A Good Start to the Week

A Good Start to the Week

This is the week that I hope to get my name higher up the author rankings and to lift my book sales. Thursday is the day that HELL’S GATE is going free on Kindle Select, and it is this that is to be the driving force that, hopefully, propels me upwards. But I have had a good start to the week. This morning I checked my book sales rank on Amazon’s Author Central. It’s a kind of novelty thing really because my sales are pretty low, along with my author rank. I only ever check my kindle books, and occasionally my paperbacks. I NEVER check my hardback sales because no-one buys them anymore. But today my hardback novel, THE THIRD SECRET shot up the rankings by over 4 million. Why was that? Probably because someone, somewhere bought a copy (I love them already). It put a big smile on my face. It usually languishes at about 5 million, but the graph showed a steep rise to somewhere around 460,000; a rise of over 4 million. I’m hoping this presages my HELL’S GATE results, which goes on a free run this Thursday (October 25^th) for three days. The only way authors like myself can promote their work if they are not prepared to pay out for advertising, is by hard work on the social networks and by blogging. But the essential thing is to establish a readership; people who like what they have read and want more. I do have a worry, and that I hope whoever bought the book realises that the book is available as a paperback, but under the title, ROSELLI’S GOLD. Perhaps the buyer wanted the hardback as a gift for someone.

So what now? I have spent some time putting out the usual notices on FB and twitter, plus using this blog to let people know about the promotion. I have already posted about it on the Kindle forum, but it seems to be slowing down there for some reason. I am also in the process of editing THE DEVIL’S TRINITY after an extensive proof reading session. It’s amazing how many errors you find, even though the book has already been edited as a hardback. But I always say it’s down to the author to ensure there are no errors in the book. I hope to have the Kindle version ready by the end of the month, but can’t send it to Acclaimed Books yet until my son, Terry comes up with a book jacket for me.

There are always highs and lows in the book world, and today I’m on a bit of a high (not too high!). Hopefully I’ll be even higher when I see the results of my promotion coming in early next month. Wish me luck!