Mind boggling

A pretty full week for me one way or another: most of it consumed by tackling PC problems, uploading files and generally scratching my head when I lose my way. My book sales have progressed at a reasonable pace, but nowhere near where I would like them to be (naturally); however, I believe I can see the results of becoming more involved with other authors and giving a few books away.

I have been exchanging emails with Ingram Spark as I struggled to understand exactly what was wrong with the files I uploaded for the paperback edition of my latest thriller, Where the Wicked Dwell. The rep was very patient and helped me through the process. Bearing in mind I have published four books with Ingram Spark, including a hardback, I began to wonder if I’d lost it completely. However, the last email I received was to say that it looked as though the files had been accepted and I would soon receive notification to that effect. I live in hopes.

I have been doing some promotion work for myself and others, including Paula Wynne (http://www.bookhub.online) with whom I agreed to work in exchange for Gold membership with Bookhub. It looks to be bearing fruit already with a few names being added to my subs list.

I also picked up the pen and added a few more words to my latest book. I’m still not sure where I’ll be going with it, but writing is better than not writing. The problem is that this is a sequel to The Eagle’s Covenant. It isn’t something I planned to do, but have had my ear chewed, particularly by my son John, about resurrecting Conor Lenihan, the main character in that novel. For those of you who have read the book, you will understand what my dilemma is. But hey, I’m a writer of fiction, so it shouldn’t be a problem. Should it?

On the subject of PC problems, it wasn’t my PC that was playing up, but the TP link between my Router and the PC. Before finding out what the fault was, I tried everything until my wife suggested I swop the plug-in links. I did this and it worked. Ha! Woman’s logic. Perhaps I should ask her to deal with my file upload problems.

My writers group, CHINDI, have been updating their website, choosing a new logo and generally trying to make the group more inclusive and expansive. We have a virtual meeting on Monday evening in place of our usual monthly gathering at a pub in Chichester. We also have a lot to offer other writers at http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk.

Sometime next week, I will be preparing something for the cross promotion I’m running for three other writers. I have an idea what I’ll prepare for myself, but I haven’t a clue what to expect from the others. They might even put me to shame with the quality of their promotion piece, but then I might be able to learn something from them. Wish me luck!

Buzzing around the buzz words.

February 25th. 2017

I launched my latest book, Where the Wicked Dwell, during the week. I used Mailchimp and social media to promote it at a launch price of £0.99. I’ve no way of comparing results with other launches, and I do understand that I could have paid out a lot of money to advertise the launch and see my rankings rise. The highest I did get was 37 in the top 100 paid in the Private Investigators category. I can say I sat proudly above Stephen King and James Patterson who were occupying 38th and 39th place respectively. Do you think they are concerned about this upstart who displaced them from their position? I sincerely doubt it. But at least I was able to rub shoulders with exalted company. You can find the book on the home page of my website: http://www.michaelparkerbooks.com

In my efforts to promote my books, I have tried most things that have been suggested over the years. In the early days of Amazon self-publishing, you had to be on social media, i.e. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn etc. and it was necessary to ensure your kindle book was formatted properly, which meant the steady growth of people willing to do the formatting for you (at a price). You were encouraged to understand what web crawlers were all about and to ensure that keywords associated with your book were always included in everything you wrote on line so that the search engines would find you. And as more and more indie authors jumped on the bandwagon, so did the ‘entrepreneurs’ who were willing to help you become the best seller that you “deserved to be”.

The explosion continues and shows no sign of wilting. Now it is cross promotions that are the buzz word, and we’re all piling in, keen to find a way of getting our books up there among the top rankers. I am no different to other indie authors; I want my books to succeed, so I will keep hanging on to whoever’s coat tails will get me up there. But I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that we are in an underclass of writers. That’s not to say we do not have the talent and the skill, but that we are being watched by the big guns in the game who see us thrashing about, trying desperately to find the answer, while they sell the books that are always sitting at the top of the pile. The pyramid is unshakeable and unbreakable, with the minority at the top and the bottom feeders swirling around at the bottom. But am I disheartened? Not really; I am pragmatic enough to know the name of the game. I know that I should spend hours at my keyboard promoting and marketing, and investing money with no guarantee of success; but I choose not to devote all those hours to what could be a dead-end, so the onus is on me when it comes to where my book sales and rankings are.

This week I have picked up the gauntlet and invited thriller writers in one of my groups to share in a cross promotion with me. I will be driving this one, and know that I can’t promise or guarantee any success. No doubt those who join with me will hope their sales will show a healthy increase. And all the while I’m concentrating my thoughts on pushing my books, I’m giving little or no time to my own writing. I have the bare bones of an idea for my next book, but precious little time (so it seems) to make any progress, and I know that I will have to devote a certain amount of time to ensuring that my cross promotion is built on solid ground. I’m sure that those writers joining with me will expect that. Sometimes we believe that those other writers are better than us at promoting because of how they present themselves and the statistics they publish, but they are searching in much the same way. So while the cross-promotion bonanza gathers pace, I’ll ride the tiger until I see something else that will almost certainly “guarantee” good results. Wish me luck!

Wireless and powerless.

My Wi-Fi became Wi-Fi-less last Monday, due to the incompetence of BT. There probably isn’t the right time to lose your Wi-Fi, unless it’s during the night when you’re asleep. I had decided to change from SKY to BT, and sorted that out over the phone. The planned change was to be 24th. February. But in their wisdom, BT sent an engineer on the 13th. to make the change at 8am (eleven days early). He brought an old router, worked for about an hour and then departed. We went out, came back two hours later, but had no Wi-Fi. Engineer came back and apologised for leaving me with an old router with a dodgy password. I had to phone BT for a router which arrived two days later.

Two days without our modern crutch: Wi-Fi! How we need it. Well, maybe not everyone in the world. My elderly sister doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t need the miracle of Wi-Fi. She wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But my two day loss came at the wrong time. It was the beginning of the week when I had arranged to do some cross promotions with two different writers, and also to support the Valentine’s Day competition that my writers’ group, CHINDI (http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk) were running. I felt as though I was letting a lot of people down because of what I had promised to do. I had a huge backlog of work to catch up with, but got there in the end.

The cross promotions I did were with Paula Wynne http://paulawynne.com/the-grottos-secret and Paul Casselle http://amzn.to/2lu1SkC . I’ve no idea how successful they’ve been, but together those two writers have about 80,000 subscribers they can reach. It’s all subjective at the moment: a case of finding my feet working with other authors this way. I have noticed a slight, daily increase in my book sales, but I can’t dismiss the follow-on effect of my Bookbub promotion. We shall see.

Another let-down was the rejection by Kindle Scout of my latest novel. I wasn’t surprised at all when I received the news, and it was something I expected anyway. Now I can set about publishing my book and get down to some advertising. I haven’t quite worked out how I’ll go about this. However, I do know that once it is published, and Kindle Scout have been informed, they will e-mail all the people who voted for me. With luck some of them will buy the book. That will be a kind of free advertising, courtesy of KDP, that I couldn’t put a price on. I’ll probably use Facebook, but will be looking into doing it through Mailchimp.

Looking ahead to my next book, I have a nodding acquaintance with some ideas, but in truth I don’t see much developing. I have been asked to write a sequel to The Eagle’s Covenant, but that would be difficult. I’m sure those of you who have read the book will know why, but to write it would be one helluva challenge. If I could pull it off, I would be well pleased.

Tomorrow, Sunday 19th. my box set comes out of Kindle Select. I will use cross-promotions to advertise the set now and at a reasonably low price. It did nothing in KS compared to other results I have read about. I think I managed a total of 1800 pages read over the ninety days, so I can’t consider that a success.

I looked at my sales figures for the last two weeks yesterday, and was surprised to see The Devil’s Trinity was selling more than Roselli’s Gold. The irony is that TDT is available free if the buyer signs up to my subscribers’ list. They can unsubscribe at any time. That way they would have saved £2.99. I’m not complaining though.

If you are reading this and haven’t read The Devil’s Trinity, you can download it at http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj

Looking ahead to next week, there’s nothing in the diary other than my BT TV is due to come on stream! Perhaps they’ll turn up with a load of gear and wonder why I’m now with them. We’ll see. Wish me luck!