I’m closing in on the end of Evolution’s Hand Book 5: Split Infinites, and you know what? I actually feel bad for Melchizedek Conrad and Leon Weber — but for completely different reasons. Also, I learned something important about Amazon’s sales reporting. And it’s a bummer! But before we get into that, let’s take a look at the numbers.
Progress Report 2023 Week 19 By the Numbers
Real Life Work and Family Events attacked again this week, so I missed my 10,000 word goal. On the plus side, I’m consistent — last week I wrote 9,187 words!
Skipping the details of the Real Life Family Event (RLFE) that cost me all of Thursday’s writing slot, I’ll just say that the story’s humming along. It sucks to be Dek Conrad and Leon Weber towards the end of his novel. I want to tell you all about it — but I don’t want to spoil the plot! So I’ll just say this: Conrad will never be the same, and Weber is about to learn a valuable life lesson about a certain dogged element of modern society.
A very, very valuable lesson.
I’m probably two weeks out from completing the first draft.
A Valuable Lesson about Amazon Reporting
I have a Fussy Librarian ad scheduled to run later this week. I’m considering a Book Barbarian ad next. Before I finish writing Evolution’s Hand Book 6: Unnatural Crypsis, I want to have a good understanding of the mechanics of marketing.
But I wanted to slip in one more Facebook ad before the Fussy Librarian ad goes live. M. D. Cooper gave a fantastic presentation on this topic recently, and I was able to watch it on YouTube. The video gave me what I thought was a solid idea of how to approach ads in a more successful way than I had before. So I gave it a shot.
So far, I’ve come to two conclusions:
- When it comes to clicks per unit of time, the only thing that comes close to a Facebook ad is BookBub. But I think that Facebook has the edge.
- The people in groups like 20BooksTo50K who said Amazon’s reporting lags were right. And the lag seems variable. Which is a real bummer.
M. D. Cooper’s video gave me the idea to go to Pixabay and grab an eye-catching image — one that wasn’t inconsistent with my story. This image is by an artist named Peace,love,happiness.
The challenge is that I’m trying to implement David Gaughran’s strategy — the one he described in his YouTube video, “Book promotion which works: Promo Stacking and building your marketing plan.” He describes a horizontal stack that’s designed to boost sales over a week or two, which will help Amazon promote the book. Trouble is, I’m running this Facebook ad, then I’ll run the Fuzzy Librarian ad. It’s going to be hard to tell which campaign yielded which results because of Amazon’s reporting lag.
Maybe that’s not a big deal; maybe I need to keep focused on the big picture. But it bugs me I can’t get up to the minute sales data!
Progress Notes
Here’s how I did against my goals from last week:
- Finish Melchizedek Conrad’s Plot Turn 2: Done!
- Finish Matsushita Sachi’s Plot Turn 2: Done!
- Finish Atticus Porter’s Plot Turn 2: Done!
- Finish Leon Weber’s Resolution: Not started
Leon Weber’s chapter was the casualty of the RLFE on Thursday. So, I’ll add it to this week’s goals.
Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2023 Week 19
Here are the goals I’m trying to hit this week:
- Finish Leon Weber’s Resolution
- Finish Jadwiga Janczak’s Plot Turn 2
- Finish Matsushita Sachin’s Resolution
- Finish Atticus Porter’s Resolution
- Finish Jadwiga Janczak’s Resolution (stretch objective)
What Do You Think?
What kind of ads attract your attention? I’m asking for a friend. Okay, I’m asking for me, but I’m really curious if others see ads the same way I do. Do you like humor? Beauty? Oddity? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments!
Ads are a tricky thing. I hate them and will go out of my way to avoid them, especially when it’s obviously an ad with a clickbait title.
I always remember the idea that someone needs to see an ad seven times before it sticks in their memory. That doesn’t even mean they will buy it. It does plant the idea and then when they are ready to buy something their more likely to think of the thing advertised to them.
It’s probably not what people want to hear, because they’d like their advert to instantly be profitably so they can do it over and over again, but I think a slow burn campaign is better and I know that Amazon prefers to see steady growth. A spike can be ignore as an anomaly, whereas if they see continued growth in sales over a period of time, Amazon will start to push the book to people they think will enjoy it. If you can get them to work for you, you’re on to a winner.