social networking again & writing, with a bit of dog walking thrown in

I’m discovering more facets of social networking, especially regarding Twitter. For a start I’m still trying to gauge how many retweets I can do for fellow authors before going over my daily limit. I’ve got a horribly over developed social conscience and can’t bear to leave anyone out. Consequently I keep being rate restricted, thus hampering tweeting about my own books.

But I’m also finding ways to streamline what I’m doing. Following an excellent series of articles by Rachel Abbott in her author friendly blog (http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com/) I’ve started using SocialOomph to schedule tweets so that I don’t have to worry about composing those and posting throughout the day: you can even save tweets to repeat post later. However, coming back to being rate restricted, I’m finding that some of my scheduled  tweets aren’t going out because I’m over the limit. I really do need to get a handle on how many to do for other people and how many to save for myself.

I’m making friends and getting to know people on Twitter now. I didn’t think that was going to happen, given the brevity of a tweet, but happily there are ways round the 140 character limit, such as breaking a message into several tweets. There are some truly supportive people and my experience so far has mostly been positive and heartening  One or two other authors are less giving and don’t return the retweet favour and a couple are happy to offer swapping likes for your book but don’t fulfil their side of the bargain, but they are in a minority. The majority are courteous and helpful in the extreme.

With scheduling the tweeting of my books, I’m finding time to write now and have got nearly 13,000 words done of the sequel to The Aunt Sally Team. This may not sound like a lot, but the way I work is to reread and reread, polishing and refining as I go along. Walking the dogs in the local water meadows is helping my writing as the book is set in our home area of Oxford.  We see deer down there from time to time and tonight a heron flew over and buzzards were circling. The place is a mass of wild flowers at the moment: yarrow, convolvulus, vetch, teasel, cranesbill and red and white campion. The endless rain of this summer in Britain, followed by sunshine, has caused an absolute profusion of blooms. It’s all very inspiring.

So all in all life is interesting and fulfilling. The worst of the settling in problems with Isha, our new Saluki lurcher, seem to be behind us. She’s fun and very sweet. We still have some hairy moments with her, like when she ran at full speed into the net surrounding the tennis courts in the park today and did a double somersault, but she’s mostly much easier now.

social networking…

…is stealing my life away! Begin day: breakfast in front of the computer while retweeting other authors’ books and giving my own a quick push; feed dogs; more retweeting, a look at Facebook and pootle around checking my books’ sales and rankings (who am I kidding, that’s the first thing I do when I wake up!); walk dogs; try to do some writing but get distracted by Twitter and Facebook – repeat at regular intervals.

But, you know, it is a wonderful way for authors to keep in touch and meet new friends; it isn’t all about promoting your books. Writing is a very isolating occupation, and while that’s fine and good most of the time, creativity flows better if you have inspiration, input and companionship from others doing the same as you. It’s impossible not to get caught up in the social side of social networking. The icing on the cake for me has been  ‘meeting’ some lovely people and finding new books to read.  A spin-off has been that I see myself mentioned in unexpected places now, popping up on virtual newspapers, websites etc. That has to be good for exposure.

Meanwhile I’m finding the iPad an invaluable tool. I can transfer my new book back and forth from the main computer via Dropbox, which means I can keep writing in front of the television while my partner is watching the Olympics, or slobbed out on the sofa in the morning sun or even in the garden (I know you can do that with a laptop too, but the iPad is smaller and more comfortable to hold). The sequel to The Aunt Sally Team (http://amzn.to/MgZRmW & http://amzn.to/LJvFhf – note sneaky social networking style addition of link!) is growing much faster than the original book did as a result of this relaxed approach to writing. Being able to compose anywhere, instead of making a task of it by sitting in front of the computer, is helping the creative part of my brain to get productive. And don’t get me wrong, though there is discipline involved in writing, I actually love doing it.

oak

KDP Select free promo part 2, sunny Britain and dog news

My first free promotion of The Aunt Sally Team on Amazon KDP Select was so unexpectedly successful (see my blog entry https://flickm.wordpress.com/2012/06/28/is-kdp-select-worth-the-restrictions-2-2/) that I ran a second one on the 18th and 19th of this month (July). Sales had been fantastic for quite some time after the event, but were finally dwindling to around 10 books per day, so I felt I had nothing to lose.

I’m experiencing another sales boost, but it isn’t as spectacular as the first. I think one reason is that the promo ran for one less day. I had only half the number of free downloads compared with last time. However, I’m still selling a pleasing quantity of The Aunt Sally Team. Some of these sales may be down to my activity on Twitter, of course, and I have noticed increased traffic on my Blog since I began tweeting, plus my other book The Sacred Marriage has picked up. But there’s no doubt in my mind that the bulk of downloads is due to the free promo.

The Aunt Sally Team: http://amzn.to/MgZRmW & http://amzn.to/LJvFhf

The Sacred Marriage: http://amzn.to/LhdwVm & http://amzn.to/Lr8JoY

I’m pleased that the sequel to The Aunt Sally Team is rolling along. I’ve done over 9,000 words and it’s beginning to come together after the sticky start. I had no idea that doing a sequel would be quite that hard: it’s very strange picking up on the characters’ lives a year on from when I began writing the first book and several months on in terms of the events in the book itself. I just treated myself to an iPad 3 with my royalties and I have to say that it makes writing a joy as it’s like a mini laptop and can be used anywhere.

Meanwhile, it’s stopped raining and Britain is enjoying lovely hot, sunny weather along with an absolute profusion of wild flowers in fields, hedgerows and roadside borders – no doubt the result of weeks of rain followed by sun. The heat is much appreciated by Isha, our rescue Saluki cross but not so much by our Border collie/Husky, Dennis, who gets very puffed. Isha has settled in incredibly quickly and it feels as if she’s been here forever. Happy days!

cover image for The Aunt Sally Team, illustrated by Beccy Blake

Beccy Blake’s site: http://beccyblake.com/

The Aunt Sally Team Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/MgZRmW

The Aunt Sally Team Amazon US: http://amzn.to/LJvFhf

writing, tweeting, the indie author community and having a new dog in rainy Britain

I’ve been tied to the house for six weeks due to the arrival of Isha our new dog, a six month old Saluki/Whippet rescue dog. It’s been a very restricting time till recently. In the early days I spent the whole time she was awake holding onto the end of a lead to make sure she didn’t chase our five cats. To begin with too she had a badly upset tummy and had to be taken into the garden at regular intervals, including the middle of the night. It was something like having a new baby in terms of sleep deprivation and in the end it was easier to sleep with her so that I could get her out at the first whimper, thus forestalling any messy accidents. That led to temporary separation anxiety and Bee Gee like howling at night once we began to leave her downstairs alone (except for the company of our border collie cross, that is). Then there was the problem of exercising her while she was first with us and couldn’t safely be allowed off the lead away from the house. Add that to torrential rain and a very wet June and you can imagine the effect a cooped up running dog has had on the garden.

None of this, of course, has been conducive to writing blogs or books, or networking. Though I have made a start on the sequel to The Aunt Sally Team.

Meanwhile I have plunged into using Twitter. I’ve had an account for some months but just didn’t “get it”. It’s been a bit of a learning curve, especially getting used to how fast it all moves, but I’m now retweeting like a goodun – so much so that this morning I retweeted so many other authors’ books that I was rate limited and couldn’t tweet my own for several hours. I hadn’t realised there was a limit – though I suppose, thinking about it, that there would have to be. I know now! But it’s been wonderful to connect with a thriving community of other writers, many of them indie authors.

So now to drag myself away from blogs and Twitter and obsessively watching my hourly book sales and Amazon ranking. I have a novel to write, hopefully in time for Christmas.

is KDP Select worth the restrictions?

I’m afraid this is yet another KDP Select free promo tale, but bear with me. I’ve read masses of blog entries lately from fellow authors saying that KDP Select isn’t worth it now that Amazon have changed their ranking algorithms so that free downloads don’t count as a full sale now for purposes of determining sales rank. But my experience has been very positive. I duly pulled my book The Aunt Sally Team:  http://amzn.to/MgZRmW &  http://amzn.to/LJvFhf from Smashwords and Lulu as one’s work has to be exclusive to Amazon for 90 days to qualify for the Select program. I then scheduled the promotion for 3 days starting Friday 15th June.

The promotion exceeded my wildest expectations. I had over 8500 downloads globally, the greatest number being in the UK. The book shot to # 2 in the Amazon UK Kindle free top 100 and stayed there. OK I thought, but what will happen once it goes back on paid? Well, first of all my ranking disappeared for a couple of hours, but then the sales started rolling in. The Aunt Sally Team moved into the Kindle top 100 paid list and stayed there for 5 days, peaking at # 53. It was also # 3 in Humour, stayed in the Humour top 10 till yesterday and is still in the top 20 Humour on UK Amazon. It rose high in both Contemporary Fiction and Romance too. 11 days later my sales are at last slowing down and the ranking has dropped drastically, but during the halcyon period I made more money in a week than I’ve done in a month working at jobs other than writing. I’ve also had several new 5 star reviews, which is wonderful and for which I’m inordinately grateful. It’s grand when you reach new readers and when those readers show their appreciation for your work. It’s one of the things that makes writing worth while.

Interestingly, although the downloads in America during the free promotion ran into thousands, I’ve only sold 10 books over there and had 2 borrows since. I see from Nick Spalding’s blog that he’s done well in America with his books, but my book hasn’t taken off there, and I wonder if it’s because the British and American senses of humour are rather different, or is it maybe because my novel is peppered with British colloquial terms.

So would I do another free promo? I have two days left and yes, I will use them unless sales pick up again or even stay where they are. I’m hoping that one more free promo will boost visibility and ranking enough for the book to catch on in a bigger way. But I can’t complain as, before the promotion, it was all but undiscoverable and selling only a few copies a month. The only downside for me was when I discovered, quite by accident, that my novel had had a high ranking in some humour charts in Australia. I expect I’ll lose those sales as I’ve unpublished the book from Lulu and Smashwords.

on becoming an indie author

I must have been the only author in the world who didn’t know about Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) – that is until a friend told me to publish my novel myself. This was after coming excruciatingly close with agents and publishers, who liked my work but were being mega cautious.

After a spate of emails to agents and the odd letter here and there to publishers (with replies varying from not for us or you write well, we liked it but aren’t taking on new clients to the more promising couple of agents who wanted to read the complete manuscript of my novel, one of whom said she would be interested in reading it again subject to certain revisions), I got rather demoralised. Then I was massively side tracked by learning to play Gaelic wire strung harp, and more recently guitar.

So back to my friend Leah Whitehorse, herself a writer of considerable talent. I had done a lot of the revisions on my novel, as suggested by the agent and was getting ready to approach agents and publishers again. I happened to ask Leah for a tarot reading about the book. The reading was fairly positive but suggested self publishing. But, I reasoned, everything I’d read advised against vanity publishing: it’s expensive and doesn’t guarantee you sales, and, besides, I’ve had five books published with a bona fide publisher with varying success – enough success anyway to have afforded to rewire my house and convert the loft, not to mention being able to put best selling author in the bio on my Amazon author page. But no, Leah wasn’t talking about vanity publishing, she was talking about publishing the book myself for free through the KDP program.

So that’s what I’ve done, though the book I’ve just published isn’t the one I’ve recently submitted to agents: this one was written some time ago and I’ve uploaded it under my published author name Elen Hawke, as it has mystical and spiritual elements in common with some of my previously published work. Though the hoops to be jumped through to get a Word doc converted to Kindle format so that it shows without gaps and errors will be the subject of another blog entry, I suspect. I also enrolled in the Kindle Select program, which allows me to offer the book free on Amazon for five days in any three months as long as it isn’t published elsewhere within that period. I used three of those days to give the book a kick start so that it acquired an Amazon ranking which helped to make it stand out from the several hundred thousand other books on there. I was thrilled to see it appear in the top 100 in its category. Since it’s been put back on paid status again, it’s still reasonably high in the ranking system, so I think it was worth doing the free period.

So here is a link to the book

The Sacred Marriage by Elen Hawke: http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Sacred-Marriage-ebook/dp/B007JN67WQ/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1331674071&sr=8-4

And the US Amazon site: http://www.amazon.com/The-Sacred-Marriageebook/dp/B007JN67WQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=digitaltext&ie=UTF8&qid=1331717615&sr=1-3

And my Amazon author profile:

https://www.amazon.com/author/elenhawke

And lastly the product description:

As she has done since childhood, Sophie spends the summer with family friend Rory Ballantyne in his old stone longhouse in the heart of Celtic Brittany – a ravishingly beautiful region filled with ancient customs and steeped in the mystery and romance of Arthurian legend. But this year things are changed: her family are involved with their own lives, so she stays there without them. At first she is troubled by tension and quarrels between Rory and his wife, but she is soon distracted by the arrival of gorgeous artist Jason Ryder. Sophie becomes increasingly drawn to Jason but she also realises that Rory is not the older brother figure she had thought him, but a fascinating and attractive man. Then a series of strange dreams opens her to the energies of the land there, forces that seem to want something from her. At eighteen, Sophie is no longer a child, and she sees the local area and people through different eyes. Gradually she realises that the energies she senses, along with her dreams, emanate from a holy spring dedicated to Sainte Nicole, a Christianisation of a Celtic deity whom locals refer to as the Lady. The spirit of the land is reaching out and Sophie’s quest to fathom its message brings her, through love and loss, to an understanding of herself that helps her cross the threshold into maturity and gives her the strength to follow her own truth. 

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iris

an encouraging email…

…from an ex commissioning editor for Time Warner, who liked my previous novel and would have taken it if her fiction list hadn’t been full for five years ahead (see what first time novelists are up against!??) I sent her some sample material from the new book. Her response was to say that she likes the concept and location and my writing is fine but…she no longer commissions work, she is in a purely administrative role now and, though she had considered  taking it to one of their editors, she knows they won’t look at it unless it comes via an agent. But how incredibly thoughtful and kind of her to take the trouble to send such a positive email and to wish me luck.