Measured Progress

June 6^th.
2015

Where did
the week go? Ever felt like that and wondered where it all went? Monday began
with a hospital appointment for Pat, but that evening I went to a meeting of
the CHINDI group to talk about our writing, our promotions and the forthcoming
events that all help to get us out into the public domain. You can read about
the writers group and the work they do on their website http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk. The next, forthcoming attraction for us is the Festival of
Chichester. This is a celebration of the rich and varied talent that can be
found in this ancient city. The festival covers all aspects of the arts and
gives people like me an opportunity to showcase our talents. (I do have some, I’m
sure!)

I’ve
managed to add a few more words to my WIP, and have increased my word count to
just over 60,000. Being over half-way is something of a bonus for me because I
began to doubt whether I would ever get there. It won’t increase by much more
over the next couple of weeks, and then there will be a pause because we are
going on a two week break cruising Alaska. We fly into Seattle for a few days
and then cruise for seven nights. Back to Heathrow twelve days later. Then a
wedding, but that’s in July.

I am
managing to sell a few books. Not many, but I am averaging a little over one a
day. This is more than I managed in the early part of the year. I put all this
down to the course I’ve been doing with Nick Stephenson and having a
subscribers list courtesy of MailChimp. If I can keep it going and supplement
it all with promotion, I would hope to improve my sales figures progressively
and with a good rate of increase. We’ll see.

I keep an
eye on my sales rank on Amazon daily, and have seen it taper off slowly to well
below 400,000 over the last few weeks despite the fact that I was selling books
on KDP (Amazon). I contacted them and asked why my sales rank was falling and
ignoring the fact that I’m selling? I received a text book reply from them
which told me nothing, but when I checked my rank after that, it had rocketed
to under 60,000. And I had no sales that day! Makes you wonder just how
efficient Amazon’s algorithms are. Or perhaps someone in the office felt sorry
for me and pushed my rankings up.

I’m still
battling with self-publishing. My latest print book came from Ingram Spark and
it was a total disaster. It was uploaded during their Spring event, which meant
publication was free. I have had to upload again, but this time it will cost
me. The annoying thing is that when I looked at the files I used, they are not
the ones Ingram Spark used. Now, you might think I’ve got it wrong, but this
happened a couple of months ago with another title. When I complained they told
me they only print the files uploaded by the customer. Can’t argue with that,
of course, but there is no redress if you know that the error is theirs. One of
the joys of self-publishing, I suppose. But I’ve uploaded the “correct” files
and have had to pay $50. I probably won’t even sell that many print books to
cover the cost. Why bother? Because I’m still in the game and like what I do.
Wish me luck!