Can you tell after two plus years of writing these posts I’m having trouble choosing unique titles? Anyway, in this week’s post I give an update on the novels in the pipeline, more advertising success and other titbits of news from hopefully one of your favourite blogging authors!
Work In Progress
With two weeks to go until the official release of FATE’S AMBITION I’ve been working on two novels (AFTER THE END & LESSON LEARNED) with stoic routine and letting the plot bubble away in my head for my first novella, CAPITAL ACTION.
Both of the main projects are proceeding to plan. LESSON LEARNED is getting the ProWritingAid treatment before I give it my last read-through prior to copy editing. Normally the next phase would be a development edit, but I think I am going to skip this part. I haven’t decided if will get it beta read first. My copy-editor provides a bit of feedback from a beta perspective so it won’t be entirely untested. I have a wonderful beta reader for the IN THE END series, but I don’t want to burden her with this novel too. I will have to see over the next couple of weeks.
AFTER THE END is coming along nicely, but despite my planning I think I will have to take a few days off to keep up with the schedule. Some of parts of the third act are going to need a lot of work and I’ll struggle if I’m just doing it for an hour a day in the morning. However, what can be better than taking a day off just to write!
Here’s a spreadsheet update for all you geeks like me!
The Audiobook is so very close
I’ve completed the listen-through of the audiobook for BEFORE THE END and the amendments are already back with me. I have a task this weekend to run through them and then sign it off, so it could be ready for release real soon. It does means I have to pay the second half of the fee, already knowing second books never sell as much as the first!
However, my thoughts are already turning to which will be the next title to get the treatment.
Events Preparation
Do you think I’m hopeful this will be a good year for event sales?
I couldn’t resist getting all of my paperbacks out of their plastic boxes and taking this shot!
Marketing & Advertising
This week I’ve had a big focus on Facebook advertising and I think I might be on to something. Although it’s early days, I put together an ad for IN THE END with a link to my Amazon pages and pressed the publish button.
The ad has only been running for two complete days and so far I’ve made ten sales. The cost is fixed at £5 per day, so I roughly need to sell 5 books a day to break even. So far I’ve sold 12 books (1 audiobook) in 2 days. If my maths is right then I have broken even.
There’s an imbalance on the sales per day so I will be evaluating properly after a week to see if it is worth the cost. In the decision I will need to factor read-through, so I would be happy with a break-even point at this stage.
I am also still running my advertisement for my mailing list, using the free download of OPERATION DAWN WOLF as a hook. The ad has been running for two weeks now and I have added 100 subscribers at a cost of £33.29. That’s giving me a cost per subscriber of 33p.
If I then work that back, I would roughly need a third of them to buy a book in order to break even. Hopefully at some point they will!
At this rate, and with a few other methods of getting subscribers, I could actually be on target to get the number of subscribers I ‘m aiming for at the end of the year!
Here’s a copy of the IN THE END Facebook advert image.
Other News
I published two interviews this week. If you want to check them out then click the links below. I have another four in the pipeline, probably more soon.
I don’t think there’s too much missing from this week’s activity, nothing of interest at least! I’ll be back next week for another update, so if you want to comment or make any suggestions, you’re more than welcome to!
GJ Stevens 