Wireless and powerless.

My Wi-Fi became Wi-Fi-less last Monday, due to the incompetence of BT. There probably isn’t the right time to lose your Wi-Fi, unless it’s during the night when you’re asleep. I had decided to change from SKY to BT, and sorted that out over the phone. The planned change was to be 24th. February. But in their wisdom, BT sent an engineer on the 13th. to make the change at 8am (eleven days early). He brought an old router, worked for about an hour and then departed. We went out, came back two hours later, but had no Wi-Fi. Engineer came back and apologised for leaving me with an old router with a dodgy password. I had to phone BT for a router which arrived two days later.

Two days without our modern crutch: Wi-Fi! How we need it. Well, maybe not everyone in the world. My elderly sister doesn’t own a computer and doesn’t need the miracle of Wi-Fi. She wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway. But my two day loss came at the wrong time. It was the beginning of the week when I had arranged to do some cross promotions with two different writers, and also to support the Valentine’s Day competition that my writers’ group, CHINDI (http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk) were running. I felt as though I was letting a lot of people down because of what I had promised to do. I had a huge backlog of work to catch up with, but got there in the end.

The cross promotions I did were with Paula Wynne http://paulawynne.com/the-grottos-secret and Paul Casselle http://amzn.to/2lu1SkC . I’ve no idea how successful they’ve been, but together those two writers have about 80,000 subscribers they can reach. It’s all subjective at the moment: a case of finding my feet working with other authors this way. I have noticed a slight, daily increase in my book sales, but I can’t dismiss the follow-on effect of my Bookbub promotion. We shall see.

Another let-down was the rejection by Kindle Scout of my latest novel. I wasn’t surprised at all when I received the news, and it was something I expected anyway. Now I can set about publishing my book and get down to some advertising. I haven’t quite worked out how I’ll go about this. However, I do know that once it is published, and Kindle Scout have been informed, they will e-mail all the people who voted for me. With luck some of them will buy the book. That will be a kind of free advertising, courtesy of KDP, that I couldn’t put a price on. I’ll probably use Facebook, but will be looking into doing it through Mailchimp.

Looking ahead to my next book, I have a nodding acquaintance with some ideas, but in truth I don’t see much developing. I have been asked to write a sequel to The Eagle’s Covenant, but that would be difficult. I’m sure those of you who have read the book will know why, but to write it would be one helluva challenge. If I could pull it off, I would be well pleased.

Tomorrow, Sunday 19th. my box set comes out of Kindle Select. I will use cross-promotions to advertise the set now and at a reasonably low price. It did nothing in KS compared to other results I have read about. I think I managed a total of 1800 pages read over the ninety days, so I can’t consider that a success.

I looked at my sales figures for the last two weeks yesterday, and was surprised to see The Devil’s Trinity was selling more than Roselli’s Gold. The irony is that TDT is available free if the buyer signs up to my subscribers’ list. They can unsubscribe at any time. That way they would have saved £2.99. I’m not complaining though.

If you are reading this and haven’t read The Devil’s Trinity, you can download it at http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj

Looking ahead to next week, there’s nothing in the diary other than my BT TV is due to come on stream! Perhaps they’ll turn up with a load of gear and wonder why I’m now with them. We’ll see. Wish me luck!

Power and absolute power.

There are two phrases I often hear: “Power dressing” and “Power nap”. I’ve tried neither, but I do have a new phrase: “Power promoting”. Before 2017 dawned, my idea of promotion and marketing was never really based on a firm foundation of experience, but more a kind of subjective approach which sometimes resulted in a few book sales. I’d listened to the experts, watched the videos and believed I could eventually master the game, but the trouble was it left me little time to write. So as the New Year dawned and I had finished my latest book, I decided it was time to get “down and dirty”. Not a buzz phrase, but something all military pilots would recognise. So, with that killer instinct burgeoning inside, I started paying more attention to the good results others were coming up with, and not always by paying through the nose.

I started with BookBub and came unstuck, which is unusual for what is generally recognised as the Holy Grail of advertising. I also used eReader News Today (ENT), which helped a little, and also submitted my book to Kindle Scout. I promoted that as best I could, but compared to the numbers I could see on the top books in ‘Hot & Trending’, I didn’t know squat (another little buzz word). There were authors ripping people like me apart with their statistics, and I had no idea why or how, but assumed they had more reach in the game and worked hard at it; they had built up a following, a readership, call it what you like, but they had more access than me.

Then along comes Paula Wynne, a very successful woman in the business of marketing, and promotion. She managed to get her first novel well up into the higher reaches of Amazon and attract some sterling reviews and maintain a healthy ranking. I wanted some of that, so when the opportunity came up to team up with her, I grabbed it. And that’s when I discovered the real meaning of time consuming, repetitive and sometimes numbing work at the keyboard. Write a book? I don’t have time! But in my own defence, I know that as I become used to following the diktats Paula hands down to me, the easier it will become (please).

It isn’t just Paula Wynne and working with her that has upped my game. I have teamed up with a couple of moderately successful writers to do some cross-promotions. And I have opened a new list on Mailchimp to collect the names of those who subscribe as a result of my new direction. I have joined instafreebie and I am also taking part in a Romantic novel promotion for Valentine’s Day with Chindi authors. All this means more visits to Twitter, Facebook, and countless other groups that I never knew existed. And there I find the new world of cross-promotions and authors helping each other, plus countless offers to boost sales, help you to become a best-seller. It’s like the iceberg: my involvement is at the tip, while below the surface there are thousands of us at it. And no doubt more will be jumping on the bandwagon.

Well, we all deserve a chance and hope to reap what we sow. But will all this work? I’ll know later in the year. At the moment my daily sales are moving along at a better rate than they were two weeks ago, but I have to put that down to the follow-on effect of the BookBub promotion. Hopefully my “Power promotion” will turn out to be a winner.

Here’s a couple of links that might interest some of you. Find out more about the Chindi Romance competition at www.chindi-authors.co.uk. Paula Wynne can be found at www.bookhub.online, and another author I’m working with is Paul Caselle who’s latest release is at http://amzn.to/2lu1SkC

I’ve begun toying with an idea for a new novel, but ‘toying’ is exactly that: I don’t really know where I will go with it. I’ll try anyway. Wish me luck!

Work, work, work. And more work!

Busy week again, but nothing to do with working on my next novel; it’s all about promotion and marketing — the buzz words in the self-publishing game. Can’t do without it unfortunately. It is so time consuming too. During the week I added a few books to Instafreebie and Bookhub. For the Instafreebie site I had to use Calibre to convert to ePub. At first I wasn’t sure I was doing it right, but eventually it all came good and I now have five books uploaded. I have another four to go. I’m also uploading to Bookhub: something I need to do to take advantage of my Gold membership with that site. And at the same time I have been posting as part of a cross promotion with Paula Wynne who runs Bookhub. I will soon have some work to do for Paula Wynne as part of an agreement to work together. Whether any other writers are involved or not, I’ve no idea, but I would imagine there will be a few. With luck it could be a very productive period.

My sales have improved marginally now that the BookBub and ENT promotions have finished. I’m giving some thought to using Mailchimp for advertising on Facebook when I get ready to launch my next book. It’s something new they are pushing. It looks pretty straightforward, but not proven yet.

My Kindle Scout campaign is not making any headway: the results dribble along but I’m nowhere near the “Hot & Trending” level. If you haven’t voted for me yet, I would appreciate it if you would click the link and leave your mark.

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/1EC59ZYJLQ07G.

Getting back to the cross promotion I’m doing with Bookhub: this is a free competition to win a bundle of thrillers. The competition runs from the 1st – 7th. February, so there is still time to enter before the closing date. Click the link: http://bit.ly/2kgf3IC Good luck!

My author group, CHINDI, are running an invitation to all Romance writers to participate in a Valentine’s day promotion. This is a first for us as we move into a new format for our group. This is a “toe in the water” attempt to build our fan base, and those Romance writers who take part. If you are interested in taking part as a writer, then have a look at the Chindi website at http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk.

On the domestic front I have been talking to SKY and BT. It’s because I have decided to move from the former to the latter. I’ll save myself about £40 a month, which I could use towards marketing. Wish me luck!