The Hard Yards

August 27th. 2017

The weather is warming up along with our sales on the Chindi book stall at the Arundel Festival. Each day those manning the stall manage to sell more than on the same day last year. Tomorrow, a bank holiday here in UK, is the last day, and we hope to be able to declare a real bonus for the Cancer_UK charity we are supporting with our book sales. I popped along last Thursday. Got there early and left at mid-day. Sales were so slow that we only sold one book; fortunately it was one of mine. Sales did pick up during the afternoon though. The photo on the left was taken yesterday. It shows Carol Thomas, Helen Christmas and Dan Jones, all members of Chindi, hard at work in the sunshine. You can see more of them and our work at www.chindi-authors.co.uk. I’ve also been keeping an eye on my book sales on-line, and can see the benefits of using an ongoing advertising campaign like Facebook. Although I’m not quite clearing my investment, sales have been good enough to make it worthwhile. However, I now need to reconstruct the advert and target another audience. I received an e-mail alert from Facebook during the week telling me that there had been a sudden change in the activity on my advert. Trouble was, they didn’t say if it was good or bad. I had to decipher all the metrics to make sense of it. I believe I was being told that they had more or less exhausted my chosen audience, which is why I will be changing tack. I have registered my interest (and paid) in a Literary event at Crawley Library in October. It’s about an hour away from here, but I’m quite happy to make the journey and, hopefully, find more readers. There’s also a chance I can meet my son for a late lunch if he isn’t working, but the main reason is to sell books. But it hasn’t all been about selling books. Last Friday, we went along to Petworth to meet our No.3 great grandson, Orin. He is six months old. He brought his mum, Gemma, along with him. We had a picnic in the grounds of Petworth House. It was lovely sitting under the shade of the trees and having him and Gemma to ourselves for a while. As a result of all that is going on in my busy schedule, I haven’t put pen to paper; so my latest thriller is gathering dust on the electronic bookshelf. I can’t see me making much progress in the next few weeks either, so perhaps I have resigned myself to the fact that there will not be another Michael Parker release for the foreseeable future: certainly not this year. I do run ideas over in my head, but I suspect that’s the same for all writers; how else would we fill our thinking moments? Something will turn up though, I’m sure it will. Wish me luck.

My engaging selling technique

August 19th. 2017 The good news from the previous seven days is that the follow-on effect from my BookBub promotion is still working: I have achieved 25% ROI at the moment, and I’m still selling books. Now the really difficult bit starts: how to keep the balls in the air. My Amazon ad. was a disaster, and now I’m hoping I can achieve better results with my latest Facebook advert. It’s too soon to make an appraisal, but early results show I might need to put my learning cap on and start tweaking. I’ll let the weekend through before trying anything.

Today I was at Arundel for the Festival. Our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) have book stall there in support of Cancer_UK. I arrived early and helped Carol Thomas and her husband, Mason, set up the table (in the road), and waited for the punters to roll up. I managed to sell five books before finishing at mid-day. Quite a result for me: it really put a smile on my face. I enjoyed talking with the people who came up to the stall, even the elderly lady who passed by pushing her walker with a few sticks of rhubarb sticking out of her shopping bag. It made for an interesting conversation on how cheap the rhubarb was just up the road. And no, she didn’t want to buy any books. I was asked what the “mark-up” is for our books. I explained to the man who asked the question that we make nothing from paperback books because we are self-published authors. We would have to set up table top sales every day of the year and hope to sell a few books every day to cover our costs. But the important point is the engagement we have with the public, getting our name into their minds and hoping — hoping — that they look us up on our respective websites and by our ebooks. I had two copies of my hard edged romance, Past Imperfect with me, and managed to sell them. My sales skills can be unbelievable at times. I just wish I knew what I said that made these lovely people buy them. We also meet other writers who tend to be very shy in admitting they are writers too. Once we’ve dragged the truth out of them they are quite happy to talk about their work. It isn’t unusual to learn that they have written one book and are quite happy with that. One lady I spoke to had written an autobiography of her short, three month spell working in a Palestinian refugee camp. The conversation looked like it might be heading towards a political narrative, so I steered away from the subject and talked about the various books we had on display. If any of you are interested, her name is Alice Merrill and her book is called Quiet Resistance. It’s available on Amazon. And almost as trustworthy as a reliable clock, the British weather let us know it was not to be laughed at. It chucked it down for about ten minutes. It cleared the streets and made us throw a protective sheet over our books. Eventually the table was pulled in off the street and into the shelter available in front of the Cancer charity shop we are supporting. Now I need to think about writing again and steering my main character, Conor Lenihan, into trouble with the Israelis and anybody else who dare steps in his way. He’s pretty tough, you know. Wish me luck!

Singing in the rain

August 12th. 2017 The week began for me really on Wednesday because of two events. Prior to that we took our friend Pauline back up to Baldock. It started raining as soon as we arrived, and eventually forced us all, including Pauline’s daughter and son-in-law, to abandon any hope of spending time chatting and we were forced to get back in the cars. We couldn’t use the restaurants because we had dogs with us. But Wednesday — our No. 3 great grandson’s naming ceremony and my BookBub promotion. We turned up at the BBQ in the park in pouring rain. Set up a Wendy house (3x3 garden gazebo) alongside our son’s, pitched them both to the large, wooden, three sided lean to, and sheltered from the rain. The BBQ was alight and smoking at 11 am when we arrived and still smoking at 3.30 when we left. It poured with rain incessantly all day. We all got wet, the dogs got filthy and everyone’s clothes needed a wash by the end of the day. But being stoical, we all refused to let it dampen our spirits, and the ceremony went ahead as planned. It was good to mingle with the family and our grand-daughter’s friends. It was a real family bash and I know we all enjoyed it. The other “emotional” event for me, the BookBub promo, was a little nerve wracking. I wasn’t convinced it would be a success, and a little concerned that I had maybe lost a lot on the deal. However, things brightened considerably overnight, and by Thursday evening I had just about broken even. Today (Saturday) I am still selling and consequently making a profit on my investment as well as adding a whole new tranche of readers. I expected sales to dwindle as the days went by, but my sales are still buoyant. I made the No. 1 spot in Canada, which included a “best seller” banner on the sales page. Can’t be bad. I decided to try out Amazon Ads to coincide with my BookBub promotion. I elected to spend $5 a day for a week, just to see how effective it could be. Today I have spent nothing, had 99 impressions and no clicks. Obviously my advertising skills are not persuading anyone to click, so that’s something I need to bear in mind when I promote through Facebook — something I’m planning to do within the next few days. Although I haven’t put pen to paper this week, my WIP hasn’t been far from my mind. I still struggle with the concept of a series character, preferring the idea of writing stand-alone books. But seeing the competition among indie writers favours the series novelists, I know I need to do something about it, although I feel as though I’m prostituting myself for the sake of sales. Goodness me, what we writers have to do to get recognition. Looking ahead, our Chindi group will be supporting Cancer_UK at Arundel in a week’s time. I’ll be there hoping it doesn’t rain, but you can never tell with dear old England. Hopefully I’ll sell some books, but truthfully, it’s more about engaging with potential readers in the hope they will check out my website and buy my books. Oh, I was more successful in North America with my BookBub deal than here in UK. Am I about to crack the American market? Wish me luck!

Getting some mileage in

4th. August 2017 My post is one day early this week because we are travelling back up to Baldock to return our friend and her little Chihuahua to her daughter tomorrow. It’s been an interesting week but with very little time to write. I’ve managed about 1000 words and a great deal of head scratching. Last Monday, my book group, Chindi (www.chindi-authors.co.uk) had an on-line meeting. We managed this through a company called Zoom. It’s strange to see your PC monitor filled with individual TV images of those who logged on. It can be a little hectic, but still possible to get a conversation going and come up with some sensible suggestions. We are already looking ahead to a November event, and hope to have something put together in time to publicise it. I’m looking forward to the BookBub promotion of my thriller, A Dangerous Game. I dropped the price to £0.99 in readiness for the promotion. You can see the book at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01AKCLP60/?tag I’ve also submitted it to ENT, but haven’t heard from them yet. If I can get some decent mileage out of this, then maybe I can keep those balls in the air and hold good rankings for some considerable time. I also have a sponsorship with Kindle Book Review for The Eagle’s Covenant. This will be for August, but unlike other promotions, this has nothing to do with a price change or new launch, but simply having my book on the right hand side of their main web page. I won’t know how effective this is until later in the month when I can check my individual book sales. The link to their home page is https://www.thekindlebookreview.net The newspapers over here in UK are talking about the latest development in DNA modification through genetic engineering. It’s made the TV news feeds as well. I’m pleased to say that genetic engineering was featured in my book, Where the Wicked Dwell. http://www.amazon.com/dp/B06WD8988W/?tag. It doesn’t make me a clued up scientist, but at least I’m on the ball. During the week we went to an open museum at Singleton, a few miles north from us here at Pagham. It’s known as the ‘Living Village’. The museum is dedicated to life throughout the Middle Ages and towards the 18th and 19th centuries. The houses on display have all been pulled down, removed from their locations and rebuilt on the site. It provides a fascinating look at how we used to live in those times. Good place for research too if you want to write a novel about those periods. We also went to Queen Elizabeth Country Park up the A3 Portsmouth to London Road, The reason for that is because me and Pat are going to our No. 3 great-grandson’s naming ceremony there next week on Wednesday. Orin will be six months old. We’ve never been to anything like this before, although we’ve been to christenings. It’s a Vegan/Vegetarian affair, which leaves me wondering what we will be having on the BBQ. Flame grilled vegie burger anyone? It’s also the same day as my BookBub promotion. Wish me luck!