Third One's the Charm

I told you that I'm taking an online 5-Day Amazon Ads Challenge class so I've been hyper-focused on my books, both paperback and eBooks. Every aspect of them has to be right. On the first day of class we made sure to have the right subtitle for the books. Unfortunately you can't change or add a subtitle to paperbacks but you can to eBooks so I changed the one for Better Than Mom's from "where you don't have to be told to clean your plate" to "life and love in a small town diner." Much more of a hint of what's inside. Now for The Seaview we have "Caribbean love after loss romance" and Horizon got "mature romance in a rural setting." I was happy with those changes but I kept thinking about ways to make the books more appealing and I thought that Horizon's cover was too dull and dark so the other day I found a more cheerful sunset picture for free and changed the cover. Better but not exactly right. Today I went over to JB's house to brainstorm keywords, categories, and navigating the Marketing tab of the Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard. I talked about wanting to change Horizon's cover and she pulled up a stock photo site that I hadn't seen so I went there and found the perfect picture. Naturally it wasn't free. I had to sign up on the site and pay for a month's membership to get a copy of the photo without watermarks all over it but it's worth it. It's exactly what I was hoping for. And when I got home I went right into my account on the photo site and cancelled the recurring membership charge. They were bereft to see me go but I was adamant. Anyway, here's the picture. What do you think?

I spent the morning surfing Amazon looking for authors and titles of books that I could piggyback my ads onto. I found quite a few so I made a list, made two lists for each title actually, and spent the time at JB's constructing ads and typing in all of these keywords. All of my work is paying off. I've gotten over a hundred new impressions since I started the class, no clicks or sales yet, but I can be patient.

The Cardinal landed on the platform feeder in the morning sunlight (it got cloudy and rainy in the afternoon and only got up to 45 degrees) so I couldn't resist taking his picture. I saw a pair of Goldfinches (the male was all bright yellow and black) on the round feeder but they weren't here long enough for me to get a shot.

And here's the day lilies sprouting on the other half of the retaining wall. I just love looking out back and seeing all of the green getting taller by the day.

I pulled out 10-Steps: Flowers late this afternoon and found some Snowdrops to draw and color. They remind me of spring.

Today's Daily Practice wasn't as much of a challenge as I thought it'd be. I confess that I didn't paint in as many flowers as she had because I didn't want them to all bleed together. I think she uses less water than I do or maybe they cut out the drying time from the video but anyway here's one of her faces with a floral braid. Not bad, although the eyes are a little odd. Next time I won't use ink in wet paint.

Now I have a mission to sell through all of the copies of Horizon that I have on hand so that I can order some with the new cover. I'm so excited that I found it--and now all of the old ones will be collector's items! Next Saturday is the last indoor Market on Military. We've all decided that we aren't going to do the summer market, it's just too much of a commitment, every Thursday from 2-7 from May through October. No, not giving that much of my time to flogging books. I'm waiting for the tour buses to visit the Sturgeon Bay bookstore, those might be some very fun and profitable times. I never thought I'd burst forth in all of this marketing stuff. Never. I was going to be happy selling a few books to family and friends. Oh well, a girl can change her mind.

--Barbara