Figuring Out Facebook Ads

Experimenting with book ads and studying the results. I'm running a facebook ad for No Apologies and watching my Amazon rank fluctuate. 

An 12 day ad with a daily click through up to $5. giving me a total cost of $60. The book is not on sale, I left the prices the same as always. 

First day my rank dropped dramatically. From 923,485 to 32,291. The next day its up to the 300,000's. (I only checked it once that day, not realizing it was going to be changing that much) The following morning it dropped again into the 30,000. Yesterday, Friday, at 7 a.m. it was back up to the 300,000's. (Wish I charted these exact numbers, but i can only give you the approximations.) Friday afternoon I'm back in the 30,000's. This drop happened about 4 p.m. which I think was when everyone at work decided they had worked hard enough all week and jumped on facebook. ;)  It held there until about 9 p.m. when everyone probably broke open the wine and started ignoring facebook. (52,000's)

This morning we jumped back up to #110,761. Will this change when people start waking up? Break for lunch? Go back to facebook after dinner? I'm curious to see if weekends are better than weekdays. 


From what I've read on Booktrakker Amazon updates hourly. 

I'm wondering if some of this is the result of setting the ad to $5.00 a day for click throughs? I hit the $5. in click throughs and the ad stops running for the day? 

Are click throughs equaling sales? So far, not much. :( but we'll see what happens by day twelve. I'll let you know. 

Anyone else have luck with ads? Any hints or tips? 

Writing 556 Pages

Writing sometimes comes easy. I have one story I wrote a few years ago that's 556 pages. I don't know why this story went on for so long, I guess it just had a lot to say.

After I send No Apologies out the door, Threshold of Midnight is up next. This 556 page moose does need some reworking but the story line is pretty solid. But who the heck will commit to read 556 pages? I think the size of this book might be a turn off so I'm thinking of breaking it in half and do a "Book One" and "Book Two" thing with it.

Which brings a whole lot of other issues in because I believe both books should be stand alone. I wouldn't want someone grabbing book two and spending 225 pages lost in space.

This is going to require some thinking. I have to let it settle in my brain a bit before I get started. But I still have to finish No Apologies and I have about 50 pages to go in the final draft. In this book I changed the story line about half way though so I had to rewrite it all the way through. I almost didn't. I just wanted to put No Apologies on the shelf and move on. The only thing that stopped me was that I liked my main character and wanted to breathe life into her. And I liked her quirky little dog.

Have you ever had a manuscript so long that you feared its marketability? What did you do?

Writer Meet Chair

Writing is simple: writer meets chair. You have to just sit down and write. Carve out your time and just do it.

To which I reply; HA!

If it were truly that easy I'd have more than one book up on Amazon. Those five or ten books that I've actually finished would have more than one draft. I wouldn't be stressing over the cube thing interview I have this afternoon.

So yesterday I locked myself in my newly finished writer's cave, determined not to leave for the whole day. Outcome? I went from page 100 to 195 of my rewrite for No Apologies.

I'm keeping a log book next to my computer of date/time/page numbers of work done. When I got up this morning and looked at my book it felt good. I actually accomplished something yesterday. How the hell did that happen?

It wasn't easy. At times it was hard to keep my butt in the chair. The ghosts of Facebook and Twitter called. My email begged to be opened. The house called out to be cleaned. These were real creatures reaching into my cave and trying to pry me out of my chair. It almost felt like I was beating them off with that Louie-ville slugger I keep next to my night stand.

This morning I'm here again in my writing cave. Space heater cooking, trying to out work the cold February wind that's leaking through my windows, coffee at my side and dogs at my feet. The old calico cat is curled up on the towel I folded on the edge of my desk. I think she wants me to write. She looks so content as I hit the keys.
That's a picture of Hemmingway's desk down in Key West. When we went I took pictures of every room in his house. Tomorrow we'll visit his bathroom. ;)
See you tomorrow.....