Talking Books

May 4^th. 2018

This week’s featured author for my blog is Chindi’s own, Christopher Joyce. Chris lives in Chichester and is the author of six children’s books titled ‘The Creatures of Chichester. The latest is The one about the Golden Lake, which he has also launched as an audio book. All Chris’s printed books are dyslexic friendly with large, sans-serif fonts. The lead character in The One About The Golden Lake is dyslexic himself and solves the mystery because he sees the world in a different way. The audio books are also a different way to ‘read’ stories. Although the books might appear as a series, they are actually stand-alone and can be read in any order. You can learn more about Chris and his books at http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk/what-shall-we-listen-to-today-mummy/.

I managed to finish the work on my website that I believe improved it, although I can’t say it has increased my book sales. Is that a given though? Some people believe it’s essential to have an attractive website, but often I look on some websites and see so much information on them, it’s a complete turn-off. You can see mine at www.michaelparkerbooks.com if you’re curious.

I have had to get to grips with my BookBub ads. They are not producing the click-through-rate (CTR) I was enjoying a couple of months ago. I’ve been tweaking the ad (it’s for my nuclear thriller, The Devil’s Trinity), and have reduced the price of the book. Today I changed the ad logo. If all else fails, I’ll drop the price to £0.99 (seems to work).

I have imposed a kind of discipline on myself with regard to my WIP. Each day I must write something, whether it is worth it or not. And today, Pat showed me an article in today’s Daily Mail about the playwright, Tom Stoppard who is suffering from writer’s block. He says there is nothing there; just an emptiness. Well, at least I’m in good company because that’s close to how I feel when I sit staring at my WIP wondering what I’m going to write and where I want to go with it.

Another problem I’m dealing with is that I don’t have any copies of my paperback, The Devil’s Trinity. I ordered one from Ingram Spark and disliked it immediately. Mea Culpa of course, so I have set about redesigning the jacket. It means digging deep to make use of Photoshop again. I’ve spent a few hours on it so far, messing around with photos, cutting and pasting, deleting etc. No doubt I’ll get there in the end, but hopefully with something I can be pleased with.

The Chichester Festival organisers launched their Festival programme this week. It’s on line and yours truly is there. I’m in the same section as best-selling author Kate Mosse (I wonder if she’s heard of me?), but there are also other local indie authors, poets and artists there too. I just hope I can pull it off. Wish me luck!