Normally I’m a little wistful at the end of July for a variety of reasons. This year, however, I’m feeling a combination of relief and utter joy.

The relief is because the temps are dropping slightly around here. And I mean slightly, but they’ll going to be in the upper 90s as of 8/5/22 and I for one am grateful for temperatures that aren’t in the triple digits week after week. Supposedly we’re going to have a hot August as well here in the clavicle of Texas, but as long as I’m not seeing 108°F I’m good.

The utter joy is because I took Bryan Cohen’s free Author Ad Profit Challenge and learned some freaking important things about how to make Amazon ads work properly for me, how to write attention-grabbing ad copy, and why it’s important to update your book covers and make sure they’re appropriate for their respective market. I wrote a LOT of ad copy this month. I also recovered A Most Malicious Murder, Shifter Woods: Howl, Shifter Woods: Roar, Shifter Woods: Snarl, and Degree of Resistance, and I made some minor but important tweaks to the cover of Shadow of the Swan.

As a result, I’ve made $204.59 from Amazon sales this month, with an ad spend of $53. Granted, $90 of the sales income is from Crystal Shard, but $114 is from my existing backlist. I never, EVER see numbers like that for my backlist. And this is only after about two weeks of tweaking and improving ads. I’m really looking forward to seeing how I’m doing after a full month of having ads up and running for all of my books.

That being said, I am looking down the barrel of a dilemma. By rights, I should recover all of the Two Thrones books as well because their current covers aren’t in line with the fantasy romance market, which tend to feature royal/magical objects. But—people who buy print books like to have all of their print books from a series match, and there will be four more books in this series. If I switch covers in mid-stream, so to speak, I’m going to be pissing off OG fans and collectors. I do have the option of creating additional print editions of each book so that I can update the ebooks with the new cover, create a print version with the new cover and keep the old print version with the old cover. That being said, I’m not sure how that can all stay organized on Amazon.

Or I could update the ebooks, keep the trade paperbacks with their current covers, and create hardbacks with the updated ebook covers until I finish the series, then update all the trade paperback covers. It’s a bit complicated, but it’s doable.

Oh, well. That’s an issue for August.