The fault is not in our stars

Tags

Amazon, Fatal Forgery, marketing, permafree, rating, review, sales, Samuel Plank

It’s been a while since I made the e-book of “Fatal Forgery” permafree on all sales platforms, and I have run a couple of promos to highlight it to people.  It’s too early to tell whether it is the right decision – i.e. whether it introduces more people to the Sam series and they then turn into buyers of the subsequent books – but I have got over my horror of giving away my work!  It’s a tricky one, because it’s certainly true that people often don’t value what costs nothing, but with the series stagnating I felt I had to do something drastic.  After all, we all know that one definition of madness (sometimes, but perhaps wrongly, attributed to Einstein) is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

So how’s it going?  Since it was made permafree, there have been 2,356 downloads of “Fatal Forgery”.  On Amazon (the only place I can track this with any certainty), the number of reviews has risen by one (to 48), and the number of ratings by 21 (to 70).  (A rating is a simple 1-5-star score, while a review is anything written.  Readers can leave just a rating, or a rating and accompanying review.)  And according to the Amazon sales rankings in the UK, “Fatal Forgery” now sits at position 88 in the Historical Fiction category in the Kindle store, and at position 138 in the broader Crime Fiction category.  I’m delighted with both of those positions – apparently the fact that a book is free does not count against it when Amazon tots up which books are “selling” most frequently.

There are people who make a living from teaching us how the Amazon algorithms work, but the nub of it is that if a book (a) “sells” well, and (b) gets lots of generally favourable reviews, it will rise up the rankings.  This means that it appears higher up when people are searching, and (I think) has a better chance of being shown to them in the “Products related to this item” carousel that is displayed on each product page.  And the net result of all that is that more people see and are then tempted to download the book.

So if you have read “Fatal Forgery” – no matter where you bought it or in what format – and have not left a rating or review on Amazon, please could I ask you to do that?  Amazon does occasionally move the goalposts, but at the moment the situation is very clear: “Provided the buyer has made at least one purchase using their Amazon account they can review any product on Amazon, regardless of where they purchased that product.  However, if a reviewer did not buy the product on Amazon, their review will not be marked as an Amazon Verified Purchase.”  (The same applies to all my books, of course – please feel free to rate them all!)  And now I must immerse myself in the Cambridge University audit books from 1825 – this sorry tale of bursarial corruption won’t write itself, you know.

Digesting download data

Tags

Best Book Monkey, Bookangel, Fatal Forgery, Freebooksy, marketing, permafree, promotion, review, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

I know you’ve all been on tenterhooks to hear the latest about permafree Sam and his progress.  As you may remember, I paid for a 24-hour Freebooksy promo slot, and during that 24-hour period there were 1,232 downloads of “Fatal Forgery”.  I think we can attribute all of those to the Freebooksy promo.

Flushed with success, I also applied for a free promo slot on the Best Book Monkey website, and that’s currently live.  It started on 9 July, and I think it just sits there until they feel that interest has waned.  You can see the Best Book Monkey listing here.

And – going a bit mad now – I also submitted “Fatal Forgery” for a five-day promo slot on the Bookangel website, and that’s now running until 14 July.  You can see the Bookangel listing here (a bit peculiar that all the punctuation in the description has been replaced with question marks, but hey ho – it’s a free promo).

So what’s the result of all this mad promotion?  Let’s ignore the 1,232 that we’ve already attributed to the Freebooksy day.  Since then, there have been 429 downloads.  Some of those will be Freebooksiers late to the party – because although the promo has ended, “Fatal Forgery” is permafree so anyone who finds their way to Amazon or Kobo or Nook or Google Play can still download it for nothing.

What I hope, of course, is that there will be more reviews, and more paid purchases of the next books in the series.  Since I started this frenzy of promotion, I have accrued six more “ratings” on the Amazon listing for “Fatal Forgery” – not full reviews, but 4- and 5-star ratings.  And sales of the other titles have increased – covering the promo periods on Freebooksy, Best Book Monkey and Bookangel, I have sold (mainly e-books, but a few of them paperbacks):

• The Man in the Canary Waistcoat – 8
• Worm in the Blossom – 7
• Portraits of Pretence – 7
• Faith, Hope and Trickery – 7
• Heir Apparent – 8
• Notes of Change – 17

And as for rankings on Amazon, well, “Fatal Forgery” is currently sitting at #83 in the Historical Fiction category on the Kindle store, and #156 in the much larger Crime Fiction category, which is not bad at all.

In short, I think it’s going well.  My focus is on getting more people hearing about and curious about the series, and I think this is happening.  If only 1% of the people who downloaded the free “Fatal Forgery” actually read it, that’s still sixteen new readers – and here’s hoping that it’s much more than 1%.

Downloads and rising rankings

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Amazon, Fatal Forgery, free download, Freebooksy, permafree, royalties, sales

Right, gang: as promised, here is the immediate feedback from the Freebooksy promo that I ran.  I mentioned it here, and basically I paid to have the (now permafree) e-book of “Fatal Forgery” advertised to the subscribers to book promo website Freebooksy, along with links to the rest of the series.  I paid about £78 for this.  The promo ran yesterday from about 2pm UK time (it’s an American set-up, so that’s 9am Eastern Time) for 24 hours.  And during that period, this is what happened:

• 1,213 copies of “Fatal Forgery” were downloaded for free
• 4 copies of each of the other books in the series – all six of them – were downloaded for hard money.

Of course I can’t tell what drove those downloads – the Freebooksy promo or just a coincidence – but I’m guessing the former.  And the 24 paid downloads have netted me about £66 in royalties, so that’s not too far off the £78 I paid for the promo.

What I am hoping, of course, is that a proportion of those who downloaded the free book will read it, like it, buy more from the series, and perhaps even leave a review.  I appreciate that a fair number of them will do none of those – there are people who simply stuff their e-readers with freebies – but I won’t know until I try.  As I always say, I’ll keep you posted.

And a thrilling side-effect of this spike in downloads is that, right now, “Fatal Forgery” is ranking at #16 in the Historical Fiction category on the Kindle store, and at #45 in the Crime Fiction category. It will drop as rapidly as it rose, as other authors run their promos and my download rate slows, but while it’s riding high it will be appearing in front of other potential readers browsing on Amazon, which can only help.

Everybody’s free (to feel good)

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Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Fatal Forgery, Freebooksy, Google Play, Kobo, marketing, Nook, permafree, promotion, royalty, Samuel Plank

Now that I have completed the Sam Plank series, and now that I have stopped the day job and am reconfiguring how I spend my time, I decided that I needed to do something significant to mark these events and to signal my intent to be a more professional author.  I considered a tattoo (no, not really) and commissioning my likeness in dark chocolate (yes, really), but in the end I have plumped for this: a permafree series opener.

For those of you (I hope all of you – it’s a horrid word) shuddering at the term “permafree”, I should explain that it means free forever.  In other words, I am making the e-book of “Fatal Forgery” free forever on all the sales platforms I can find.  My reasons are these:

• Several successful indie authors of series have already done it and highly recommend it
• A free book entices readers to take a punt on an unknown author – and once they’ve had a taste of Sam and Martha and the gang, I’m sure they won’t be able to resist buying the next six books in the series, for themselves and all their friends and every member of their extended family
• It’s scary and exciting – and at my stage in life, something scary and exciting is good.

Of course, it’s not that simple to make something permafree, unless you do it right from the start.  All of the Sam e-books were enrolled (there, you see: I’m putting it in the passive to deny responsibility, but it’s entirely my fault) in the KDP Select programme.  This means that they can only be sold on Amazon, and in exchange for this exclusivity I get a higher royalty rate (70% as opposed to 35% for e-books that are published “wide” – i.e. other places as well as Amazon).  And Amazon does not – for obvious reasons – allow you to price a book at free.  So I needed to get the books off KDP Select, and there is a three-month notice period.  That expired last week, and I had a giddy couple of days publishing the e-books to other platforms such as Google Play, Kobo and Barnes & Noble (formerly Nook).  They do allow you to price books at free, which I did for “Fatal Forgery”.  And once you have a book priced at free on a couple of reputable competitor sites, you can request Amazon to price match to zero on their site – which they have done (it’s not a given, and there’s no guarantee they’ll keep the price at zero, but we can try).  It’s as simple as that…

I have plans for world domination with permafree Forgery, and – again on the recommendation of much more successful indie authors – I have booked a series promo on Freebooksy.  This site promotes free books to its “over 150,000 voracious readers”, and with a series promo they highlight the free opener and show the rest of the series.  That’s booked in for 30 June, at a cost of US$95 – about £78.  Given that I get about £1.40 royalty per e-book sold (nothing for “Fatal Forgery”, of course – I mean the other six), I have to hope that the promo will result in at least fifty-six additional sales.  The true value of a series promo, I am told, is its “long tail” of sales, which will be hard to monitor, but I feel excited that I am trying something new.

And here’s something interesting…  Since “Fatal Forgery” went permafree a couple of days ago, I have told my friends on Facebook, and Sam’s audience of 23 on Facebook, and his 17 followers on Twitter.  (I know, I know: I really need to get a grip on his social media presence – or, more truthfully, his absence).  So not many people have been told.  And yet the word is out somehow: since yesterday, there have been 322 downloads of “Fatal Forgery”, pushing it to sales rank 54 in the historical fiction e-books category on Amazon.  And sales rank really matters on Amazon: if you rank high, they jump in with their own promotion and then, well, watch out Tanya Anne Crosby (current holder of position one in the historical fiction e-books category)!

The league table

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Amazon, e-book, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, Heir Apparent, Kindle, marketing, Notes of Change, paperback, Portraits of Pretence, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom

Tomorrow is the big day – the publication of “Notes of Change”! Today, therefore, is a day of preparation and reflection. And I haven’t updated you recently on the sales of the Sam series. So here goes – the number I have sold in paperback (print-on-demand through Amazon, and through physical bookshops to which I supply stock) and in various e-formats (mostly Kindle, but occasional other formats):

	Paperback via Amazon	E-book	Paperback via physical bookshop
Fatal Forgery	290	954	145
The Man in the Canary Waistcoat	90	122	75
Worm in the Blossom	62	78	56
Portraits of Pretence	63	78	43
Faith, Hope and Trickery	49	46	26
Heir Apparent	32	36	27
Totals	586	1314	372

As you can see, it’s almost three-to-one in favour of e-books – which is good in some ways as the royalty for e-books is more generous than that for paperbacks. And “Fatal Forgery” is far and away the most popular title. Yes, it’s been out for longest, but I think what the figures really suggest is that not enough people like “Fatal Forgery” enough to stick with the series. That’s something I need to address – another task for the book marketing to do list (how to make sure that people know there is a whole series of lovely Sam books). To be fair to Amazon, they are very good at highlighting series: when you buy one book in a series, the others appear in a tempting carousel display. Perhaps I need to make the pricing more appealing – or investigate the possibility of a seven-title omnibus edition… (Apparently you can’t call e-books a box set, as that implies a physical box – you can, however, call it an omnibus. Like the number 27 to Clapham.)

But is it bright enough?

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Bob Marrion, cover, Design for Writers, Fatal Forgery, Notes of Change, publication, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

But is it bright enough?

One of the many joys of being a self-published author is the complete control I have over how my books look.  And one of the many curses of being me is that I have no visual artistic talent at all.  Thankfully I am smart enough to find people who have this talent, such as the marvellous Andrew at Design for Writers.  He has done all my covers – fiction and non-fiction – and, to quote the immortal Hot Chocolate, everyone’s a winner, baby, and that’s no lie.  In particular, he has done sterling work in turning what we both thought was a one-off cover for “Fatal Forgery” into a powerful visual brand for the Sam Plank series.  Each Sam Plank cover has a central line-drawn figure against a blurred document, and its own, bespoke font.  And so it is with – drumroll, please – the seventh and final Sam Plank cover, for “Notes of Change”:

Choosing the colour was tricky: earlier books in the series had already nabbed blue, yellow, red, green, purple and grey, and the Regency/Georgian colour palette is all about strong colours, so the pastels are out.  I did some fun research on various decorating websites, particularly for companies specialising in heritage and period properties and restoration, and the strong orange/ochre/cinnamon palette seemed promising.  And look what Andrew has done – who could possibly not spot that cover on a shelf!

As for the image, that was quite a saga, but with a happy ending.  I wanted an image of a Metropolitan Police officer, but right from the beginning of the “new police” rather than later in their life.  There are dozens of drawings and paintings of Met Police officers in the Victorian era, but finding one from the start, with the right facial hair…  And I finally came across this one, drawn by a fellow called Bob Marrion.  A police officer himself, he illustrated dozens of books on military history – uniforms were his thing – and one slim volume on called “‘C’ or St. James’s: A History of Policing in the West End of London 1829 to 1984”.  Sadly Bob has died, but his estate has given permission for the use of his gorgeous drawing – all Andrew had to do was cunningly remove the duty band that the officer was wearing.  (Duty bands weren’t introduced until 1830 while “Notes of Change” takes place in 1829, and you know what a stickler I am for historical detail.)

So now it’s all hands on deck for actual publication (officially Friday 29 April) – let the uploading begin!

The home straight

Tags

Fatal Forgery, marketing, plotting, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Notes of Change, writing

Good heavens – has it really been two whole months since I updated you on what I am up to?  I do apologise.  If it is any excuse at all, my blog silence has been the direct result of my writing busy-ness – yes, the finish line is in sight for “The Notes of Change” (the novel formerly known as “Plank 7”).  All is in hand for a publication date of Friday 29 April (2022 – for the avoidance of doubt!), and as it stands I have only one last chapter to write.

Oddly for me, the chapter left to write is indeed the last chapter of the book.  Usually I write the ending somewhere in the middle of the writing process and then work my way towards it – I have written before about my “jigsaw” writing technique (where I write the chapters I fancy in any order I want, and then patch them together at the end – I find it a good technique for avoiding writer’s block).  But this time, perhaps because I know it really is the Final Chapter for Sam, I have been putting it off and putting it off.  And, if I’m honest, until quite recently I wasn’t actually sure what I wanted to do with him.  Those of you who have read “Fatal Forgery” and done your date calculations will know that I can’t do anything too drastic to him in this book – which ends at the end of 1829 – but still, I need to make the transition for him.  And now I know how I am going to do that.  But actually writing it, and knowing that it’s the last time I will write in his voice, well, that’s quite sad.

Some readers have suggested that I could go all Morse on him and write a prequel – and I might yet do that.  (For my money, “Endeavour” is by far the best in the Morse canon – and in our house we can no longer even watch “Lewis” as it features an actor whose abhorrent political views mean that I will not even name him, let alone watch him.  Not the lovely Kevin Whateley – the other one.)  But if I do one day try a “young Sam” book, he will of course be a different man – he’s Sam as I know and love him only because he has lived so long and experienced so much.  But I might not be able to resist.

Publication is not just about finishing the text – there are other ducks to get into that row.  I have booked my lovely cover designer and have found a cover image that I want to use.  I’m now waiting to hear from the copyright owner of the image about whether and how I can use it.  My regular beta reader is lined up and waiting for the finished draft – I’ve promised that by the end of next week, so I’m going to have to get over my Sam sadness before then.  And once the text is off my hands, I need to get cracking with arranging some marketing splash or other for the big day – and marketing is real weakness of mine.  So if anyone reading this wants to suggest something, I’m all ears!

All change!

Tags

Fatal Forgery, Gardners, Heffers, marketing, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Notes of Change

Hello everyone – just a quick update so that you know I’m still here and still (albeit very slowly) writing the final Sam Plank book (“The Notes of Change”, due out on 25 February 2022).  The life of a self-published author is never dull: just when you think you’ve got a grip on some part of the publishing process, it slips away from you.

As regular readers will know, the very first bookshop to stock my physical paperbacks was my beloved Heffers, the university bookshop here in my hometown of Cambridge.  Their crime buyer – the renowned Richard Reynolds – is a great champion of indie authors, and he was kind enough to take a chance on “Fatal Forgery”.  It obviously sold well enough for him, as he took all subsequent books, and even invited me to take part in various crime fiction events at the shop – where I met people who (entirely unprompted by my pleading or their pity) called themselves “fans”.  Over lockdown, of course, things halted in the bookshop world, and when Heffers finally opened up again my books were (through no fault of their own – it’s a system thing, going purely on how long it is since a copy sold, and very little sold during lockdown) deemed to be “aged stock” and put into the sale.  No problem, thought I: I’ll simply get another order and take in some new copies.

But no.  In a bid for greater efficiency, Heffers has streamlined its book-ordering system and now does not allow its booksellers to make arrangements – like mine – with individual authors or small publishing houses.  Instead, all orders must be placed through the big book distributors, such as Gardners.  Now, I have jumped through the many hoops required to get my books listed on Gardners, and what happens is that a bookshop places an order in response to a customer order, Gardners passes the order to me (as the publisher of record), and I then fulfil it.  I know this, because I have once done it for Heffers – and “fulfilment” entailed me jumping on my bike and cycling it over to them.  I believe I fulfilled the order within an hour of it being placed, which surely is a record.

So come January – when I am a more full-time author – I will go into Heffers and find out exactly what I need to do to keep my books on their shelves: I want them to have stock all the time, waiting for casual purchase, not just when a customer orders a book.  I think it means changing my settings on Gardner, which will require a gathering of strength, a cold compress to the head, and industrial quantities of Jaffa Cakes.  Wish me luck!

Hear ye, hear ye!

Tags

Amazon, Audible, audiobook, Fatal Forgery, Guy Hanson, narrator, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

After something of a gap owing to other commitments (including working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, darlings! Only the best for us!), our wonderful audiobook narrator Guy Hanson has just started work on the third Sam Plank book, “Worm in the Blossom”.  Guy has the perfect voice for Sam – warm, mature, humorous and gently London.  And having read both “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, he’s also a dab hand (throat?) at adjusting his voice to encompass Martha, Conant, Wontner and all our other regulars.

If you’ve not yet sampled audiobooks – ideal for car/train/plane journeys, and good company when gardening/jogging/dog-walking – did you know that you can get a free 30-day trial to Audible (the audiobook arm of Amazon)?  With a free trial you get:

• One free audiobook of your choice – which you can keep even if you cancel after the trial (and if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you get two free audiobooks during your trial)
• Unlimited listening to the Plus Catalogue, which contains thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and select audiobooks (including mine, of course)
• After the 30-day trial, you can download one book a month, with unlimited access to the Plus Catalogue, for £7.99/month (which renews automatically)
• And you can pause or cancel your membership at any time.

(In the interests of openness and transparency, I should tell you that – should you take out a trial or membership through my link – I get what Amazon calls a “bounty”.  Sadly not a yummy coconut chocolate bar, but just some ordinary money.)

So if you’re tempted to meet Guy/Sam and make a Sam Plank novel your free starter audiobook, here are the links: “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Two new reviews

Tags

Amazon, Fatal Forgery, Goodreads, Heir Apparent, review, Samuel Plank

I’ve written before about how crucial – and uplifting – reviews are for authors.  Sadly, just as the rich get richer, the well-reviewed attract more reviews, while for those of us who are generally unknown in the writing world every single review is hard-won and treasured.  Friends and family are usually marvellous at leaving reviews when a book is first published and then it’s a matter of hoping that future readers are sufficiently moved to express their thoughts on Amazon or Goodreads.

Maybe it was lock-down boredom, or maybe people are finally getting to the piles of books they have meant to read, or maybe it’s just good luck, but I have had two new reviews in the past fortnight.  One appeared on “Fatal Forgery” whose heading made me laugh (“Nothing to add”); the review itself said “Good book with an unusual twist at the end” and awarded five stars.  Short and sweet – but five stars, and every review (even a single line) brings the book to the attention of the Amazon ranking bots.

And now a new review of “Heir Apparent” has appeared, again five stars (*smiles smugly*), calling it a “thoroughly engrossing story”: “This time Constable Sam Plank is investigating a possible case of identity theft, but as usual, that’s only the start.  I am very sad to hear that there is to be only one more book in this series.  I shall miss Sam Plank, his wife Martha, Constable Wilson, and all the other regular characters who make these books so enjoyable, and also the vivid evocations of the darker side of Regency London.”

So thank you, reviewers – you cannot over-estimate how important your comments and ratings are to us.