Getting my ducks in a row

26^th. October 2019

Pat’s situation cheers me up one minute and lets me down the next. We had a trip to the neurologist last Tuesday for a consultation. It means Pat will be referred to a memory clinic for some kind of rehabilitation. She also has an appointment for a head scan in a couple of weeks. But we were back at the doctors the following day because her water infection returned, so she’s on antibiotics again. And this morning I had to take her for a flu jab. She didn’t want to go, but what do you do? We sought advice from the cancer nurse before making the appointment though. She isn’t getting much sleep at the moment, which means I’m not, but that’s the way it is.

On to other things now. My book sales are creeping up. Haven’t hit the big time by any means, but the graph is showing signs of early growth. One factor is the jump in page reads on KU. My title, No Time to Die (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WFQMQV4) has reached 773 page reads this month. This gives me something of a problem: I decided to take the book out of KU once it’s 90 days were up on November 11^th, but those kind of figures for me are bloody good. So I guess I have no option but to extend the KU for another 90 days. What I am going to do though is advertise the book in USA on Amazon Ads. At the moment it’s the UK ad that is encouraging sales and page reads. I’m also thinking of advertising on BookBub again (not the featured deal), because that seems to bring sales in on D2D. Just got to watch the pennies though. The beauty of AMS is that it’s reluctant to take your money from you unless you’re attracting positive clicks, which is a step closer to selling a book. Oh, and I sold three paperbacks this month: three more than I sell in a year I think. Must be doing something right then.

And because I’m picking up a bit on-line, and people are viewing my FB page and my profile on LinkedIn, I thought I ought to tidy up my website. Not being technically proficient in that area, I set about it a couple of days ago with some smart idea of how I was going to blow everyone away with my phenomenally brilliant web page. Well, it’s back to the drawing board and a careful reconsideration of exactly how I should go about this. So, I’m lining all my ducks up in a row and creating new 3D images of my jackets, which I will put on my main page with links direct to the sales pages. With luck, my ‘subtle’ changes will encourage potential readers to click on the books once they’ve landed on my website and go on to buy!

I watched a SPF podcast last night (I watched it on my laptop. This means I can be in the room with Pat). It was a writer called Amanda Lee. What a phenomenal woman! She writes 9000 words a day and has written almost 200 books in the last eight years. She turns out one book a month and has an eleven book series in the pipeline. She reads about five books a week as well as editing her own material. She also writes under another name as well as her own. Just watching the interview left me shaking my head. What kind of life is that? Good luck to her if she’s happy. She’s certainly successful and must have a huge fan base. If only, eh? But I don’t think I would welcome success if that was the kind of sacrifice needed. Careful what you wish for. Oh, and talking of wishing: wish me luck!