Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

February 26th 2016 Last week I received an e-mail from a writer in Israel. He had finished reading my latest thriller, A Dangerous Game, and said he hoped it would not be my last book. He then went on to take the book apart, saying he found the plot “interesting, even intriguing, but more than a bit implausible”. He pointed out the errors in my characters, none of whom escaped his criticism. But he did admit that he found my style and vocabulary “enviable and enjoyable”. It left me with a smile on my face. I answered his e-mail and thanked him for his opinion, which I valued, and wished him all the best in his writing career. It set me wondering about why we write and why we put ourselves out there to be lifted up or shot down. Writing, after all, is entertainment. Fiction is what fiction is: make believe and often implausible. Science Fiction, Fantasy, Dystopian, are all implausible but enjoyed by millions of readers. So am I guilty of using this as an excuse in my work? Most top writers are guilty of this. Many action heroes suffer life changing injuries but go on to beat the odds. The film makers indulge themselves with impossible scenarios like James Bond and the Die Hard films: all of these attracting huge audiences. But what of my style? My work? I don’t write to educate; to teach, to help or to instruct; I write to entertain. People will judge me on what they get out of my books. Some make judgments from an assumption that they hold a higher ability than the writer they are criticising. I had a three star review recently of one of my titles in which the reviewer said the book would have benefited from professional editing. What the reviewer didn’t know was that the book had been professionally edited. But I continue to write and to hope that one day I will reach the elevated position of a top writer. And if anyone asks about my sudden success, I will tell them that it took a lifetime to achieve. Along the way I have enjoyed the good with the bad, the highs with the lows, and still I plough on. At least the writer from Israel admitted he liked my book, my style and my vocabulary, which he found enviable, so I have that to hang on to. My Facebook advertising campaign came to an end during the week. I am relatively pleased with the results, although I did not cover my costs. That wasn’t the objective; it was to act as a learning curve and perhaps propel me on to more efficient and profitable advertising. The campaign lasted four weeks and lifted my rankings from around 250,000 to 20,000. I am currently around 45,000, so not too bad. I am now in limbo — leaving nothing for a week to see if my rankings hold up. If not, then I’ll have to go back to Facebook. I began jotting down some thoughts for another thriller. I have decided to go with Marcus Blake, the leading character from A Covert War. I can trailer it as a new, Marcus Blake thriller. I haven’t decided on the main theme, but I want to make this a kind of “creepy” thriller: test my skills with some darker writing. When you cast around looking for plot ideas, there are not that many out there; they’ve all been done. But it’s the way a writer spins a new story that determines whether it will be a success or not. On the domestic front, Homebase failed to deliver the kitchen parts we’d ordered. They delivered some. This meant we had to cancel the kitchen fitter and get on the phone to Homebase. Our oven turned up this morning and we have been promised the work tops next week. Kitchen fitter can’t make it now until half-way through March. C’est la vie! Tomorrow we are off to the funeral of a dear friend of ours. But life goes on: I dream of selling loads of books. Pat wants a dog. We haven’t won the lottery yet, but keep trying. The world is falling apart, but I still keep writing. Who says there are not enough stories around? And as a little rider, my book, ROSELLI'S GOLD has just been accepted by Bookbub for a feature deal on March 14th. This is the fourth book I've submitted in the last four weeks. I expected them all to be rejected, but this one more than the others because it only has six reviews. The book will retail at $0.99 for the promotion. It cost me £420. Last time I had one of these, I made my money back overnight, but it's more about the follow on sales, the rankings and the publicity. Wish me luck!

Climbing the learning curve

February 20th. 2016 This week has been more of a learning curve for me with respect to promoting myself and my craft. My proposed “Book Talk” at the local Arts & Craft shop next month is not attracting people. Whether it’s because there are no potential writers or budding wannabees in the area, I’ve no idea. Let’s face it, not everyone wants to sit at a desk or in front of a computer writing their memoires or the next best seller. Just because I think it’s a great hobby doesn’t mean that everyone else in the parish does. The other part of the learning curve is about advertising and what works, but more of that later. My book talk is primarily aimed at those people who nurse a desire to write, but need encouraging. And although I can’t teach anyone to write, I can at least open a few doors and let them into the secrets of bringing a book to life in today’s on-line world. Anyone who has written and published might find my talk a bit of ‘old hat’; after all, what can I teach them? If I was a top writer, I wouldn’t have any trouble filling the event, but there is no way I could have it at a local craft shop. In a couple of weeks’ time I will have to make a decision about whether to pull the event or not, and that’s part of the learning curve: how and where does it all go wrong (or right)? The other part of the learning curve this week is about what sells and what drags its heels in this game. I advertised my latest thriller on Facebook, and enjoyed watching my rankings soar from about 200K down (up) to 19K on the Amazon Author rank chart. I was selling my book at $0.99/£0.99 and seeing sales of about twelve a day. Once I had reached my budget limit, I raised the price to $2.99 and saw my sales drop to almost zero. For a while I thought I would have to suspend the advert until I could come up with another ploy. But my sales lifted to about seven a day, which it the break-even figure for me while I’m running the ad. But advertising on Facebook isn’t simply a matter of putting something there and paying for it, it’s more about the detail and where your target audience is. I’ve already learned that more women buy my books than men. Now I have to understand how to cultivate that audience and at what level I engage with them. I won’t exclude men of course, but if my market is predominantly female, then so be it; that’s where I’ll go. But it isn’t that simple — it never is — I need to understand how to manipulate my ad in order to achieve maximum advantage, and I can’t do that without more study. Fortunately I have Nick Stephenson and Mark Dawson’s excellent FB training videos, which is where I’ll go to improve my technique. Next week Pat and I have a full calendar, and I may not get too much done on the literary front. I haven’t even started my next book and have no idea where I’ll get my ideas from. Our son, John, came up with a credible plot for me, but I can’t see me sinking my teeth into it. He’ll be disappointed to think his idea hasn’t hit the mark. It was good, but I just couldn’t get enthusiastic about it in the end. Tonight we are off to see Leonardo de Caprio in The Revenant. Maybe I’ll see something in that to inspire me. Wish me luck!

Some good days and some not so good days.

February 13th 2016 On the whole my week has been good in places and not so good in others. The kitchen didn’t happen: the suppliers called to say they couldn’t fulfil the order, so we had to reschedule the delivery. This meant phoning the kitchen fitter and making other arrangements. I picked up a head cold (man-flu for those who know how it is), which has left me coughing and sneezing all over the place. And so far I’ve had no real interest from the public in my advertised book talk. I popped round the gift shop earlier in the week to find that no-one has put their name down. I put out another advert on our on-line Streetlife, but so far only one person has said she might come. It looks like I’ll be pulling the event if nothing has changed by the end of the month. I even had another cancellation: a neighbour, who I don’t know, phoned me earlier this month and asked if I could advise him on getting his memoires published. I agreed, but he phoned and called it off. Don’t know why; but it’s no big deal. On the book front, things are looking decidedly better. My Facebook advert for my latest thriller, A Dangerous Game, seems to be bringing home some pleasing results. This week I have sold about one hundred books (overall about 250), keeping my averages up at a healthy level compared to my averages before the FB advert. And during the week, our book group, CHINDI, had a Valentine’s week promotion offering their romance titles at a discounted rate. To move this along the romance authors in the group agreed to do an on-line Q & A session. Three authors shared an hour each in the evening over three days. I was on-line Wednesday and had to field a lot of questions about my book, Past Imperfect, and the reason why I, as a thriller writer, decided to write a romance. It was all good fun and it looks like we may be exploring other events like this. I also put my name down for a book event in Selsey in West Sussex during August. It’s a table top book sale, but publicity nevertheless. Another big step for me is submitting my book to BookBub for a one day promotion. Pat suggested I do this and offered to pay for it as a birthday present. It’s too expensive for her, so I’ve agreed to share the cost. It’s unlikely that my book will be accepted, but I live in hopes. If it’s rejected, I’ll submit another of my titles which has a reasonable track record. For those of you who do not know what BookBub is, it’s an on-line promotion site for authors, and their results can be pretty spectacular. I was lucky enough to get one about three years ago and had covered the cost of the advert in twenty four hours. My book continued to sell for about two weeks beyond the one day promotion. Right now I am reading through The Boy from Berlin, and hope to have a paperback available within a few weeks. I need to design a suitable book jacket, so will need to spend some time on that. So there’s a lot going on in the Parker book world. Let’s hope it continues. Wish me luck!

A bouncy week, but I'm still not king of the castle.

February 7^th.
2016

I’m slowly coming back down
to earth after a pretty good week with my book sales. Although I am nowhere
near the hundreds and thousands mark, there are levels that mean a great deal when
sales are mediocre. As a result of my Facebook advertising and some other more
parochial adverts, I have managed to sell about 175 eBooks. After seeing an
average sale of about one or two a day, it’s nice to see the average lifted to
something like twenty or so each day. It’s beginning to taper off now, but I
shall keep monitoring my FB ad and making adjustments.

On the subject of FB advertising, I was able to give a
clearer insight into this at our Chindi writers’ meeting last Monday. Naturally
we are all looking out for ways in which to improve our books sales, so digging
into the FB advertising minefield was well received by the group. I’m no
expert, but was able to follow Mark Dawson’s excellent training video and pass
a lot of that on to the group. Mark Dawson, by the way, is the creator of the
John Milton series. He is a high seller on Amazon: something like a million
sales to date, so he knows what he is talking about.

Another small promotion our Chindi group are doing is a
generous discount on our romance novels for the week leading up to Valentine’s
Day. Four of us in the group have written and published a romance or two, and
are making them available through our online bookshop at www.chindi-authors.co.uk.
A bouquet of roses is being included as a raffle prize.

I received the first batch of my latest paperback thriller,
A Dangerous Game, through the post. I’m
happy with those and will be sending them off to my family etc. More will be
ordered of course. I have been in contact with the local Press here in
Chichester about an interview. The reply as favourable and I expect to be talking
to their entertainment correspondent in a couple of weeks. He is currently in
South Africa getting some sun and watching the cricket!

I’ve put a local advert out for my forthcoming ‘Book Talk’,
something I’m looking forward to. So far one person has agreed to put her name
down. Hopefully I’ll be chatting to more than one wannabe writer. I did get a
phone call as a result of the advert from a retired chap wanting advice on
publishing his memoires. At least he has written a substantial amount (62,000
words).

On the domestic front, we are having the kitchen upgraded this
week: should create havoc for a while. Hopefully that will be finished by the
weekend. Apart from that, life goes on. I still haven’t come up with an idea
for my next book. Well, I have actually come up with ideas but have binned them
within a couple of days. One of my sons tells me he has a great idea for a
novel. He is going to impart this gem of an idea to me later this week. Could
be good — or not. If he comes up with a cracker, I’m all set; but if not, then
it’s nose to the grindstone and putting my thinking cap on. Wish me luck!