It's Good News Week

As this week and this month comes to an end, I can say it’s finishing on good news. The hospital has finally diagnosed Pat’s cancer and we will be seeing the haematologist on Monday afternoon for the consultation and the beginning of Pat’s treatment. Yesterday when we got the news, we were both in a flood of tears, cuddling each other with big smiles on our faces. It’s ironic that when we are supposed to be in despair at the news of cancer, for us it was a massive relief to know the treatment can begin after waiting for almost eight months. It’s going to be a hard road for Pat, but with faith and prayer, and the skill of the doctors, I know Pat will come though.

As readers of my blog will know, I have been advertising my book, The Boy from Berlin on Facebook. The two ads are identical, but one has been running for two weeks in UK, the other for a week in USA. In that time I have sold 39 copies of the book on KDP, and two on D2D. This represents a terrific turn round in my monthly averages: whereas I’ve been selling about one book a week, I can hope to see that figure rise to an average of ten copies each week. Naturally I will be tweaking my ads because it’s good advice to do so. I won’t make drastic changes, but as the numbers slow down, so I’ll look to maybe change my target audience. Needs some thought though. And next month (July), Stuart Bache is contracted to design a new jacket for me. It will be interesting to see how that impacts on the sales. I had one comment posted on my FB page from someone I don’t know. He put the jacket up and said, “Brill read”. Great stuff.

The next bit of good news is that I finally managed to type “The End” on my WIP. I never thought I’d get there with all that we’ve been going through this year. It’s taken me the best part of twelve months to get this far and it’s a relief to reach the end. Naturally the book isn’t ready yet, but I will be printing it off and going through it with my red pen. Once I’m happy with that, I’ll start the process of publishing. I can’t afford to ask Stuart Bache to do the jacket, but I’ll look into finding some designer recommended by people I know.

And the other bit of good news is that photo at the start of this blog. That’s me at our local ‘Fun Day’ on the green in our residential park home estate. Last year I sold six books and was well pleased. This year I sold nineteen books! At least, I think it was nineteen. I started losing count after twelve. I was staggered. One woman bought two books and while I was signing them, she picked up another and said her son would love that book. I reached the stage where I thought I might have to nip home for more books. So, a really good day. Next on the horizon is Pat’s treatment, my editing and a look at how I can tweak my FB ads and increase my sales. Wish me luck!

Being brave, stepping out

Well, Tuppence came home and cheered Pat up enormously. Me too. She’s such a bundle of joy — Tuppence, not Pat. Needs a decent trim now though, so she’s off to the poodle parlour on Monday. It also means I have to set aside time during the day for a couple of dog walks as well as looking after Pat now. We had two medical appointments this week: just skirting round the problem really, and are now waiting for the biopsy results to come in. Hopefully that will be next week.

I finally ventured into Facebook ads this week for my book The Boy from Berlin. I used Mark Dawson’s video on setting up an ad. My audience was (is) The United Kingdom and Ireland, my featured author is David Baldacci, and my budget is £5 per day for thirty days. At the moment I am spending about £3.75 a day. But the results are very encouraging. In five days I have sold twelve copies and my current sales have reached seventeen since Monday, which includes other titles. This is after selling about one book a week before last Monday. My next step, which I’ll be doing today, is to copy the ad and target an audience in the USA. That’s the only change I’ll make and will then see how well the ad. does with an American audience. This is what’s known as ‘split testing’; something I’ve never done before because of the cost involved. But because I can monitor the spend and the effectiveness of the ads, it’s down to me how much FB takes from my wallet. I’m planning to keep this up until the end of the thirty day run, maybe tweaking here and there, but it’s the only way I can see myself gaining any traction with readers. I accept that my ROI will suck, but nothing ventured……..

I have also made some decent inroads into my WIP. I have managed to reconstruct the plot line by moving some scenes into different parts of the story, although I think it’s a bit like moving the chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. Maybe the story will sink because of my ill-disciplined way of writing, but hopefully not. I expect to have the MS completed by the end of this week, and then it needs to be read by a few beta readers who I will contact through my website mailbox. If they don’t pour scorn on the book, I’ll be encouraged to find a relatively inexpensive cover artist and have a jacket designed. I would like to be able to use Stuart Bache, but as I’ve already signed up with him for next month, I can’t afford for him to do two jackets. Talking of which, my FB ads for The Boy from Berlin now use the rewritten prologue and strap line blurbs from Bryan Cohen. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact a Stuart Bache cover will have on sales when I decide to advertise again.

My recent reading has been The Fear Index by Robert Harris; a massively complex and intellectual thriller that I found hard going. I probably won’t read another Harris novel for a long time. I also ventured into The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz. I read the trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson) and have the DVD, so I thought I’d give this a try. Big mistake. Now I’m into Hush Hush by Mel Sherratt. It’s a British crime thriller and looking pretty good so far. We’ll see though.

Next Saturday, June 29th. will be the ‘Fun Day’ here on our residential site. Last year I sold six books while sitting in a marquis enjoying the events unfolding around me and smelling the drift of barbecued meat wafting over. Lovely stuff. I’m hoping I can pinch some time off from looking after Pat and set up another table. It’s only for a couple of hours and Pat says she wouldn’t mind coming along and sitting with me. The event is only two hundred yards from our house, so I reckon Pat could make it. Should be fun. Wish us luck!

A carousel and a merry-go-round

The week began for me and Pat with an appointment with the London consultant who carried out Pat’s op. He has referred her to the haematologists now having seen confirmation that there is no lung cancer. We now wait for the results of the biopsy tests from the same three London hospitals that gave that confirmation as they now look for signs of T cell lymphoma. Since Monday it’s been a case of getting Pat’s sleep patterns restored and building up her energy levels and getting some weight back on. The waiting goes on however and we just have to hope and pray that the experts will determine what cancer it is so they can begin treatment.

Although I’ve had to shoulder the burden of looking after Pat and getting on with the household chores, I have managed to get some work done on my WIP. I began by reassembling the whole story-line using Scrivener, and creating another draft. I now have an almost complete plot line right down to the last gasp page. With luck I’ll see the end of this particular draft in a couple of weeks, and from there I can get an edit done and think about a suitable book jacket. I may pay for one yet, I don’t know. I’m hoping Pat will do the read through for me as she often does before I contact those subscribers of mine who read HUNTED for me earlier this year. Ironically, I was watching Mark Dawson and James Blatch chatting on their weekly SPF podcast yesterday, when Mark said he was planning to begin a novel once he’d finished his current WIP; it was about the drug business and the County Lines. No doubt he will excel at this, but I need to beat him to it because my current WIP is exactly that: a thriller about the County Lines gangs.

I have also been watching the Mark Dawson videos on FB ads again. They were updated when Mark’s SPF group launched the latest Ads for Authors course. I will dip a toe in the water this week and advertise The Boy from Berlin on FB, and will be using the blurb and ad lines provided by Bryan Cohen. FB has a reputation of sucking your wallet dry, but if I could see some positive results, I might clap my hands. Who knows?

Yesterday I took five copies of my pulp fiction thriller, HUNTED round to Dan Jones. Dan is the Chindi author who has opened a Pop-up shop in Chichester. It’s primarily to promote his own books and his wife’s creative work, but he has shown willing to add the Chindi authors’ books to a carousel. We all wish him and Abbie good luck of course, all the while hoping Dan can sell our books.

You know, when you’re struggling to sell books, you cling joyfully at the sale of one book and hope it’s the beginning of a trend. I haven’t advertised for some time and have seen my sales virtually flat-line, both on Amazon and D2D. But I was miffed when I saw D2D take one of my sales for May and add it to June. There was me thinking I’d sold ten books last month when it was suddenly reduced to nine. And it doesn’t help when I see authors complaining on FB groups about their lack of sales. One lady writer was moaning because her sales of 50 eBooks a day, no ads, first book, had suddenly crashed. She wanted to know why this was happening to her. I don’t have to say what went through my mind. I did smile though.

So, on to next week and, hopefully, some major progress with my current book, my ads campaign, the gardening, the washing, the ironing, walking the dog. Oh yes! Tuppence comes home on Monday. That will cheer Pat up enormously. What a lovely thought. Bugger the book sales. Wish me luck!