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Cambridge, Gregory Hardiman, historical fiction, marketing, publicity, research, update

I know, I know – I’ve been distracted again!  But this time – rare for me – this post is actually topical.  I was reading about the history of Cambridge and I came across several stories about when the bubonic plague hit town in the seventeenth century.  Well, it had been there before, but the seventeenth century was bad, with dangerous outbreaks in 1610, the 1620s, 1630 and then the big one (the Great Plague, as we all learned in primary school) in the 1660s.

Now I’m baffled as to why more of you don’t sign up for my monthly updates – which elaborate on the historical details behind the books – so this is a bit of a teaser.  The update that is scheduled to go out on 1 May is all about plague and pestilence in historical Cambridge, but I won’t tell you much here, apart from a couple of taster highlights:

• The expert at the time was a German “plague doctor” called Dr Milne
• Windows were removed from churches to allow fresh air to blow through
• Forty pest-houses were built on Coldham’s Common, which is still a green area and presumably home to lots of skeletons.

If you’re keen to know more, sign up for the monthly updates!  (And if plague is not your bag, the June update features a hot air balloon and a water velocipede – my research is nothing if not wide-ranging.)

Kind words and five stars

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Amazon, Heir Apparent, research, review, sales, update

I can breathe again!  “Heir Apparent” now has three reviews on Amazon (the UK version – I still don’t understand why reviews on one Amazon site don’t automatically appear on all Amazon sites) and they are all five-star.  Here are a couple of lovely extracts, which warm the cockles of my authorly heart:

• “‘Heir Apparent’ is certainly the most complex case the experienced constable has had to tackle; it concerns the question of stolen identity and the law of succession in the early decades of the nineteenth century.”
• “The biggest draw is enjoying the company of [Susan’s] characters, so well-drawn, realistically flawed yet hugely likeable (for the main characters), and although the villains are suitably villainous, they too are three-dimensional, with their reasons for erring clearly drawn”
• “I love how many times pie is mentioned.”

All authors agree that Amazon reviews are important.  Sometimes we can forget that Amazon – no matter how big and no matter how global – is just a shop.  And all (most) shops care about is selling things to customers.  So Amazon tries to put its most tempting items in front of potential buyers – and the most tempting items are the ones that other buyers have bought and loved, and indeed loved enough to come back and rave about how much they loved them.  Hence the value of the review: if someone has read your book and thinks it’s terrific and tells Amazon how pleased they are, that will help your book rise up the rankings at Amazon, and it will be shown higher up the search results, so that more potential buyers can spot it.  Interestingly, you don’t have to buy a book – or anything, I suppose – at Amazon to leave a review for it on Amazon.  So if you have read any of my Sam titles, even if you’ve borrowed it from a friend or bought it somewhere else, and you liked it, please consider leaving a review for it on Amazon.  (The only restriction is that to be able to leave reviews on Amazon, you have to have spent at least £40 – US$50 on the US site – on Amazon in the past twelve months.)

And I am just putting the final touches to my free monthly research update, which will be sent out to subscribers on 1 November.  This month it’s about education in Sam’s time, so if you’re interested in the research behind the Sam books (I can’t shoehorn it all into the books – there’s far more in my files than I can ever use), why not sign up now?  I occasionally offer giveaways and competitions too – who could resist?

Plan it of the Chimps

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Berners Street, Fatal Forgery, MailChimp, marketing, Samuel Plank, update

A new era of updates has started today, in my latest marketing initiative for the Sam Plank novels.  A while ago I explained that I was focusing on assembling an opt-in MailChimp mailing list of people who were actively interested in hearing more about Sam, and the books, and the history behind the books.  It’s been a fairly slow start, but then I think that’s the nature of the beast: word of mouth (or rather, word of inbox) takes time to spread.

In my mind the theme of these regular updates (they will be coming out monthly) is now clear: they will deal with extra detail pertaining to the novels themselves.  (As opposed to these blog posts, which talk about writing and plotting and self-publishing and book design and marketing and anything else that is preoccupying me as an author.)  And the first one, which I sent out this very morning, looks at the history of the Berners Street Hotel, which took over the buildings where Henry Fauntleroy – the banker in “Fatal Forgery” – both worked (number 6 Berners Street) and lived (number 7 Berners Street).  If you’re now thinking, darn, I wish I knew more about that, well, why not head over to my subscriber page and sign up so that you don’t miss any more monthly gems.

As anyone who knows me will testify, I am a fantastically organised person.  There are few things I love more than a plan, except maybe a timetable.  And I have indulged myself by creating a mash-up of the two with regard to these updates: I have spent the past hour putting together an outline of the updates that I plan to issue – and the giveaways that I plan to feature – from now until the end of 2019.  It’s the level of organisation of which Sam’s Quaker banker friend Mr Freame would have wholeheartedly approved.