Authors Electric

A couple of months ago I blogged about hiring Midas PR to garner a few reviews for my novella, “Secrets of the Italian Gardener”, concluding that the resulting reviews added a few more bricks to the wall of the book’s reputation, but were probably not going to result in many direct sales. The next thought was to use the reviews to convince BookBub that they should feature the book in their recommendations. My publisher – the utterly wonderful Clare Christian at RedDoor – made the approach to BookBub in September, but was turned down. In October she tried again, perseverance being the only weapon we authors and publishers ultimately have in our armoury, and they said okay. If we were willing to drop the price of the book to 99 pence in the UK , $1.50 in Canada and 65 rupees in India they would try it out in those three markets for a few days. For that they would charge US$90. On the first morning of the promotion the Canadian version went up from number 1,...

Letters coming through my letterbox here in Kilkenny are a rare thing. Bank statements - electronic these days. Payslips - electronic. I did recently have a cheque for €53.70 arrive from my previous broadband supplier, which was quite exciting. Unfortunately Alfie the Dog has become unused to snail mail and thrusts his fangs through everything that postie shoves in the door, including hands. So the cheque had two teeth marks in it, and my bank wasn't happy with me. Their processing machines don't appreciate bent, spindled, twisted or chewed financial documents. I ordered a paperback book (remember those things?) for Mrs R recently, after her traumatic run-in with a herd of cows and a bull while collecting river water samples for analysis; Apocalypse Cow by Michael Logan , naturally. Zombie cows, a very good read. Alfie the Dog appreciated the beefy taste, biting right through the packaging. Two tooth dents in back and front covers. Well, one set of mail that my hound can...

I hadn’t given away any free ebooks for a year, so I did a 5 day Kindle Select Free Promotion of The Survival of Thomas Ford from 16-20 October. I paid for a Bookbub ad, going out to their Thriller subscription list on 16 October. Luckily, I was able to get my order in during the first month of Bookbub’s new UK-specific listing, which sends the book out to a list of their new UK subscribers when you pay an additional 5 per cent on top of the US Bookbub fee for your genre. In the past, a Bookbub promotion would result in mainly US downloads with not much result in the UK, but I noticed right away that the new UK subscription list resulted in the strongest UK downloads I’d ever had during a free promotion. I also took out a $20 Ereader News Today ad on 17 October; a Dailyfreebooks.co.uk ad at £10 on 18 Oct, along with a Kindle Nation Daily FreeBookHighlighter ad on same day at $30/and a $10 eBookSoda ad on 19 Oct/with a Freebooksy ad on October 20. As previously, ...

Just before the start of my three weeks of summer leave from the day job, my leviathan employer decided to reorganize. Again. This is the third time in the seven and a half years I've been with them. 100,000 employees in a giant game of musical chairs, some running for the exit and picking up an envelope on the way, others looking to get a softer cushion and a nicer office. I've left my mobile phone switched on so I can see the e-mail indications of frantic energy expended by all involved without having to engage personally. These are decisive reconfigurations that result in us all singing a different theme tune and not daring to utter the unmentionable jargon of the previous regime. It seems like an Orwellian opera on a three year cycle. I quite like it and wonder what project-type job I'll do for the next 24 - 36 months until the next time. Here in my little house, on the sidelines, I can't whisper in the ears of the corporate architects or try to influence the senior...

Having made several thousand dollars profit last year from a series of Amazon Kindle Select free promotions, and three Bookbub promotions, I had been waiting for a chance this year to combine a 99 cent Bookbub promotion with a Kindle Countdown Deal for my novel, The Survival of Thomas Ford. On 24 th March, Bookbub sent The Survival of Thomas Ford out to their thriller subscription list. I combined this with a Kindle Countdown Deal ad which ran on the Kindle Book Review site on 25 March; also, a Kindle Nation Daily Special Sponsored Post Triple Play ad which ran on 26, 27, and 28 March; and a Bargainbooksy ad and mail-out to their thriller subscription list which ran on 27 March. This involved an outlay of $625 for advertising in total, which, although it was a relatively small percentage of the profit made from last year’s promotions, was still the most I had spent on advertising for one promo to date, so there was a degree of nail-biting involved. Soon, though, the s...

After two successful Bookbub promotions for The Survival of Thomas Ford earlier this year, which resulted in 70000 free downloads, and a combined profit of $2300 from 1300 Amazon sales/borrows when the book returned to its $2.99 price (followed up by 100 new Amazon reviews), I decided to reinvest a little of this profit in a third Bookbub promotion. The third promotion, which ran from October 26-30, was not for The Survival of Thomas Ford, though, but for its “little brother”, my story collection, Storm Damage. Storm Damage had won the award for Best Short Story Collection in the eFestival of Words Best of the Independent eBooks Awards 2013, and, ever since, I had been looking for an opportunity to get the ebook out to more readers. Storm Damage was sent out to the Bookbub literary fiction subscription list on 26 October. There were only 6 or 7 books selected by Bookbub to be sent out to that subscription list that day, and Storm Damage was the only one of the bo...

Author, Linda Gillard, has written on occasion about the constraints of genre on fiction, or, more particularly, the problems “genre-busting” books can present to publishers, and their marketing departments. I’ve mentioned previously that my literary agent sent The Survival of Thomas Ford out to publishers, sometimes as literary fiction, and sometimes as a commercial thriller, and sometimes as a “literary thriller”.   In June, I wrote here about the Bookbub promotion I did in April, to Bookbub’s Mystery, Thriller, Suspense subscription list (which is now no longer available and has been split into two lists). This had a successful post-promo effect of about 50 new Amazon USA reviews, and 1000 sales at the $2.99 post-promo price. As a further experiment in “genre”, I submitted The Survival of Thomas Ford to Bookbub’s literary fiction list at the end of August. On this occasion, I also used EBOOKBOOSTER, which Mark Chisnell had mentioned using in an earlier...

          I had good sales in June and July, for some reason. I had The Ghost Drum, by Susan Price done nothing in the way of publicity that I hadn't done before, but my sales nearly doubled in June, and then doubled again in July. We're still talking low figures, mind. The Lear jet isn't on order yet...but still.           For one thing, something odd was happening in Germany. Having steadfastly ignored my kindle output since I started, Germany suddenly sprang to attention and bought ten of my books - one copy each of ten of the eleven books I've self-published.           I've no idea whether this was one person buying all ten books, or ten different people buying a different book each, or some mixture of the above - one person buying five different copies, say, another buying two, and three other people buying one each. Amazon doesn't allow you ...