Evening gang,
So, after the excitement of meeting lots of new folk all over the world thanks to Facebook and Twitter, what next?
I've decided a little bit of a promotion might be in order. So, just for a little while, my latest 5* crime thriller is available at a reduced price on Kindle only in the UK, Europe and US. It's now just £1.33 or $1.99 depending on where you are. Please spread the word.
To get everyone in the spirit, here's a few lines to tempt you in...
" A host of memories passed through his
mind, particularly one of himself as a child playing on the beach, paddling in
the sea. He smiled, but it was tinged with regret. This town, Morecambe, had
never taken responsibility. Its inhabitants were always keen to blame someone
else, something else, constantly hoping – expecting – to be bailed out by a
third party. Well, now perhaps it was time to pay, time to face up and answer
for what had gone before.
He smelled lighter fluid and glanced
down. His right hand still held the lighter only now a blue flame rose from it,
ending in a point. For something new to begin, something else had to end. He
dropped the lighter."
You know where to find the book by now but for the sake of completeness, here are the links:
Jazz Cafe UK
Jazz Cafe US
Showing posts with label self promotion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label self promotion. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Tuesday, 5 June 2012
Self-promotion. A chore without reward?
Afternoon folks,
Did everyone have a lovely jubilee? If nothing else having four days off work has been a delight. Mind you, the wife has worked every day but she gets paid lots so fair play to her.
Anyway, self-promo. I'm not a fan simply because I work full time and what little free time I do have I like to use to write books. If I spend an hour in an evening touting myslf around the internet it leaves nothing left for crafting the novel. Of course, logic suggests that if I don't do some promotion then nobody will buy my books as they won't know they exist.
This, I suppose, is true. To an extent. If you're a best selling author shifting thousands of copies then surely self-promo is pointless as the sales and word of mouth will feed into each other. I sell in dozens rather than thousands (so far) but I've found that no matter what promo I do my sales are pretty consistent month on month.
For example last month I did a couple of days promo and then only because my debut book, Playground Cool, was lauched in paperback. But I was busy at work and also decorating bits of my house, so that didn't leave any time to promote. Yet at the end of the month I'd sold near enough the same amount as the month before.
Anyway, since I did have time today I've posted on several Amazon.com discussion threads, also on Kindleoards and Book Blogs. I will post on Amazon.co.uk later and on Goodreads, as well as this blog post obviously. This will automatically appear on Facebook (hi facebook) and that will be about it. Will it lead to sales? Probably a couple. But then I reckon I might have had those anyway, sooner or later.
If you work it out in terms of a job, then self-promo for an author selling the amount I do is expensive i.e. an hour a day of promo for 2 sales? That's about £1 in royalties. Who on earth does anything for a pound an hour? Of course, if one of my books starts to take off and an hour of promo equalled a hundred sales, a thousand? Then all of a sudden that's a great return. But making that leap is proving hard, not just for me but for thousands of other writers in this position. We all know the game and the rules, promo, lots of it, on all the right websites. But it's so time-consuming!!!
So what to do? I will do some promo, as much as I can be bothered to do, and hope something sparks and takes off. But it's not the be all and end all. I'd rather spend the time writing books than promoting them.
Did everyone have a lovely jubilee? If nothing else having four days off work has been a delight. Mind you, the wife has worked every day but she gets paid lots so fair play to her.
Anyway, self-promo. I'm not a fan simply because I work full time and what little free time I do have I like to use to write books. If I spend an hour in an evening touting myslf around the internet it leaves nothing left for crafting the novel. Of course, logic suggests that if I don't do some promotion then nobody will buy my books as they won't know they exist.
This, I suppose, is true. To an extent. If you're a best selling author shifting thousands of copies then surely self-promo is pointless as the sales and word of mouth will feed into each other. I sell in dozens rather than thousands (so far) but I've found that no matter what promo I do my sales are pretty consistent month on month.
For example last month I did a couple of days promo and then only because my debut book, Playground Cool, was lauched in paperback. But I was busy at work and also decorating bits of my house, so that didn't leave any time to promote. Yet at the end of the month I'd sold near enough the same amount as the month before.
Anyway, since I did have time today I've posted on several Amazon.com discussion threads, also on Kindleoards and Book Blogs. I will post on Amazon.co.uk later and on Goodreads, as well as this blog post obviously. This will automatically appear on Facebook (hi facebook) and that will be about it. Will it lead to sales? Probably a couple. But then I reckon I might have had those anyway, sooner or later.
If you work it out in terms of a job, then self-promo for an author selling the amount I do is expensive i.e. an hour a day of promo for 2 sales? That's about £1 in royalties. Who on earth does anything for a pound an hour? Of course, if one of my books starts to take off and an hour of promo equalled a hundred sales, a thousand? Then all of a sudden that's a great return. But making that leap is proving hard, not just for me but for thousands of other writers in this position. We all know the game and the rules, promo, lots of it, on all the right websites. But it's so time-consuming!!!
So what to do? I will do some promo, as much as I can be bothered to do, and hope something sparks and takes off. But it's not the be all and end all. I'd rather spend the time writing books than promoting them.
Sunday, 11 December 2011
The Trials and Tribulations of Self Promotion
Afternoon readers,
It's been a frustrating week. The books are selling which is, of course, fantastic and the whole point of the exercise. But the trick seems to be to constantly self promote via amazon forums, social media etc and I simply don't have the time to do that.
I have added my books to Goodreads and Librarything but without promoting this presence I'm dubious about seeing any benefit in terms of sales. So I'll persevere and see what happens. Hopefully being available in formats other than kindle wll help.
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