Recently, I signed up with a company called “BookBub” that is essentially a huge mailing list of books on sale. I promoted my book “The Hidden Institute” on there, dropping the price to $0.99. For sci-fi books selling for under a dollar, the cost was $120 to mail an ad to 90k subscribers who had expressed an interest in sci-fi. If I got even half of one percent of their subscribers to buy my book, the ad would pay for itself.

Goals

Before we start talking about numbers, let’s look at everything I hoped to accomplish with this ad.

Back in the 60’s, the Twilight Zone did an episode called “A kind of Stopwatch”. In that story (warning: spoilers) a man receives a stopwatch that can stop time for everyone except him. He tries to use it to rob a bank, and in doing so, breaks the watch. The story fades out with him trapped in a moment in time, alone for all eternity.

So, a couple of days ago, I bought a new computer. Here’s how that worked. I read an article about an ultra-cheap, android system that plugs directly into your TV (called the MK-802). I went to Amazon and bought it for $35, with two-day shipping free (because I’m an Amazon Prime member). So, on Wednesday, I paid $35 for a computer, and on Friday, I got it in the mail.

It is slightly larger than a thumb drive, with cable connections all over it. I plugged it into the HDMI connection on my TV, then plugged it into the USB on my TV (for power), and boom. I had a working, hi-def Android system hanging off of my TV.