We’ve almost reached antibiotics! — Anyway, today’s milestone is that I set up an Amazon ad for Healers book 1. It’s a very limited one and only on the US storefront, but I’m still learning the setup system. I have never done a cost-per-click ad or any advertising on Amazon. I’ve never had anything against advertising, it’s just that I know very little about it and didn’t have the energy to learn about it.

Honestly, the “why now” of it all is that a program I’m already using to research keywords (the kind in the store metadata, which help people find the book) added a more robust system for helping you figure out what ad keywords might work for your book, too. Because I certainly didn’t know where to start. We’ll see how it goes.

I had planned on not promoting Healers at all until it has a new cover, but then I thought I could fiddle around and learn more about the process/system in the meantime. I don’t expect the world, but my spending is low enough that it couldn’t hurt.

All of this is not very interesting, but in the back of my mind I’m also thinking about a podcast episode I listened to today — mostly about AI art and how it has swamped social media, but also about reminding people that creativity can be messy and take time, and that we (waving vaguely) are humans. And YES.

I respect authors who can turn around a book every month (or more often); I worry for them a little bit, but they are adults and can tend to their own work/life balance. I do know that it literally could not be me. I do want to write more than one book every six years, that was deeply frustrating. But it’s not going to be one per month. It’s just not, and I won’t apologize for it anymore. That’s fine if that’s what you do, but that’s not what I’m capable of doing.

Anyway, this is me, back on my anti-grind culture bullshit. <3 Good night, humans. Off to write about my new set of cranky protagonists for a little bit.