So, I need to start this week’s post off with an apology. I completely forget to post last week. I’m sorry. I actually remembered about halfway through the week, but at that point I figured I might as well wait and do a double post this week since I was busy digging out from a snowstorm at that point.
I don’t know if there’s any one thing I can attribute my forgetfulness to, but I guess I had a lot of things to do–not all of it book related and posting my weekly update just slipped my mind. So, I’ll try to sum up what I’ve been busy with these past two weeks.
At the End of My Rope
Well, when I last posted, I had some work cut out for me as far as tweaking the cover for Blood Answer the final book in my Culver Creek series. The tweaks have at last been completed, but it all took a lot longer than I intended, and throughout I found myself becoming increasingly disgruntled with my choice of cover image for the book.
To be clear, I think the rope photo is awesome and fits the book, but of the three books in the series this image gave me the most trouble when I needed to design the print versions of the books. Getting the rope to wrap all around the cover while not getting in the way of the text proved to be more of a challenge than I had anticipated.
When working on the two hardcover versions of the book with those big dust jackets I ended up having to to get a little extra creative, and had to do some digital painting to get it to look decent. Had I known it was going to cause so many issues and take so much extra time I probably would have chosen a different image at the outset, but by that point I was so invested in the project and the design I felt I had to see it through.
So, I definitely spent a lot more time than I intended on the cover design for book four.
Heading Out On Tour
I’m headed out on a book tour . . . a virtual one that is. I have two different book blog tours scheduled for next month, and I spent time during the last two weeks, completing some tasks for my Partners in Crime book blog tour. Specifically, I wrote three guest posts and completed three written interviews.
I had booked the tour awhile ago, something you do need to do with blog tours as spaces are limited, and even though the posts won’t run until January. The host wanted to make sure she had everything in this week, and I wanted to have everything done so that I didn’t have to worry about that with all the other stuff I have to do for the book launch.
Advertising
The other big undertaking this past week was to get started on working on book ads, specifically for social media. I have created and scheduled a couple of ads to run on Pinterest, and I’m in the process of setting up ads for Facebook.
I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook ads. I think they have a lot of potential for reaching readers and selling books, and so that’s why I love them. I also really LOVE the fact that you can target users so specifically on Facebook. That to me, makes it a very useful tool for reaching the right eyeballs.
So, what do I hate about Facebook ads? Well, I don’t know if it’s a knock against them, but since I am a somewhat infrequent Facebook advertiser, I am frustrated by the fact that it seems every time I log in to the ads manager something has changed completely and I have to relearn everything, but that’s just the complaint of an old dog who has to learn new tricks.
The other thing that drives me crazy about Facebook ads is the fact that they have all different placements and each one has a completely different shape of the ad that appears. So, the reason I have not scheduled any Facebook ads yet is that I need to determine which placements I want to focus on then design my ad to the correct shape for those placements. So, that’s what’s on the agenda this week. Well, that and taking a break from all this book launch stuff to enjoy a nice, quiet Christmas with my boyfriend.
Here’s wishing you a very Merry Christmas!
