PERSONAL UPDATE

I’m super excited. Firstly I’ve just downloaded my tickets for the Silverstone Formula One Grand Prix which is happening in a month’s time. Secondly, although one event in June has been cancelled, the second, in a week’s time, is going ahead. It’s a re-run of the very successful event I attended at Christmas and it is over two days. I have the Friday before off for some work in the garden and the following Monday to catch up on what I missed by being at the event. So all in all it should be a great weekend.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Purple Rain Series – Book One – This is the only project I have any progress to report on. I’m around 9,000 words into the first major edit / revision and all is progressing well. It’s still too early to predict a release date but if I had to stick my finger in the air then it would be about six months time if all goes well. That puts it to my traditional publishing month of November. However I’m not putting any pressure on myself for this date.

I do have a slight dilemma which has crept in. A month or so ago I found out that one of the customers of the place where I work was diagnosed with cancer and the outlook is not good. I knew he is into books and having been forced to retire had so much time on his hands. I’ve known him for over ten years and he’s a really good guy. Knowing that he likes Lee Child books I sent him a copy of FATE’S AMBITION and OPERATION DAWN WOLF. Yesterday he emailed me to say how much he enjoyed FATE’S AMBITION and he’d love to buy a copy of the second book. I had to tell him it’s not been released yet and it needs quite a bit of work to get it up to standard, including professional editing.

I’d always planned to get those two books released but because I’m not promoting FATE’S AMBITION and it’s not selling, I just haven’t had the motivation to slip it into the schedule in place of something I know I can sell. So my dilemma is, do I push it to the head of the queue in order that I can get it out to him as soon as possible, or leave it until I’m ready. It’s a tough one.

SALES AND MARKETING

I’ve come to believe that my Facebook ads have been like a drug to me. Whenever I look at my Amazon sales I feel like something is missing and I think about turning the ads on. However when I total up my sales and ad costs in the morning, that feeling washes away. I’m currently on track for hitting the same level of gross profit as I did last month and I’m not missing that constant feeling as to whether I’m throwing money away on the ads. I keep reminding myself, ‘turnover is vanity, profit is sanity.’

Next month I think I will keep the ads off and perhaps put them back on in August and see what happens. But I might even leave it longer if the profit is still there as I hope the snowball effect of my unpaid Facebook marketing will be paying dividends.

Fan Club

After another week the membership is building nicely. For now it’s another place I have to spend time in, both to recruit new members and to keep some activity in there. Hopefully as the membership increases the activity will too.

If you want to join the party then here’s the link.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/anticsandescapades

Okay. I think that’s about it for me today.