This is where the magic happens! There’s not a glass of wine or a bottle of spirits in sight. If you’re wondering… no, I didn’t clear up before taking random shots to show you. Nor do I suffer from OCD, but I prefer order to chaos.
Every book has been written in this room. The decor, desk, PC, printer, and chair may have changed, more than once, over the past decade – and I haven’t always sat that close to the window; but, variety is the spice of life.
The small collection of trophies and mementoes I included in last month’s newsletter is behind me. They’re sandwiched between another item I’m never without.
Some of you will recognise the album cover – Led Zeppelin – the original vinyl from 1969. I bought it within days of release. (It’s hard to accept that’s almost 55 years ago). You won’t find any middle-of-the-road stuff in the stack. My favourite CDs from a wide range of bands and solo artists are in the basket on the shelf above. If you checked the drawers in the cupboard to the right you would find cassette tapes, which help me recall the hundreds of singles and albums I sold when three growing children stretched the purse strings 40 years ago.
I don’t always listen to music when I write, and it’s quiet this afternoon because I’m expecting a delivery between 2 pm and 5 pm, and don’t want to miss hearing the doorbell.
That’s enough nostalgia for one blog post.
What have I been reading that I would recommend to you?
A short story collection from Joffe Books, which included offerings from Faith Martin, Joy Ellis, Bill Kitson, and three other authors who appear in my Also Boughts carousel on Amazon. I also revisited Liz Mistry’s ‘Unquiet Souls’, the gritty police procedural featuring DS Gus McGuire in the first of an eight-book series.
Since I finished the final Freeman Files book this time last year, I’ve been searching for a way to get the best from my extensive backlist. Work on another book/series has been going on in the background, but I can’t give it my full attention until I solve the advertising riddle.
Bryan Cohen’s 5-Day Ad Profit Challenge offered a free opportunity to learn the basics of Amazon Ads. I’d tinkered with them in the past (along with BookBub, Facebook, and others) but all I did was pour money down the drain. The Challenge involved watching the videos, completing homework, and sharing your experiences with around 6000 others who had embarked on the same journey. It sounds a lot, doesn’t it?
But with four million new books being published each year, anything you can do that gives you an edge over the competition has to be a benefit.
How did I fare? I found Bryan Cohen to be very personable, and he explained things in a way that even an aged technophobe like me could understand. I learned how to keep my Ad costs reasonable, which statistics to focus on, and how to create Auto, Category, and Keyword Ads over the following days. They’re still running, without any sea change, but the Challenge also highlighted several areas that many of us might need to attend to before we would see improved results.
Did we even have our books in the right Categories? Had we found the optimum Keywords for the 7 boxes in KDP when we published our titles? I found this part of the Challenge the most interesting, and although I’d spent hours in the past 12 months working on the subject I soon realised I must do better. Since the Challenge ended I’ve set up a schedule to uncover hundreds more relevant keywords to support my Ad campaigns. If I keep things organised, like my office space above, then I hope to be able to make time to finish writing the book that’s on the back-burner.
That’s it for this month. I’ll be back in March with an update.
This is where the magic happens! There’s not a glass of wine or a bottle of spirits in sight. If you’re wondering… no, I didn’t clear up before taking random shots to show you. Nor do I suffer from OCD, but I prefer order to chaos.
Some of you will recognise the album cover – Led Zeppelin – the original vinyl from 1969. I bought it within days of release. (It’s hard to accept that’s almost 55 years ago). You won’t find any middle-of-the-road stuff in the stack. My favourite CDs from a wide range of bands and solo artists are in the basket on the shelf above. If you checked the drawers in the cupboard to the right you would find cassette tapes, which help me recall the hundreds of singles and albums I sold when three growing children stretched the purse strings 40 years ago. 
