Less than two days to go!
Sunday 18 February 2018
Marketing Update
I believe it was Gary Strang in an episode of Men Behaving Badly who said, If you throw enough balls at enough coconuts, eventually you win a fish.
Albeit an analogy for getting Dorothy pregnant, it could also apply to my approach to marketing and promoting The Tomorrow Child.
Am I casting my net too wide? Do I need to narrow my focus? Probably. I currently have adverts running on Facebook and Amazon. I'm generating thousands of placements, and getting around 1% converted to clicks. What I'm not seeing is those clicks converted to sales.
I'm also enrolled in amazon KDP Select, which means The Tomorrow Child is part of the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library scheme. I've just started to see some data from this in terms of pages read, so it could be that the adverts are driving sales through this channel.
I hope so.
Then there's the Writer's Online Subscriber's Showcase. The Tomorrow Child will feature on the website, free, for up to two months. It's good exposure as the site has thousands of visitors daily.
Albeit an analogy for getting Dorothy pregnant, it could also apply to my approach to marketing and promoting The Tomorrow Child.
Am I casting my net too wide? Do I need to narrow my focus? Probably. I currently have adverts running on Facebook and Amazon. I'm generating thousands of placements, and getting around 1% converted to clicks. What I'm not seeing is those clicks converted to sales.
I'm also enrolled in amazon KDP Select, which means The Tomorrow Child is part of the Kindle Unlimited and Kindle Owners' Lending Library scheme. I've just started to see some data from this in terms of pages read, so it could be that the adverts are driving sales through this channel.
I hope so.
Then there's the Writer's Online Subscriber's Showcase. The Tomorrow Child will feature on the website, free, for up to two months. It's good exposure as the site has thousands of visitors daily.
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Tuesday 13 February 2018
The Tomorrow Child on Writers Online
The Tomorrow Child is currently featured on the Writer's Online Subscriber Showcase. Click the link below to view.
Subscriber Showcase
Subscriber Showcase
Design a Cover Competition Update
7 days to go, and no entries received as of yet. Maybe this is your opportunity!
Sunday 11 February 2018
Evolution of a Story
The Tomorrow Child grew out of another story that I started writing in 2002. Back then, I had just read the first couple of Harry Potter books, and convinced myself that I could easily write something as good as that.
'Hello, Mr Bloomsbury, I'll take my six figure advance now, if it's all the same with you.'
I started writing a story called Jason Price and the Guardians of Time (so original!) that had an enigmatic supply teacher who would enter the teacher's smoking room (yes, this was back in the day when you could still smoke inside) and disappear to a dimension that existed 0.168 seconds in the future (don't ask why, I can't remember).
It was terrible. Well, let's say it had plenty of good ideas, but they were underdeveloped and never really held together as a story. There was no narrative drive, just lots of exciting events that sounded great in isolation, but didn't add up to anything. And the dialogue, well, damn!
I sent this to a small publisher, full of hope and dripping with naivety. It was a first draft. I don't think I even proof read it. I had some expectation, that anxious what if buzz. What if somehow all the mistakes were overlooked and the potential of the story shone through?
Not a chance. It came back with some brief notes, a pat on the back for imagination, and that was it. No publishing contract, no advance, simple rejection.
I came back to it in 2012, after some success - a short story published in a Doctor Who anthology, another in Writing Magazine, and another which was sold to an anthology that never made it to print - and started to redraft. The teacher went, along with the first hundred pages of kids creeping around a school to find out what he was up to. The future dimension changed to a world of dark matter where memories are collected and archived.
I spent a couple of years drafting and redrafting before finally stumbling on the heart of the story, the thing that would drive the narrative forward (hopefully). It came to me one evening when I was out jogging. What if the main character was actually . . .
So, if your stuck in a rut with your writing, go out for a jog, or a walk, or maybe even a bike ride or a swim.
I can't tell you if The Tomorrow Child is any good, but it's evolved into something a million times better than it's predecessor. And while self-publishing might not be the fulfilment of the dream that I set out to achieve as a writer, it perhaps marks an evolution in my attitude towards writing and selling a novel. It gives me a marketplace to test my book and my marketing skills, and it doesn't stop me from seeking the traditional publishing route with my next novel.
'Hello, Mr Bloomsbury, I'll take my six figure advance now, if it's all the same with you.'
I started writing a story called Jason Price and the Guardians of Time (so original!) that had an enigmatic supply teacher who would enter the teacher's smoking room (yes, this was back in the day when you could still smoke inside) and disappear to a dimension that existed 0.168 seconds in the future (don't ask why, I can't remember).
It was terrible. Well, let's say it had plenty of good ideas, but they were underdeveloped and never really held together as a story. There was no narrative drive, just lots of exciting events that sounded great in isolation, but didn't add up to anything. And the dialogue, well, damn!
I sent this to a small publisher, full of hope and dripping with naivety. It was a first draft. I don't think I even proof read it. I had some expectation, that anxious what if buzz. What if somehow all the mistakes were overlooked and the potential of the story shone through?
Not a chance. It came back with some brief notes, a pat on the back for imagination, and that was it. No publishing contract, no advance, simple rejection.
I came back to it in 2012, after some success - a short story published in a Doctor Who anthology, another in Writing Magazine, and another which was sold to an anthology that never made it to print - and started to redraft. The teacher went, along with the first hundred pages of kids creeping around a school to find out what he was up to. The future dimension changed to a world of dark matter where memories are collected and archived.
I spent a couple of years drafting and redrafting before finally stumbling on the heart of the story, the thing that would drive the narrative forward (hopefully). It came to me one evening when I was out jogging. What if the main character was actually . . .
So, if your stuck in a rut with your writing, go out for a jog, or a walk, or maybe even a bike ride or a swim.
I can't tell you if The Tomorrow Child is any good, but it's evolved into something a million times better than it's predecessor. And while self-publishing might not be the fulfilment of the dream that I set out to achieve as a writer, it perhaps marks an evolution in my attitude towards writing and selling a novel. It gives me a marketplace to test my book and my marketing skills, and it doesn't stop me from seeking the traditional publishing route with my next novel.
Sunday 4 February 2018
Competition Countdown!
16 days to go until the Design a Cover competition closes. Make sure you get your entries in by 23:59 on the 20th Feb.
Don't miss out on a great opportunity to have your work showcased!
What have you got to lose?
Surely you can do better than this . . .
Don't miss out on a great opportunity to have your work showcased!
What have you got to lose?
Surely you can do better than this . . .
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