Eventing

Where do I begin? Well, happy New Year to all of you (that’s from my little girl, Tuppence, as well). I hope it will be a good one for you. I already have a speaking engagement in my diary, but it isn’t until January 2nd. 2019, so the world isn’t beating a path to my doorstep yet, but maybe that will change. I started the New Year well, having been given a clean bill of health yesterday from the haematologist at the cancer clinic. Dentist next week for a root canal filling and a crown. How much pain can I take? And I have to pay! But I’m looking ahead with renewed optimism, which helps.

I plan to continue with advertising, but I hope to be a little more successful. I’m still using BookBub, and the signs are a little encouraging, but not enough on which to build a writing empire.

So what else is there? I’m looking forward to the UK South Coast book show at Worthing in March. I may not sell many books, but there will be a lot of writers there, about sixty all told, and no doubt the foot traffic should be good. The book fest will be in the theatre on the pier, which kind of adds a little glamour to the event.

We have an event in Littlehampton, sponsored by Arun Scribes and Chindi, which will be spread over a few days. Once again the foot traffic should be good, and we’ll have a chance to spread our names out further into the general reading public.

The big one for us at Chindi will be the Chichester Festival. We’ll be holding events during the week and will also be sponsoring a charity. Last year it was Dyslexia Action. We haven’t decided yet for this year.

Another event we like is the Arundel Festival. We spend about ten days with a stall sponsoring Cancer UK. It’s always an enjoyable time, and we do manage to sell books.

There will be other events coming along. Crawley library comes to mind. I went last year, didn’t sell anything but it was good to be there. And my son and grandson came along, which meant we had lunch together afterwards.

Another direction for me is my local church. I have been added to the preaching team and begin at the end of this month. I won’t be able to advertise my books there, although I might ask for a little divine help if my promotion work fails.

Just before Christmas, I gave my subscribers the free gift of my African novel, Hell’s Gate. There were no strings attached to the gift, and 125 people took advantage of it. I had some good comments — not too many because it’s a fact that very few subscribers respond to gifts, offers, discounts etc. Naturally I was hoping to pick up some good reviews, but it’s too early to tell if all of those readers will have anything to say.

But I did have one piece of luck in my quest to promote the book and get some mileage out of it. I contacted Wilbur Smith some weeks before giving my book away, and asked if he would like to read it. I was chuffed when he agreed. It took him about six weeks to reply to my message, so I was not really expecting it when it turned up in my messenger box. Anyway, the book will be on its way to him this weekend. Hopefully he will like it enough to give me a quote that I can use when I start pushing it. Fingers crossed. Wish me luck!

Rolling on

My little dog, Tuppence made the weigh-in satisfactorily. She needs to lose about half a kilo now, and we’ve cracked it. Now I need to work on my weight. No doubt Tuppence will win.

I’m still not succeeding with my BookBub ads. I’m persevering though, and will continue to tweak them until I see a significant change in my results. I need to make up my mind whether to keep them going until well into the New Year, or move over to Facebook ads.

I made some progress with my WIP, despite my admission last week that my Christmas lunches were getting in the way. I must admit that it’s taking me a lot of time just sitting staring at the screen and trying to imagine where I’m going. I can see different ways of going with it, but there’s an inevitability of drifting away from the theme if I’m not too careful.

I’ve seen a number of complaints recently on one of my author forums about the lack of reviews and the quality. This isn’t something I too vexed about; I find some reviewers can be quite dismissive of an author’s work without realising why they are posting a review. It should be about enjoyment and being carried along with the depth of the story, but some reviewers must feel they are marking a student’s exam paper, and treat it as such. If they don’t like a book, find it boring or poorly written, they should say exactly that, rather than give a forensic report on it. At the same time, authors shouldn’t read their reviews if they don’t want to read harsh words.

Had a real treat today: two of our sons came over with their families, and we all went out to lunch. Because of family commitments, it was easier to have our Christmas get-together this way. And as an added bonus, our No.3 great grandson Orin came too — brought his mum with him of course. He’s 9 months old. Such a joy.

I entered a short story competition this week: the BBC annual event. The winners won’t be announced until October next year, so I’ll have forgotten all about it by then. I’m not a short story fan, because I look at them as a kind of extended joke: there has to be a punch line at the end. My story was something I wrote a couple of years ago for our church magazine in Spain. I cannot see it making any progress because of its Christian content. Sadly, the BBC tends not to enjoy tales of this nature.

Nine days to Christmas now, and still a lot to get through. I probably will not making any progress with my WIP during that time, but I’ll try. Meanwhile I want to wish all my readers a very happy Christmas. I might post a blog next week, but it’s unlikely. Have a great time and I’ll see you all in the New Year.

Weighing up my progress

Well, still no real progress with my BookBub adverts. Using an author as the keyword, which is BB’s suggestion, doesn’t appear to open up any real, tangible results for me, and switching authors and split-testing ads hasn’t proved anything useful; except that I have a long way to go before I can say I have the hang of it.

I looked up one of my titles (I won’t say which one), published on KDP about five years ago, and decided it needed a little attention. I wish I hadn’t started. But after some editing, almost all minor changes, I have managed a forensic edit and believed it would stand up to scrutiny, but after viewing it on the Kindle previewer, I see there are no indents. I haven’t changed the way in which I upload my Word docs to KDP, so it looks as though I’ll have to do some research and find out why this has happened. I’ll probably convert it to a PDF file first; see if that works. It didn’t — I discovered that copying the whole document to include a table of contents for KDP, meant that the indents disappeared. That shouldn’t happen, but it is what it is, so I’ll have to come up with plan B.

I saw a post on Facebook from Mark Dawson of the Self-publishing group. I am one of his “alumni” (that’s his word), so I see everything he posts, which often includes some good advice. He put a lengthy post up about Kindle Unlimited, and is seriously thinking of moving his books there. He gives some pretty good reasons why, and it certainly makes you think of which way is best. Mind you, he is a million books best-seller, so he can afford to play around. I might put some of my books there, but only those that are not selling. That’s a project for next year though.

Are you all ready for Christmas yet? Two weeks to go and we’ll be celebrating the birth of baby Jesus. Well, a lot of us will, but some of the younger generation may think it is simply about being nice to each other and exchanging presents. You can always buy one of your offspring a book; one of mine preferably!

I haven’t made any progress on my WIP, but I’m blaming the time of the year for that, plus the editing I’ve been doing. We’ve had a couple of Christmas lunches with friends, so that’s an excuse not to do anything, and using that as a deplorable excuse means I probably won’t do anything now until next year. Then the New Year’s resolution takes over.

So what lies ahead for this week? Our little dog is going to the vet for a weigh-in. She was a little overweight three weeks ago. I got into trouble for giving her too many treats, which I hold my hand up to. Hopefully she’ll make the required weight and I can resume (secretly) feeding her treats. Not true; I will be very careful.

I have a trip to the physio this week; she is going to make me ride a bike this time. Thankfully it will be in the gym and not out on the road. I may even lose weight like my little dog. Wish me luck!