Managing the excitement levels.

27^th June 2020

Life is still up and down for Pat, and consequently for me too. Good days and bad days, good nights and bad nights; all served up in a haphazard fashion and never knowing which way the coin will fall. Pat is back on antibiotics again having just finished last Wednesday. Our local GP made a house call last night to check Pat out for himself. He gave us the option of having her admitted to hospital so the infection she has, which won’t go away, can be dealt with intravenously, but we (Pat) turned that down. The doctor understood why and wrote the prescription so I could treat Pat here at home.

I got to thinking about levels of excitement the other day, and how they impact on our daily lives. For me and Pat, like most people, we’ve had our fair share. Sometimes an unexpected gift or windfall. A visit from a family member. A holiday abroad for the first time. Babies arriving — four in our house! Moving to Spain and enjoying a big villa with a big pool. Pat and I used to like skinny dipping late in the evening in the pool. It did wonders for my excitement levels, as you can imagine. But as we approach our final years, the excitement levels are moderate and less frequent. With Pat’s condition, I can get excited if she manages to finish the small meal I cooked for her, or if she manages to sleep through the night. Life can be fun, can’t it?

But my excitement level went up a notch during the week: I heard from Joffe Books, and they have scheduled publication of my book, Past Imperfect for the autumn. I wanted to swing Pat around like I did years ago each time my publisher agreed to publish my latest manuscript. But Pat’s emotional responses are miniscule, so I had to enjoy the moment in solitude. However, it will happen and I’m tremendously excited about getting in with such a successful company. I know one swallow doesn’t make a summer, but with luck I may be able to persuade Joffe Books to take on more of my other titles. We’ll see.

I’ve started an advertising campaign on Amazon but have taken the advice of a new member of Mark Dawson’s long list of experts: Janet Margot. Janet worked for Amazon for eight years on the ads team and brings a new kind of expertise to Mark’s team. Her advice was to begin a campaign (for beginners) with one book and run two ads: one with auto targeting, the other with manual (keywords). I decided to try with my World War 2 thriller, Shadow of the Wolf. By stepping away from A&A, thrillers, crime etc., I believe I can have a better idea of what kind of impact my ads have. So far, very little has happened. I’ll give it a few days before I start tinkering. Will this turn out to be a successful campaign for me? Hope so. Wish me luck.

Puffing out my cheeks...

20^th. June 2020

Another up and down week with Pat, but she’s still holding strong. Her sleep patterns are all over the place, which means mine are. My eldest son said its like having a baby in the house. I had to take her to A&E during the week after a phone consultation with a paramedic. We were in the hospital for five hours, but they were able to complete the necessary tests before discharging her with a prescription for antibiotics. No doubt we’ll tread this path again sometime in the future, but there is little option to do otherwise. We did have a couple of brighter moments when our number two son, Terry came over with our grandson Adam. We had a fish & chip lunch in the garden, social distancing in place of course, and enjoyed the sunshine and being in close proximity with them. Then on Friday, our number three son, John came over. He brought beers, homemade scones with clotted cream and jams, four frozen spag bole meals for me that he’d cooked himself and a curry. Lovely boy. So it’s not all doom and gloom. Well, not until we get on to my book world.

Last week I said I might consider writing an entry for Amazon’s annual KDP competition. Having worked out the numbers I made a start. One week later I’ve managed 800 words and know that it isn’t going to happen, not even if I force myself to write. And as I sit here writing this blog, Royal Ascot is on the TV. Frankie Dettori has won five out of five races. It must be dispiriting for the other jockeys knowing they’re up against one of the best jockeys in the world. And he hasn’t always been on the favourite; he just happens to be bloody good at what he does. And so it is in my book world: there will be writers who succeed in whatever they take on because they’re so good, while others, like me, only threaten to do something. If I was a racehorse, you wouldn’t put money on me.

My advertising campaigns finished during the week. I sold a total of 48 books, which isn’t too bad, but now the sales will fall off the edge of a cliff unless I’m prepared to spend more money, which I’m not. Not at the moment anyway. It’s a sad fact of a writer’s life that advertising is a necessary evil, costly too while you go through the learning curve. I’ve been going through this learning curve for some considerable time, but I think it needs more application on my part. My next campaign will almost certainly be on Amazon, but I will be paying closer attention to all the information I have (and have paid for) in the hope that I can achieve a better ROI and see some significant change in my monthly sales.

I watched the drama, The Salisbury Poisonings during the week. I looked at it like a thriller writer might, but in this case I would have dispatched my tough guy hero off to Russia to quietly dispose of the two men identified by the British government as perpetrators of the poisonings and the subsequent death of an innocent woman, Dawn Sturgess. I did wonder if those two Russians survived being identified on British TV and made to look like absolute chumps trying to pretend they flew all the way from Moscow just to see the spire at Salisbury Cathedral, and then cut their visit short because the weather turned. No doubt some thriller writer is beavering away writing the book already. And me? Well, I did start the sequel to my pulp fiction thriller, Hunted. My tough guy hero arrives incognito in Russia and spends several months odd-jobbing and developing his colloquial Russian as he searches for the man he had been ordered to bring back to England. All it needs is a couple of changes and I would have the makings of the Salisbury sequel. Could I do it? Not this jockey! Wish me luck! 

Behind the scenes

13^th. June 2020.

I watched the ITV documentary ‘Living with Dementia’ this week featuring Ross Kemp talking to two families who are living with the curse of knowing their loved ones have this disease. I was able to recognise the early signs that I see in Pat, and I’m caught up in the dilemma that is familiar to so many people who have gone through it. Pat’s cancer may take her first before her mind becomes so confused she has to go into full time care and suffer all that entails, but what do I hope for? Whatever way the coin lands, we lose. All I can do as time progresses is to make sure I look after Pat completely and totally.

Have you ever been on the cusp of something? I feel as though I’m on the cusp of some fairly good book sales, but I don’t know how to make sure the numbers grow. My Facebook campaign has resulted in nineteen sales of The Boy from Berlin so far this month, while the legacy of a cross promotion I shared at the beginning of the month for No Time to Die, has resulted in fifteen sales. Meanwhile, on D2D I have sold seven books so far. All told that’s forty-one, which is just over three a day: better than last month. I’m still not making a profit, but I’m quite close. However, it could all taper off unless I find a way of “scaling up”. There are several ways of doing this, and invariably means spending more money, buy at least it has given me something to work on and hope I can lift the graph and end up with a smile on my face.

In a couple of weeks’ time I’ll be promoting a fellow CHINDI author, Isabella Muir, who has written a crime mystery set in West Sussex. I can’t give the title of the book yet because it happens to be the same as a best-seller I downloaded at the beginning of the week and am still reading. It’s an eBook written by a retired policeman, but it isn’t a thriller; more a resumé of his career in the Met. I’m enjoying the book despite it having a lot of statistics in it about crime. One thing I can say though, as a result of reading the book, I know that the violent demonstrations that are going on in London will be policed in such a way that the public will be unaware of the enormous effort that goes on behind the scenes while the violence is perpetrated by the zealots.

And on the subject of fellow CHINDI authors, I must congratulate Angela Petch whose book sales have passed the 100,000 mark. It’s great to be in the company of some stellar writers. Hopefully some of the stardust will rub off on me.

Most of you will know that I stopped writing last year so I could spend more time with Pat. The desire to write didn’t go away, but the inclination did. I’ve become used to the idea now, but last night I found myself considering an entry into Amazon’s yearly competition for the best eBook of the year. It has to be self-published on Amazon by the end of August. I did some simple maths. One thousand words a day would get me to August 12^th for a 60,000 word novel. That would leave less than three weeks for editing, cover design, etc. before submitting it to KDP on or before the last day in August. It’s possible, except that I haven’t got a clue what to write, and doubt very much if I could even challenge the entries that usually win this kind of prize. I don’t watch much TV now, so would have no excuse about lacking the time. I’m not on the go all day long and do have my quiet times (when I’m usually asleep). So maybe it would give me something to focus on alongside the need to watch over Pat. Who knows? I may even do it. At least it would mean another book to add to my growing list. Wish me luck!

The book they tried to ban.

June 6^th. 2020

One week moves effortlessly into another week, and for many of us it all seems repetitive. For some its because of the lockdown, but in my case its about looking after Pat. There has been a little change in her condition: marginal improvements here and there, but she still needs constant attention. She is no stronger but at least she is eating a little better and holding her weight at seven stone. I hope we can get that higher. We manage to get out more. In the morning I take her with me and the dog for a walk. During the afternoon we go for a drive. We’ve been to four seaside resorts and managed to walk along the prom at two of them. Pat’s in the wheelchair of course. When I’ve finished this blog, we’ll take a drive again, but no walk because it’s raining.

My book world has thrown up some interesting stuff, mainly Facebook. My ads have worked OK, and I decided to run the campaign for my book, The Boy from Berlin again. It ran for about twelve hours and was then stopped because it didn’t adhere to FB’s ad policy. Took me a while to figure that one out, seeing as it had run fine for the whole of May. Turns out that FB did not like the use of my headline referring to a white racist front runner for the presidency. That was an extract from the first line of the blurb, but FB suddenly discovered they didn’t like it. Once I’d amended the text, the ad was accepted and being served again. I have also run the same ad in UK; I want to see how one does against the other: one in USA, the other in UK. Strange thing though about the American angle. When I tried to put that up for a featured deal on Book Bub, it was rejected for USA but allowed for Canada, UK and Australia. Obviously my headlines touched sensitive nerves in this American presidential election year. I wondered how I could capitalise on the double rejection and advertise the book as “The book they tried to ban!”. It would definitely sell well then.

My other title, No Time to Die, has been on a four-day promotion, and to date I have sold 12 copies. The price was reduced to 0.99, which helped, but later today or tomorrow, I’ll be putting the price back up. My sales this month are 23 so far, just over three a day. I wonder how long I can sustain that? I need to keep an eye on my advertising costs though. I’m also running a campaign on Book Bub, but that is low key.

I finished reading Glass Dolls by D.E.White. I enjoyed the book but found it a little repetitive at times. At least I finished it, but I would probably only award it four stars. I’ve just started The Chain by Adrian McKinty. It has attracted all kinds of five-star quotes from well-known writers, so it should be good. I just hope I can get used to McKinty’s odd writing style. We’ll see.

Next for me is to learn a little more about FB advertising, and to start studying Mark Dawson’s latest Amazon Ads for Authors course (I’m already a paid-up member). He claims it is probably the best course of its kind currently available anywhere online having recruited ex-Amazonian, Janet Margot and persuaded her to compile the whole thing. Maybe one day I’ll know how its done. Wish me luck!

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.