How My Book Experiment Hit #1 on Amazon (For a Few Days)

13 May 2026 #experiments #bookwriting

Last February, I started a book experiment.

I turned my most popular self-help post into a mini book. If you’re curious, here’s the final result:

10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too.

The success metric was 1 organic sale. By that definition, the experiment was a success. I announced it on Friday Links and it made 1 direct sale on Gumroad. Then I gave away some copies and it got its first Amazon review.

To keep the experiment going, I tried two promotion strategies:

#1. Use a promotion site.

I paid for a mention on RobinReads.

The day of the mention, my book got 19 sales on Amazon and 9 the next day. It went from #165 to hitting #1 in Personal Transformation & Spirituality.

The sales spike lasted 2 days, then the #1 spot disappeared. By week’s end, the book ranked #44 in One-Hour Health, Fitness & Dieting Short Reads. Still on the first page.

Overall, the RobinReads mention brought 33 sales that week. One was refunded—hopefully not because of a typo.

#2. Use ads.

I placed 4 ads using BookBub.

To cap my budget, I limited each ad to $5, paying per click. Not much, but it was enough to test the ad copy and to learn about book ads.

Here are the stats of the ads I tried:

Over 22,000 people saw my book cover in one day. Wow!

The ad on April 23rd had the best clicking rate. It drove 4 clicks and 3 book sales.

But there was a catch with the experiment: Book promotion sites expect discounted prices. Despite 38 sales in total, pricing at $0.99 wasn’t profitable.

Some final lessons from the experiment:

1. Don’t just publish your book and expect sales.
2. Book promotions bring more conversions than ads.
3. Ads alone aren’t profitable. Use them to test headlines, taglines, and copy.
4. Target specific book categories and authors.
5. Use book promotions/ads for the first book on a series.
6. Amazon chooses categories they want.

For the time being, I’m declaring this experiment a double success.

If you want to change your life and don’t know how, check out 10 Surprisingly Simple Ideas That Changed My Life And Could Change Yours Too—the same copy that made my best ad a success. Let’s see how far it can go.