If you're not currently thinking about or in the process of writing a book, you may want to skip this post. This is for those who are. 

It's been awhile since I last posted about my experience with Click Testing for Authors (CTA); a course teaching those planning to run ads to sell their books how to create more effective ads. In my case, in support of The Unlived Lives of Raymond Quinn, followed by the second and third editions to be released this fall, and spring 2026.

As creative as you might think you are, you don't just slam pretty pictures together with words you're certain will the cause the public to buy your book. Much more often than not they won't.

The CTA approach is a slow, methodical progression testing individual ad elements defining who the target consumer actually is along with what you should say to them. This includes testing slogans, headlines, testimonials, and images, first separately, and later, putting the "winners" together in ads you also test. And as if that weren't enough, you have to do this within Meta's ad manager, itself a daunting task.

How hard can that be?

The image you see in this post is just partially showing one of approximately 30 inputs for just one ad, in just one section, of one of six separate tests. In my case, five variants to twenty-two variants in each of those six tests.

It's hard!

None of this guarantees I will sell more books. As the course says, if my books are crap the course won't fix them, nothing will. But if they are good, and I've created good ads, there's still the need to spend money running the ads.

You have to pay to play.

I'm satisfied, often surprised with what I've learned writing Raymond's story, and now Shelly's, including that coming from the CTA course.

Time will tell if I'm trying to sell crap.

"I almost wish I hadn't gone down that rabbit-hole—and yet—and yet—it's rather curious, you know, this sort of life!" 

My original intent for Raymond's story was for it to be one and done; a literary "only child". Unfortunately, that dog don't hunt.

The further down the book marketing rabbit hole I've gone the more I realize how important is marketing. And near if not at the top of the book marketing list of things to do is this truism.

Write more books, you will sell more books. 

Book readers want to read a book that is part of a series rather than one, one and done. They do because (assuming they read and enjoy the first book) they want, and will pay to read more of the same.

I doubted this at first, or maybe I just didn't want it to be true. But after connecting with self-published authors, learning what they do, many with six, a few with seven figure incomes from selling their own books, it's definitely true.

It took me a little over a year to write Raymond's first draft. Another four plus years doing twenty plus wordsmithing rewrites before sending it off to an editor (who, having read it, couldn't believe I ever had a course in grammar.😐️)

As of today, February 21, I am a day or so away from completing the first draft of Shelly's Unlived Lives story, the sequel to Raymond's story. I began writing it January 2nd this year. It will be published on or about October 15 this year, no later.

I have the framework for the third and final in the Unlived Lives series. It will be published in the spring of 2026.

I've turned over a new writing "leaf".

I write more, more often. I will publish much sooner. I will market much more of what I write. 

Alice knew it; it is rather curious, you know, this sort of life!

​This may cause some of you who suspect I'm some sort of scientific/psycho babble nerd to no longer just suspect I am.

I came across a discussion of some of the works of Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist, psychologist Dr. Carl Jung that further fed my interest in things multiverse. While not referring directly to the possible existence of parallel universes or the multiverse, his work led others to believe there is a connection to what Dr. Jung called "Synchronicity."

"Synchronicity has been proposed as a corollary phenomenon of the many-worlds or parallel universes theory of quantum physics, in that the subject is somehow ‘navigating’ to those particular alternate worlds that are correlated to their past history, among the myriad possible other worlds that are not as correlated to their past history."

I am 'navigating' to articles such as this one searching for alternative worlds correlated to my past history writing Raymond Quinn's story, and now, Shelly Roul's in the sequel?

Wow, and all along I thought it was Google telling me where to go. 

Here's a plain language example of Synchronicity from the article. There are more if you care to read them.

"You drive to a place where parking is “next to impossible” and someone pulls out of a parking spot or it is waiting for you."

How do I find this stuff? A better question would be, how does it find me? Dr. Jung might say Synchronicity.​

I've been a huge music fan all my life, probably a bit too much so. Even today I maintain a YouTube Music subscription, which, according to YouTube Music, gives me access to over 100 million songs.

And then there's my personal collection purchased throughout the years, first on 45's, then LP albums, and finally CD's. I don't recall the last album I bought, but I do remember the first 45. "Cathy's Clown", 1960, $1.02 with tax. 

A dozen or so years ago, I digitized all the analog LP's along with my 400+ CD's. All 78 GB of it now on my NAS (Network-Attached Server). I can listen to it wherever and whenever I wish. I still have two storage boxes containing around 200 or so 45's.

Do I listen enough to justify having bought it all in multiple formats, the equipment to play it, particularly in light of having the YTM subscription?

No. But I do so enough not to regret it or to cancel the subscription.

Music is my "time machine" connection to, as the Beatles sang, "people and things that went before". A sort of theme song for my interest in the multiverse.

What connects you?