The Time Bubble

Yesterday, the first day of my week long promotional campaign for My Tomorrow, Your Yesterday began. I have reduced the price for a week to 99c in the US and 99p in the UK, and supported this by taking out advertising with seven different promotional sites. These were cherry picked after much research as I felt that they were the ones that could give my book the best possible exposure. The prime focus of my campaign is to build awareness and ranking though increased sales during the promotional period that will position my book for long term success. Whatever I achieve in sales during the promotion itself is fantastic, but it is what happens afterwards that really counts. A recap on where I am in June so far. My target was to sell 1,000 books this month. By the end of yesterday (the 14th) my sales stood at 283. This was some way behind the target figure of 466 at this stage of the month, but with all the promotional activity to come, I'm confident of catching up. So how did t...

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...

So, now that Global Cooling is launched, what about the final part of the trilogy? You'll have noticed a fair few teasers and loose ends in the first two books that haven't been tied up yet, as well as a few plot lines that were not expanded on to any great extent. So what is going to happen in the third book? I'm at the outlining stage now, with a plan to start writing in January for an Easter release. I am planning to call it "Bubble Wrap". Here's a provisional blurb... Josh has discovered the secret of how to create his own Time Bubbles and manipulate them, dangerous information if falling into the wrong hands. As Josh joins Peter on his quest to explore the far future, Daniel Fisher is trapped in a mental institution, insisting to his counsellors that he's travelled from twenty years in the past. He's determined to escape and find a way to put right the wrongs of the past. But if he does succeed in changing history, will anybody even no...

I'm really pleased with the way the sequel to The Time Bubble is coming along, and am delighted to announce that I have scheduled it in for a provisional launch date of Friday 28th November. Amazon are now allowing indie authors to put their books up for pre-order, so it should become visible on the site some time before that date. Watch this space. I have been overwhelmed by the fantastic response I have had to The Time Bubble. At the time of writing I have sold nearly 1,000 copies all over the world via Amazon. Those sales have generated 16 reviews in the UK with an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars, and more good reviews in America. It was always my intention to write a sequel as you know. In fact if this goes well, it may even become a trilogy. Because the book is going to be put on pre-order, I need to do things in a slightly different order, so although I'm still writing the story, I've already sorted out the cover and the "blurb". Here is the blurb: ...