Personal Update

Not much to say here other than the exciting news that from 5th July we can go around our friend’s house and stay the night. About ten minutes after the Prime Minister announced the news, we’d organised to stay with our friends!

The Big Reveal

Following on from the exclusive reveal to my mailing list, I can now revealed the cover to the rest of the world. AFTER THE END is the third book in the series and starts where both IN THE END and BEFORE THE END finished and will be available from November 2020 if all goes to plan. I hope you like it!

Here are some of the unpaid ads / posts you’ll see around my social media in the coming days, all produced in Canva.

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I love the look of the three books side by side!

Work in Progress

I’ve been working on the IN THE END novella this week and I’ve chosen the title, BEGINNING OF THE END. It’s still on its first edit / re-write and edging slowly up the my target of 20,000 words. Yesterday I received the first third of the beta read back from Laura and I’m pleased to say that I’ve not come across any major issues so far, but there’s still two-thirds to go! Laura’s objective comments are exactly what a novel needs. I’m just too embedded in the story to see the problem with the details she picks out.

I’ll be editing AFTER THE END in the morning and working on BEGINNING OF THE END at lunchtime so I keep the momentum up on both books.

ODW Audiobook

I’m in discussions with a producer who has provided a promising audition, so fingers cross we should be in production soon.

Sales and Marketing

Sales continue to tick along at the same level, but despite what I said last week about not trying to upscale return on the marketing by increasing the budget, I went and did it again. I’ve doubled the budget of my Facebook ads for IN THE END and I’ve decided no matter what, I’m going to leave it at that for at least a month so I can get a true picture of how it effects the profit. It’s been a few days now and I’ve already seen a rise in sales but a drop in profit, however I’m sticking to my guns as I need to know if I’ve just been unlucky or if I need to be more patient to see the build-up effect, especially in Kindle Unlimited.

I’ve given away a lot of promo audiobooks this month (which I don’t count in my turnover for this purpose) so I have a bit of cash to invest in the trial.

I’ll post up the latest sales figures at the end of the month, including the format types for those that are interested.

On the upside, sales for June have already passed last month’s, which had been my highest ever. I’m now nearly at an all time total of around 2,500 book sales with 3/5ths of that figure coming from February onwards when I started paid advertising.

I’ve also been playing around the various options in my head for the CARRIE HARRIS series. I’ve decided to set it to free on Amazon instead of just free to my mailing list. My reasoning is as follows:

• Although offering the book for free to my list has driven a good level of subscribers, sales from mailings to the list are very poor.
• If people get the book from Amazon then the Amazon machine will introduce them and recommend the second in the series, saving me the trouble, plus they’ll recommend any future releases and my other books.
• I know I will get a load more downloads through Amazon, especially if I advertise, so it gets the book out in the wild and hopefully draws in more reviews.

You can’t actually set a book to be perma-free on Amazon. Instead you have to put the book on sale for free on the other stores, Google Play, Kobo and Smashwords, and then request Amazon price match. They have done this for the UK marketplace but have yet to complete it elsewhere. It’s been a week now so I’ve put in another request.

When the novella for the series is complete, I’ll give it to my mailing list first before deciding whether to put it for sale too.

I think that’s about it for me. If you want to grab a free copy of OPERATION DAWN WOLF then you can grab if from Amazon. If it’s showing you have to pay then you may have to wait a few days more.

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Formed of audio transcripts of covert recordings and team member journal entries, this file documents OPERATION DAWN WOLF, an EYES-ONLY covert operation to identify and terminate the perpetrators of ongoing [redacted] of the highly secret Special Operations candidate selection process.

The transcripts document the progression of [redacted] recruited 2Lt [redacted] (now known as Carrie Harris, aka Candidate Corra Hughes) through the agency’s Special Operations selection process, [redacted].

The files contain numerous redactions to protect the identities of current and past operations and operational agents, lowering the security status of the information from EYES ONLY to SECRET.

No details have been changed or edited, however the final report by [redacted] cannot be downgraded to SECRET and is therefore omitted.