Roller Coaster

May 19th. 2017 Two weeks have gone by and much has been packed into it, but not one word have I written for my next novel. I’ve been cleaning up my act a bit with regard to disconnecting from other groups, and hopefully I’ll see things a little more clearly now when it comes to knowing who I’m working with and what is expected of me. I mentioned Amazon selling my romance (Past Imperfect) at a knock down price. I realised I should buy the stock (they said there were six copies) and throw them in the bin. That way I would get the full royalties on the official retail price, and the sales would go towards pushing up my rankings. Good plan? Nope! I went on-line and learned I could only order three copies. I did this, went back an hour later to order the remaining three to discover that my latest version was up for £7.50. I ordered it, but it turned out to be one of the remaining stock, published by Lightning Source, not the new version published by CreateSpace. The single copy arrived before the other three; all has been published by LS. I complained to CreateSpace and returned the book to Amazon. End of story? Nope! I edited A Dangerous Game, waited until the new version was available and ordered the new copy. The old one turned up. I checked the “Look Inside” feature to see that it was my new version there, which meant that CS and/or Amazon have messed it up. I complained to CS and returned the book to Amazon today. I suppose when you consider that CS and Amazon are handling an enormous amount of book traffic, mistakes are going to be made, but lightning shouldn’t strike twice in the same place as it has with my book orders. One small success was registered with the promotion I ran for my author friend, Helen Christmas. She sold several copies of her box set which delighted her. She said it probably wouldn’t have happened without my input. I was really pleased for her. Her latest book in the series, Retribution, is now available on Amazon. It’s £3.50 to buy (Kindle), and free if you’re a member of Kindle Unlimited. http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06ZYF7TYP. My wife and I travelled up to Norfolk last week for a family ‘bash’: a joint birthday party for our great grandson, Harrison and his dad, Leon. Had a good weekend catching up. Then we travelled up to Lincoln to visit an old friend of ours whose husband is confined permanently with Alzheimer’s disease. It’s so sad watching a man who had been your friend for twenty years fading like that. At least we were able to give our friend, Pauline, a lift in her spirit while we were there. Managed a trip out to Skegness where I left a copy of my book, Hell’s Gate in a shelter on the promenade. It had a Chindi label on it asking whoever picked it up to read it and leave it somewhere else. This is something our Chindi group have been doing as a precursor to the Chichester Arts Festival and the launch of our new website, due to happen about now. www.chindi-authors.co.uk. Despite my determination not to write for a while, I found myself mulling over different ideas for plots and writing them in my head. The curse of the author: not being able to give up for a while. I’m getting used to my new hearing aids and expect to be forking out the money for them, but not for a week or so. Need to sell more books to pay for them. While I was away, my Amazon rankings rocketed a couple of times. They are back in the doldrums now, but it puts a smile on my face to see that steep incline on the graph. I just have to learn how to keep those ‘balls’ in the air. Wish me luck!

Now for Consolidation

May 6th. 2017 Most authors like to be interviewed, and I’m no different. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to be interviewed on radio, TV, in the Press and through author websites, including YouTube. It’s difficult to quantify the effects of these interviews, and I doubt they do much for my sales figures, but at least it puts me in the public eye. My next interview will be in June on award winning author, Karen Ingalls’ website. (kareningallsbooks.com). Hopefully the interview will attract a few more fans to my books. I’ve come to the conclusion that my less than 100% commitment to promotion is one of the reasons why my rankings and sales are low, and it’s about time I consolidated the effort I’m putting into it by setting aside my writing time. No doubt some people will say that I should write more books and keep on writing because it’s the only way to increase reader awareness out there, but it’s like a chicken and egg argument to me; so unless some unshakeable idea drops into my head and won’t go away, I’m going to spend more time trying to sell my books than writing them. Trouble is, it doesn’t stop me coming up with ideas: I keep getting them buzzing around in my head. I mentioned my Romance last week: Past Imperfect. I decided to tidy it up, edit the book for some minor typos and make a small adjustment to the cover. I uploaded it to CreateSpace at the beginning of the week. Two days ago it appeared on Amazon at £2.01. I queried this to be told that this was normal practice with book-sellers, and the royalties would be paid on the full price of £8.50. I was dubious about the whole thing so I ordered a copy. It came today. It isn’t the edited version I uploaded to CreateSpace, and was printed by Lightning Source. I’ve contacted CS, but now I’ll have to remove it from LS until I’m satisfied that the old version doesn’t exist. Who’d want to be a writer anyway? Yesterday I e-mailed my subscribers with a promotion for my author friend, Helen Christmas. We are both keeping our fingers crossed that she will enjoy a bounce in her sales figures because of it. Click rates are notoriously low these days, probably because there are so many “offers” going around, and the readers are being saturated with them. But unless we keep plugging away and gently pester the lives of the reading public, we won’t get anywhere. Helen’s promotion offer is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017WLXY7K. Why not click and have a look? It’s a great offer. I had a hearing test last week after seeing an advert in the Daily Mail. I’ve had so many of these over the years that I could practically draw the graph they come up with after the test, and this one was no different. Hopefully the product will be a vast improvement on my current hearing aids, which I purchased a few years ago in Spain (American company). It comes with a remote control: should be fun playing around with that. At least I get a trial period before making up my mind whether I want to shell out the money or not. Next week we are off for a family bash in Norfolk, then a trip round to an old friend in Lincolnshire, so there won’t be a blog post from me. Hopefully when I post again, I will have some good news about, well, anything really. Wish me luck!

Reaching Out

April 30th. Where have the days gone? It seems like Christmas was only five minutes ago. I’ve had enough time since then to be halfway through my next novel, but so far I’ve done precious little. I’m feeling fairly calm about that, and expect to explode into life later this year. Now things are returning to normal after our fairly busy schedule, I can hopefully think about the promotions I’m involved in this month and keep my fingers crossed for some light at the end of the tunnel. One author I will be promoting is a member of our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk), Helen Christmas. Readers of crime thrillers from authors like Martina Cole and Lynda la Plante, would probably enjoy Helen’s thrillers set in London. Her three novels have attracted excellent reviews, averaging just below five stars on Amazon. She has a fourth in the series coming out and will be doing a promotion on that in May. Check out Helen’s Facebook page here: www.facebook.com/author.helenchristmas. I will be sending details of Helen’s new promotion to my subscribers in early May. I managed to crack the Co-op bank and finally become a fully-fledged member as a director of the Chindi group. I also managed to get the £65 back from Gatwick Parking that I paid to get through the barrier. They apologised, said it was down to an error on their website. I filled out my tax return last week. Unfortunately I don’t earn enough from my book sales to employ an accountant, but at least I can say I am earning something. Compared to last year, I didn’t do so well, but that was because of a terrific result with a BookBub ad. This year my ad failed to cover the cost, although I did manage to sell about 2000 books. I have been giving some serious thought to giving away free books. I touched on that last week, but I am still wondering why I pay £16 a month to Instafreebie so that one of my books can be given away through their website. Once I’ve got through the May promotions, I’ll probably close my account with them, unless someone can come up with a cast iron argument why it’s good to be with Instafreebie, or other sites like them. I’ve been reading one of my books, Past Imperfect. I took a copy along to the hospital to leave it there as part of our Chindi giveaway promotion, and started reading it while I was waiting to see the nurse. I enjoyed it that much I decided to read through to the end. Unfortunately I don’t have the ebook rights to the book, which is annoying. I’ve got to wait another eighteen months before I can get them, otherwise I would be promoting it now. It’s a Romance with hard edged back story: a touch of family saga and prison life; murder; betrayal and some real tear-jerking moments as love wins through. You can find the ebook on Amazon, reasonably priced too. The ASIN is B00TDTOY3I. Why not have a look? There are no reviews either, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s brilliant! I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead with Chindi. We have our new website launch to look forward to with the £300 of books to give away. We are heavily involved in the Chichester Arts Festival, and will be too with the Arundel summer festival. We have author friends of the Bognor Writers and Arun Scribes getting involved as well. Our numbers are growing and I believe this can only help us to improve our overall outreach to the area and beyond. Now, if only I could find the inspiration to write! Wish me luck.

Getting around

April 22nd. 2017 I didn’t write my blog last week because I was in Spain enjoying the sun and linking up with old friends. The week before that I travelled up to Norfolk to attend the funeral of an old work colleague of mine: another opportunity to meet and chat with old friends of mine from the workplace. It also gave me the chance to spend some time with my eldest son, Vincent, and just relax in his company. Despite all that, my mind wasn’t too far away from the book world. I am involved in a cross-promotion, but the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned regarding the effectiveness of these tie-ups. I’ve had three so far and have yet to see any real advance in my sales. I am also beginning to doubt the point of giving away books for free. I understand the argument about giving something to get something in return, but I have given away almost 400 books over the last four weeks (two titles), and have yet to see any reviews or have any contact from the readers who have downloaded them. I have had some sign-ups though. As a result of my involvement with the Chindi group www.chindi-authors.co.uk, I am now a director of the group and have to be a signatory on the cheques. I contacted the bank with the necessary information (so I thought), which included an official letter with my new ID. Although I had been armed with what we thought was sufficient information, I was caught out by questions that could only be answered by a mother’s daughter and had to bail out. I will eventually become a bone fide member, but it is so frustrating. I was on the phone for about half an hour. Last Monday I picked up my car at Gatwick North terminal long stay car park. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and despite having the correct ticket with my number plate on, I couldn’t get out of the car park without paying £65. The guy on duty wasn’t interested in my plight, so I had to cough up. I did get reimbursed by the company yesterday, but what a hassle to go through because some ‘jobsworth’ wouldn’t open the barrier for me. The Chindi group are launching their new website next month. We’re going global and are giving away £300 of books as a prize. Have a look and see what we are up to. The link is above. We are also leaving our books around the area with a sticker on asking whoever picks them up to leave them somewhere else once they’ve read them. So far I have left a paperback on a bendy bus in Gatwick, a bus stop in Chichester, a waiting room in the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, our local tea shop here in Pagham, and one in a D-I-Y store in Bognor Regis. Five down, five to go. All the photographs were posted on Facebook and Twitter. Apart from a couple of cross promos next month, I am thinking of paying out for some Facebook advertising. I’m not sure yet which way I’ll go with that. Needs a lot of thought. Wish me luck!

Planning ahead and hoping for the best

April 9th. 2017 Looking at the pages of my diary for the past week I see they are blank! I must have done something because I couldn’t let a week go by without doing something. I cut the grass, I remember that. I visited my sister who is 87. We often talk about the past. It reminded me that people of her age are a wonderful source of information for writers when researching those early years. She has been a fan of my writing for years, ever since she typed my first novel for me that never saw the light of day. I have thought about resurrecting it. The title was “The Perforated Edge”, and it was about a packet of extremely valuable stamps. Not so sure it would excite readers today though. Last Monday, my author group, CHINDI, had a photoshoot for their relaunch in May. We have opened the group to anybody, rather than locally based writers. We still intend to work as a group of writers helping each other with promotions and advice about publishing. What we will not be doing is trying to sell each other our books. The website will be focussing on authors and readers as a separate group (if that makes sense). The idea is to allow author members to edit their own pages and update them, while the readers can log in and see what books are on offer and any recommendations from other readers. The website is www.chindi-authors.co.uk. After the photoshoot, we all adjourned to a local pub for an informal meeting. The main topic of conversation was mainly about the upcoming Chichester Arts Festival in June. We are running a week of ‘workshops’ and fun stuff. The website is www.festivalofchichester.co.uk. Three of us — myself, Helen Christmas and Christine Hammacott, sat down and discussed our participation in the festival week. We are doing a crime seminar where we’ll be talking about what’s involved in writing crime novels. I am more of a cross genre writer rather than specifically crime, but most of my novels have an element of crime in them, so I can at least have some input. I have another interview on line with Ben Jackson of the Indie Publishing Group. It’s very similar to my other interviews (naturally), but you can catch it at http://www.indiepublishinggroup.com/author-interview-michael-parker/. My YouTube interview with Debbie Mack is at http://bit.ly/2oyRSY8. As I look at my diminishing sales, I reminded of a conversation on line in one of my author groups about the lack of sales. One theory, which I tend to support, is that it is our own fault; we are giving away too many free books. Readers have no need to buy anymore; they can stock their own libraries with hundreds of free ebooks. If that’s true, it means we are killing the goose that lays the golden egg. The only way now, it seems, to get my books out to a wider reading public is by advertising. I could spend a fortune and ‘hope’ for success. Or I could wait for a massive dose of luck and watch all those readers beating a path to my doorstep. Wish me luck!

Back to the Future

April 1st. 2017 A different week this time: no writing, but a lot of frustration with getting a book jacket image loaded up to Ingram Spark. I’m taking advantage of their free offer to have a hardback copy of my latest book, Where the Wicked Dwell, published. I have to confess that most of the problem was my own lack of experience in working with templates. I eventually worked out the best way to use the template with the image of my jacket. It meant a lot of adjustments using Photoshop, and insertion of guides to ensure I had everything right. I received the e-proofs today and found there is a missing page break after a one of the chapters. It’s ironic because I was extremely careful with the interior file (so I thought), and didn’t expect any errors. I checked the paperback from CreateSpace, and the error isn’t there. The jacket is OK, but needs a little tweaking. Not essential but because I’m going to upload a new interior file, I might as well titivate the jacket. Yesterday, my wife and I visited the small town where I was born seventy six years ago. It’s a place called Cuckfield, and happens to be in West Sussex, the same county in which we are now living. It was a notion I had when we settled back here. I was born during World War 2. We lived in London and, because of the war, the blitz and constant bombings, pregnant mums were moved out to countryside hospitals to free up the much needed hospital beds in London. So my mother was whisked off to Cuckfield, to a hospital that was once a workhouse. It was the kind of place that, in its early years, would have been a place where “fallen women” were taken to have their offspring. No, my mother wasn’t “fallen”; she was married and had two children when I was born. The hospital has been modernised and exists as a block of flats. It is now a world heritage site. The surrounding area is beautifully landscaped and looked after by a professional company. I had a bit of luck on my side. Our son, Terry, is a Captain with the airline, EasyJet. One of his pilot friends actually lives in the old hospital. This meant we were able to not just visit the place, but to step inside. Although the hospital is just a block of flats now (apartments for my American readers), it felt odd to think that somewhere in that building, my mother gave birth to me as Hitler was doing his best to bomb us all into submission (not in Cuckfield of course). My mother wanted me to be born on St. Patrick’s Day, and had already decided to call me Patrick in honour of my Irish grandfather. But I had other ideas and turned up a day late, so she called me Michael instead. Now I look back and see how history has unfolded since that day, and how much, or how little, I have been a part of it. There are a million stories out there, and mine is just a single thread in a whole pattern woven over the years. I should be able to pluck that single thread and watch it vibrate into a story that would grace the pages of any book. But I can’t; I have to stick to thrillers. And that’s the rub; I’m having trouble coming up with a plot. Now, where was I? Ah yes, searching for ideas for my book. I did think of one: it was about this baby who was born….. I don’t know; no-one would believe it. Just one other thing: my Debbie Mack interview is now available to see on YouTube and Debbie’s website. http://www.debbimack.com/blog/2017/03/29/the-crime-cafe-interview-with-michael-parker/ Wish me luck!

A Chatty Man

March 25th. 2107 The highlight of my week from a literary point of view was the interview I had with Debbi Mack, a New York Times best-selling author, last night. We set this up about two months ago. I learned a little more about Google hangouts when Debbie sent out the invite; took a little while to get going. We chatted for about 35 minutes, which will be edited to about 30 minutes for the YouTube channel. She said some very positive things about my book The Devil’s Trinity, which she is currently reading, but that wasn’t the point of the interview. We talked about my latest release, Where the Wicked Dwell, and why I decided to go with the character, Marcus Blake, who appeared in A Covert War. She could have asked me anything because I would have rattled on until she decided I’d said enough. Anyway, I tried to explain my reasons for re-introducing Marcus Blake, which were purely mercenary: to sell more books. I think it’s a truism that authors who write series novels will sell more books than someone like me who writes stand-alone books. I did say, however, that by going down this route, I might be letting my standards drop simply because I am being propelled along a route I really don’t want to go. I believe that writing with a single character doesn’t let the writer wander too far away from a channelled path. No doubt there will be writers who disagree with me, but because my books are inspired by world or local events, I find the task of writing to ‘order’ as it were, is rather like being in a straight-jacket, and it saps inspiration. But hey, it sells books! I’m finding that now because I have resurrected Conor Lenihan from my thriller, The Eagle’s Covenant. This was in response to comments I’ve received about wanting to see this guy again: something I’d never planned to do. So I’m tackling the problem of how I cast this character in a completely new role and avoid too many similarities between that and what went before. But where will the inspiration come from? What I am considering is actually making this a sequel to the previous book, beginning where that one ended, so that the two books could be seen as one complete story. If I did that, I could publish the two as one book. It’s an interesting thought. I’m also taking advantage if Ingram Spark’s free promotion and having Where the Wicked Dwell published in hardback. I did this with A Dangerous Game last year. It looks good against my other hardback titles, and Wicked will make a nice addition to the bookshelf. I’ve had no feedback from the cross-promotions I did last week. I haven’t seen any significant change in the sales of my books, although I am giving away several copies of my latest book every day, and adding about ten subscribers a day to my growing list with Mailchimp. I’ve seen some comments from authors on a particular Facebook group complaining about readers not buying their books, even when they are on sale for $0.99. They say the free copies are being downloaded, but no-one is buying. One author suggested it’s our own fault for giving books away. There are so many free books available now on Amazon, so what’s the point of buying? I’m not sure if that’s true, but I do believe it is necessary to establish yourself as a reliable writer, and hope that readers will be prepared to part with their money to buy your books, and you can only do that by attracting them to your product with giveaways in the beginning. I hope so. Wish me luck!