I Have a Terrible Habit

When something doesn't work that's supposed to work, do I give up? Oh, no; not me. I double down. Because I'm an idiot. 

Here's the thing: If you've got scores-to-hundreds of people claiming something is "no fail", it's gotta be you, right? You're just not doing it correctly. But could it be that I'm just listening to the wrong people?  It's like when I was informed that BookBub ads were phenomenally successful. You'll be showered with sales! I think I got two or three, which doesn't even qualify as a light drizzle. Did I let that stop me? Hardly. I created a few more ads, tried targeting different comp authors, played around with which countries my ads would appear in. I did even worse.

Inevitably, it takes getting beat over the head a few times for me to catch on that people were lying. You always hear about that "one guy" ~ the one who netted 2,000 book sales from a one-day BookBub ad. That one phantom guy. And that one guy's story makes the rounds, and before you know it, the story changes. It didn't just happen to one guy, but to millions of guys, and if it didn't happen for you, well, that's on you. You're obviously doing something wrong. I internalized that, of course. It must be my ad, it's my cover; my background is the wrong color, I'm pricing my book too high.

I've wasted so much money on promoting my books that I'll never recoup, the smart move would be to just stop; cut my losses. But boy, don't ever book me a flight to Vegas, because here I go again. I'm going to slap up a new Facebook ad. I just took the wrong approach with the first one. Yea, that's the ticket. There's a learning curve; I have to allow for that, right? The second ad has gotta be golden. After all, everybody says...

According to "everybody", places like Facebook and BookBub are populated by ravenous dogs just waiting for a delicious book morsel to be tossed their way. An author can't lose! Except all I do is lose. It's bad enough that I submitted the wrong version of my novel to book contests (more money down the drain, as well as my reputation); I've got to now bet it all. At this rate, my gambling problem has gotten so bad, I'll soon start embezzling from my employer. (Luckily, I don't have an employer.)

So, here I go. This is my last bet.

I swear.