Buzzing around the buzz words

February 25th. 2017 I launched my latest book, Where the Wicked Dwell, during the week. I used Mailchimp and social media to promote it at a launch price of £0.99. I’ve no way of comparing results with other launches, and I do understand that I could have paid out a lot of money to advertise the launch and see my rankings rise. The highest I did get was 37 in the top 100 paid in the Private Investigators category. I can say I sat proudly above Stephen King and James Patterson who were occupying 38th and 39th place respectively. Do you think they are concerned about this upstart who displaced them from their position? I sincerely doubt it. But at least I was able to rub shoulders with exalted company. You can find the book on the home page of my website: http://www.michaelparkerbooks.com In my efforts to promote my books, I have tried most things that have been suggested over the years. In the early days of Amazon self-publishing, you had to be on social media, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. and it was necessary to ensure your kindle book was formatted properly, which meant the steady growth of people willing to do the formatting for you (at a price). You were encouraged to understand what web crawlers were all about and to ensure that keywords associated with your book were always included in everything you wrote on line so that the search engines would find you. And as more and more indie authors jumped on the bandwagon, so did the ‘entrepreneurs’ who were willing to help you become the best seller that you “deserved to be”. The explosion continues and shows no sign of wilting. Now it is cross promotions that are the buzz word, and we’re all piling in, keen to find a way of getting our books up there among the top rankers. I am no different to other indie authors; I want my books to succeed, so I will keep hanging on to whoever’s coat tails will get me up there. But I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that we are in an underclass of writers. That’s not to say we do not have the talent and the skill, but that we are being watched by the big guns in the game who see us thrashing about, trying desperately to find the answer, while they sell the books that are always sitting at the top of the pile. The pyramid is unshakeable and unbreakable, with the minority at the top and the bottom feeders swirling around at the bottom. But am I disheartened? Not really; I am pragmatic enough to know the name of the game. I know that I should spend hours at my keyboard promoting and marketing, and investing money with no guarantee of success; but I choose not to devote all those hours to what could be a dead-end, so the onus is on me when it comes to where my book sales and rankings are. This week I have picked up the gauntlet and invited thriller writers in one of my groups to share in a cross promotion with me. I will be driving this one, and know that I can’t promise or guarantee any success. No doubt those who join with me will hope their sales will show a healthy increase. And all the while I’m concentrating my thoughts on pushing my books, I’m giving little or no time to my own writing. I have the bare bones of an idea for my next book, but precious little time (so it seems) to make any progress, and I know that I will have to devote a certain amount of time to ensuring that my cross promotion is built on solid ground. I’m sure that those writers joining with me will expect that. Sometimes we believe that those other writers are better than us at promoting because of how they present themselves and the statistics they publish, but they are searching in much the same way. So while the cross-promotion bonanza gathers pace, I’ll ride the tiger until I see something else that will almost certainly “guarantee” good results. Wish me luck!

And finally, my latest thriller

Took a while to get here, but now my latest thriller is available on-line at a low, low launch price of $/£0.99. Why not pick up a copy and settle down for good read? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WD8988W/?tag

From BT to infinity, wireless and powerless

February 18th. My Wi-Fi became Wi-Fi-less last Monday, due to the incompetence of BT. There probably isn’t the right time to lose your Wi-Fi, unless it’s during the night when you’re asleep. I had decided to change from SKY to BT, and sorted that out over the phone. The planned change was to be 24th. February. But in their wisdom, BT sent an engineer on the 13th. to make the change at 8am (eleven days early). He brought an old router and spent an hour and departed an hour later. We went out, came back two hours later, but had no Wi-Fi. Engineer came back and apologised for leaving me with an old router with a dodgy password. I had to phone BT for a router which arrived two days later. Two days without our modern crutch: Wi-Fi! How we need it. Well, maybe not everyone in the world. My elderly sister doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t need the miracle of Wi-Fi. She wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But my two day loss came at the wrong time. It was the beginning of the week when I had arranged to do some cross promotions with two different writers, and also to support the Valentine’s Day competition that my writers’ group, CHINDI (http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk) were running. I felt as though I was letting a lot of people down because of what I had promised to do. I had a huge backlog of work to catch up with, but got there in the end. The cross promotions I did were with Paula Wynne http://paulawynne.com/the-grottos-secret and Paul Casselle http://amzn.to/2lu1SkC . I’ve no idea how successful they’ve been, but together those two writers have about 80,000 subscribers they can reach. It’s all subjective at the moment: a case of finding my feet working with other authors this way. I have noticed a slight, daily increase in my book sales, but I can’t dismiss the follow-on effect of my Bookbub promotion. We shall see. Another let-down was the rejection by Kindle Scout of my latest novel. I wasn’t surprised at all when I received the news, and it was something I expected anyway. Now I can set about publishing my book and get down to some advertising. I haven’t quite worked out how I’ll go about this. However, I do know that once it is published, and Kindle Scout have been informed, they will e-mail all the people who voted for me. With luck some of them will buy the book. That will be a kind of free advertising, courtesy of KDP, that I couldn’t put a price on. I’ll probably use Facebook, but will be looking into doing it through Mailchimp. Looking ahead to my next book, I have a nodding acquaintance with some ideas, but in truth I don’t see much developing. I have been asked to write a sequel to The Eagle’s Covenant, but that would be difficult. I’m sure those of you who have read the book will know why, but to write it would be one helluva challenge. If I could pull it off, I would be well pleased. Tomorrow, Sunday 19th. my box set comes out of Kindle Select. I will use cross-promotions to advertise the set now and at a reasonably low price. It did nothing in KS compared to other results I have read about. I think I managed a total of 1800 pages read over the ninety days, so I can’t consider that a success. I looked at my sales figures for the last two weeks yesterday, and was surprised to see The Devil’s Trinity was selling more than Roselli’s Gold. The irony is that TDT is available free if the buyer signs up to my subscribers’ list. They can unsubscribe at any time. That way they would have saved £2.99. I’m not complaining though. If you are reading this and haven’t read The Devil’s Trinity, you can download it at http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj Looking ahead to next week, there’s nothing in the diary other than my BT TV is due to come on stream! Perhaps they’ll turn up with a load of gear and wonder why I’m now with them. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Power and absolute power

February 11th. 2017 There are two phrases I often hear: “Power dressing” and “Power nap”. I’ve tried neither, but I do have a new phrase: “Power promoting”. Before 2017 dawned, my idea of promotion and marketing was never really based on a firm foundation of experience, but more a kind of subjective approach which sometimes resulted in a few book sales. I’d listened to the experts, watched the videos and believed I could eventually master the game, but the trouble was it left me little time to write. So as the New Year dawned and I had finished my latest book, I decided it was time to get “down and dirty”. Not a buzz phrase, but something all military pilots would recognise. So, with that killer instinct burgeoning inside, I started paying more attention to the good results others were coming up with, and not always by paying through the nose. I started with BookBub and came unstuck, which is unusual for what is generally recognised as the Holy Grail of advertising. I also used eReader News Today (ENT), which helped a little, and also submitted my book to Kindle Scout. I promoted that as best I could, but compared to the numbers I could see on the top books in ‘Hot & Trending’, I didn’t know squat (another little buzz word). There were authors ripping people like me apart with their statistics, and I had no idea why or how, but assumed they had more reach in the game and worked hard at it; they had built up a following, a readership, call it what you like, but they had more access than me. Then along comes Paula Wynne, a very successful woman in the business of marketing, and promotion. She managed to get her first novel well up into the higher reaches of Amazon and attract some sterling reviews and maintain a healthy ranking. I wanted some of that, so when the opportunity came up to team up with her, I grabbed it. And that’s when I discovered the real meaning of time consuming, repetitive and sometimes numbing work at the keyboard. Write a book? I don’t have time! But in my own defence, I know that as I become used to following the diktats Paula hands down to me, the easier it will become (please). It isn’t just Paula Wynne and working with her that has upped my game. I have teamed up with a couple of moderately successful writers to do some cross-promotions. And I have opened a new list on Mailchimp to collect the names of those who subscribe as a result of my new direction. I have joined instafreebie and I am also taking part in a Romantic novel promotion for Valentine’s Day with Chindi authors. All this means more visits to Twitter, Facebook, and countless other groups that I never knew existed. And there I find the new world of cross-promotions and authors helping each other, plus countless offers to boost sales, help you to become a best-seller. It’s like the iceberg: my involvement is at the tip, while below the surface there are thousands of us at it. And no doubt more will be jumping on the bandwagon. Well, we all deserve a chance and hope to reap what we sow. But will all this work? I’ll know later in the year. At the moment my daily sales are moving along at a better rate than they were two weeks ago, but I have to put that down to the follow-on effect of the BookBub promotion. Hopefully my “Power promotion” will turn out to be a winner. Here’s a couple of links that might interest some of you. Find out more about the Chindi Romance competition at www.chindi-authors.co.uk. Paula Wynne can be found at www.bookhub.online, and another author I’m working with is Paul Caselle who’s latest release is at http://amzn.to/2lu1SkC I’ve begun toying with an idea for a new novel, but ‘toying’ is exactly that: I don’t really know where I will go with it. I’ll try anyway. Wish me luck!

Work, work, work. And more work!

February 4th. 2017 Busy week again, but nothing to do with working on my next novel; it’s all about promotion and marketing — the buzz words in the self-publishing game. Can’t do without it unfortunately. It is so time consuming too. During the week I added a few books to Instafreebie and Bookhub. For the Instafreebie site I had to use Calibre to convert to ePub. At first I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, but eventually it all came good and I now have five books uploaded. I have another four to go. I’m also uploading to Bookhub: something I need to do to take advantage of my Gold membership with that site. And at the same time I have been posting as part of a cross promotion with Paula Wynne who runs Bookhub. I will soon have some work to do for Paula Wynne as part of an agreement to work together. Whether any other writers are involved or not, I’ve no idea, but I would imagine there will be a few. With luck it could be a very productive period. My sales have improved marginally now that the BookBub and ENT promotions have finished. I’m giving some thought to using Mailchimp for advertising on Facebook when I get ready to launch my next book. It’s something new they are pushing. It looks pretty straightforward, but not proven yet. My Kindle Scout campaign is not making any headway: the results dribble along but I’m nowhere near the “Hot & Trending” level. If you haven’t voted for me yet, I would appreciate it if you would click the link and leave your mark. https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1EC59ZYJLQ07G. Getting back to the cross promotion I’m doing with Bookhub: this is a free competition to win a bundle of thrillers. The competition runs from the 1st – 7th. February, so there is still time to enter before the closing date. Click the link: http://bit.ly/2kgf3IC Good luck! My author group, CHINDI, are running an invitation to all Romance writers to participate in a Valentine’s day promotion. This is a first for us as we move into a new format for our group. This is a “toe in the water” attempt to build our fan base, and those Romance writers who take part. If you are interested in taking part as a writer, then have a look at the Chindi website at http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk. On the domestic front I have been talking to SKY and BT. It’s because I have decided to move from the former to the latter. I’ll save myself about £40 a month, which I could use towards marketing. Wish me luck!

Competition

Why not join my latest thriller competition and win a bundle of thrillers. ~ the competition runs from the 1st to the 7th of February! Click the link for a great opportunity to win. Good luck! http://bit.ly/2kgf3IC