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Writer's pictureMichael Parker

Weighing up my progress

Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it.


I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B.


I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though.


Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably!


I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over.


So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful.


I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!

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