Weighing up my progress

Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it.

I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B.

I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though.

Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably!

I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over.

So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful.

I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!

Happy planners

Last night our Chindi group enjoyed a pre-Christmas get together at The Dragon restaurant in Rustington. Twenty of us made it there, although not all were writers. However, it made for a good number to crowd into a very full restaurant. The oldest of our members is in his eighties, and is reaching the fulfilment of three years’ work: he is publishing a semi-fictional account of a soldier relative who fought during the First World War. Our youngest member there was a newcomer to the group who writes children’s stories. We are a diverse bunch and cover just about all genres in fiction and some non-fiction. It was a chance, too, to be able to chat with some of the group about what problems we have encountered throughout the year, and what success we’ve had. Success in our case is largely relative, but we all have been able to blow our own trumpets from time to time.

We have some good ideas to carry us forward into the New Year, and it gives us all a sense of excitement and hope. We are already discussing our summer promotions in the Chichester Arts Festival, plus we have a couple of things planned for Littlehampton, which should be around the earlier part of the year. And March is something else eight of us will be looking forward to because of the UK Southern Book Show at Worthing. I’m sure we’ll come up with other little gems too, but it does give us some impetus, knowing that we are reaching out and not waiting for things to happen.

Earlier this week I cracked on with my WIP, and managed to push ahead somewhat. I still have a long way to go with this, and will probably struggle to have it ready for a summer launch at my current rate of progress.

I mentioned my efforts last week about BookBub advertising and the fact that they seem to feature a lot of best-selling authors: some who aren’t even living now. I received an email from them advertising Harper Lee’s book, To Kill a Mockingbird, which kind of reinforces the complaint I saw on an author forum about BB capitalising on the top writers and leaving less room for the indie guys. So far I have received an email each day and only one has featured an indie writer, all the others have been NYT best-sellers. Make you think.

Anyway, back on the advertising bit: it is a recommendation from BookBub that it helps to use their list of top authors when searching for a “keyword” writer. As I am trying to promote my book, A Dangerous Game, I searched through their list for an author similar to me. Almost without exception though, the list of thriller writers is populated with those who write series characters. This makes it hard for people like me, a cross-genre writer, to find an author to use as a “keyword” author. I’ve already tweaked my ads, and even changed them, hoping for some positive results. I can’t expect overnight miracles, but there are pointers to the way in which your ad is performing. I’m getting a few sales, thankfully, but at the moment I can expect to struggle. Hopefully things will improve in time. Wish me luck!

Nothing but a dreamer.

We’ve just returned from an overnight stay with our son, John and his wife, Bryony in Dorset. It’s good to get away for a while, spend some time with the family, couple of beers, walk the dogs. There’s no time to think about books, promotion, advertising and sales figures because those things will be there when you get home. There’s always the anticipation of what might have happened to the book sales while you’ve been away, and true to form in my case, very little has happened. I checked my BookBub advert (I have two) and find that they will need serious attention if things don’t pick up, but not today; there’s always tomorrow.

The planned launch of the box-set hasn’t come off, and it looks like it’s going to fail before it gets started. The launch date and pre-launch push didn’t happen, it’s been delayed now until after Christmas, and cracks seem to be appearing in the overall commitment necessary to make it work. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but leaves me with the sense that involvement with other authors, for me anyway, is not the best way to go. So once this year is out of the way, I’ll stick to my own plans for promotion, marketing and writing. I don’t include the CHINDI group in this, because we have contact with each other by meeting up, doing book stalls and getting together from time to time. In fact, next Saturday, a lot of the group will be at a Chinese restaurant in Littlehampton for a Christmas bunfight. Should be good, and we’ll have plenty to talk about.

I made a little progress on my WIP last week, and dug myself out of a hole I’d managed to get into. Making small gains in this writing business does help. One thing I do frequently is watch movies on Amazon Prime, hoping to pick up some ideas. Unfortunately I tend to watch a load of rubbish that passes for crime drama, but I did pick up a little nugget that I will be able to slip into my WIP.

Some-time during the week I found myself thinking about music from my past. This was as a result of sitting in a waiting room where a couple of elderly ladies were talking about the youth of today and all that goes with it. My mind went back to when I had finished my second novel, Hell’s Gate, and imagined it on the big screen (it never happened of course). The novel is set in British East Africa in 1898, and was inspired by historical fact. One of my all-time favourite pieces of music at the time was The Dawn by Osibisa. I could see the whole thing on the big screen: my story and the compelling, African music. Ah well, what it is to be a dreamer, eh? Incidentally, you can get the book at

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00RW1VTGO/?tag

and https://www.books2read.com/u/4XGd9m.

I mentioned Hell’s Gate last week and the length of time it was taking to get the paperback file uploaded to CreateSpace. I thought I’d cracked it until I received an email from CS asking me for ‘Content Validation’ for the book. I sent them a photocopy of the rights authorisation from my publisher. Good thing I still had it on file. Once they have accepted that, I can look forward to getting the copy from Amazon UK, and then I can get on to do another, hands-on edit.

And as we come to the end of November and look ahead to Christmas, I can see the social diary filling up with various dates for this and that. I’ve no idea what Santa will be bringing me for Christmas, but I hope it will be a ringing endorsement of my books, coupled with a blossoming advert campaign. Wish me luck!