Coming Soon!

Last month was something of a revelation for me with regard to my word output, but not so much for my advertising skills. Looking back through my September blog, I see that I promoted The Eagle’s Covenant on Amazon and binned it. I went back to Amazon Ads, and using Janet Margo’s instructions, I rebuilt the campaign. Janet is an ex Amazon advertising exec and has joined Mark Dawson’s group to help update his Ads Course. Hey Ho! I thought; this should be good. I followed her advice to the letter, even submitting five separate ads and setting a budget across the five ads at £300 each (1500 total). This included a Lock screen ad, which is not usually useful for unknown authors like me. Janet warns about that, but her advice was to give it a try. So I did. Results since the 7th September? Zilch! Despite 37,500 impressions on Lock screen and 300 across the remaining adds. I got 77 clicks on Lock screen and 2 clicks on one other ad., but no sales. I spent just over $17. Says it all really, doesn’t it?

The resultant connection with The Book Typesetters and their design for my new book jacket has produced a brilliant cover. I’m so pleased with it that I just had to include a thumbnail image here. I’m waiting for a Proof copy before publishing it: something I hope to do as a pre-order for November 1st. I will go back to Amazon and Facebook to promote it but have promised myself to be a little more circumspect when framing my campaign.

As a result of changing my routine and creating more time to write, I have completed and published a short autobiography about the two years following the loss of my lovely Pat. I’ve called it What Happened After. It won’t be promoted; I simply felt compelled to write it and send copies to my family and friends. That was a 17000 word booklet.

But not stopping there, I gave some thought to writing a Police Procedural crime novel. I downloaded two crime novelists who I know a great deal about and read their work. It didn’t take me long to realise that police procedurals are literally all dialogue. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get out of that particular straitjacket. I often tell people who say they want to write a book, that they should “Write as you can, not as you can’t.” By not following my own advice, I fell at the first hurdle. Mind you, knowing me, I’ll probably try again, particularly as I have a great opening scene for a crime thriller.

However, still ignoring my own advice, I needed to do something having spent a lot of time finishing two books, so I started on a Romance. It’s just for fun really, and I will use a pen name. I’ve tried several names so far, but none of them seem to click. The one I’ve eventually settled on is Emma Carney. I’m not even sure I’ll use that one, but we’ll see. So far I have written 20,000 words. My daily target, which I had to trim because I wasn’t getting any work done in the house, was 2000 words a day. (I do get work done in the house of course!). My average so far is 1500 words a day. At this rate I’ll have another book available by Christmas.

I’m still planning to use TikTok as a platform for my work. I need to go through the course again, but I have posted videos there already, so I’m not a complete novice.. I’m waiting for my book to be available before I go daft and promote the hell out of it.

Other events during the month were lunch dates with my family and relatives. A trip to the Bognor Writers’ Group. That clashed with the England V. Germany game, but thankfully I was able to watch the recording. Dog walks, domestic duties, gardening (killing weeds really), running my church House Group, and trying to polish up my piano playing skills on my Clavinova. Life can be full, but underneath it all, it can be difficult too.

So what next for Michael Parker? Who knows? I might change course and become a painter, a musician, a dog walker. The world’s my oyster. Wish me luck!

Looking Good

September 2022. Looking Good.

The month of August was quite a busy month for me. Now that the jigsaw of my life was being put together slowly, I was able to get on with my latest book and I eventually finished it. I had to change my routines for this. I gave up buying a newspaper and consciously reduced the amount of time I spend sitting on my backside watching TV. I was surprised just how much writing I could accomplish, and how much time I had to deal with unexpected diversions.

I gave up some of my time to paint my neighbour, Jackie’s fence. My side needed doing (it’s a trellis fence), so when I knew Jackie planned to pay someone to do her side, I told her I would do it for nothing. She’s going to buy me dinner though. The start of that job was delayed because I was getting over Covid. Fortunately the weather was okay; the heatwave hadn’t arrived.

I was also fortunate enough to spend some time with two of my sons, Vincent and John, having lunch with their families at Port Solent. It has been years since I was there, but it was good. I also managed a lunch date with my sister-in-law, Carole and her husband, David.

I started another advertising campaign on Amazon, but my efforts have been abysmal. So much so that I binned the campaign after a couple of weeks. I have now started the Amazon Ads Course again (paid for it years ago) and hope I can enjoy more success with that. I also plan to go through the TikTok training. I am posting on TikTok, and my granddaughter, Sarah, has given me some pointers with posting on TikTok and Instagram without the latter rejecting the former. Something to do with TikTok’s watermark. I have read on my Facebook groups of amazingly spectacular results with TikTok, so I’m persuaded it’s the right way to go. Naturally I will continue with AMS.

Other aspects of my writing which are looking up is a project I’ve started and spent a little time on. There’s nothing to reveal about this because it hasn’t been completed yet. With regard to my novel, I have completed the editing and formatting of the manuscript but have engaged a professional book jacket designer to do the jacket for me. I did think about doing the jacket myself, but having come across this designer by chance, I decided to let him do the work. His prices were good: not as much as I paid for The Boy from Berlin. The irony is that I am currently redesigning my book jacket for A Covert War and using Photoshop to do it.

But the biggest part of my month, and a kind of welcome change, was to pick up my friend, Pauline, from her home in Lincolnshire and bring her down here for a week of travelling around, sightseeing, visiting family and enjoying what the countryside has to offer. Pat and I first met Pauline and her husband, Brian, in Spain twenty five years ago. We were great friends while they lived there and continued that friendship when we returned to England. Sadly, we are both on our own now. Brian died a couple of months after my lovely Pat. We chat each week on Facetime, and I have been up to Lincolnshire a couple of times, including bringing Pauline down here last year. Tempus Fugit.

Back in the book world again, I went to the Bognor Writers’ Club for their monthly meeting. It’s part of my attempts to make connections. I also popped into the bookshop in Bognor Regis where a local author, Peter Redford was holding a small event. I spent about fifteen minutes chatting with Peter and bought one of his books. I also left some of my books with the owner of the bookshop who has managed to sell a few of mine over the last few months.

I have also posted a new campaign on Amazon for The Eagle’s Covenant. The book happens to have the highest number of reviews in the UK and the USA, and the highest average star rating of 4.5 of all my titles. But the number of reviews is abysmal compared to most other popular thriller writers. Consequently I am using Janet Margo’s instructions in building a campaign as a ‘novice’, using Ad Groups and committing a big budget. Janet used to work at Amazon on the advertising panel, so she knows what she’s talking about. Naturally I have to look at what’s happening each day, otherwise I could be spending money pointlessly. I feel this could be my last chance at understanding AMS Ads and know how to negotiate the minefield out there in an effort to attract readers and book sales.

Looking back, it seems like I’m on the mend; but believe me, it’s hard without my Pat. I still miss her, and I’m sure she’s encouraged that I’m managing to put some meaning back into my life. Onward and upward hopefully.

Wish me luck!

A Welcome Change

(Blog post for August 2022)

The month of July has witnessed a definite change in the way in which I have started to turn my life around. The impact of the Writers Retreat in Ireland in June, together with the Self-Publishing Live show in London, has been the reason for this. I needed to find a way of changing my routine so I could devote more time to writing, marketing and promotion. The first thing I did was to stop buying a newspaper. It is amazing how much time can be wasted reading unwelcome news, pages of adverts and moaning about nothing worth reading in the papers these days.

The next thing was to stop watching so much TV and to spend more time writing. Once I had got used to this idea, I found myself sometimes writing in the evening with just the radio on. I do watch TV of course but try diligently to watch only particular programmes. Naturally, I still have to deal with normal routines: gardening, housework, walking the dog, going to church etc., and there are breaks when I am invited to share time with the family.

So what have I achieved to date? I made the decision to rewrite my current WIP after a one to one with my Publisher, Rhonda, in Ireland. It meant starting from the beginning of my 40,000 words and approaching it from a different angle. So far I have produced 50,000 words and have now worked out a sequence of events that will complete the story and bring me to my usual target of 80,000 words. If I continue at my current rate of progress, I could have the book ready by Christmas. We will see.

Promotion and marketing? Well, last month I told you how I sold about sixty-five books on Facebook using a David Gaughran video as a guide. I continued with that and sold another twenty-five books before the campaign faded away. I did another ad on FB, but achieved nothing with that, so I have switched to Amazon Ads. Not too sure about that though.

I have also run a FREE book campaign with Hello Books. That finished July 31st, and over the three days of the promo I have given away around seven hundred books. The title is Where the Wicked Dwell. The book will be free for a few more days on my Amazon Product page: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B06WD8988W.

Alongside those efforts, I have submitted Hell’s Gate for a standard, short campaign, with Author Glow. I’ve no idea how that will go, but for me now, it is all about immersing myself in the book world and getting my ‘mojo’ back.

On the downside, the result of my two weeks away meant I ended up with Covid. Six days positive followed by what is often referred to as ‘Long Covid’. It was no fun and seriously curtailed my involvement in most things, although I did manage to write.

But beneath all the good and uplifting news, I still miss my lovely Pat. I am managing that; meanwhile the book world is like a metaphor for a crutch that supports me as I try to live my life as normally as I can. I will keep plugging away.

Wish me luck!