This week I took delivery of FATE’S AMBITION with the new cover and it looks amazing. I can’t wait to show them of at Godalming on Saturday and see how people react. I only ordered ten copies in case there was an issue, and so now I have another bundle on the way.

WORK IN PROGRESS

I’m over eighty percent through the current edit of book 3 of the James Fisher series, which I’ve still not named. I’ve started the process of writing a blurb for it in order that I can place it in the back of book 2.

I rejected a second cover idea for THEIR RIGHT TO VENGEANCE as it still wasn’t right, so I ended up looking for images for them to work with myself. Yesterday they came back and it was exactly what I was looking for. Now they just need to finalise it all and then I can get on with the rest of the production.

Amazon KDP announced a couple of important changes this week. Firstly, you can now publish a paperback to go live on a certain date. Between the time of pressing the button and the publish date the book will show up on Amazon, but will not be available for pre-order. The second important change is that during this time, the author can order author copies. This means no more need to silently publish the paperback in order to get your own copies.

I think I will start updated my publishing book with these changes soon and more soon, as I specifically talk about this. I can produce a revised version and relaunch the book next year, or when I run out of author copies.

EVENTS

Last Sunday attended my first ever comic-con, and I had a stall! I wasn’t sure what to expect, either from the event or from a sales perspective. On arrival my first surprise was how big the place was. It was held in a leisure centre the next town over and the place was rammed with stalls. Most were of course selling what you expect, comics and art and associated collectables, but there was also jewellery stalls and another pair of authors too.

As the place opened and the aisles filled with the roving professionals in costumes paid to be there for photographs, including lots of characters from Star Wars (storm troopers and wookies amongst them), and a darlek, there were also plenty of kids, and fully grown adults, in homemade costumes. I found myself cringing a lot for the first few hours.

I used my usual tactic of offering bookmarks and it worked well, but it was a little more difficult than normal because the walkways were much wider. Eventually the sales came in. At the end of the day I would say that, despite the setting, the demographic for the audience was much like that of what I see at my craft fairs, this being backed up by the range of books they bought. I made a profit on the day but it was lower than I have come to expect on average at craft fairs. However, I may do one more of these as a test, and because they are on a Sunday, whereas my craft fairs are typically on a Saturday.

MARKETING & PROMOTION

After almost a week without Facebook ads my sales and Kindle page reads have pretty much dried up. After reading somewhere that often adding less audience targeting to your ads can let the Facebook algorithm find more of your specific audience, I thought I would give it another go. I set the ads up yesterday and I’ll give it a week to build up steam. If it’s not successful then this is the last Facebook campaign I will be doing before trying Amazon Ads.

If I do need to do Amazon Ads then I will find my Ads for Authors account details and refresh myself with the content before diving back in.

That’s it for this week. Back for more of the same next week!