EVENTS

With the Saturday sun beating down on the fair cathedral city of Salisbury, the tourists were out in force, as were the readers, apparently.

Despite there being two other authors with stalls, I managed to hit a record profit (outside of Christmas) at any event and it was my third highest profit ever! The highlights included meeting a very nice chap I’d met last year who’d travelled quite some distance to come and see me so he could buy the Agent Carrie Harris series. I’d talked to him about it last time we’d met and gave him a short story. Another was a cringe inducing request for a photograph with a customer.

Tomorrow I’ll be at Chichester, and it’s looking to be excellent weather, then that’s it for May as I’ll be on holiday!

WORK IN PROGRESS

Predictably, I’m storming on with the second book in the LOST AMONGST THE STARS series. After spending a few hours outlining the general direction of the book, and again setting up to target around sixty to seventy thousand words, I’ve started writing in earnest. I’ve already hit 5,500 words which accounts for seven chapters. The creative juices are really flowing with this project already so I know I made the right choice.

LOST AMONGST THE STARS

Although the MS is still with the editor, and will be for a few weeks yet, I’ve been thinking on the details of what I want to do with it once it’s completed. In an ideal world I’d release the book in the normal way and send of the first few chapters to query with agents at the same time. This will allow me to get paperbacks printed and sell the book on the stall, plus I know there are quite a few people excited for the project too.

However, agents don’t want anyone else to have read the book until they have had a chance to take it up. Or if it has been released, then it needs to have been a great success for it to catch their attention.

The problem is my impatience, coupled with the fact that I don’t think it’s likely that the book will get picked up, so I see it as a long shot that will be a pointless delay.

The middle ground is if I get the books printed by a book printing company and just sell them at my live events whilst I query. I’m looking into book printing options and the costs don’t seem to prohibitive, apart from the cost of an ISBN. However, when selling directly, i.e. not through a distributor, I don’t actually need one. Perhaps I will sell them as ‘special edition’ or ‘pre-release copies.’

I have a book sample coming my way to see what the quality is like, and you never know, if it’s better than KDP then it might be the way to go in the future.

MARKETING AND PROMOTION

Online sales have been steady with the advertising, but I think it’s coming to the end of the good times for this current run. I’ve thought that a few times and then find out that a low sales day turns out to be just a delay in Amazon reporting. I’ll now trigger a new advert if I get two poor sales days in a row, or after two weeks, unless the sales are particularly strong.

That’s me for this week. Comments and suggestions welcomed as always.