Climbing mountains

The week began poorly for Pat, but she has made good progress now. Her situation prompted me to make two decisions which resulted in a chest X-Ray on Tuesday and then a doctor’s appointment for another problem on Thursday. She is now on a different antibiotic tablet because her infection was resistant to the earlier one prescribed. I constantly find myself in the invidious position of having to diagnose Pat’s problems and hope I get them right. I have now added a finger oxygen monitor to the paraphernalia I use to keep an eye on her. I’ll be wearing scrubs next!

On Wednesday evening I went along to the Chindi Christmas Book launch at the Swan Hotel in Arundel. You can see the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feast-Christmas-Stories-Unwrap-Sussex-ebook/dp/B07WSGPKMP/ref. As I mentioned in my post last week, I had agreed to take Beryl Kingston along. Beryl was our celebrity guest: an author who has sold over a million books no less. I knew Beryl had contributed a short story to the book about growing up in war-torn London, so I asked her about that and about living in the big city during the war (me too). It turns out we were both brought up within couple of miles of each other: Beryl in Tooting and me in Wandsworth. I lived in the Garret Lane which ran from Wandsworth to Tooting (about two miles away). So as you can imagine, we got on like a house on fire. Beryl is almost 90 years of age and has a tremendously strong spirit for her age. We spent the car journey talking about London and the book world, and I was also able to catch up with her during the book launch once she’d finished ‘mingling’. Quite an evening for me; not because I had the pleasure of Beryl’s company, but also to be able to indulge myself in the world of writing and talking to like-minded people. Great evening. I had a friend from church come in that evening to look after Pat, which gave me the opportunity to spend a few hours out of the house.

My reading this week is a crime novel by Neil Lancaster called Going Dark (1912946068 is the ASIN number if you like well written crime novels). Finally I have a book which I’m enjoying and not moaning about.

On the subject of Amazon book numbers (ASIN), I have just finished uploading forty campaigns to Amazon Ads, with another twenty to go. I used ASINs to search for relevant best sellers on Amazon, and from there produced numerous books through a site called Yasiv.com (free by the way). Sometimes I would get as many as 300 connections to one ASIN. From there is was a case of jiggery-pockery and the confusing world of Excel spreadsheets to produce suitable keywords for my campaigns on Amazon. Sound confusing? You bet; it took me hours to learn how to do all this, courtesy of Bryan Cohen’s excellent AMS ads course. Twenty more campaigns to upload and I will have sixty running for a month. This is all for my book, The Boy from Berlin. If all this works, I’ll see a positive upswing in my book sales which are trickling along the flat, bottom line with an occasional spike. Do I worry? Got more than selling books to worry about. Wish me luck.

Puzzles and more puzzles

Bit of a bumpy ride with Pat this week. Her next appointment is twelve days away, and as much as I hate to say it; I can’t wait for her to go back on chemo. The only medication she’s on at present is a beta blocker and a blood pressure pill, so we’ve no idea what her real situation is. I try to make decisions based on Pat’s apparent condition and what she admits to. I use the BP monitor to keep an eye on her and today I bought a Finger Oxygen monitor. I'm beginning to feel like a doctor, or Quack! Her weight is stable, thank goodness, and she seems to be in good humour, except when I ask her to do some colouring pictures with me; then she acts like a truculent ten year old and won’t. But she does at least attempt the quiz book for seven year old kids. One page every morning: Sudoku, that kind of thing. But that’s for her mental state. So we’re winning there.

Back to my other world. I came to the end of my AMS advertising in USA for my book, The Boy from Berlin. Very poor results. I complained to my mentor, Bryan Cohen, who responded with a daunting challenge to put the ads back on with a new campaign that will result in sixty ads. He has given me explicit instructions on how to go about this. I must admit it makes me nervous because AMS ads can sometimes run away with you. Needs careful monitoring two or three times a day: something I have precious little time for these days.

My book sales for No Time to Die are trickling along, and the page reads are slowly climbing. I will be coming to the end of those particular ads next week, but will start again with a whole new bunch of keywords. I am slowly beginning to understand spreadsheets: something that is a helpful part of preparing an ad campaign. Made some mistakes in the process though. Two days ago I built a column of sixty ASIN numbers and began the process of copying in the relevant search results on Yasiv.com. Once I had the information I wanted, I edited the results, removing all the characters like commas, colons etc. that are not wanted as keywords. End result? I’d managed to edit my ASIN numbers too because I’d left them on the spreadsheet. I was really annoyed with myself because it took about an hour to meticulously prepare the ASIN numbers. UGH!

Next week, on Wednesday, I am going to the Chindi group’s Christmas Book launch. The book is a collection of Christmas stories pertinent to West Sussex, written by some of the group’s members, and available now. The launch party will be opened by best-selling author, Beryl Kingston, also a member of our group, so it should be a good evening. You can see the book here: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Feast-Christmas-Stories-Unwrap-Sussex-ebook/dp/B07WSGPKMP/ref

I had a quick look at my pulp fiction WIP last night, but soon realised that I simply don’t have the inclination to spend any time on it. Probably won’t now until after Christmas. Then maybe I’ll be able to knuckle down. Wish me luck!

Getting my ducks in a row

Pat’s situation cheers me up one minute and lets me down the next. We had a trip to the neurologist last Tuesday for a consultation. It means Pat will be referred to a memory clinic for some kind of rehabilitation. She also has an appointment for a head scan in a couple of weeks. But we were back at the doctors the following day because her water infection returned, so she’s on antibiotics again. And this morning I had to take her for a flu jab. She didn’t want to go, but what do you do? We sought advice from the cancer nurse before making the appointment though. She isn’t getting much sleep at the moment, which means I’m not, but that’s the way it is.

On to other things now. My book sales are creeping up. Haven’t hit the big time by any means, but the graph is showing signs of early growth. One factor is the jump in page reads on KU. My title, No Time to Die (https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B07WFQMQV4) has reached 773 page reads this month. This gives me something of a problem: I decided to take the book out of KU once it’s 90 days were up on November 11th, but those kind of figures for me are bloody good. So I guess I have no option but to extend the KU for another 90 days. What I am going to do though is advertise the book in USA on Amazon Ads. At the moment it’s the UK ad that is encouraging sales and page reads. I’m also thinking of advertising on BookBub again (not the featured deal), because that seems to bring sales in on D2D. Just got to watch the pennies though. The beauty of AMS is that it’s reluctant to take your money from you unless you’re attracting positive clicks, which is a step closer to selling a book. Oh, and I sold three paperbacks this month: three more than I sell in a year I think. Must be doing something right then.

And because I’m picking up a bit on-line, and people are viewing my FB page and my profile on LinkedIn, I thought I ought to tidy up my website. Not being technically proficient in that area, I set about it a couple of days ago with some smart idea of how I was going to blow everyone away with my phenomenally brilliant web page. Well, it’s back to the drawing board and a careful reconsideration of exactly how I should go about this. So, I’m lining all my ducks up in a row and creating new 3D images of my jackets, which I will put on my main page with links direct to the sales pages. With luck, my ‘subtle’ changes will encourage potential readers to click on the books once they’ve landed on my website and go on to buy!

I watched a SPF podcast last night (I watched it on my laptop. This means I can be in the room with Pat). It was a writer called Amanda Lee. What a phenomenal woman! She writes 9000 words a day and has written almost 200 books in the last eight years. She turns out one book a month and has an eleven book series in the pipeline. She reads about five books a week as well as editing her own material. She also writes under another name as well as her own. Just watching the interview left me shaking my head. What kind of life is that? Good luck to her if she’s happy. She’s certainly successful and must have a huge fan base. If only, eh? But I don’t think I would welcome success if that was the kind of sacrifice needed. Careful what you wish for. Oh, and talking of wishing: wish me luck!