Finding Books "Connected" to mine

Welcome, Mark, Christine & Pattie. Yes, I can afford to do shout-outs when my audience grows - my newsletter is still young enough that I celebrate each change like one does with their firstborn. "Look, she spat up on me! So cuuute!" If I keep going, I'm sure there's a 3rd-child/thousandth-diaper stage, but for now, "Three new people. So cooool!"

I rambled on a bit about work last week, so I'll keep the personal info short this week and jump into writing.

Writing Updates

Last week I revealed some artwork--I didn't touch art any this week, except for some minor changes to spit out some of the same images with transparent backgrounds for my web site. But I did decide to request more artwork for the character reveals, which I'm really loving, so thanks, @inkqueenmarketing. I haven't pulled the trigger on any Fiverr orders yet, but I'm in contact with the artist team I used for the Guardian League pics. I also have a new artist I'm trying for a scenic picture for Book 4. If it clashes too much with the existing style, I won't be able to use it, but I thought it would be fun to add some variety to the art.

I followed a lot of marketing ideas over the last week. Bryan Cohen held his 5-day Author Ad Profit Challenge, and I sat through my second iteration. He ran one in-between the first one I took, so I've been running ads for a while, and had some data I could lean into as I read through the instructions and watched the replays (his webcasts are never at a good time for me, with my day job). I added a couple of second-generation ads, based on what I learned. One of the more interesting bits I pulled from my data was that my most successful orders were from click-throughs for books I'd never heard of. The "Also Bought" list-scraping from my first generation ads had hit a couple of nuggets. In fact, four nuggets, but two stronger than the other two. Have you read any of these? (I put links to the amazon pages with the pics... I get nothing out of that - just in case the books interest you). I can also tell you who, in my head, I write like, but I found that using keywords related to those authors did not do well--very interesting woods to explore.

So I've now created my first attempts at second-generation ads, and I'll sit back and wait to see how they do. And learn. I could also see which of my ad copy ideas did the best, and the result surprised me. The winning ad goes slightly against the recommendations from Cohen's ad school, or maybe I need to think about it a little differently. Here's the two top ads, with the most successful first:

The real problem with overpopulation? Earth became a target. Dive into a Manhattan that wrestles with burgeoning magic, careening toward disaster.

Magic isn’t real. Alien invaders? Ha! Yet, unless one skeptical security guard decides to believe, Earth and her life will meet a swift end.

What do you think? I thought the second one would win because it brought in the main character and made it more personal. But that's the point of these ads... try different things and learn. (Those weren't my only two... those were ads 12 and 13, which were not the last.)

Wow, that was just one of the marketing things I did this week, and the newsletter already grows long. I'll save the Facebook/Meta Ad coaching and the new plan with @inkqueenmarketing for another day.

Let me quickly provide an update on Book 4. I'm editing chapter 55 of 101. I've tackled some of the structural problems I mentioned last week, but I'm not happy with it yet. I still think I've introduced some of the events too abruptly, and I need more backstory, or a different ordering, to make the story flow. This round of editing often results in two steps forward and one back--as I work on the chapters in the 50s, I realize I need another chapter somewhere in the 30s to make the story flow, so take "I'm editing chapter 55" with a grain of salt.

Oh, one other fun bit - I dropped off bookmarks at our local B&N for them to give away. I still plan to get bookmarks and book plates to my street team, along with copies of the final books (since their ARC copies are not final versions), but I don't have all the pieces, and my oldest daughter (the most avid reader amongst my kids) tells me my title pages "don't look right yet".

o To-Do list for writing last week: