Keep buggering on

Tags

Amazon, BookBub, Gardners, IngramSpark, Kindle, marketing, promotion, Waterstones

I’m a big fan of Winston Churchill – one of life’s great over-achievers (soldier, journalist, politician and artist) – and in particular his repeated exhortations to just stick at it, variously “Never, never, never give up”, “If you’re going through hell, just keep going” and, of course, “Keep buggering on”.  I too am one of life’s plodders: I’m not given to flights of fancy or flashes of brilliance but I am a great sticker-at things – including the marketing of self-published books.

I try – some weeks more successfully than others – to do at least one marketing activity per week.  I keep a list of ideas and suggestions in a little notebook and when I have time I try to cross off, or make a little advance on, one of them.  They vary in size and complexity – from “contact events person at local Waterstones” to “get to grips with how Amazon ads work” (there’s a project…) – and, as with pretty much all marketing initiatives, it’s all but impossible to know which will bear fruit and why.

On my list at the moment are these:

• Once the IngramSpark versions of my books are finalised [nearly there – paper proof copies are on order] update all the ISBNs on Amazon and elsewhere
• Wait several weeks – it seems to take about six – for the IngramSpark catalogue to update in the Gardners system so that bookshops can order the books, and then think of ways to get them to do that…
• Contact events person at local Waterstones – no point doing this until they can order the books (see above)
• Consider running a BookBub promotion – general consensus in the indie writing community is that this is a good idea but hard work as you need to jump through dozens of hoops before BookBub will take you on
• Consider releasing a “box set” of the first three Sam titles in Kindle format – this has been recommended by a writer friend
• Get to grips with how Amazon ads work

Today I have asked for a quotation from my cover designer to create the new image I would need for Amazon for a box set.  And now I am going to read some of the thousands of blog posts out there which discuss Amazon ads and the black magic that seems to underpin them…  It’s not glamorous and it’s not much fun, but then neither was being sent to Bangalore with the Fourth Queen’s Own Hussars in 1896 – if Winston can keep buggering on, so can I.

Stiff competition

Tags

author talks, marketing, Plank 6, promotion, research, sales, Sarah Vaughan

Last Wednesday I had some pretty stiff competition.  I was invited to speak at a literary event in a local village, during their annual week of festivities, and on the night I shared a platform with properly-published, best-selling author Sarah Vaughan (she’s even had her most recent book, political thriller “Anatomy of a Scandal”, promoted on London black cabs and on posters in the Tube – she’s that professional an author!).  Not only that, but Sarah and I were battling for attention against “Mock the Week” regular Hal Cruttenden (performing at a comedy event in the same village) and the entire England football team playing Croatia in Moscow.  Nonetheless, a fine band of about thirty people turned out to hear us talk about crime, writing, and crime writing.

Sarah was a lovely person, and since we met has been very generous with her time and her contacts, but I will admit that sharing a stage with her reminded me that I have a long way to go.  She happened to mention that one of her books has over twenty editions in translation, and that the Italian edition alone has sold over twenty thousand copies.  Twenty thousand!  All five of my novels, in all editions, have sold a total of just over 1,400 copies.

But am I daunted?  I am not!  Now that I have sorted out just which year I am writing about, I find that 1829 is a cracker of a year.  We’ve had the hanging of grave-robber William Burke and the first appearance of the Metropolitan Police – and it’s only the end of June.  Added to that, it was a very cold year with a wet, thundery summer and then London snow in early October – very atmospheric.  As Sam might say, we’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do, not because it makes us money.

Pricing and promo problem

Tags

Amazon, CreateSpace, Facebook, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, Kindle, pricing, promotion, Twitter

It’s an odd time, post-publication.  For authors with traditional publishing houses behind them, I daresay this is a period of frenzied promotional activity, with champagne-lubricated launches across the world and endless media interviews.  But for little old me, it means sitting here checking the UPS website every ten minutes to track the delivery of my books from CreateSpace in South Carolina, while occasionally looking at Amazon to see whether anyone has left a review.  I know that people are receiving their copies – thank you, Carol in West Row, for your wonderful photos of the grand unwrapping! – and here on my desk I have pre-prepared addressed envelopes ready to send out the review copies as soon as they arrive.

In the meantime, I wanted your opinion on the special price reduction I have done on the Kindle edition of “Fatal Forgery”.  I did it as a way to draw people into the series, just before the appearance of “Faith, Hope and Trickery”, and the initial uptake was encouraging.  I reduced the price to 99p (99¢ in the US; 0.99 euros in the EU) on 7 March.  Between 7 March and 9 March – when I suspect you were all kindly passing on the good news, and I had links on Facebook and Twitter – I sold twelve copies, but nothing since then (I suppose the promo links have fallen from view).  Should I return “FF” to its normal Kindle price, to fit in with the others – that’s about £3.62?  Or should I keep it at 99p permanently, as a sort of entry-level drug to get people to sample the series, and do more puffs about it?  Amazon does occasionally promote its 99p Kindle catalogue and there’s a chance “FF” could appear in such a promotion – but I suspect that’s for books with higher sales figures already.  (What I do know is that it definitely won’t appear in a 99p promo if it’s priced at £3.62!)  Complicating the issue is the fact that Amazon – of its own volition – has created a Kindle bundle of the first four Sam books, and that includes “FF” at 99p.  I don’t think anyone has bought the bundle – my current sales info shows no sales in recent weeks of any of the middle books in the series, which it would if the bundle had sold.

So, dear readers, what do you think?  Leave it at 99p, or put it back to the higher price?  (I suppose you need this info: if it sells at 99p I get 35p royalty, and if it sells at £3.62 I get £2.09.  But that’s only if it sells!  So lots of 35p is better than no £2.09…)

Pile ’em high

Tags

cover, CreateSpace, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, Kindle, promotion

I promised to keep you posted about my 99p deal on the Kindle edition of “Fatal Forgery” – and in the two days since I launched the promo (thanks to all of you who distributed the link), I have sold eight copies.  This compares very favourably to the four copies sold in the whole previous month, so the promotion seems to be working.

In other news, I have now uploaded the interior and cover of “Faith, Hope and Trickery” to CreateSpace.  What happens next:

1. They (CreateSpace) do a review to make sure the book works in layout terms – this generally takes 24 hours
2. They instruct me to do my own proofread of the formatted version on screen
3. If I am happy with that, I order a physical proof copy – this is sent from America and usually takes about five days to arrive
4. If I am happy when I receive that, I press the big Publish button
5. The book will then appear on Amazon – this can take anything from eight minutes (the record, as far as I am concerned) to three days, a process which is probably not helped by my hitting Refresh on the Amazon website every four seconds or so, day and night
6. You can then order your own copies, and I can order my author copies for distribution to bookshops and reviewers – I can select one of three delivery speeds, depending on how flush I am feeling, but the speediest still takes a week, which is a killer.

Plank for under a pound

Tags

Amazon, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, Kindle, pricing, promotion

To amuse myself while I work through the final publication steps for “Faith, Hope and Trickery”, I am trying an experiment.  From now until publication date, I am reducing the price of the Kindle edition of “Fatal Forgery” – that’s “Plank 1” – from the usual £3.62-ish to a mere 99p.

Doing this via Kindle Direct Publishing (where I set my prices) was quite straightforward, although I had to change my royalty plan.  If you want to keep 70% of the cover price, you have to price your book at £1.99 or more.  If you want to sell it more cheaply than that, you have to opt for the other royalty level, which is only 35%.  I guess Amazon need to recoup their costs, and taking only 30% of a cover price of 99p would not work for them, so for cheap books they take 65%.

I’m hoping that people will take a punt on “Fatal Forgery” at 99p (which appears on the US site as 99 cents, and on the European sites as 0.99 euros) and then become irresistibly addicted to the series and buy them all at “full” price.  A bit like drug dealers offering a cheap sample…  I’ll keep you posted and let you know whether it works or not.

Let us talk of many things!

Tags

Book of the Year, bookshop, Helen Hollick, map, marketing, Plank 5, Portraits of Pretence, promotion, Samuel Plank, title

It’s all happening today!  First of all, the divine Helen Hollick has featured a little piece by me on her terrific historical fiction blog, Let Us Talk of Many Things.  She gave me free rein – rather brave – and I decided to write about how I explore Sam’s London.  And quite by chance I realised that it is an interesting blend of old and new, as my two most-consulted resources are a map from 1827, and the Transport for London online journey planner!

Secondly, I have taken delivery of my “Book of the Year 2017” promotional stickers.  For those of you interested in the financial side of things, I ordered them from Vistaprint, using – with her permission – the logo designed by Helen.  I chose circular, matte, easy-peel stickers to mimic those seen most often in bookshops, and 120 small stickers (3.6 cm in diameter) cost me £26.03 including delivery and VAT.  That’s nearly 22p per sticker and a wild extravagance, but I treated myself.  I have now put them on the copies of “Portraits of Pretence” that I have in stock, added them to the books in my local bookshops, and posted them to the more distant stockists in Ely and London.  I have also been keeping a beady eye on sales for a spike, given all this publicity, but it is so far proving elusive.

 

And thirdly, I will be launching the “Plank 5” title poll at the end of this week.  My creative team and I (that’s me and the husband) are looking at a long list of possibilities in order to narrow it down to the final five.  The big thesaurus is out – the one with its own special magnifying glass – so it’s serious stuff.  Voting will open on Friday.

Plank in the Wild

Tags

blogging, promotion, Samuel Plank

I have decided to add a new page to my author website, called “Plank in the Wild”.  This will replace the hugely unsuccessful “Plank Q&A” page, which – in a whole year of existence – has not received a single question…

“Plank in the Wild” will be a bit of fun, featuring Plank books out and about.  So if you have any photos of your Plank books that you would like to share, please do email them to me – I’ve put up a couple to get us started.  Let me know if you’re happy to appear in the photo, or would rather be cropped out.  And if *pause while I imagine this degree of wonderment* you ever see a stranger reading a Plank book, please oh please oh please photograph them surreptitiously and email it to me.  It is the stuff of which my authorish dreams are made.

A week of promotion

Tags

competitions, CreateSpace, Mslexia, plotting, pricing, promotion, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Twitter, WH Smith

Thanks to all who voted in the “which Plank should I submit to this competition” poll, and the winner (of the poll, not the competition!) is “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  So this weekend I will be preparing the first five thousand-ish words of that for submission, and then it’s fingers crossed until winners are announced in February 2018.

In other news, I have been working in Guernsey all week and so have had little time for writing, but I have managed about 600 words.  I’m still struggling a little with the plot of “Plank 5”, in that I have the basic plot but want more complication – you know how I like to have several strands to the story.  But I am reasonably confident that the additional strands will reveal themselves as I go along – they always have in the past.

On the promotional side of things, I read recently in a magazine that Sophie Raworth (an English news-reader on the telly) has a book review blog.  She seems nice and approachable, and so I tweeted her to ask whether I could send her a copy of “Canary” – it’s set partly in Langham Place, now the home of the BBC, and I thought that might appeal.  I have not had a reply, which perhaps is not surprising.  But I do try!

I have also taken my book of newspaper columns – “Susan in the City” – into the Cambridge branch of WH Smith (a large chain of bookshop/stationer/newsagents), to see whether they would be interested in stocking it on their “local interest” shelf.  The manager seems keen – he said that the sale-or-return basis of my offer was crucial – but he still needs to put the case to head office.  I’m hoping to hear by the end of next week.  As regular readers will know, putting copies in physical bookshops actually costs me money (in other words, it costs me more to order the books from CreateSpace and have them shipped from the US than I make from the eventual sales) but I see it as a promotional move, to get the books being read and – hopefully – recommended.  Although, as with all my promotional efforts, it is all but impossible to assess the success of the approach!

Party for poison pens

Tags

bookmark, bookshop, Heffers, Portraits of Pretence, print-on-demand, promotion, self-publishing

Great excitement: I have just been invited to participate in “What’s Your Poison?”, the summer crime party held by local bookshop Heffers.  I missed it last year, as I was away on my writing retreat, but this year the stars are in alignment and on Thursday 6 July 2017 I will be rubbing shoulders with fellow crime addicts and writers.  Do come along if you’re around: they are always lovely events, with some terrific books on show.  And I will be handing out bookmarks!

I have been asked to prepare a three-minute reading from my latest book, which is “Portraits of Pretence”.  I don’t do readings that often; when I am asked to speak (quite rarely these days, as I have not been putting enough effort into chasing speaking opportunities, bad writer that I am) I tend to focus on the process rather than the product.  And people are usually so fascinated by the mechanics of self-publishing and print-on-demand that we run out of time.

But I do know that choosing the right excerpt is quite an art.  You need something that can stand alone (I don’t like doing big explanatory introductions) and yet tempt your listeners to buy the book so that they can read on; that gives a flavour of the main character and perhaps a couple of others; and that hints at the plot without giving anything away.  I’m going to have to give this some thought…

The “Canary” sings

Tags

Amazon, Audible, audiobook, Fatal Forgery, Guy Hanson, Plank 5, plotting, promotion, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

It’s been quite the week in Sam Plank land – first my “Book of the Month” accolade for “Portraits of Pretence”, then the arrival of the bookmarks, and now the publication (if that’s the word) of the audio edition of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Guy the narrator has been working like a Trojan in recent weeks, sending me clutches of chapters of “Canary”, and I have had a ball listening to it all again.  I haven’t read it since I published it, and it’s been great to hear it.  Even more importantly, it is very useful to have it to remind myself of certain character traits and biographical details as I start to wade more deeply into “Plank 5”.  Here’s where I spent most of the past weekend, during that sunny spell:

That’s my A4 “Plank 5” notebook on the left, filled with my favoured plotting method: plot points written in boxes and then joined together with arrows – some going across several pages.  If I had a dedicated writing office (I do have a desk, but it’s in the back bedroom, which is sometimes needed as, well, a back bedroom) I would have a plain white wall for the affixing of coloured Post-It notes, but as I don’t, the arrowed book will suffice.

So now the audio version of “Canary” is available.  (If you’re curious about the royalty/bounty side of audiobook sales, I’ve written about it before here.)  I trust that Audible (the audiobook member of the Amazon stable) will promote it to people who bought the audio “Fatal Forgery”, and I will need to get the word out there as well.  As before, they are going to send me a clutch of promo codes for free downloads, so I will consider how best to use those.  Last time, for “Fatal Forgery”, I offered them on a suitable audiobook forum in Goodreads, so I may do the same again.  Any other suggestions?  I could run a competition, I suppose…  Let me get back to you on that one.