The book they tried to ban.

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

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 24th, 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?

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!