Authors Electric

Hey, no kidding. Listen up! My own Great White was out there-- online invisibility-- waiting to devour my next book like the twelve before. But I'd grown extra-protective, you see; the new book was so different from all of rest. And I'd pledged my life to save it-- when the Great White finally surfaced after showing its dorsal for years. And it surfaced more than once. First, my cover artist declined to work on the new book, citing her 'moral objections'. The title included the last name of an actor she didn't approve of. Neither did I but the actor, who doesn't appear in the book, sells a giant stick that does. Next, I learned that I'd been dropped from an April radio interview that would have helped market the book. And the path to blurbs for life support was paved in equal parts with Yays, Nays and silent snubs. I'd started to wonder if I should jump ship. But then I heard Chief Brody's cry, followed by the captain's roar to start ge...

Back in October (2012) I started to think about two picture book stories I hadn't got around to converting into eBooks. I had tried to get the books traditionally published but had found publishers were either cutting back or had completely stopped publishing seasonal books. Most were telling me that books that only sold over certain periods of the year didn't make them enough money. What was annoying was many had given positive feedback on Where It's Always Winter ( Amazon UK - Amazon US ) and The Perfect Christmas Tree ( Amazon UK - Amazon US ). So during November I converted both titles and placed them onto Amazon. Due to the typical Christmas madness and work commitments I was unable to undertake my normal marketing campaign for either title. However I've found both  titles have sold well. So well in fact that one title reached number 42 in the top Amazon short stories paid for section and is still in the top 100. I've had top ten titles on Amazon befo...

One of the excitements of ebooks is that rather than having to fathom Amazon's sometimes bizarre rankings system, or trying to get figures out of your publisher (!), you know exactly how many books you sell, every day, every hour, every minute. You can go to your dashboard on Amazon, Smashwords, Kobo, wherever and see how it's all coming along. Or not. As I am responsible for publishing other authors as well, I have to keep a tight rein on records of sale for the monthly royalty payouts. This has always been an enjoyable exercise because month after month sales figures have been on the rise. Of course this had to fluctuate sooner or later, and in the past couple of months I have seen the first of the 'dips' across the board, especially with US sales. Thankfully there were reasons. On a couple of days with no US Amazon sales at all (major panic) it turned out there had been a technical glitch at Amazon HQ. General elections and natural disasters also took their t...