On the up!

The week began with a trip to the Fernhurst Centre at St. Richards hospital where Pat had an hour’s consultation with the haematologist. He explained, in detail, what cancer they’d found: it was a lymphoma as they suspected, but one that is difficult to find. I can’t pronounce the name of the lymphoma, but it isn’t curable although they can treat it. This means that Pat will have this permanently but the disease will be contained with proper management. But finally we know where we’re going. Pat starts her chemo on Monday and has been on steroids all week. She’s like a different woman, full of beans, cooking, washing — just like the Pat I married. She comes off the steroids today, but has had a good week. And all this was a blessing because on Wednesday, my false hip decided to play up and left me half crippled, in a lot of pain and having to use a walking stick. The doctor has put me on codemol and I’ll be getting an X-ray later this month. This has happened before, and I know it will get back to normal, but I could have done without it.

On to brighter things now; in particular my Facebook campaign. I made a couple of tweaks to both ads (UK & USA), and have seen my sales increase. Yesterday I sold eight books. All told this month, that’s six days, I’ve sold 24 copies of The Boy from Berlin. At this rate I could hope to make most of my advertising costs back. And this is where I get nervous, believe it or not; how do I maintain this exponential growth in sales? The ads have eleven days to run, but I’ve yet to know what kind of ROI will be returned. Not that I’m concerned about that at the moment; I just want to know what it is that I’m doing right. I won’t be running the campaign once the closing date has been reached; I want to wait until Stuart Bache has come up with a new jacket for me. I was in touch with him earlier this week and he said it will be later this month before he can get started. Once that’s done, I’ll dive into another FB campaign

I am also working through my WIP, wielding the red pen. This is something Pat used to do for me, but she doesn’t feel she could do it justice, so I’m doing it myself. I think the word count will probably run out to about 62,000, which for me is quite short; I usually manage about 85,000 words. I expect (hope) to have the book ready well before the end of August when Amazon’s Kindle storyteller competition closes. It’s open to everyone of course. I don’t expect to win the competition, but I can’t see the point in not trying, particularly as I will have my unpublished book ready to go. I will probably contact a few of my subscribers and ask them to read it for me, but I need to have it ready for them, although not with a jacket; it will just be the Word file or something.

Looking ahead, I can see things will be fraught for a while because of Pat’s chemo, which will go on until the end of the year. We are both hoping she’ll be fit and well by January 19th. when we celebrate our diamond wedding anniversary. Probably go up to London and stay in a posh hotel. Maybe I will have sold thousands of books by then and will be in a position to afford the best. Wish me luck!

It's Good News Week

As this week and this month comes to an end, I can say it’s finishing on good news. The hospital has finally diagnosed Pat’s cancer and we will be seeing the haematologist on Monday afternoon for the consultation and the beginning of Pat’s treatment. Yesterday when we got the news, we were both in a flood of tears, cuddling each other with big smiles on our faces. It’s ironic that when we are supposed to be in despair at the news of cancer, for us it was a massive relief to know the treatment can begin after waiting for almost eight months. It’s going to be a hard road for Pat, but with faith and prayer, and the skill of the doctors, I know Pat will come though.

As readers of my blog will know, I have been advertising my book, The Boy from Berlin on Facebook. The two ads are identical, but one has been running for two weeks in UK, the other for a week in USA. In that time I have sold 39 copies of the book on KDP, and two on D2D. This represents a terrific turn round in my monthly averages: whereas I’ve been selling about one book a week, I can hope to see that figure rise to an average of ten copies each week. Naturally I will be tweaking my ads because it’s good advice to do so. I won’t make drastic changes, but as the numbers slow down, so I’ll look to maybe change my target audience. Needs some thought though. And next month (July), Stuart Bache is contracted to design a new jacket for me. It will be interesting to see how that impacts on the sales. I had one comment posted on my FB page from someone I don’t know. He put the jacket up and said, “Brill read”. Great stuff.

The next bit of good news is that I finally managed to type “The End” on my WIP. I never thought I’d get there with all that we’ve been going through this year. It’s taken me the best part of twelve months to get this far and it’s a relief to reach the end. Naturally the book isn’t ready yet, but I will be printing it off and going through it with my red pen. Once I’m happy with that, I’ll start the process of publishing. I can’t afford to ask Stuart Bache to do the jacket, but I’ll look into finding some designer recommended by people I know.

And the other bit of good news is that photo at the start of this blog. That’s me at our local ‘Fun Day’ on the green in our residential park home estate. Last year I sold six books and was well pleased. This year I sold nineteen books! At least, I think it was nineteen. I started losing count after twelve. I was staggered. One woman bought two books and while I was signing them, she picked up another and said her son would love that book. I reached the stage where I thought I might have to nip home for more books. So, a really good day. Next on the horizon is Pat’s treatment, my editing and a look at how I can tweak my FB ads and increase my sales. Wish me luck!

Being brave, stepping out

Well, Tuppence came home and cheered Pat up enormously. Me too. She’s such a bundle of joy — Tuppence, not Pat. Needs a decent trim now though, so she’s off to the poodle parlour on Monday. It also means I have to set aside time during the day for a couple of dog walks as well as looking after Pat now. We had two medical appointments this week: just skirting round the problem really, and are now waiting for the biopsy results to come in. Hopefully that will be next week.

I finally ventured into Facebook ads this week for my book The Boy from Berlin. I used Mark Dawson’s video on setting up an ad. My audience was (is) The United Kingdom and Ireland, my featured author is David Baldacci, and my budget is £5 per day for thirty days. At the moment I am spending about £3.75 a day. But the results are very encouraging. In five days I have sold twelve copies and my current sales have reached seventeen since Monday, which includes other titles. This is after selling about one book a week before last Monday. My next step, which I’ll be doing today, is to copy the ad and target an audience in the USA. That’s the only change I’ll make and will then see how well the ad. does with an American audience. This is what’s known as ‘split testing’; something I’ve never done before because of the cost involved. But because I can monitor the spend and the effectiveness of the ads, it’s down to me how much FB takes from my wallet. I’m planning to keep this up until the end of the thirty day run, maybe tweaking here and there, but it’s the only way I can see myself gaining any traction with readers. I accept that my ROI will suck, but nothing ventured……..

I have also made some decent inroads into my WIP. I have managed to reconstruct the plot line by moving some scenes into different parts of the story, although I think it’s a bit like moving the chairs around on the deck of the Titanic. Maybe the story will sink because of my ill-disciplined way of writing, but hopefully not. I expect to have the MS completed by the end of this week, and then it needs to be read by a few beta readers who I will contact through my website mailbox. If they don’t pour scorn on the book, I’ll be encouraged to find a relatively inexpensive cover artist and have a jacket designed. I would like to be able to use Stuart Bache, but as I’ve already signed up with him for next month, I can’t afford for him to do two jackets. Talking of which, my FB ads for The Boy from Berlin now use the rewritten prologue and strap line blurbs from Bryan Cohen. It will be interesting to see what kind of impact a Stuart Bache cover will have on sales when I decide to advertise again.

My recent reading has been The Fear Index by Robert Harris; a massively complex and intellectual thriller that I found hard going. I probably won’t read another Harris novel for a long time. I also ventured into The Girl in the Spider’s Web by David Lagercrantz. I read the trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larrson) and have the DVD, so I thought I’d give this a try. Big mistake. Now I’m into Hush Hush by Mel Sherratt. It’s a British crime thriller and looking pretty good so far. We’ll see though.

Next Saturday, June 29th. will be the ‘Fun Day’ here on our residential site. Last year I sold six books while sitting in a marquis enjoying the events unfolding around me and smelling the drift of barbecued meat wafting over. Lovely stuff. I’m hoping I can pinch some time off from looking after Pat and set up another table. It’s only for a couple of hours and Pat says she wouldn’t mind coming along and sitting with me. The event is only two hundred yards from our house, so I reckon Pat could make it. Should be fun. Wish us luck!