WORK IN PROGRESS

I approved the audio for OUT OF THE BLUE over the weekend so it won’t be long before I can start promoting the two audio shorts. I’m going to distribute wide and put them on sale for £1.99/$1.99c where I have control, whilst places like Audible will choose their own pricing.

Over the Easter break I managed to get a decent amount of editing completed on the draft for Their Right to Vengeance and I’m about 60% through, with 40,000 words of this run to go. It won’t be long before I have to start thinking about covers, and audio. If I’m going to commission audio I think I will need to do a review of the first book as once it’s recorded that is how it is staying.

As is my way, I’ve started investigating another project. It began as a question to the zombie group about what genre I should write in next. After some fun suggestions, I ended up choosing, with their help, to write a time-travelling sci-fi story. This week I’ve been thinking about characters and as I outline the six members of a spaceship crew I’ve been asking the group for names. So far we have Mac, the little person chef and Travis, a six foot tall pilot with mousey brown hair who never seems to be able to find shirts that fit his long arms. 

The third crew member who joins Mac and Travis, is the navigator. A short, nerdy guy who always wears t-shirts because he never feels the cold. He has round rimmed glasses which are as thick as the base of a bottle. He’s always sniffing as if he has a cold. He’s a hypochondriac and is always reading any medical diagnosis book he can get hold of. Some people think that if he just wore more clothes he’d feel much better. He’s generally quiet, but when he does speak he’s often insightful.

I think it’s going to be a humorous adventure book, somewhere between Guardians of the Galaxy and Red Dwarf, although I’m not confident I can write out and out comedy. There is a possibility I might even write this at a YA level, but we’ll see when I start tapping the keys.

EVENTS

Tomorrow I’m back at Witney! It will be the first event I will have STOPPING POWER, the complete first season and the dyslexia friendly copies of IN THE END. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer until I can add my publishing book into the mix.

Facebook Ads Diary

For those of you who missed last week’s post, I decided to start advertising the IN THE END series on Facebook again and I’m logging the progress on a day to day basis for this month long trial so you can follow along with the progress.

Day Five – Friday 7th April

Post likes and comments – 18 likes. 3 comments.

Frequency – 1.42

Link Clicks – 422

Spend to date – £27.46

Accredited Amazon sales – 9 (+7) – Includes 2 copies of BTE and ATE as bought together.

Accredited Audiobook sales – 3 (+0)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 464 (This is a marked increase in page reads per day)

Accredited sales – £35.60 (£8.14 profit)

Stress level – 2

What a great day, adding £20 to my sales and pushing me well into a profit of 30% on cost. This will certainly help out the days when I don’t see anything. Let’s see if we can sustain this, if a peek at Saturday’s morning figures are anything to go by, it looks like the page reading numbers weren’t a fluke.

Day Six – Saturday 8th April

Post likes and comments – 20 likes. 3 comments. 1 share.

Frequency – 1.49

Link Clicks – 527

Spend to date – £34.82

Accredited Amazon sales – 13 (+4) – Includes 1 copy of BTE and ATE as bought together.

Accredited Audiobook sales – 4 (+1)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 1,438

Accredited sales – £53.29 (£18.38 profit)

Stress level – 2

A second great day. This does lead me to believe this is due to the bank holiday, but we’ll have to wait and see. I’m hoping that after almost a week it’s just the ad maturing.

Day Seven – Sunday 9th April

Post likes and comments – 22 likes. 3 comments. 2 shares.

Frequency – 1.50

Link Clicks – 620

Spend to date – £40.13

Accredited Amazon sales – 13 (+0)

Accredited Audiobook sales – 4 (+0)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 2,324 (+886)

Accredited sales – £56.05 (£15.92 profit)

Stress level – 2

With no sales just page reads yesterday, it was a slower day and only covered half the cost of the ad. The page reads were a mixture of IN THE END and the next two book in the series as well. My stress level has remained low as whilst I type I can already see a single sale for Monday so with expected page reads, I would have covered the cost of Monday’s ad, and I’m hopefully on track for a bit of profit to add to total.

Day Eight – Monday 10th April

Post likes and comments – 22 likes. 3 comments. 2 shares.

Frequency – 1.58

Link Clicks – 684

Spend to date – £44.73

Accredited Amazon sales – 18 (+8)

Accredited Audiobook sales – 6 (+2)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 2,575 (+251)

Accredited sales – £84.46 (£39.74 profit)

Stress level – 2

Yesterday was another top sales day, equaling the best I’ve had so far in this campaign, and it proved even better than first thought because five hours after I checked the sales for the previous day another three sales had registered.

KU reads seem to be dropping off a little but that perhaps is a blip. With a sale already in the bank for Tuesday, it’s looking good again for today. This is the first day back at work from the Easter break for many so I think it likely it will be a slow day for sales, at least that’s what I’m prepared for.

Day Nine – Tuesday 11th April

Post likes and comments – 27 likes. 4 comments. 2 shares.

Frequency – 1.61

Link Clicks – 745

Spend to date – £49.38

Accredited Amazon sales – 25 (+7)

Accredited Audiobook sales – 6 (+0)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 3,249 (+674)

Accredited sales – £103.42 (£54.04 profit)

Stress level – 2

Sales reporting remained static throughout the day and it was only in the morning that I found out it was another excellent day of sales!

Day Ten – Wednesday 12th April

Post likes and comments – 27 likes. 4 comments. 2 shares.

Frequency – 1.60

Link Clicks – 789

Spend to date – £54.66

Accredited Amazon sales – 28 (+3 or 3 per day, on average)

Accredited Audiobook sales – 6 (+0)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 4,221 (+972 or 422 per day, on average)

Accredited sales – £114.98 (£60.94 profit which is £6.08 per day, on average)

Stress level – 2

Sales came in early yesterday which meant no fretting as to whether I would cover the ad’s cost. Kindle reads are on the up. A quick analysis shows that 50% of the people buying from the ad are purchasing just the first book in the series and the rest are buy the complete series. If 50% of those buy just the one book read the rest of the series then I estimate profit will be up by around £30 as it stands.

Day Eleven – Thursday 13th April

Post likes and comments – 28 likes. 4 comments. 2 shares.

Frequency – 1.62

Link Clicks – 843

Spend to date – £59.22

Accredited Amazon sales – 29 (+1 or 3 per day, on average)

Accredited Audiobook sales – 9 (+3)

Accredited Kindle Unlimited page reads – 5,213 (+992 or 480 per day, on average)

Accredited sales – £132.72 (£73.59 profit which is £6.68 per day, on average)

Stress level – 2

Increasing page reads and someone buying all three audiobooks gave a good boost to a slow kindle sales day. Based on the performance so far, I have no plans to make any changes to this campaign. As has happened in the past, I’m considering whether I should try advertising my other series but I came back to that fact that IN THE END as a series is in such an ideal place for advertising, i.e. it’s complete and has a high number of reviews. I might give it a go with Carrie Harris but I’m undecided.

That’s it for this week. Catch you on the flip side!