After the Promotion.

The free run for HELL’S GATE has now finished, and I’m waiting for Acclaimed Books Ltd. to let me have the download figures for the promotion. My results were encouraging judging from the information that was available on Amazon and Author Central. The title went up into the top ten (free) in the two categories, Historical, and Action & Adventure. Overall the title topped out at about 250 in all Kindle books. The important aspect of free promotions is the resulting sales figures that generally follow after a free run. It sounds like a contradiction, but it happens. When NORTH SLOPE went on a promotion earlier this year, it had almost 40,000 downloads and something like 6000 sales that followed. There was also a knock-on effect for my other titles. But unfortunately the Kindle bubble has burst, and now the results, for almost all the authors using the Kindle Select promotion, have tailed off dramatically. But unless we promote this way, we are unlikely to achieve any significant sales without spending heavily on promotion and marketing, which carry no guarantees anyway. What I’m after, apart from the obvious, is to establish a readership, which I can only do by having my titles permanently available on Amazon at a reasonable price, and hope to pick up good reviews. Even then, good reviews don’t always guarantee sales. The reason for this, I believe is that there are a lot of writers who cajole, persuade, and act duplicitously in conjuring up five star reviews in order to persuade potential readers to buy their books. I have fallen into this trap as a reader, downloading books that have had some sterling reviews only to find that the books are rubbish. But I have also persuaded friends, as a writer to put good reviews on Amazon for me. I believe in myself though, and I’m sure all writers do. So it behooves me to establish a readership through the slow process of building trust: trust that the reader has in my work.

Another title of mine that I have a great deal of faith in is THE BOY FROM BERLIN. This will be available on Amazon and other outlets as an e-book in November. It is being released by my publisher, Robert Hale, and will also be available as a Harlequin paperback in January. The hardback was published a year ago (2011) and picked up by Harlequin very quickly. They will also be publishing THE EAGLE’S COVENANT, but I will be releasing that as an eBook probably next year. So, there will be plenty there to form the basis of a readership, and I live in hope that the fruits of my labours will become apparent in the not too distant future. Wish me luck!

A Good Start to the Week

A Good Start to the Week

This is the week that I hope to get my name higher up the author rankings and to lift my book sales. Thursday is the day that HELL’S GATE is going free on Kindle Select, and it is this that is to be the driving force that, hopefully, propels me upwards. But I have had a good start to the week. This morning I checked my book sales rank on Amazon’s Author Central. It’s a kind of novelty thing really because my sales are pretty low, along with my author rank. I only ever check my kindle books, and occasionally my paperbacks. I NEVER check my hardback sales because no-one buys them anymore. But today my hardback novel, THE THIRD SECRET shot up the rankings by over 4 million. Why was that? Probably because someone, somewhere bought a copy (I love them already). It put a big smile on my face. It usually languishes at about 5 million, but the graph showed a steep rise to somewhere around 460,000; a rise of over 4 million. I’m hoping this presages my HELL’S GATE results, which goes on a free run this Thursday (October 25^th) for three days. The only way authors like myself can promote their work if they are not prepared to pay out for advertising, is by hard work on the social networks and by blogging. But the essential thing is to establish a readership; people who like what they have read and want more. I do have a worry, and that I hope whoever bought the book realises that the book is available as a paperback, but under the title, ROSELLI’S GOLD. Perhaps the buyer wanted the hardback as a gift for someone.

So what now? I have spent some time putting out the usual notices on FB and twitter, plus using this blog to let people know about the promotion. I have already posted about it on the Kindle forum, but it seems to be slowing down there for some reason. I am also in the process of editing THE DEVIL’S TRINITY after an extensive proof reading session. It’s amazing how many errors you find, even though the book has already been edited as a hardback. But I always say it’s down to the author to ensure there are no errors in the book. I hope to have the Kindle version ready by the end of the month, but can’t send it to Acclaimed Books yet until my son, Terry comes up with a book jacket for me.

There are always highs and lows in the book world, and today I’m on a bit of a high (not too high!). Hopefully I’ll be even higher when I see the results of my promotion coming in early next month. Wish me luck!

Kindle Gen and all that

I’m finally having some success with my upgraded Windows after some teething problems. When I learned that my file converter, mobi pocket would not work with Windows 7 I had no alternative but to try Amazon’s Kindle Gen. For those who haven’t yet tried but need to, prepare for the worst. I did manage to convert a Word document to kindle, but not quite the way I had envisaged. And in fact it was much easier than having to load html codes into a Word document and converting through mobi pocket, but I didn’t use KindleGen. If anyone wants to know how I achieved that, please contact me through my web page or this blog. I’m now in the pre promotion period for HELL’S GATE (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008N3MT6E). I’ve already logged on to various websites and attached all the necessary information. I’m looking forward to seeing how my results pan out, particularly since Amazon has introduced an Author Rank on Author Central. It’s really just something else to fret over, but writers being what writers are, particularly indie writers, I’ll keep watching my rankings in the hope that they will rise to the top of the pyramid. My best rank at the moment is in the Action & Adventure category. It nudged 730 a couple of days ago, but my overall rank, for all books is way down. It’s good fun though. I think the secret to selling books, apart from having a major publishing house behind you, is to keep up the supply and keep your name in the forefront of the reading public’s mind. Next month (November), I should have THE DEVIL’S TRINITY available in Kindle and paperback. I will also see my latest novel, THE BOY FROM BERLIN being released in Kindle, but that will be by my publisher, not me, because they still have the e-book rights. It will be followed in January with the paperback being released by Harlequin in North America. And if I’m really good, and work hard, I might even get all of my books out by January or February. Then my readers will have a lot of choice, which is one of the keys to becoming an established and successful writer (relatively speaking). Wish me luck!

Another Plan Gone Bust

So much for my plan to get cracking with THE DEVIL’S TRINITY. I upgraded from Windows Vista to Window 7 only to find that my HP scanner/printer needed a driver download to function on this system. Having duly downloaded the driver from HP, I discovered that it does not work in the same way as it did on Vista. I tried contacting HP but it’s all about FAQ’s now. Once upon a time you could get hold of a technician (I did that when I first bought my HP Photosmart), so the result is that I have had to abandon the project until I can come up with an alternative. I have an idea what I will do, but something else has turned up to thwart me too: my Kindle conversion software, mobi-pocket will not work on Windows 7.  It appears that Amazon have bought mobi-pocket and substituted it with their own ‘Kindlegen’ version. All this is progress designed, I believe, to capture the market and make it difficult, if not impossible to keep up without spending more money. I must admit that it never occurred to me that an upgrade to the next version of Windows would result in the loss of two software functions (scanner and mobi) that I have been using happily and with complete confidence.

One thing the upgrade will not prevent is my intended promotion of HELL’S GATE. I have a free run beginning on October 25^th. for three days on Amazon. This is for all Amazon customers of course, and also those Amazon prime members will be able to loan it from the Amazon library. Like all promotions, I need to spend time on this and if I do it right, it will give my name a lift and hopefully help to sell not just HELL’S GATE, but my other titles as well.

There are signs that Amazon’s Kindle Select programme is running into the buffers, which means less sales for authors like me, unless I can establish myself as a reliable writer. It has been said on the Kindle forum that Amazon are using their algorithms on the higher priced books in order to generate sales of those books. I have stated earlier in my blog posts that I believed that publishers would eventually restore the status quo and turn the book pyramid back up the right way. This would mean the so-called slush pile would be back at the bottom. Seems like Amazon are edging that way. Not that there’s anything wrong with their business plan; it’s just means I have to sell more books and then I can edge my prices up. Would I do that? Probably not: if I’m selling lots of books, why should I?

 

Back In Harness

Well, I’m finally back in front of my PC after six weeks. Four of those weeks were due to our holiday in UK and Australia, but the last couple has been because my PC has been in the ‘menders’ for an upgrade and a hard drive replacement. I didn’t know I had a fault on my hard drive until the technician told me he was having trouble because of corruption on the disk. I must admit that my PC has been playing up of late and I realise now that it was only a question of time before it crashed completely. But now I’m almost back in full flow. I had to do some installation of my own like Skype, MS Word etc., and I also had to change the keyboard language because mine is Spanish. You don’t get to do that every week, so it took some time figuring out how to do it. There was also the problem with passwords for websites I had been using for about four years. Some didn’t recognise ‘gmail’ because I had originally registered in ‘googlemail’. Then I had to trawl through my ‘book of passwords’ (how many of you have those?) in an effort to get logged on. On two occasions I had to ask for a new password. But I’m back and raring to go. The four weeks away was great, and it was a joy to see our son and his family in Australia who we haven’t seen for about six years now. I didn’t get much time to spend on the web while I was away, but that was deliberate on my part, otherwise I might have spent an inordinately long period in from of a terminal with an impatient wife leaning over my shoulder.

Since being away, my book sales have dropped off dramatically. I suspect this is because I haven’t been promoting them and generally making a nuisance of myself on other websites. But I will be pushing HELL’S GATE which goes free on October 25^th. for three days. Between now and then I shall be putting the word out in all the usual places. I will also be giving away three copies on Goodreads once I have changed my ‘signature’ for the book because it has a new jacket. I see the coming four weeks as something of a proving ground for me. If I am right about my falling sales, then I should see a marked improvement by the end of the month.

Another project which I will be picking up again is the work I’m doing to get THE DEVIL’S TRINITY out on Amazon. I’m about one third of the way through, and would like to have that available by the end of this month. Might take a bit of doing though. So, much to do and much to hope for. Wish me luck!

Tying up Loose Ends

My viewing figures are going up. When I started this blog in October last year, I had about two readers. One of those was me and the other was one of my sons. I don’t know which one because I have four! They probably arranged to read my blog weekly, one at a time. But now the figures are creeping up and have reached as high as thirteen. Not massive by any means, but as the old saying goes: Big oak trees from little acorns grow. My wife and I are off to Australia in five days’ time. We’ll be visiting one of our sons who lives out there with his family, and we’ll also be calling in on some old friends in Adelaide. On the way over it’s a shopping trip at Singapore and on the way back we’ll have a look at Bangkok. We’ve got two friends staying at the house to look after the dog and cat, so we can feel relaxed about that because they have done this for us before.

So where does that leave me and my writing? Well, I’ve just had my HELL’S GATE paperback launched on Amazon, and will be running a little promotion campaign while I’m away. I don’t intend to push it until I get back from our trip. In the meantime, I’m preparing THE DEVIL’S TRINITY for publication. I have to scan the book because I don’t have the original file anymore. It isn’t too much of a problem, just slow, that’s all. I should have that ready for Acclaimed Books by the end of October. My son, Terry will be doing the jacket for me of course. At the moment he’s working on a revamp of the HELL’S GATE jacket. That might be ready before I leave, but it’s not that vital that he has it finished before I go.

I came to the conclusion that my priority for this year is to have all my books available on Amazon by the end of 2012. If I can manage that, then I can get on with my latest novel which is lying around gathering dust at the moment. The one book I can’t prepare myself is THE BOY FROM BERLIN, because Harlequin have the paperback rights to that and Hale, my publisher has the eBook rights; that will be available on Amazon in November. And although Harlequin will be publishing THE EAGLE’S COVENANT, I have the eBook rights to that. And that’s already been prepared for Amazon. So, with luck and God’s good grace, all my books will be available by year end.

I’ll try and slip in a short blog before we leave on Friday. Happy reading.

Milestone

Milestone

I like to think that there are points in your life that can be singled out as a milestone. Most of us have them; they mean a great deal but would not necessarily be significant to others. The milestone for me today is that I have just downloaded my re-edited Kindle version of HELL’S GATE. Why do I consider that a milestone when the eBook has been available on Amazon for about a month now? It’s all about personal, professional pride (hopefully), and the fact that I have managed (I hope) to have a book on Amazon without any flaws; no typos, no grammar mistakes and no howlers. I wouldn’t let the POD file go up to Amazon until I was satisfied that it was as perfect as I could get it. The re-editing for that took me through five editions before I was happy with the result. The kindle re-editing was a joy too because I had finally got the hang of editing the html file with mobi pocket, doing the search and find, closing the gaps etc., spotting the slight errors in the html codes until finally I was happy with the finished product.

So why, you ask, should all this have such significance in my literary life? The answer lies in the fact that my previous kindles and POD books all had flaws in them that could have been prevented. It was all my fault and it has cost me money to have the editions resubmitted, most of which had to be done two or three times. It’s all part of the learning curve, but the big cost to me was the bad reviews. Even though my three novels picked up some cracking, four and five star reviews, the bad (and sometimes vitriolic) reviews about the typos and poor editing have left a scar across my reputation on Amazon as a reliable writer, in terms of editing etc. The only way back from this is to rebuild my reputation, and this can only be done by very careful editing, proof reading and attention to detail. To that end I propose to launch HELL’S GATE on to the reading public when me and Pat come back from our holiday in Australia and the Far East. I have begun that, in a small way by paying for a couple of weeks advertising on KotC, which I presume means ‘Kindle on the Cheap’, to be run for a couple of weeks in September.

I have a lot of faith in HELL’S GATE. It’s what I call my ‘masterpiece’. At least, that is what it would be if I was a painter, but beauty, as they say, is in the eye of the beholder. So I’m hanging my reputation as a writer on to the views of the reading public. It’s a terrific read and would probably appeal to fans of Wilbur Smith. So, the book is out there, not expensive and available now. Have a look, see what you think. I’m pinning my hopes on this one. Wish me luck!