My on-line quest; and not just for readers.

January 31^st. 2016

Where do I begin? It’s been quite a week one way or
another. It’s really all been about my book and my Facebook advertising
campaigns, although there were some developments on the domestic front. No, we’re
still married. It was about saucepans and kitchen tiles because we are having our
kitchen upgraded next week. Induction hobs need saucepans that work, so a new
set had to be purchased. Oh yes, and Bluetooth headphones. We have a Samsung
Smart TV, which cannot pair with any old Bluetooth headphones, despite the
claims of all and sundry. Samsung admitted to me that they have a compatibility
problem with such headphones, which was the reason my Phillips headphones
wouldn’t pair. And Phillips told me that they were only really intended for
mobile phones. The headphones were returned to Amazon and the money was
refunded. Thank you, Amazon. I also found that Samsung Bluetooth headphones are
about as rare as hen’s teeth. Even the websites Samsung recommended didn’t recognise
the search request.

Anyway, back to the Facebook
adverts. I have been running a ‘sign-up’ campaign which ended on the 29^th,
the day of my book launch. The advert ran for ten days and netted me 90
subscribers: a good result compared to the one a day I pick up through my
permafree book. I now have 531 (last count). I will probably run that campaign
again later this year. The reason it stopped on the 29^th was because
I launched another FB campaign for my latest thriller, A Dangerous Game. In three days I have managed to sell just over 90
eBooks. It has made my sales rankings look good, putting me up to 34,000: a
leap from about 200,000, a place I usually inhabit. I know it isn’t quite the rarefied
level the top writers reach, but it’s better than being down among the bottom
feeders (for a change).

So what now? I have a couple of
small promotions to be aired tomorrow, and one maybe later in the week. After
that, dependent upon results, I may try some direct approaches on-line until I
feel the promotion has run its course. Then I will put the price up and go back
to pushing for sign-ups. Another thought running through my mind is to try a
box set of some of my books. It isn’t something I’ve given any real thought
too, but it might help to draw attention to me and my titles, and encourage
people to keep buying.

For any of you who haven’t seen
my latest title and may want to purchase it at the low price of £0.99/$0.99,
click the link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AKCLP60/?tag
for USA. The UK link is http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01AKCLP60
Wish me luck!

The lotteries of life: some you win, some you lose.

January 23^rd 2016

I finally uploaded my Facebook ad.
It went live on January 19^th. Since then, 4 days ago, my subscribers’
list has grown by about twelve to fifteen a day. This is a handsome increase
from my usual one a day. The ad will run until early February, or until the
budget limit has been reached. Looking at the advert page I have now had 87
clicks and a reach of 2176 people. I don’t know yet how to evaluate that, but
my click rate is costing me £0.22p a click. From what I understand from the
instruction videos, that’s not too bad. Time will tell though, particularly
when I look at my sales figures in about two months’ time.

My
pre-order posts for A Dangerous Game, should
have reached all my subscribers and others through my Facebook posts. I can’t
measure that, but I will be able to figure it out from my KDP account shortly
after the launch. I’ll send out another reminder in a few days.

This
morning I attended a CHINDI event: ‘Writers Across Sussex’ awards. This was a short
story competition for all ages, broken into three groups. The event was
sponsored by the Chichester Observer, and a panel of five judges, all important
people in the world of publishing, judged the entries. The head of the panel
was Kate Mosse, a well-known broadcaster and widely published writer. Kate
founded the Orange Book awards, now known as the Bailey’s women’s prize for
fiction. The prize winners can now call themselves published authors because
their entries have been published together in book form. It will be available shortly
on Amazon. Meanwhile, all entries can be read on the Chichester Observer on-line.

My
week on the domestic front has been pretty full. Pat and I celebrated our 56^th
wedding anniversary last Tuesday (19^th). We had already celebrated
with a meal the previous Saturday, which I mentioned in my last blog. Wednesday
we travelled to Taunton to visit a friend of ours who has terminal cancer. I
know we don’t call the shots in our lives, but you can imagine my feelings when
I know I am still on my cancer treatment and feeling full of the joys of life,
while our friend doesn’t have that luxury. Thursday was a visit from the
plumber to install a new, larger radiator in our en-suite. Madam is happy now.
And of course, today was the book event at Woodies in Chichester.

I
am pondering what to write for my next book. I am a million miles away from
writing the first sentence, and have no idea of plot lines etc., or even a
plot. But when I think of the nine books I have had published, I probably didn’t
have much of a clue about them either. But I got there in the end. Wish me
luck!

Upping the ante.

January
17^th. 2015

I’m stepping up a gear this year. Last
week I put my latest book, A Dangerous
Game, on pre-order with Amazon, something I’ve never done before. The
launch date is January 29^th. Looking at the way some other writers
approach this point, I know I haven’t put as much in to the launch as they have.
One writer on one of the forums I follow has been incredibly busy and looks like
he’s achieving pretty good results. Some of you may ask why I haven’t followed
the example set by people like that, but I probably take a more laid back view
of how to make progress. One change here though is that I am about to place an
advert on Facebook, encouraging readers to sign up to my mailing list. But
rather than rely on them finding my permafree novel and signing that way, I
will be using an image to attract them. I will be adding a headline and blurb,
plus the link (http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj) to
find my landing page so they can sign up and download the book. I’ve been
watching instructions videos by Nick Stephenson and Mark Dawson, two of Amazon’s
top authors, and hope that I will see some good results with the ad. I am also
planning to advertise my book, A
Dangerous game, in time for the launch date. Looking ahead, I believe this
will either make me or break me. By that I mean that if this way is successful,
I’ll spend more on advertising. It will also encourage me to write another
book; something that’s missing at the moment.

At
the beginning of the week I went to the first CHINDI meeting of the year. It’s
amazing how a group can change over a twelve month period. In the past twelve
months we have lost six author members and attracted four. We can still look
forward to book events which are in the pipeline, and hopefully expand our public
awareness. And three or four of us will be bringing out new titles this year.

Earlier
this week we celebrated my wife’s birthday and had some of the family members
over for a pub lunch on Saturday. We also included our wedding anniversary in
the celebrations too: fifty six years on Tuesday.

On
Friday I had an advert placed with ‘bknights’ on Fiverr.com. It was for my
permafree novel, The Eagle’s Covenant.
I thought it needed a bit of a lift after dragging its heels in the download
department. On that day I had 180 downloads, and healthy increase from my usual
average of about five a day. That cost me five dollars. Worth every penny if I
can add a few more names to my subscribers list.

Tomorrow
I’ll be back on video training and hope to post my ad on Facebook. Wish me
luck!

Prepped and almost ready.

January
9^th. 2015

I’ve
just about finished my book jacket and expect to be publishing the book within
the next couple of weeks. I will be preparing a Facebook advert and fine tuning
it until I’m happy with the result. Then it’s a case of dove-tailing the
announcements and directing them to the right people and the right places to
“maximise” (love that word) the book’s potential. There are many tricks to this
advertising game, many of which I don’t know, but it’s all about key words,
categories, targeting the right audience and picking the right global spot to
find the market. Sounds like I’m doing some corporate thinking, right? No, just
using the buzz words I come across in all the advice I see on forums and
elsewhere. I’ve never been a marketing man, so it’s about to get interesting.

I
tried an experiment the other day: changed some keywords for my book, Hell’s Gate. Against the conventional
wisdom I aimed the book at the high end market where competition is fierce in
the African Adventure category. The book can’t do any worse than it has done
over the last year, so I’ve nothing to lose and maybe I’ll learn something. I’ll
have a better idea on sales for that particular title later in the month.

I
watched a video on book jacket design yesterday. It had two experts picking
over the jacket designs bravely submitted to them by half a dozen indie authors.
The books were all available on-line. All I learned from that 25 minute video
was that it’s all a matter of personal taste: what one person likes, another
may not. It helped me firm up my decision to go with the jacket I had designed
and produced using PhotoShop, so at least I did get something from it.

Last
week I sent a short message out to my subscribers telling them that I expected
to have my book ready fairly soon. I lost three subscribers. Not many, I know,
but every time I send out an e-mail (I don’t send out many) I think I jog some
people’s memories and they realise they had signed up to get my freebie, but no
longer wish to be involved. Perhaps I should stop sending e-mails to them. My
next will be the main announcement. Hopefully people will buy and not unsubscribe.

On
the domestic front, I had a pre-assessment check for eye surgery this morning
at Worthing hospital. It’s that time of the passing years that means a cataract
needs to be removed. Shouldn’t take long but I’ll have to buy new glasses. If I
sell a lot of books I’ll be able to afford designer specs. Maybe not. Wish me
luck!

Looking ahead into 2016

January 3^rd. 2016

And so it begins again: going into
a new year with hopes and schemes, plans and ambitions. Many of us have them
but few ever realise those dreams. I’m no different to most of us: I have high
hopes for the coming year and my own plans, but the feeling tends to water down
as time goes by. But looking back over 2015, I can’t complain; I’ve had plenty
of highs. But what now? Well, first let me wish you all a happy and prosperous
New Year. For myself I’m looking forward to the release of my latest book,
which is currently titled A Dangerous
Game. I still have the book jacket to finish, but I expect to have it ready
for launch before the end of the month. Prior to that I plan to advertise it on
Facebook, using the excellent reach that FB has. I will also be letting all my
subscribers know in the hope that they will buy a copy. At first it will sell at
low price of $0.99: probably for a month. After that I’ll raise the price.
Although my Kindle Scout campaign failed to deliver, there will be over 600
people contacted by Amazon about the launch. Could prove to be a good day!

On
a local level, I am looking into ways of spreading my name among readers in my
area. The book group I am with (CHINDI) have plans which include all our
members, but I will still push ahead with something a little more prosaic. To
that end I am planning a “Book Talk” at a local Arts and Craft shop. This will
simply be about books and how to publish. For a lot of people, the thought of
publishing a book is still lodged back in the dark ages when publishers and
literary agents held sway. Now, however, we are all writers, and it is fairly
straightforward to publish on Amazon and other outlets. Hopefully I will be
able to help those who want the advice and maybe sell a few books of my own in
the meantime. I will also be exploring the possibility of doing something
similar at our local libraries here around Bognor. I think it will depend on
how successful my “Book Talk” turns out.

I
am also renewing my acquaintance with an advertising and promotion course I
signed up to last year. It has been an eye-opener for me, and now that the
course has been revamped, I will begin the study again (I have already worked
my way through several of the videos). It has proved to be very successful for
some of the students, but probably because they put more time and effort into
following the advice.

My
current sales have dropped to a low level; probably because of the time of
year, or maybe my readers have finished reading my books. My permafree book is
still being downloaded, and my e-mail subscription list grows daily, almost
certainly because of the free offer I have inside the covers of my permafree
novel. For those of you who might like to download the free book I’m offering (The Devil’s Trinity), you can obtain a
copy by subscribing. Click the link: http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj

So for me it’s now a case of head
down, pen in hand and push on. Hopefully I will see an upward movement in my
sales and big increase in my subscribers. Wish me luck!