The book they tried to ban.

June 6^th. 2020

One week moves effortlessly into another week, and for many of us it all seems repetitive. For some its because of the lockdown, but in my case its about looking after Pat. There has been a little change in her condition: marginal improvements here and there, but she still needs constant attention. She is no stronger but at least she is eating a little better and holding her weight at seven stone. I hope we can get that higher. We manage to get out more. In the morning I take her with me and the dog for a walk. During the afternoon we go for a drive. We’ve been to four seaside resorts and managed to walk along the prom at two of them. Pat’s in the wheelchair of course. When I’ve finished this blog, we’ll take a drive again, but no walk because it’s raining.

My book world has thrown up some interesting stuff, mainly Facebook. My ads have worked OK, and I decided to run the campaign for my book, The Boy from Berlin again. It ran for about twelve hours and was then stopped because it didn’t adhere to FB’s ad policy. Took me a while to figure that one out, seeing as it had run fine for the whole of May. Turns out that FB did not like the use of my headline referring to a white racist front runner for the presidency. That was an extract from the first line of the blurb, but FB suddenly discovered they didn’t like it. Once I’d amended the text, the ad was accepted and being served again. I have also run the same ad in UK; I want to see how one does against the other: one in USA, the other in UK. Strange thing though about the American angle. When I tried to put that up for a featured deal on Book Bub, it was rejected for USA but allowed for Canada, UK and Australia. Obviously my headlines touched sensitive nerves in this American presidential election year. I wondered how I could capitalise on the double rejection and advertise the book as “The book they tried to ban!”. It would definitely sell well then.

My other title, No Time to Die, has been on a four-day promotion, and to date I have sold 12 copies. The price was reduced to 0.99, which helped, but later today or tomorrow, I’ll be putting the price back up. My sales this month are 23 so far, just over three a day. I wonder how long I can sustain that? I need to keep an eye on my advertising costs though. I’m also running a campaign on Book Bub, but that is low key.

I finished reading Glass Dolls by D.E.White. I enjoyed the book but found it a little repetitive at times. At least I finished it, but I would probably only award it four stars. I’ve just started The Chain by Adrian McKinty. It has attracted all kinds of five-star quotes from well-known writers, so it should be good. I just hope I can get used to McKinty’s odd writing style. We’ll see.

Next for me is to learn a little more about FB advertising, and to start studying Mark Dawson’s latest Amazon Ads for Authors course (I’m already a paid-up member). He claims it is probably the best course of its kind currently available anywhere online having recruited ex-Amazonian, Janet Margot and persuaded her to compile the whole thing. Maybe one day I’ll know how its done. Wish me luck!