Doin' the e-Math

Luckily I had no preconceived ideas about what would happen to my fledglings once I'd flung them out of the nest that had been their home for the past 2-8 years i.e. the dusty bowels of the C-drive and into the world wide web-o-sphere of e-publishing.

Okay then, so half of me (and this is where my *maths gets REALLY shonky) thought maybe I'd have a lucky break and my Big Brave Move would be the absolute making of me; I'd soar the dizzy heights of self-publishing stardom and I'd have the world eating out of the palm of my hand-held-e-reader.
Another half of me was dissecting the world of writing whilst breaking blueberry muffins with Kerry Wilkinson and Amanda Hocking in Starbucks. And the other half (*see what I mean?) was rocking plaintively and dismally in the darkest recesses of the smallest room in the house wondering what the hell had possessed me to be so utterly reckless in the first place.

Because I hadn't a clue what to expect and equally hadn't a clue how to 'promote' the fact that I'd done it  - or even if I should promote the fact I'd done it at all.  And anyway, what would 'friends' on Facebook think? *in my head* "Oh ffs, there she goes, she can't get an Agent, she's clearly plummeted the depths of desperation and she's self-published.  I'd better 'like' it and say I'll buy it just to make her feel better". And that wasn't what I wanted.  Not what I wanted at all.

I am not one of life's natural 'sellers'.  Give me a vanful of double glazed windows and I will paint pretty pictures on them rather than push them on unsuspecting members of the public.  Give me a bag full of leaflets to hand out and I'll turn them into swans and fans in lieu of squashing them into unyielding palms of strangers. Give me a market stall and instead of bawling "Grabba bargain over here love, pound of spuds fer a pound!"   I'll  hand out steaming cups of tea and slices of cake and have chats with anybody who feels like stopping by.  In short, I don't 'do' selling.  If somebody wants something, they will, as Darwin would probably corroborate, go out and look for it and ask for advice if they need it.  After all, that's what I'd do.

So I didn't want to make a song and dance.  I wanted my words to just be Out There.  Like they would've been had they been printed on paper and bound and wrapped in a lovely enticing cover and placed nicely on a shelf in a bookshop. Only the e-way. And anyway my Facebook friends weren't my target audience.  Hell, some of them don't even know what a book is *waves to husband*.  So I did a couple of 'Promo's i.e. I put my books on for free for a 24 hour or 48 hour stretch to see what would happen.
And guess what?
The figures speak for themselves.

January:

'Dead Good' = 11 'Re:Becca' = 1

February :

'Dead Good' = 583  'Re:Becca' = 276

March:

'Dead Good' = 12 'Re:Becca' = 1 'Let's Go Round Again' = 626

April:

'Dead Good' = 13 'Re:Becca' = 2 'Let's Go Round Again' = 12

May:

'Dead Good' = 3 'Re:Becca' = 241 'Let's Go Round Again' = 5

So, when I've promo'd my book for free on the 3 days that I've done it (Amazon do their own freebie days and authors get 5 days per month of their own choosing) the 'sales' figues have absolutely rocketed (*see above*). BUT this doesn't mean that the book is getting read.  We've all done it - I'm not without blame.  If there's a free read going and the opening sample is interesting enough and makes me want to read on, then I'll download it.  I might not read it right now, but I have it on my system ready for when I remember it's there and I need something to read.

And it's this little spark of knowing that somewhere someone has - during the free promo at least - read the opening sample of my books and thought 'yeah, that looks good enough to save for later' and has gone to the trouble of actually bothering to press a few keys and downloaded it for ... whenever.  I don't mind.  It's out there and even if it never gets read or reviewed, I know that for a few brief minutes it was worth it - because they thought that it was.

p.s. I won't mention the very hurtful (and ambiguous) "units refunded" column on the download report and how I'm automatically drawn to the *1* that sits sadly in that list.  I have already assumed the worst.  It was such a sh*t read that the purchaser felt compelled to demand the 99p refund or it was an accidental download which wasn't even worth keeping as a back-up... sometimes I really don't like the Math 'cos the imagination gets way too involved.

p.p.s  I've just added it up and I'm averaging approx £5.38/month in 'royalties'. I'm sure that must say something but I don't think I'm listening!

Kerry Wilkinson, bestselling e-author answers some Quick Fire Questions

Kerry Wilkinson, sports journalist and self-published crime writer has become the most popular author in the Kindle charts after selling more than 250,000 e-books in six months.

 
He told futurebook (http://futurebook.net/content/reader-first-approach-writing-and-self-publishing): “Ultimately, I'm a kid from a council estate in Somerset. I grew up reading those thin Doctor Who paperbacks which were almost entirely written by Terrance Dicks. I love books, I collect them.
There is no way I should be able to compete with a massive major publisher - let alone beat them. How have I done it? I'm not sure I really know. I can only ever continue to act on instinct. After all, I'm a reader first.”

We were thrilled when Kerry said he had time in his manic schedule to answer a few Quick Fire Questions on Strictly Writing.

1. Who is you favourite Doctor from Doctor Who and why?
- I always like whoever the current guy is so, at the moment, Matt Smith.

2. Where do you write?
- Pretty much everywhere. Sometimes, if I'm on a day off, I'll use my netbook in bed and write through the morning. I mainly write on the sofa at home, but I also write on my lunchbreak at work, I've written on trains and on planes, everywhere really.

3. Best writing snack?
- I don't think anyone can function creatively without biscuits (cookies for our American chums). I have, in the past, nicked out the supermarket before settling down to work because the house has been devoid of sugar-based snacks. I'm also a fan of a good old fashioned biscuit tin. There's something endearingly British about all that crumbly crap you end up with at the bottom.

4. Soundtrack (if so, what) or peace and quiet?
- I pretty much need the house to be silent but I'm also a walking hypocrite because I can write on a train, etc, where it isn't quiet at all. The ideal soundtrack is the noise of the ice cream man pulling up outside our house. I always move quickest when I'm trying to find my shoes and some money to get out the door before he pulls away. Then I can settle back on to the sofa with a bonus ice cream to aid my creative process.

5. Which book/writer has/had any major influence on you?
- I don't know really. I don't particularly follow individuals. I read more comics and sci-fi stuff than I do prose fiction. Through that, you could say Ed Brubaker or Brian Bendis but I've read some really great stuff. People are missing out big-time if they don't think comics can tell good stories. Things like Y: The Last Man, Ex Machina, The Walking Dead, Preacher, Supreme Power, Blankets and many many others. Comics teach you about plotting too because they rely on finishing on a belting cilffhanger every 20-odd pages. If they don't do that, people don't buy the next issue, which means the writer has to stop telling his story.

6. What are you reading right now?
- Chris Jericho's first autobiography. It is very funny and very good. I just finished the Alan Partridge autobiography for the third time. It's the funniest book I've ever read. I think I could read it over and over and not get bored.

7. Has (and how) ‘overnight success’ affected your ordinary daily life?
- Basically, not at all. I'm still the same person I was a year ago. I just now have better excuses for not tidying up around the house. "I've been writing all day" garners more sympathy than "I've been on the PlayStation all day".

8. Laptop or paper?
- What's this paper you speak of?

9. Where do the ideas come from?
- The broad ideas usually come from small stories which you might stumble across in a newspaper or on the radio news or something like that. Sometimes it will just be one line that will sets your imagination off. The whole of book two, Vigilante, was born out of a throwaway line at the bottom of a much wider newspaper feature. The funny thing was, someone left a review saying that certain part of the book was "unrealistic" when it was the only part based on fact! I think people are very quick to call things "unrealistic" because real life will always be stranger at some point. Think of things like the David Kelly saga, or the Stockport saline story. That's far "better" in a story sense than most things you could make up.

A lot of the character stuff comes from incidents I've seen over the years or people I've met, although not necesarily directly. Again, sometimes you might see the startings of an event in real life, then you reimagine them with your characters.

11.The best advice you could give to an aspiring writer?
- Not even a writer, just anyone who wants to do something creative: Do it because you want to. I never feel pressured to write. I only keep going because I have something left to say and pads of unused ideas. It's why I never have writer's block. I've never once sat around wondering what happens next.

12. What would you have liked Q.10 to have been?
- I prefer to think of question 10 as like those 11 days in 1752 when Britain jumped from 2 September to 14 September because the country switched to the Gregorian calendar.

Kerry's website/blog is here: Kerry Wilkinson.com  and you can read the openings of Kerry's first three books,  'Locked In', 'Vigilante', and 'The Woman in Black' on Amazon.  Look out for the fourth and fifth books in the Jessica Daniels' series, 'Think of the Children' and 'Playing with Fire' which will be out later this year.