Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything really good.
- William Faulkner
- William Faulkner
I have been
good recently. I have been plodding on with my ms for Poison in the Water- I’m
half way! Hurrah! It feels good to reach this milestone. Not only that but I
have been blogging (Check out my nutshell posts below on how to improve the
dialogue in your ms and setting tone and mood in your ms) and I have started a
new notebook for The Body in the Bath. The ideas are already coming to me and I
need to scribble them down as I have promised myself not to start writing the
draft until I have finished with this draft of Poison.
I have
started reading a book by Nicci French as well. It’s called The Memory Game. I
recently saw the authors on TV and I have heard good things about Nicci French
so thought I would give it ago. So far so good. I also have bought The Cuckoos
Calling (The JK Rowling one) and The Book Thief – They were 99p on Kindle and I
wanted to read them so may as well stock pile! And I am half way through my New
Years resolution which is not to buy new clothes till May. It’s going well so
far, but I am buying way more books (fiction and research books on criminology
and forensic psychology) and I’ve just subscribed to Mslexia Magazine. So much
for saving money.
I am also
working on a new ‘In a Nutshell’ post on social media- inspired by a writing
buddy who finds it all a little daunting! I am hoping to complete and post in the
next couple of weeks and I think of all the posts it will be useful to all
authors out there.
So still no
improvement on my kindle ranking for Bittersweet. In fact it’s falling every
day. What else can I do? Another attempt to ask people to write reviews on my
personal Facebook page – was a poor cry for help and the direct question was
not very social media friendly or so the marketing manager at work told me! I
suppose it was a poor bit of spamming. I thought as its juts going to friends
it didn’t matter but apparently it does! However, the low ranking, is making me
pause for thought. It really makes me
wonder because I feel as the author that Bittersweet is a much better book than
Goa Traffic and yet Goa Traffic is still selling well. Are people reading Goa Traffic and being put
off by Bittersweet? But then Goa Traffic has received some good reviews so
maybe not. It’s a tricky one and I think much of the problem with Bittersweet
(and this will apply to many trad published or self published books) is as
follows:
1) It falls
into a standard genre category with no differentiation – The tags are
psychological, thriller etc. How many psychological thrillers are there out
there?
2) The
price – It’s currently £3.59 as set by the publisher. Is this too much for an
unknown author? From my own experience the book buying public out there and I
am talking kindle readers in general are extremely price sensitive. Unless you
know the book is already a huge success and you are dying to read it-
unfortunately people don’t want to part with more than a couple of quid.
3)
Publicity .Now this is a tricky one. Goa Traffic has had the same number of
publicity shots as Bittersweet plus Bittersweet has the backing of a publisher.
Yet the ranking of Bittersweet (That’s all I can go on at this stage) is well
below GT. In addition to the publicity I did for GT with Bittersweet I have had
the official book launch and I have approached libraries and reading groups
plus I did a little blog tour. Perhaps I need to think again and get some new
ideas on how to promote Bittersweet!
4) I guess
the one main difference is that GT is established. It’s been on sale since 2011
and I know that a book is for life – not just the year it is published in
(especially with the e-book and POD). On this basis maybe I need to wait it out
and see if, over time, my sales improve.
And on that note I will end this post with one last question - What are you reading this World Book day?
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