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!

Corragio amico mio (Courage my friend)

June 23^rd. 2018

Took a break from it all and went to Hever Castle last Wednesday. It was the home of the unfortunate Ann Boleyn, second wife of Henry V111. It was a lovely day; the house (castle) was amazing, and the gardens exceptional. It was well worth the visit and made me feel like writing historical novels rather than the stuff I write now. I slept like a log that night — must be my age. Pat said she slept well too. (Must be her age as well).

Decision time. How often do we have one of those? Mine crept up on me when I realised I needed professional help in tackling my abysmal marketing efforts. I know I’m not alone in that; I see several posts on my FB author forums by authors wondering why they can’t sell books despite spending a lot of money on advertising, and I’m no exception. I thought I had improved my efforts with BookBub ads, but after changing the ad at the beginning of the month, my sales on Amazon came to a halt and those on D2D nosedived. I began tweaking the ad, but without any change in results. I rewrote the short, sixteen word blurb and dropped the price twice. Still nothing. So I figured I needed help. It all began with Dave Chesson and his KDP Rocket course.

The Rocket course is about finding the keywords for the Amazon ads. I mentioned it in last week’s blog. But at the end of the course were several links to other places, no doubt Dave Chesson has affiliate links to these. This one — the one that intrigued me — was by a group called Book ads. They take on your promotion for a fee (naturally), and the AMS campaigns are run by a guy called Brian Berni. There are others involved in the group too, but Brian becomes an editor added to your AMS dashboard. He then runs the ads. Brian lives in Italy and worked in the Vatican archives for seven years (I wonder if he ever saw the light of day?). He’s American (I think). Well, he sounds American. But the rub, and this was the point at which I hesitated for a long while, was that I was required to agree to run ten ads consecutively. I pay a monthly fee, which I can cancel at any time, and must be prepared to spend $10 a day. It doesn’t take much maths to see that it could result in a spend of $300 or more a month if there are no book sales. Hence the hesitation. I counted it all on my fingers and toes, figured out how I could keep it secret from Pat (I told her in the end anyway), bit the bullet and signed up. I’ll let you know next week how the ads are progressing, if at all. The most I could expect to spend on AMS by the way is about $6 or $7 a day.

I was back in the book design business too. I received a proof copy of my re-edited book, The Devil’s Trinity, and could see I needed to do a minor tweak to the jacket. The book came yesterday and still needed attention, so I uploaded another, revised jacket (I’m talking about very minor changes here) and hope to see it in a couple of days.

July is almost upon us and I have the Littlehampton Festival Book talk and the Chichester Festival Book talk to look forward to. There’s also a small festival here on our estate where I’ll be manning a table hoping to sell my books for a charitable cause. Mind you, if I don’t have any success with Book Ads and AMS advertising, I think the charity I’ll be thinking of will be closer to home. Wish me luck!

Trying not to get diverted

June 16^th. 2018

This week began with a Chindi Zoom meeting. Nine of us tuned in and managed to talk about a great deal. We were able to chat to John Hall who was beginning his ‘Author of the Week’ slot during which time we feature him and his book Under the Yew Tree. You can read about John and his novel at http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk/john-hall/. When we have these Zoom meetings, they can be quite amusing: rather like a bunch of amateurs producing a TV show. But we enjoy having them and it helps to bring faces together and to catch up in the flesh so to speak.

I said the week began with a meeting, but in fact it

began with a visit from our No.3 great grandson, Orin. We love having him here, even though we have to make our home “baby friendly”. All the TV remotes have to be put up high, the telephone as well. He likes pushing buttons and even sees the small speakers on the TV sound bar as a source of button pushing joy. It was a lovely day, so we were able to have some time with him in the garden giving him a chance to play splash in the blow-up pool. It was a sunny day, so he was suitably covered in sun cream.

Of course, none of this was helping me with my dedication to learning more about promotion and marketing; not that I was too unhappy about that. But I have been busy studying Dave Chesson’s course on AMS keywords etc. I have the benefit of Mark Dawson’s excellent course on the subject, but I find Chesson’s course a little more forensic, and therefore a little more complicated. It’s strange how other experts come across with their advice. Dave Chesson recommended an ebook on AMS advertising by Brian D. Meeks. I’m just over half-way through the book and wonder why I’m even trying; it’s designed to frighten you off AMS altogether, I’m sure of it. Yes, all the information is there, but as a “student”, it’s clear to me that the teacher thinks the subject is a doddle. Nevertheless I shall pick the bones out of the advice, spend my money and watch my sales rocket. Really? Oh, where am I? Oh yes, back to reality — my learning curve. My sales have bottomed on Amazon, which means I need to persevere and hope the information sinks in.

During the week I received an email via my website from a reader who enjoyed my book, Past Imperfect. He wanted a free copy of my giveaway title, The Devil’s Trinity, but failed to realise it was an ebook and not a paperback. I checked the wording on my website and could see how someone could make the mistake in not realising it was only an ebook, and it was for my subscription list. Anyway, I have decided to send him a copy. I’ve changed the wording now on my front page. Incidentally, this is what he said about the book: I think Past Imperfect was one of the best, if not, the best of the books I have ever read. I like the way you tied the characters from the past to the current, very clever. 

My other diversion this week (and the next four) is, of course, the World Cup. What else can I say other than “Come on England!” Wish me luck!

Talking the Talk

June 9^th. 2018

I missed our Chindi author of the week spot last week for some reason, so I want to make amends for that now. I would like to introduce Susanne Haywood who is a cat lover. She joined Chindi recently but has been active in the literary world, penning such articles as the one at https://katzenworld.co.uk/2018/06/04/so-youve-decided-to-adopt-a-human/. Naturally we wish Susanne all the best with her furry friends and hope she’ll enjoy plenty of books sales.

Last Wednesday was a ‘book’ day for me. Will Patching came to see me in the morning, bringing the book I’d won in an on-line competition. I could say that Will came all the way from Thailand to hand me the book, but that would be the imaginative writer in me adding a little editorial licence to the truth. As a matter of fact, Will was visiting UK and staying in Bognor. His brother lives just round the corner from me, so it meant an enjoyable couple of hours talking about books. And Will had a great deal of useful information which he passed on. I’ve already acted on that and joined up with Dave Chesson of Kindlepreneur (www.kindlepreneur.com). Will has used it quite successfully. Hopefully it will help me with my promotion and marketing, and I suspect that in the long run I’ll make gains I can see, but how much and how many depends largely upon the effort and time I’m prepared to put into it.

Later in the day I was at The Steam packet pub in Littlehampton where I joined up with two Chindi authors, Isabella Muir and Helen Christmas, for a talk on writing crime novels. Supporting us there were Patricia Feinberg Stoner and Rosemary Noble. Patricia organised the evening, and Rosemary has been responsible for organising several events for the Littlehampton festival next month. The evening event at The Steam Packet was a kind of practice for us all. At first I thought we would struggle as we were put into a corner, but the whole pub paid attention as we got into our stride. The Landlady, Arletta, was a star; she looked after us really well and even bought a book off each of us. I’m sure the Chindi group will be invited back again. I hope so.

Last week I put my boxset into Kindle Select. I did this because I’ve sold about one in the two years the box set has been available. So imagine my surprise when I saw that within a day or so, I’d got just short of 1400 page reads. You can see the box set at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01KYAOZZG. It’s called Michael Parker’s First Three Novels. The set is cheap to buy at £4.75 anyway, but I think I’ve made more from those pages than I have with the set sitting there for the last couple of years.

As a result of meeting up with Will Patching and being pointed in a sensible direction (more discipline), and also because of watching David Penny on an SPF podcast, I’ve decided to put my WIP on the back burner until I am reasonably happy with my promotion and marketing efforts. I still have a long way to go, but hopefully I’ll see the light at the end of that very long tunnel. Who knows? Wish me luck!

'Hims' ancient and modern. Recalling the past and planning the future.

June 2^nd 2018

Well, I made it to my old school. Forty seven of us turned up. We were given stick-on name tags with our year. Mine was 1952. It meant I could reminisce with the other two old boys who were the same year as me. We didn’t know each other, which was to be expected. One of them became a scientist, while the other became a banker and went on to head up a global company as a Sales Executive in America. The oldest ‘old boy’ had 1948 on his label. The school was almost unrecognisable inside, whereas the frontage was exactly as I remembered it. Being a listed building, it couldn’t be changed. The school was founded by Sir Walter St. John in 1700. It was known as ‘Sinjuns’, but now it is St. Thomas’s. It’s in Battersea High Street, which has been smartened up since I saw it last. The visit brought back some happy memories, and a recall of funny stories. One chap spent some time looking for the initials he had carved on an oak panel in the school hall. He found more than his own.

I also picked up on my WIP: something that has been annoying me for some time. I can see a little more clearly now that other stuff has gone away. I’m reasonably happy with the way it’s going, but I still see some problems ahead. With luck I’ll have it finished by the end of the year.

I’m having fun and games republishing The Devil’s Trinity on Ingram Spark. Just when you think you’ve got it cracked, you receive that dreaded email to say there’s an error. My initial problem was in wanting to reduce the size, but I’d forgotten about the ISBN. Reducing the size meant starting again basically with a new ISBN. Fortunately I still have some which I purchased from Nielsen a few years ago. I will also publish the book on CreateSpace and upload a new eBook file for KDP.

Next week, Wednesday, I’ll be meeting the author, Will Patching. I’m looking forward to that. It’s always good to speak to writers who understand what it means to be a self-published author with all the difficulties that go with it; perhaps he can give me a few tips. That evening I’ll be at Littlehampton at The Steam Packet with fellow Chindi authors Isabella Muir and Helen Christmas. Rosemary Noble will be in control there so we don’t get carried away and spend too much time talking about ourselves! If you’re anywhere near the pub, why not drop in?

My book sales increased a little during last month. I think it’s down to my ads on BookBub. I will be putting up a new ad for June, but will use another title: possibly North Slope. I’m a bit reluctant to drop the price, but sometimes it’s inevitable if you want sales to increase. What I will have to do is see how the sales go with the current price of £2.99 and if it’s sluggish, then the price will have to come down. I am at least seeing sales with seven of my titles, which is good.

I’ve got a lot going on this month what with appointments, events, family visits etc., it’s a wonder I have any time to write and to catch up on the latest news and advice about promotion and marketing. Once I’ve sorted the puzzle out, I should soar. Wish me luck!