NEW RELEASES

Work on the release of the new covers is pretty much completed and they’re showing everywhere apart from a few wide audiobook stores. I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how quickly ACX updated the covers for the old Carrie Harris books.

This means I’m pretty much ready to start advertising the books on Amazon and I’ll then find out if the gamble of paying for new covers has worked! I’ll have some time at the weekend to put together keywords with the help of Publisher Rocket and give it a shot.

My wife is doing a last read through for proofing issues, and she’s caught a few, before the MS goes into production of the audiobook and over to the ARC readers! I’ve recruited a load more ARC readers, I call them my ARC angels, some of them haven’t read the Carrie Harris series so I’ll be very interested in how that works for them.

I’ve ordered paperbacks for OPERATION DAWN WOLF and LESSON LEARNED, and I can’t wait to see them with their new jackets and alongside each other. The proof for THE GEMINI ASSIGNMENT looks glorious!

WORK IN PROGRESS

Purple Rain Series Book 1 – I’m 78,000 words through the 103,000 word ms and I’m pleased with progress so far. Tonight I have some time to myself, and next week I have a couple of days off, so I hope to make a large dent in the remaining revision. As said a couple of weeks ago, I’m going to try timed sessions to try and keep my productivity near the level I have when I only have a hour or half an hour at a time.

MARKETING & PROMOTION

Sales are down on the floor. Even the page reads are like nothing I’ve seen since being back in Kindle Select, so I’ve decided to go back on AMS (advertising on Amazon) and see how much they bounce up. This will be a very good test based on the low baseline of sales I have now. The sponsored brand ads are now running and I plan to keep them live for at least three months to see if there is a build up effect. I’ve also made a few changes to the ad copy to make it really clear what the IN THE END series is about.

As of next week I will have the two sets of ads running and if it doesn’t work then it’s going to be expensive. Luckily enough, now that the cost of relaunching Carrie Harris and THE GEMINI ASSIGNMENT is accounted for, there’s nothing else big to pay for on the horizon until the next release.

EVENTS

Next week I’m attending two events with my books. On Wednesday I’ll be at a night time Christmas market in Ashford, Middlesex, (it’s going to be cold!) which was very successful when I attended last year. An event in Guildford on Friday will be my last craft fair of the season and it’s one I’ve been looking forward to for some time as it’s meant to be the most profitable event they run (and the stall fees reflect it’s popularity). It will be sad to say goodbye to the events until March, although they are hard work, and not always worth the money I earn, I always get to meet some great people and hopefully make a few new fans.

That’s it for this week. Comments, suggestions and preorders of The Gemini Assignment welcomed as always.

mybook.to/GeminiA