In the aftermath of finally hitting “publish” I made a shocking discovery. Well, more of a re-discovery really.

There are a plethora of websites out there that newbie authors can subscribe to via email, full of great advice and, more often than not, soft sell tactics to get you to part with your money on the promise that their product can help you get started or get better.

I don’t subscribe to that many for one simple reason. I learned the hard way that the more subs emails you get from all those writing & book marketing advice sites, the more likely you are to simply file them in a folder, fully intending to read them later… only for later to never come.

Before you know it you’ve folders and folders full of hundreds of filed-but-unread emails. Since I’ve now taken the first step on the yellow brick road to Authorville, I thought I’d better start working my way through some of them. And it was in one of those folders that I made my shocking re-discovery.

Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur site is one of my favourite writer advice sites. But apparently I signed on for his Amazon AMS Ads course TWO YEARS AGO.

My progress? 0%! Whoops!

Since The Next Prime Minister is my first, and so far only self published book, I at least had something to advertise. Dave’s course details two types of ads – Sponsored and Display. Clicking on the “run an ad campaign” button on my Kindle Direct Publishing dashboard for the UK Amazon site, I was only offered the option of Sponsored, why I don’t know.

Since I’ve never done this before it’s all baby steps.  Or it would have been if it wasn’t for the fact that no sooner had I started than I hit the roadblock of needing a VAT number. A quick check on the SPF 101 Facebook Group revealed that there was no point going any further as those who had gone before me had just ended up going round in circles!

So no need to worry about spending too much money on Amazon Ads then! On the plus side I did at least get 26% of the way through the course before I discovered it was a complete waste of time…

 

In other news, editing of The Fan Film Book is almost complete, meaning there’s just going to be a bit more jiggery-pokery to go with the formatting in Kindle Create before that gets released to keep The Next Prime Minister company on my Amazon Author Page. Since today is November 23rd, Doctor Who Day, I had hoped to have the book ready for release today but it’ll be ready when it’s ready.

Now it’s back to my Email Folders to try and reduce the amount of Unreads I’ve got filed!