Personal Update

I have an early start this morning as I’m away with friends to hike the Isle of Wight (UK). There will be many great views, plenty of trash talk, two nights under the stars and maybe a few beers. Okay, there will definitely be beers!

This week I’ve found the joy of some excellent podcasts which although give me a little guilt as I’m not listening to audiobooks, they’re a great source of research. Bad People from BBC Sounds is particularly good, as is True Spies!

Work in Progress

I’m ticking along at a steady pace with the edit and run-through of FROM THE DEAD, but other than that I’ve not be doing too much productive work.

OPERATION DAWN WOLF released on audible just this morning, but I have no time to do anything about it. I’ll start the publicity on my return. At least audible have got their act together with approving audio, it took little over 10 days to process / approve, compared to 6 weeks for BEFORE THE END.

SALES AND MARKETING

My campaign with six ads running at a budget of £20 a day for the IN THE END series is running along nicely and giving around a 30% return. This is excellent, however I seem to always say this then things go downhill.

So that I can be more sure of my strategy, I decided to take a look back at my sales over time, in particular looking for trends from a weekly and monthly perspective. It’s quite tricky as I haven’t had a consistent budget or type of campaign, so all I can look at is the raw numbers.

The results showed me pretty much what I thought but were useful to help reassure myself and not mess with the ads when the sales drop. Looking at a monthly perspective, the ads generally start strong (the campaigns normally kick off at the start of the month) and after dropping a small amount, they are consistent until around the 17th / 18th of the month whereby they drop by a third, only to rise back up again 4-5 days later, before dropping off again with a few days to go before the end of the month.

From a weekly point of view, Sunday is the strongest day, then Monday and Tuesday, before slowing down as the days go on. As I say, this is not a strong analysis, but if I keep a consistent campaign the data will be more reliable. I’m keen to see how this month compares to this average.

For chart fans, I’ve included them below. Don’t worry about the numbers on the left hand side, its the trend of the line that’s important.

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In the quiet times between writing I’ve also been searching out a community of people who like spy-thrillers, writing to book bloggers who show an interest in the genre. There’s not too much to report yet but if you know of any, then drop me a message.

I think that’s about it for me today. I’ll return next week hopefully with lots of photos to share!