December 27, 2013 by elegsabiff

September 2013: The Recruiters

THE RECRUITERS
(The theme for September was Humour, and the element was Outer Space.)

‘I’m afraid it’s out of the question.’ The Daolan looked apologetically around the four men facing him.

Admiral Hansen leaned forward. ‘Because we’re from Earth?’

The yellow-skinned alien hesitated, then inclined his head. Humans have met many strange variations among the intelligent space-travelling races, but Daolans, acknowledged as the finest navigators of all, are odder than most, with a gelatinous body shape that can change at will. The Daolan had braced himself into a sitting position with four pudgy tentacles, and used two more to make gestures. The upper part of his sac-like body was fringed with silky follicles, which moved of their own accord as though sniffing the air.

Admiral Hansen looked round at the others, then back. ‘Gorman, we brought you here at some expense for this interview, you must have known we would be asking you to join our crew. I’ll be frank—we were really excited that you agreed to meet us at all, so this is a great disappointment. I accept you won’t take the job. I would like you to explain why, because yours is not the only race keeping their distance. ‘

Gorman shrugged, his follicles rippling, but answered honestly. ‘Earth people have already accrued a reputation for a certain, uh, oddity. I wanted to meet you, because I didn’t believe it could be as disturbing as I’d heard, but . . . you say things that don’t make sense, then look at each other and pull faces. Sometimes you even make odd noises. It is—unsettling. Each voyage lasts at least twenty epochs; I think in your calendar that translates to a year. To be unsettled for that long would be deeply distressing, so I have to say no.’

‘He means joking and laughing!’ Smith realized.’ I once tried to tell a Gannan a pub joke, changing it to a Gannan, a Doonong and a human entered a bar—he looked at me as though I was deficient.’

‘What, you guys don’t laugh? So a pompous, very dignified Daolan slips on a banana peel—okay, okay, forget banana peel, slips—and is suddenly on his back with his legs waving in the air—you don’t laugh?’ Jackman smirked and looked round for support.

The Daolan looked disgusted, all his nostrils pinching. ‘I’m afraid you just made my point.’

Hansen shook his head at Jackman, annoyed. ‘So, your children—do they play? How do you know when they are enjoying themselves?’

‘They jiggle, and their follicles vibrate. Sometimes their tentacle ends change colour.’

‘And does that disgust you?’ Hansen persisted.

‘Of course not.’

‘But it would be unsettling to anyone who wasn’t a Daolan.’

‘Yes—which is why our young put aside such things when they are of an age to meet other races, at least in public. It is something entirely private.’

‘Well, our smiling and laughing is the equivalent of your jiggling and vibrating. Does that help?’

The Daolan pondered, then nodded. The admiral scrawled quickly on a piece of paper and handed it over. ‘Would you at least look at our offer?’

The Daolan took it delicately in a tentacle and read in silence. Then to their astonishment he started to shudder, and the follicles on his upper body started to vibrate. The tentacle holding the paper turned blue, then purple, and the admiral grinned fiercely.

‘Oops,’ he remarked, ‘I gave you the wrong paper. Here’s the real offer. I think you’re going to fit in just fine.’

December 4, 2013 by elegsabiff

Christmas Kindle – the gift of a portable library

I loved this tweet when I saw it and hope Rossetti Rogers will forgive me for borrowing it here, but it is oh so relevant to this post.

A very successful blogger with a huge readership invited independently-published authors to toot their books on his blog today for the Christmas market. His website may yet collapse, I think I darted in at number 285.

If you want to know who and where, ask. I find it very odd that I have more readers all the time, yet you drift silently in, read (often more than one entry) and then drift away. Yes, you. What for you do that, you doan wanna talk, eh? Eh? Am I scary?

The older I get the more prone I am to these little conversational detours.

Anyway, I pitched quite the persuasive spiel, all the while knowing the chances of anyone making it down to #285 without having spent their entire Christmas budget were slim to non-existent. Maybe, I thought, I should be pitching my spiel, not on a passenger liner, but in my own tiny canoe. And maybe you, the silent passers-by, will be struck by the logic and force of my argument and I’ll rack up a sale or two. Well, I might have, if I hadn’t already aggressively italicized you away.

But here’s the pitch. (If WordPress font permits, in big loopy letters.) (nope, WordPress preferred to stay understated. Bold and italics yes, Algerian 24 no.)

This entry is for those of you buying a Kindle for a slightly older relative who has never had one before. You KNOW you’ll have to download the first book for them, because they’ll never do it themselves and there’s a real chance your lovely gift will end up being a coaster otherwise. But what to download?

What you need is a cozy whodunit, clean as a whistle, perfect for the armchair detective, novella length (making it easy-read AND affordable) and the first in a series so they’ll be motivated to go looking for the next. One reader, converted. Oddly enough many of my readers are in their forties, even thirties, but the books work all the way up to ninety plus, have a look, you’ll see why. You’ll thank me.

One Two Buckle My Shoe

Of course if they’ve ever done any website dating for senior singles, you’ll want to download the newest one in the series instead, because that’s all about our heroine diving into the deep end of the dating pool, the end where the predators lurk, and it’s proving the best seller so far: Seems we’ve all done some website dating.

I even quoted one of my 5 star reviews, trying to make it sound as though there were hundreds and I had picked one at random. That’s salesmanship. I hope that’s how it comes across, anyway.

Five Six Pick Up Sticks

5 star review on Amazon.com from Scottiedog “I enjoyed both the earlier books, they’re fun to read and neatly solved. I like the characters and the retirement village setting, and there’s always a twist I miss, even though by this book I was watching closely for clues because they’re so obvious in retrospect! This book is slightly different in that Edge is put squarely and deliberately in the firing line and even though she’s a main character and I know she won’t be killed off (right?) I was reading faster and faster as the end approached. I think it’s the best so far- fun and exciting”

We may never know. But I’d kick myself for not even trying. And the point remains, getting a Kindle is lovely but, er, what next? You’re a lovely generous person for giving it, but you have to follow through.

Happy to help.

December 1, 2013 by elegsabiff

Coffee – Cake And Crime Event – With E J Lamprey

There’s been a murder, how great is that for a blog title? And it’s a grand blog, Lynsey really knows her stuff!

THERE'S BEEN A MURDER

Life may not begin at (nearly) sixty but it certainly takes some unexpected turns for golden girls Vivian and Edge, fellow residents at the Grasshopper Lawns Retirement Village in Scotland, after the murder of an unpopular resident. Edge’s niece is a sergeant in the small local police force, so they are not only kept up to date, they start picking up clues that no-one is passing on to the police.

The murder sparks off a lively investigation, friendships with bon vivant William (a vast and charming SF writer) and sardonic new neighbour Donald, and will be enjoyed by armchair detectives everywhere.

This is the first in a cosy whodunit series set in the beautiful Firth of Forth area just north of Edinburgh.

In One Two Buckle My Shoe the engaging Edge and Vivian solved a flurry of murders at Grasshopper Lawns with their new friends Donald and William, but life…

View original post 1,771 more words

December 1, 2013 by elegsabiff

On hats and age and future reviews, (and shoes and ships and sealing wax etc. Okay, not them).

I read a quote a while back that wholly resonated. I don’t recall the exact wording but the essential message was ‘Inside every old person there’s a puzzled kid wondering what the heck happened’

Maybe your internal and external ages are still in synch. I hate being asked my age, and I really hate being asked for a photograph, because both classify me instantly as OLD. And I’m not, not on a good day, honestly truly cross-my-heart. I’ve put a few years on the clock, true enough, and not that many more will have me on eBay looking for good purple hats; I like being the age I am; but I hate the automatic label that goes with it. So when I was asked for a photograph for an author interview I rebelled and sent a composite. Which was such fun that I shall dig out some of my older photos and make a few more.

Anyway, that’s just the morning’s mutter. I recently joined the Alliance of Independent Authors, (which is the best move I’ve made since I joined this crazy world with the publication of my first book in January) and that will lead to a slight change in focus on this blog.

As all writers reading this already know, Amazon is decidedly beady-eyed about authors reviewing each other, and there’s no denying it could lead to abuses because the world seems to be filled with people determined to foul up ideal situations. ALLi have a private group on Goodreads and has just floated a new discussion re members reading and honestly reviewing each other’s books on Goodreads. The suggestion was also mooted that we add reviews to our blogs (those who aren’t already doing it) so just as soon as I’ve worked out how to do (well, archive) that effectively, you can expect a few reviews to start appearing here. Many of the members are already very successful (and alarmingly talented) and I am really looking forward to my reading (two books already heading my way).

And last update on the progress of printing my first book, I changed the cover yet again (now it is beautiful, no?) and it is once again back in review. Fingers crossed.

November 30, 2013 by elegsabiff

Baby steps into POD

Considering my blog is for me, the most newbie of newbies, it must seem hopelessly naïve to the more experienced of you and yet every now and then I get a tweet on the lines of ‘hey, I never knew that, thanks!’

Which is of course very encouraging. Perhaps in time it will become sophisticated enough that people would be prepared to comment on the blog itself that they hadn’t known something. We all start out knowing nothing, and we all learn. Some (usually me) more slowly than others.

Anyway, my latest field of learning has been the first cautious steps into POD. There simply isn’t a print-on-demand option out there that is praised by everyone, so it has taken a year to get this far, bite the bullet, and give it a try, one baby step at a time. I went with CreateSpace, because the ISBNs were free and immediate, and because the general consensus, after all my research, was that it was fairly idiot-proof, and even its most vocal critics weren’t saying too many alarming things. One downside is that I won’t be able to use the ISBNs outside Amazon but I’m only selling on Amazon anyway.

So, idiot-proof? Actually, yes. They supply a template, and you copy and paste your manuscript into their format, and spend hours (and hours and hours) formatting and tweaking and uploading to their previewer, and blushing over oddities spotted in the process. Repeat.

The cover options were pretty simple too. Choose one of their covers from scratch, or choose one of the template covers that permits you to add your existing artwork to the front cover (with some limited positioning and colour options) or expand your existing artwork to create your own back cover. They then have templates that will format it and add the spine lettering for you. Obviously these are the free options, and as always with indie publishing, the more money you have to throw at the process, the better the results. But you can put together a fully formatted book, and cover, having spent nothing but time. Lots of time.

One reminder to the ignorant such like what I am. CreateSpace threw me slightly by insisting my artwork had to be a minimum of 300 dpi, but this just means you have to resize your pixels. I eventually resized to 4000 x 3048 and that worked quite nicely.

CreateSpace (and no doubt the others) then provides a full digital proof to gloat over online. They do recommend you get a physical proof, and that was a tiny setback, because one by normal post was pencilled in for January delivery. I can’t wait until January, not after getting this far! So I went for the most expensive option (about four times the price of the book) and received it in two days. Joy.

Being a newbie, I had of course made several mistakes, so the joy wasn’t unmixed with chagrin. My title, although it had looked perfect on the digital preview, was slightly too far over, so the B of Buckle was crowding the spine and looked ridiculous. I had chosen matt over glossy; but with a very dark cover, there were odd shiny patches, and fingerprints showed up hideously. I think I shall be going glossy instead. I hadn’t sized my cover properly, so there was a deep black frame top and bottom, a skinny black frame either side. And it was so dark, it looked really dull and glum.

Any decisions you take can be changed at any time, as can any errors you suddenly pick up in the book. (Despite all those hours and hours you spent, above.)

I went for 11pt (11pt or 12pt are standard) type, and a 1.15 line spacing, because it is a novella, and would have been quite thin using normal line spacing. It makes it light and airy to read, which considering it is ideally a weekend / holiday book, I think is better. For the same reason I went for a 5 inch by 8 inch size (the default offered is 6 inch by 9 inch, but with many other options) and I’m pleased with the size. The book’s price is calculated by the page (hence the popularity of 6 x 9, a 12pt prize size, and regular line spacing, for word-heavy books). My book is around 42 thousand words, the proof copy is half an inch (around a cm) thick, and would be priced at $7.53. That was having chosen cream paper, which is more expensive. Because I chose a light font, and more because some of the CreateSpace critics said that some local (book depository) printers had printed on white anyway, I will be checking the price difference if I go with white instead. $7.53 is too high a price.

I played with a few generic cover options, because my cover was so dark, but they’re obviously not designed to, well, put professional cover artists out of business. I tried about eleven, and have a photo below of one option – the pre-formatted author name went in an odd little hoop across the pic, but removing it (and pasting the author name on the pic instead) meant no author name on the spine.

For a POD sale, no problem, the buyer knew the name anyway. But if there was ever to be a chance of bookshop sales? ridiculous. I fiddled a bit more with my own cover, and managed to improve it slightly. Enough to give it a try, anyway. Put it this way, I can’t shake the feeling I will be the only person buying it, after all.

At the same time, the whole point of printing copies is to be able to send them out for review, and I don’t want the reviewer rejecting it on sight. Decisions, decisions.

Anyway, that has been the POD experience to date. And to tell you the truth—so thrilling. I’m a paperback writer! One paperback so far, granted, and my sales will never threaten the forests of the world but a book in the hand is about the most exciting thing that has happened in this whole year of very exciting things.

November 23, 2013 by elegsabiff

Playing with punctuation; the hyphen, the n dash and the m dash

I’m really writing this just to get it straight in my own head, but perhaps others have puzzled over it as well. And maybe what I think I am now clarifying I have still got wrong, so please jump in if I have.

A hyphen is used in phrases like mother-in-law. There are no spaces.

The n dash is a hyphen (taking up the print space of an n), with spaces either side. One – two – three – GO.

The m dash, as a punctuation tool, is virtually interchangeable with a semi colon – and oh dear WordPress is not allowing me to create it – and creates a sub-sentence. It takes up the print space of an m, double the length of a hyphen. In Word, you can specify an n dash using CTRL and the minus sign on your number keypad, and the m dash using CTRL, ALT and the minus sign. (Didn’t work in WordPress.) It should not have spaces, so in fact-ignoring what I wrote at the start of the paragraph-there should NOT be a space either side. When it is full length, it looks less cramped. My m dashes all need correcting, because I persist in inserting spaces and Word doubles or halves the dash sizes with gay abandon.

You may ask why this is suddenly of importance, and I’m glad you did; I am currently formatting the first of my books for CreateSpace, to try out POD. I want to get it right. Talk about sweating the small stuff. I may yet give up but so far so good.

As you were.

November 20, 2013 by elegsabiff

Nothing succeeds like excess. (May include flesh-eating aliens)

I heard about NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) for the first time last year. This year I tried it. So did 302 THOUSAND others. Writing 50K words, for the sake of writing 50K words, was an odd experience, but I knocked out the basics of my 4^th whodunit in the process and feel obscurely uneasy about writing my first ever potboiler. When I had written my quota I went to the relevant forum on NaNoWriMo to record it. I was – surprised – to see how many books had met that target on the first day of November. One day, to write 50K words. Gosh, those must be good books.

It got me thinking about how we overdo, well, everything. Every good idea becomes a fad, then the norm, and then excessive. Doing something the original traditional elitist way – oh, take the above example, pouring heart and soul into a book over months and even years, polishing it lovingly, and finally, after setbacks and rejections and re-writes, getting it published – becomes the exception to the rule.

I’m as guilty as anyone, no mistake. No finger pointing here. But it did start me thinking about what defines excess. In my childhood, best beloved, as a family we sent and received up to thirty Christmas cards, because we were at the other end of the world to most of the large and scattered clan, and if you couldn’t spend family time together, you at least wanted to be in touch. Last year, I received I don’t remember how many, but over a hundred, most from people I didn’t know. Quite interesting, mind you. Fancy Mary’s husband being called Urgen, and who would have guessed she had daughters called Bliss and Supreme?

When does more become too much? Christmas cards, how many is too many? Will I make eight – no, nine – cards by hand, write long chatty letters and enclose photographs? Unfollow all the people on Twitter who interest me not at all and hope that my favourite few will do the same and we can go back to the fun chats we had a few years ago, you remember, when getting a 50^th follower was genuinely exciting ? Reduce my Facebook to people that I know? Grow my own vegetables, go fishing, set snares, slaughter my own livestock, or even just cook every meal from scratch instead of a few times a week? Ask my daughter to reconsider planning children because there are too many people already? Delete my own books and start a campaign for everyone to delete theirs? Er, no.

Instead, my predictions for the future.

Christmas card scanners will become the next gimmick, and people will scan and email their card(s) to everyone they know. The cards received will play in a constant loop across your choice of computer screen, TV screen, or a viewer mounted next to the holographic Christmas tree. There will be several hundred of them. Really expensive holographic cards will project3D images of family waving and smiling, and the youngest members of said families playing in the snow or on the beach (delete as applicable) / performing on musical instruments / singing or telling jokes.

A new social media called Chatter will allow you to select the categories in which you have an interest, and will automatically join you to everyone else in that category. This will instantly give everyone several million interest-sharing friends.

GM food patties of high nutritious content, available in nine exciting flavours and four distinct colours, will be delivered to every household on a weekly basis. Luxury foods will be available, at a huge price, from select outlets. They will inevitably be dried, frozen, pickled, preserved or tinned (canned). Youngsters reading old books will feel slightly queasy reading descriptions of raw food, while their parents will feel a momentary pang of nostalgia. Those who insist on keeping hens, or growing their own fruit or vegetables, will be considered slightly alarming eccentrics, and newspapers will run frequent stories on how many of them die of salmonella or eColi poisoning.

Books, magazines and newspapers will no longer be printed at all and readers will be encouraged to hand in the books on their shelves for recycling. All electronic books will be assigned to categories, where accredited reference books, including school books, have the highest rating. The lowest category of books will be the cheapest and largest, but books that earn above a set amount will move to a higher and more expensive category. Readers have to complete a detailed registration form and will then be offered a selection, starting with the most expensive, in their favourite genre. They will be expected to complete a response before they can buy the next; (a) could they finish the book just taken, (b) was it fit for purpose, (c) was it correctly categorized, (d) would they recommend it. Their answers will shift the books up or further down the popularity lists.

Many more people will be born. In about twenty years time flesh-eating aliens will start gathering hungrily around the planet. People with money or connections will be concealed for the duration of the emergency, with a good supply of GM patties and dried, pickled, preserved and tinned food. When they emerge there will be a few million at most, and their health will be permanently affected. It will take a thousand years for the human race to recover, along with new religions and new political structures, possibly overlapping.

There could be a book in this.

October 30, 2013 by elegsabiff

Results of pimping my book

I did a free giveaway much earlier in the year with Polly, my short story, and Amazon later gave me an analysis of how it performed in its category – into the top fifty, which, considering it was the most inept promotion of all time, wasn’t bad. I’m hoping they’ll do the same on One Two (nothing yet) but the figures below show how the books were performing against the million-plus-plus books eddying around in the Amazon ocean.

I spent the whole weekend pimping One Two at regular intervals and Monday adding in Five Six. This morning I counted up clicks on my Booklinker codes – which reflect the response to anything I have personally pimped – then checked the books to see where they ranked on Amazon.com and Amazon.uk, and finally bravely went into sales / downloads to see the actual results.

One Two’s promo ended last night, and it achieved a personal best today with an Amazon ranking of #635 on UK. It was down slightly on Amazon .com, where it never got higher than #2173 (Sunday). It racked up 548 clicks from my personal advertising. The ranking is not, unfortunately, sales – it just reflects how popular it was proving with browsers.

Polly PW, just to put the above into perspective, had no promoting at all this time round and remained below the #700K mark on Amazon.UK, (never breaking into the top million on Amazon.com) and never selling a single copy, yet swaying between #708808 and #711865. Polly is joining the excellent Alfie Dog stories website (‘take your imagination for a walk’) at the end of November, at a lower price than Amazon, and will have her share of promotion then.

Actual downloads of One Two on all Amazon sites – 573 books. Looked at one way – compared to the better known authors, who apparently give away 20 thousand books when they run a freebie, definitely deflating. Looked at the other way – potentially nearly two hundred new readers. That’s based on the theory that 30% of readers will hate your work, 30% will love it, and the rest will be completely indifferent. (19 of those were in Germany, and definitely not related to my personal promoting, as I only had 8 clicks for Germany.)

Three Four only got one promotional tweet, but made a few unexpected sales. Its ranking never rose above 300 thousand on UK, yet oddly it is the only book performing better on Amazon.com. Its ranking there today was #181 440, but over the days I was monitoring it rose as high as #115 407. That does imply the cover is working, the blurb – or lack of reviews – is not.

Five Six achieved a respectable ranking, #32 659 today, well done the new kid on the block! The book got 93 clicks in all from my personal promoting. I do have two fabulous reviews on Amazon.com, the kind of reviews that a writer (well, this writer) dreams of, and I suspect Five Six’s high ranking has much more to do with them than with anything I was puddling about doing. Sales were okay. Better than any previous book of mine has done in its first few days, but not everyone who looked, bought. The books are definitely off-trend, you only have to look at the top hundred books to realize how far off. Celebrities, autobiographies, cook books, diet books, children’s books and a slim sheaf of very loud novels from well-known authors are a far cry from cosy whodunits. I’m grateful anyone bought!

If it had all gone brilliantly I would now have launched into a breakdown of where I did all my promoting but under the circumstances, I doubt it would help anyone planning a campaign. I don’t think I’ll do it again, but if I do, the following will remind me not to make the same mistakes twice.

Promoting on Twitter

I did find, as I said in an earlier blog, hashtags were extraordinary. Although I only have a handful of contacts on my author Twitter account (@EJLamprey), using the hashtags took me into the general ocean. The Booklinker click count definitely showed more reaction to #whodunit, #newrelease #freekindle #freekindleread, and #ebook than to some of the others that had been recommended.

Promoting on Facebook pages

I had joined about twelve Facebook sites for readers, reviewers, writers, and various combinations of same. Some will only feature free books, and were a bit crowded – post an entry, and in minutes it was five, six, seven posts down the page and lost for ever.

Some FB pages are only for new books, and weren’t as hectic, although Five Six’s cover was rubbing shoulders with a lot of naked gleaming torso action, and intense stares from beautiful males / females with too much makeup, pointed chins, and probably even more pointed teeth. There was a lot of Young Adult stuff but I was the only Old Adult whodunit, so far as I could see.

Promoting through other writers, and friends

I got an author interview from the successful and talented romantic comedy writer Patsy Collins, some retweets on Twitter from friends, and some shared posts from my author page, grateful thanks to those too, so very much appreciated. It is a lonely business, pimping, and moments of interaction are very welcome. One lovely fellow writer spotted one of my promo posts on a FB site and put a comment on it to say how good the book was, huge hug!

Promoting on websites for free books

I had applied to about ten different websites that list freebies while they are on promotion, and three of them definitely ran the book, grateful thanks to the following:

http://addictedtoebooks.com/free – you can’t book in advance, you have to remember to post on the first day, but they’ll keep it live while it is on promo price. I have no idea how powerful it is, but I loved that you can tick categories, and therefore readers can search by categories and filters, and I picked up a few free books while I was there!

http://snickslist.com is also one to list at the start and I forgot, such an idiot. I listed it for the last day only, but liked the website, which also tells you how many times viewers have looked further – 14 readers clicked via it to Amazon, not bad for a Tuesday. So I would recommend this one too.

http://www.talismanbookpublishing.com did list the book, but have a very odd system – actually finding the books was tricky, and then they had no covers, and no clickable links, so not really of any use.

http://ereadernewstoday.com didn’t run it – I was sorry about that, they are a top website and it looks well run and well managed.

The sour grapes section of promotional websites:

http://pixelscroll.com didn’t run it – or if they did, I couldn’t find it. The section called ‘free Kindle books’ had quite a few with prices and although I filtered by ‘mystery’, there were some heavy clinches going on, and nekkid people, so I wasn’t particularly impressed.

http://www.indiesunlimited.com didn’t run it and when you click into Freebie Friday all you learn is how to submit your book, not what actual books are free that Friday, so ditto.

http://www.pixelofink.com didn’t run it – no big surprise there, as they are supposed to be one of the best websites and run two bargains, and two freebies, every day, which must have good ratings and good reviews on Amazon.com already. Their main feature was “what happens after Fifty Shades?” – that was never going to be a good match!

http://freebooksy.com doesn’t have a search facility so you have to scroll through the website to find the type of books you like – it also has no history, just the books on offer for the day. I checked Friday, and today, but I didn’t remember to check over the weekend so if you apply to this one, check every day. I have no idea if they ran the book over the weekend, but probably not.

http://www.fkbooksandtips.com is a bit clunky and I’m assuming didn’t run it – couldn’t find it but because of the clunkiness, didn’t search each day.

Summarising the promotion

All in all: 46 promotional tweets (it felt a lot more). 26 posts on FB pages for One Two, and 17 for Five Six. Submitted details to 10 websites (that’s quite a lengthy process, as it includes a bio and synopsis and mini author interview on some) and definitely featured on 3. Looked at that way, I got a good return in sales / downloads.

And now – we wait. Will One Two’s visibility help Five Six before the impetus wears off and it fades back into the sunless depths? Will Amazon let me know how the books performed in category? Will readers become fans and follow the series? Will there be any reviews?

And can I face NaNoWriMo for the first time (this time last year I was way too busy on One Two) or is it time to take a month off altogether?

October 28, 2013 by elegsabiff

Five Six Pick up Sticks, a murder mystery by E J Lamprey

Yay, the third book has been accepted. This is a great way to read sample chapters 🙂

First Chapters

Website dating for the over-fifties is definitely a boom industry, but for some it has been a dead end, and the Scottish police want to know why. Sergeant Kirsty Cameron’s aunt Edge is the right age to become the bait in their investigation, and even has some recent murder-solving experience on her CV, making her the perfect candidate.

The third whodunit in the Grasshopper Lawns series dives gleefully into the murkiest end of the senior singles dating pool (where the predators lurk) with Edge secretly hoping to meet someone special. It’s spring, and it seems the rest of the world is in love, is there someone out there for her? Preferably not the murderer, of course.

The murders of the recent past were solved with her friends Vivian, Donald and William, but this investigation is so covert, not even they can know why she is suddenly so keen…

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October 26, 2013 by elegsabiff

Counting clicks / puzzled face / waiting for bed to warm up

Useful Paragraph Alert if you’re publishing or promoting a book. Skip next paragraph if not.

A few months ago I linked One Two and Three Four to Viewbook, because it meant (a) nice short link and (b) the link adjusted itself to the nearest Amazon website. Very handy; so when Five Six joined the family very quietly a few days ago, I wanted to link it, too. Viewbook has become BOOKLINKER, a slightly different setup. Oh MY. Booklinker counts every time it is used, AND shows which Amazon it bounced to. I converted the Viewbook links, and suddenly had a history on them too.

Even better – sorry, just a moment. You, the reader skipping paragraphs? This could take a while. Maybe come back another time, if you know all this already, or are never planning to promote a book?

Even better, I could judge how my promotion of One Two was going almost by the minute. Run a tweet. Make a cup of coffee. Check my stats. Run a link on FB. Drink the coffee. Check my stats. It was literally that quick.

One Two had 43 clicks on the clock when the promo started and I started posting. I made the first cup of coffee, idly refreshed the count – 176 clicks. I nearly dropped my cup.

Fascinated, I ran a single tweet (heavy with hashtags) on another book I’ve written under a different name, which nosedived into the ground on publication and has sold a princely two copies (one of them to me). 18 clicks, instantly.

These are not, of course, sales. Just people going off to view the book. Another book I put out under yet another name attracted 89 clicks in a little flurry of notifications, and I rushed off to see my sales in a blaze of excitement. No sales. In fact it is currently doing rather less well than the one above, I don’t understand it because it’s a terrifically useful little reference book.

That’s beside the point, which is, at the moment, clicks. If people don’t go near the books, they won’t sell. If they are interested enough to go, but not buy (or even take One Two as a freebie), well, that’s a horse of a different colour and a problem still to be puzzled over and fixed.

Booklinker also gives you country feedback. I’ve had a click in Canada, 1 in Italy, 2 in Japan, 18 in the UK, and 27 in France (yup, that puzzled me too) and the rest have all been in the US. So that’s pretty cool stuff to know.

The other thing puzzling me is that I added 5 6 into my profile on Amazon, to update my author link ready for Monday. Amazon offered to show me stats on my book rankings. 1 2 – with all the promoting – is in the top 1000 books for today, which was nice. The puzzling part is that 5 6 is higher in the rankings than 3 4. MUCH higher. In fact according to Amazon it has already substantially out-sold 3 4 even though it only officially launches on Monday and hasn’t had any promotion yet.

I don’t quite believe it, and I absolutely will not go look at my sales figures because that’s always so discouraging, but it’s a nice thought to go to bed on.

Which I’ll be doing as soon as the electric blanket has kicked in and the bed is suitably warm. This is Scotland, and it’s cold and dark and I’ve been slaving over a hot computer all day. Maybe one more post on one of those wonderful FB sites that I found. And a last tweet for the day. And of course count my clicks.