People like free stuff!

Some more book sale number-crunching for those interested… Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing allows authors to offer their ebooks at a discount or free for limited periods of time. The free promo is only available for 5 days out of every 90 days. I can’t find how often the author is allowed to run a discount,…

Books sales and other stuff

It’s been ten months since I self-published my first book, Daughter, Disappeared, and six months since the second one, Glasdrum. After a few months I lost track of how many I was selling; it’s surprisingly hard to monitor because the dashboard sales reports are mostly on a rolling 30 day basis and each category of…

99p ebook promotion

I haven’t advertised my books for a while, kinda horrified at the amount of money I was spending. But sales stagnate when I stop – that’s business I guess. At least the monthly payments from Amazon are staying marginally ahead of advertising spend. So I’ve set up a few campaigns this morning, mostly for Glasdrum,…

Book reviews

I gave up many precious book-writing hours a week ago to submit my two published novels to various vetted book review sites. According to Author advice, this is what I should be doing. It was on my To Do list for a long time, and now it’s underway. But it’s left an unpleasant taste in my…

Highland thriller free on ebook 15-19 June only!

Glasdrum: one town, five women, dark events… Do you want to try a new Highland author for FREE (15-19 June 2017 only)? I’m running a free promotion for my thriller set in a fictional west-coast Highland town. It has received 31 top reviews since it was published in April 2017 and I’m hoping to expand its…

eBook giveaway – is it worth it?

I had my doubts about doing an ebook giveaway. Do people value something that’s free? Even if they downloaded it, would they get around to reading it? There are some free or very cheap books out there that are amateurish… books that have never been within ten paces of an editor or proof-reader. Would people…

A reality check and a free book!

How to sell books without spending money (I don’t have the answer btw) I have self-published two books (Daughter, Disappeared in Nov 2016 and Glasdrum in April 2017) and sales have been better than I expected. However… those sales have cost me. I have used facebook targeted posts and they have been effective (I’ve sold…

A pitch of a day

I was excited and hopeful to be one of six authors picked to pitch my second novel to a panel of literary agents at the London Book Fair. It started badly. My flight was delayed by three hours (initially due to fog, then a medical emergency that required an ill passenger and his luggage to…