What's the point? Still ducking and diving.

January 27^th. 2017

How mighty is the ‘Zon’? I queried the fact that the paperback version of Hell’s Gate shown on their dot.com website, was the wrong one, and that the right one was shown on the UK product page. The answer I received still baffles me: it is because Amazon.com only work to one decimal point that they could not show the latest copy of my book because the trim size is 5.25 inches (x 8”). I know; I couldn’t either. This vast, unstoppable monolith that consumes all markets in its wake and gobbles up small businesses was brought to its knees by a decimal point. Someone should write a book about it.

I completed the questionnaire for Santonu Dhar during the week, which he transposed into an interview for his website. It’s standard fare really, but nevertheless it’s another contact in another part of the world. And my thanks to Santonu for doing this. The link is http://bit.ly/2nhmdMx. I also heard from a chap who our CHINDI group made a connection with some time ago — Jamie Dyer of South Waves Radio. He is back in business doing author interviews for his on-line radio station. We haven’t been in touch for over a year, so it was nice to know that he is back. We should be hooking up soon to record an interview.

I’m dithering again — procrastinating is the word. I was playing around with my website, which definitely needs some work on it, and also trying to add five chapters which are an extension to my novel, The Eagle’s Covenant. The intention was to send it to my subscribers, but as I read through them, I realised that these should be allowed to run into a full length novel. The question was, how could I do that when I don’t have a plot? Then I read something from David Gaughran that pointed me to the author, Libbie Hawker. She has written a helpful instruction book called Take off your pants. Libbie had her first book traditionally published, but had written it without a planned plot line: something I tend to do with most of my stuff. So, getting back to the Covenant, I began to think about turning this book into a trilogy, simply to compete with the writers who self-publish their series novels successfully. What I needed was a pre-panned plot line with an arc covering the three books. Could I do it? Could I really come up with something that would mean putting myself in a literary straitjacket? Well, I’m going to give it some serious thought once I have picked the bones out of Libbie Hawker’s book. Oh, I messed up my website by the way: managed to delete it and had to delve into the site history to get it back.

My wife and I went to the pictures yesterday. We saw The Darkest Hour. It was a brilliant performance by Gary Oldman playing Winston Churchill. I remember when I was stationed with the RAF Airfield Construction Branch in 1963, being “volunteered” on to the Guard of Honour with about fifty other poor souls. We spent the most part of that year rehearsing for Winston Churchill’s State funeral. We became very good at marching, forming two lines from three on the march, rifle drill to bring us to “arms reversed at rest” as the cortege went by. But I never did get to his funeral because I was posted to Germany before Churchill died. People of my age will remember the great man, and I can only hope that the younger generation will understand just what he did for us when Hitler’s tyranny decimated Europe.

News of Tuppence and her weight loss programme. She almost blew it! Pat left a ham sandwich in the wrong place for about one minute. Tuppence got to it and practically devoured the lot. My wife was furious, but I couldn’t help laughing; Pat’s anger was with herself really because she was so looking forward to that sandwich (she’s on a diet too). You’ve got to love them, haven’t you?

Next week (tomorrow evening) begins with me preaching my first sermon at our church as a fully-fledged member of the preaching team. Then somehow I must get to grips with my WIP and the idea of writing a trilogy. Good thing the first one is already in the bag. Wish me luck!

Searching beneath the radar

The old adage about never judging a book by its cover rings true when trying to decide on what would make a good cover for your novel. I now have the paperback rights to my title, The Boy from Berlin (I don’t have the ebook rights though), and I knocked up a jacket which I like, but probably won’t use. The image here is just something I like, but doubt if I can use it. I need to give some thought to the fonts, and decide whether I should use the dazzling background. After all, what kind of book does this image suggest? If any of you want to make a comment, please do, because I can’t make up my mind. I’ll probably spend some time playing around with different options. The book has been available for about five years now. I’ve sold very little — I mentioned the reason why last week, but I think it would be nice to have it available in print for all the upcoming events I’m hoping to attend in the coming year.

My book sales flattened off on Amazon. I sold zero for about six days. I picked up a little on D2D, which means sales on Kobo, Apple and B&N most probably. Amazon popped up yesterday, which meant they hadn’t suddenly stopped operating. The advice I got from David Gaughran’s video on promotion & marketing, was to ignore Amazon and concentrate on the smaller sites. This was the low hanging fruit, but by drip-feeding this area, the harvest will improve. He suggested that Amazon was so vast, so over-stuffed with hundreds and thousands of ebooks, that it was a veritable minefield for authors like me. To venture into this minefield meant needing the protection of a big marketing budget and a professional approach. It makes sense to me, although I still use BB ads on Amazon as well as the other sites.

I received an email from a writer, Santonu Dhar, in Pakistan who wants to interview me for his magazine. Naturally I said I would be delighted. He has sent me a huge list of questions, but fortunately he only wants me to answer seven (my choice). I have to go back to the “low hanging fruit” example because I have been advertising, through BB, in India lately, and maybe, just maybe, this is one result from that. We’ll see.

I have made a little more progress on my WIP. I’m re-writing each chapter and changing the way in which I’m presenting my characters. It still makes tricky writing, particularly as I don’t know how the book will end. I know I should work backwards — have and ending and work my way towards it. I wish it was that easy.

I finally managed to get the right copy of my paperback, Hell’s Gate delivered from Amazon. I had to remove the book from Ingram Spark to prevent them printing the Amazon order. It seemed the only, logical way to go. So, having now sorted that out, I have contacted Amazon because they have the wrong version on the American product page. I gave them the necessary details which they have passed on to CreatSpace. Phew!

I have just finished reading a psychological thriller (Lost Identity) written by the ex-Chindi author, Ray Green. His fans will enjoy it no doubt, but I still find myself reading thrillers very guardedly. I’m now reading Mark Dawson. This is the guy who, six or seven years ago was unknown. Now he’s off to Denver shortly for talks with the film producer who will be making a TV series (I believe) about Mark’s character, John Milton. Mark’s SPF course, of which I’m a member, is like gold dust for any budding writer who wants to learn all aspects of promotion and marketing. It takes a lot of time and dedication though: kind of eats into your writing time. (Poor excuse, I know).

On the domestic front, my temporarily repaired tooth broke into small pieces a couple of days before I went back to the dentist. It meant she couldn’t complete the job of fitting a crown, so she checked the root canals were filled OK, and banged a ‘temporary’ filling in. She offered to fit the crown but couldn’t guarantee it. So, nothing to pay now and fingers crossed my temporary filling will last a long time.

Tuppence is practically on a starvation diet to get her weight below 10Kg. We’re nearly there. Me and Pat feel very guilty, but know it’s the best thing for her. Her ‘Treets’ are chopped pieces of carrot, and she’s only allowed just a miniscule share of my bag of crisps. It’s tough, but I can handle it — I just hope the little darling understands.

Oh, yes: me and Pat celebrated our 58^th. Wedding anniversary yesterday. I can’t expect another fifty eight years, but hopefully we’ll keep going for a lot longer yet. Wish me luck”

Getting down to the root of the problem

January 14th. 2017

Root canal filling — now I know what it really means: one very uncomfortable hour in the dentist’s chair and another appointment to come. Fortunately my dentist knew what she was doing and I suffered no ill effects once the anaesthetic had worn off. I’ve just had an image flash into mind of Dustin Hoffman in a dentist’s chair. I can’t remember the film title, but he wasn’t enjoying the benefits of modern dentistry. 

Tuppence failed her weigh-in too. We got an earful from the Vet. We tried to blame Christmas but the Vet was having none of it. So, new eating plan: chopped carrots for her treats only and no extras in her bowl. I’m supposed to be on a diet too, but I know where the chocolate biscuits are kept. That makes me smarter than my dog. And a trifle bigger! 

Back to the world of books now and the calamity of Amazon publishing. For a second time they have sent me the wrong paperback: wrong size, wrong colour paper and not the book that is shown on the product page. I have now asked Ingram Spark to unpublish Hell’s Gate. The reason for that is because Amazon have sent the IS book twice, and not the one I uploaded to CreateSpace. Once I know that IS no longer have the book on their file, I’ll order one from Amazon and hopefully get the correct book. When we are back on track, I can order a few for the upcoming UK Southern Book Show in March. Check it out on FB https://www.facebook.com/uksouthernbookshow. 

I managed to get back to some editing and writing. I am currently reading through The Boy from Berlin. I have the North America paperback rights now, so I’m anxious to make that available in USA, and need to edit for reasons that have become apparent over the last couple of years. Not having the rights has stopped me of course, and I still don’t have the ebook rights. I’m hoping I might see some change in that respect later in the year. I’ll just have to plague the life out of the publisher; after all, they are not selling or promoting the book: something that I am reluctant to do simply to boost their income. Incidentally, this particular publisher only produces non-fiction work. They bought my publisher (Hale) out a couple of years ago, which kind of leaves me and the other Hale authors in limbo. Hopefully that will change. 

I made a little progress on my WIP by binning an element of the story that happened sixteen years before the beginning. Without realising what I’d done, by having to ensure I had a link back to that particular period, I was inhibiting the entire plot. I have subsequently changed character profiles and have begun thinking along a different story line. Sounds confusing, I know, but that’s what we authors do: make hurdles for ourselves. It’s the only way to write a “keep them guessing” thriller. 

I am also falling out of love with BB advertising. I still haven’t seen any real benefits to my particular efforts. I can’t blame BB; it’s simply a case of not targeting the right authors as Keywords, and not having a big budget. I increased it from $2.50 a day to $10, left it like that for about six days and saw no improvement or significant change in sales. In fact, they’ve gone down. So tomorrow, I’ll be having a real think about which way to go: Facebook, AMS or stick with BB. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Eventing

January 5th. 2018

Where do I begin? Well, happy New Year to all of you (that’s from my little girl, Tuppence, as well). I hope it will be a good one for you. I already have a speaking engagement in my diary, but it isn’t until January 2nd. 2019, so the world isn’t beating a path to my doorstep yet, but maybe that will change. I started the New Year well, having been given a clean bill of health yesterday from the haematologist at the cancer clinic. Dentist next week for a root canal filling and a crown. How much pain can I take? And I have to pay! But I’m looking ahead with renewed optimism, which helps. I plan to continue with advertising, but I hope to be a little more successful. I’m still using BookBub, and the signs are a little encouraging, but not enough on which to build a writing empire. So what else is there? I’m looking forward to the UK South Coast book show at Worthing in March. I may not sell many books, but there will be a lot of writers there, about sixty all told, and no doubt the foot traffic should be good. The book fest will be in the theatre on the pier, which kind of adds a little glamour to the event. We have an event in Littlehampton, sponsored by Arun Scribes and Chindi, which will be spread over a few days. Once again the foot traffic should be good, and we’ll have a chance to spread our names out further into the general reading public. The big one for us at Chindi will be the Chichester Festival. We’ll be holding events during the week and will also be sponsoring a charity. Last year it was Dyslexia Action. We haven’t decided yet for this year. Another event we like is the Arundel Festival. We spend about ten days with a stall sponsoring Cancer UK. It’s always an enjoyable time, and we do manage to sell books. There will be other events coming along. Crawley library comes to mind. I went last year, didn’t sell anything but it was good to be there. And my son and grandson came along, which meant we had lunch together afterwards. Another direction for me is my local church. I have been added to the preaching team and begin at the end of this month. I won’t be able to advertise my books there, although I might ask for a little divine help if my promotion work fails. Just before Christmas, I gave my subscribers the free gift of my African novel, Hell’s Gate. There were no strings attached to the gift, and 125 people took advantage of it. I had some good comments — not too many because it’s a fact that very few subscribers respond to gifts, offers, discounts etc. Naturally I was hoping to pick up some good reviews, but it’s too early to tell if all of those readers will have anything to say. But I did have one piece of luck in my quest to promote the book and get some mileage out of it. I contacted Wilbur Smith some weeks before giving my book away, and asked if he would like to read it. I was chuffed when he agreed. It took him about six weeks to reply to my message, so I was not really expecting it when it turned up in my messenger box. Anyway, the book will be on its way to him this weekend. Hopefully he will like it enough to give me a quote that I can use when I start pushing it. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck!

Rolling On

December 16th. 2017 My little dog, Tuppence made the weigh-in satisfactorily. She needs to lose about half a kilo now, and we’ve cracked it. Now I need to work on my weight. No doubt Tuppence will win. I’m still not succeeding with my BookBub ads. I’m persevering though, and will continue to tweak them until I see a significant change in my results. I need to make up my mind whether to keep them going until well into the New Year, or move over to Facebook ads. I made some progress with my WIP, despite my admission last week that my Christmas lunches were getting in the way. I must admit that it’s taking me a lot of time just sitting staring at the screen and trying to imagine where I’m going. I can see different ways of going with it, but there’s an inevitability of drifting away from the theme if I’m not too careful. I’ve seen a number of complaints recently on one of my author forums about the lack of reviews and the quality. This isn’t something I too vexed about; I find some reviewers can be quite dismissive of an author’s work without realising why they are posting a review. It should be about enjoyment and being carried along with the depth of the story, but some reviewers must feel they are marking a student’s exam paper, and treat it as such. If they don’t like a book, find it boring or poorly written, they should say exactly that, rather than give a forensic report on it. At the same time, authors shouldn’t read their reviews if they don’t want to read harsh words. Had a real treat today: two of our sons came over with their families, and we all went out to lunch. Because of family commitments, it was easier to have our Christmas get-together this way. And as an added bonus, our No.3 great grandson Orin came too — brought his mum with him of course. He’s 9 months old. Such a joy. I entered a short story competition this week: the BBC annual event. The winners won’t be announced until October next year, so I’ll have forgotten all about it by then. I’m not a short story fan, because I look at them as a kind of extended joke: there has to be a punch line at the end. My story was something I wrote a couple of years ago for our church magazine in Spain. I cannot see it making any progress because of its Christian content. Sadly, the BBC tends not to enjoy tales of this nature. Nine days to Christmas now, and still a lot to get through. I probably will not making any progress with my WIP during that time, but I’ll try. Meanwhile I want to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. I might post a blog next week, but it’s unlikely. Have a great time and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

Weighing up my progress

December 10th 2017 Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it. I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B. I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though. Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably! I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over. So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful. I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!

Happy Planners

December 3rd. 2017

Last night our Chindi group enjoyed a pre-Christmas get together at The Dragon restaurant in Rustington. Twenty of us made it there, although not all were writers. However, it made for a good number to crowd into a very full restaurant. The oldest of our members is in his eighties, and is reaching the fulfilment of three years’ work: he is publishing a semi-fictional account of a soldier relative who fought during the First World War. Our youngest member there was a newcomer to the group who writes children’s stories. We are a diverse bunch and cover just about all genres in fiction and some non-fiction. It was a chance, too, to be able to chat with some of the group about what problems we have encountered throughout the year, and what success we’ve had. Success in our case is largely relative, but we all have been able to blow our own trumpets from time to time. We have some good ideas to carry us forward into the New Year, and it gives us all a sense of excitement and hope. We are already discussing our summer promotions in the Chichester Arts Festival, plus we have a couple of things planned for Littlehampton, which should be around the earlier part of the year. And March is something else eight of us will be looking forward to because of the UK Southern Book Show at Worthing. I’m sure we’ll come up with other little gems too, but it does give us some impetus, knowing that we are reaching out and not waiting for things to happen. Earlier this week I cracked on with my WIP, and managed to push ahead somewhat. I still have a long way to go with this, and will probably struggle to have it ready for a summer launch at my current rate of progress. I mentioned my efforts last week about BookBub advertising and the fact that they seem to feature a lot of best-selling authors: some who aren’t even living now. I received an email from them advertising Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which kind of reinforces the complaint I saw on an author forum about BB capitalising on the top writers and leaving less room for the indie guys. So far I have received an email each day and only one has featured an indie writer, all the others have been NYT best-sellers. Make you think. Anyway, back on the advertising bit: it is a recommendation from BookBub that it helps to use their list of top authors when searching for a “keyword” writer. As I am trying to promote my book, A Dangerous Game, I searched through their list for an author similar to me. Almost without exception though, the list of thriller writers is populated with those who write series characters. This makes it hard for people like me, a cross-genre writer, to find an author to use as a “keyword” author. I’ve already tweaked my ads, and even changed them, hoping for some positive results. I can’t expect overnight miracles, but there are pointers to the way in which your ad is performing. I’m getting a few sales, thankfully, but at the moment I can expect to struggle. Hopefully things will improve in time. Wish me luck!