This week there’s been a natural lull in the interviews as I wait for responses. Instead I’ve filled the time with editing and rewriting, editing and more editing. Mostly, anyway.

Reviews

These are still one of the most important aspects for successful sales, but an area I have little control over now that the novel is in the big wide world. Following my advertising and price promotion I’m getting more reviews and it’s definitely part of my consideration when I decide how much to spend on advertising, not just the profit, or lack of.

I’m currently sitting with two reviews on Amazon US, averaging 5 stars, and seven reviews on Amazon UK, averaging 4.4 stars, plus 10 ratings and 4 reviews on Goodreads, giving me 4.5 stars.

Cover Updates

The cover has been updated following feedback from Stuart Bache. Below are the before and after images. It’s only a minor change, but I think it’s very effective at giving more detail. The kindle edition has already changed and possibly could be the cause of a small spike in sales and KU page reads…I had my best day to date yesterday with over five books worth of page reads in one day.

I’ll be updating the paperback cover too, but it might not be in time for the first signing event.

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Advertising Update

It finally looks like I’m getting closer to achieving the allusive Amazon UK advertising account, the secret is apparently not to use your author name as the company name for your account. I plan to test out the ad I used in the US as a direct comparison to results in the UK. (Apart from the cover change).

Pricing Tweaks

Next week I’m going to reduce the price down to the minimum for the 70% royalty for KDP, so thats $2.99 in US and £1.99 in UK to see if this is a happier middle ground for sales. I have to wait 14 days after my last kindle countdown deal in order to change the price.

Other Updates

I’m getting active in the ALLi facebook group and learning ever more each day, plus I’m actually managing to give back something too.

Signing Updates – With T-20 days till the first signing, I’ve ordered 500 bookmarks. I’ve been looking for a while for a suitable provider as bookmarks are the perfect collateral for authors. When I found a company who had an online design tool I made the leap and they arrived yesterday! Along with the art from the book, I’ve covered them with snippets of reviews that convey everything I want people to know! If anyone in the UK wants to give it a go, here’s the link www.helloprint.co.uk.

I’ve had some great advice from some of the writer’s groups about drumming up publicity for the event which includes asking the local library to put up a poster and seeing if any community websites would let me place a free notice.

In the same vein and out of the blue, I got an email from a student at the local university asking if they could attend the event at the end and interview me for a group project they’re doing. Of course I said yes but I have told them I’m an Indie who’s just released their debut novel and I’m not sure how well I would be able to answer questions around whether people are still reading. We’ll see if they still want to come along!

Before The End Updates

Editing is going well and I can feel the momentum building up again. I should be finished this major first pass in the next few days and then having identified where I need to concentrate my efforts, plot, characterisation, dialogue and trimming everything so every chapter fights for its place in the novel, I’ll be starting at page one again! Not too much then!

That’s it for now and I’ll be back with at least a couple of interviews next week.