Canada? Really?

Tags

CreateSpace, e-book, Fatal Forgery, Kindle, Kobo, marketing, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

As I have mentioned many times before, I have to be quite strict about allowing myself to check online for sales figures for “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  If I didn’t control it, I would waste time every day just clicking and refreshing all the sales reporting channels – it’s terribly addictive, especially for a low-volume author for whom each and every sale is a cause for (Jaffa Cake-shaped) celebration.  So I permit myself to check CreateSpace (for the paperback edition) and KDP (Kindle) once a day, and Kobo, Smashwords and Gumroad once a week.

These three are less exciting because – in total combined sales of both books – until the end of last week they represented four copies.  And then, on Monday of this week, I checked them as usual – and sales have doubled!  Eight copies!  The additional four were all on Kobo, and – wait for it – two in the UK and two in Canada (a copy each of “Fatal Forgery” and “Canary”, bought on the same day).  Canada?  I’m mystified.  That’s the problem with all statistics, of course – they tell you exactly what happened, but not why.  While on holiday in Greece a couple of weeks ago we did meet some Canadians, but we didn’t mention my books (or indeed my surname) at all, so unless they were mind-readers it’s not them.  We don’t have any friends in Canada; my husband has some cousins, but we haven’t seen them for years, and my surname is not his, so they wouldn’t have stumbled across me and bought out of family loyalty.  So why now, and why Canada?  But I’m not one to look a gift reader in the mouth, and if they like Sam and tell their friends, all the better.

E-nough e-formatting!

Tags

Amazon, financial crime, formatting, Gumroad, Kindle, Kobo, publicity, self-publishing, Smashwords, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I do rather envy Jane Austen, you know.  When she was writing “P&P” and all the others, she simply sat in a sunny room in Hampshire and filled pages of parchment with lovely curly writing, then sent it off to London and someone turned it into books.  For me (note how I subtly compare myself to Jane Austen…), once the story is finished, the work is only half-done.

I do love self-publishing, as you know, for the many opportunities it offers, but it really is blooming hard work.  You may think that there is only one “Canary”, but I know otherwise: there is the paperback, then the Kindle version, the Smashwords version, the Kobo version, the iBook version and the plain PDF.  Each is subtly different (in formatting, not in words), and each has to be carefully prepared, checked and uploaded, with each publication route asking for different interior and cover files, and for slightly different information about book category, pricing structure, distribution rights and so on.  As my late nan used to say (alongside “a dulage of rain”), it’s a mindfield out there.

On the plus side, it’s all done – hurrah!  Now I’m just waiting for the various e-formats to appear on their sites in time for the Big Launch on Friday – although the Kindle one is already available (thanks to reader Graham for spotting it – too exciting!).

A full set of e-versions – I think!

Tags

e-book, Fatal Forgery, financial crime, Kobo, marketing, publicity, self-publishing

A little while ago I explained that I was publishing “Fatal Forgery” through Smashwords, in order to create lots of different e-versions for all different e-shops (to complement to Kindle version published through Amazon).  Thanks to Smashwords, “FF” is now available as a Sony e-book, an Apple iBook and more – although I have to admit that it has not sold even one copy through any of these routes.  (On the other hand, it cost me only time – not money – to publish through Smashwords, so I’m not feeling too worried.)

Another format that Smashwords offered was Kobo, and I was particularly keen on this because our largest chain of newsagents here in the UK – WHSmith – sells Kobo e-readers and e-books.  But even a fortnight after “FF” was listed on Smashwords as having been shipped to Kobo, it still wasn’t appearing there, so I did a bit of sleuthing.  It turns out that Kobo now offers its own (free) e-publishing route, called Kobo Writing Life, and the rumour is that they are prioritising books published through that over ones coming through Smashwords.  So I did the obvious thing and went direct through Writing Life, and now “FF” is listed on the Kobobooks website (you can see it here).  Again, no sales yet – but it did only appear there yesterday.

What this has all shown me is that it is terrifically hard to keep up with all the options – there are probably dozens of other e-book formats out there of which I am totally unaware.  It almost makes you yearn for the days when the only two options were hardback and paperback – although I course I wouldn’t have been published at all without all the new self-publishing routes!