I woke up to this:

Six inches, with a coating of ice, followed by a deluge of sorta rain, back to big floofy snow flakes. There’s not much traffic, schools are on 2 hour delay, and I ain’t going nowhere.

Not that I want to, but I’m an American. I have a right to drive my truck wherever I want, whenever I want… Besides, I never panic-shopped for this one and I’m actually out of a few victuals (translation: rolls, potato chips, low on coffee creamer).

Why is she so snarly, you ask?

Well, when I checked my email (the home account), I had 632 spam messages in Chinese (or Klingon) avowing a delivery failure or selling me a product I might have been interested in except it was in Klingon and probably laden with 12 really nasty viruses looking to overrun my computer and release state secrets to the Chinese/Klingon military.

See what happens when you watch David James Spader on The Blacklist and screech bloody murder because… CLIFFIE!

Then, there’s the matter of the Amazon ads offered as an exclusive to Kindle Select patrons (I have 5 titles there). It’s a pay-per-click program with a $100 minimum pot, but you get to set and experiment with the pennies-per-click rate in an auction where you are bidding against other author-advertisers for space on a title’s page in a genre/category you chose. You are only charged if someone clicks on the ad and goes to your title’s page. There’s no guarantee of a sale. You’re paying for a pointer to a product.

Yeah, I said the same thing, just not as politely.

For shits ‘n giggles I signed up Roman (Saints and Sinners) since it needs some love (aka sales). I started at 10 cents/click and had 32 “impressions”. Zero clicks, zero sales. Hmm. Obviously I’m not winning the war to get on the page, and even if I am there, I’m pond sludge.

So, I upped the ante to 15 cents and woohoo! I have 302 “impressions”. Zero clicks. Zero sales. I’ve yet to track down an actual page where my ad appears, but a friend told me the CLICK button looks just like a BUY button.

Color me underwhelmed. I don’t see this as the next big thing. No clicks, no draw down on my account, I get my money back. But then again, the Zon has my $$ for a month (or however long the ad campaign runs), earning interest, times however many idiots  authors like me took the bait.

Let’s just say this week is not off to a rousing start…