Building Blocks

25^th. February 2018

Amazon never fails to surprise. The first copy of my paperback, The Boy from Berlin arrived. I checked it out, found nothing wrong, and was well pleased with the result. I was surprised, though, to see the book had been printed in Poland. I ordered another four copies, which were exactly the same as the first, except they were printed in UK. I wondered if there might be a difference to the paper quality, but I guess they have a particular type of paper to be used on all their printed copies.

My sales figures are improving (slowly). Although I haven’t cracked the author keyword for best results, I can see movement. My D2D results started coming in about fourteen days after the beginning of the month, which wasn’t surprising because I created the new advert about the 7^th.  Amazon is also improving steadily. I’m nowhere near those authors who excel at this advertising game and manage to sell at least two hundred books a month, but I hope I’ll get there.

I made some progress again with my WIP. There is an old saying: The moving finger having writ moves on; and all thy piety and wit cannot remove but a single word of it. Or something like that! I find it difficult to change my early plot lines, my character’s situation and the way I think the story should be re-written, but it’s a resistance I have to overcome. In fact, I thought I might have to remove my main character, Marcus Blake, but realised that this was supposed to be book No. 3 in the Marcus Blake series, and he had to stay. I still wonder who’s writing this book; me or Marcus Blake.

I took Pat to our local hospital for a check-up to her eye. Since the cataract op a couple of weeks ago, she cannot wear glasses, and has to wait for another four weeks before seeing an optician. She did think about reading one of my large print editions, just as an experiment. I have a couple of these, published by Ulverscroft. I think they’ve gone out of business now. Their main clients were the libraries in UK and elsewhere, but what with the closure of so many and the withdrawal of funds, book purchasing by them now is very selective. The top author in the PLR (Public Lending Right) is Jacqueline Wilson with 16 million loans — mostly children’s books. So come on you authors of books for the youngsters, start badgering your local library to stock yours.

I preached the sermon at my local church this morning. I was little nervous because this was my first for a Sunday morning at this church, but got through it successfully. Preaching is much like writing: you have to do your research and write something that is relevant and interesting. I believe talent is God given, and believe also that this enables me to be creative and to get some good stuff down on paper.

Next Sunday is the big one: The UK Southern Book show at Worthing in West Sussex. I’m hoping I will meet at least one person who has read my stuff (and liked it!). If you’re local, why not pop in?
www.uksouthernbookshow.co.ukwww.uksouthernbookshow.co.uk. Wish me luck!