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Marketing Loft [Public] / Re: Keyword feedback for a legal thriller?
« Last post by TimothyEllis on September 11, 2024, 12:01:56 PM »
You get to fill those 7 fields with up to 50 characters each.

So triple the number of words at least.

What was the nature of the crime? What sort of lawyers involved?

Think of every word that someone might search on to find your book, and cram it in somewhere.

Novels is redundant. Urban would be a category. murder trial should be there.
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Marketing Loft [Public] / Keyword feedback for a legal thriller?
« Last post by Gregg Bell on September 11, 2024, 11:54:25 AM »
The book is called The Perfect Lawyer.  It's a courtroom drama of a murder trial. The below is what I was thinking of using, and here's the blurb if that helps. Thanks.

Spoiler: ShowHide
Illinois Attorney Ike Thompson just wants to live out the rest of his days in peace.

Years ago, he was known as “the perfect lawyer” for his high-profile, pressure-packed criminal defense work in downtown Chicago. But after losing a crucial case to up-and-coming prosecutor Ursula “the merciless” Rush, his confidence was shattered, and ever since, he’s resigned himself to doing small-time real estate deals in the sleepy suburbs. He’ll never practice criminal law again. He’s lost his edge. Worse yet, he’s lost his courage.
When he’s asked to defend a sensational murder case that’s inflaming the nation, there’s no way he’s accepting.

But then he learns that the defendant, Mia Hendrickson, a young mother accused of setting the fire that killed her three small children, has been tried in the media and found guilty. That she’s been brutally beaten in jail. And that her public defender is incompetent.

Listening to his heart rather than his better judgment, Ike takes Mia’s case—only to find that his opposing counsel is none other than Ursula Rush. The prosecutor has a slam dunk case. The jury seems to be convinced that Mia is guilty. Ike’s old doubts surface and threaten to overwhelm him. Can he face down his fears—and save Mia’s life?


1. legal
2. courtroom
3. thrillers
4. dramas
5. suspense
6. mysteries
7. novels
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I've researched but found nothing recent ... AMS ads do take a while before you can properly assess whether they're working, correct? I don't mean Amazon approval, I mean looking at the results and deciding if you got it right.

Cheers for any help.

I've heard think long term. And don't think expense. Think investment.



The word you're looking for is gambling.  :icon_mrgreen:

Ha ha. Pretty much. The odds are definitely stacked in favor of the house.
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I've researched but found nothing recent ... AMS ads do take a while before you can properly assess whether they're working, correct? I don't mean Amazon approval, I mean looking at the results and deciding if you got it right.

Cheers for any help.

I've heard think long term. And don't think expense. Think investment.

The word you're looking for is gambling.  :icon_mrgreen:
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I've researched but found nothing recent ... AMS ads do take a while before you can properly assess whether they're working, correct? I don't mean Amazon approval, I mean looking at the results and deciding if you got it right.

Cheers for any help.

I've heard think long term. And don't think expense. Think investment.
66
That's kind of depressing. But for the moment, my aim is to get some sort result from AMS ... like, just any amount of sales just to prove it can be done. Then I'll see if it can be tweaked into any positive ROI.

So far, my self-chosen keywords have had little success, but I did deliberately stay away from popular and expensive ones. I'll be home in a few days and that will let me trial Publishers Rocket. If that doesn't help, I'll get a refund and maybe go back to the FB drawing board ... or maybe try BB.
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Publisher's Office [Public] / Re: Ingram Spark - Automated ordering ???
« Last post by lspierce on September 06, 2024, 02:44:56 AM »
I think the OP is looking for a provider, like Ingram Spark, that does POD hardcovers but with an API so the ordering process can be automated.  That is, a customer can go to the OP's website, order a hardcover book, and the OP's website sends that order information to the POD book printer's website to order and ship the book.  The OP's website can already do this for other merchandise because companies like printful have integration options where your website can communicate with theirs.  I believe the OP is looking for the same thing for POD hardcover books.

If you're looking to automate your IngramSpark orders, I’d recommend checking out my company Demon (demondms.com). It integrates with your e-commerce store and IngramSpark so your customers can place orders, and Demon handles the print-on-demand ordering automatically—no need to manually fill orders.

It works great with Shopify, so you won’t have to change much if this is what you're using already. It also supports platforms like Squarespace, WooCommerce, and others, giving you flexibility depending on where your site is hosted. It handles international orders (like selecting the printing region, and it even does the two factor automatically if you set it up to) and there's no limit to the number of orders.

There's good documentation, it ingests your products from IngramSpark automatically when you set up the integration, and for individual publishers with at most 10 POD products it's just $19.99 a month. It's not free, but it also takes away a lot of manual work. It also handles things that other systems don't, like placing POD orders across multiple different distributors.

They haven't played ball with any integrations, and I added this feature over the last year because of the closing of well-loved Small Press Distribution, which forced lots of small presses into tons of manual labor they couldn't afford to be doing. It does it by acting like a user - Demon has 3 dedicated servers that actually go out and do the work of placing the orders, getting the products, etc, 24/7. It has lots of fail-safes, and is currently processing the orders for 2 medium-sized publishers every day.

The documentation for Demon's IngramSpark, WooCommerce, Shopify, and Squarespace integrations are all easy to find from the link below.
https://docs.demondms.com/core/integrations/distributors/ingram-spark

Demon is a tool primarily used by small- to medium-sized publishers, and it has been around for about 5 years now. Of course this doesn't change the rest of the discussion around KDP vs Lulu vs Ingram vs another, but for those using Ingram, it's something.
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Positive ROI? I'm not sure that's ever happened with AMS ads.

When they first started, it was better. I know it can be done. Anarchist has said it's doable. But no matter how much time I spend tweaking, I lose money.

I think part of the problem is how many people are competing for clicks, driving up the price per click. It's high enough now in popular genres that you might well spend 1/3 to 1/2 of the royalty on a book paying for a click, which means you need a sale every two or three clicks just to break even. Conversion rates are seldom that high.

My philosophy used to be that such spending was an investment in the future. Now, it's more like keeping a patient on life support. In any given month, the majority of my sales come from AMS ads, except sometimes when I do a huge promotion for a new release. I'm not spending more than I can afford. I'll pull the plug if I have to.

Substack is driving some sales. We'll see if it becomes an eventual replacement for AMS ads.
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Writer 101 [Public] / Re: Self-Publishing on a Shoestring
« Last post by Gregg Bell on September 04, 2024, 12:10:08 PM »
You said it, LibreOffice. Post said Sigil. I second that. Compose in LIbreOffice .odt. Convert .odt in LibreOffice to .html. Open html in Sigil and format into .epub. And Sigil makes superb epubs. And LibreOffice makes superb pdfs for the paperback.

PS. And quit thinking so negative!  Grin
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In theory, ads on the actual platform where you want the sales should be more effective than ads on another platform. And AMS ads have always been more effective for me than Facebook ads. But they still aren't cost effective. Maybe you'll have better luck.

What do you call "cost effective", Bill? Surely you at least have a positive ROI?

Cheers!
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