Too many forks in the road

July 28^th.2018

There are so many ways in which we are encouraged, as writers, to engage with the public, the readers, and to chum up with other authors, that it seems impossible at times to know which is the best way to go. Most of my FB groups are fellow authors, and I don’t expect them to keep buying my books because, like me, they are only interested in selling their own. When I read of success stories, and not always by the top, top authors, it’s always about finding readers. So where are they? I have over 1200 subscribers on my email list. My last email resulted in 24 openings. That’s an open rate of 2%! Last week I held a giveaway with a company called ‘Voracious Readers’ and gave away 20 copies of my book, Where the Wicked Dwell. The upside to that is that I have now added their email addresses to my subscribers list. There can only be one answer: what I’m offering isn’t attractive enough. So now we come to the $64000 question (why is it 64K?): what is it that I’m doing wrong? I believe, firmly, that my stories live up to the claims I make, backed up by some solid reviews, but I know, hand on heart, that what’s in between the book covers generally comes last when it involves grabbing potential readers’ attention. So, it must be the blub, right? Or maybe not; maybe it’s the price. I dropped The Eagle’s Covenant and sold four books within 24 hours, but none since. I’ve sold two books on Amazon in the last two days, but not the book I’m advertising with AMS. So it must be the blurb. Oh, could be the cover! But we are told never to judge a book by the cover. And which famous book has been published with something like eighty different covers over the years? I know there is one; I recall reading about it somewhere. It has had more makeovers than the bible. So, it can’t be the cover. What is it then? Perhaps I have to stand on top of the Eiffel Tower, or Big Ben, or even Trump Towers and wave a banner. Probably get arrested though. Perhaps that’s the answer: grab a piece of notoriety; that should do it. But in a kind of perverse way, I’m enjoying myself. Masochist or what? I feel I’m on a promotion and marketing learning curve which will help to sort the wheat from the chaff and make some kind of success with my efforts. I just hope it doesn’t take forever.

I watched the SPF podcast yesterday. The interviews were with J.D.Barker (no, I haven’t either), Peter James and Karen Slaughter. There were some real gems of advice in those interviews, not so much about what to do, but how these writers see the future of publishing etc. J.D.Barker believed that audio books were going to make a bigger impact for several reasons. Peter James said that Character, Research and Plot is how he develops his stories; and plot is definitely the last. Karen Slaughter said that writers, including indie writers have to accept that writing has to be viewed as a business. The concept of someone sitting alone, writing a book and getting it published with nothing else to do after that is complete fallacy; you have to work at the promotion and marketing otherwise your book will fade without trace. Naturally the three of them were big on professional help: covers, proof reading, editing etc., etc., but that isn’t always affordable to, probably, the majority of self-published authors. All in all they all had something interesting to say.

I have started on a project which may not see the light of day for a few months. It has nothing to do with my WIP, but I can say that it is another book. That will be three that I’ve started this year. This one though is a special project, one I sincerely hope I’ll be able to finish before the year end. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Meeting people, facing facts.

July 21^st. 2018

The book talk at Littlehampton went well. The photo here shows me with two of our Chindi authors, Helen Christmas and Christine Hammacot. About twenty people turned up (there are others out of

shot sitting in the comfortable armchairs at the back of the room) and were quite an attentive audience. You always unearth someone who has written a full length novel at these events, but are too shy or afraid to admit it. One of our audience had written eight novels, and none of them were published; he said he just liked the idea of writing. Bit like stamp collecting I suppose. I managed to sell one book, and that was to a chap who had never written a book, but just wanted to listen to us talk about ourselves. The event was part of the Littlehampton Festival during which our group held four events, including a ‘Ghost Tour’. Spooky, eh?

I still haven’t seen an improvement in my AMS sales, so have contacted BookAds and submitted another book. If there’s no significant change, it will mean another month wasted, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. I’ll pull out and persevere with BookBub ads. I am selling a few, but cling to something I read on one of my FB groups that summer is a bad time for selling books. I don’t think it makes any difference, but it could be true. My author colleague, Helen Christmas, who has written a crime series set in London covering a period of about thirty years or so, was chatting to me about the difficulty in grabbing the readers’ attention and getting sales. We agreed it’s a difficult game out there, and you just have to keep on trying. Helen’s series is called ‘Same Face, Different Place’. You can find her 5 book series on Amazon. She has terrific reviews too, so why not have a look, starting with Book 1 in the series? https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0078L8858

On the domestic front, we had lunch with our granddaughter Gemma and her son, Orin (our No.3 great grandson), at Worthing. It’s always good to see the little ones growing up, although it does remind you how time is passing by, so being able to spend some time with them is always a bonus. Last night, Saturday, was Bingo with Fish & Chips down at the village hall. Life can get so exciting at times, can’t it? I’m not a bingo fan but I go along to this three monthly event with Pat just to be sociable. And for the fish and chips of course! I managed to see the whole of the British Speedway Grand Prix from Cardiff too, which was also a bonus. Watched most of it before going out, and caught up with the last hour when we got home. Terrific evening of Speedway.

I pulled out of BookAds today; couldn’t see any point in waiting for my sales to “take off”. I can’t blame BookAds, even though I would like to, because my ad was getting plenty of impressions, so I guess it lacked something — not punchy enough? Not interesting enough? Yet this is a book that reached No.1 in Canada (yes, I’ll cling to anything to make it sound good), and had decent reviews, which means its back to the drawing board again. Wish me luck!

Oh, by the way, I dropped the price of my BBad for The Eagle’s Covenant to $0.99 yesterday and sold four books in 24 hours. Is someone telling me something?

Summer days and summer sales

July 15^th. 2018

So, football isn’t coming home after all, but the boys have given all of us football fans a fair share of highs and lows. Sounds a bit like book sales, and mine happen to reflect more of the lows than the highs. But I’m not too despondent because it can be fixed. I’ve just got to work out how, although I was told by way of a Facebook group that summer is not a good time for selling books. My week actually ended on a kind of ‘high’ though; I sold six books at our local, fun day dog show here on the small estate where we live. I was allowed to set my table up in the small marquis that was being used as a kind of shaded area, while all the stalls were scattered in the shade beneath the trees. I did nothing for the first hour, and then people began noticing me. It always nice to sell books of course, and sometimes you get some lovely conversations with people, but the nicest moment was when a young boy about thirteen or fourteen years of age came up and started browsing through my books.  And he did, with his mum. She told me he had developed a passion for reading, which I said was great to hear. I did ask if she was happy with the idea of me selling her son a book, bearing in mind that they might have been too adult for him. However, I did manage to persuade him to choose The Devil’s Trinity rather than The Boy from Berlin, the latter being more of a political novel. He was happy with that and paid for his book, leaving me with a big smile on my face.

He asked if he could read the first page of one particular book and then said he would come back.

As I mentioned last week, I’m at Littlehampton tomorrow (Monday) for an event as part of the Littlehampton Festival. I have decided to talk about my latest crime thriller, Where the Wicked Dwell, https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06WD8988W. I have two, 5 star reviews for this — one on Amazon UK, the other in USA — although it has sold reasonably well with the help of some promotion, I still believe it is worth reading as a crime thriller, but I suppose all authors believe their books are worth reading, eh? Nevertheless, I will be promoting it on Amazon with BookAds too, having come to the conclusion that my current ad is not selling well despite having 20,000 impressions since June 23^rd. It might be because the book, or the advert, isn’t appealing enough. This is when I wish I was a competent copy-writer; it might make a lot of difference.

My week began with a trip to the dentist. It ended in something of a disaster because she was unable to pull the bad tooth out. She gave up half-way through and decided to refer me to a specialist clinic. Thankfully she gave me antibiotics which have calmed the tooth down. I’m now waiting for an appointment to come through. I’ve just put up a temporary fence at the side of our house because we have a pigeon building a nest in our Wisteria bush. It happens to be fairly close to the bird feeder, and a place where our Cockappo, Tuppence, likes to go ferreting around in case the birds have dropped anything. The temporary fence will keep her away so she can’t annoy the pigeons (she likes barking at them too).

So, a fruitful end to the week with my print book sales at the fete, but less so with regard to my sales with BookAds. Maybe I’ll do better with the other book. Wish me luck!

Getting out and about

July 8^th. 2018

It’s been quite a week for the members of our Chindi group. We held seven events as part of the Chichester Festival, culminating in the Ghost Tour, which sells out very rapidly. The tour is led by two of our members, Julia and Helen. Julia has published a book to go with the tour, and each ‘guest’ gets a glass of wine as they begin the tour. The idea has been taken up by another of our members, Rosemary, for inclusion in the Littlehampton Arts Festival later this month. Our events over the week have covered self-publishing; a short story seminar; writing for kids; wine and quiz; thriller writing and a book stall at a major event in Graylingwell Park here in Chichester (not forgetting the ghost tour, of course). I gave a talk on Friday evening with a small group interested in thriller writing covering an age range from about mid-twenties to late eighties. So, all in all a week that helped a lot of people wanting to make sense of the world of indie writers.

My involvement with BookAds isn’t likely to last much longer. I have another two weeks before my next monthly payment is due, and at the moment I can’t see any benefit in continuing with them. I can’t lay all the blame on the group because my Amazon ads have attracted a total of about 14000 impressions, so it could be argued that the book I’m advertising is the problem. But one sale in fifteen days? I have been in touch with them and received a positive reply, so we’ll see if there is any improvement before I pull the plug.

I exchanged emails during the week with David Gaughran (clever guy). This was nothing to do with BookAds, but about his free book on decoding Amazon. I already had the book in my kindle library, but in response to a question from him, I said that all the advice and information from the experts becomes overwhelming eventually. His advice to me was to stick to one thing at a time, master that before moving on. He suggested that BookBub ads was probably the easiest to manage, but Amazon have structural defects in the system which makes it hard to learn. I now have two ads running in BB: both for the same book but with a different blurb. It will be interesting to see which one performs better.

The book talk I gave on Friday evening was quite informal; seven people came and we held the talk in the small, back garden of Henning’s Wine shop. It helped because of the heat. To have tried in the room above the shop would have been too much of a challenge. I don’t use a script for these talks: just say what comes into my head and try to understand what those attending really want. The one I did at Littlehampton ended up with a guy wanting me to help him promote his “fantastic” Western. You come across “secret” writers too: they written a huge book, but are reluctant to talk about it to anyone until you get them to open up a bit. One young woman had a degree in English and worked as an editor. She didn’t write but hoped to one day. It was the third Chindi event she had attended that week. All in all, a pleasant experience, and I sold two books. Can’t be bad.

So what’s next? England are in the semi-finals, that’s what’s next. I’ve finished one of the sermons I’m due to give later this month, and have almost cracked another which I’m giving in four weeks’ time. And I’ve been casting eyes on my WIP. I know, I said I had put it away and probably wouldn’t do anything until later in the year. That’s what being a writer means: you just can’t help yourself. Lots to do, lots to think about. Wish me luck!

The skill of the professionals

July 4^th. 2018

I have to say that my blog has been delayed because the World Cup got in the way. So while the Americans are celebrating Independence Day, we English are celebrating our first victory in a penalty shoot-out. For those Americans who don’t understand football, let me say that the referee in our game against the Colombians was American (no, I’m not suggesting anything!). The picture of Jordan Pickford saving a penalty in the shoot-out is significant to us because that was the moment we knew we almost had it in the bag: just one more of our lads to take a shot at the Columbian keeper and we would win. Well done, Eric Dier for being “cool” and scoring the winning penalty.

So what’s all that got to do with writing and selling books? Well, I’m convinced that photograph is allegorical: Pickford is not really a footballer; he’s a stopper working for Amazon and other on-line book sellers. He’s there to stop all my efforts at promotion and marketing — not a particularly difficult task, but he comes into his own when he’s up against the professionals I employ to sell my books (BookAds). And he’s been doing a classy job up till now. Ten days into the AMS ads campaign and I’ve sold three copies of my book that BookAds are promoting. It’s so glum that I’ve picked up advertising on BookBub ads again, just to see if I can outstrip BookAds. Hopefully BookBub will have a weak ‘stopper’ and I’ll see some results.

This week is important for members of our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk). It’s the Chichester Festival time, and we are holding six events in Chichester. These will be at Henning’s Wine shop (in the room above) for five evenings, culminating in a stall at Graylingwell Park, and also a ghost tour round the city that evening. I’ll be doing a talk on the ups and downs of an Indie thriller writer on Friday evening. If you’re in the locality, why not pop in? It’s a ticket event, but they can be purchased on the night.

Last week we had a visit from our Grandson, Sam who lives in America. His family home is in Australia, but he came over to UK from the States with his girlfriend, Taryn. He’s lived in the US for a couple of years now, and its funny hearing a mixture of American, Australian and English colloquialisms. We wanted to take them out for a meal; Taryn said she wanted Fish and Chips, seeing as it was her first visit here and she’d heard so much about the traditional English take-away. We ended up at the end of the pier in Bognor, sitting by the beach eating our Fish and Chips. Really enjoyed it and I’m sure Taryn did too.

I have often said that I feel as though I’m in a literary straitjacket, trying to write series thrillers. Having decided to put my WiP on the back-burner for now, I’m fast coming to the conclusion that the reason I have struggled with this book is simply that: I shouldn’t be writing another Marcus Blake thriller; I should be looking for inspiration from another source, and there’s plenty of that around. So there’s the dilemma: do I pick it up later in the year and produce something mundane, or do I try for that inspired moment as I have done with all my other books? Wish me luck!