Midland Hotel & the Jazz Cafe

Evening gang! Everyone okay? Excellent.

First off, how on earth does an 11 year old child get from Wythenshawe to Rome via plane on his own without a bloody passport? For God's sake the Olympics starts on Friday. Should we not be on top of security at major airports? Just in case you've missed this story here's the LINK TO THE BBC.

In other news, this picture is of the iconic Midand Hotel.

Awesome photo isn't it? Thanks to Crosby Camera Club for the image.You should see the inside of the hotel. In fact, come to Morecambe and stay there. This hotel features in my book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe. In fact, it's on the front cover.

Not bad is it? Accordng to the reviews it's a pretty good crime thriller too. Sadly in the book the Midland is not open but being redeveloped as it was a few years ago. Then the hotel is burned down at the end. Don't worry, they build something awesome on the site for the follow up!

Anyway, that's the point of this post. I use real places in my books to ground them in reality. Makes the story more believeable. In Edinburgh you can go on an Ian Rankin Rebus tour to see the places featured in the books. I hope one day that folk will come to Morecambe and district for my books in the future and, hopefully, that will help the regeneration of the town.



Featured at Bibliocracy

Morning folks,

Just a quickie. A couple of my books are on the front page of Bibliocracy as featured books this morning which is nice. So if you don't fancy buying them from Amazon get yourself over there. All four of my books can be downloaded from Bibliocracy right now. Just search for Jamie Sinclair.

Is it just about numbers?

Morning gang,

Progress on the new book continues. I had a thinking day yesterday because I suddenly realised I was writing myself into a bit of a cul de sac. That seems to be sorted now and I've written about a 1000 words today to take the total to over 26,500. Hurrah.

I have to admit I've been sidetracked somewhat by The Open on the BBC. As ever, if you've read my profile you'll know this, I was routing for Tiger while knowing that, realistically, he would fall short. It was frustrating viewing because he was basically trying to win a Major tournament without using a driver. Such is his talent he still came third. If he ever manages to recapture his previous magic God help everyone else. The numbers are interesting. Adam Scott was winning but bogeyed the last 4 holes to leave himself level needing to par the last for a playoff with Ernie Els. He didn't. Also a big thumbs up to Team Sky and Bradley Wiggins for winning his first Tour De France. Never been done by a Brit!

Last night also saw Liverpool's first pre-season game take place against Toronto FC. Interesting largely because it was Brendan's first game in charge. What did I take from the game? That Liverpool has a lot of players on it's books, many of whom will never, ever play in the Premier League. The game was a 1-1 draw. It's a miracle I've written anything.

Right, I'd best dash, I've got to be at work in 5 and a half hours and I've got a bottle of beer to finish first.

Night

Will this Blog Post lead to a book sale?

Hi folks and welcome to my first post since announcing the relaunch of my blog. The purpose of this post? To see if a single post can lead to

a) more traffic to this blog
b) more followers of this blog
c) increased sales of my books

It's a big ask but here we go.

Today I changed the title and description of my blog. I am going to mention that I am an English author of crime thriller books in this post. I am also going to tell you that they are set in a small seaside town called Morecambe where I grew up. Hopefully you'll wonder where that is and click the link I put in the word Morecambe. The reason I'm sharing this is because it's relevant and also because I hope that people like you will search for these terms and find my blog.

If you're still here you might wonder what my books are about. You can learn about them from this very blog or from my Facebook page or even my Amazon author page. It shouldn't be a surprise that I've put links to all these in the text too.

If you are a fan of romantic fiction you'll hopefully like my book Playground Cool or All the fun of the Fair. If you're not sure why not download a sample? You can do that via Amazon or Smashwords and, soon, Bibliocracy.

Do you like crime thrillers? Great, try my latest book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe. It's set in Morecambe and you can try a sample fo that for free too. If you've been paying attention you'll know the link was in the title of the book.

As part of my new strategy to meet aa many people as I can and introduce them to my books, today I aso updated my LinkedIn profile, did a press release and made sure that my entire online presence is linked. That means this blog post will go straight to this Facebook page. It will also appear on my Goodreads page too. If I post a Tweet that will appear on this blog and on my LinkedIN account.

Why? Because I want you to know about me and where I'm from. Then I want you to buy my books, and enjoy them. Then, finally, I want you to tell all your friends about me.

But it all starts with you reading this blog post. Welcome aboard.

SEO. Using Keywords to get seen.

Afternoon folks,

Morecambe. Crime thriller. Romantic saga.

You might have noticed, if you're a regular reader, that the name of the blog has changed. And the description too. Why?

Well, as part of my ongoing efforts to drive traffic to this blog and, ultimately, to drive sales of my books, I am trying to embrace the idea of Search Engine Optimisation. Like most folk, I'm aware it exists but I don't have a great understanding of it. But I've been doing some reading and have decided to give it a go.

The idea seems to be to mention certain keywords regularly throughout blog posts which are then picked up by search engines. These need to be words that are likely to be searched for so there's no point picking something random like Handbag Clasp. So, for this post I'm trying Morecambe because it's where two of my books are set and Crime Thriller, because it's the biggest selling genre of fiction.

Apparently the trick is also to reference old blog posts too, with a view that you drive traffic to yourself. I haven't grasped that yet but I'll persevere. The plan is to keep an eye on my traffic stats for a month and see if there's been an impact and review after that.

So, to recap. My book The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe is a CRIME THRILLER set in MORECAMBE and has received fantastic reviews. My book All the fun of the Fair is a ROMANTIC SAGA and is also set in MORECAMBE. Too subtle? We shall see.

Golf, EL James and Bibliocracy.

Evening gang,

So the golf at Lytham is at the halfway stage. Tiger produced a stunning last shot on the 18th to leave himself in contention for the weekend. I shall be planted in front of the tele all weekend.

In other news I was just looking at my last post from Monday where I said the goal for the night was to clear 21000 words. Well as of today I've written 25,500 so it's going well. The weekend plan is to review and tighten up some scenes and then attack it again next week. But if you liked The 24 Hour Jazz cafe, you'll love the new one.

Last thing, as part of my ongoing efforts to increase my online presence I have uploaded my books to Bibliocracy. Essentially a platform to publish and sell work, they take a small cut for the service but no more than Smashwords and a lot less than Amazon. They reckon it'll be about five days before the books appear on their site so I'll post links when I have them.

Until then my books are still available on Amazon everywhere, on Smashwords in every conceivable format and in paperback via Amazon or Createspace. I know how many I've sold so I know lots of you have yet to treat yourself to a copy. You'll regret it when I'm suddenly the next EL James (Fifty Shades of...)

Royalty payments and Federer

Morning folks,

I'll be really quick tonight because I'm writing and it's going well. Tonight's goal is to clear 21,000 words of the new book and leave it in a place to hit the ground running tomorrow. That's key because it's a Monday and I'm at my most tired and grumpy on a Monday. Why? Because I always stay up late on Sunday writing, drinking beer and blogging.

Anyway, as regular readers will know my existing books are now available in all formats via Smashwords. I've sold a couple already and here's what I noticed. The royalty percentage is 77.5%. Why is this interesting? Because Amazon's best offer is 70%. Don't get me wrong, I'm really, really happy with everything Amazon do for Indie authors. But they do make a big deal of their percentage and, if you want the most flexibilty, their 35% offer is the best and the one I use. On a 99p Indie book that's not going to make you rich.

Anyway, I don't know why or how Smashwords offer more but I'm glad they do. Obviously when they sell via retailers the royalty is far less because the retailer takes a cut, then Smashwords take a cut from that. But direct sales via Smashwords are impressive from a royalty point of view and I'm surprised they don't make more of it in their advertising.

Of course, I only benefit from this if you go and buy my books so crack on.

Oh by the way, the Federer reference in the title? I was reading about him on the BBC website. I never get bored of him. Obviously I mean his tennis, I don't know the man. But good grief, even though he's past his dominant prime, when he manages to conjure up the magic like he did at the recent Wimbledon final it's mesmerising. It's nearer to art than sport, but then all great sport is in my opinion. Ali at his best? Woods when he used to win just by turning up? Federer on grass.

Anyway I'm rambling. In short. Buy my books. Watch tennis. Night.