The Time Bubble

Yesterday I did something I haven't done for at least a year. I went for a bike ride. Yes, my poor unloved bicycle had been sitting in the shed all that time, neglected and unloved, with tyres going flat and a colony of spiders building webs among the spokes. This is a crying shame, because for as long as I can remember, I've loved riding my bikes, and there have been a fair few over the years. Why haven't I ridden it for over a year? Because it's just turned into one of those many things on the ever growing list of things that I "used to do". Growing up and growing older is a strange thing. There are all manner of things that we stop doing at various points in the process, without perhaps realising at the time we last perform them that it is in fact the last time. For example did I know, growing up, that I was having my last game of "tig" with my mates? I can't remember when the last one was, but I subconsciously stopped at some point. It...

Well, I hope they are going to be a Magnificent 7. Eventually, after many hours of research, I was left with a list of 7 sites that I decided to apply to for my big promotion on MTYY. As mentioned in previous blogs, a large amount of research went into this, largely looking for anecdotal evidence based on other's experiences. Here's another tip that might come in useful: When I was assessing the sites, I subscribed to all of them so I could monitor the performance of the books they sent me as their daily deals. This is a great way to gauge a site's effectiveness and something I'd definitely recommend if you are considering signing up to one of them for a promotion. What I suggest doing is as soon as the daily email comes out, go to Amazon.com (better than the UK as most of the sites are based in America) and check the book's rank before the promotion kicks in. Let's say for example, it's #50,000. Then go back the next day and check again. If it's...

I'm preparing to embark on the biggest ever promotional push I've run on any of my books. My Tomorrow Your Yesterday is going on to Kindle Countdown Deal for the second time on June 15th. The first time was back in the spring, soon after launch when it was a lot less established than it is now. Even so, I was very pleased with the results. Despite very little promotion on my part, sales soared during the week it was reduced, and have continued at a very nice level ever since. This time, I've decided to go in all guns blazing and invest some serious money in the promotion to get the word out there. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. It is very easy to spend a lot of money on book promotion and not get results - there are literally hundreds of advertising options out there which can be quite daunting for an inexperienced author. How can we make sure we are investing our money wisely? Something that might only cost $5 might not seem much of a risk but is it reall...

Things got off to a flier on Monday with 25 copies sold/ borrowed. Of these, 13 were borrows and 12 were sales. Kindle Unlimited has worked wonders for me, it has really helped to open my books up to a wider audience. It is probably worth noting that in order to reach 1,000 sales for the month, I need to be averaging 33.3 recurring per day, so 25 leaves me lagging behind, but I'm not at all worried about that at this stage. As I said yesterday, things won't really start moving until the 15th when my big promotional campaign kicks in. Speaking of campaigns, I've seen many people on forums remark that Kindle Countdown Deals don't work. As I've said before, I think this is true of books that aren't selling well to begin with. Dropping the price makes little difference. My second book, Austerity Dad, went on to a deal yesterday for a week and is yet to trouble the judge. I'm not really expecting it to do much, to be honest, and I haven't even mentioned t...

I've had a tremendous response to the last blog entry I made on marketing and selling Kindle books. One kind respondent on one of the Facebook groups I participate in even went so far as to say:  "that was one of the best blog articles on marketing books that I have ever read" Encouraged by this, and with the risk of ending up with egg on my face, I've decided to put my money where my mouth is and "go live" throughout the month of June when I'll be tracking what I'm doing via this blog. Apologies to readers who don't follow me for the book stuff but I'll endeavour to entertain too. To make it more interesting, I am going to set myself an extremely ambitious target, that target being to sell 1,000 copies in total of all my books during the calendar month - that is including borrows which pay out at just under a quid a shot, so they all count. If you'd said to me a year ago I'd ever be contemplating selling 1,000 books in a mont...

People write and self-publish for many reasons. For some, it is purely for the sense of achievement. They want to leave their mark on the world and aren't worried if they don’t sell any copies. The fact that they've written the book is fulfilment enough. Others dream of writing a best-seller that they’ll load up to Kindle and will take the charts by storm. In reality it seldom works out like that. I have seen statistics which say that the vast majority of self-published books will never sell more than 100 copies. It’s fair to say that the quality of work out there is variable. Some people will load up poorly written books, riddled with errors that probably don’t deserve to sell. But what about those who have written brilliant well-crafted books that deserve to succeed, yet sit unloved on Amazon’s virtual shelves? How do the authors of these books feel, knowing they've written a fantastic piece of work that nobody is buying? Pretty demoralised, I would imagine. Ther...

I've been doing a lot of contemplating on the subject of life in general over the past few weeks. I seem to have found myself in a rather reflective and at times melancholy frame of mind. I wonder if it's normal and healthy for us as people to spend time reminiscing about the past, "the good old days" as we often refer to them, or whether we should be always looking forward. The fact is, I think I've been using the phrase "the good old days" since my mid-twenties which means either my life has gone progressively downhill since then or I'm just looking through rose-tinted spectacles at a golden era that probably wasn't as great as I remember it. Perhaps our minds subconsciously choose to remember the good bits and tune out the bad ones. Let's look at a couple of examples. Firstly, work. Last week, on Facebook, one of my old colleagues from Nielsen started a thread which quickly turned into a nostalgia fest. Over a few days, I had plenty ...