Why aren't you growing your newsletter sign ups?

A newsletter is a great way to get readers to your books, especially new releases. There are many newsletter providers available, and it is easy to find a free one.

I use MailChimp as I find it very easy to set up and run, and since adding a link to the back of my books I have seen it gradually grow. I currently have 31 genuine newsletter sign ups. It doesn't sound much, I know, but it is a start and it is heading upwards!

To encourage more people to sign up, I've decided to offer a free, exclusive ebook to people on my list. Once this is written, I will send it to those good people and set it up to auto-send to new sign ups as a thank you.

I hope to see the rate of sign up increase with this exclusive offer! I'll keep you posted...

(and just in case you are interested, here's mine ->>> Newsletter)

When writing takes a back seat to a dog.

I try to write, I really do. At my last sitting a put down 2,500 words, but that was three (four?) days ago now and I haven't been able to get back to it at all.

Animals and the Spanish

Animals are partly to blame. You see, I live in a country where animals are treated merely as a commodity, with very little love shown to them if any. I live in Spain, a country famous for its bull fighting and bull running and numerous other 'traditional activities' which usually mean an animal has to suffer to please the people.

Abandoned

In the small region where I live (La Rioja, pop: 320,000), 5,000 dogs are abandoned each summer when families take off for three months vacation, the dog being nothing more than a costly nuisance. If it is there when they come back, they might even take it in again.  Over 300,000 pets are abandoned in Spain EVERY year, the worst country for abandonment in the European Union. After 10 days, Spanish law says they must be killed.

Adoption

Me with Pitbulls ELTON (L) and Rasta (R)

Elton cuddles up to my wife

What's this to do with my writing? Well, due to my love for animals and in an attempt to make up for the Spanish indifference to their animals, I recently went to the local charitable dogs' home, (Asociación Protectora de Animales en La Rioja) with my wife to see if we could help at all. The amazing volunteers there collect dogs from the local government killing houses and attempt to give them a longer life at the shelter, trying to have them adopted by people who care. We sponsored two Pitbulls, simply because they told us NOBODY will have anything to do with them due to the negative publicity re the breed, and because they were two of the friendliest dogs I have ever met. It means that we now drive the 25 mins to the shelter each day and take the two dogs out for a walk. They love it, and so do we.

Own dogs

This is on top of my own two dogs. Nina the Dalmatian was bought in Spain and - due to inconsiderate breeding - is 100% deaf. She is now 12 years old and doing fine, capable of understanding at least 15 hand signals. Adah is a 9 month old German Shepherd we bought in La Rioja. Today we confirmed that she has severe Dysplasia in both hips and needs an operation. She is in so much pain and I feared we were going to lose her. Dysplasia is very common in Spain, as most people just breed any dog to make a profit with little thought for the welfare of the dog.

Adah (L) and Nina (R)

I'll never BUY another dog in Spain as I can't trust the people to care enough to breed healthy animals, but I will go to the shelter and adopt dogs from there. If I had space, I'd take in Elton and Rasta tomorrow.

As for my writing, it seems a tad irrelevant right now.

Foundation Monitoring

As I prepare for the release of book three of The Rozzers series, I like to keep an eye on what's happening with the previous two books.

Passive Marketing

As you may know, End of the Road is permanently free, and links through to the second book in the series, Cops Don't Run (0.99c). That is all the marketing I do, nothing more. This I call passive marketing (it is visible on my FB page, blog etc). I don't do active marketing (or very little, and only occasionally). If only I had the time!

So, how are the books doing?

Downloads

End of the Road has been downloaded nearly 7,000 times in the last 16 months, and has never been off the #1 spot in various categories (that's over 100 copies per week). Success? I think so, although obviously I don't earn anything from it, but then that is not my intention with this book.

End of the Road on Amazon UK (today)

Sales

Since Cops Don't Run was published in Nov 2013, it has sold 250 copies (approx 10 per week). Again, it is not actively promoted. For the first few months I was selling one copy per day. The last few months that has doubled to two copies per day. The majority of these sales are conversions from book one readers (they liked what they read in the free book and decided to go on and buy book 2) - this was my marketing plan all along.

Conversion rate

The interesting thing is that as downloads for book one show a slight decline over the last few months, purchases of book two seem to be increasing. In January, the conversion rate was 13.2 copies of EotR for every one copy of CdR bought. That rate has steadily improved, and is currently at 6.1 free copies downloaded for every one copy purchased.

 

 

Publishing

My mum, and #1 fan

As actual sales have steadily increased since January (now selling 2.2 copies per day, up from 1.2 in Jan), it would seem to be a good time to publish the third part, as I believe that the 250 buyers of book 2 will want to buy book 3 as well. If I can get them all to buy it on the release date, the book should get pushed high up the charts.

To achieve this, I plan to use the preorder option with Amazon and Smashwords, and of course announce its availability on my ever-increasing newsletter, Twitter, FB and blog.

I will also tell my mum, as she tells everybody and anybody back in my home town!

It's great to feel like an author!

There is no greater feeling than that of finally beginning to feel like an author after almost a decade of hard, almost impossible writing. I initially began to feel the first stirrings of being an author when I published my first book, End of the Road. I felt a tad more like one when I finally published the follow up, Cops Don't Run.

Now, when I look at the two books together with their amazing covers, I positively glow with pride.  It's great to feel like an author!!

Writing & publishing was the easy part

So you've just hit the publish button for that book you've been labouring over for the last God-knows how many years. Now you can sit back, smile and relax, and just wait for the money to flow in.

Well, I certainly recommend relaxing and smiling, you have jolly-well earned it. Writing a quality book, having it edited and proof-read, and finally formatting it for Amazon and Smashwords is no easy task and you deserve a rest. But now the work really begins.

Invisible

Firstly, your book is sitting amongst 1.5 million other books. It's most probably completely invisible, only findable by people you send its way through active or passive marketing. What you need to do is ensure that book and the information presented with it is not only up-to-date, but grabs the reader's attention before they click on another book presented below yours. I am amazed just how many books are sitting on Amazon without these basic requirements. Here are a few ideas of things that you should be doing after you have published your book.

Additional images

Me at 24yrs of age

Amazon displays an image of your book. Did you know you can add additional images to sit alongside your book cover? Images grab attention, and somebody glancing at your book image might be about to move on from it until they see a second, smaller image with it. Then they'll click on it. This may lead to further clicks and keep the reader on your book page. That is what you want - the longer they stay, the more likely they are to buy your book. To give you an idea of what I am talking about, my first book (End of the Road) has an image of me as a 24yr old soldier with it. Why? Because it is a true account of a particular day when I was that young military man. What better way is there to read it than with an image of the man in your mind. Take a look here. Can you see, just below the main book image, two smaller images? Go on, I know you want to click on it. Stay on that page, because I'm going to talk about the text underneath the additional picture next.

'Book description'

Once the viewer has clocked your additional pictures their eye will glance down at what you have to offer. This is another chance to seize them or lose them. The Book Description field as a place where you can add some impact to your page. The first thing you see on my page is a review, in bold, yelling out the qualities of my book. This is immediately followed by About the Book, where I mention that the book hit #1 in its category. Getting the picture now? My book is growing in value. I've also added a warning about the content, as some people are offended by strong language and may paste a negative review. I have given them fair warning.

Beneath the warning is a teaser for the book, followed by a handful of other reviews. All you need to do to add such details is log into your Amazon Author Central account, select your book page followed by your book. The Product Description page is where I added the above details. Scrolling down the page gives you additional fields, such as From the Author and About the Author. Again, add some detail to these sections as they will appear on the page and give you more chance to trap the viewer. Back to the books sales page, you'll see mine appear beneath Customers who Bought this Item also Bought... Hopefully, I have created sufficient interest in the viewer that they won't click on one of these other books, choosing instead to skip over them to read more about me.

Below these are the book details (including any category it is in). Again, if you can be top of a category this will help the viewer to become a buyer. Below this are the all-important reviews, creating another prompt for the viewer to buy (get some reviews if you don't have any!!).

Shelfari

Beneath the reviews is a section called Book Extras from the Shelfari Community. More selling space! To add this, you need to visit Shelfari, claim the book and add the details. Others can also add to this information if they so wish. Shelfari is now owned by Amazon and will come into use more and more.

'More about the Author' page

The final space for you to keep the viewers attention is a link to your Amazon author's page. Make sure you have updated this with links to your Twitter, blog, newsletter etc. Click on the link and note the additional photos included here too.

Once you've done all of that, you'll need to do the same for the other Author Central's you have (I do it for AuthorCentral.com and AuthorCentral.co.uk, my two main markets.)

Finally

It's not over yet. You still need to update the book on any other sites that you have listed you and your book, eg Authors Database, Goodreads, Pinterest, Facebook page and your blog and or website. If you don't have them, I suggest getting on with it right now!

Why your free book stops 'selling' when it reverts to a price

If, like me, you have a book out there for free, you may have noticed that it suddenly stops 'selling' when it reverts to its original price. Devastating, isn't it? This happened to me recently and I think I know why nobody buys it when Amazon suddenly lists it at the original price. First, a bit of background.

My story

I have a short story called END OF THE ROAD, which I'd originally priced at 99c. It is part one of five, part two is due out soon. It sold a few copies a week, and it wasn't going to make me rich, so I decided to reduce the price to zero on Smashwords and eventually Amazon price-matched it. Downloads took off, hitting 155 in the first month. Since then, a steady month on month increase has been recorded (see graph).

Downloads for END OF THE ROAD in 2013

Sales figures

June was a blip, having been featured on a highly-followed website, but that helped with July's figures, pushing into high visibility on Amazon via its lists and other behind the scenes fumblings. August is showing strong sales and is already on target to surpass July, even though we are only halfway through the month.

It's clear that the numbers are increasing month on month, despite the book suddenly being listed on Amazon.co.uk at its original price for a few days in August. This caused the UK downloads to stop dead, effecting my overall figures.

Immediate action

The first thing I did was go to the book page on Amazon and click on the link "Tell us about a lower price", to notify them that the book is STILL free elsewhere (Smashwords is not sufficient, you must give a link to your book being sold on an online store such as Apple or Sony). Eventually, it will revert to free again.

Whilst I was waiting for the price to match I was astounded that whilst it remained at the .99p price, none of my UK compatriots considered buying the book, despite it being very little outlay for months of hard work by this author. It was only when I looked at the list the book was in that I realised.

#1

As a free book, it routinely hit the #1 spot in its category, and even now rarely leaves the top-ten free books for several categories. When the book reverted to a priced book, it vanished from these lists, being shown as number 514,346th or there abouts. Clearly, at that rank, nobody but the saddest of late-night book browsers are going to find it so it WILL NOT SELL!

#1 best 'seller' in its category

Visibility

The simple reason it gets downloaded when it is free is that it is visible on the top ten list of its category and people can see it and download it, but when priced it vanishes from view ( or to 1/2 million books back). It is not because nobody is willing to spend a meagre amount on your years of work, it is because they can't find it.

Moral

So the moral of this post is, keep your first book for free (look at how many people are downloading a book with my name on it - almost 1 per hour EVERY day, 24hrs per day) and keep on writing that second book because, even if you sell it for a price, those people that downloaded your free book are going to get to see your next one, because your first book will link to it, and because Amazon will make sure they do.

(Apologies for any bizarre layout in this post but either my computer is having a laugh, or Google blogger is)

Is your book cover speaking your language?

Home-made

When I first entered the epub world as an author, I did so on a shoe-string. In fact, I'd promised myself not to spend anything on my book until I began making money. So I did the book-cover myself and it was - on the whole - well received. I had no training in book-cover design, nor the programs needed to knock one up. But after a month of trial and error and $12 (for the photo), I came up with this:

Original home-made cover

Downloads

I liked it - it was, OK. I sold about 6 books per month. After six months of this I decided to give the book away. The downloads increased significantly - 7 copies per day for four months, on average. And then I decided to go pro.

 Pro

The real reason for finding an expert to do the cover was book two. I didn't have the patience to knock up the second cover, nor the skills to bring the pattern of book one across onto book two. The one thing I was worried about was the cost - as the first in the series this book was always going to be free.

Cover designer

I found Jan Marshall on Twitter, and found her to be helpful and flexible regarding payments. We agreed to use the original background, and before long she sent me a file containing several possibilities. After discussing our options she sent me another file containing amendments. The result was this:

Professionally designed cover

Downloads increase

I uploaded the new cover in the final week of May 2013. Downloads increased immediately, averaging 20 per day (more than double the original quantity). Then on Sunday 9th May, something crazy happened. Over 220 downloads occurred. This continued into Monday, resulting in 600 downloads in the first 10 days of May (more than the preceding 3 months added together.)

Reason

I have possibly tracked this sudden surge to a website that promoted my book that day. It listed '5 good ebooks for free'. It has a following of over 100,000. I'm not sure the surge can be traced back to this posting but I have no other ideas at the moment. Whatever the reason for the surge in downloads, I am sure it is down to the new-look cover. With a doubling in downloads, I'm sure this cover has been picked up and promoted, which wouldn't have happened with the original, amateur version.

Book two

With book two close to release, I can now sit back and get on with the writing whilst Jan focuses on designing the new cover, which I'm sure will look as good as the first one. In the meantime, here are the two covers side by side. Can you spot the amateur? Is yours easily identifiable as an amateur, or can it hold its own up there with the professionals? What do you think? I'd love to hear from you.

Book downloads update (January and February)

January was the first full month of giving my book away. Here is a breakdown of what happened.

January downloads

• Amazon.com = 90
• Amazon.uk    = 60
• Smashwords  = 5
• Total giveaways = 155

Downloads in January averaged 5 per day.

I thought that might be it; surely there can't be more people interested in my little memoir..?

February downloads

• Amazon.com = 71
• Amazon.uk    = 140
• Amazon.es     = 2
• Smashwords  =8
• Total giveaways =221

Downloads in January averaged 7.9 per day.

Graphs

I'm a visual chap, so I've broken those figures down into a graph, which I'll be posting here each month. As can be seen in the 1st graph, there is a considerable increase from January to February, particularly in the UK (see 2nd graph). I have no idea why.















To give an idea of where those downloads occurred, I've created this pie-chart. Amazon.co.uk is responsible for over 53% of downloads.