Do Facebook Ads Work?

In the last couple of months since the release of my new book, Blood Moon, I've been attempting various ways at marketing myself. There are so many books out there and so many good writers. One book scores while another book bombs without any real rhyme or reason that I can see. I am pretty confident saying it doesn't really depend that much on one book being better than another. There are LOTS of well written books.

(Side Note: Case in point would be the book, The Cuckoo's Calling, which was barely scraping by in the sales department. Then the word was out that the author was J. K. Rowling and sales skyrocketed. Was her book somehow better than other crime novels because it was written by her? I am dubious. But her name has built-in marketing power.)

Today on Facebook, I accidentally clicked on their marketing link. I'd never considered an ad on Facebook. I think I've maybe clicked twice on ads I see in the sidebar. But I found myself thinking, "What the heck?" What could it hurt to try?

So I created a Facebook ad this morning for my book, The Ninth Curse. I chose to only pay for clickthroughs, rather than impressions. Who knows if an impression does anything at all?  An impression probably works better for a product that has a multi-faceted ad campaign, and I was only going to be advertising on Facebook.

I set my daily advertising budget at $2.22. That would allow for 3 clickthroughs per day. The total period of my advertising will be 30 days. So even if I spent my entire budget, I would be well under $70 for that month of advertising. Not bank-breaking, by any means.

Not sure if this will do anything to boost sales, but I thought it would be an interesting experiment. I'll keep you updated on my results over the next month.

UPDATE: After only 1/2 hour of my ad being available on Facebook, I have had 3 clickthroughs! This suprised me. Also, I clearly do not understand the cost per click. Although I had 3 clickthroughs, I've only used 74 cents of my $2.22 budget for the day. It looks like the price per click varies depending on a number of algorithms I don't understand. We'll see if any of the clickthroughs result in an actual purchase!

Marketing Yourself is Hard

I am not a social butterfly kind of person. I have a small circle of peeps that I interact with (mostly family) and I'm cool with that. However, I think that limits my capabilities at marketing myself... which stinks.

Many writers are introverts. Possibly because we express ourselves better on 'paper.' I do a better job of explaining myself in the written word than I do speaking off the cuff. In fact, I've been known to put my foot in my mouth more times than I care to remember. Introvert does not mean silent. At least, not in my case.

Combining limited social skills with introversion results in a horrible marketer. I feel self-conscious talking about my books, promoting myself with guest blog posting, or mentioning the fact I'm an author. I carry around business cards with my book cover and a blurb on the back, but keep forgetting to hand them out or feel goofy doing so. I need to figure out how to get over this!

I think my book, "The Ninth Curse," is just as good as many books out there for sale. Although I was published with a reputable smaller publisher (thank you, Samhain, for taking a chance on me), my sales were pretty anemic. I didn't expect big things, but I was hoping for slightly better sales once my book made it onto Amazon and was available as an e-book.

Honestly, I believe the biggest problem I had was very few reviews. I've had an acquaintance or two who bought my book tell me they enjoyed it, but they did not take the time to review it. Frustrating to say the least. You really need a LOT of reviews in order for someone to believe that a new author has the chops to write a good book.

The other thing I have heard is that the best thing you can do is to write another book. Recently, I uploaded a new book to Amazon. Self-published as an experiment. Blood Moon is in the same genre as The Ninth Curse, paranormal, but is directed at a teen audience. Without the backing of a publisher, I am definitely floating in a huge sea of self-published books. I am not sure if this really helped me at all.

On the one hand, I enjoy sharing my writing with anyone willing to take a chance on it. On the other hand, I get frustrated that I haven't done a better job of getting the word out there about my books. I suppose I should just get back to the writing, since I'm better at that part. Either I need to ditch my loathing of promoting my work, or I need to stop complaining about it.

For all those readers out there my plea is that you write a review if you love a book. That's the only way an unknown author even stands a chance to sell her books. So, please, take the time to write a review today. The author will be grateful for it.

The cat came back...

We have two cats at my house. They don't get along that well. One is more of an outdoorsy cat that lives on our boat cover in the summer and sleeps in the garage most of the time in the winter. This cat, Mackenzie, is a great hunter and is lean and mean most of the time. Just this spring she actually killed a rabbit and dragged it through the cat door into the garage leaving only feet and a few other parts behind. So, yeah, she's pretty tough.

Our other cat is a mess. Arrow is overweight. She has asthma. She broke off her two bottom teeth somehow and had to have emergency surgery over Thanksgiving weekend last year to stop an infection in her gums. She doesn't jump well. She's more of a housecat who likes to think of herself as much cooler than she really is.

Yesterday morning my husband noted that he had not seen Mackenzie for a few days. We were trying to remember the last time she'd appeared in the yard (we have a pretty big, unfenced yard in the wilds of Idaho). My last memory of her had been a barbecue on Sunday night. I couldn't remember if I'd seen her come in the house to eat since then.

My husband called her outside before he left for work (yes, he worked on the 4th of July), but Mackenzie did not appear. Since I work from home, I took a couple of breaks during my day to look for her. I called her several times. Only Arrow appeared.

I was worried. We have coyotes and other wild creatures in our neck of the woods.  Although Mackenzie is pretty adept in her outdoor lifestyle, you just never know when something bigger and badder might get the best of her.

Yesterday afternoon I was glad to see Mackenzie make an appearance to eat at the cat bowl!  She walked in as if she'd been there all along. I was so relieved.

On our way to the fireworks display last night, we drove past a neighbor's hay field that had been recently cut. My husband mused that perhaps Mackenzie had been staked out near the field for the last few days taking care of the mice whose homes were exposed. That seemed like a reasonable explanation.

What a relief, though, to have our Kenzie Cat back home! We had something else to celebrate yesterday...the return of a good friend.

I couldn't watch

On Sunday night we recorded Nik Wallenda's tightrope walk attempt across the Grand Canyon. Glad we recorded it because the commentary and build-up was so ridiculous!  But as for the walk itself, I couldn't watch. The rest of my family was riveted to the tv, and I was staring down at my smartphone.

Why?

I am horridly afraid of heights. Even heights seen on a tv or movie screen. Just a few glimpses of Nik Wallenda suspended 1500 feet above the canyon floor was enough to nauseate me.

My fear has gotten worse as I've gotten older. I don't like ferris wheels, tall buildings (even looking up at them is enough to freak me out), and most definitely cliff edges of any kind. I will never sign up for The Amazing Race because I know I'd end up having to bungee jump off a bridge or pitch myself out of an airplane or walk down the side of a building. All horrifying challenges.

I think a fear of heights make sense. We aren't built to fly or climb walls like a spider. We are breakable. There is no real need to stand on the edge of anything. It is a built-in fear based on basic survival instincts, so I'm glad my fear is a strong one.

Maybe if I were an engineer who drafted the plans for suspension bridges or skyscrapers, I'd feel better about things. For now, though, I'll leave the bungee jumping, skydiving, rockclimbing to the daredevils and crazy people.

And next time there is a Nik Wallenda special on tv, I think I will just ban myself to the bedroom where I can play Candy Crush or Words with Friends until I get the 'all clear' signal from my husband.

The Stress of Summertime

So the kids are out of school, and I work from home. This is a good thing and a bad thing.

Good thing = Don't have to get up at 6:15 am to make lunches / get kids out the door. My summer wake hour is 7 am. Yeah, I'm a morning person. So sue me.

Bad thing = Kids camp out in living room all day long on their laptops making noise / messes and intruding into my Quiet Work Zone. My office is in my bedroom, and the master bedroom just happens to be on the 1st floor. If they get a rowdy game of Minecraft going, it can be difficult to get my work done.

Good thing = Don't have to pick up kids at 2:30 pm and interrupt my work focus. Or my afternoon internet surfing. ;-)

Bad thing = Kids eat a LOT more food when they are at home. Which means more dishes. Um, and why haven't I taught them to reuse drinking glasses? Do you really need to put that 3rd drink of Kool-aid in a *clean* glass????

Good thing = Don't have to worry about after school activities and making a zillion trips into town. Have I mentioned how happy I am that the school musical is finally over? Rehearsals, extra rehearsals, rehearsals that go over time, dress rehearsals...ARGH!!!!!

Bad thing = Kids get bored and want you to make a zillion trips into town so they can see their friends, go shopping, etc. Next thing on the list is to get the daughter her driver's license. So very very very close.....I think we both can't wait for that one.

I suppose I should make more use of my morning hours when the kids are still asleep. For some reason, though, I pick up steam by about 2 in the afternoon and pour it on until dinnertime. That is when the kids are at their peak noise-making / mess-making stage.

Somehow work gets done. Kids fall into their summer routine. And by August we all can't wait for school to start up again! (Okay, maybe that's just me)

Why Vocabulary is so Important

I've always been someone who loves words. Spelling them. Reading them. Writing with them. Just one of those things that I've been interested in since I was a young lass.

For me, the vocabulary part of the SAT was going to be my shining moment. It was the one area I had never been worried about. My high school English teacher had prepped me well. I loved her assignments. We were to read a challenging book, keep track of words we didn't know, and then once a week we were to write a few short pages using those new words.

This was golden for a word lover like me. The new words I learned out of books like "The Time Machine" by H.G. Wells or "Tom Jones" by Henry Fielding would be the starting point for me to get my creative juices flowing.

I also remember my sophomore or junior year of college. I took a Modern Fiction class with a friend of mine. There was one kid in our class who used what I called "50-cent" words regularly...in his questions to the professor, in any presentation, etc. Words that were so esoteric and so bizarre for a 21-year-old to be spouting, that one day, we decided to keep track of all the words he used. And we came up with a brilliant contest: After class, we both had to write a story using those words and then see who wrote the best one.

The challenge was on!  I wish I still had the list of words...but there were some good ones, as I recall. Immediately after class, I headed back to my dorm room and whipped out a 2-page story using all the words. I met up with my friend, showed her my work, and she said, "You actually did it?"

Although she had agreed to the contest, apparently she'd seen it as a joke. I saw it as an awesome challenge.

Writing "Blood Moon" reminded me of those two times in my life when vocabulary gave me inspiration to write. Instead of needing a 'writing prompt,' I just needed a vocab prompt!

Formatting for Kindle - Some Tips & Thoughts

This week I uploaded my new book, Blood Moon, to the Kindle store. I think now I have a pretty good handle on how to set up my Word file next time to avoid a lot of formatting in the future. It's really not that big a deal. Someone suggested skipping the automatic Table of Contents (TOC) in Word and doing it a completely different way, which sounded very time consuming.

Instead, I used the automatic TOC, ran my file through the Kindle Reviewer program and checked out what the TOC looked like in all formats. Once I saw that it was a mess, I knew what to do. I went back to my original file, removed the huge tabs with the leder dots between the chapter title and the page number, chose a style of TOC that was simpler and then everything was fine. The TOC needs to be narrow and fit in the middle of the page in order to work on all platforms. A very easy fix.

Another thing I learned is that the superscript I added next to each SAT word in the book messes up the dictionary look-up feature on the Kindle Fire. Unfortunately, that was impossible to check in the Kindle Reviewer. I can only look at the presentation of the text, not the functionality. So I'm a little irritated that readers using a Kindle Fire won't be able to look up the definition of each word as they read, which was my original intention.

My original intention was to have footnotes with the definitions for each word at the bottom of the page. However, I found out Kindle format does not support that. So I had to remove all the footnotes and add the superscript, so each word would be numbered.

Now I know I have to put a space between the word and the superscript so that a reader can use the dictionary lookup feature in Kindle Fire. On my regular Kindle, however, the word lookup works just fine.

The things you learn.