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!

A carousel and a merry-go-round

The week began for me and Pat with an appointment with the London consultant who carried out Pat’s op. He has referred her to the haematologists now having seen confirmation that there is no lung cancer. We now wait for the results of the biopsy tests from the same three London hospitals that gave that confirmation as they now look for signs of T cell lymphoma. Since Monday it’s been a case of getting Pat’s sleep patterns restored and building up her energy levels and getting some weight back on. The waiting goes on however and we just have to hope and pray that the experts will determine what cancer it is so they can begin treatment.

Although I’ve had to shoulder the burden of looking after Pat and getting on with the household chores, I have managed to get some work done on my WIP. I began by reassembling the whole story-line using Scrivener, and creating another draft. I now have an almost complete plot line right down to the last gasp page. With luck I’ll see the end of this particular draft in a couple of weeks, and from there I can get an edit done and think about a suitable book jacket. I may pay for one yet, I don’t know. I’m hoping Pat will do the read through for me as she often does before I contact those subscribers of mine who read HUNTED for me earlier this year. Ironically, I was watching Mark Dawson and James Blatch chatting on their weekly SPF podcast yesterday, when Mark said he was planning to begin a novel once he’d finished his current WIP; it was about the drug business and the County Lines. No doubt he will excel at this, but I need to beat him to it because my current WIP is exactly that: a thriller about the County Lines gangs.

I have also been watching the Mark Dawson videos on FB ads again. They were updated when Mark’s SPF group launched the latest Ads for Authors course. I will dip a toe in the water this week and advertise The Boy from Berlin on FB, and will be using the blurb and ad lines provided by Bryan Cohen. FB has a reputation of sucking your wallet dry, but if I could see some positive results, I might clap my hands. Who knows?

Yesterday I took five copies of my pulp fiction thriller, HUNTED round to Dan Jones. Dan is the Chindi author who has opened a Pop-up shop in Chichester. It’s primarily to promote his own books and his wife’s creative work, but he has shown willing to add the Chindi authors’ books to a carousel. We all wish him and Abbie good luck of course, all the while hoping Dan can sell our books.

You know, when you’re struggling to sell books, you cling joyfully at the sale of one book and hope it’s the beginning of a trend. I haven’t advertised for some time and have seen my sales virtually flat-line, both on Amazon and D2D. But I was miffed when I saw D2D take one of my sales for May and add it to June. There was me thinking I’d sold ten books last month when it was suddenly reduced to nine. And it doesn’t help when I see authors complaining on FB groups about their lack of sales. One lady writer was moaning because her sales of 50 eBooks a day, no ads, first book, had suddenly crashed. She wanted to know why this was happening to her. I don’t have to say what went through my mind. I did smile though.

So, on to next week and, hopefully, some major progress with my current book, my ads campaign, the gardening, the washing, the ironing, walking the dog. Oh yes! Tuppence comes home on Monday. That will cheer Pat up enormously. What a lovely thought. Bugger the book sales. Wish me luck!

Balloons, books and pop-up shops.

My week began with Pat coming home from hospital and me looking forward to having her with me and being able to look after her, not to mention no need for the daily journey up to London. After a traumatic weekend, I decided our little dog, Tuppence, needed to go away for a couple of weeks, so I set that up and sent her to a company called Barking Mad. We’ve used them before and have been quite happy with the way in which they operate. So, just me and Pat and some caring time.

I have also been able to get some time in with my WIP, having come to another decision to change the opening sequence. I’m taking a leaf out of one of Mark Billingham’s crime novels and beginning the story with a violent scene during which no character names are mentioned. The link, if you want to read the short prologue is at https://www.michaelparkerbooks.com/marcus-blake-prologue. Naturally it means a few more changes to the plot sequence, but that’s the life of a writer I suppose.

Another decision taken was to begin Mark Dawson’s ads for authors course again. Mark released his latest version which, as a paid up member of his SPF group, entitles me to all the updates. This means I’m getting it for free. So it’s a case of knuckling down and start again. I’m really looking ahead to July when Stuart Bache will be redesigning the book jacket for my political thriller, The Boy from Berlin. I need to have my head right for this because I have to spend money on promoting the book, and the only successful way is to use the big guns like Facebook, Amazon and BookBub. I tried a couple of small promotions last month, about $30 a shot, but achieved just one sale for the book. When I think back to the beginning of the year, I told myself that my latest book would be published by the end of March, and here I am in June still nowhere near finishing the damn thing. I know I have a reasonable excuse, but I don’t want to use Pat’s illness as an excuse. So, thinking of next month, new book jacket, new marketing campaign to follow and getting stuck into my WIP, maybe, just maybe I’ll see an upward projection in my book sales.

The photo I have inserted at the beginning of this post is an unusual ‘bouquet’ made by our grand-daughter, Gemma. She came over to see her Nan with our great-grandson Orin, yesterday. She’s a clever girl, our Gemma: has her own business too. We’re really proud of her. Perhaps I should get her to do PR for me, although I don’t think I’d sell many books by being associated with children’s entertainment, craft making and, sometimes, dressing up as a fairy.

One of our Chindi authors, Dan Jones, has come up with a brave project. He will be opening a ‘pop-up’ shop at Draper’s Yard in Chichester. It’s to sell his own books, fiction and non-fiction, and also his wife’s artwork. He has suggested us Chindians use his stall as an outlet for our books. We have been invited to put five of each title with Dan. He’ll display one at a time and top it all up as they sell. He’s going to be swamped with books from the Chindi group, but hopefully the project will not only help us but will also help Dan and his wife enormously. I might even sell some of my books. Wish me luck!