The above e-novel was my first, of what is now five, e-Books published on Amazon.  It has been reviewed twice, both with four star reviews. If you want to learn more about it, you can tap the link at top of page. I loved writing the book and the two main fictional characters in this book, based on a true story, have now appeared in three e-novels. Baseball fiction does not sell well, unless you are named W.P. Kinsella, or Darryl Brock. So in order to gain more readers, because, as I said, I love this satire on fame and celebrity, I lowered price to 99 cents. 

I also decided to avail myself of Amazon’s marketing services and created an ad campaign with them. It is easy to setup. When submitted, either robots, humans, or some digital logarithms places the campaign in review to make sure it meets their standards of decency and all that jazz.  The campaign was approved. It was to begin May 9th and on that day I received an e-mail from their marketing service stating the campaign was stopped due to ‘low relevance.’

What, you ask, is ‘low relevance.’ Amazon says the following “There are a number of factors that impact relevance including the targeting you choose for your ad. Refining your targeting options to focus on related products or genres may improve your ad’s relevance.”

When I created the campaign you have a choice on whether to target by ‘interest’ or ‘product.’ For writers ‘interest’ is best. As I said baseball fiction is not a big seller and when choosing targeted relevance I chose literary fiction because neither sports fiction or satire was listed. But literary fiction was as close as I could get. I could select up to two I believe, so thought I should select another.

I redid campaign and submitted it again, this time adding ‘sports and outdoors’ under ‘other.’  I don’t know if this will work as campaign is under review, and even if approved, it may, like my first attempt, get approved then stopped on my new day to begin the campaign.

The only other problem I had in marketing with Amazon was the knife you see on the cover that I had to remove because of the image and what it means. I dealt with it, not a deal breaker. So I will see what happens with my new ‘relevance’ and in the interim I will contact marketing services to suggest they expand their list to include sports fiction and satire.