Progress Two Ways.

Almost at the end of the month and my word count had reached 67000. By the end of the month I should have managed 70,000. But thereby hangs a dilemma: I’m making such good progress that there’s a danger I might go over my projected target of 100,000. It might seem silly to say that, but my publisher usually wants between 60 – 100 thousand words. That would mean either a rejection or a suggestion that the novel be cut. Like most writers, having penned all those words over a long period and then re-edited, the last thing I want is to have to cut again. Stephen King said that the second draft should be the first draft minus 10%. It might be tongue in cheek advice, but could be necessary nonetheless. I know where I’m heading with this book and have resolved one or two sticky problems that I have to face — well, that my characters have to face — and I can see that I’m in danger of over-running. I could look at it like a football manager who says he’s happy to have too many good players to choose from; he’d rather that than not have enough players. I’m also looking at a way of improving my promotion methods. It’s all a bit crazy at the moment, but I see positive movement in my rankings followed by drops, then a surge again, and I realise that I am not keeping my eye on the ball. I currently have three of my titles outperforming the others (seven with AB.c), but only two of them have been promoted very recently. The third was promoted over four weeks ago, so maybe that’s a knock-on effect. I would like to think that readers like my work and download my other titles. I am also picking up moderate reviews (17 to date) bringing me an average for one title of four stars; this is for a title that hasn’t been promoted for a while. So I am going to devise a plan (like Baldrick in Black Adder, I have a cunning plan) that tells me which titles to promote, where and when. Oh, and how much to spend! One thing I have admitted too is that I don’t have much of a clue when it comes to promoting myself, but there’s nothing like stumbling along to help climb the learning curve. One of my colleagues on Acclaimed Books (Peter Lihou) has marketing in his blood and seems to be doing quite well with his titles. But budgets come into it as well, and I try to stick to a percentage of my royalty income which at the moment is quite small. But I have to remember that this is a hobby and as much as I would like to make a huge success of it, I won’t break the bank trying. Besides, there are more important things in life. Wish me luck!

I've been away!

For some reason, and I don't know why, none of my blog posts have reached this blog. I need to keep an eye on it. Anyway, for those stalwarts among you who look in on my blog from time to time, here is my last post from August 19th................................ I’ve seen various articles recently about the rise and fall of the e-book, and the return to the top of the pyramid of traditionally published books. Each article presents a reasonable and credible discussion on the merits of each process, and for indie authors of a nervous disposition it means the end is nigh! Apart from the famous and the infamous, to be a successful writer you need a massive slice of luck, and there’s nothing truer than that old saying: luck is when opportunity and preparation come together. How often have you heard someone say that it’s taken them twenty or so years to become an overnight success? And one famous golfer said that the more he practices, the luckier he gets. Napoleon once said ‘I don’t want good generals, I want lucky generals’. But if the luck comes your way, you need to sustain it with a quality product, and for a writer that means talent. I can honestly say that I have never been taught to write: all that happened was that I studied English language from junior school up through senior school, which helped me with my spelling, my grammar and also, if ever I needed it, how to summarise. But probably the one thing that has been a constant guide and a hard learning curve has been rejection. That more than anything helps a writer to produce a story that might be acceptable to a publisher, but it doesn’t teach a writer to write. When my first book was published in 1980 (NORTH SLOPE), it sold 2000 copies in its first year. It didn’t go into paperback, and the following year my publisher dropped me. This was another rejection of course. I published that title last year on Amazon and sold something like 6000 copies in less than six months. But I was riding on the Amazon Kindle revolution which has dropped off dramatically now, and so have my sales. The luck was with me then and I hope it continues, but I have to admit that I’m still working on it, still writing and still trying to promote and market my work. So as the e-book market drops away and it is, believe me, I am back in a parallel, literary world to the one I have inhabited for most of the last thirty years, fighting for recognition. But the big guns are fighting back and restoring the publishing pyramid: big boys on top, bottom feeders at bottom. The difference now of course is that success is down to me and will come depending on how hard I work and how lucky I become. Wish me luck!