I began this adventure in marketing my books armed with good advice and two how-to books literally walking me step by step through the process. I put one of them aside fast, when I realized I couldn’t afford my learning curve with Facebook ads.

My how-to book for successful Amazon ads had problems, too. It was written back when Amazon offered something called Product Display Ads, an option my source highly favored. By the time I got to following his advice, this type of ad had been discontinued. (Thank you Amazon.)

The replacement for product display ads was like handing a chain saw to someone who wanted to use a stiletto.  I could use the power of ads displayed on a kindle, but could only select my audience using broad genre types like Women’s Fiction. These are called Lock-screen Ads and I am selling books with them, just not nearly enough to be actually making money. At least so far.

Amazon’s other options for me is something called a Sponsored Ad.  My mentor/author didn’t think much of using these, but I bravely tried the concept of picking keywords from my books and bidding for clicks. Every time, it failed miserably, but the good news is if hardly anyone clicks on your ad, it doesn’t cost you much.

A little poking around showed me I had another choice called Individual Products. It involves picking products (books) similar to mine, and advertising to those who buy them. It took forever to seek out these books, although it probably was a good exercise for me to get to know more about what was out there. None-the-less, all this effort yielded even fewer clicks and cost almost nothing.

Then recently a new option emerged. I could bid to advertise based on genre, just like with my Lock-screen ads, but the ads would appear to all Amazon users. So I tried it. And oh my goodness.

The stiletto was back, just not on Kindle where I needed it. I still can’t pick my audience by demographics like gender or age, but I can specify my ideal reader using genre divisions I never knew existed. With Lock-screen Ads, my tale of a 40-something female telepath who gets involved rescuing a kidnapping victim gets advertised to readers of women’s fiction, fantasy, and adventure.

Here women’s fiction alone offers more options than I’d ever heard of.

So I’m trying it.  Will this turn out to be the magic bullet that sells my books at an actual profit?

There is no one in this world more hopeful than a self-published author.