WORK IN PROGRESS

Much of the week has been about my science fiction story, and I’ve now completed what I think is the penultimate editing pass before I run it through ProWritingAid. I’m loving what I’ve written and can’t wait for it to get to the alpha readers.

I ended up changing the dwarf character to someone who was short and dumpy. I didn’t want any comeback for leaving my lane or inadvertently offending a minority.

SHATTERED DESTINY, the last of my James Fisher trilogy, has been through proof reading and the manuscript is set. I have a proof of the paperback on order and soon I’ll set up the kindle pre-release. I set the release date as 15th Feb! Once that’s organised I’ll do an official cover reveal and let everyone know about the pre-order. I have to admit, I’m so into getting the sci-fi story ready, I’m having to tear myself away to deal with this release!

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

This week IN THE END has been on sale (14th Jan to 20th Jan) and I’ve paid to advertise in a couple of third-party mailing lists.

Here are the results so far.

Mailing List 1

• Cost – $35 (£28)
• Accredited sales – £6.90 (14 units)

Free Marketing (Social media, Facebook link dropping & My Newsletter)

• Cost – £0
• Accredited sales – £9.03 (16 units)

Amazon Advertising

• Cost – £–
• Accredited sales – £0 (0 units)

Mailing List 2

• Cost – $15 (£12)
• Accredited sales – £3 (6 units)

Of course I cannot be certain where each of the leads came from so I can only pin it on the day each aspect of the campaign was activated. I also haven’t considered page reads (which are exceptionally low at the moment, as these are likely to come later on).

The total cost was £40 and the total sales revenue was £19. This gives a direct loss of -£21. That sounds terrible but it actually means I need a read through rate of around 10% in order to break even. I think that is pretty realistic for I can be confident this exercise has been a success.

One of the key takeaways from the exercise is that the price hurt the Amazon advertising, rather than making more people buy!

That’s it for this week. I’ll be back in seven days for the next instalment!