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Selfishgenie Publishing are pleased to hand over our blog this week to one of our poets, AngieD, who is writing about how she became a poet and how she is inspired to write her poetry. Disclaimer: All views expressed in this blog are those of the author and aren't necessarily those of Selfishgenie Publishing  Poet AngieD I’d like to say that writing poetry was something I was good at in school, though in between Romeo and Juliet, Hard Times et al, there didn’t appear to be much time devoted to this category of English Literature; what little poetry we children were exposed to I could barely understand since, to my mind, it was in adult language and highly cryptic; too cryptic for my little ears. I therefore had very little knowledge of what poetry was about, except for limericks and nursery rhymes. And so, if I said it was something I’ve always wanted to do and that each time I read a ditty it had me thinking “Gosh! I wish I could write a verse” and piqued any great interest, I would be lying! It wasn’t something that ignited any spark of excitement or great interest at all, quite different from hearing someone with extraordinary musical abilities, which aroused feelings more of jealousy that I couldn’t, and probably would never, play like that.  I didn't get excited about poetry. So, besides reading limericks and silly nursery rhymes, I didn’t really give poetry much thought. In fact, the first I really knew about any ability to write a verse was quite a few years ago, lying in bed one weekend morning in my very small and humble-in-great-need-of-decoration second floor London flat and being disturbed by the neighbours occupying the one below. They were making an awful racket but, instead of getting highly irritated (well, not strictly true – I was a little irritated at first!) my mind just seemed to speak in rhyme. It was quite a startling and frightening revelation to me.  Gracula religiosa intermedia (Common Hill Myna) At first I heard myself say “who’s that talking?” not realising it was my mind. Nevertheless, I went with the flow, chuckling as I wrote down the words of this verse about a Myna bird. I had never had an encounter with one; I’d never even seen one. I even had to look it up. What connection had this with the noise I was hearing? I have no clue, but my first ever verse was written and, being a PA Secretary (and previously in the “be prepared” Girl Guides and Girls’ Brigade), I always had pen and paper by my bedside. And that was the start!  From then on it was, as they say, all systems go, like a dam had burst and that part of my mind which had laid dormant had suddenly woken up, its contents released, and there was now no turning back. Things I’d never noticed before would quickly come into my mind’s eye and words or lines would pop up. Voices would say “hurry up there’s another waiting to be written down”. It could be frantic at times since I couldn’t write quickly enough to get everything down! Now, was this the reason I learned shorthand?* Even if it wasn’t, it was now coming to the fore, since it enabled me to write at breakneck speed. This doesn’t bode well for wrists and hands since even before I arrived to start a day’s work, I was already weary from an hour or more of writing while on my train journey.  The lightbulb of inspiration. I found nothing in particular inspired me. In fact, everything inspired me. Finding a window seat on the train was my most important early morning mission so I could write while observing the scenery and how it changed from morning to morning. It was beautiful. How had I never noticed this before? So much to see and appreciate; now that was exciting! Scenery, people and animals were looked at in a different light. Do you ever notice the habits of people: feet on seats where others have to sit. Leaving their rubbish on seats and floor. Grownups picking their noses, biting their nails, coughing or sneezing without covering their mouths, speaking so loudly one can hear every word (and me itching to join in!). That annoying clicking on laptops or ‘phones as they type away as if the train is their office! My mind would just rhyme away; I could have sat on the train all day just writing.  Inspiration can come from anywhere. I’m finding writing poetry is a 24/7 thing. Everything I look at, see, or hear becomes a subject. Although I have written now for quite a few years, I have only recently succumbed and accepted the fact that writing is a part of me. It happens anywhere at any time, in any place (church, supermarkets, the aforementioned trains), I’m not really conscious of it happening, it just happens; commuting on my way to work when I had to commute; walking from the railway station to the office; in a restaurant (and often I would be asked if I was a reporter!). Whatever popped up in my mind would have to be written down. I find writing takes no prisoners if it’s in your mind it has to exit somewhere and if one doesn’t comply pretty sharpish, it fades away and is forgotten. Work produced ample opportunities to write fun little personal verses. If a colleague was having a bad day, I could write something to make them smile. Business acquaintances too would engage and respond to my verse, in verse. Which made work all the more fun and, sometimes, they would even apologise for not replying in the same vein!  Everything seemed now to be about writing verses, not just writing a memo in prose, but some notification of meetings or cancellations were rhyme written and, again, replies would come back in verse! See, everyone can rhyme! Earlier years would see me go to bed with a pencil and notebook and practically never sleep! I am learning to control it a little more than in past years. I won’t say I’m completely successful, that would be impossible. If that which is filling my mind is not written down then it is lost forever. This has been tested; I’ve had a verse(s) in my mind and thought that chanting it over and over during the night would ensure it would be remembered in the morning. Not so, I couldn’t even remember the subject, so that much I’ve learned. Even though I now leave the pencil and paper on a cabinet three steps away from the bed, verses still often, come in the middle of night and I have to write them down but, thankfully, it’s much easier doing it via the recording app on my phone!  The queue of ideas is never ending At times it feels like a tap that never switches off. Each new day brings a different set of subjects and so the writing continues, and you tend to become at one with whatever you’re writing about. It never occurred to me that I would be writing for so many years. Did I ever think I’d write so many? No. I thought one day I’d run out of things to write about, maybe about the 50th verse and that one day the verses will dry up. Touch wood, thousands of verses later it hasn’t happened yet. I am aware of the saying all good things come to an end, but my end has not yet come! Do I get tired of writing? Well actually, physically, yes I do. It’s a never-ending task to which most poets and authors of books can probably attest. There is always an idea in your head and before you can write it down another one is waiting in the wings eager to be noted. The unavoidable task of writing is logging all that is written!  The one about the loo rolls! I write to empty my mind of words to make room for the words I can see pushing past those I’m writing, so I think so there’s no time to enjoy. I do often sit while watching TV reading some of the verses and often wonder what the blazes was I thinking to write that (like the one about loo rolls!). But what I enjoy most and the best reason to write is seeing those who hear my readings, and knowing those who read my book smile and/or comment that they can relate to whatever they’ve heard, whether it’s romance or why toenails grow much faster than fingernails. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if it makes people smile or gives food for thought then it’s been worth writing!  Poetry seems to be within me for the foreseeable future, so I have (happily) learned to live with it and the constant buying and sharpening of pencils!. Poetry is my world along with music, spinach, dancing and cheese. To find out more about AngieD’s poetry, see her collections on our “Books” page. Two more volumes are scheduled for publication during Spring 2024. * For younger readers, shorthand was a system of speed writing. The modern versions can be traced to 1720, but it is known to have existed as far back as the 4th century BC. It is a way of writing that allowed secretaries, journalists etc to record the spoken word at the same pace as it was uttered, without missing any of it. Modern technology has rendered it obsolete. To find out more about AngieD’s poetry collections, click here. 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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 I read a post in a writers’ group on Facebook recently that said that the author had done their “research” and come to the conclusion that there were just two approaches to marketing a book. Approach One was to plug your book relentlessly on social media. Approach Two was to make sure you get your keywords right, a good cover, a snappy title and a top notch blurb so that your book would show up in searches and sell that way. The person who made the post had decided he was going to put all his eggs in one basket and just pursue one of those approaches. I’ll not say which in case it influences you to do the same, which is not the objective of this blog. In fact, the objective is exactly the opposite.  Like this shape, Marketing is multifaceted. I’m not going to say that either of those two approaches are wrong in themselves. What I will say is that narrowing things down to just one of two approaches is like saying there are only 2 ways to cook eggs (I can think of 6 without breaking sweat). Marketing, like any discipline, is multi-faceted. Tossing a coin and saying that only one option will be taken is like taking a binary view of any activity. It rules out more than it includes and what it rules out is valuable. Good marketing is analogue decision making, not binary. Using social media to plug a book is important to an Indie author. First of all, it is all some authors can afford because everyone can afford free. Secondly it raises the author’s profile, even if it is only amongst a limited size group of people. Finally, it can actually sell books if done the right way. But having the right keywords, cover, blurb etc is also essential. Keywords get the book found in searches. But they don’t sell the book. Once the book has been found, the cover attracts attention, the blurb increases the reader’s curiosity, and the sale is around 70% made.  But it is either the reviews or the free sample (sometimes both) that actually sells the book. Reviews because people will buy what other people have liked and the free sample because it allows the reader to decide if the book lives up to the expectations raised by the blurb and the cover. But that assumes that the book appears high enough up in the search results. There can be no doubt that Amazon ranks search results by popularity. At the top of Page 1 of the results is always the “sponsored” books, the ones that authors or publishers have paid to be there. Then you usually get the best-sellers in the genre because Amazon knows that they are money makers. The rest of the results can be spread over many pages and there is no way of knowing how far readers will go through the results before they buy their next read. Yes, your book will be there if you used the right keywords, but they may be on page 100.  I suspect it’s going to be one of those 80:20 things. 80% of all books that will be purchased will appear on the first 2 or 3 pages of results and only the remaining 20% of sales will be made on subsequent pages of results, with the percentage declining the further you go through the pages. I have no evidence to support that, BTW, but intuitively it would seem to make sense. So, if you want to be in that 80% you have to do something else to make that happen. And that falls outside the second approach described above. To get your book into the 80% you have to find some way of marketing the book that doesn’t depend just on search results. You have to find a way of getting the reader to go looking for that book specifically, rather than doing a search. And that means finding a way of getting the reader to click on a link so that they go to exactly the right page for the book.  So, we’re back to social media. Yes and no. Social media is just one route that can be taken. We’ve already mentioned paid advertising as a way for readers to find a book the reader didn’t even know they wanted to buy. We use it and it pays for itself many times over. But for people who have a more limited budget that isn’t always a viable route to take (but check it out because it’s probably cheaper than you think). When you use social media and search results together, you start to harness the best of both worlds. It isn’t an either/or situation. It is a “both in the right place” situation. Then you can add in things such as email lists, promos, blogs and so much more.  I could list all the approaches that we at Selfishgenie Publishing use, but you would end up reading all day and you probably aren’t up for that. Scroll down to read the blog we posted a fortnight ago, because that says a bit more about what successful book marketing involves. Suffice to say – there is more than one way to skin a cat and using several ways, at the right time and in the right way, is always going to produce better results than just limiting yourself to one approach (apologies to animal lovers, but it’s just a saying. No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog). That is why marketing is such a time consuming activity for the Indie author and if you aren’t prepared to commit the time, you are always going to get disappointing levels of sales. One of the most frequent questions Indie authors ask about marketing their books is “Which is the best place to market my book?” The answer to that is so subjective that there simply is no answer.  Just because Author A had huge success using Platform X, it doesn’t mean that Author B will have the same success if they also use it. This is why you have to know your readers, especially when it comes to using social media. For example, TikTok is used a lot by younger people. Now, don’t get the idea that it is only used by them, because older people use to too. But if you want to reach younger readers, then you are better off using TikTok than using, say, Facebook. Many women find X (formerly Twitter) too hostile for them, so if you want to reach a female audience you would be better off using Instagram or perhaps Pinterest, where more women tend to hang out. And that is why Author A may be having more success and why Author B won’t because their readership is different and therefore their readers’ social media habits are different.  There are even some readers who don’t use social media at all, or the internet for that matter (I know, weird, huh?) so reaching that group of people is going to be really hard, which is where book fairs and other real world forums fit into the equation.
I’m not saying you have to be everywhere, all the time. You would have to be superhuman to do that. But you do have to think in terms of being in more than one place at any time. This is why real research is so important. You have to know where the majority of your target readership hangs out and when they hang out there, so that you can be in the same place at the same time. For example, there is little point in targeting YA audiences between 9 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, because they will be in school or college. You have to target them in the evening. So, what would we like you to take away from this blog? 1. Book marketing is not a binary choice. It is multifaceted. 2. Taking multiple approaches to marketing covers more bases, which means it is likely that you will sell more books. 3. Know where (and when) to find your readers, so your readers can find you. 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.  It is a sad fact that around 80% of people who start to write a book, never finish writing it. Why such a high dropout rate? It’s not easy to say as those that don’t finish don’t tend to talk about why they didn’t finish, but we can make a few assumptions which may not be too far off the mark. First there is the time factor. Writing a book is a very time consuming activity and when someone has competing priorities, such as work or family, something has to give and the thing that is easiest to abandon is writing.  Secondly, some people don’t actually realise that writing a book is quite difficult. They assume that the words will simply flow from their brains to their keyboard of their own volition and in no time at all there will be a 90k manuscript that is all ready to go to the publishers. That is down to a lack of research, of course. Anyone who spends even the smallest amount of time on social media groups dedicated to writing would soon see the posts from frustrated writers and would realise that writing isn’t anything like as easy as it seems. Then comes the realisation that writing the book is only a fraction of the work that is involved in producing a book. Once it is written it has to be edited, market tested (beta readers), edited again, proofread and then the biggest mountain is still ahead: either finding an agent or going self-published. That is enough to put the less motivated off the idea of finishing their book.  Which brings us to the biggest barrier of all for finishing the writing of a book: a lack of basic motivation. It is very easy to come up with an idea for a book. We can be inspired in all sorts of ways, including the “I’m pretty sure I could write a better book than this myself” we have all probably felt after reading a mediocre book. But the world is full of half-finished projects for which the explanation is that the person who started the project didn’t have enough motivation to finish it. Real writers are highly motivated. There can be no doubt about that. There are many reasons they are motivated, and we can take a look at some of them.  The most obvious is that they have a story to tell and writing it down is the best way of telling it, other than pinning someone in a corner and telling it to their face while they try to escape. I’m one of those sorts of writers. Once I have an idea for a story there is no way I can rest until it is written. Sometimes I’m halfway through writing one story when a second comes along and demands attention. It can be a real problem finishing the first story while the second one jumps around in my head trying to get my attention. I think that many real authors suffer from that problem, which is why they produce so many books at frequent intervals. They just can’t stop the stories from flooding out.  The second motivation is that people do it for money. If you are just starting out on your journey as an author, and the possibility of making a lot of money is what is motivating you, then brace yourself, because I have some bad news for you. 70% of all the books ever written never sell more than 100 copies. How motivated do you feel now? There are many reasons why they never sell more copies, and a lack of marketing is one of them, but it shows you what a tough industry you have chosen to enter. Of the remaining 30%, 70% of those will never sell more than 1,000 copies. To put that into context, you have to sell around 30,000 copies to make the equivalent of the “living wage” in the UK, which is about £20k p.a. at time of writing (about $25k or €23k).  Only the smallest percentage of authors will ever make more than the living wage from writing books and the mega rich authors are the ones that get their books turned into movies or TV series. Yes – that could be you. But before you give up your day job, ask yourself what the probability is. The vast majority of authors are the equivalent to the Sunday-morning-in-the-park footballers comparing themselves to Lionel Messi (or Joe Burrow if you are American).  For many authors writing starts out as a hobby; something they like to do to pass the time. The thought of actually publishing a book often doesn’t cross their mind. It is something suggested by someone who has read their “scribblings” as they self-effacingly describe them. Those people tend to be some of the ones in the 70% who never sell more than 100 copies, because they don’t understand that the writing is the easy part. It is the marketing that sells books and that is the difficult part. Thos sorts of people would much rather just keep on with the writing part, so their books never sell. Which is a great pity because they might be potential best-sellers, but no one will ever know.  For some people writing is cathartic. Writing allows people to express their emotions, especially negative ones. Getting things down on the page is a form of release. It can also provide insights into why people feel the way they do, so it is good for their mental health. I have met many authors who have told me that this is why they write. Many of those sorts of books become best sellers, because the emotions expressed are so authentic.  I have described just 4 examples of motivation for writing in this blog, one of which is actually built on a false premise. There are many more I am sure. Why not tell us what motivates you to write? Use the comments section below to share your story. So, if you are just starting out on your writing journey, ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated for weeks, maybe months, on end while you work on your book. Then ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated during the seemingly endless querying process. And, if the querying process doesn’t pay off and you end up self-publishing, ask yourself how you are going to keep yourself motivated while you market your book yourself.  I’d love to be able to answer those questions for you, but in the writing world there is no boss or team to help you stay motivated.
There is only you, the device you are writing on and, if you are lucky, a loved one who will keep you supplied with cups of tea and comforting words. But you aren’t really alone. There are thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people in the world just like you. Join a writers’ group either in the real world or the virtual world, because they, too, can provide you with encouraging words. But it will still be down to you to do the rest and there is no one to motivate you to do it except you. If you happen to have some good motivational tips, please feel free to share them in the comments below. 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.  Books don’t sell themselves. They have to be marketed and learning how to market a book effectively can be time consuming. It can also be expensive, especially as there are so many sharks out there who would like to take your money but not give you very much in return. But you can kick start your marketing efforts by following our top 10 marketing tips for self-published authors. 1. Make time for marketing The one thing every successful indie author can tell you is that marketing takes up a lot of time. But the same authors will also tell you that if you don’t put enough time into marketing, you will never sell any books. Or at least, you won’t sell many.  If your dream is to become a best-selling author, you also have to become a good book marketer. But marketing doesn’t stop when your book has started selling. If you stop marketing, the sales will stop too. This is pretty much a lifetime commitment. You need to spend a minimum of an hour a day marketing your books. That can be more than doubled in the early days or when you have a new book coming out. Yes, it’s a lot. There is no tip in this list that makes marketing any less time consuming. No indie author, even ones who are good at marketing, became an “overnight success”, so you also have to learn to be patient.  Patience isn’t just a virtue – it is an essential. That isn’t something people want to hear in today’s “instant gratification” world. But if you try marketing for a week, get no results and stop because you think it isn’t working – well it won’t work. It wasn’t the marketing that failed, it was the lack of patience that caused the failure. It is said in the marketing industry that buyers have to have 7 “touches” of a product before they buy it. A touch is any sort of exposure to the product and includes seeing marketing messages on-line It takes time for those 7 “touches” to happen. You could be lucky and get them within a few days, or it could take weeks, months or even years. But the more marketing you do, the more “touches” the readers will get and the quicker it will be for you to make sales.  2. Use multiple approaches to marketing. Using one approach to marketing may bring you some results, but using several different approaches will produce even better results (which is why marketing is so time consuming). People respond to marketing in different ways. Some will respond to direct advertising, but others would rather die than click on an ad. Which is why you need to use multiple approaches to reach different people. By using all the different approaches listed below, in combination and at different times, you will tap into several of the different ways that people respond to marketing. We promoted this blog as the “top 10 tips”, but that doesn’t mean that there are only 10, so be prepared to research some of the ones we haven’t mentioned. Our past blogs are full of other approaches, and they can be found in our blog archive.  3. Cover The book cover is the first thing the reader sees and it does quite a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to marketing. It has to attract the reader’s attention at the same time as it tells them about the genre of the book. Spend some time looking at other authors’ book covers, especially the best sellers in your genre. What have they got in common? But most of all a book cover has to look professional – even if it was created by an amateur. If you can design your own covers using Canva or BookBrush (other graphics packages are available) and make them look professional, then that ‘s great. But if you can’t it is worth spending a little bit of money to get the right cover for your book. But beware. There are lots of “designers” out there and they don’t all do a good job. Also, the book covers they show on their profiles may not actually be their work. Seek recommendations from other authors, because they have trodden this path before and may be able to point you in the right direction.  4. Blurb This is the other bit of marketing that does a lot of heavy lifting. So many books don’t sell because their blurbs are just snores-ville. Don’t try to describe your book in your blurb. You’ll never do it justice. Instead describe how exciting/entertaining/dramatic/thrilling/romantic/funny your book is. The first sentence has to hook the reader. It doesn’t matter how good sentences 2, 3 and 4 are. If the reader isn’t hooked by the time they get to the first full stop, those other sentences won’t even be read. We have covered blurb writing in previous blogs and there are lots of other blogs out there on the subject. READ THEM.  5. Metadata Meta data is all the stuff that you enter on the first page of whatever publishing platform you use for your book. Author name, title, subtitle, description, category (or categories), keywords etc. All this information is important because it is the way your book will be found when readers do searches for books to buy. Your metadata has to include words that will match up with their search terms. Pay particular attention to the category in which you place your book, because if you put your book in the wrong one, you may as well hide it at the back of a cupboard because it will never be found by the readers who read books like yours. On social media we see a lot of authors saying “you can’t fit my book into any category, it’s a cross between X, Y, Z and something new and original I created.”  This is wrong. Their book has a central theme, and that central theme is the category it belongs in. If ever there was a time to “pick a team”, this is it. One “team” will always be better for your book than the others and you have to work out which it is. Do some research! Do searches on etailing sites to find the categories that other authors in your genre are using. You will find the information in the “product description” section on Amazon. Who are the big-name authors in your genre? Take a look at the categories where their books are listed because that is probably where yours should be listed too. If you get your metadata wrong your book won’t show up in search results. If you get it right it will. Maybe not on the first page, or the second page or even the third but it will be in the results somewhere. The better the match between the search terms and the metadata, the higher it will be. When it comes to keywords, do more research. Don’t just try to guess them, try them out to see what sort of search results you get. Use incognito browsing so you don’t get offered your own books or books like the ones you have bought in the past. If you don’t get books like the one you’ve written, then the keywords aren’t the right ones to use for your book.  6. Social media presence The important thing about social media is that it is social! In years gone by, being on social media was a great place to promote your books for free. However, so many authors are now using it for that purpose that readers now tend to just scroll past book promotions. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to bother with social media. But it does mean that you should use it more to build relationships than you do for promotion. And we do mean real relationships, ones that involve conversations. Asking random questions in order to get lots of responses is not a relationship and it isn’t a conversation. Finally, don’t focus on attracting writers, focus on attracting readers. Yes, writers will support you and give you “likes”, but they aren’t the people you need to be talking to if you want to sell books. Readers, on the other hand, are always looking for new books to read. (yes, we know that writers also read books, but there are many more readers than there are writers). How do you identify readers? By starting conversations with people. We recommend Facebook, X and Pinterest. We don’t recommend Instagram, TikTok or similar. But we may be wrong so if you think you can make them work for you, then give them a whirl.  7. Advertise It pays to advertise, that’s why big corporations spend so much money on it. And it can pay back for indie authors too if they do it the right way. The wrong way is to pay on-line book promotion sites to blast out X or Facebook posts and to “feature” your books on their websites. The posts are ignored and the website entries get lost in the crowd. Use the outlets that have been proven to work for other authors. For us this is Amazon and Pinterest. Both platforms are used by people who want to buy something, so the battle is half won before you start. All you have to do after that is to learn to use them effectively. We have sold books using Facebook advertising, but Amazon Ads and Pinterest have both been more successful for us. I have provided some links to resources at the end of this blog. For Amazon, once you have seen their videos, I would recommend undertaking Bryan Cohen’s “5 Day Author Ads Challenge” where he teaches authors how to use Amazon’s algorithms to get better results for less money.  8. Your own website Having your own website isn’t for everyone and if you don’t think it is going to be your thing, that’s fine. However, if you do decide to get a website, or you have one already, it is useless if you can’t get people to go to it to look at your books. You need what are called “reader magnets”. There are two things you can put on your website to attract readers. One is complete short stories that can be downloaded for free. The second is free extracts of your books, with links embedded to take the reader to the complete book so they can buy it when they have finished the extract – assuming they liked the extract, of course. Blogs can be a reader magnet – if you are reading this it is because we drew you in with our magnet – but they take a lot of time to write, especially as you need to post new blogs regularly. If you are considering getting your own website, wait until you have at least 3 books published. The cost can’t be justified if you only have one book to sell. But remember, your website is like your book. Nobody is going to trip over it by accident. Use the other marketing tips in this blog to get people to visit your website or you may as well not bother having it. If you don’t want a website, at least have a Facebook page dedicated to you as an author. Keep it separate from your personal page and use it like you would a website.  9. Price Promotions Price promotions are a great way to kick start sales of a new book, by reducing the price of a previous book. Putting your book on sale for a low price can attract sales, boost you up the sales rankings and get you reviews. However, they won't earn you much in the way of royalties, so you have to strike the right balance. Where price promotions really work is by reducing the price of an existing book and using it to promote the new book. Make sure that you include an extract of the new book in the reduced price book to entice people to buy it. This may mean having to change your ebook’s MS and re-publishing, but that doesn’t take too long. This tactic works very well if you put the new book on “pre-order”, which allows you to generate interest before the actual release date. Your pre-order sales all show up in the sales rankings on the day the new book launches, and they catapult you upwards. We do give away free books from time to time, but we don’t recommend it as a major marketing tool. Free books tend to be downloaded by people who only want a free book. They often don’t result in subsequent sales. Free books don’t feature in sales rankings, so they have no impact in those terms, though they may provide you with a few more reviews. It is better to discount the price of the book for a period. Amazon allows you to do this for 5 days at a time if your book is enrolled in KDP Select, but even if it isn’t, you can reduce the price on the book’s set-up pages on KDP as long as you don’t go below the minimum price that Amazon sets. Draft to Digital allows you to generate Smashwords coupons for discounts up to 100% and you can publicise these through your social media. But special offers are only special if they are for a limited time. Keeping books listed at a discounted price for a long period reduces the impact they have.  10. Learn how to market effectively. We should probably have made this the No 1 tip, but if we’d done that you wouldn’t have read the rest of the blog. There is no substitute for learning the skills necessary to do any job. Exactly the same applies to learning how to market your books. The biggest selling indie authors aren’t the ones who have published the best books. They are the authors who have learnt how to become good at marketing. You can write a mediocre book (we've read some of them) and still become a best-selling author by learning how to market. You can also write the best book ever written and it will never sell because you didn’t learn to do your own marketing. Your book, your rules. All we can say is that we sell books because we market relentlessly, and we are always trying to learn new marketing skills. We have included a link below to direct you to a website where you can get some training for free to get you started.  Resources One blog won’t make you a marketing expert, so here we list some resources you can tap into to help you with your marketing. Marketing training. FutureLearn offers free training wherever you are in the world. Search their site for a wide range of marketing courses. You can complete one in a day if you put your mind to it. Using Pinterest for marketing: Beginners use this link, more advanced users should use this link to find out how to use it for business (and selling your book is a business) Amazon advertising: watch their videos to learn how to use their ads platform. To learn to use Amazon Ads more cheaply and effectively, try Bryan Cohen’s 5 Day Author Ads Challenge. This is the Facebook page to find out when the next challenge starts. They usually run once every 3 to 4 months.  What to take away from this blog
There are two key messages that we hope you will take away from this blog: 1. Marketing is the only way an indie author can ever sell more than a handful of copies of their books. 2. Learning how to market is the only way to make marketing work for you. 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.  87% of Pinterest users have bought a product because they saw it on Pinterest. Has that grabbed your Attention? It should, because that is 87% of around 300 million monthly users. We here at Selfishgenie Publishing had heard of Pinterest, of course, but we hadn’t paid it much attention. It didn’t seem to have a place in our marketing strategy, as far as we could see. We regarded it as a poor relation of the social media world and therefore not able to do much for us. Then we watched a video that changed our minds. The video was made by a well-known self-published and mainstream published author, Melissa Bourbon, who also provides a wide range of training for writers. She also does a lot of her own marketing and is a big user of Pinterest. In the video she showed us what Pinterest had done for her and we were sufficiently impressed to give it a try for ourselves. So, we gave it a try and it worked for us too, which is why we are now suggesting it for you. What follows is a bit about how Pinterest can be used for marketing, along with some hints and tips we’ve picked up along the way that will help new users to make an impact with it. Let’s continue with a few more significant statistics.  47% of Pinterest users go on the site specifically to shop. So, if you want to find buyers, Pinterest seems to be the place. 50% of Pinterest users are outside of the USA. So, wherever you are in the world, you have a Pinterest audience waiting for you. Finally, just to whet your appetite a little more, Pinterest users are more likely than other social media users to click-through, share or use your content. First of all, what is Pinterest? We thought it was just another social media platform. We were wrong.  Social media posts are here today, gone tomorrow things. Every time you make a post, older posts get pushed further and further down your profile page. That means you have to keep refreshing your messages with new posts. With Pinterest you don’t have to. Pinterest “pins”, as they are called, show up in search results according to relevance, not currency. So a pin made 5 years ago can show up alongside a pin made today. Pinterest is really a very powerful search engine. But unlike other search engines, it only searches within its own site. When users log into Pinterest they are usually looking for something and Pinterest helps them to find it. One of the popular searches is for recipes, for example. Readers enter a few ingredients or other suitable search terms (dinner recipes, summer recipes, etc) into the search bar and Pinterest will show them all the pins related to those search terms. But not only do your pins show up on Pinterest searches but, if you set them up correctly (I’ll return to that later in the blog) they’ll also show up on Google searches. Two for the price of one. Actually, two for the price of none because you don’t have to pay Pinterest anything, unless you want to use their advertising tools.  And the same applies to books. Some readers go to Pinterest to find ideas for new books to read. If you have a website, Pinterest can give you immediate impact. Google takes a long time to find new websites and show them in their results, no matter what SEO “gurus” might tell you. They can take weeks, months or even years to make it to the first or second pages of search results. But pins on Pinterest show up the day they are posted. All users have the latest pins displayed on their home feed, before they even start searching. And the pins they are shown are those relevant to the sorts of things they have saved before. So, if they have saved pins related to books, they’ll see new pins related to books – your pins. Why do buyers like Pinterest and not Amazon or one of the other book etailing sites? Probably because there is no pressure to buy. They are just browsing, looking for ideas or suggestions.  If the reader finds something they like the look of, they can click on the pin to find out more, but if they aren’t interested they can just go onto the next pin that takes their fancy. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest actually encourages users to click on links, by including those links in prominent positions on the details page of the pin. And this is why it is a marketing tool for indie authors. Now, I’m not claiming that Pinterest is going to turn a book into a bestseller overnight. Nor would Melissa Bourbon make that claim. This is just one more string to the indie author’s marketing bow and should be viewed in the same light. But it’s probably a more powerful marketing tool than either Facebook or Twitter/X. We started using Pinterest back in November, when we were setting up our social media marketing for the Christmas season. It’s a big time for book sales and we wanted some of that action. The timing of our “discovery” of Pinterest couldn’t have been better.  We have two books which we think are especially suitable for Christmas and we put up several pins relating to them. And we got sales. What is particularly significant is that for one of the books, sales had been pretty poor over the first 10 months of the year, but as soon as we put it on Pinterest, that changed. Coincidence? You know we don’t believe in those. Besides, Pinterest’s tracking data showed us how many views and clicks we got for the pins, so we can be pretty sure that the sales came via Pinterest and not just from random searches on Amazon. I’ll be frank, there is some work needed to get the best out of Pinterest, just as there is for any other marketing channel. Experts suggest you have to make around 10 pins a day. Well, we haven’t got time for that so we’re not going to make the same suggestion. But using it regularly is going to have better results than using it sporadically.  In one of the videos we link to later in the blog, the presenter suggests that you can get great returns not by pinning quantity, but by pinning quality. She claims that over 50% of the traffic that is driven to her website by Pinterest comes from just 3 pins, which she made a while ago. But they are “quality” in terms of what makes a good pin, which is why they keep on working for her in the long long term. We’re not going to take you line by line through how to set up a Pinterest pin or how to create a good quality pin. Instead, we went on YouTube and found a video that does that. We provide a link to it at the end of the blog. But we have learnt a few tricks, and we’d like to offer you a few tips.  The first tip we have is to make sure your book’s cover is eye catching. Your cover image is going to appear as one of many, so it has to stand out. If it isn’t eye catching, put it onto a background that is eye catching. Graphics packages such as BookBrush and Canva have tools that allow you to do that. It does no harm to surround the cover image with short text phrases, to entice the reader in. We’ve put one of ours here to show what we mean. Pinterest also allows you to overlay text onto your images. Second tip: Make sure the filename for your cover image actually describes the image. Many graphics packages download images with filenames that are just bunches of numbers and letters and authors often don’t rename the files. But if you rename them so that it describes the image, the description acts as keywords, so they show up in search results. For example, we use the format “Author Name_Book Title_Genre_Book” Not only will those words be found by searches on Pinterest, but Google will find them too if someone does an image search using any of those terms. I always include the word “book” in all relevant file names, because that will show up in all searches where “book” is used as a search term, even if none of the other words are used.  Third tip: Use the right tags for your books. Pinterest doesn’t allow you to create your own tags for your books, but it has lists of tags that have been used in a lot of searches. If you start to type a word into the tags bar, you will get a box that contains all the tags related to that word. Scroll down and select the tag you want and click on it and it will be added to your pin. It guarantees that your pin will be found if that tag is used in a search. Use as many tags as you can – but make sure they are relevant. Your book showing up in a search related to pea soup is not going to win you any friends or sell you any books (unless you write recipe books, of course).  Fourth tip, post regularly and vary your post images and text. As we have said in previous blogs, it can take up to seven viewings of a product before some people will buy it, but at the same time Pinterest has rules about posting spam, so if the images and text are always the same you could get into trouble. This is where packages such as Canva and BookBrush come in handy because they have lots of templates you can use to create different images with different text, all of which will have your book cover at the forefront. Fifth Tip, make sure you are using the right keywords in your pins. Like any other search engine, Pinterest looks for pins that contain the words that users input into the search bar. So, you have to use the same keywords. You can also nudge the search in the right direction by including hastags in the pin’s description (but put them after the main text). Do your research by entering the keywords you think are right to see what sort of results you get. Refine them until you are getting results that display books just like yours. Those are then the keywords you need to use in your pins to get your books found.  Finally, don’t forget to make special pins for special events: Christmas, Valentines Day, Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc. These are great times to boost your sales, especially of paperbacks, and special pins will attract people who are looking for anything related to those occasions.
So, that is our quick whizz around Pinterest, and we hope you have the same success with it as we have. But remember, this is just one string for your marketing bow. A well rounded marketing strategy uses all available and relevant channels and also uses them in multiple different ways. If you want to give Pinterest a try, then beginners can watch this video Once you are happy with using the platform, you might want to take a look at this video, which is aimed at optimising pins for business use. 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. Every year we like to try to give our blog page a seasonal theme and in the past we have allowed our authors to give you their take on the Christmas season (with varying degrees of success). This year, however, we thought we should get some contribution from the people that really make Christmas happen, the ones that live at the North Pole. So we emailed Santa and asked for a contribution from himself and maybe one from the reindeer and the elves. Much to our surprise we got all three, though from Mrs Santa, rather than from the man himself. Up until 16th December we are posting the replies. They look a bit like a conversation was taking place, because when we got the emails they prompted a lot of questions, which we asked and for which we got answers. So, we edited them all together to make them easier to read. So far we have heard from Vixen the Reindeer and Nobby the Elf and now it's the turn of Mrs Santa Claus.  OK, you asked for an email from Santa but you’ve got one from me, Mrs Santa, instead. Or Mrs Claus if you prefer. I don’t mind. Anything except Nellie, which is my real first name. That got ruined for me back in 1956 by that singer Mandy Miller. But I digress. Santa would have replied in person, but you have to understand that this is his busy time of year. Ha, gotcha! Don’t make me laugh – Santa? Busy? Oh no, he’s got it all worked out. There’s half a million elves next door doing all the work for minimum wage and I do all the work in here for no wages at all. Even the reindeer do more work than he does. He a lazy fat (expletive deleted), but I still love him. I shouldn’t complain, I suppose. I knew what I was letting myself in for when I married him all those epochs ago. Oh, you think he was a 3rd century Greek who was canonised, somewhat belatedly, in 1446. No. The Greek gets the credit (for the usual reasons regarding cultural misappropriation) but Santa is far, far older. As am I, of course. No, a lady never reveals her age and a gentleman never asks. Let’s just say that I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth. Actually, a lot older than these teeth, because I only got them this year. Very nice dentist in Birmingham. Lovely soft hands. Sorry, I’m digressing again. Where was I? Oh yes. No, nothing to do with Greek saints. We’re what the archaeologists call primeval, or is that primordial? I can never tell those two apart. Let’s just say that the day before the big meteor struck, there were a lot of happy dinosaurs unwrapping presents. Not T-Rex’s of course. their arms aren’t long enough to pick them up. Most of what you think you know about us comes from Victorian times. The actual celebration of Christmas is the misappropriation of many different pagan rituals to mark mid-winter, but you already know that because the “We don’t celebrate Christmas, we celebrate saturnalia” posts are all over social media. Jerks! But not as big as the jerks that say “winterval”. They are total (multiple expletives deleted). It doesn’t matter what you call it, it’s an excuse for a party and that’s never a bad thing. Not that we ever go to parties. We don’t even go to Longyearbyen for the annual “decorating the dead whale” festival, and that’s only 650 miles away. Do you think dinosaurs had Christmas? They didn’t even have calendars. We gave them their presents whenever they deserved a treat. Which, to be fair, wasn’t all that often. Giant carnivorous lizards are often naughty. Mind you, we didn’t leave them coal back then either, because it hadn’t been made. It was still standing upright covered in leaves. This year we’d like to tell you that there are a lot of people out there who won’t be getting presents, because they’re sat on the naughty step. I won’t name names. You read the news so you can guess who some of them are. All we can say is that if you behave like a (expletive deleted) we’ll treat you like a (expletive deleted). So, if you find a present from Santa under your Christmas tree (or whatever culturally misappropriated pagan ritual symbol you have in your home) then you know that you have been judged to be nice this year. I know some of you will be quite disappointed when you don’t find yours. Why is Santa so judgemental? Well, unlike most people who are judgemental, it is actually in his job description. By what authority is he allowed to be judgemental? That’s a much harder one. You’d have to go all the way back to the Big Bang for the answer to that one and even then it wouldn’t make a lot of sense. Let’s just say that the universe knows the difference between right and wrong and leave it at that. How does the universe know? Sorry, but to answer that would take several Christmases. Try asking a scientist. They’re getting closer to finding out. I’ve got mince pies and mulled wine to make for half a million elves or there will be no end of trouble next door.  I blame that Nobby. Right little rabble rouser that one. I’ll be glad when he retires and so will Santa. He told you I charge for the food? Oooh, I’ll have him, see if I don’t. Let me explain. I make the food, out of the goodness of my own heart. But food costs money, so I have to make a nominal charge, just to cover expenses. It isn’t my fault that I have to travel the world to buy it all every day. The mini-market in Longyearbyen never has anything other than frozen pizza with whale meat topping and only a couple of those at any time. You can’t feed half a million hungry elves on that! And as for the First Class flights and the 5 star hotels, well Santa insists. He says he can’t have me slumming it in Business Class. I need a wide seat and a comfy bed at my advanced age. No, I couldn’t take the sleigh. I’m allergic to reindeer. So yes, that does increase the costs a little bit, but never more than the elves can afford to pay. It’s not my fault that they want money left over to go drinking whisky in Longyearbyen at £25 a shot. How do I get on an aeroplane if I live at the North Pole? My, you are a nosey beggar aren’t you? Let’s just say that I have abilities that you will never understand and one of them is to turn up in the First Class lounge at any international airport in the world (avoiding the queue for Security in the process). So, why do I need airports at all? Why not go straight to the supermarket? Because the supermarket doesn’t have a breakfast buffet cooked by a Michelin starred chef. Now stop being so (expletive deleted) nosey. Oh, now you want to know how old Christmas really is? Well, way back a couple of billion years ago, a lightning bolt struck the primordial soup and caused some chemical changes which resulted in the creation of a single cell life form. No, that wasn’t us. We were already there. But we did give the single celled life form a birthday present and that’s how it all started. You could call that the first Christmas if you want. We got more organised as things went along, of course. We hired the elves, roped the reindeer in (literally) to provide the power for the sleigh, and that sort of thing. Where do elves come from? Now you’re asking! No one really knows. They sort of turned up, unannounced. For several millennia we regarded them as a sort of infestation, then we found they could be trained and that eased Santa’s workload a lot.  They eased it so much the fat lump doesn’t do anything but drive the sleigh nowadays. And for that he gets all the credit. Bit like politicians I suppose. Now politicians, well, they're definitely on the naughty list so you’ll find they’re all getting coal again this year. That's 5,000 years in a row, since you’re asking. It’s been so long since we gave a politician anything but coal for Christmas that we’d have to look it up in the archive to find the exact date. We did think about not giving them anything even before they became politicians, but we decided against that. There’s judgemental and there’s judgemental. There’s always a chance that one of them will do something useful. We won’t hold our breath while we wait, but we have to believe that in an infinite universe, anything is possible. No, we’re not going to answer that one. I refer you to what I said about infinite universes. You believe what you want to. It won’t make the slightest bit of difference to the way things really work. Some of you lot think you know the answers, but in reality you haven’t even worked out the questions yet. Anyway, back to mince pies and mulled wine for me, 'cos I can hear the elves starting to pack away their tools. They need some cheering up before they start to load up the sleigh. Santa’s starting to check the “naughty or nice list”, so it too late to change your behaviour now. But if you don’t get your present from Santa, ask yourself why. Then take a look at your world and start to think how you could make it a better place instead of a worse one. And if, after you’ve looked, you’re thinking “that’s someone else’s job”, you’re wrong. Merry Christmas from The North Pole! Selfishgenie Publishing is closing up for the holidays now, but our blog will be back in January when we have some interesting things to say about how Indie authors can use Pinterest for marketing their book. So don't forget to check back on 6th January.
In the meantime we wish you all a Merry Christmas and if you don't celebrate that holiday, we wish you all the very best wishes for the season. We also wish you all a very happy New Year. 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. Every year we like to try to give our blog page a seasonal theme and in the past we have allowed our authors to give you their take on the Christmas season (with varying degrees of success). This year, however, we thought we should get some contribution from the people that really make Christmas happen, the ones that live at the North Pole. So we emailed Santa and asked for a contribution from himself and maybe one from the reindeer and the elves. Much to our surprise we got all three, though from Mrs Santa, rather than from Santa himself. Up until 16th December we are posting the replies. They look a bit like a conversation was taking place, because when we got the emails they prompted a lot of questions, which we asked and for which we got answers. So, we edited them all together to make them easier to read. Last week we heard from Nobby the Elf and this week it's the turn of Vixen the reindeer.  Hi ya, Vixen here. I’ve been elected to send this email on behalf of all of Santa’s reindeer. Well, elected may be putting it a bit too strongly. It makes it sound like I had a choice. As the only female in the outfit, I tend to get given all the jobs the other reindeer don’t want to do. Which turns out to be most of them. And for 20% less pay! Yes, even up here! Cupid? No, he’s not female. Let’s just say “10% of the population” and you’ll get the picture. Now, the stories and movies all tell you that Rudolf is the one who doesn’t get the breaks, you know because of the … Actually, we don’t talk about that anymore. We call him “differently nasalled” and leave it at that. But no. because of all the stories, Rudolf is the top reindeer these days, even though he has done very little to deserve it. No, he never used his differently nasalled state to guide the sleigh. Are you kidding me? I know it’s bri… no, I better let it go. I’m actually lead reindeer. There are reasons for this that all the females reading this email will understand. If you want a male to do your bidding, just make sure he gets a good look at you from behind, which is why Santa puts me at the front. It’s the only way he can get those lazy b******s to move at all. Not that I’m bitter you understand. But it would be nice to be appreciated for my intellect for a change, rather than for my superb butt. And it is superb, even though I say it myself. But I’ve also got a PhD in comparative philosophies and nobody seems to take any notice of that. OK, philosophy isn’t such a big deal these days, not like it was back in the old days in Greece. You know the names of all the greats from back then: Aristotle, Plato, Socrates. Even batty old Diogenes in his barrel gets a mention from time to time. But name one philosopher from the 21st century! I bet you can’t. And maudlin, drunken introspection doesn’t count as philosophy. But that’s enough about me. What it is it really like being one of Santa’s reindeer? Actually, aside from the casual sexism, it isn’t too bad. We only work one night of the year unless some of the elves fancy a night out in Longyearbyen. We all have our own stalls, with hot and cold running hay, a TV set that gets Disney+ and Netflix, Santa keeps the heating on all winter and most of the summer (it never really gets warm up here) so I guess as far as being a reindeer is concerned life isn’t too bad. Let’s just say that it’s a lot more fun than living in Lapland, foraging for moss and being milked by Sami with cold hands. That’s just the females that get milked, by the way. See, more casual sexism. Mind you, Cupid probably wouldn’t mind too much if the Sami tried to milk him. So, for 364 days a year we get to stay in our nice warm barn and on the 365th day we fly around the world as Santa and the elves drop off all the presents. Yes, I know that scientists say that this isn’t possible. Well, scientists can go and f… have a real good think about it for a while. We’ve been doing this from the dawn of time (No, nothing to do with him, we’re far older than that). So, we know we can do it. Something to do with the Big Bang apparently. Some things started to slow down afterwards, but we kept the ability to move really fast if we want to. Or if Santa wants to which, apparently, is what we really want as well. As a female I really appreciate it when males tell me what I want (yes, you’re right, that is sarcasm). All reindeer have this ability, by the way. But the rest of them haven’t got a fat bloke cracking a whip over their heads to encourage them. How come we can fly when we aren’t very aero dynamic? Let me tell you, when you can travel the speed we do, you don’t need to be aerodynamic to be able to fly. The hard part is slowing down enough to land on a roof without sliding off the end! How do you think Rudolf got his red nose? Just our little joke. Actually, we don’t tell it anymore. Where do you think the term “snowflake” was invented? We got our inspiration for it locally, of course. So, that’s what being one of Santa’s reindeer is all about. 364 days of munching on hay and making sure Santa doesn’t forget to lock the door to my stall, and one day of moving so fast my antlers glow. Yes, I know female reindeer don’t have antlers (more sexism). But I’m one of Santa’s reindeer and he gets what he wants and he wants all his reindeer to have antlers, so antlers it is. I think I carry them off quite well. Our relationship with the elves? Cordial, I would call it. We don’t see a lot of them apart from Christmas Eve. Unless they want a night out in Longyearbyen. Fortunately, they don’t earn enough to get drunk, so they aren’t bad passengers. There’s no vomit to clean off the seats of the sleigh unless they’ve eaten a dodgy bit of whale meat. There’s one I don’t like. Grumpy little sod by the name of Nobby but he retires straight after this Christmas. Not a day to soon if you ask me. I won’t be sorry to see the back of him, I can tell you. You know what he once asked me to do? The filthy little sod. He crept into my stall one night and he …. (Editor’s apology. Once again the end of the email seems to have become corrupted and we have been unable to get it resent in time for inclusion on our blog page.) The last in this trilogy will be posted next week, when we hear from Mrs Santa Claus (Santa was too busy to reply, apparently). 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.
Every year we like to try to give our blog page a seasonal theme and in the past we have allowed our authors to give you their take on the Christmas season (with varying degrees of success). This year, however, we thought we should get some contribution from the people that really make Christmas happen, the ones that live at the North Pole. So we emailed Santa and asked for a contribution from himself and maybe one from the reindeer and the elves. Much to our surprise we got all three, though from Mrs Santa, rather than from Santa himself. From now until the Saturday 16th December we’ll be posting the replies. They look a bit like a conversation was taking place, because when we got the emails they prompted a lot of questions, which we asked and for which we got answers. So, we edited them all together to make them easier to read. First up is the reply we got from Nobby The Elf.  Being one of Santa’s Elves is not as great as you might imagine. Will Ferrell has a lot to answer for! (Look out Will, we’re coming for ya) You just have to look at the shape of Santa to know that flatulence is going to be a major issue, right? But it isn’t just that. Let’s take it from the top – literally. Here we are, up at the North Pole, with sod all to do once we knock off for the day. The nearest restaurant is in Longyearbyen (yes it’s a real place – Google it if you don’t believe me). Now, if you haven’t heard of that place before then don’t beat yourself up over it. No one who isn’t from Longyearbyen has ever heard of it either. It’s in Svalbard, which is the largest island in a group of islands owned by Norway. Even other Norwegians haven’t heard of Longyearbyen. Now, there are a couple of things you need to know about Longyearbyen, Svalbard and Norway in general. Trust me, it isn’t all fjords and woolly hats. The main industries up there in Svalbard are fishing and whaling, along with their associated pastimes of fish gutting and blubber rendering. So, in the nearest restaurant to the North Pole there is a lot of fish and whale meat on the menu and not very much else. If you are looking for fresh fruit or veggies, go somewhere else. If you are lucky there might be a bit of reindeer meat available from time to time, but we don’t go too much on that because, well, you know … It’s a bit close to family you might say. The second thing you have to know is that no country in Europe charges more for alcohol than the Norwegians. You have to be a millionaire to even attempt to get drunk. Us elves, paid what we are by himself, stand no chance. One beer and that’s month’s wages down the toboggan run without a bobsleigh! At least visitors are spared the smell of rotting fish and dead whales for most of the year, because nothing rots in a country that is basically one giant deep freeze. So, us elves don’t get out much, even when Santa lets us use the sleigh. Now, you’d think that making toys for all the ickle children of the world would be a great job. So much job satisfaction to be had, thinking about all those happy smiling faces waking up on Christmas morning to find what Santa has left under the tree for them. Not a chance. It is monotonous, fiddly work and any self-respecting slave labourer in a third world sweat shop would refuse to do it. I once spent a year putting the eyes into teddy bears. I almost went blind in the process. Now, that would have been ironic. Of course, teddy bears are a thing of the past. These days it’s all Playstations, X-Boxes and robots. At least Barbie is back in fashion this year. We get a lot of fun out them. Don’t judge! You try getting thousands of pairs of plastic boobs to stay the right shape and see what it does to your mental health. Without a little bit of a distraction there would be no Barbies for Christmas, so just think on that when you’re looking into the loving eyes of your little girl (or little boy – unlike you, we don’t judge). And for our Australian readers, Barbies have nothing to do with outdoor cooking. At least, these ones don’t. If it doesn’t come served by a butler on a silver platter, she isn’t interested, not since the movie. I suppose that working long hours for 364 days of the year has its compensations. We have so little time off that the fact the nearest restaurant is 650 miles away (about 1,100 kms) isn’t as bad as it might be. Then there is Christmas Eve. You think Santa slides down the chimney to leave all the presents, don’t you. Well, he doesn’t. That fat lump could never get down a chimney. So, we go down it for him And, of course, it isn’t all chimneys, not anymore. We’ve got log burners, gas boilers, oil furnaces and houses with no chimneys at all to deal with. How do you deal with a house that has underfloor electric heating, for goodness sake? And don’t get me started on heat pumps! I have to say we’ve adapted well. We can wriggle through the holes in an air brick if we have to. It’s pretty tough getting a Playstation through too, but that’s what magic is for. But kids, if you really want to help, leave a window open. Not it your room, of course. We wouldn’t want you to get cold. No, leave the window open in mummy and daddy’s room. But I have to tell you a secret now, so I hope the children won’t be too disappointed to find this out. It isn’t us that eats the mince pies or drinks the sherry. And the reindeer don’t get the carrots. We’ve no time for all that. No, It’s mummy or daddy who scoffs all that stuff. But not the whisky. We may be elves, but we’re not stupid and a tot of whisky keeps us going. Besides, even if we don’t have time to drink it we can always take it back to the North Pole with us and flog it to the Norwegians on the black market next time we go to Longyearbyen. Have you ever travelled on the back of a sleigh in the middle of winter? It’s no picnic, believe me. Santa’s OK, he’s got that big red coat on with all the fur trimmings, but not us. We just wear our normal clothes and a set of stripy socks doesn’t do a good job of keeping the cold out. And pointy ears get frost bitten very easily. You’d think evolution would have done a better job with us, considering where we live, but no. Even nature gave us elves a raw deal. Are there any up sides to being one of Santa’s elves? Just the one. Mrs Clause is a great cook (which is why Santa is the shape he is). She does all the cooking for the toy factory and the meals are great. She doesn’t even charge us too much for them, which is nice of her. I’m one of the lucky ones though. I come up for retirement this year. After 400 years of slaving at toy making and sliding down chimneys, I’m off to Spain to live in a little house I bought there. I picked it up for a song after the last banking crisis. There’s a lovely restaurant at the end of the street with not a bit of whale meat in sight. Ot's right next to a bar that sells cheap beer and shows all the football on Sky Sports. And Santa can go f…. (Editor’s apology. The end of the email seems to have been corrupted and Nobby is now too busy to resend it. We think it might have said “And Santa can go for a walk in the snow and not worry about me”. But we can’t be sure.) Next week we hear from Vixen the reindeer. 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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January 2025
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