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.

Don’t mute the messenger

Tags

communication, Gregory Hardiman, marketing, newsletter, research, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey, website, writing

I appreciate that this may have passed you by – mainly because it’s all still in my head rather than actually happening – but now that I am giving being a professional author a go, I am revamping my communications with readers.  I have a very minimal Facebook and Twitter presence for Sam Plank (nothing yet for Gregory Hardiman), and then I have this blog and my monthly research updates.  And there’s my website for me as an author, which covers my fiction and non-fiction writing.  My husband has kindly volunteered (that’s not a euphemism – he genuinely did) to update my website, which is looking a bit tired; like everything, websites have their fashions, and my rather static, page-driven one is now the website equivalent of the Ford Granada.  So I’ll leave that to him, and weigh in with praise/complaints/biscuits as required.  But my job now is to think about my more proactive engagement with readers.

This blog has always been ad hoc – in other words, I make a post when I feel I have something to say.  But again, this seems to be a bit passé: looking at the output of other, much more successful authors, the trend these days is for regular newsletters sent to subscribers.  Some of you will already receive my monthly research updates, and I am wondering whether to unite the two – in other words, to send out a monthly newsletter that contains some background research information as well as other updates on (for instance) how my current book is going and who has agreed to play Sam in the Sunday evening drama commissioned by the BBC (well, an author can dream…).  So the blog would cease, and only newsletter subscribers would hear actively from me.  (Signing up to the newsletter would of course be free.)

And so I wondered whether you had any views on the subject.  To make life simpler I have put together a few questions – but you are more than welcome to go off piste and ignore them completeley.  Here goes:

1. Would you be interested in receiving a monthly newsletter from me, which would focus on my historical crime writing (i.e. both the completed Sam series and the new Gregory series, and whatever comes after that)?
2. Looking at possible content, are you interested in:
   • The research that I do behind the writing – my current monthly update has only 46 people signed up, so perhaps it’s not as popular as I think
   • My progress on my current book
   • The writing process
   • The self-publishing process
   • Me as an individual and not just as an author – some writers share their holiday photos and pet photos, for instance
   • Anything else?
3. It is likely that I will work out how to sell my own books – in e-formats only – via my new website.  Would you prefer to buy this way (for about the same price as on Amazon, but with a larger percentage of the sale price going to me)?  And would the promise of special subscriber discounts interest you?

I think that will do for now.  As you can see, what I am trying to do is gauge whether this is the right approach, and – if it is – what would tempt you to become a newsletter subscriber.  Thank you so much for any thoughts.

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%.

Everybody’s free (to feel good)

Tags

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)!

A month of Notes

Tags

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop, Draft2Digital, Google Play, Gumroad, Kobo, marketing, Notes of Change, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Smashwords

And here I am, a whole month later.  That was a deliberate gap, in case you’re wondering: I decided to take a break after publication, have a holiday, and come back refreshed and full of fab ideas for book promotion.  Well, two out of three ain’t bad!  When I was working full-time, I could carve out space to do the actual writing (which I love) but not for any marketing (not so much love here…).  Now that I have stopped work, I am hoping to take a more professional approach: my ideal routine would be to spend two days a week writing, one day researching and one day on marketing.  And so I have not beaten myself up about abandoning “Notes of Change” to its fate after publication, as I know that before too long I will be revisiting the whole series with a proper marketing/promo plan.  (I’m going on a long train journey next week – four hours each way – and my goal is to spend most of it on preparing that plan.)

Meanwhile, I thought you might like to hear how “Notes of Change” has done in its first month.  It’s the first book for a while that I have published “wide” – i.e. on platforms other than Amazon, as well as on Amazon itself.  And here are the latest stats:

• Sold to bookshops: 10 copies
• Sold via Amazon: 25 copies
• Draft2Digital: zero
• Google Play: zero
• Gumroad: 1 copy
• Kobo Rakuten: zero
• Barnes & Noble: zero
• Smashwords: zero

So that’s a total of 36 copies.  On the plus side, I’m getting excellent reviews – five five-star ratings on Amazon already.  So onwards and upwards, as I promise my poor little books that I will give them the promo help they deserve.

The league table

Tags

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.)

Jam doughnuts all round!

Tags

Amazon, beta reading, Crime Writers' Association, editing, marketing, promotion, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Notes of Change

In life it is important to celebrate achievements, and today I have had a jam doughnut for elevenses because I have completed my draft of “The Notes of Change”.  [As an aside, am I the only person who eats a jam doughnut by spearing it onto a fork and then eating it like a toffee apple?  So much tidier than the doughnut-in-fingers method.]  I realise that there will be more work to do, but for today – I’m happy.  I have sent the file to my lovely beta reader Roy, to check for plot madnesses and general readability and likeability, and at the same time my husband will be close-reading it for spelling mistakes, poor punctuation, extra spaces and all the other typos that return to haunt us.

Meanwhile, I have been contacting the people who have kindly reviewed other Sam Plank novels, to ask whether they would like to take this one on as well.  Other more organised authors would have blog tours and the like lined up, but I’ve just not managed that this time round.  However, I have decided not to chastise myself too much for these promotional shortcomings – after all, I’ve written a whole book!  By myself!  And this “being an author” thing is meant to be fun.

That said, I do have plans.  On the advice of several people, I am planning to get to grips – or at least within gripping distance of – Amazon ads: I have bought a couple of books on the subject (of course I have – when faced with any new endeavour, I will always buy a book) and will read them while I wait for comments on my draft.  My other task in that hiatus is to apply to join the Crime Writers’ Association – it’s quite the application process, and acceptance is far from guaranteed, but as they have just opened their well-respected and much-coveted “Daggers” awards to self-published novels, I now have a real incentive to try.  And just think: if they do accept me, it will be the perfect excuse for another doughnut!

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!

At long last – and a longlist!

Tags

Discovered Diamonds, Helen Hollick, marketing, Portraits of Pretence, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Notes of Change, writing

The day has finally come: I am a full-time author.  Well, that’s over-stating it, but on 31 December 2021 I retired from my “day job”, and now I can spend more time learning about self-publishing, marketing my books, exchanging ideas and encouragement with other indie authors – oh, and doing some writing as well.  I found my last three months of work so busy and all-encompassing, what with planning my exit and providing “just one last training session” for so many lovely clients, that I have not even opened “The Notes of Change” (the final Sam Plank novel) since the end of October…  But now I can, and the first order of business is to read it again, from start to, well, not finish, but to “wherever I’m up to”, so that I can remember the plot.

Actually, that’s another over-statement, because of course the real first order of business was to turn my efficient business office into an equally efficient but much softer and more creative “writing den”.  My husband very kindly did the grunt work of removing a now-surplus second built-in desk and making good the walls, and then I scarpered while he and a neighbour manhandled the new “sofa of reclining reflection” through the house and garden and up the office steps.  It looks marvellous – and within ten minutes had been colonised by Maggie the cat, henceforward known in her new incarnation as “writer’s muse”:

Maggie thinking deeply creative thoughts – about dinner

And what of this longlist, I hear you cry!  Well, as if to welcome me properly to authordom, on 1 January 2022 I had a wonderful email from the sainted Helen Hollick (quite why she has not received a damehood for services to the self-published, I do not know – she’d certainly have no trouble finding a hat to wear to her investiture!).  Her review website for indie and self-published authors – Discovered Diamonds – has launched a new award.  The Richard Tearle Discovering Diamonds Award is named in honour of one their most prolific reviewers, who died last year, and “Portraits of Pretence” (the fourth Sam Plank novel) has been longlisted for the inaugural award, by dint of having been the Discovered Diamonds “Book of the Year” in 2017.  I can’t wait to see who will join Sam on the longlist, and then we’ll have to be patient until they announce the winner and runner-up in spring 2023.  What with a new sofa and the honour of being a longlist nominee for a new award, my new writing life is off to a flying start.

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!