 One of the perks of enrolling your ebook in Kindle Select is that you can also register them for Kindle Monthly Deals. These are like Kindle Countdown Deals, but they run for a month rather than the normal maximum of 7 days. And you can't just ask for it. Your book has to be selected for a deal - The author has no idea when they will happen, they just get an email saying their book has been nominated and, if selected, they get another email saying when the deal will start, which is usually the 1st day of the following month. But the author doesn’t have to accept the deal and whether they should or not is the subject of debate in some Facebook groups. Authors aren’t sure if they are worth the loss of royalties inherent in discounting their book to 99p (or 99c, or whatever), The time authors normally want to provide discounts is when they are launching a new book and want to garner some interest in their existing books by running a promotion, in the hope that new readers will buy into the new book as well. It’s a well-established marketing strategy and is known to work.  But if you are being offered a Kindle Monthly Deal at a time when you aren’t marketing a new book, is there any point in accepting the deal? That was what we wondered when a book by one of our authors was selected for a deal for February. It was actually a second bite at the cherry, because the same book had been nominated for a deal in January but hadn’t been selected for the deal that month. That was convenient because it had given us some time to consider the pros and cons and advise our author accordingly.  The selected book is Book 1 of a 9 book series and if the deal created enough interest, we could hope for some good read through rates further down the line. Unfortunately, while Amazon are happy to discount the book for a whole month, they do little or no marketing for it, so it is up to the author or, as in our case, the publisher to invest in the marketing in order to make the best out of the opportunity. And this is the dilemma faced by most Indie authors when offered a Kindle Monthly Deal. Can they afford to invest in marketing in order to capitalise on the deal? For us it wasn’t too difficult a decision. We had run Kindle Countdown deals for the same book on several occasions and always got a good read through rate, so we believed we would get a good enough read through rate this time to justify the marketing costs. But it wasn’t guaranteed. There was still a risk. Running a marketing campaign for the 28 days of February wasn’t going to be cheap. But we decided to take the chance anyway.  So, we set up some Facebook ads for the book to start on the first day of the deal and run for the full month. We already run ads for the book on Amazon, so there was no need to do anything additional there. In addition to the ads, we put together some social media promotional posts as well, using our usual channels, as they are free, so we may as well use them. And then we waited to see what would happen. The most obvious thing was that we got significantly more sales for the book during the month than we would usually get. To be precise it was 5 times more than we would get for the same book in an average month and double what we got for the month when we ran our last Kindle Countdown Deal. But what about payback – would we get the read through levels we needed to pay for the marketing and leave us in profit? The answer to that was immediate.  Sales of Book 2 of the series started to increase above the average level from about halfway through the month, as early readers finished Book 1. Towards the end of the month, we started to see an increase in sales for Book 3 and, as we moved into March, we started to see the same trend for books 4 onwards. As this blog post goes live, I can tell you that we have run into profit and sales are still rising. But there is a knock-on benefit that has to be taken into account. As we have mentioned before, the Amazon algorithm loves an upward sales trend, and a Kindle Monthly Deal provides that. If the algorithm sees a book that is selling, it does its best (within the rules laid down by Jeff Bezos) to help it sell more, because that helps Jeff Bezos to make more money. What the algorithm does is include the book in the “recommended for you” and “also bought” carousels that a lot of readers use to find their next book. So, the Kindle Monthly Deal has created momentum that is going to carry the book forward for several weeks into the future. And the other thing that the algorithm does is push the book towards KindleUnlimited readers, so you get an increase in KENP reads off the back of the deal.  If you are the author of standalone books, you will be wondering what this might mean for you. Unfortunately, as we were marketing a series, we can’t answer that.
But if you have more than one title in your catalogue, it would make sense for satisfied readers to go looking for more books by you if they have enjoyed the discounted book. But if you don’t have any other titles, then there isn’t really any way to make a profit on a Kindle Monthly Deal. You might be able to break even during the campaign if your marketing budget isn’t too extravagant. But you may also gain from the momentum that we mentioned above, which may mean you make a profit further down the line. However, we wouldn’t want you to think that the profit is guaranteed. Much will depend on how much you spend on your marketing and how targeted it is. If you only have one book out, this is not a time for a “throw it at the wall and see what sticks” approach to marketing (if there is ever a time for it nowadays). So, if you are offered a Kindle Monthly Deal, please do give it serious consideration, but make use of data to inform your decision. We would not have been so confident about accepting the deal had we not previously seen such good results when running Kindle Countdown deals, or if we hadn’t seen good read through rates for the series in general. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
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 How much can you afford to spend to promote a series when you have a new book coming out? Let’s say Book 1 has been out for a while and you have Book 2 coming out shortly. You decide to run a discounted price promo for Book 1 hoping to get sell through for Book 2. It’s a common tactic and it is known to work. We use it quite regularly. But people have to know about the discounted promo, so you decide to either run some ads focused on Book 1, run some stacked promos with some of the reputable sites (BookBub, Fussy Librarian etc) or a combination of the two. But how much can you afford to spend on those promos and ads?  Because of its discounted price, Book 1 isn’t going to give you much of a financial return (in fact, we’re going to totally ignore it), so you are going to be relying on Book 2 selling well in order for you to end up in profit. Unfortunately, you don’t have any sales data on which to base any assumptions about sales for Book 2, so you could spend a lot of money on your promos and ads but end up making a loss. That is what this blog is all about. We have come up with a calculation to allow you to forecast your royalties for Book 2 so you can make an informed judgement. But first some “health warnings”.  1. This method provides a forecast, not a prediction. It is not guaranteed that the reality will match up. 2. You will have to base some of your calculations on historical data which might not be replicated in the future. 3. It makes some assumptions based on industry benchmarks and your books may not perform to the benchmarks. 4. Because of 1 – 3 above, the figure you end up with is “ball park”, an estimate. It may not be 100% accurate. But that is a limitation we feel is acceptable. Please bear those health warnings in mind when you do your own calculations.  Your first step is to gather data on the cost of your promos (before you actually pay for them), which means looking at the promo sites and identifying the cost of the packages you want to use. Add those costs together to give you your promo costs, which I shall refer to as PC. Next decide what daily budget you want to set for your ads and for how long you wish to run them. So, if you want to set a £5 daily budget and run the ads for 5 days, that’s a total of £25. We’ll call that AB for advertising budget. Add AB to PC to give you an overall cost for your marketing, which we will call MC for marketing cost. Next you need to look at your historical sales data. If you have run a discounted promo for Book 1 in the past, how many books did it sell? If you are running a Kindle Countdown Deal, you may have to go back 90 days or further to find that out. If you haven’t run a discounted promo before, work out your average daily sales for the previous 90 days (total sales over 90 days divided by 90). A discounted promo would be expected to sell more copies than the 90 day average, but we don’t know how many more so we have to stick with data that we know is accurate. Whichever figure you are using, we will call it SD for sales data.  The benchmark for “read through” from Book 1 to Book 2 is 70%, which means that for every 100 copies of Book 1 you sell, you can expect to sell 70 copies of Book 2. So, work out 70% of SD to predict how many copies of Book 2 you can expect to sell per day during the promo period, then multiply by the number of days over which you are going to run the promo (PD), so the sum will be SD x 70% x PD. That will give you your forecast sales (FS) for Book 2. Now you have to calculate your royalties for Book 2. The amount per book is displayed on the pricing tab of your KDP pages for the book, so it is FS x R (for royalties) to give FI (forecast income). If you divide FI by MC you will get a number. If that number is less than 1, then your promos and ads are forecast to run at a loss. If you get a number greater than 1, your promos and ads are forecast to give you a profit.  If you have forecast a loss you have some decisions to make. 1. You can decide not run your promos, not to run your ads or both. 2. You can reduce the number of promos you run, select cheaper packages if there are any, or reduce your daily budget for your ads or a combination of all of those. 3. You can go ahead as planned, hoping that the forecasts are wrong, and you actually sell more copies of Book 2 than expected. But that is much riskier. If you are going to take risks like 3, then you may as well not do the calculations in the first place. If, on the other hand, you have forecast a profit, you could increase your marketing budget in the hope of generating even more sales for Book 1 which should translate into even greater sales of Book 2. What if you have more than two books in the series? OK, that means you will have to forecast sales for Book 2 to Book N, where N is the number of books in the series. First of all, you have to know that it is normal to lose readers after each book, so the audience gets smaller the longer the series runs. There are a variety of reasons for this, some of which are reader related and some of which are author related, but those are the subject for a different blog. I have already told you that the benchmark read through rate from Book 1 to Book 2 is 70%, but the readthrough to Book 3 is 90% of that 70%. The read through to Book 4 is then 90% of that 90% etc. Below is a table showing how many copies of each book in a 9 book series you can expect to sell if you sell 100 copies of Book 1. You can extrapolate those for however many copies of Book 1 you actually sell (figures have been rounded to the nearest whole number).  Using the table, you can calculate your total FI from read throughs using the method described above, to work out whether your campaign will make a profit or loss. You will notice that I haven’t mentioned KENP reads from KindleUlimited. That’s because they would muddy the waters quite a bit. If you have solid income data for those page reads which relate directly to previous promos, you can add that into your FI if you wish, but it is a simpler calculation to leave them out.  OK, we will be the first to admit that this method is a little bit “rough and ready”. But ask yourself this question: “Is it better to have a rough and ready calculation, or no calculation at all?” We think you will conclude that rough and ready is better than nothing when it comes to risking your money. Before we end this blog, we have one more thing to say about those benchmark figures. They are based on industry averages for read throughs for a series. However, we don’t know what the shape of the bell curve is that produced those benchmarks.  It is highly likely that bestselling series like Harry Potter, Jack Reacher, Game Of Thrones etc are skewing the figures and producing a high average. That means that it is possible that your Indie pubbed space opera or dark fantasy series isn’t going to achieve a 70% read through from Book 1 to Book 2.
That is a reasonable assumption to make. However, if your series is achieving less than a 50% read through rate, you need to be asking yourself why. What is it about Book 1 that is discouraging readers from reading Book 2? Is it a marketing thing? Or is there something wrong with Book 1 and readers don’t like it, so they aren’t buying Book 2? You have to decide that for yourself. If it’s something wrong with the book, your reviews will probably tell you, but that is by no means certain. But something is definitely wrong, and you need to find out what it is, or you are going to be spending a lot of money on promos and advertising for little or no return. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Creativity is a basic skill for being a writer. Your imagination is what creates stories. Every best-selling book started with an idea popping into the head of the author. The author then nurtures and feeds the idea until it starts to gain form and flesh, in the shape of sentences, paragraphs and chapters. No two authors are alike, so the techniques that each author uses to create their story will be different. We are familiar with the terms “plotters” and “pantsers”, but those are only two types that form the extremes of a very broad spectrum. Sometimes, regardless of whether they are plotters, pansters or somewhere in between, authors run out of ideas for taking their story forward. They may call it writer’s block, or they may use another term, but for some reason they just can’t come up with what is going to happen next in their story. But all is not lost. You don’t have to sit there looking at a blank screen (or a blank sheet of paper if you are more “old school”). There are tools and techniques that can be used to stimulate creativity.  I would love it if creative problem solving techniques were taught in schools, as they have a direct application in any workplace. But they aren’t. What you can do, however, is take a few of these techniques and maybe make them work for you as an author. The best creativity comes from working with others. By combining brains and “bouncing” ideas off other people, the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts. However authors are, by nature, solitary workers. That solitude presents a challenge, but one that is not insurmountable. Last week we heard from Gene Ramsey about how to unlock some of your creativity by taking control of your writing environment. This week we would like to take things one step further and suggest some practical techniques you can use to create new ideas. So, enough preamble, let’s get into the details.  “What if” scenarios. This does what it says on the tin. If you are stuck thinking about what your character should do next, asking “What if they did this …” allows you to test ideas out. The basis of “what if” scenarios is rule breaking. You are going to make your character do something that may be physically impossible, morally or ethically wrong, might get them killed, might get someone else killed and a whole lot of other things that might, normally, prevent you from considering taking the character in that direction. But that is OK. Having created the scenario, you can then challenge the idea not in terms of not doing it, but in terms of still doing it, but in a way that will make it work. You are building up, not knocking down. In creativity it is always about building up, not the other thing. My character can’t do “that” because they would burn to death. OK, how about I find a way of them doing it without burning to death? Can I give them a fireproof suit? Can they find a way to extinguish the flames? Can I use magic to protect them? You get the idea. So, the character will still take the path you imagined with your “what if” scenario, because you have found a way of making it possible. But the key barrier to the what if scenario is assumptions. We make them all the time, sometimes without thinking about them. You have to learn to not only identify assumptions, you have to learn to challenge them. You will be surprised how often assumptions are actually wrong. Scientists and engineers find that out every day. And if you doubt me, remember that only 120 years ago it was assumed that it was impossible for humans to fly.  Quantity, not quality. This is the basis of one of the best-known creativity tools, brainstorming. Basically, you generate idea after idea, without worrying whether they are good, bad or indifferent. Normally this is seen as a team activity, but you can do it yourself. All you need is a pad of sticky notes and a surface on which to stick them. Write your ideas on the notes and slap them on the white board, wall or whatever. Lots of them. They don’t even have to have anything obvious to do with your book. The whole idea is to get your brain spewing out ideas in a constant stream, because amongst the thousands of bad ideas that may come out, there will be a few golden nuggets. When you have finally run out of ideas (you should try to keep going for at least an hour) you can start to group the ideas together in terms of common themes. Those themes can then be examined more closely to see what they have to offer. Maybe you didn’t come up with “the” idea, but perhaps by combining ideas a, b and c together, you may have something you can work with. A similar technique involves writing the ideas on a pad, page after page of them. Then tear up the first two pages, because they will be too “normal”. The real gold will appear on the later pages, when you started to get desperate for ideas and your brain had to keep going, drawing more and more from your subconscious mind.  Flip the Point of View (POV) Authors sometimes get so hung up on what their protagonist is doing (or not doing) that they sometimes forget that there is more than one character in the book. By switching your point of view to see the problem through a different pair of eyes, you may see the flaws in your character’s (your) thinking (the paradigm they (you) are working within) which will allow you to break them out of the status quo. For example, if your protagonist is a cop and the paradigm for a cop (an honest one, at least) is that they can’t break the law, then the way forward for the protagonist might be blocked But if you view the problem from the POV of a lawyer, you might find that there is a loophole in the law that would allow your protagonist a route out of their problem. But you won’t see that loophole if you are still thinking like a cop, so you have to think like a lawyer. You can also look at the story from the antagonist’s point of view. What is the thing the antagonist would least like the protagonist to do? That is what you should have your protagonist do. You can look at the problem through the eyes of several other characters, to see how they would deal with it. Shifting the paradigm in this way is a fundamental in organisational problem solving.  Use Analogies I’ll start this section by asking you a question. What has Formula One (F1) motor racing got to do with the airline industry? The answer is very simple when you think of the question as an analogy. A feature of F1 racing is the speed at which pit crews are able to get a car in and out of the pits for tyre changes etc. It depends on two things: (1) having everything where it is needed, when it is needed and (2) having well practised drills, so everyone does their job instantly without having to think about it. Back in the late 1970s, when cheap air travel started to become a thing, airlines were looking for ways in which they could get more flying hours out of their aircraft, because an aircraft sat on the ground isn’t earning any money. They looked at the problem from the perspective of F1 racing, and realised they could adopt some of the same techniques to get their aircraft turned around at airports far more quickly, saving several hours a day in some cases. Now all the budget airlines use the same techniques to get their aircraft back in the air as quickly as possible. Businesses use analogies of this sort a lot to come up with new ideas to streamline their performance. And you can use the same technique to come up with new ideas for moving your plot forward. So, in terms of solving your character’s problems, what sorts of analogies might you use to stimulate your thoughts?  Zoom Out From The Problem How often have we heard the expression “can’t see the wood for the trees”? We are so stuck down in the weeds of the detail of a problem that we can’t see the bigger picture. So, the solution is to “zoom out”, so we are no longer able to see the individual trees, but we can see the whole forest. And if we can see the forest, we can also trace all the possible paths through it. I’ll give you a hypothetical situation. Your character is stuck at the bottom of a well. There is no way for them to climb out and the rope that holds the bucket is rotted through, so they can’t climb it. They are shouting for help, but there is no one to hear them at the top of the well. Because you are so close to the problem, all you can see right now is a deep dark hole with no way out of it. But if you were to zoom out, you might see a church with a belfry. And the rope that attaches to one of the bells in the belfry is broken. You might also see that on the other side of the forest lives the chief bell ringer. They know about the bell rope and they have a replacement. So, they cross the forest and their path takes them close to the well, where they hear the protagonist calling for help. So, you now have a rope and someone to drop it down the well to rescue your character. But you only got to that point because you zoomed out from the well to take in the wider picture. OK, that is a literal interpretation of the theory. But it does work. If you can detach from the detail of the situation in which you have placed your character and look at the bigger picture of the story and imagine what else COULD be happening, you may well find the solution to your problem. Incidentally, you can combine "zooming out" with the "what If" scenario to make it even more effective.  Mind Mapping
Again, this is a long-standing technique that works for many people. Basically, you place the problem in the centre of the page and then map all the different aspects of that problem, to see where the barriers are lying. For example, one branch of the map may relate to your character’s family constraints. Another may relate to their skills and knowledge. A third might relate to the resources available to them. Another may be their emotional entanglements. Another is the mental baggage that they are carrying around. As you explore each branch you should be able to make smaller branches that deal with other aspects of the same problem and you may be able to link some of the issues in one branch with some of the ones in other branches, because they are connected in some way. Once you have a detailed mind map, you should be able to identify possible solutions to what is causing your creative blockage. Mind mapping makes use of the key questions we always ask: who, what, where, when, how and why. Here’s a link that describes mind mapping in more detail. This technique isn’t just useful for overcoming writer’s block. It’s also a great way to get a new story idea worked out in more detail. Conclusion I have only been able to scratch the surface of the wide-ranging subject that is creative problem solving. Enough, I hope, to get you started. But if you go online and search “creative problem-solving tools” you will find a wealth of information. Some resources you may have to pay for, but others are available for free. Images credit: pexels.com If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. This week we are delighted to post another guest blog by Gene Ramsey. This time he takes a look at how to refresh your creative juices when they are flagging a little. All images courtesy of Pexels.  As a writer, the ability to tap into your creative wellspring is indispensable, yet there are times when the muse seems elusive, and your imagination feels as barren as a desert. In these moments, the need to recharge and revitalize your creative spirit becomes paramount. This article explores practical strategies tailored to help writers and authors break free from creative stagnation, ensuring a vibrant and fruitful engagement with your craft.  Disconnect to reconnect In this digital era, it's essential to consciously detach from the ever-present screens of your smartphone, computer, and tablet. Allow your mind the freedom to meander through thoughts without the interruption of incessant notifications and the relentless influx of information. In the tranquillity of this newfound mental space, as you gaze out the window or simply let your thoughts roam, your next ground-breaking idea might subtly make its presence known.  Establish a Sanctuary for Creativity As a writer, your craft demands undivided attention. Designate a sanctuary where you can isolate yourself from the world's distractions. This dedicated space should invite tranquillity and allow for uninterrupted flow of thoughts. Whether it’s a quiet corner of your home or a secluded part of a local park, make this space your own. Regularly spending time in this creative haven can help you establish a routine that, over time, will signal to your brain that it’s time to engage creatively.  Play Your Way to Innovation Remember, creativity is not all about stern expressions and furrowed brows; it's also about play and exploration. Reconnect with activities that light up your spirit and make you feel alive. Whether it's sketching, playing board games, or crafting, these playful acts can subconsciously stir up ideas and inspire innovative thinking. Allow yourself regular playtime; it’s not frivolous but a fundamental part of nurturing a creative mind.  Harness the Power of Video Creation Venture into the dynamic world of digital storytelling by creating your own videos, opening up a vibrant avenue to communicate your narratives. With a free video creator online, you can experiment and enhance your projects without any financial strain, providing a cost-effective way to bring your visions to life. This tool not only allows you to add audio and animate elements but also enables you to manipulate video speed, enriching your storytelling with a professional flair that captivates your audience.  Revisit Childhood Joys Reengage with the activities you loved as a child to tap into pure, unadulterated creativity. Childhood is a treasure trove of imagination and wonder—qualities that are often muted in adulthood. By revisiting these past joys, whether it’s reading comic books, doodling, or building model airplanes, you can reignite the imaginative spark that once came so naturally and infuse your writing with renewed passion and enthusiasm.  Art as a Pathway to Creativity Use art as a therapeutic way to explore tools to unlock new creative realms. Artistic expression transcends words, allowing emotions and ideas that might be difficult to articulate through writing alone. Engage in painting, sculpting, or drawing to visually express what lies beneath your conscious mind. This not only provides a therapeutic release but also deepens the well of creativity from which you can draw as a writer.  Write Freely and Fluidly Dive into the realm of free writing; unleash your inner stream of consciousness directly onto paper without the constraints of perfect syntax or punctuation. As you write without stopping, you'll navigate past the barriers of writer's block and discover hidden ideas that lurk beneath your structured thinking. This technique not only refreshes your mind but also enriches your narrative skills by revealing unexpected insights and themes.  Dream a Little Dream
Your dreams are a direct line to your subconscious, where much of your creativity is housed. Make a habit of keeping a dream journal by your bedside. Upon waking, jot down as much as you can recall about your dreams. Over time, you may find that these abstract and often bizarre dreamscapes serve as excellent fodder for creative projects, offering unique imagery and plot twists that can set your work apart. Recharging your creative batteries as a writer involves a blend of structured solitude and unstructured play. By adopting these practices, you not only enhance your creativity but also enrich your life, making each written word a reflection of a fully lived experience. Rediscover your creative spirit and watch as your writing transforms from mere words to vivid worlds that captivate and inspire. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  A recent post in a writers’ group on Facebook asked for “tips on marketing” and I wept. The person making the post might as well have asked for tips on building a space rocket. Yes, they would get a few tips from people with some knowledge of building space rockets, but they would not provide sufficient depth of information to allow the questioner to build an actual working space rocket. Marketing is something you have to learn from the ground up. If you don’t understand the basics you are probably doomed to waste a lot of time (and possibly money) doing the wrong things, before you eventually discover the right thing to do.  I’m not going to try to write a blog about the whole subject of book marketing. It would require a whole series of blogs to discuss that, and we have written them before (see our blog archives). No, this blog is about one small, but very important, part of book marketing. One of the things that I have never seen anyone say in Facebook writers’ groups, when discussing book marketing, is that the very first marketing decision that has to be made is actually made before a word of the book has been written. It may not seem like a conscious decision, but it is one that is being made anyway. Each author decides whether they are going to (a) write to market or (b) write something truly original.  This is a crucial decision when it comes to marketing a book. A book written to market has a far higher chance of finding an agent and, if self-published, of selling a lot of copies. Writing to market is about riding the current trends in books. For example, according to this article, a rising trend in 2024 was romantacy. This is a mix of fantasy and romance. So, if you like writing fantasy or you like writing romance, then conflating the two stands a good chance of success right now. The author of the article talks about it as though it is a genre, but it isn’t. Romance is a genre, fantasy is a genre, but romantacy is a subgenre of the two. It will generally be listed under the fantasy heading. But that is a technicality. If you want to make a quick buck out of writing, then that is one of the subgenres to head for.  However, the book will only do well so long as it adheres to the norms for the subgenre. It must contain the sorts of tropes that the readers expect to see in a romantacy novel, or the readers are likely to post unfavourable reviews and that will kill the book. Some people (not us) would describe that as “formulaic” and turn their noses up at the very idea of writing to market. Many authors choose not to write to market. They don’t like their creativity being curtailed in that way. They want to be free to write their story their way. So, many authors eschew writing to market and concentrate on trying to find something original to write about. And there is a market for originality too. There always has been and always will be. But it isn’t quite as attractive to agents who want something they can take to publishers which the publishers are actively seeking.  To use a metaphor, it’s difficult to sell fish to someone who wants to eat fowl. And it is even harder to sell a species of fish that no one has ever seen before, even to people who like eating fish. But all trends start somewhere. No one had ever heard of romantacy until quite recently. The earliest articles discussing it that I have been able to find were in early 2024, it is that new. So, your new original novel may be the big “write to market” subgenre for next year. But in marketing terms, the two approaches to writing are very different, so they require different marketing strategies. Yet no one is mentioning that in social media posts about marketing. Which means the Indie author can spend a lot of time using an unsuitable marketing strategy to sell their books. We are not advocating either approach to writing. If someone were to submit a written-to-market romantacy to us we would give it due consideration because we are a business and we like to make money.  But part of our mission is also to discover new creativity, so we would also consider something that isn’t written to market and to give the author a start in the business.
But we would use different strategies to market the two different books. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Disclaimer: The views expressed in this review are those of the reviewer and not necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing. The reviewer was not paid or offered any inducement for this review but was provided with a free review copy.  Cooee Baby is a book that works on many levels. If you just want an adventure story, then great. Five stars all the way. It really works as adventure. But on the deeper level, as a story about a neuro-divergent young woman, there is a lot going on. I’ll cover some of the nuances later in this review. Athena Fernandez is the neuro-divergent young woman. Her real first name is Awhina, but she doesn’t like it because people don’t know how to pronounce it, so she changes it, and to everyone other than her parents she becomes Athena. Early in the story Athena is diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome*, which is one particular syndrome on the much broader autism scale. Not only is Athena neuro-divergent, however, she is also a brilliant scholar, with a particular talent for maths and sciences. This takes her to Cambridge University where we start to get a real insight into her personality. This is something I will again return to later in this review. After graduation with an honours degree, and starting to prepare her PhD proposal, Athena’s mother offers her the opportunity to go on a five-week cruise around the islands of Indonesia. This is not your normal “floating gin palace” type cruise but is on a much smaller ship where more time is allowed to experience the diverse cultures that will be encountered. I don’t want to give any away spoilers, but I can’t tell you about the key story point without revealing some of what happens, but I’ll try not to tell you too much. Athena is involved in a swimming accident that threatens her life. It also disfigures her. She is rescued and taken to Papua where she is treated by the shaman of a local tribe, the Walukek. She is then kidnapped by a neighbouring tribe, the Suamu, who are in a perpetual state of war with the Walukek.  The author, Charles Moberley There is always a risk in placing a European in a situation like this that they succumb to “white saviour” syndrome, trying to modernise the indigenous people for their “betterment”.
This was common in 19th and early 20th century literature as it reflected the colonial values of the day. Fortunately, author Charles Moberley doesn’t succumb to this in Cooee Baby and Athena does nothing that would change the culture of either of the tribes with which she lives. Indeed, the culture of the Suamu is central to the plot. So, having said at the start of this review that I would award 5 stars for this book as an adventure story, why have I only awarded 4 stars? The answer is in the development of Athena’s character within the story. Asperger’s Syndrome doesn’t make the person intrinsically unlikeable, but Athena’s character I found very hard to engage with. Her overbearing mother and emotionally absent father must, therefore, account for a lot of her behaviour, rather than her neuro-divergence. Because, despite all her bravado, Athena is also very vulnerable. Her outspoken and sometimes obnoxious behaviour is, in part, motivated by her feelings of vulnerability and this isn’t explored in any depth. It means that the picture we get of Athena seems to be incomplete. She behaves like a spoiled brat a lot of the time, but her neuro-divergence doesn’t account for that. While Athena may suffer from Asperger’s, she is also capable of analysing both her own behaviour and that of others, which means that beneath the surface she does understand emotions and their functions, but we are offered too few glimpses of that part of Athena’s personality, which means that she remains, largely, unlikeable. I didn’t expect some damascene conversion from Athena, in which she changed her behaviour significantly. That would not fit with her neuro-divergence. However, she is portrayed as a person in possession of complex analytical and reasoning skills, so I would have expected her to develop an understanding that the way people act towards her is a reflection of how she acts towards them. But that insight is lacking. There is also Athena's resilience. People on the autism scale are not known for dealing well with the external environment. They often try to shut out the world. But not Athena. She may be frightened, but she stares down her assailants with a bravery that Jack Reacher would nod his head towards. That too, I feel, speaks of something deeper in her character than can be accounted for by her neuro-divergence. It was this quality that finally won me over and kept me reading the book. But, if you can get past that characterisation, this book has a great deal going for it. As I said at the top of this review, it is great as an action adventure and if you can read it that way then you are likely to enjoy it immensely. To find out more about “Cooee Baby” by Charles Moberley, click here. * According to the charity Mencap, Asperger’s Syndrome is no longer a term used by the medical profession to describe Athena’s form of neuro-divergence. The person after whom the disorder was named (Hans Asperger) had strong connections to the Nazis, which is why the term has fallen out of favour. If you wish to be politically correct you would now describe the condition as an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) If you have enjoyed this book review, be sure not to miss out on future blogs by signing up for our newsletter. We’ll even give you a free ebook for doing so.  Most Indie authors know that selling books in a series is more profitable than selling stand-alone books. But it isn’t all plain sailing, and we’ve just come across a couple of things you should know about how Amazon handles series. If you publish your series using KDP then you can create a series page on Amazon. There are a couple of advantages to this. First of all, the series page doesn’t have any advertising on it, so when people click a link to it, they will only see books in your series, not ads for other people’s books. Secondly, at the top right of the page there is a button that allows the reader to buy the whole series with a single click - and some readers do that. So, instead of selling one book at a time, you sell the whole series in one go. That means that all the books in the series move up the sales ranking in lock step. It also means that all the titles appear in the “also bought” lists that Amazon shows readers.  The “1 click” button is also “smart”. That means if the reader has already bought books 1 and 2, they won’t be included in the purchase. Also, the price for the rest of the series is adjusted accordingly, making the rest of the series appear cheaper. In addition, if any of the books in the series is reduced, maybe because of a Kindle Countdown Deal, the overall series price will be adjusted accordingly. So far, so good.  But there are a couple of things you should know about. The most significant one is that if you don’t publish through KDP, you can’t have a series page on Amazon. Using publishing sites like Draft2Digital (D2D) allows you to set the books up as a series, just like on KDP. D2D will also sell your books on Amazon, if you include them in your selection of distribution channels. This also applies to some other self publishing sites. BUT Even if you have set the book up as a series on D2D, it won’t create a series page on Amazon. So, you lose those advantages listed earlier in the blog. Yet another reason for using KDP! But some people have an aversion to using them, but that’s their business.  The second significant issue affects authors that do publish using KDP. When you create a series, Amazon assigns an ASIN to it, just the way it assigns an ASIN to the individual books. If you use the link to the series page in your marketing and end matter (which you should for all the reasons given above) then the link will include the series ASIN. So far, so good (again). The problems arise when you add a new book to the series. Amazon deletes the old series ASIN and assigns a new one, because it identifies the extended series as a new product. That means that all the old links you have been using are now invalid and if readers use them, they’ll get a “page unavailable” notice.  That means that when you publish a new book in the series, you must change all the links in all your marketing and end matter.
The new ASIN won’t go live until the book goes live and there’s no way of knowing in advance the precise moment when the series ASIN will change, but it will probably be within 72 hours of publication of the new book. It would be unethical of us to claim credit for telling you all of the above, so here’s a link to the YouTube video where we made the discovery. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  The Amazon algorithm hates spikes in book sales. There, now you know. Authors used to use a technique called the “book bomb” to get their books selling, but no one talks about those anymore. A book bomb was a splurge of advertising and promotions on a single day to send a book zooming up the sales rankings, so it would get noticed. But Amazon decided it didn’t like those sorts of spikes, because they weren’t sustainable in terms of sales. If all the marketing was happening on a single day, sales soon started to drop off on subsequent days. Part of that is because of the way that Amazon calculates sales rankings. A sale is counted as a whole number on the day it’s made, but the next day it is only counted as ½ a sale. The day after that it is a ¼ of a sale and so on until the fraction becomes so small it is meaningless.  That is why you can be riding high in the sales rankings one day and you’re pondlife the next. So, Indie authors had to find a new way of getting the Amazon algorithms working for them that didn’t create a spike but created a trend instead. What they came up with was the stacked promo, or promo stacking if you want to express it the other way around. A well-planned stacked promo campaign can gather you a lot of sales over a longer time period, which creates a trend and gets the attention of the Amazon algorithms. They can also be used in conjunction with Facebook and Amazon ads  That’s because Amazon wants to sell books because selling books makes them money. And the easiest books for Amazon to sell are the ones that are already selling because the author is promoting them. So, if your sales are creating an upward trend, as they should be over the period of a stacked promotion for a discounted book, the Amazon algorithms will do two things. The first is that they will start to include them in their recommendations listings. You know the ones in the carousels that appear on the sales page for books and act as competition. That’s the “recommended for you” list and the “also bought” list.  That’s basically free advertising for your book, as a lot of people buy from those lists because it saves them having to do more searches. The second thing it does only applies if your book is subscribed to Kindle Select, the driver behind Kindle Unlimited. A lot of “wide” authors don’t know this, but if your book is in Kindle Select and its starts to sell as an ebook, then it will be recommended to Kindle Unlimited subscribers for them to download. This is because Amazon assumes that if people are buying your book, other people will download it for free on KU and that justifies the subscription price Amazon charges. That is more free advertising and the majority of 6 figure earning authors make most of their money this way, not through sales of the ebook.  But if you just go for a sales spike, none of that happens. Do stacked promos work? All I can say is that we have just run one for our book The Magi and yes, it worked. How much does it cost? The most expensive book promo site is BookBub and their Featured Deals start at around $100 (£80) and can run as high as $1,000 for the most popular genres. I think it is fair to say that you need to be selling quite a lot of books already if you want to book a slot with them. But many sites offer far cheaper packages than that and they also have a significant reach. They start from around $20 and I don’t think any charge more than $100, but check their prices for yourself.  Unsurprisingly the best sites are much in demand, so plan ahead. You need to be looking at least 30 days ahead if you want to secure a slot on a specific day or in a particular week, but for some genres you might have to look as far ahead as 60 days. There are so many book promo sites, how do you know which are good, which are bad, and which are scammers? I’ll provide a link at the end of the blog to another blog by book marketing guru David Gaughran, that lists sites he has used personally, and we have also used some of them. You can trust all those sites. But by all means check with other sources if you don’t trust us or David Gaughran. In fact, I recommend that you do. So, there you have it. Stacked promos are great for promoting your back catalogue on a tight budget, but they also work well as a promotion for a new book in a series, where you can list Book 1 at a heavy discount (99c or even free), Book 2 at a higher price and the latest book at full price. Basically, you are building a pricing ladder to encourage the reader to climb down deep into your series and you can do that for anything from a 3 book series to a 10 book (or more) series.  RESOURCES
For David Gaughran’s blog on stacked promotions, including the best sites to use, click here. For more information on making the Amazon algorithms work for you, we recommend David Gaughran’s book “Amazon Decoded”. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  When is a book not a book? When it is a Christmas Gift. This blog may be a little late for you to do anything with the content right now, but we hope that by passing on its message it gives you something to think about when marketing for the next year. If you already have a marketing plan, this is something that you can add in and if you haven’t – why not? Those books aren’t going to sell themselves! Fail to plan - plan to fail.  As regular readers will know, we are great advocates of advertising, both on Amazon and on Facebook, so we thought we’d like to share a bit of a success story with you. You could call this a “case study” but that makes it sound a bit fancier than it was. We have one book in our catalogue that makes it ideal for a certain type of person. We’ll get to the details in a moment, but we’ll start with the “back story” first. We noticed back in December 2023 that sales of the book picked up quite considerably and we sold more copies that month than we had during the previous 11. Being curious sorts of people, we wondered why.  We had almost no data that we could analyse, because the growth in sales was “organic”. We hadn’t advertised the book and we hadn’t even promoted it that much, so we had no idea who had bought it. But we did have one very important bit of data. All the copies sold were in paperback, not ebook format. That was what gave us our biggest clue. Asking a few contacts in the book marketing world brought us the suggestion that the copies were being sold not as books – but as Christmas gifts. Yes, of course they were books, but that wasn’t why they were being bought. They were being bought so that they could be wrapped up in nice Christmas paper, to be given to someone else. The buyer had no intention of reading the book themselves, which is very unusual in the book marketing world.  So, in our marketing plan for November and December 2024 we decided we would aim not at the book buying market, but at the gift giving market. Not all of it, of course. That market is huge and not everyone who buys gifts is going to buy a book as a gift. But there was still quite a large segment of the market that we could aim at. We estimated the market size to be in region of 2 million people. OK, so how did we arrive at that figure?  The book in question is aimed at golfers, of whom there is an estimated one million in the UK. But we weren’t going to be targeting the golfers, we were going to be targeting the people who would be buying Christmas gifts for golfers. That is likely to be a much larger figure, when you take into account spouses/partners, children, siblings and friends. In creating our ads, therefore, we didn’t use our normal approach of saying “This is a great book for all you golfers” We changed our approach entirely and said “This is the ideal gift for the golfer in your life”. That affected the way we targeted the book in our advertising. We are looking primarily at Facebook and Amazon ads here.  The crossover was in pricing. We reduced the book’s price to make it a little bit more attractive to gift givers who were on a tight budget. That would also make it more attractive for children to give to parents, uncles, aunties etc. In our Amazon keyword targeted ads we also used keywords related to Christmas gifts. Christmas and Xmas were included in all the keyword phrases we put into the ads. But on Facebook it meant we didn’t try to target golfers, as they weren’t the people we were trying to sell to. We left our targeting as wide as possible, so that anyone who was buying a gift for a golfer might consider it.  In terms of the graphics and the advertising text, we also focused on the gift giving opportunity. The image next to this para is one of the ones we used. As you can see, we magnified the gift giving potential of the book as well as pointing out the price reduction.* In the ad’s primary text, we also focused on the gift giving opportunity, making more of that than we did of the content of the book. Non golfers would hardly pay attention to the book’s content. They probably read little, if any, of it before they wrapped it up.  So, to the results of the advertising campaigns. Immediately after launching the ads at the beginning of December sales weren’t any better than they had been throughout the year, but they got better rapidly. As the month progressed and people started to run out of time to buy gifts for their loved ones, sales started to accelerate. In week 2 of the month sales doubled. In week 3 they quadrupled and hit their peak over the weekend of 20th/21st December, which was pretty much the latest date by which delivery could be guaranteed in time for Christmas. Part of the slow start to sales we experienced at the beginning of the month we think was down to the Facebook algorithm “learning” who it should show the ads to. After all, we hadn’t given it a target audience to work with. From its scan of the images and text we used it probably thought it should be showing the ad to golfers. But it would then have learnt that the audience was much wider, which was when we started to see the acceleration in sales.  So, the lessons we learnt:
While this blog has mainly been about marketing for Christmas, it also suggests opportunities for selling other genres of books at other times of the year. For example, selling romance books in the run up to Valentines Day, or selling books as birthday gifts at any time of the year. There are many different days throughout the year dedicated to particular causes or events (Hint: May The Fourth Be With You) and many of those offer opportunities for specially targeted sales campaigns. *Editor’s note: the book is no longer available at that price. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  In theory, anyone who can write their name can write a book. In theory. In practice it’s a very different story (pun intended). From the emails we get seeking advice and from the questions we see on social media, it’s clear that a lot of would-be authors get frustrated when they find out just how difficult it is to write a book. And then there are the emails and social media posts that ask how to get started as a writer and we weep in frustration at the sorts of replies we see from other authors. They are very often so encouraging without telling the questioner the truth, which is that writing is very hard work, publishing is harder and marketing a book is the hardest part of all. We have no problem with the idea of encouraging people to write, but we have to temper that advice with warnings about reality or we may do more harm than good.  All that encouragement gives these people a false sense of the reality of being a writer and I can’t help but feeling they end up asking “Why did no one tell me writing was this difficult?” And they usually say it just before they hit the “delete” key on their work and go and look for something easier to do. Which is a shame, because if they had been told the truth and been prepared for the journey from the start, they might have ended up being good writers. Now, the purpose of this blog is not to discourage anyone from becoming an author. It is a great life if you can do it, with a tremendous sense of achievement when your book starts to sell. If you think you can deal with everything that goes with it, then please do become an author. But this blog is a reality check for budding authors. If you think anything I say in the paragraphs that follow sounds too much like hard work for too little reward, then writing may not be for you.  Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens The problem started with author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 1989) who said “Everyone has a book in them.” Why was this a problem? Because that isn’t actually what he said. What Hitchens actually said was ““Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain.” He was having a conversation with friends, and he was being sarcastic, but somehow this quote escaped into the public awareness. So now everyone remembers the first bit of the quote and they don’t even know about the last bit. But, because of that misquote, whole generations of people think that they can write a book. Now, I’m not saying they can’t, but based on some of the submissions we get here at Selfishgenie Publishing, there is a chasm between wanting to write a book and having the talent and skills needed to actually do it.  The naturally talented Tiger Woods Yes, there is such a thing as raw (or natural) talent. But raw talent needs nurturing, which people forget. I’ll use the golfer Tiger Woods as an analogy. Tiger Woods didn’t go straight from hitting a golf ball at the age of 5, in his family’s back yard, to winning the US Masters at Augusta. He had raw talent, sure, but if he had just relied on that we would now be saying “Tiger who?” Between 1980, when Tiger was 5, and 1997, when he won his first Masters, was a 17 year journey of golf lessons, coaching, endless practicing and playing to upgrade his raw talent to a “Major” winning capability. And that is how it works with writing, too.  The fact you can write a half decent essay or report does not make you either a writer or an author. Creative writing, that which is necessary to write a novel, is a skill that has to be learnt. Universities know this, which is why they offer degrees in creative writing. I’m not saying that everyone who wants to be an author has to go to university (or college, if you prefer), but they do need to take their raw talent and develop it so that they can go from being someone who writes a good essay to someone who writes a best-selling novel. It is the same journey that Tiger Woods took, only without the necessity of carrying a bag of golf clubs around (Tiger Woods did go to college on a golfing scholarship, but that was a means to an end. There were other ways he could have completed his golfing education). So, Mr, Ms, Mrs or Miss wannabe author, are you willing to put some time into developing your talent?  Are you willing to take courses in creative writing? Are you willing to attend writers’ workshops? Are you willing to join writer’s groups (real ones, not virtual ones) to get feedback on your writing? Are you willing to sit and listen to feedback that says you could do it better? Are you willing to spend years practicing so that you can improve as a writer? Are you capable of dealing with the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that plagues many writers? And all before you write the first word of your first actual novel. OK, I’ll admit that some authors do have enough natural talent to make it big at the first attempt. But they are the exception, they are not the rule. The chances of being one of those prodigies, is extremely small.  But, thanks to modern technology, it is easy to find out if you are one of these prodgies. Join a Facebook writers’ group, post a piece of work on the page (anonymously) and ask for feedback. I can be pretty sure that what you receive back will not be overwhelmingly positive. Even though a lot of the feedback will be couched in positive language, it will be negative in its meaning. So, you’ve put the hard yards in, and your first novel is ready to be released into a world that couldn’t give a damn about it.  Because that is another lesson the newbie author has to learn. The world is not waiting with bated breath for their novel. This is when they find out that getting your book published is even harder than writing it. Querying (as it is known) is brutal. Most authors get rejection after rejection before they find an agent to represent their work to publishers. Are you ready for that? We speak from experience when we say that those rejections hurt, and the pain doesn’t get any less the more rejections you get. The biggest named authors in the world have all had at least one rejection. It’s on record that J K Rowling had ten before eventually landing a deal for her first Harry Potter book. Even getting an agent isn’t the end of the journey, because publishers don’t like taking risks on first time authors. Your agent may like your book and have faith in it, but it doesn’t mean they can sell it to a publisher. J K Rowling’s publisher had so little faith in her book that the first print run was only 5,650 copies. Most of those went to reviewers. So, how many rejections are you willing to accept before you call it a day? Actually, thanks to the internet and the mushroom like growth of self-publishing platforms, you don’t have to call it a day anymore. You can self-publish your book.  No one is going to stumble over your novel by accident! But that is just more hard work, You now have a whole new set of skills to learn, and they are called editing, cover design, formatting and marketing.
That last one, marketing, is the hardest of all. Sorry to have to tell you this, but no one is going to stumble over your book by accident. You have to take them by the hand and lead them to your book. With a lot of hard work, you may sell 1,000 copies of your book. That would put you into the top 10% of all authors. Yes, you read that right. Only 10% of all published authors sell more than 1,000 books in their lifetime. Here’s the breakdown.
If an author wants to sell their book, they must first learn how to market it if they want to eat regularly. So, do you still want to be a writer? I hope so, because there is room in the world for you. But don’t believe that it is an easy path to fame and fortune, because anyone who says it is, is a liar. Yes, maybe anyone can become a writer. But not every writer will be good at it and not every good writer will be successful. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. |
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