Great Expectations

January 14th. 2017 Looking at my diary I can see January will eventually prove to be a busy month. I submitted my latest book, Where the Wicked Dwell to Kindle Scout. The campaign to attract nominations will run until February 11th. After that, KS will decide whether to offer me a publishing deal. But I need nominations, so how about clicking on the link and nominating my book? That’s all you have to do. https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1EC59ZYJLQ07G. Whether I’ll stand a chance or not remains to be seen. KS (Amazon) say it’s all about reader nominations, but I suspect they look at the author profile and make a judgement on the prospect of selling enough ebooks to make a profit. Makes sense anyway. But if I received thousands of nominations, it would be a no-brainer for them. One of the downsides to searching for votes by the way is that any e-mail to my subscribers results in about ten people unsubscribing. It’s disappointing but according to the author forums I’m on, it happens. Next month I might go back to Facebook advertising and look for more subscribers I have my BookBub promotion coming up on January 25th, which will mean the chance of good sales and high rankings, but not without some effort on my part. So to keep the balls in the air, I have paid for an ENT promotion three days after the BB promo. If sales remain buoyant, I’ll keep the low price until I see things slowing down. There are one or two other irons I have in the fire, but nothing guaranteed. One of the problems authors face after finishing a book is that spell when the brain refuses to switch on to a new story. I know that not all writers suffer that problem, but I certainly do. I find myself imagining scenarios that are a complete waste of time, knowing that I have to be patient and wait until something drops into my lap. There’s plenty of scope in the daily news of course: alleged Russian hacking into the Presidential elections, and the suggestion that a British MI6 agent has gone into hiding because of his involvement. All good John le Carré stuff, but not Michael Parker I’m afraid. I received some good comments from some of my beta readers about my book. They can’t be translated into book reviews because the book isn’t for sale yet. Reviews are like a double-edged sword though: they can be helpful or damaging. I read many complaints on the author forums about bad reviews and how horrible they are, but we all know it goes with the territory. I’m reading an ebook at the moment that I’m struggling with, but the reviews on Amazon are excellent. It has a few one and two star reviews, but generally the average is about 4.5, so I guess it must be me! I saw a piece of advice the other day about naming my blog. Well, embedded in my Wix site is the name “Readawhile”. It was one I used when I first started blogging a few years ago. So now it appears on my website under that name. Sounds better than ‘blog’ don’t you think? On the domestic front — today is my wife’s birthday (her age is filed under secret). Lots of cards and good wishes have come her way though. Next week we celebrate our 57th wedding anniversary, so we’ll be looking for some way to celebrate that. On Monday our Cockapoo, Tuppence, is going to spend an away day with a husband and wife team of dog-sitters. It’s a trial; see how they all get on. Me and Pat will probably find something to do that day, although we have the plumbers here all day doing a power flush on the central heating system, so may need to stay close in case we are needed. Hope not. So, a lot to look forward to and to hope for. Oh, in case you forgot: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1EC59ZYJLQ07G Wish me luck!