As I try to improve my advertising, I’ve encountered a problem — and it’s a good kind of problem! It’s a problem I hope all of you have at some point. Also, we had a major event in the United States. You might have heard something about an election? Yeah, regardless of where you fell on the voting map, it was as stressful night. Turns out the stress had an impact on my writing, too. I think I’ll call it a Real Life Election Event (RLEE). I also, shockingly, made progress on Dreams of Deucalion Book 2: Flanking Maneuver. Let’s take a look at the KPIs before going into any details.
Last Week’s Progress By the Numbers
Another week where I managed to write more than 10,000 words! Given the week, I’m honestly surprised.
What can I say about the RLEE? The less, the better, because I’m not sure what words are going to achieve at this point. No, that’s not some kind of veiled threat. I’m honestly not sure what words can do. If a frontal assault on democracy isn’t enough to swing the vote, well. Like I said. I’m out of words.
The weird thing is, in Evolution’s Hand, I talked about a timeline similar to ours. The large investment banks and brokerage firms got sick of unstable governments, so they took over and imposed a level of stability. That’s not not a new idea. Other books have talked about it, too. What bothers me is that I meant for this to be fiction. I didn’t mean to live it!
Stupid dystopian timeline.
A Good Marketing Problem to Have
Margins are tight. That’s another way of saying that I need to spend a lot to make a little, and I’ll only make a little if everything works right. Right now I’m spending a lot to lose a diminishing amount. But the key idea is that even if everything works well, I hope to earn 10-20% more than I invest in marketing.
I now have two series in print. I’m running Amazon ads for Evolution’s Hand and Facebook ads for The Sword of Sirius. More specifically, I’m advertising Evolution’s Hand Book 1: Executive Action and The Sword of Sirius: Red Flag Warning.
The reason I make that distinction is that some people who buy Red Flag Warning may go on to buy The Sword of Sirius Book 2: Collapse Zone and The Sword of Sirius Book 3: Firebreak. A handful may even go on to buy books in the Evolution’s Hand series. Vice versa, too. That’s great — I love it when a reader enjoyed one book so much they bought others.
From an advertising budget perspective, though, it’s gets tricky to know which sales to attribute to which ad spend. That means it’s hard for me to refine my budget. This is a good problem to have, of course. Readers are buying more of my books than ever before. That said, this is an aspect of the writing business that’s tough for me, since I’d rather spend my time writing instead of analyzing Marketing campaigns.
Maybe I’m making this harder than it needs to be. I need to sit down and come up with the heuristics to process the numbers. I’ll make that a goal for the next few weeks.
Progress against Last Week’s Goals
Here’s how I did against last week’s goals:
- Finish Atticus Porter’s Pinch 2: Done!
- Finish Jadwiga Janczak’s Pinch 2 (it’ll probably stretch to two chapters): Done!
- Finish Trent Raven’s Pinch 2 (it’ll likely also extend into two chapters): Half done! It’s going to be two chapters, and I finished one of them.
- Continue to monitor and fine-tune the running Facebook ads: Ongoing
Goals for the Week in Progress Report 2024 Week 46
Here’s what I hope to accomplish this week:
- Finish Trent Raven’s Pinch II Part II
- Finish Atticus Porter’s Pinch 2 Part III
- Finish Jadwiga Janczak’s Plot Turn 2 (will likely be multiple chapters)
- Continue to investigate how to measure advertising metrics
What Do You Think?
How do you attribute sales to an advertising campaign? How do you track ad success? I’d love to hear about your experience in the comments!
