u/Spare-Feedback-8120

I’m an indie author trying to learn Facebook advertising properly before I burn money blindly, and I’d appreciate advice from people who actually understand ad testing and audience targeting better than I do.

I write in the LitRPG / progression fantasy / military fantasy space. My current series is an alternate-history apocalypse story set in 1953 where a dormant “System” reactivates, monsters appear, and a war veteran becomes something called Warden Prime. It’s doing reasonably well organically for a small indie series:

• solid review average,
• Kindle Unlimited readthrough,
• stable Amazon ranking instead of huge spikes and crashes,
• audiobook release,
• Book 3 coming soon.

So I don’t think the issue is “nobody wants this product.” I think my issue is marketing education and execution.

Right now I’m trying to understand:

• how to structure Facebook ad testing without overspending,
• whether low-budget campaigns ($5–10/day total) can still produce useful signal,
• how experienced advertisers judge whether an ad is failing because of the creative, the targeting, or the landing page,
• and how much data is realistically needed before making decisions.

I’ve been reading about the David Gaughran method for author Facebook ads:

• multiple small audience tests,
• optimizing for clicks first,
• killing weak performers quickly,
• scaling winners slowly.

That approach makes sense to me conceptually, but I’d like to hear from people outside the indie-author bubble too.

A few specific questions:

1. At very low spend levels, how long do you usually let Facebook ads run before judging them?
2. How much importance do you place on CTR vs CPC vs downstream conversion?
3. Is Facebook still viable for niche fiction audiences, or are people seeing better returns elsewhere now?
4. How much does audience quality outweigh creative quality?
5. Are there common mistakes beginners make when they think they’re “testing” but actually aren’t gathering useful data?

I’m not looking for magic shortcuts or “make millions with ads” advice. I’m mostly trying to develop a repeatable process and stop approaching advertising like guesswork.

Any advice, brutal honesty, recommended resources, or “don’t do this, I learned the hard way” stories would genuinely help.

Yes I am an author. I read my book often as i am writing and rewriting it.

What I'm looking for, is something fun. I have read most of the major books and many of the minor ones. I need a pallet cleanser for my mind.

I like the time travel back to the beginning.

I hate dickish main characters.

I want smart characters that although they may not have been gamers they are willing to learn fast.

Real stakes, real emotion and no throw away companions.

One thing I’ve noticed reading a lot of LitRPG/Progression Fantasy lately is how often power scaling turns into a straight line—get stronger, hit harder, move on.

But what happens when the system expects more than that?

Not just stats. Not just skills.
Authority. Responsibility. Consequences.

That was the idea behind Aether Earth 1953.

Instead of a “player climbing levels,” the system pushes the main character into something closer to a role he doesn’t fully understand—a Warden. He’s not just fighting monsters. He’s dealing with:

• unstable rifts
• failing “prison” systems older than recorded history
• and a world that wasn’t supposed to reconnect to the system at all

Progression still matters (stats, skills, abilities are all there), but:

• power comes with expectations
• decisions carry weight beyond the fight
• and sometimes the system doesn’t explain what it thinks you should already know

If you’re into:

• grounded progression with consequences
• system mechanics that aren’t fully transparent
• a slower build into larger-scale responsibility

…it might be up your alley.

Aether Earth 1953; Do not Go Gently

Aether Earth 1953; Into That Good Night