PERSONAL UPDATE

This week was my first week working in my new self contained office for my day job as an alternative to working from. I’m enjoying the walks to and from work, although walking fast for 15 minutes and then going for a 30 minute run on less food than I’ve been used to for the last four months is going to take some getting used to!

Tomorrow is the official start of my summer holiday and although we won’t be going to Spain now, we have lots of plans, including camping in Dorset for next the three days. There will be lots of long walks, meals out and other fun over the coming days. I’ve also decided to take two weeks off blogging during this time. At least I should have lots to talk about when I return.

WORK IN PROGRESS

This week has been focused on significant tweaks to the ending of AFTER THE END. I’ve completed the structural works on this yesterday and now I’m back reading through the last quarter of the book and making general edits following feedback from my beta reader / development editor.

I plan to get this finished whilst I’m on leave, including spending one day in the office concentrated solely on the edit. For those of you who think I should skip it until after the holidays, I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to relax knowing it is sitting there waiting to be done. Taking a day out means I can leave it alone for the rest of the time and not feel the guilt that I should be working on it.

I hope to have finished the final long read through and final edits before September. If all goes to plan then it’s off to the copy editor and back mid-October. That gives me a month and a half for the copy edit changes, proof reading and then proofing the paper back. It’s going to be tight but I’ll give it a go!

Wow this year is flying by!

SALES AND MARKETING

Last week I told you I would leave the marketing alone. Well that went out of the window. Downloads of OPERATION DAWN WOLF were dwindling so I turned off the ad. I’m still getting a couple of downloads a day but I’m going to wait until September to see if the sales of the other books follow through before I think about the next plan.

On a whim I created a new ad for the IN THE END series using an awesome photo I found on Shutterstock and a great new review. This time I’ve also incorporated that IN THE END is £0.99/$0.99 and included the full blurb. I also increased the budget to £30 a week. I ran a test on the Facebook ad platform and the new ad had 4 times the number of clicks over a two day period so I killed the old ad and now I have the new one running on it’s own. So far my profit level is doing okay at about £8 a day, but it’s early days and there is often a boost at the start of using a new ad.

Also because the ad includes all three books, the sales of BEFORE THE END have increased and loads of people have been asking when AFTER THE END comes out, which is great to hear.

You can check out the new ad image below.

I had a note from the narrator for OPERATION DAWN WOLF the other day to say that the recording is nearly 50% complete, so it shouldn’t be too long until I need to start approving it.

That’s everything for this week and I’ll catch up at the end of August. If you’re managing to get away, or just having some time off work, I hope you enjoy yourself.

Comments and questions welcomed as always.