It’s been a busy and successful week with time flying past the window like I’m on life’s motorway!

Publishing Wide

This week I added Apple Books to my list of outlets and I found it to be the most difficult and convoluted process. You have to re-format the book in one piece of software, copying and pasting from word as the import process didn’t work. Then you had to sign up on the web, using iTunes to create an account and then publish with another piece of software. I was glad when it was over, but I must admin it looks pretty great!

As I’m now very wide, in a publishing sense, I’ve had to sign up to another book linking service. Books2Read.com is free of charge and directs the user via a single link to choice their favourite store out of the list of stores they can buy my book from. By providing a single link to your book on one of the stores the system will find the rest of the links for you. The user can set one outlet as their favourite and whenever they use the service in the future it will take them straight to that store without having to make the choice again. You can check it out here.

books2read.com/u/b6j5DZ

Kindle, Apple Books and Kobo where published directly and the rest were aggregated through Smashwords.

Writing Update

Progress is much as it was last week, the word count is rising for Book 3 and SURVIVOR Volume 2 as I wait for BEFORE THE END to be back from its beta read. Not much to talk about here.

Newsletter

I sent out my fifth newsletter this week where I talked about the new stores I published to, plus shared some details about a trip I’ll be taking this time next week canoeing down the River Wye. I also offered more audiobook codes for IN THE END and asked if anyone would like to receive an ARC of BEFORE THE END when it’s ready.

With around 460 subscribers I had an open rate of 50% which is 10% higher than last time. I had half as many clicks, but this newsletter was mainly intended for me to connect with the readers and not to sell anything.

I mark this one as a great success as I had around ten enquires for audiobooks, all of which have been issued with codes, plus I recruited two ARC readers for BEFORE THE END and I had my first Smashwords sales as a result! I also had a sample download from Smashwords but I can’t tell if its the same person.

I hope the next newsletter will be a special one and include the cover reveal, blurb and release date for BEFORE THE END!

Events

On Saturday I will be hosting a market stall with two author friends and another author’s books in Staines Upon Thames. It takes a bit of planning and will be a long day but I’m looking forward to finding out how well the books sell with what should be a great footfall and where people expect to see market stalls! My full report to follow of course!

I’ve also been researching possibly selling signed copies of my books from my website and what that involves, plus utilising bookfunnel so I can sell ebooks directly and dipping my toe back into Amazon adverts.

That’s it for me this week. I will either be skipping next week’s update or it will be coming late as I’m away for the weekend, but hope to be back with loads of sunny photos!

I’ll just leave you with this little teaser ad I put together.