I’ve been trying to reserve weekends for crafting and any time-intensive publishing business work, like checking my Amazon ads. And from this morning’s work I clearly have to go in and tweak/replace the bulk of those ads because they are simply not performing (interestingly enough the ad for A Most Malicious Murder, my alternate history mystery written as Melanie Fletcher, is the only one that is doing gangbuster business. Go figure).

Like most things, ads aren’t something you can set and forget. You have to go in regularly and check how they’re doing, tweak and prune where necessary, and sometimes wipe completely and start over with new ones. There are a number of different schools of thought on that last bit—some people recommend that you try and jump-start a poorly performing ad, while others recommend that you retire it and start over.

One thing I’ve learned in the time I’ve been doing ads is that you really have to figure out what works best for you. This is a case where one size most definitely does not fit all and you have to experiment with blurbs and price points until you find what delivers you the best ROI. Which is a little frustrating for a lot of indie authors because it would be so much easier if there was a proven, cut and dried way to create effective ads. That simply isn’t the case, much as I wish it were. You can have the catchiest ad copy and the greatest blurb in the world, but sometimes it’s just not going to work on someone who isn’t in the mood for your book when they click on your ad. *shrugs* Sucks, but there it is.

So I keep learning from the ads that are performing well and tweaking the ones that aren’t. Not the most exciting thing in the world, but it’s all part of the business of publishing.