Adventures in advertising

Afternoon folks,

I've been making actual effort this afternoon.

Since I began my little adventure into Indie Publishing I've continually said the goal was to make enough money to enable me to write full time. So far that hasn't happened and, as I earn more at work, it becomes less likely.

But every now and again I have a word with myself, just a quiet reminder of the long term goal, my reason for being if you will.

With that in mind I've finally done something about it. I've danced around using paid advertising for months and today I finally took the plunge. It's nothing major but it's a start. I've bought $100 of pay per click adverts on Goodreads. The idea being I can create as many ads as I like for my campaign, target them to specific groups within Goodreads membership and see what happens.

The risk is that people will see my adverts and click on them only to not purchase the book. Either way I pay for the click. The goal for this first campaign is merely to break even, or as close as I can get. If I make a profit, bonus.

I'm at home for the duration of the campaign so I can monitor it. I am also able to tweak the ads in real time so if one seems to be working better than another I can adjust. Worst case scenario I've wasted $100 which is less than £65 in real money. Not the end of the world.

However at least I can I've tried. The campaign is only for The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe but if sales increase I'll try the same thing for every book. I also have another site lined up which works on a subscription basis. It's more expensive but again, the potential is there. We shall see.

In other news I have also submitted The Trust to our chums at Smashwords. What does this mean? Well, in a few days The Trust will be available in all formats i.e. Sony EReader, Kobo, Apple, Barnes and Noble, as well as Kindle and paperback. So there will be no excuse.

I'll keep you posted on the adverts.

Now I might have a quick snooze before tea.

My books. All formats. Right now.

That's right kids, we're taking things up a notch. As of tonight all four of my books are available in every available format. As such you are bang out of excuses not to buy a copy. If you can't be bothered to read anymore and just want to dive in then click HERE, select the book you like buy it in the format of your choice. You can even have a 20% sample for free to see see if you like the book.

Got a Kobo or a Nook? Buy my book.
Ipad? Got it covered.
Sony Reader? Dive in

I know, it's all a bit overwhelming so let's take a breath and just see where we're up to. Since November last year I've been publishing my books via Amazon and it's been far more successful than I'd dared hope. But of course I was always aware that there were other games in town, especially in America. As of tonight I have published my books via Smashwords so if you dash over to their website and search for me, or my books, you can buy them in any format you like, including PDF, Text file, as well as all the fancy ebook options. The price is the same regardless of format so nobody is gaining or losing anything by having one reader or another.

But it gets better. Smashwords also distribute to all the major retailers. What does this mean I hear you all cry? It means that within the next few weeks my books will appear on websites like Barnes and Noble (very big player in the US), the Diesel Bookstore, Baker & Taylor, as well as Apple's Ibook store. So all of a sudden I'll be everywhere. Exciting times.

Of course it means I'll have to get a bit more creative with my promo which currently is pretty pathetic. I'll need to promote myself on sites specific to each format, find forums which deal with formats other than Kindle. It'll be a challenge but there's no downside to being seen more.

So that's it. I'd best get back to writing the next book. As ever there links throughout the text but since this is a new venture I'll include some specific links at the bottom to get you started.

If you click HERE you'll see my books on Smashwords. Click on the one you like, read a bit of blurb. Scroll down and there's a list of every available format. Just click your choice and away you go. The really cool bit? You can download a 20% sample for FREE to see if you like the book.

Promo Results

Afternoon kids,

My latest KDP promo has just finished and it was pretty successful. Overall Playground Cool and The Storyteller were downloaded over 1600 times.

The majority, as you might expect, were in America via Amazon US. There were about a thousand downloads there. About another 500 came via Amazon UK with the rest from Amazon Germany. However, this time I had 1 download from France and 1 from Italy which has never happened before!

The plan now is to wait and see if these downloads translate into sales of All the Fun of the Fair. I'll give it a couple of weeks and if not, then I'll lower the price.

In other news there seems to be trouble brewing in terms of price hikes for ebooks. Apparently five of the big publishers are supposedly colluding to raise prices. Apple are involved because of their Ibook platform. There's a link to the article here.

That's it for now.