Wipeout

This week has been the kind I need to forget and move on. Last week I went down with a bug that more or less wiped me out on Monday and Tuesday. Struggled to the doc on Wednesday and now, Saturday, I am only just about getting close to normal. It was also the week I started with Amazon ads. I stopped my BB ads for this reason, but had great expectations with AMS. Nothing has happened! I have totalled just over 500 impressions, one click and no sales. I’m trialling two ads: one on sponsored keywords, the other on sponsored product. Fortunately I’ve only spent sixteen cents! Obviously there’s something radically wrong with my creative marketing process. And my D2D sales have slumped to one.

I watched an interesting SPF podcast yesterday. It was David Stansbie of The Creative Corporation talking about web design. His impressive list of clients include Katie Perry, Pink Floyd and J.K.Rowling’s alter ego Robert Galbraith. Oh, and Mark Dawson of course, which was why David was featured on the podcast. I’m in no position to call Mr. Stansbie up and ask him to redesign my site (and goodness knows it’s needed), but he spoke a lot of sense when highlighting the errors some designers and their clients make when choosing how to present their site. It struck a chord with me because of my CV as a stand-alone author not having a clue how to encourage potential readers to get the best out of my site by pointing them towards the books of mine they might like. Do I go with my Thrillers? My Historical novel? My Romance? The irony of this, for me anyway, is that David Stansbie started life as a graphic designer long before Web design became a major player. Years ago, when I was in the RAF, I was often asked to design posters for events, all of which would be hand drawn and coloured. No, I wasn’t a graphic designer, but how I wish I could bring something of my earlier skills to modern web design. Well, mine anyway.

My WIP has taken a battering, and is now in the ‘screwed up paper on the floor stage’. There’s plenty of it, too! It looks like it will be a major re-write with a lot of culling going into it. Perhaps I should look at the Dragon software again. Nick Stephenson has included a blog about this very item to his weekly newsletter. It makes interesting reading, but it won’t complete my book, nor give me inspiration; only I can do that.

I think I lost control of my Smartphone during the week; perhaps it was something I said. But I am beginning to fear for the sanity of our future generation. So many aspects of our lives are now being controlled by technology in such a way that I can only see technology developing itself at the speed it believes is essential for progress. Advances in mobile phone technology, medical science, robotics and drones will force us all to do the will of the corporation that holds the power in its hands. Facebook and Google have already shown a lead in this, and I believe that one day all our books will be written by robots: authors will become dinosaurs — antediluvian creatures that had a mind of their own but were wiped out by modern science. Perhaps my Smart phone has already done that to me, and I don’t even know. I must try and write! Wish me luck!

Picking and choosing

I’ve come across a lot of Q&As this week about which is the best way to find readers? Which advertising platforms? Are stand-alone authors fighting a losing battle? There are answers to all these questions, right answers too if you happen to make the right choice. But what is the right choice? One best-selling author whose interview I read on Nick Stephenson’s 10K forum advised focussing on a single strategy: one that works for you, and binning everything else. Don’t waste time writing a blog was one of her suggestions; they achieve nothing. Nick put a little note in at that point about the value of blogs. I remember reading of two writers, both women: one American and the other an English writer, who found success by writing a kind of diary of their daily routines. One, I think, was about cooking and just keeping up generally around the house, and the other about trips to the hairdresser and that kind of thing. In both cases they were encouraged by their ‘readers’ to put the work into book form. Then bingo! Best sellers.

So what works for me? I wish I knew the answer to that. One query on the Mark Dawson’s SPF community today was about the difference between stand-alone authors and those who write series novels. The answers were mixed: some authors were enjoying success with their stand-alone books, while others found the opposite. The answer to any question about finding the right audience has to be promotion and marketing. Of course, you could become instantly famous by attempting to attack a public institution with a gun, but the future would be very bleak. I was going through my old contracts the other day and came across my first royalty statement from Macmillan in 1980. I sold 2000 books in the first nine months of publication. For an unknown first time author, that was good. And it was unexpected according to my publisher. Macmillan didn’t keep me on though, but that’s life. And in those days it was more or less down to the publisher to push the book. I was too naïve to know any different.

The other suggestion I’ve seen is to write more books. I don’t see that as the answer though. I have eleven books in print, which should be plenty for my readers to get their teeth into, but not all of them want to read stories set at different times and in different places. It’s a real challenge, and the increase in sales, even when they are marginal, are always pleasing and always puts a smile on my face. I’ll be advertising on Amazon from tomorrow and hope to see that rise which will make me smile. Seeing my bank balance go down as I pay for the ads won’t though, unless I get a decent ROI.

I met up with an author friend of mine during the week: Paul Asling. We talked about the speech recognition software, Dragon. Paul showed me how it worked. I was impressed, but knew that if I bought the software, there was no guarantee I would use it. It isn’t expensive, but then I could spend the money on promotion. So while we’re all struggling to come up with the answer, I don’t think there is a right or wrong way; it’s all down to being prepared to spend and wishing for a good dose of luck.

Remember, April 1st. tomorrow — April Fool’s Day. I wonder what made-up stories will hit the newspapers tomorrow? Of course, it could be: Michael Parker hits the one million sales on Amazon. Who knows? Wish me luck!

Happiness and busyness

Had a lovely disruption to my usual time for blog writing: my grand-daughter came over with Orin, our No.3 Great Grandson. It’s always lovely to see them. I also had a fairly busy week one way or another. I managed to dig out some effort and began work again on my WIP. Trying to come up with a crime novel is far more difficult than I imagined. I’d be hopeless as a serial killer: wouldn’t have a clue. Sure, I can write good stuff, but it all has to come together seamlessly in the end, otherwise I’ll get found out.

During the week we had an on-line Zoom meeting: three of the directors (me included), trying to thrash out some sensible way to go with the Chindi group. We are attracting more self-published writers, which is a good thing, but we have to take care that the group doesn’t become unmanageable. As the treasurer, I can see the workload increasing, cutting into time spent on writing, social media, promotion & marketing etc. Oh, and doing the usual domestic stuff too: sleep, eat, breathe, walk the dog. My, my, what a busy boy am I.

My sales are slowly increasing on Draft2Digital. Although I am not making any money, I expect to break even with my current progress. My main concern is that the advert on BookBub will run out of steam and I will have to come up with another, something I’m loathe to do while I see those numbers going up. I’m currently studying the Mark Dawson video on AMS advertising because my sales on Amazon have slumped dramatically. I’m not alone with this situation, I’m sure. I often see posts on some of my author FB forums from authors complaining about their poor returns and asking the inevitable question: what am I doing wrong? The chances are, they are probably doing nothing wrong, but maybe not spending enough money on advertising.

I watched a podcast on which Ernest (Ernie) Dempsey explained how he cracked the mystique behind attracting readers, and one thing he suggested, which I think is worth trying, is to produce a short video of yourself answering the kind of questions readers might ask. He uses his iPhone, but it’s possible to do this with the desktop PC as well. I must admit I’m tempted, but might feel silly asking myself questions. It’s worth a punt though. We will be trying something similar on our Chindi website. We’ll be having an “Author of the Week” slot. There’ll be short video clips, media promotion and tweets for the author. Our first slot is for children’s author, Christopher Joyce (Creatures of Chichester). He’ll be coming up on April 9th for a week. You can see his books on Chindi-authors.co.uk

I’ve put my name down for a table-top sale in July on our small, residential estate where I live. There will be a dog show, charity stalls and a BBQ. The lady who will be judging the dogs is also the lady who comes round picking up the money for the ‘Bonus Ball’ competition each month. The dogs love her because she always has biscuits in her pocket. She reckons that on the day of the dog show, all the dogs will be flocking round her for a biscuit. How can she pick a winner? We’ll be putting Tuppence in, all prepped and smelling nice for her walk round. Should be good. I’ll be trying to sell books too. Wish me luck!