Sales of the Unexpected

30th. May 2020

Almost half-way through the year and there’s no let-up in Pat’s condition, and a worrying sign now of a progressive deterioration. We are now under the watchful eye of our local hospice, St. Wilfrid’s, and had a nurse round on Thursday for a general chat and more pertinent questions about Pat and the prognosis. We still live in hopes of some sort of stabilisation and control, but it’s doubtful. We have at least been able to enjoy the good weather. Pat has now been out with me and Tuppence for a walk at a local recreational field. I take Pat in the wheelchair because it’s easy to push her over the flat green while Tuppence goes chasing her ball and playing with other dogs. I’ve also taken Pat out for a drive twice this week. Yesterday we had a trip to East Wittering. Couldn’t get out of the car of course, because we had Tuppence with us, but it was another way of mixing up Pat’s usually boring day. Now that the lockdown rules are being relaxed, we can expect a few more visits from our family, social distancing notwithstanding of course.

As you know, I have been running an ad. Campaign on Facebook and BookBub. The ads are costing me money but showing some signs of life. Before that my sales were dribbling along and doing very little. This month though I have seen some significant change with my KDP sales on Amazon, averaging about 2 sales a day. On D2D my sales were not performing as well as last month, having only reached 17 by about the 24^th, six days ago. Then suddenly there was a jump of 19 in one day, from 17 up to 36. I was bowled over by that. Then the next day the figure leapt up to 47. I couldn’t believe it. So much so that I expected to see the figure corrected downwards within a day or so. But it has held on and I’m at 48 with one day of the month left. In fact, D2D is out-performing Amazon. The book that’s leading the sales figure is A Dangerous Game. I haven’t advertised that book in any way, so I’ve no idea why this phenomenon has happened. I’m not complaining though. My next task is to run another campaign but with a slightly different approach: I intend to test one country against another. Same ad for USA and for UK but separated. I will also be using the advice offered to Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ad School students by Alana Terry, a Christian mystery writer who has turned FB advertising into an art form and increased her book sales exponentially. I hope she has something significant to offer that others in the FB tutorial world have not. I’ve watched about a third of the video so far and she has already given me some good stuff to work with.  I’ll be running a new campaign for the month of June, see how it goes.

My reading this week is still Glass Dolls. It’s growing on me, so I reckon I’ll get through to the end with this one.

I will be involved in a book promotion next week: first four days of June. I’ll be promoting 17 other authors covering about 60,000 subscribers. Hopefully my offer, No Time to Die will attract some attention. It’s already doing so with page reads on KDP because of my FB ad. I don’t want to burst my own bubble, but the interaction I’m seeing with sales, ‘likes’, page views and people looking at my profile, is definitely growing. It would be nice to think I can establish a firm, committed fan base which could push me into a significantly higher Amazon ranking. Just got to spend more money — no brainer!

That’s it then. I wish you all well and stay safe! 

Half full or half empty?

May 23^rd. 2020

It has been a week now since Pat was discharged from hospital and signed off from cancer treatment, but that does not stop her getting unwell. We have not slept in our bed all week, and last night was pretty torrid: the worse yet. At 2.30 Pat could not muster a sensible word or settle down. As a result I phoned the ECHO service at 4.30. That was followed by a phone consultation with a doctor, and a Paramedic was dispatched to check Pat over. We had the antibiotic in our hands at 7.30. So hats off to the NHS system; it worked really well. Now we have to try and get Pat stronger. I will be arranging a phone call with our local GP to talk about the problem and asking how we will be expected to deal with this now Pat is no longer a cancer patient, bearing in mind she still has the cancer.

Having got beyond the need for sleep, I enjoyed a Zoom meeting at mid-day with our family. This was for the Parker International Quiz challenge: a recently inaugurated trophy for the Parker family. It has to be international and at mid-day because of the Aussie grandson, Sam who lives in America, and the Aussie son, Stephen, who is Sam’s dad. There were three teams, and would you believe it? We all scored 21 points. Hmm! There is a plan to do this again in a couple of weeks. Must get into shape for that.

My reading this week is Glass Dolls by D.E.White. It’s a murder mystery. Looks pretty good so far and comes recommended from a good source. My book sales are still holding their own: I’m averaging two books a day on Kindle, and just over one a day on D2D.And now D2D have made all their books available on a new French site called Vivlio. Sounds good although I’m not sure it will make much difference to me. But it’s another outlet, so well done D2D.

Like many writers, I have faith in my own ability, but often come across books whose authors I would happily concede to. One that particularly comes to mind, from the moment I finished reading it a few years ago is The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I watched the film this week. It’s the second time I’ve seen it and will probably watch it again some time. Sadly, the book’s author, Mary Ann Shaffer, died the year it was published. Her niece, Annie Barrows helped her aunt finish the book. If there was one book I wish I could have written (there are probably more of course), then that’s it. If you haven’t read the book, put it on your ‘must read’ list.

I’ve signed up for a cross-promotion with author David De Lee. The promotion will bring about seventeen authors together offering a book for free or $0.99, for four days at the beginning of June. I’ve been involved with David before, and his promotions usually do well. Naturally I’ll be sending the details out to my subscribers and will also mention it on my blog post for that week. Should be good. Wish me luck!

Down in the dumps

May 16^th. 2020

Pat came home from hospital yesterday but has now declined further treatment. This means we are heading into the unknown. Whatever comes, we have to face it because, sadly, that’s life. My hope is that I can give Pat a quality of life that will sustain her for however long she has. I’m sitting beside her at the moment, writing this blog post while she is watching TV. I took her for a slow and gentle walk round the garden just now so she could see what I’d been up to while she’s been away. I’m struggling with the compulsion to finish writing a blog post each week, and to abandon all thoughts of book sales, promotions etc., but that might be counter-productive; I need to keep my spirits up somehow while making sure I don’t neglect Pat.

My book sales are steady. So far this month I have sold 45 ebooks and a couple of paperbacks. And my page reads are trickling along nicely. This is all down to my current campaign on Facebook although needless to say it is costing me money. But I’m sticking with it. The majority of the sales are for The Boy from Berlin of course, and it’s good to see some of my other titles selling as well.

I have to say I have given up with Joffe Books. There has been no word since the last email saying they still wanted to publish my book Past Imperfect, and they would let me know after their ‘big’ meeting to discuss back titles. I know it might happen, but it no longer seems important.

How are you all coping with the lockdown and everything that entails? We have a family visit this afternoon. Our No.2 son, Terry, is coming over with our grand-daughter, Gemma and our great-grandson, Orin. They will go through to the back garden and have their lunch while me and Pat chat to them from our bedroom window. It would be nice to sit out there with them and keep our social distance, but unfortunately little Orin might want to run over and give me and Pat a hug, and that is a risk we cannot afford to take, even though we are quite sure Orin doesn’t have the bug, nor do his mum and grandad. We have to stay safe. Even more so now with Pat’s condition.

I’ve stopped reading Alex Shaw’s thriller. I did try but just couldn’t stick with it. I think it’s more my problem than the quality of the book, but it is, in my opinion, formulaic writing: writing for a market. Bit like the Die Hard films really and their ilk. I watched Lethal Weapon 2 on Sky during the week. Pure, over the top entertainment: just the kind of thing you find in a lot of action books that sell well. I wasn’t tempted to watch Lethal Weapon 3 the following night though; there’s only so much dross you can take, isn’t there?

Well, that’s my lot for this week. I might write another post next week. If I had something exciting to share with you, I would. Hope you are all staying safe and in good health.

Life can be a four-letter word at times

May 10^th. 2020

I would like to say this has been a good week for Pat but I can’t. Since being discharged from hospital, it has been mostly downhill. We learned that as a result of her CT scan last week, her final chemo session has been cancelled (not postponed) and the PET scan due later this month is not going to happen. We have a phone consultation this coming Tuesday with the consultant when I think he will dot the eyes and cross the tees for us. We are clinging to the hope that there will be other options. I’ve already taken Pat off one of her pills because of a problem the haematologist couldn’t solve for us: something I thought I would never do, but I reckon most people who have cared long term for a family member would recognise decisions like this. So now we wait for the outcome of the phone call. Our sleep patterns are virtually non-existent now, and it usually depends on Pat where and how and for how long we sleep. I won’t leave her on her own, so when she’s awake, I’m awake.

 

I can say however that I gave both my girls a bath this morning. Neither of them enjoyed it. Tuppence went mad when I’d finished with the blow drier and had a crazy run round the house and the garden. I think she was drying herself off. Thank goodness Pat didn’t try something like that. I wish she could have a run round the garden though. Tomorrow I might give Tuppence a clipping.

In my book world I can see the benefit of using Facebook ads over Amazon. Since the 19^th April I have sold 53 books and had 330 page reads. For me that is phenomenal. I’m still losing money on costs against revenue, but that’s something I’m prepared to do. For now anyway. I’ve also picked up five sales on D2D but that may not have anything to do with FB ads. Taking the page reads into account, the average is about three books a day. Not bad, eh?

My creative spark has disappeared: it went long ago, and now I don’t even bother with reading through the training videos on Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ads School, nor those on the Mark Dawson SPF 101 course. These are things I may pick up again in the fullness of time; after all, I have paid for them.

My current reading, Alex Shaw’s Cold East is difficult. This has nothing to do with the current situation in the Parker household, nor what is going on in the outside world: I just don’t feel drawn to the book at all, and only manage a few pages a day. My other avenue of attraction now is the garden. I’ve done a lot of weed clearing and have planted seedlings ready to move into those spaces I have cleared. I’ve also tackled the weeds out front with my hot burner weed killer. It’s like an elongated hair dryer and burns weeds at 2000 degrees C. But I still get on my hands and knees to tackle some of the stuff.

Incidentally, I received an email from David Gaughran: someone I have been following for a few years having bought one of his self-help books. He’s well known in the book world. He loves data: uses it a lot to break down the mysteries of the indie publishing world. He uncovered a strange set of figures from Amazon’s own pages on the comparison between ‘best-sellers’, and ‘most popular’. He chose the top ten thrillers and space operas genres, and of all the permutations, only one book featured in the top ten. The top ten in both categories did not match in a straightforward, side by side comparison, nor did the publishers, and the only consistently high publishers were ‘self-published’ in Space Opera. David Gaughran wondered how Amazon could rely on their own algorithms with those kind of contradictory figures. Needless to say, none of my books were in there. One day, maybe. Wish me luck!

Not so splendid isolation

May 2^nd. 2020

This time last week, Pat was in hospital and was discharged during the afternoon, which I thought was a bit quick. This Wednesday she was taken back into hospital because the infection was still raging through her body. Thankfully it is now under control and we are expecting her to be discharged either today or tomorrow. She had a CT scan yesterday which helped. At least her brain was clear; something I was worried about because of her stroke last year. But she’s OK now. I phone her four times a day because there are no visitors allowed and virtually nothing for her to do in her single room. I can’t wait to have her back home.

Naturally, Pat’s absence has given me plenty of time to work in the garden pulling up weeds, filling hanging baskets and mowing the lawn. Yesterday afternoon, having already done a bunch of weeding that morning, I decided to watch an SPF podcast. It was Evan Gow of Story Origin, a book promotional group of which I am a member. Naturally, I was keen to see Evan and what he had to tell us, but I fell asleep and only woke when James Blatch was winding up the podcast with Mark Dawson. I decided not to look at it again until later and forced myself to go outside and carry on with the weeding.

My latest read is Cold East by Alex Shaw. It isn’t too bad and basically does “what it says on the tin”. Shaw is a competent writer, successful too, so I can’t say he isn’t well read. But it’s a book that is written for a market. And I think that is one of my failings; I don’t write for the market. I’ve often wondered, although maybe not anymore, why my books are poor competition for other thriller writers that inhabit the genres in which I write. I have no doubts about my ability, never have, but other writers nail it consistently, while I struggle to attract a firm readership. I think the answer lies in the fact that I write by inspiration: I get an idea in my head, maybe from a news item, or perhaps some occurrence in my life that triggers a story. I then research the idea and write the story. This inevitably means I am writing for myself and not the market I’m trying to crack. Is that a lesson learned for me? Has to be, right? So what can I do about it? While I’ve been looking after Pat (eighteen months now), I have struggled to put pen to paper, and now have no inclination to write. The desire hasn’t left me, but the thought of preparing a draft copy and all the research that’s necessary, just leaves me cold. But there is also an underlying reason for that: by attempting to write to a market, I cannot get enthusiastic about a project. It’s almost as if I’m prostituting myself on the altar of market necessity, and that’s ruining whatever story I try to come up with. So well done to Alex Shaw and all his contemporaries; they’ve got it cracked.

I’ve had a little run of success with my Facebook ads programme. I managed to sell 25 books in eleven days. When you consider my average organic sales are about ten a month, that result could put me closer to sixty or seventy. Trouble is that its costing me money. My royalties are slightly lower that my ad spend. But that’s something I have to expect for a while; I simply need to learn more and not fall asleep when I’m watching a training video.

No news yet from Joffe Books. Wish me luck!