Dip

Sales of First and Next Time dipped by about a third last week, which is a little disconcerting, to be sure. Also, the ads I usually run over the weekends drained the budget slower each day. I’m not sure of the reasons, but there are several possibilities. One could be that the Amazon algorithms are not recommending my books as usual per the spate of low-rated reviews I mentioned in the last post. Maybe, but there have also been several new ones that were good, as well as continued high ratings that didn’t include reviews. I don’t know, maybe that could be part of it. It could be that my ads have been running too long and people aren’t responding to ads they’ve already seen or clicked on. However, sales usually remain steady throughout the week and there’s not really a bump on the weekends, which makes me think the ads are for awareness and not necessarily driving immediate sales. These two reasons - reviews and ad clicks - could be part of the downturn. Other reasons? American football season started. School is back in session. It was just an off week. Whatever the case, this week is starting to look similar based on the daily Amazon rankings. Let’s hope this is just a temporary dip before a big upturn in new readers.