My First Missed Deadline

November saw two great weeks of downloads, due to the two promotions on Books Butterfly and Booksends, that I mentioned last month. I was encouraged by the figures in the remaining three weeks too. There are no more paid promotions until 2017 now, so I fully expect the downloads to drop away. It seems evident I can’t sustain the higher figures, without adding to my marketing budget. C’est la vie.

‘A New Dawn’, #6 in The Phoenix series, is behind schedule. I’m going to miss my Christmas deadline! I’ve got 40k words finished, so its two-thirds of the way there. There’s no sign of the dreaded ‘block’, it’s more a desire to get the ‘feel’ of this one right.

If there are up to six more titles to follow, then certain structures need to be put into place, to provide avenues for the necessary story lines. I hope readers like the subtle alteration in style. My own view is that I’ll gain new followers, with a slight change in direction. My fervent hope is that I don’t lose any of my current readers.

If you want news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club? Newsletter #7 will be published in the New Year. A Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year. I’ll be back in January with lots more news I need to keep this blog post short – that book won’t finish itself!

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A Dig In The Ribs

October was an interesting month, but ultimately it saw little return for the ‘dripping tap’ experiment. Despite the efforts of a handful of sites offering cheaper advertising for ‘Nothing Is Ever Forever’ and ‘In The Lap Of The Gods’ via 3 day blog posts & tweets; Daily spotlight; and 7 day pinning to Home page there were few actual sales.

I’ve used Books Butterfly this week for the two permanently free titles and ‘Bingo!’ the extra money I laid out paid dividends immediately. Over 700 downloads in 3 days. On Monday it’s a return to Booksends for a blast on ‘Gold, Silver, and Bombs’. (On Aug 8th ‘The Olympus Project’ got the same treatment and that yielded almost 1500 downloads) You get what you pay for I guess?

The next three weeks are promotion-free zones and although Digital Books Today are running a campaign throughout Dec/Jan, I’m waiting to decide where to target my promotion next.

The ‘dripping tap’ has been abandoned for the time being. It seems more beneficial to give the vast reading public ‘a dig in the ribs’ from time to time. So, the strategy going forward is ‘larger lumps every now and then’!

Time will tell whether this will bring lasting rewards, or just short term elation as the Amazon rankings improve sharply.

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The EIGHT paperbacks are still on the shelves awaiting orders. I’m still trying to work out how to promote these better. All ideas welcomed.

I’ve reduced the number of daily posts via Buffer, with that mixed-bag of titles, images and media. October saw an increase in impressions, but not enough to warrant it being a regular method of communication. Time for another batch of tweets, images and media vehicles perhaps?

Although the modest, regular spend strategy is now out of the window, I’m still increasing my ‘background’ presence with listings on EReader Café, Readers In The Know and The Fussy Librarian.

The website is fully functional at present, but there are changes to be made and by the dawn of 2017 I hope to let you see a slimline, more dynamic site. More news as I get it.

I’ve made a start on ‘A New Dawn’, book six in The Phoenix series, but it’s behind schedule. Mea culpa! Not to panic though, if I can write 3k words per day for 20 days between now and the 30th of November, it will still be ready for Christmas. No worries.

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If you want news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club. Newsletter #6 will be circulated to my ‘happy band of followers’ in a few hours.

The Dripping Tap Plan

With every month comes new challenges. September has thrown up a few familiar ones I’m afraid, but resilience is one attribute that a writer develops over time.

A setback that would have floored me a year ago is merely a mild irritation these days. All the evidence shows that progress is being made, so ‘onwards and upwards’.

The book promotion early last month yielded almost 900 downloads. The last three weeks were promotion-free zones and the drop-off in sales was significant, but not as low as the barely-visible levels of January to June.

The EIGHT paperbacks are now on the shelves awaiting orders. Don’t be shy!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

If you’ve read the ‘Reverse Engineering’ blog post from a week or so back, then you will know I’ve been busy measuring my ‘digital footprint’ against others in my field. It’s a constant task; nothing stands still in social media. If it does; it stagnates very quickly.

So what’s new? The dripping tap? This will be evident on THREE fronts between now and the end of the year.

I’ve increased the number of daily posts via Buffer, with a mixed-bag of titles, images and media.

I’ve identified up to THIRTY promotion sites with potential benefits for the indie author. You might still see the occasional obvious ‘big spend’ on the sites I’ve mentioned in earlier posts, but essentially I’ve targeted a modest spend EVERY week across a range of promoters.

Instead of a possible ‘spike’ on a particular day, I’m hoping to spread the word far and wide, picking up a few new readers here and there, day by day.

On Twitter, I have looked into the ‘Moments’ category, which has been available for around a year. It seems to me to be a fertile area for investigation. Watch out for my ‘Moments’ over the coming weeks.

There’s always a downside isn’t there? I pray that you can read this post without difficulty. My website has been playing up of late and the support I thought was readily available seems to have gone walkabout. If it can’t be resolved successfully soon, then I’ll be off to pastures new.

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If you want more news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club. Newsletter #5 will be circulated to my ‘happy band of followers’ in a few hours.

Can We Learn From The Best?

I know this is earlier than expected, but I spotted a post from another blogger about ‘reverse engineering’ and thought I’d give it a spin.

The basic steps: –
1.Select a group of writers in your genre that you admire, or you believe are a few rungs up the ladder from you. I went mad and chose NINE! Three ‘greats’; three well-known indie crime thriller writers and three who specialize in Vigilante Justice series.

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2.Compare and contrast your covers. Produce a photo collage. Is there anything you can learn? In my case, I noticed Ian Rankin’s Rebus series uses very similar covers across its range, quite basic in design, but easily identifiable as part of a series. As you know, I elected to keep the same Phoenix image throughout the series. Tim Stevens and Jon Mills use almost exactly the same cover image.
The font size for titles and author name on many of the people I chose is far larger than mine. Colour though, isn’t that important to the group. My cover stands out from the rest because of the bold orange I used. Or is that just me being protective?
3.Check out the ‘blurb’ for the book. I deliberately cut off where Amazon states ‘Read More’. If you haven’t captured their interest in the first half-dozen lines, why would buyers delve deeper? If you do read on, some of the ‘big’ names have reams of information, mini-reviews from other ‘big’ names and prestigious publications. Although we can’t all add in that much detail, there are tips and tricks to learn from what they say & how they say it.
4.Look at the huge variety in the author bios! Claude Bouchard tells you about his writing, but there are lots of personal insights too; he gives the impression of being approachable. The sort of guy you might want to know? Jon Mills tells you zip about himself. Decide for yourself what works best and try to match the content and flavour of your bio to which you think is the best. I’ll let you into a secret: – when I re-vamped mine last year, I visited Ian Rankin’s. Apart from all the accolades and achievements he’s got in his, it contains some personal background followed by a list of all the books he’s written in chronological order. I used his as my template; thinking I could add in the accolades if/when they came along!
5.Analyse their social media output. Where are they? What do they tweet about? How do they use their Facebook page? How interesting is their website? Do they have other ‘footprints’ to help them sell books in greater numbers than us? My chosen authors were a mixed bag, but a couple had websites that were awesome (when compared to my own) and yet Tim Stevens, who is prolific and successful doesn’t have a dedicated website. Peter James has a YouTube TV channel (another box I can now tick) and Karin Slaughter posts dozens of trailers, interviews and other items through YouTube on her website.
6.Some writers suggest you should read books by your ‘favourite’ or ‘successful’ authors and then use what they wrote about & how they did it to improve your own writing. I think that’s rubbish! Be your own person. The world doesn’t need another Ian Rankin (sorry Sir). Your stories have to be unique in some way that sets them apart from the crowd. You’ll never achieve that if you follow the template laid down by another writer, no matter how brilliant they might be.

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There’s nothing really new in this approach is there? I remember reading articles from other bloggers and book promotion site owners telling me pretty much the same things over the past four years. I agonised over my covers, my blurb and my bio twelve to eighteen months ago and re-vamped everything. I think it had a positive effect; but you can’t afford to sit still. It’s time to re-assess. I’m going to sift through the data I’ve gathered and I’ll tweak those areas of my set-up I think will benefit from ‘learning from the best’. If you want to try it out yourself (I suggest on a more limited number of writers!) it might help; if it does come back & tell me all about it.

This was a bonus post. There are lots of newsworthy items left over for another day. I’ll be back in a fortnight. Happy Autumn!

Available In Words And Pictures

Before you know it, August will have come and gone. It’s time for a new blog post and another hectic month of events to catch up on.

The promotions for ‘The Olympus Project’ and ‘Gold, Silver, and Bombs’ produced a huge surge in downloads on the 8th of August, with just under 1400 books in twenty-four hours. Many thanks, and welcome to those new readers.

It was inevitable that after such a great day, the next three weeks would be an anti-climax, but it’s true what they say: – after you manage to get that ‘spike’ in sales, you don’t drop back to the level you were at previously. So, with very little promotion going on, the figures are still healthy.
Nothing Is Ever Forever

I have been running a promo for ‘Nothing Is Ever Forever’ #3 in the series, and at $0.99 it’s a bargain! As I promised last time, #4 ‘In The Lap Of The Gods’ has been reduced to the same price in the past week.

Yes, that means TWO things! One, you can get the first FOUR books in The Phoenix series for $1.98; and two, ‘The Price Of Treachery’ #5 in the series is OUT NOW. Priced at $2.99 the reviews are starting to arrive and a 14 Day Book Launch promotion starts on Monday 29th August on Digital Books Today.
The Price Of Treachery

Just in case you thought I sat back after completing the new book, the paperback situation has been moving forward quickly. There are EIGHT titles on Createspace waiting for their Cover files. The fabulous ‘The Cover Collection’ will be supplying those in the next few days and before you know it, I’ll be a Paperback Writer.

The heading for this blog post was ‘Words & Pictures’. I paid for Video Book Trailers for some of my early titles, but the outlay wasn’t justified by the number of views/sales they generated. I’ve got my own channel on YouTube now (Author Ted Tayler) with half a dozen Slideshows for my books. They all run for around ONE minute and although the ‘old’ ones are still out there, I’ll be using my new found skill to spice up my tweets and Facebook updates.
The series so far -

I’m planning a new promotion for The Phoenix series in mid-September, so watch this space. That buzz doesn’t show any signs of disappearing; even if it’s a little quieter just at present. Help me turn up the volume!

If you want more news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club. Newsletter #4 will be circulated ‘when September comes’ – to coin a phrase.

A Real Buzz

Well, another month has passed. This time I’ve got more to tell you than in any month since I started this blog almost five years ago.

The first two books in The Phoenix series have remained FREE throughout July. That situation is set to continue. I plan to keep ‘Nothing Is Ever Forever’ at the $0.99 level and when book five is published, then ‘In The Lap Of The Gods will be reduced to match it.

I mentioned the promotion initiatives last month. Well, all three that I invested in have run their course. Wow! What a transformation. After three years of writing novels and trying to get the word out there – something wonderful happened.

If you write books and sell in huge numbers, then you will probably wonder why I am so excited. If you’re like the vast majority of us who have never sold more than single digits in a day, then maybe you’ll get it.

The promotions have helped to boost my numbers to just short of 3000 units in July. Both of the free books have consistently been in the Top 100 Free Crime/Thriller listings and ‘The Olympus Project’ has been as high as #5.

The series

So I want to give a huge vote of thanks to the people below: –

http://goodkindles.net

http://digitalbooktoday.com

http://bookpromo.net

More promotions follow during August and September. Good Kindles are promoting ‘Nothing Is Ever Forever’ from next Monday (8th) and Digital Book Today are running promos for the first two books here : –

Nothing Is Ever Forever

Nothing sparks your enthusiasm like good news does it? So, ‘The Price Of Treachery’ is 50000 words down, with around 15000 to go. It should be completed by the end of this week, then it’s edits and rewrites followed by the never-ending hunt for early readers and reviews.

I’m still awaiting a green light to publish the books in paperback. I’ve been busy writing these past three weeks and I’ve not chased it up as I should have. That’s my task for this month. Get that sorted. Oh, and finish the book.

There’s been a real buzz around the place this month. Let’s hope it continues. Happy days!

If you want more news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club. Newsletter #3 will be circulated in the next 48 hours.

All The News That’s Fit To Print

Do you remember that slogan from a long defunct newspaper? I certainly do. Well, another month has passed and I’ve not written a word. Why am I being so lazy?

I’ve been far from idle; I’ve finally completed editing all the novels and short stories. Amazon US and UK have been extremely speedy and generous in setting the first two books in the series as permanently FREE. Although whenever I make that claim they seem to move the goalposts!

I want people to read the third and fourth stories, as well as look forward in eager anticipation for books five and six. I have no plans to reduce the price of the later books any further than the $0.99 or £0.99 level that ‘Nothing Is Ever Forever’ stands at currently. I need to get some return on my investment! Getting the word out there seems to be proving harder than I realised.

New Olympus Cover


I mentioned the promotion initiatives last month. Well, all three that I invested in are either under way or on hold while Amazon sort out their position. Both of the FREE books were first for the treatment. Various options were available involving listings, excerpts and Twitter blasts. You may well see some of these sites helping the cause: –

http://goodkindles.net

http://digitalbooktoday.com

http://bookpromo.net

More promotions will follow on during July and August if these prove successful and I can engineer a level playing field.

New GSandB Cover
I had a great ‘thank you’ message from Kate Teng from Canva for my comments last month about their website. It’s gratifying to know that someone reads my blog post. Even more so that someone takes the time and trouble to reach out to you in person.

Ever since my first book I have stuck to the modern option; kindle only. I kept getting prompts from Amazon about Createspace and Print On Demand so I wondered what was involved in getting my files ready for paperback publishing.

A lot less than I imagined! Around 45 minutes per book to prepare the word files to upload. I had covers already of course and the Createspace wizard steps you through the process effectively.
So that’s been my excuse for not writing this month! All of The Phoenix series and the two novels that preceded it are set to go into print as soon as I can ensure the promotions are working. I just have to await the tax form saga to be completed and I can press the GO button.

Maybe next week I’ll start writing ‘The Price Of Treachery’. Look out for those initiatives on the promotion front; and the new ones to follow. Enjoy July and I’ll be back at the end of the month with an update on how things have progressed.

If you want more news of offers and gifts, why not join The Phoenix Club. Newsletter #2 will be circulated in early July.

In The Lap Of The Gods

I know it’s been a long while since I posted anything. I’ve not been entirely idle. The holiday in Ibiza went very well. The weather was fine; the company and the hospitality was excellent as always.
When I returned home the new book was sitting there on Amazon ‘ticking over’. I actually published it before I went on holiday, in the end. The reviews so far have been very favourable; but true to form they’re thin on the ground with a dozen of my ARC’s yet to post their opinions.

I intended to start on Book 5 as soon as I got back. In the end I started on my editing problems. Four weeks later I’ve done everything except my book of short stories. Grammar, punctuation and spelling were dragged screaming into focus earlier in the year (Feb/Mar) and now many more categories that might have antagonised reviewers/readers have been corrected. I don’t profess to have eliminated 100% of the problems, but using Pro Writing Aid (£35 for a year) and grafting for a few hours a day myself is my only option as I couldn’t afford a professional edit on all of my books. (£5000 – £7000 roughly?)

Maybe in a week or two I’ll get cracking on ‘The Price Of Treachery’.

What now? I think I’ll call it a ‘renewal’ rather than a ‘relaunch’. I’ve not promoted the new book at all (apart from a few daily tweets). I need to find a way to kick-start everything from the beginning. Answers on a postcard please! By ‘everything’ I mean from ‘Conception’ to the latest Phoenix title (5 books in total)
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My website crashed while we were away. I hadn’t noticed until someone wrote and told me. It’s still not fully functional. This is the first time in six weeks I’ve tried to use it; so fingers crossed this post will appear. That’s another job on the list – get to grips with WordPress.

Mentioning the ‘black dog’ didn’t have the desired outcome; my daughter’s black Labrador Bailey had to be put to sleep three weeks ago. Very sad. I’m not a pet lover, but even I miss him.
Heart N Soul
For those of you who read the book that started all this back in 2011, last month also saw another of my great friends from the old days die suddenly. We heard after we got home from Ibiza. Merv Osman, our keyboard player was 68. A larger than life character with talent to burn. He lifted us from a run-of-the-mill pop group to one of the top soul bands in the West Country and South Wales. We shared some terrific memories. (Merv is on the right hand end of the photo)

So, look out for some new initiatives on the promotion front. Prepare to be amazed/amused by my Canva designs.
Enjoy June and all things being equal I’ll have some snippets of positive news for you in a month from now. As Bailey and Merv will attest, whatever happens will be in the lap of the Gods.

After The Black Dog

It wouldn’t take a genius to work out that I’ve had some serious thinking to do over the past six to eight weeks. It didn’t help that for a lot of that time I was ill; perhaps that helped to tip me over the edge from ‘mildly disappointed’ to ‘seriously pissed-off’.

After three years of hard graft, I was getting nowhere. I struggled to get reviews, struggled to get sales and since January and the launch of The Phoenix Club, I struggled to get people to sign up to my email list.

It was time for some serious questions to be asked: –

1. Was I still enjoying writing?
2. Did I want to know what might happen next in The Phoenix series?
3. Could I do anything differently to what I had been doing, given the financial strictures that I face?
4. Was there any realistic chance of improvement?

The answer to questions one and two was an unequivocal YES.
I decided that MAYBE was the honest answer to question three.
As for question four, I still have to be brutally honest and say NO.

With the answer to the first two questions ringing in my ears, I shut myself away from March 7th onwards and completed Book 4 in The Phoenix series.

‘In The Lap Of The Gods’ will be published in around two weeks time.

You will recall my earlier post which listed ‘must-have things’ for new titles.
It needs a compelling synopsis; plus a decent cover – so here they are: –
In The Lap Of The Gods

This is the fourth book in the series so far, and it takes the stories featuring the Olympus Project in a new and exciting direction.
From Larcombe Manor, Phoenix and Athena have battles to win against vicious gangsters on home soil and urgently need to identify factions within the organization plotting to take it in a different, far more sinister direction.
The opening scenes at Glastonbury 2013 to the closing chapter cover little more than a month in time. Yet in that short month, the landscape surrounding the Project is altered forever.
The action is non-stop as it switches from the West Country to Windsor, then from England to the Mediterranean. Take a deep breath; once you start you’ll keep turning pages until the end.

Most of all a new title needs reviews, the writer’s lifeblood. So things have to change. The promotion and marketing avenues I’ve pursued so far haven’t worked; so it’s time to ditch them. I’m looking for new ways to get the word out there that my books are worth reading. I’m looking for new reviewers to take a look, to add to my loyal band of ‘first responders’.

The budget is still limited. The odds against success are still astronomical.

As the problem of question 4 is unlikely ever to be resolved, I’ve decided on an exit strategy. After I get home from holiday on Ibiza in early May I’ll continue with ‘The Price Of Treachery’ the next title in the series. (Chapter 1 is written and available as a ‘taster’ at the end of ‘In The Lap Of The Gods’)

If I still enjoy the writing and stories continue to flow into my head then maybe Book 5 won’t be the last; perhaps an even number would be best. If it takes two books to get the story to a satisfactory conclusion – so be it.

Either way, there will be no massive effort from me to promote my writing. I’m going to write, publish, inform and then walk away to find another hobby. It’s the only sane thing to do; beating myself up over every element that makes up the books, the website, and the marketing is driving me nuts.

Apologies for another negative post! Actually, committing it to paper, as it were, is quite liberating. I know what I’m doing now and writing the final books will be a lot easier than if I was undecided about the future. If my mind was still in turmoil I might start writing a few chapters and then stop for six months – thinking why rush? This way it will be done and dusted and as good as I can make it.
The fact that it’s not enough to be successful isn’t anything I appear to be able to do anything about. I just have to be happy with the knowledge that the characters I have created have excited me and held my interest for almost four years. That has to be enough. It’s far more than I imagined I could achieve when I wrote by book of memories just over eight years ago. When I wondered if I could write a novel in December 2012 I was entering totally uncharted waters. I’ve travelled a long way. All journeys have to end somewhere.

Welcome Newsletter

I hope you like the new theme for the website? You’ll have spotted the sign-up area too for my new venture – The Phoenix Club. Many indie authors have an email list of readers. It makes that bond stronger between author and reader, more personal I believe, and as such there are some ground rules that on my part will always be followed.
If you entrust me with a direct contact link, then I will respect that and ensure that what I post to you is appropriate and not overly frequent.

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I’m excited to welcome you as a member of my Phoenix Club community. My newsletters focus on what I’m working on, what’s next for the brand, as well as keeping you in the loop about new releases and free/special offers. As soon as we hit 100 members – ALL your names will be entered into a draw; the winner will receive a Kindle Fire (worth £49.99). This draw will be repeated at the end of each quarter. Each month there will be additional gifts (free copies of my titles; perhaps a short story not available elsewhere and other ‘goodies’)

This is just the start of what I hope to offer you as we move forward in 2016 and beyond. A consistent message throughout. One newsletter per month, no more, no less. So like The Phoenix, spread your wings and sign up today. I’d love to have your company.
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