| Hey, I'm gonna piss some people off this week – especially those selling $1000 courses filled with half-baked nonsense. You see, if you want to really sell an overpriced course, what you need to do is come up with some kind of buzzword that encapsulates a scary change, and then gatekeep your answer behind a paywall. Yeah, today we're busting myths. I've received lots of emails this year from authors worried about drastic changes on the biggest platforms for selling books and reaching readers: Amazon and Meta. But here's the thing. I have giant issues with how these changes are being characterized by some people out there, often being peddled with some expensive "solution." Today we are talking about Meta Andromeda, and Amazon's A10 Algorithm, if you haven't guessed already. And the reason I'm going to annoy certain people this week is this: one of these things is wildly misunderstood… and the other is a complete fabrication. Yep. meta andromeda I say this without judgment but authors can overreact Facebook Ads changes. The reason I say it without judgment is because Meta makes so many changes all the goddamn time that it's difficult for anyone to parse what is going to kill their income and what is a nothingburger. You would need to make Facebook Ads your full-time job to instinctively know which changes require you to rethink everything and what you can safely ignore. So, here's Jon Loomer – whose full-time job literally is Facebook Ads – telling you that Andromeda is being both misunderstood and mischaracterized and is basically nothing to worry about. I've followed Jon for years and he's always on the money. Quoting him: No one would be talking about Andromeda if it didn't have a fancy name. If you take anything from this article, it's that. Before anyone objects, no one is saying that there hasn't been huge changes. Indeed, I've been covering those in some detail and will continue to do so – for free – with my updated Facebook Ads tutorial coming soon. In all my resources, have you heard me mention Andromeda once? Maybe there's a reason for that, eh? But what do I know? Well, I started working in what we used to call "online advertising" back in 2004, and soon I was managing $40m of yearly ad spend for big ad agencies on Google. Even more directly relevant: I've been advertising books on Facebook for over a decade and this year along I've managed several launches for authors with five-figure ad spends during launch week – books which hit the top of the charts. I follow Jon Loomer because he's the real deal. And I am happy to join him in assuring you that Andromeda is nothing to worry about. Feel free to read his post yourself (and indeed all his other resources on the topic over the last twelve months) but I can tell you that it's not the major algorithmic change that it has been painted as (often by those trying to sell you the answer). As Jon breaks down in the link above, Andromeda is merely an ad retrieval system. In simple terms, it's just a way for Facebook's system to handle the increased numbers of ad variations that people are creating (at Meta's urging tbf). Here's Jon Loomer again: Andromeda is more about capabilities than it is about requirements. Meta can handle more variations, but it doesn't mean that you're required to create more to get better results... Quality still beats quantity. To put it in slightly sharper terms, it's a way for Facebook to sort through the AI slop... which it encouraged in the first place, so limit that sympathy. Not creating AI slop or endless ad variations? Then you literally never have to think about Andromeda. You're welcome. Some of you might be wondering why I care. Here's why: if you think the Andromeda bogeyman is the reason why your ads are tanking, then you're going to miss the real cause and waste all your time creating endless ad variations. Even worse, you might get duped into buying some overpriced course or tool which will send you running in the wrong direction, with lighter pockets too. OK, so that's the giant misunderstanding. What could the complete fabrication be? Oh yeah. This effin' thing. amazon's a10 algorithm I'm going to be charitable here and assume that some of the people using the term "A10 Algorithm" are doing so with good intentions and are genuinely trying to help people. But, to me, the term "A10 Algorithm" is a giant red flag. Especially when they say something like, "Amazon launched the A10 Algorithm earlier this year which has completely changed how readers discover books." Here's the reason I know this is complete bullshit: I wrote about this nonsense before: Amazon and the Myth of the A9 Algorithm. And here's a quote from that post: One of my mailing list subscribers emailed me asking about the "A10 algorithm" and what it meant for authors. Because I have worked in this sector since the early 2000s, and because I've known what A9 actually is since it was first rolled out to the public in 2004 — I immediately smelled a rat. Nevertheless, I headed over to my trusty search engine again to see if I could garner any information about this mysterious "A10 algorithm" which I somehow missed in all my years studying and researching and writing about this topic. Not only did I discover a whole group of people pontificating on the "A9 algorithm" and the "A10 algorithm," one enterprising soul was even selling the secrets of the "A11 algorithm" — no doubt after reinvesting the profits from his 6-Minute Abs video. Aaaaaaand here's the date on that post: And that's when the post was last updated. I actually wrote that in the summer of 2020. So over five years ago, why is 2025 so stupid and where is my wine... Now, again, before anyone objects, I'm not saying there haven't been changes on Amazon this year either – some of which have been exceedingly difficult to separate from glitches which have been plaguing Amazon at record levels (just look at the UK Hot New Releases chart which has been garbled for months and months). But framing this as the launch of the "A10 Algorithm" isn't just inaccurate, it betrays a complete lack of understanding of how Amazon really works – and that there are many different interlocking algorithms which affect discovery and visibility. All of which can be understood, and exploited, in different ways. Those simple facts should be enough for most people, but please allow me to emphasise my personal experience here – which began many, many years before I wrote a book called Amazon Decoded. As mentioned above, I was working for Google back in 2004 – when it was still a start-up, pre-IPO in other words. Yahoo was the big dog at the time, dominant in search, but inside Google all knew that it was only a matter of time before we overtook them. Our product was simply better; they were on a shrinking piece of ice. Internally, we were watching other players much more closely. One we were keeping an eye on was a search-focused start-up inside of Amazon called A9, who were doing some clever things; the assumption was that Amazon would move into search, take on Google directly, and provide much stiffer competition. Instead, it did something arguably smarter and adapted A9's tech to vastly improve product searches on Amazon itself, while also deploying those algorithms to power discovery in all sorts of other interesting ways across its website. Google might have been on the path to dominating top-of-funnel searches, but Amazon had just taken a giant leap towards owning the bottom of the funnel – i.e. when consumers have their wallet in hand and are ready to spend. My point is this: A9 wasn't an algorithm. It was company which made algorithms – lots of them. Where did the name A9 come from? This is my favorite part. From that 2020 blog post: A9 literally means algorithms. It's a geeky in-joke, a numeronym: A + 9 more letters. Algorithms. Plural. 😉 Dave P.S. Writing music this week is Pulp with Something Changed. | 
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