You ain’t seen me … roight?
Bit of a bum start this week. The touch pad on my computer is bust so no editing my auto responders, doing mailing list anything or Facebook or BB ads because because none of them like my iPad. Gits. Nothing much doing, then, until I’ve dug out a mouse from somewhere. I hate mice too, they give me RSI.
The most irritating thing about it all is that the touchpad click bit is sticking down so it probably just needs a clean. This computer has special star-shaped screws on it and it looks as if I have to go through the motherboard to get to the mouse pad and keyboard. Drat and double drat! As Dick Dastardly would say.
Also, I’ve been looking at my marketing efforts this week. Yeh, don’t laugh. Principally my advertising. It’s not going well, but I suspect my budget is too small. Also, I’m rubbish at paid advertising but I am alright at mailing list sign ups so what have I learnt from this? Principally that I should stick to the things I’m good at.
Frankly, I suspect that in the same way the author is somewhat an acquired taste, these books are too. That said, there is also the possibility that something is going on at Amazon on the algo front – either that or I may have chosen bum keywords for my latest series. I put the first book, Small Beginnings in a free promo on Kobo and thought I may as well reduce it everywhere. The only site acting as I’ve expected it to is Kobo, itself. Everywhere else it appears I can’t even give it away! Mwahahahrgh! But what is interesting is that a few months ago I did this with another book. I gave away a load on Kobo and didn’t make one follow on sale BUT Amazon price matched on their US site. About 600 people downloaded it there and a decent chunk have read it and gone on to read the others.
With this book, Small Beginnings, that is not happening at all. It’s achieving the same level of free downloads on Kobo, which is great, but it’s not getting that many on Amazon so far, although that may change. So far, on the other platforms, it isn’t being downloaded at all. One of the difficulties with the Kobo free runs is they don’t give you enough notice of acceptance to book anything on the free book newsletters, which is a pain but just how it is.
Clearly I need to redo the meta tags on my latest series, or look at what categories they are in – not that there is much opportunity to be creative with sff comedy other than a couple of very well used ones. Ugh, keywords. They take time. Loads of time and I don’t have that now, not until September. Holidays is when I do stuff and have the experiences that are going to inspire the next lot of books … which I write during term times.
Also I’ve shot myself in the foot calling the series ‘shorts’ so although there are authors telling me they get bookbub feature deals with 20 and 30k ‘novels’ my 20/30k ‘shorts’ won’t get one because of the series name I chose. I really am a dolt. An honest dolt, but a dolt nonetheless.
Other Things To Do, I need to redo my mailing hello protocols so it sifts out people who have signed up before. Otherwise I end up with people getting the same emails three or four times after signing up for different free books. Nothing like winning your readers over by sending them the same email on four consecutive days, Mary. Well done. Not.
Aaaaand, I am hoping to compile a humorous story box set which I will then give away free. The idea is that it’ll contain first in series books from a bunch of wide authors. Being on one of these has made a big difference to my income. But it’s also a great way to give people on my mailing list a book that’s ridiculous value and is more than just my books. Then, even if they don’t like my books and unsubscribe, they may have a good enough feeling about me to recommend my books to people they think might like them. Rather in the way McOther can’t stand Pratchett but suggests it as reading material to people who like that sort of thing.
Finally, fellow author Bonnie K.T. Dillabough started a podcast a few months ago called Bibliofiles. I am appearing as her guest this Tuesday, that ever is. We will be talking about how to keep writing when life is busy, or tough, or both: mental strategies, coping strategies, tools that make things easier and other stuff along those lines. It’s at 9.00 am PST Pacific Standard Time. The difficulty I have is that the handy time zone tool calls that 6.00 pm British Standard Time. Now, in Britain we have GMT, Greenwich Mean Time and BST, British Summer Time which is our daylight saving time and is one hour on. I have no clue if British Standard Time is American for Greenwich Mean Time or British Summer Time. So … having googled it all extensively and found absolutely eff all answer, I will kick McMini off the internet and be ready for action at five pm but expect the call at six!
Other excellent news, I finally got to go metal detecting again yesterday. I got sunstroke (not badly luckily) and so did one of the others but I found a Victorian locket. It’s a bit dented but it’s silver, made in Birmingham, date letter gothic S I think for 1840s. so that was a bit of a thing. I missed out on the really productive field but I’m glad I went home. I had to because I’d run out of water, but I also felt a bit odd and had a banging headache later. I get sunstroke under a 40watt bulb which is ironic, considering I’m directly descended from an actual black African.
So there we are, bit of a hodgepodge this week.
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If you’re looking for a new listen, feel free to check in to Bibliofiles and listen to me wittering on. What I’ll try and do, if I remember, is talk about some of the stuff I mention in the podcast here next week. You can find my effort along with the rest of the podcasts – which are all an interesting and informative listen – here.
Alternatively, if you have a moment and are wondering about reading some more of my stuff, Small Beginnings is free until August 17th. Links to download from your favourite store are here.