Good news for Before The End and progress on my novella, code-named Survivor, plus updates on promotions and upcoming events.

Promotions & Mailing List

Mailing sign up is a bit slow, I’m not doing any major promotion on it at the moment so I may have to halt my giveaway for the audiobook because there’s not enough UK recipients to win! If you’re in the UK and you fancy listening, join my mailing list and there’s a very good chance you could win a free copy.

I am putting together an international give-away as much of my audience is outside of the UK. I’m going to gather together 4 books from the genre, along with mine, but I’ll be promoting it for a month or so. If someone in the US wins I might need to tap up one of my US followers to post the package so I don’t have to send it from the UK.

My book appeared in the bookhippo recommendations newsletter this morning. Initial results are….I think my Amazon reporting is broken as there was no massive bounce in sales! 🙂

Before The End Progress

With my edits finished I’ve sent book two off to the editor for evaluation. With a due date of a month I can’t wait to see comes back. The MS is also off to my cover designer to read so he can come up with a design. I have ideas of what I want to do but it will be great to see what he comes up with first.

Although I use an agency for my editing, I have ensured that the same dev and copy editors will be working on this book that worked on In The End.

Survivor (A Novella)

I’ve had this last week concentrating on getting the magnet novella ready and it’s coming along very nicely. I’m not creating much content, all that’s taken from my blog, although I am having to edit and there is so much formatting to do. However I’m pleased with the results so far. Here’s a few sample pages.

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I’m working on the paperback version first, I will be getting some copies printed for my signing and indie events. It will go on sale on Amazon on paperback and kindle format, but I will be giving it away for free for joining my mailing list.

The book will be 6″ x 9″ with bleed, which means the images don’t have a border and go right to the edge of the page. I think a larger format is more appropriate for a non-fiction book. I don’t know how the images will come out via KDP but I’ll we’ll see when the first proof comes out.

The novella is a mix of fiction and non-fiction so I need to see how I can differentiate between the fiction and non-fiction aspects. I may not need to but I will have to get advice as to whether readers get confused. I’m thinking about either changing fonts or some other way of doing it.

Going Wide

The countdown for going wide has started, with my deadline being the end of May. For those of you who don’t know, that means withdrawing from Kindle Select and placing my books for sale across the other service providers including Smashwords, Kobo and Apple Books to name a few. I’ve been having fun, not, with the Kindle Select reporting system which makes me worry that the negative stories you hear about the service might be true. For the last few days I’ve registered no page reads, with it only just recovering yesterday.

Events

My next event is Staines, Middlesex next weekend (10am to 3pm, if you’re local!) and the new simplified bookmarks have arrived.

If you missed my debrief after the last event you can check it out here. One of the very kind people who bought a book on Saturday contacted me via Twitter which made my day.

Coming Next Week

I have next week off work and I have a busy schedule planned. On Monday I’ll be visiting my old school to talk with the headteacher and a selection of students. On Tuesday through to Thursday I’ll be attending the London Book Fair to soak up as much as I can. I’ll be meeting up with a few people from various Facebook groups and maybe I’ll see some of you there!

I have around seven interviews to get ready, most of which are genre specific and I’ll be pumping them out over the next couple of weeks. The first mail out will be coming shortly where I will be announcing my next giveaway and cross promoting other authors in my genre.