Now for Consolidation

May 6th. 2017

Most authors like to be interviewed, and I’m no different. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to be interviewed on radio, TV, in the Press and through author websites, including YouTube. It’s difficult to quantify the effects of these interviews, and I doubt they do much for my sales figures, but at least it puts me in the public eye. My next interview will be in June on award winning author, Karen Ingalls’ website. (kareningallsbooks.com). Hopefully the interview will attract a few more fans to my books.

I’ve come to the conclusion that my less than 100% commitment to promotion is one of the reasons why my rankings and sales are low, and it’s about time I consolidated the effort I’m putting into it by setting aside my writing time. No doubt some people will say that I should write more books and keep on writing because it’s the only way to increase reader awareness out there, but it’s like a chicken and egg argument to me; so unless some unshakeable idea drops into my head and won’t go away, I’m going to spend more time trying to sell my books than writing them. Trouble is, it doesn’t stop me coming up with ideas: I keep getting them buzzing around in my head.

I mentioned my Romance last week: Past Imperfect. I decided to tidy it up, edit the book for some minor typos and make a small adjustment to the cover. I uploaded it to CreateSpace at the beginning of the week. Two days ago it appeared on Amazon at £2.01. I queried this to be told that this was normal practice with book-sellers, and the royalties would be paid on the full price of £8.50. I was dubious about the whole thing so I ordered a copy. It came today. It isn’t the edited version I uploaded to CreateSpace, and was printed by Lightning Source. I’ve contacted CS, but now I’ll have to remove it from LS until I’m satisfied that the old version doesn’t exist. Who’d want to be a writer anyway?

Yesterday I e-mailed my subscribers with a promotion for my author friend, Helen Christmas. We are both keeping our fingers crossed that she will enjoy a bounce in her sales figures because of it. Click rates are notoriously low these days, probably because there are so many “offers” going around, and the readers are being saturated with them. But unless we keep plugging away and gently pester the lives of the reading public, we won’t get anywhere. Helen’s promotion offer is at https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B017WLXY7K. Why not click and have a look? It’s a great offer.

I had a hearing test last week after seeing an advert in the Daily Mail. I’ve had so many of these over the years that I could practically draw the graph they come up with after the test, and this one was no different. Hopefully the product will be a vast improvement on my current hearing aids, which I purchased a few years ago in Spain (American company). It comes with a remote control: should be fun playing around with that. At least I get a trial period before making up my mind whether I want to shell out the money or not.

Next week we are off for a family bash in Norfolk, then a trip round to an old friend in Lincolnshire, so there won’t be a blog post from me. Hopefully when I post again, I will have some good news about, well, anything really. Wish me luck!

Reaching out.

Where have the days gone? It seems like Christmas was only five minutes ago. I’ve had enough time since then to be halfway through my next novel, but so far I’ve done precious little. I’m feeling fairly calm about that, and expect to explode into life later this year.

Now things are returning to normal after our fairly busy schedule, I can hopefully think about the promotions I’m involved in this month and keep my fingers crossed for some light at the end of the tunnel. One author I will be promoting is a member of our Chindi group (www.chindi-authors.co.uk), Helen Christmas. Readers of crime thrillers from authors like Martina Cole and Lynda la Plante, would probably enjoy Helen’s thrillers set in London. Her three novels have attracted excellent reviews, averaging just below five stars on Amazon. She has a fourth in the series coming out and will be doing a promotion on that in May. Check out Helen’s Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/author.helenchristmas. I will be sending details of Helen’s new promotion to my subscribers in early May.

I managed to crack the Co-op bank and finally become a fully-fledged member as a director of the Chindi group. I also managed to get the £65 back from Gatwick Parking that I paid to get through the barrier. They apologised, said it was down to an error on their website.

I filled out my tax return last week. Unfortunately I don’t earn enough from my book sales to employ an accountant, but at least I can say I am earning something. Compared to last year, I didn’t do so well, but that was because of a terrific result with a BookBub ad. This year my ad failed to cover the cost, although I did manage to sell about 2000 books.

I have been giving some serious thought to giving away free books. I touched on that last week, but I am still wondering why I pay £16 a month to Instafreebie so that one of my books can be given away through their website. Once I’ve got through the May promotions, I’ll probably close my account with them, unless someone can come up with a cast iron argument why it’s good to be with Instafreebie, or other sites like them.

I’ve been reading one of my books, Past Imperfect. I took a copy along to the hospital to leave it there as part of our Chindi giveaway promotion, and started reading it while I was waiting to see the nurse. I enjoyed it that much I decided to read through to the end. Unfortunately I don’t have the ebook rights to the book, which is annoying. I’ve got to wait another eighteen months before I can get them, otherwise I would be promoting it now. It’s a Romance with hard edged back story: a touch of family saga and prison life; murder; betrayal and some real tear-jerking moments as love wins through. You can find the ebook on Amazon, reasonably priced too. The ASIN is B00TDTOY3I. Why not have a look? There are no reviews either, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s brilliant!

I’m looking forward to the weeks ahead with Chindi. We have our new website launch to look forward to with the £300 of books to give away. We are heavily involved in the Chichester Arts Festival, and will be too with the Arundel summer festival. We have author friends of the Bognor Writers and Arun Scribes getting involved as well. Our numbers are growing and I believe this can only help us to improve our overall outreach to the area and beyond.

Now, if only I could find the inspiration to write! Wish me luck.

Getting around

I didn’t write my blog last week because I was in Spain enjoying the sun and linking up with old friends. The week before that I travelled up to Norfolk to attend the funeral of an old work colleague of mine: another opportunity to meet and chat with old friends of mine from the workplace. It also gave me the chance to spend some time with my eldest son, Vincent, and just relax in his company.

Despite all that, my mind wasn’t too far away from the book world. I am involved in a cross-promotion, but the jury is still out as far as I’m concerned regarding the effectiveness of these tie-ups. I’ve had three so far and have yet to see any real advance in my sales. I am also beginning to doubt the point of giving away books for free. I understand the argument about giving something to get something in return, but I have given away almost 400 books over the last four weeks (two titles), and have yet to see any reviews or have any contact from the readers who have downloaded them. I have had some sign-ups though.

As a result of my involvement with the Chindi group www.chindi-authors.co.uk, I am now a director of the group and have to be a signatory on the cheques. I contacted the bank with the necessary information (so I thought), which included an official letter with my new ID. Although I had been armed with what we thought was sufficient information, I was caught out by questions that could only be answered by a mother’s daughter and had to bail out. I will eventually become a bone fide member, but it is so frustrating. I was on the phone for about half an hour.

Last Monday I picked up my car at Gatwick North terminal long stay car park. It was about two o’clock in the morning, and despite having the correct ticket with my number plate on, I couldn’t get out of the car park without paying £65. The guy on duty wasn’t interested in my plight, so I had to cough up. I did get reimbursed by the company yesterday, but what a hassle to go through because some ‘jobsworth’ wouldn’t open the barrier for me.

The Chindi group are launching their new website next month. We’re going global and are giving away £300 of books as a prize. Have a look and see what we are up to. The link is above. We are also leaving our books around the area with a sticker on asking whoever picks them up to leave them somewhere else once they’ve read them. So far I have left a paperback on a bendy bus in Gatwick, a bus stop in Chichester, a waiting room in the Queen Alexandra hospital in Portsmouth, our local tea shop here in Pagham, and one in a D-I-Y store in Bognor Regis. Five down, five to go. All the photographs were posted on Facebook and Twitter.

Apart from a couple of cross promos next month, I am thinking of paying out for some Facebook advertising. I’m not sure yet which way I’ll go with that. Needs a lot of thought. Wish me luck!