Looking at ways to improve my sales

January 17^th. 2015

I’m stepping up a gear this year. Last week I put my latest book, A Dangerous Game, on pre-order with Amazon, something I’ve never done before. The launch date is January 29^th. Looking at the way some other writers approach this point, I know I haven’t put as much in to the launch as they have. One writer on one of the forums I follow has been incredibly busy and looks like he’s achieving pretty good results. Some of you may ask why I haven’t followed the example set by people like that, but I probably take a more laid back view of how to make progress. One change here though is that I am about to place an advert on Facebook, encouraging readers to sign up to my mailing list. But rather than rely on them finding my permafree novel and signing that way, I will be using an image to attract them. I will be adding a headline and blurb, plus the link (http://eepurl.com/bgYKMj) to find my landing page so they can sign up and download the book. I’ve been watching instructions videos by Nick Stephenson and Mark Dawson, two of Amazon’s top authors, and hope that I will see some good results with the ad. I am also planning to advertise my book, A Dangerous game, in time for the launch date. Looking ahead, I believe this will either make me or break me. By that I mean that if this way is successful, I’ll spend more on advertising. It will also encourage me to write another book; something that’s missing at the moment.

At the beginning of the week I went to the first CHINDI meeting of the year. It’s amazing how a group can change over a twelve month period. In the past twelve months we have lost six author members and attracted four. We can still look forward to book events which are in the pipeline, and hopefully expand our public awareness. And three or four of us will be bringing out new titles this year.

Earlier this week we celebrated my wife’s birthday and had some of the family members over for a pub lunch on Saturday. We also included our wedding anniversary in the celebrations too: fifty six years on Tuesday.

On Friday I had an advert placed with ‘bknights’ on Fiverr.com. It was for my permafree novel, The Eagle’s Covenant. I thought it needed a bit of a lift after dragging its heels in the download department. On that day I had 180 downloads, and healthy increase from my usual average of about five a day. That cost me five dollars. Worth every penny if I can add a few more names to my subscribers list.

Tomorrow I’ll be back on video training and hope to post my ad on Facebook. Wish me luck!