September 2026 Ad Roundup
I wanted to do an ad roundup post for September, but most of my time in October went towards finishing ELVEN-WARLOCK and various Real Life things.
But! ELVEN-WARLOCK is finally out now, and I had a little time to dig into ad results from September 2026.
First, Amazon ads. Remember for an Amazon ad to be successful, it generally needs one sale/readthrough for every 6 to 8 ad clicks. “Dollars Back” is how much I got back her $1 of ad spend.
Half-Elven Thief, CPC: $0.52 , Total Clicks: 9, Dollars Back: $9.21, Sales Per Click: 0.91
Half-Elven Thief Omnibus One, CPC: $0.41 Total Clicks: 35, Dollars Back: $6.91, Sales Per Click: 0.74.
Ghosts Omnibus One, Total Cost: CPC: $0.41 Total Clicks: 81, Dollars Back: $2.31, Sales per click: 1.29
Cloak Mage Omnibus One, Total Cost: CPC: $0.44 Total Clicks: 83, Dollars back: $16.61, Sales per click: 0.07.
Dragonskull Omnibus One, Total Cost: CPC: $0.37 Total Clicks: 19, Dollars back: $10.02, Sales per click: 1.46
Linux Command Line, Total Cost: CPC: $0.40 Total Clicks: 130, Dollars back: $1.68, Sales per click: 3.51
So as we can see, Amazon ads really do best with Kindle Unlimited books. I can turn a profit advertising THE GHOSTS OMNIBUS ONE and CLOAK MAGE OMNIBUS ONE at $0.99 USD because the audiobook generates a lot more revenue at the ebook at that price point. Same thing will be happening with DRAGONSKULL OMNIBUS ONE in November. CLOAK MAGE OMNIBUS ONE did really well because it had a Bookbub Featured Deal in September.
Now on to Bookbub ads. For my Bookbub ads, I only advertise my permafree first in series books on non-Amazon platforms. So I track for the total series how much I get back, what percentage of the clicks convert to a first in series download, and what percentage of those convert on to a sale of the 2nd book in the series.
Frostborn: The Gray Knight, Average CPC: $0.29 Total Clicks: 532. Dollars back: $6.01. 1st book conversion: 63%. 2nd book conversion: 9.35%
Silent Order: Iron Hand, Average CPC: $0.29 Total Clicks: 426. Dollars Back: $4. 1st book conversion: 37%. 2nd book conversion: 5.4%
Dragonskull Sword of the Squire, Average CPC : $0.28 Total Clicks: 432. Dollars Back: $6.76. 1st book conversion: 100%. 2nd book conversion: 8.5%
Sevenfold Sword: Champion, Total Cost, Average CPC: $0.36 Total Clicks: 421. Dollars back: $5.38. 1st book conversion: 100%. 2nd book conversion: 5.3%
So I’ve been having very good results advertising my first-in-series free books on Bookbub. For Bookbub ads, it really comes down to the image, and it takes some refining and experimenting to find out what works for the genre you’re advertising.
Will I do Facebook ads again? I don’t know. I’m running an experiment right now to test some new things, but Facebook seems to transforming into an even worse company as all its resources go into AI. So we’ll see if it works out or not.
So those were my ad results for September 2026. Thanks for reading books, everyone!
-JM