Season 1...

Interesting, mostly due to worldbuilding. If you enjoy the cyberpunk genre, you'll like this from a bird's-eye view.

Acting: A couple actors do solid work. Most do forgettable work. A few do consistently cringe-worthy work.

Writing: Uneven. Some good episodes and some bad episodes.

Directing: Solid. A few great sequences surrounded by really good ones. Poor choices here and there, but that's to be expected when you're relying on a stable of directors (unlike, for example, season 1 of True Detective).

Visuals: great. Big budget put to good use.

Overall: 7


Season 2...

A dumpster fire.

Acting: with the exception of one character, sh*tty.

Writing: terrible. Bad enough to make you curse the writers.

Directing: also terrible. Storytelling sacrificed for cool-looking scenes (which aren't nearly as cool-looking as the directors probably imagined).

Visuals: ho-hum. Lower budget than season 1. But rather than leaning into the storytelling, they tried to dazzle and totally missed the landing.

Overall: 2 (only saving grace was one particular character's arc).

Folks, don't expect to make everything work the first time. You're learning a new tool. It's normal to not get it and understand it. Doesn't mean you're stupid or inept or worse. It's just a new thing. Starting from zero is starting from zero. It makes everyone feel stupid while learning.

And if you only try to use the thing once a month, no wonder there are things forgotten. Only daily use makes it faster to be learned.

Don't be too hard on yourselves for learning. And don't expect perfection. Give yourself a break and learn to be learning. It's totally normal to suck at first. It's all part of the process.

A lot of it is common sense, but I picked up enough tips and pointers to make it worthwhile (watched the vids at 1.75x speed which helped)

I also find that watching a few videos on AMS ads gets me enthusiastic about putting in the effort, which is sometimes an issue for me. (Repetitive paperwork tasks, I mean.) Half the time I'm convinced I'm better off writing more books in the time I might spend herding hundreds of ads and thousands of keywords.

I've been checking my 7-day vs 30-day vs 90-day KU pageread averages in SalesScanner, and almost every 7 day average is in the green, whereas every single 30-day was in the red vs 90 day. So something's moving on the KU front even though sales numbers aren't really there.

I do like the idea of 2nd gen and 3rd gen ads using the best bits from the many scattergun ads we start out with.

A slew of these things have popped up in the last year spamming me. The pitch is often identical, with different names, and they're clearly automated since they keep asking to promote random books in the series.

My educated guess is that they are scams slapped together to take your relatively small spend ($20-$30) and do very little for you (if anything), but they make thousands for the owners of the sites by casting a wide net. Extremely substandard in other words, even if not phishing.

I just checked the aussie product page for one of my own books, and there was a carousel with six pages of sponsored books underneath - all of them mine.

As someone said (Bryan?) it's better to fill your product pages with your own products than someone else's...