Significantly influenced

Ever wondered about the future of advertising your books online?

I've just discovered it is possible to do one Amazon Ad and have more than one title on that ad.

I read that the future will be significantly influenced by AI. Well, I sort of expected that. Protecting consumer data is also crucial. Wasn't that critical when they were teaching AI to write books, though, was it? so I'm not entirely convinced on that one.

Already AD Agencies are touting for business among authors. "let us do your advertising..." 

Pretty soon they'll be writing the books for the (possibly top-line) authors and reaping the royalties before someone reads the book and says "this wasn't as good as the last one - are you sure s/he really wrote it?" Because  *they* could write any sort of rubbish, stick a famous authors name on it and what re-dress does the author have? Or the reader who paid good money for something that is basically a fraud? There probably isn't a law that covers it ... yet.

*anyone who wanted to and had the IT knowledge to do it, really.

Spring Clean

 Currently doing a spring clean on my computer. I may lose a few URLs but its worth it because things change so rapidly in the electronic world. I have blog addresses from 2012  and some of the bloggers have set up newer blogs elsewhere since then. 

I'm writing - or should I say re-writing?  part 2 of my Scots Queen trilogy. I've learned such a lot and it gives me pleasure to get rid of clunky sentences and add in what I now feel are important bits of characterisation. There's a new cover, too. As for paperbacks I think they are a waste of time for me. They take so much more effort, particularly for the cover, and the number I have sold is minimal. Sometimes they don't look as expected no matter how carefully checked they were. The first excitement of having my very own paperback in my hands was wonderful, but I'm over that now, so I think it will be e-books only in the future.

Most attention is on Amazon Ads which I began January 12th. I began with ads in the US. Recently I have put a few ads to show in the UK which operates a little differently to the US system. So far I have no great insights to share, but then I'm still learning the ropes and I was told right at the beginning that it would take perhaps 3 months for real results to show. I am keeping careful track of what I'm doing and what results I get. 

The way to go

Lots of writers are turning to ads because book sales are so slow. Google, Facebook and Amazon seem to be the top choices. I think it may have a lot to do with the way Facebook changed the ground rules about who saw which posts - the answer being the average person saw very little, certainly when compared with what had gone before. Time was when it was hard to actively keep up with the number of posts scrolling by - and maybe that volume threatened to break the system.
I deliberately did not do any promotion this autumn. I thought I'd save my efforts for when the new book was published. With no promotion my sales line looked thin, though the odd KENP figures chipped in randomly. Certainly no way to go on if I want my books to be read. I have followed a couple of webinars with Mark Dawson, but to follow the method he advocates you have to be prepared to speculate to the tune of $99 to join Amazon Advantage and it seems to me it is geared to selling paperback books rather than e-books. So I shall be doing a little more reading around the topic..

Ads, anyone? What do you think? Is it the way to go?

To ad, or not to ad?

Publication Day for The Queen's Letters.

I have sent it on its way and it will have to make its own way in the world. Yet in a way I feel bereft; it has been with me for so long, I'm not sure I know what to do without it!

My list of jobs to be done is whittling down item by item. My car tax is renewed, Mailchimp Newsletter sent out - though I cheated on that and asked my other half to do it before I flew into a temper and bashed the pc. The software is not easy to use  and of course I use it so rarely that what I learned the first time, I'd forgotten when I came back to it. I have given my other half the title of Mailchimp Manager and maybe he'll do them in future. I write the copy, but he does all the tecchie stuff.

I've been pushing tweets and Facebook posts in the last fortnight and I'm starting to think about using all the ad services there are around these days. According to Mark Dawson, advertising guru,  we should bypass KDP ads, free or not, because Amazon Advantage is far superior. I thought as a first foray I would try KDP Free ads, and set one up for 3 days starting tomorrow. I've no idea what, if anything, will happen, but I shall be watching!

Musings

Like the lady on Facebook this morning who sent out a plea for chocolate because she is editing, I feel the same way. Fascinating as it is to see one's own goofs and gaffes, editing soon becomes a chore. I'm up to Chapter 8, so there's a fair way to go. 

My routine goes like this  ~  Print out 10 pages, check, make the corrections, print another 10. I may be doing this for quite a while.It will be interesting to see how much the word count drops in this first edit. I have no plans to cut specific chunks; if the 128K length reduces, it will be a natural editing process.

Meanwhile I am keeping an ear to the ground on the sexual harrassment argument which has now ventured into odd waters. Some female on the Andrew Marr show yesterday, whose name I had never heard of and instantly forgot, said that women should not be decorative items for male enjoyment. This has all arisen from the Presidents Club evening that aroused such a storm of protest, claiming that women were groped and made to wear provocative dresses. Now, I wasn't there, and I don't know anyone who was. My knowledge of that event is all hearsay. At first glance the claim seems valid - women should not be groped and certainly not harassed or assaulted. 

But then one begins to wonder how far this goes. What frightens and upsets one woman may be flirtation or livelihood to another. I began to think of all the females who pose semi-nude in glossy magazines, who adorn huge posters on hoardings and on buses, in their underwear. They make a lot of money by doing so and become celebrities. They turn up at sporting events such as the Tour de France, Formula 1 and darts, to name but a few. What about cheer leaders? What about ball girls in tennis wearing skirts so short we can see the curve of their cheeks while ball boys wear sensible knee length shorts? Book covers frequently sport sexily clad females. The pop world so beloved of many has been semi-pornographic for years and I’m only surprised that no tales of sexual harassment has come out of that world as yet. The school girls these days wear pelmets instead of skirts and no one is making them do it. Some females enjoy "showing off their assets" and demand attention in this way. Watch anything on the box and there will be the female showing lots of bare skin and huge amounts of thigh. Advertising would collapse without sexily-dressed women to promote the goods. The thing is the attention comes sometimes in a way that some women don’t like and it is not always directed at the one who wants it.

I don’t know how this problem is going to be sorted, if it ever is.

Cover Reveal ~ Queen's Courier

I've lost count of how many times I've said this - I'm almost at the end of the final edits on Queen's Courier - but I really mean it this time. I am reading at a snail's pace and finding things to correct, which makes it worth while. This is the final read through via the Online Previewer and the cover is already loaded, won't change and so I'll put it here today.

I've been looking back over the year's KENP stats (since July 2015) and I'm happy to say that they are definitely going up. The month just closed was the highest figure I've had, and it is mostly due to The Gybford Affair. Strange to think that it sat with MuseItUp for a year or two and attracted very few readers. I think the combination of pretty but irrelevant cover pic plus a high price did the trick, but it could also have been because I did very little PR work on it. So once I get Q'sC off my hands  (ie published,) I'll concentrate on PR and see if it has any results.

It is interesting to see how the stats go in waves. A book will be read for two or three months and then there'll be a gap when it is not read at all, then off it will go again. I can only assume it is when promotion works. Maybe those alerts Amazon send out - yes, they advertise my books to me, which always amuses me - maybe they do a lot more good than I know.

Autumn and kitchens

So far there are few changes to the trees, but autumn is approaching. The temperatures are starting to go down at night, and we have warnings of the first overnight frosts. No doubt in a week or two, these woods, where we walked last Friday - the day the car decided to play its nasty little trick - will be a mass of gold and brown.

I like autumn - especially its clear blue skies and brisk, bracing days. I'm less keen on the mists in spite of the mellow fruitfulness...we have picked a lot of blackberries this season, but the raspberries were not at all fruitfull. On the plus side, our apple tree produced its first crop of ten apples - hurrah! I noticed that we didn't have the usual hordes of bees this summer, and those we did see were a much smaller variety than the usual bumble bee. I've replanted lavender, which bumbles love, and some hollyhocks in the hope of tempting them back.

I often think this world is going to the dogs but now I'm convinced of it. Words I recognised drifted from the tv set and I stopped reading to find that Elizabeth Barrett Browning's wonderful words, from the poem that begins How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height... were accompanying an ADVERT. I was so shocked I didn't take note of the thing being promoted. Sacriledge, I thought. They'll have Shakespeare's sonnets advertising sausages next. Have admen no souls?

I've done work on critiques today. Critiques I've received, and critiques I've done for others. Often illuminating, often thought provoking work. But I must get back to my writing, which I've neglected it today. I think it was because I spent a good two hours this morning helping dh heave new kitchen units about between the garage and their final resting place in our wrecked (as of this moment) kitchen. We'll be in upheaval for a little while longer, too, but I must not allow that to stop me writing. And I must remember not to get too enthusiastic with the hoovering. We recently retired our ancient Hoover and got a new Dyson, and this is probably only the third time I've used it. Wafting the long nozzle about proved disastrous - it sucked down the pretty pink ribbon bow that decorates my bedside lamp, a green ribbon I never saw but it found somewhere and some old fashioned replaceable nibs for pens that I kept in a Victorian glass inkstand. They tinkled merrily as they vanished into the maw, and I haven't dared tell dh...but there seem to be no adverse reactions, and I got the ribbons back when we emptied the bag.