My Week: Frustrations and Hope?

My week started on a frustrating note. Somehow, I lost a very important file, and I mean lost, as in completely gone; vanished. I took to Google for advice on reclaiming it, but none of its suggestions worked. The file wasn't even in my recycle bin. I scoured the detestable OneDrive, where all my files land whether I want them to or not. Nope, not there. I blame Microsoft—doesn't everyone? Finally, I watched a video Google recommended, in which the guy told me to download something called Disk Drill, a (thankfully) free program. Then I set it to work, which took practically a full day. Not even Disk Drill could undo Microsoft's dastardly deed.

So, I fell back on, "accept the things I cannot change". Still really miss that file, though. It's impossible to recreate.

Generally, when a week starts out badly, it doesn't improve. That probably has a lot to do with attitude. Little annoyances bother me more than they normally would, because I'm already dealing with other bullshit. 

My Firefox browser, where I store all my bookmarks, finally drove me to drown it in a well. I've been a dedicated Firefox user for years, but in the last six months or so it's gone squirrely on me. If I have, for instance, four tabs open (which aren't many) and then I want to open a site with streaming video, such as YouTube, Firefox bitches that it's just too much for it to bear, so it pulls a pout and leaves. And getting it to come back takes hours. And no, "clearing my cache" doesn't fix the problem. F it. I'm done.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating: Sometimes I really miss drinking. 😏 

But on the bright side, I've got a FreeBooksy ad running today for Running From Herself (GET IT WHILE IT'S FREE!), and while free downloads do nothing except raise the book's ranking on Amazon, this is exactly my aim. Starting Monday, my Amazon ad will run, and I'm hoping the novel will have a decent ranking so potential customers may feel it's a worthwhile purchase. 

Thus, my "strategy":

1. Run a FreeBooksy ad (with the new, beautiful book cover) and achieve a bunch of downloads.
2. The novel's Amazon ranking gets a temporary boost.
3. Start my Amazon ad with a book ranking that reflects the novel's popularity.

Obviously, I have absolutely no idea if that will work. If I was an expert marketer, I'd change my profession. All I know is, I can (surely) do better than this:

Best Sellers Rank: #1,390,694 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)

• #1,298 in Contemporary American Fiction
• #6,776 in Coming of Age Fiction (Kindle Store)
• #9,881 in Coming of Age Fiction (Books)

To that end, I've promoted the book for free on social media and...well, that's it. Where else would I have to promote it?

My one and only previous Amazon ad (for one of my novellas) might have gotten one click; it was either one or none--can't remember--so being hopeful is likely uncalled for. But as you know, this is my last shot. I've tried everything else.

I'm so used to being ignored that when I opened Instagram today and found a giant image of my book cover as the first item in my queue, I was temporarily confused. I hadn't posted anything recently. Then I realized it was a book review. Ohh, one of the bookstagrammers whose services I employed finally came through. I naively thought it was an organic review. 🤣

The review is great, but I realize it's a bookstagrammer's job to make a book sound great. Still...I at least know he read it, because everything in his narrative couldn't have been gleaned from the blurb alone. (I really, really like it when a reviewer actually reads the book.) And I have to say, my new cover looks fantastic!

In other news, my first newsletter in five months went out on Friday, and because I also subscribe to it (why not?) I can attest that it looked quite professional. That didn't stop three people from unsubscribing. I've chosen to be philosophical about unsubscribes. Number one, I won't be sending out another newsletter anyway; and two, as Rachel D. Russell writes, "I’d rather have 1000 dedicated and engaged readers than 5000 ghosts—or more."

No, I don't have 1,000 dedicated readers of my newsletter; I have 325 (well, 322 now, and they're not exactly dedicated). And only 70 recipients opened my email, with one person clicking on the book link I provided (shrug). It doesn't matter. That kind of thing used to upset me, but I just don't care about newsletters. I do hope my single fan opens it, though, because I thanked her specifically.

My suspicion that all my scam marketers are coming from LinkedIn hasn't yet been proven, but I did go in and look at my posts, and Inn Dreams does have a really big image, for some reason. I certainly didn't do that on purpose. I can see why it's eye-catching. Once I was on the site, I realized that I'd never created a separate post for Running From Herself, so I added one, and now we'll see if these marketing experts start referencing that book instead.

Overall, what began as a really aggravating week has settled into more of a wait-and-see. I prefer the latter; it's much more peaceful.

(And I have no idea why my font color and size keeps changing on this post.)

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