Rolling On

December 16th. 2017 My little dog, Tuppence made the weigh-in satisfactorily. She needs to lose about half a kilo now, and we’ve cracked it. Now I need to work on my weight. No doubt Tuppence will win. I’m still not succeeding with my BookBub ads. I’m persevering though, and will continue to tweak them until I see a significant change in my results. I need to make up my mind whether to keep them going until well into the New Year, or move over to Facebook ads. I made some progress with my WIP, despite my admission last week that my Christmas lunches were getting in the way. I must admit that it’s taking me a lot of time just sitting staring at the screen and trying to imagine where I’m going. I can see different ways of going with it, but there’s an inevitability of drifting away from the theme if I’m not too careful. I’ve seen a number of complaints recently on one of my author forums about the lack of reviews and the quality. This isn’t something I too vexed about; I find some reviewers can be quite dismissive of an author’s work without realising why they are posting a review. It should be about enjoyment and being carried along with the depth of the story, but some reviewers must feel they are marking a student’s exam paper, and treat it as such. If they don’t like a book, find it boring or poorly written, they should say exactly that, rather than give a forensic report on it. At the same time, authors shouldn’t read their reviews if they don’t want to read harsh words. Had a real treat today: two of our sons came over with their families, and we all went out to lunch. Because of family commitments, it was easier to have our Christmas get-together this way. And as an added bonus, our No.3 great grandson Orin came too — brought his mum with him of course. He’s 9 months old. Such a joy. I entered a short story competition this week: the BBC annual event. The winners won’t be announced until October next year, so I’ll have forgotten all about it by then. I’m not a short story fan, because I look at them as a kind of extended joke: there has to be a punch line at the end. My story was something I wrote a couple of years ago for our church magazine in Spain. I cannot see it making any progress because of its Christian content. Sadly, the BBC tends not to enjoy tales of this nature. Nine days to Christmas now, and still a lot to get through. I probably will not making any progress with my WIP during that time, but I’ll try. Meanwhile I want to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. I might post a blog next week, but it’s unlikely. Have a great time and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

Weighing up my progress

December 10th 2017 Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it. I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B. I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though. Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably! I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over. So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful. I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!

Happy Planners

December 3rd. 2017

Last night our Chindi group enjoyed a pre-Christmas get together at The Dragon restaurant in Rustington. Twenty of us made it there, although not all were writers. However, it made for a good number to crowd into a very full restaurant. The oldest of our members is in his eighties, and is reaching the fulfilment of three years’ work: he is publishing a semi-fictional account of a soldier relative who fought during the First World War. Our youngest member there was a newcomer to the group who writes children’s stories. We are a diverse bunch and cover just about all genres in fiction and some non-fiction. It was a chance, too, to be able to chat with some of the group about what problems we have encountered throughout the year, and what success we’ve had. Success in our case is largely relative, but we all have been able to blow our own trumpets from time to time. We have some good ideas to carry us forward into the New Year, and it gives us all a sense of excitement and hope. We are already discussing our summer promotions in the Chichester Arts Festival, plus we have a couple of things planned for Littlehampton, which should be around the earlier part of the year. And March is something else eight of us will be looking forward to because of the UK Southern Book Show at Worthing. I’m sure we’ll come up with other little gems too, but it does give us some impetus, knowing that we are reaching out and not waiting for things to happen. Earlier this week I cracked on with my WIP, and managed to push ahead somewhat. I still have a long way to go with this, and will probably struggle to have it ready for a summer launch at my current rate of progress. I mentioned my efforts last week about BookBub advertising and the fact that they seem to feature a lot of best-selling authors: some who aren’t even living now. I received an email from them advertising Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which kind of reinforces the complaint I saw on an author forum about BB capitalising on the top writers and leaving less room for the indie guys. So far I have received an email each day and only one has featured an indie writer, all the others have been NYT best-sellers. Make you think. Anyway, back on the advertising bit: it is a recommendation from BookBub that it helps to use their list of top authors when searching for a “keyword” writer. As I am trying to promote my book, A Dangerous Game, I searched through their list for an author similar to me. Almost without exception though, the list of thriller writers is populated with those who write series characters. This makes it hard for people like me, a cross-genre writer, to find an author to use as a “keyword” author. I’ve already tweaked my ads, and even changed them, hoping for some positive results. I can’t expect overnight miracles, but there are pointers to the way in which your ad is performing. I’m getting a few sales, thankfully, but at the moment I can expect to struggle. Hopefully things will improve in time. Wish me luck!