It’s a week now until my first event of the year and signs are looking very good that it will be going ahead. I can’t wait to get out there and meet people again, and hopefully some of them will buy my books. In particular I’m looking forward to seeing how my novellas fair! More on that further down.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Capital Action Audiobook – I approved the audio at the weekend and submitted it to Findaway Voices and it was approved the very same day. It’s now on its way to numerous distributors. I’ve set it to be free but not all of them will accept it on that business model.

Beginning of the End Audiobook – My narrator for the Carrie Harris series has auditioned for this role but it sounds too much like Carrie Harris. I have instead requested auditions from Findaway Voices. They should be back to me next week to see what comes of it.

Purple Rain Series – Not a load of progress on the first book due to the long weekend and having a day off for DIY on Wednesday. I’m still working through the first third of the book editing.

From the Dead – Not much progress here on the final read-through. I wish I had so much more time in my life!

SALES AND MARKETING

In The End – Sales are progressing well and I have upped my daily budget on FB to £25 but it’s too early to tell if it is having the desired effect on the sales. I will review at the end of the month. On the spur of the moment I put the books up for AMS and quickly saw my pages reads double, but looking at the figures they weren’t high enough to cover the cost of the ads themselves, plus I cannot be sure if it wasn’t just a high from the normal ebb and flow of sales.

One interesting but unsurprising fact, since introducing the novella, BEGINNING OF THE END, the read-through for the last two books has doubled (65% to BTE and 45% to ATE), according to the limited data since the release. This makes sense because the entry point to the series is BOTE so the smallest read-through will be between the novella and the first in the series. That figure is difficult to measure both because it hasn’t been enough time since release and because some people may start with the first novel in the series rather than the novella. The figure right now is around 10% read-through from the novella to IN THE END. I will continue to look at this figure as data comes in.

Carrie Harris Series – With no adverting I’m not getting more than a handful of downloads, but the previous downloads have resulted in page reads and some audiobook sales. I’m still moving forward with trying to get bloggers to review, but this is a long process.

I’ve decided that the last major factor I can deal with in the poor take up of the series is the covers. Although I love them, they go against the major rule for covers. Look like all of the other covers on the shelf for the same genre. I believe the simple covers I designed express the genre, but I think they could be so much better, because it is true that people do judge a book by its cover. They certainly don’t look like anything else on the shelf.

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All this said I’m not going to jump in head first. The plan is to synchronise the new cover launches by the end of this year’s events season as I should have sold or given away all of the stock of printed novellas. This gives me plenty of time to find a new designer and have a cover for all 4 books produced. It’s not going to be cheap but it is worth it as the only other option is to have wasted all of the investment I have already put in.

This decision means that I need to target the sales of 25 novellas per event and if I haven’t sold that many as the day progresses I can give them away to people who have a passing interest. If sales of the novellas are strong then I can bring forward the production of the new covers.

I have a string of days off work next week so I can’t imagine making much writing progress, but I’ll keep plodding on. Comments and suggestions welcomed as always.