they’re shopping for anything. That makes it a discovery and list-building channel more than a direct-sale one. It’s strongest for visual genres where a cover and a mood do a lot of the selling, and it works best with video or carousel creative and lookalike audiences built from your email list or pixel, rather than broad interest targeting that burns budget on people who’ll never buy.
The strategic value of Meta isn’t only the sale in front of you. It’s that you can send that traffic to a reader-magnet signup instead of straight to a retailer, and build an email list you own. A sale on Amazon is a sale. A subscriber is someone you can reach for every future launch without paying again. If you don’t have a list yet, that’s the better use of Meta spend, and I walk through the setup in how to start an author newsletter readers actually want.
The distribution wrinkle most guides skip
Where your book is sold changes which ad makes sense. If you’re exclusive to Amazon through KU, Amazon ads keep the reader inside the store where your page reads are earning, and that’s efficient. If you’re wide, Meta earns its place because it’s one of the few ways to drive readers to Apple, Kobo, and your direct store rather than defaulting everyone to Amazon. Running Amazon ads on a wide book still works, but it quietly funnels your hardest-won traffic to the one retailer, which may not be what you want.
One mechanics point matters here too: driving outside traffic to an Amazon listing only helps if that traffic converts, and most external traffic doesn’t. I covered what Amazon’s algorithm actually rewards in what “send traffic to Amazon” actually requires.
So which should you run?
For most authors with one or two Kindle titles, start on Amazon. The intent is higher, the cost is lower, and you’ll learn faster whether your listing converts. A single standalone book rarely pays back a Facebook campaign, because there’s no next book for a new reader to buy.
Add Meta once you have a reason to: a series to advertise into, a wide catalog to reach, or a list you’re deliberately building. At that point the two stop competing and start covering different ground, Amazon catching the in-market shopper and Meta building the audience for everything after. Before you scale either, make sure the listing they’re pointing at is doing its job, which comes back to optimizing your Amazon book listing first.
Ads work best on a book that already converts. They don’t rescue one that doesn’t. Get the listing and the reader-fit right, start where the intent is highest, and add the second channel when you have something for it to do.
Practitioner sentiment in this post draws on current 2026 industry commentary from BookBub Insights, Reedsy, and Publishing.co.uk; the ACOS figures are typical ranges cited across those sources rather than a guarantee for any individual book.