I just sent the following email to what purports to be Facebook customer service email:

I’ve just tried to boost a Facebook post in order to — what a concept — let the people who’ve liked my page actually see a post.

FB won’t boost it, citing the 20% rule.  That is because Facebook clearly doesn’t know/adhere to its own guidelines, which state that a book cover counts as an image.

I have encountered this over and over and over from Facebook. I’m a long-time author who knows a lot of authors who are also encountering this over and over and over.

If you are a human, surely you can understand the frustration in this:

• FB won’t send our posts to people who liked our pages.
• We try to spend money to get FB to show a post to people who have liked our pages by boosting.
• FB system automatically rejects the boost effort, citing its no-more-than-20% text rule.
• In fact, FB’s guidelines specifically exempt book covers, saying that they count as an image.
• FB’s system does not recognize its own guidelines, and thus rejects authors’ effort to spend money to reach people who already liked our pages.
• Effort to inform FB of its error … gets an error message.

Sorry, this content isn’t available right now

• Searching the *cough* “Help Center” shows lots of similar questions/issues. No answers/solutions from FB.

IOW, there is no appeal to FB failing to follow its own rules and “letting” authors spend money to try to reach the people who have already indicated they want to hear what the author has to share.

• Facebook poorly serves authors and readers.
• Authors increasingly turning to blogs.

I doubt a person will respond … but I did get a blog post out of this.

P.S. UPDATE SUNDAY, JUNE 28 — Below is the response to my email to customer service:

Hi,

You've reached us at a channel that we don't support. Please visit the Help Center to find answers to many frequently asked questions and up-to-date forms you can use to get in touch with us:

https://www.facebook.com/help

We apologize for the inconvenience. 

 
Thanks,
The Facebook Team
~~~~
Of course Help is where I saw numerous similar complaints with no responses. Gotta give Facebook this -- it's consistent.