Getting out and about

It’s been quite a week for the members of our Chindi group. We held seven events as part of the Chichester Festival, culminating in the Ghost Tour, which sells out very rapidly. The tour is led by two of our members, Julia and Helen. Julia has published a book to go with the tour, and each ‘guest’ gets a glass of wine as they begin the tour. The idea has been taken up by another of our members, Rosemary, for inclusion in the Littlehampton Arts Festival later this month. Our events over the week have covered self-publishing; a short story seminar; writing for kids; wine and quiz; thriller writing and a book stall at a major event in Graylingwell Park here in Chichester (not forgetting the ghost tour, of course). I gave a talk on Friday evening with a small group interested in thriller writing covering an age range from about mid-twenties to late eighties. So, all in all a week that helped a lot of people wanting to make sense of the world of indie writers.

My involvement with BookAds isn’t likely to last much longer. I have another two weeks before my next monthly payment is due, and at the moment I can’t see any benefit in continuing with them. I can’t lay all the blame on the group because my Amazon ads have attracted a total of about 14000 impressions, so it could be argued that the book I’m advertising is the problem. But one sale in fifteen days? I have been in touch with them and received a positive reply, so we’ll see if there is any improvement before I pull the plug.

I exchanged emails during the week with David Gaughran (clever guy). This was nothing to do with BookAds, but about his free book on decoding Amazon. I already had the book in my kindle library, but in response to a question from him, I said that all the advice and information from the experts becomes overwhelming eventually. His advice to me was to stick to one thing at a time, master that before moving on. He suggested that BookBub ads was probably the easiest to manage, but Amazon have structural defects in the system which makes it hard to learn. I now have two ads running in BB: both for the same book but with a different blurb. It will be interesting to see which one performs better.

The book talk I gave on Friday evening was quite informal; seven people came and we held the talk in the small, back garden of Henning’s Wine shop. It helped because of the heat. To have tried in the room above the shop would have been too much of a challenge. I don’t use a script for these talks: just say what comes into my head and try to understand what those attending really want. The one I did at Littlehampton ended up with a guy wanting me to help him promote his “fantastic” Western. You come across “secret” writers too: they written a huge book, but are reluctant to talk about it to anyone until you get them to open up a bit. One young woman had a degree in English and worked as an editor. She didn’t write but hoped to one day. It was the third Chindi event she had attended that week. All in all, a pleasant experience, and I sold two books. Can’t be bad.

So what’s next? England are in the semi-finals, that’s what’s next. I’ve finished one of the sermons I’m due to give later this month, and have almost cracked another which I’m giving in four weeks’ time. And I’ve been casting eyes on my WIP. I know, I said I had put it away and probably wouldn’t do anything until later in the year. That’s what being a writer means: you just can’t help yourself. Lots to do, lots to think about. Wish me luck!

The Skill of the Professionals

I have to say that my blog has been delayed because the World Cup got in the way. So while the Americans are celebrating Independence Day, we English are celebrating our first victory in a penalty shoot-out. For those Americans who don’t understand football, let me say that the referee in our game against the Colombians was American (no, I’m not suggesting anything!). The picture of Jordan Pickford saving a penalty in the shoot-out is significant to us because that was the moment we knew we almost had it in the bag: just one more of our lads to take a shot at the Columbian keeper and we would win. Well done, Eric Dier for being “cool” and scoring the winning penalty.

So what’s all that got to do with writing and selling books? Well, I’m convinced that photograph is allegorical: Pickford is not really a footballer; he’s a stopper working for Amazon and other on-line book sellers. He’s there to stop all my efforts at promotion and marketing — not a particularly difficult task, but he comes into his own when he’s up against the professionals I employ to sell my books (BookAds). And he’s been doing a classy job up till now. Ten days into the AMS ads campaign and I’ve sold three copies of my book that BookAds are promoting. It’s so glum that I’ve picked up advertising on BookBub ads again, just to see if I can outstrip BookAds. Hopefully BookBub will have a weak ‘stopper’ and I’ll see some results.

This week is important for members of our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk). It’s the Chichester Festival time, and we are holding six events in Chichester. These will be at Henning’s Wine shop (in the room above) for five evenings, culminating in a stall at Graylingwell Park, and also a ghost tour round the city that evening. I’ll be doing a talk on the ups and downs of an Indie thriller writer on Friday evening. If you’re in the locality, why not pop in? It’s a ticket event, but they can be purchased on the night.

Last week we had a visit from our Grandson, Sam who lives in America. His family home is in Australia, but he came over to UK from the States with his girlfriend, Taryn. He’s lived in the US for a couple of years now, and its funny hearing a mixture of American, Australian and English colloquialisms. We wanted to take them out for a meal; Taryn said she wanted Fish and Chips, seeing as it was her first visit here and she’d heard so much about the traditional English take-away. We ended up at the end of the pier in Bognor, sitting by the beach eating our Fish and Chips. Really enjoyed it and I’m sure Taryn did too.

I have often said that I feel as though I’m in a literary straitjacket, trying to write series thrillers. Having decided to put my WiP on the back-burner for now, I’m fast coming to the conclusion that the reason I have struggled with this book is simply that: I shouldn’t be writing another Marcus Blake thriller; I should be looking for inspiration from another source, and there’s plenty of that around. So there’s the dilemma: do I pick it up later in the year and produce something mundane, or do I try for that inspired moment as I have done with all my other books? Wish me luck!

Coraggio amico mio (Courage, my friend)

Took a break from it all and went to Hever Castle last Wednesday. It was the home of the unfortunate Ann Boleyn, second wife of Henry V111. It was a lovely day; the house (castle) was amazing, and the gardens exceptional. It was well worth the visit and made me feel like writing historical novels rather than the stuff I write now. I slept like a log that night — must be my age. Pat said she slept well too. (Must be her age as well).

Decision time. How often do we have one of those? Mine crept up on me when I realised I needed professional help in tackling my abysmal marketing efforts. I know I’m not alone in that; I see several posts on my FB author forums by authors wondering why they can’t sell books despite spending a lot of money on advertising, and I’m no exception. I thought I had improved my efforts with BookBub ads, but after changing the ad at the beginning of the month, my sales on Amazon came to a halt and those on D2D nosedived. I began tweaking the ad, but without any change in results. I rewrote the short, sixteen word blurb and dropped the price twice. Still nothing. So I figured I needed help. It all began with Dave Chesson and his KDP Rocket course.

The Rocket course is about finding the keywords for the Amazon ads. I mentioned it in last week’s blog. But at the end of the course were several links to other places, no doubt Dave Chesson has affiliate links to these. This one — the one that intrigued me — was by a group called Book ads. They take on your promotion for a fee (naturally), and the AMS campaigns are run by a guy called Brian Berni. There are others involved in the group too, but Brian becomes an editor added to your AMS dashboard. He then runs the ads. Brian lives in Italy and worked in the Vatican archives for seven years (I wonder if he ever saw the light of day?). He’s American (I think). Well, he sounds American. But the rub, and this was the point at which I hesitated for a long while, was that I was required to agree to run ten ads consecutively. I pay a monthly fee, which I can cancel at any time, and must be prepared to spend $10 a day. It doesn’t take much maths to see that it could result in a spend of $300 or more a month if there are no book sales. Hence the hesitation. I counted it all on my fingers and toes, figured out how I could keep it secret from Pat (I told her in the end anyway), bit the bullet and signed up. I’ll let you know next week how the ads are progressing, if at all. The most I could expect to spend on AMS by the way is about $6 or $7 a day.

I was back in the book design business too. I received a proof copy of my re-edited book, The Devil’s Trinity, and could see I needed to do a minor tweak to the jacket. The book came yesterday and still needed attention, so I uploaded another, revised jacket (I’m talking about very minor changes here) and hope to see it in a couple of days.

July is almost upon us and I have the Littlehampton Festival Book talk and the Chichester Festival Book talk to look forward to. There’s also a small festival here on our estate where I’ll be manning a table hoping to sell my books for a charitable cause. Mind you, if I don’t have any success with Book Ads and AMS advertising, I think the charity I’ll be thinking of will be closer to home. Wish me luck!