Last month was something of a revelation for me with regard to my word output, but not so much for my advertising skills. Looking back through my September blog, I see that I promoted The Eagle’s Covenant on Amazon and binned it. I went back to Amazon Ads, and using Janet Margo’s instructions, I rebuilt the campaign. Janet is an ex Amazon advertising exec and has joined Mark Dawson’s group to help update his Ads Course. Hey Ho! I thought; this should be good. I followed her advice to the letter, even submitting five separate ads and setting a budget across the five ads at £300 each (1500 total). This included a Lock screen ad, which is not usually useful for unknown authors like me. Janet warns about that, but her advice was to give it a try. So I did. Results since the 7th September? Zilch! Despite 37,500 impressions on Lock screen and 300 across the remaining adds. I got 77 clicks on Lock screen and 2 clicks on one other ad., but no sales. I spent just over $17. Says it all really, doesn’t it?
The resultant connection with The Book Typesetters and their design for my new book jacket has produced a brilliant cover. I’m so pleased with it that I just had to include a thumbnail image here. I’m waiting for a Proof copy before publishing it: something I hope to do as a pre-order for November 1st. I will go back to Amazon and Facebook to promote it but have promised myself to be a little more circumspect when framing my campaign.
As a result of changing my routine and creating more time to write, I have completed and published a short autobiography about the two years following the loss of my lovely Pat. I’ve called it What Happened After. It won’t be promoted; I simply felt compelled to write it and send copies to my family and friends. That was a 17000 word booklet.
But not stopping there, I gave some thought to writing a Police Procedural crime novel. I downloaded two crime novelists who I know a great deal about and read their work. It didn’t take me long to realise that police procedurals are literally all dialogue. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get out of that particular straitjacket. I often tell people who say they want to write a book, that they should “Write as you can, not as you can’t.” By not following my own advice, I fell at the first hurdle. Mind you, knowing me, I’ll probably try again, particularly as I have a great opening scene for a crime thriller.
However, still ignoring my own advice, I needed to do something having spent a lot of time finishing two books, so I started on a Romance. It’s just for fun really, and I will use a pen name. I’ve tried several names so far, but none of them seem to click. The one I’ve eventually settled on is Emma Carney. I’m not even sure I’ll use that one, but we’ll see. So far I have written 20,000 words. My daily target, which I had to trim because I wasn’t getting any work done in the house, was 2000 words a day. (I do get work done in the house of course!). My average so far is 1500 words a day. At this rate I’ll have another book available by Christmas.
I’m still planning to use TikTok as a platform for my work. I need to go through the course again, but I have posted videos there already, so I’m not a complete novice.. I’m waiting for my book to be available before I go daft and promote the hell out of it.
Other events during the month were lunch dates with my family and relatives. A trip to the Bognor Writers’ Group. That clashed with the England V. Germany game, but thankfully I was able to watch the recording. Dog walks, domestic duties, gardening (killing weeds really), running my church House Group, and trying to polish up my piano playing skills on my Clavinova. Life can be full, but underneath it all, it can be difficult too.
So what next for Michael Parker? Who knows? I might change course and become a painter, a musician, a dog walker. The world’s my oyster. Wish me luck!