Reader Reach Facebook Ads by Written World Media: a Complete Scam

Beware of Reader Reach Facebook Ads, which is a complete scam. This service, which is supposed to help you sell your ebooks with custom-made ads, is almost completely ineffective.

I decided to pay $150 for an advertising campaign for my Thriller The New Guardians, for a 5 day period. Reader Reach Facebook Ads seemed to me to benefit from interesting feedback from authors. My Thriller has a 4.5/5 rating on Amazon, with ten reviews. Granted, that's a small number of reviews, and I had also decided not to lower the price of the ebook for this campaign. The price is $3.99, which is standard for a 432-page book. I really wanted to test the effectiveness of Written World Media's advertising team.
The ad campaign was spread over 5 days on Facebook. I thought that for this kind of service, Written World Media would only accept the challenge for ebooks likely to generate a return on investment.

My ebook was accepted, and as soon as the campaign was launched, I asked them to send me the advertising that had been set up. The advert read: "The New Guardians by Alan Spade is a great book to read. Highly recommend!" 

I didn't get any link to the ad on Facebook.

By the end of the first day, I had made only one sale. I knew I needed to sell 112 ebooks over the 5-day period to recoup my investment. Sensing disaster, I immediately emailed Written World Media. 

Hi, 

The image is good, but the text... Did you ask an 8-year-old to write it? It's so boilerplate. So dull. One sale so far. If it stays that way, I don't predict much more.

Best,

Alan

Here's the boilerplate answer from Written World Media: 

Hi Alan,

Thanks for getting back to us! Because Facebook provides a limited amount of space for text, our team uses an excerpt from a five-star review. The campaigns start small and build over time, therefore you’ll likely see more consistent visibility for your book across multiple days and not a single-day spike. We have an article on our website that you may be interested in about what to expect with the ads; you can click HERE to check it out!

Let me know if you have any other questions!

All the best,

 

I only sold four ebooks in all by the end of the fifth day. 4. Ebooks. That's 1/28th of the number of ebooks that would have needed to be sold for ROI.
I had no access to statistics on cost per click, number of impressions, or which ad would have performed best. Nothing.
If anything, it wouldn't have mattered too much if I'd sold more ebooks. But the result is absolutely abysmal. This service is to be avoided! The only advantage for me in using this service is that it allows me to warn other authors of the scam.  

The New Guardians on Amazon

Update: The New Guardians received 274 clicks and 7,982 impressions over the 5-day period. With 4 sales in the end. So, the team at Written World Media tried. Quoting an author who has experience running ads:  I do know my ads I run myself have over 500 words of text. I think they allow 1000 words (*but recommend 250). So that small text is really lazy and saying FB allows "limited text" is not really accurate. Yes, limited to 500 or 1000 words but not limited to 15 words. Also, should be testing 3 text sets and 3 images. Anyway... FB ads are hard to make work. It takes months. I suggest running $25 a week until you hit on an image that works.
When you offer a service that promises a return on investment in just 5 days, and in fact it takes months to develop ads that work, it's still deception for me.
Written World Media should spend the $150 over more time, maybe a month or two, and make experiments until the ads really work. The cost per click should'nt be the absolute metric. The number of clicks for one sale should be the absolute metric. With this campaign, I needed 68 clicks to obtain a sale. Maybe it's because the Amazon page of my ebook didn't work. Maybe it's because the cover or the blurb needed to be tweaked. Maybe it's because there isn't enough comments. But maybe it's because not enough people who click on the ad on Facebook are ready to buy. Maybe it's because the ad system on Facebook is somewhat broken.