And I Have Shared A Thousand Tweets, And I'll Probably Share A Thousand More...

Yes, I can't help but feel the need to mark a little Twitterversary, if you please.

Earlier this month saw the occasion of my 1,000th Tweet (spontaneous round of applause imagined, but not actually forthcoming).

While many Tweet this per month, I'm pleased to say it has taken me the best part of a year to reach this milestone, evidence surely of the quality of every Tweet I deign to share with whoever happens to stumble upon it.

Alack, many of my Tweets are repeats of older ones. So to say I've Tweeted 1,000 different messages is a bawdy lie. But, I've got books I need to draw people's attention to. And with every Tweet I've tried to be entertaining, and to not just say, here's my book, now click this link and go effing buy it. Although, I might try a Tweet along those lines to see if it works.

Because Twitter doesn't really work as a book selling medium, and nor is it designed to. It's good at drawing people's attention to blogposts like this, and I quite like posting the odd quote from one of my novels on there.

But don't expect it to act as a sales window for your novels. I didn't, and I haven't been disappointed.

Here's to the next thousand Tweets...

Who's Got A Cure For Tweeter's Block?

It's been coming, and it's finally here.
And I know it's going to take a bit of surgery to cure.

Yes, I've reached the point on Twitter when I'm now following 2000 other Twitterers and Twitterees.
But because I don't have 2000 following me, (1650 at the last count) that's it.
My expansion plans are scuppered until I can even up the number of following and followers.

That means trawling through everyone I'm following and seeing who's not following me back and giving them the old Spanish Archer (el bow for those not in the know).

And I know there's a few apps and the like that make it easy to see who out of the people you're following isn't returning the compliment.

But it seems a little childish, giving them the flick just because they don't want to see my Tweets.

So, what do I do, wait for 350 more people to follow me, even though I can't follow them back, or roll up my sleeves and get the scalpel out?

Hmmm.
A definite #firstworldproblem

Advertising On AskDavid.com

Continuing my occasional and occasionally interesting look at different places fellow deluded self-publishers like myself can advertise their wares, I stumbled across askdavid.com

The chap looks decent enough in his picture, if slightly blurred and a little white at the tips of his spiky hair. But that's nit-picking.

Having decided to look for somewhere else to advertise my books other than Adwords, askdavid seemed like a good way to spend $15 that I'd only waste on essential food or some other flamboyance.

It was easy enough submitting the book, though I had to write some new blurb about it, as David is dead against using blurb that appears anywhere else. Fair enough, it's his site.

So my new review of Last Night At The Stairways is up there, and I get 10 free chances to tweet David's Twitter followers (all 21,800 of them at the time of writing). I also got a thumbnail of my head and shoulders on his homepage for a while, until more authors who'd spent $15 signing up more recently than me pushed me off the page.

Now, the all important results. I've not sold any more copies of Last Night At The Stairways than I did before signing up, though the number of sample downloads on Smashwords is up significantly. (Yes, reader, I can read between those lines).

In conclusion, David offers a professional enough service, so I'd probably recommend it, though you have to wonder how many actual readers look at his site, and how many of them are just fellow, deluded authors like me?

Why My Books Were Nearly Banned From Amazon

Naughty, naughty, slap wrist, bedroom sans supper for Lymon.

I've been warned that I'm one more warning letter away from getting my books scrubbed off Amazon for good.

And I've come to the conclusion that that'd be a bad thing.

It's all down to my recent foray back into KDP Select land with 'The Diamond Rush'. As my reader will know, Amazon demands digital exclusivity for titles registered 'Select'. So I unpublished my book from Smashwords and decommissioned it from Draft2Digital and pulled it off Kobo thinking that'd do the trick.

But Amazon's bots spotted 'The Diamond Rush' was still on sale somewhere (without my knowledge m'lud', honest). And a couple of sales via Draft2Digital proved it. Gulp. I'd accidentally broken the rules and got caught.

I was sent a stern but fair letter to which I had to hold up my hands. I thought 'The Diamond Rush' was exclusive to Amazon. Apparently not. But how difficult is it to keep track of where your titles are being sold, and how long does it take to unpublish them?

Anyway, lesson learnt. One more misdemeanour and I'm out of Amazon. So I just can't risk KDP Selecting any of my existing titles again.

REVIEW: CROSS COUNTRY James Patterson

Super short

chapters

in this one.

158 chapters in 406 pages. You do the math.

Designed for the short attention spanners.

Those with an appetite for bitesize chunks.

Look, it was a good read. A compelling story. Part of a series featuring Alex Cross, a defective detective of course. Got family problems, bit of history with some nasty people etc. This one takes him to Africa in the wake of some truly nasty family-size slaughters, in pursuit of the perpetrators. And he gets a beating along the way - if they make a film of this, his face is gonna be a mess throughout.

It's all pretty top line with some attempt to dig deeper. Didn't hate it. Didn't love it.

***

KDP Select - one last hurrah.

Through the floor.

That's where my Amazon sales have gone recently. Not that they ever went through the roof. But there was regular interest, back in the day.

But the day was 2012. In 2013, with all the changes that have been outlined on better blogs than this, it's been tough for self publishers like me.

And now with a massive section of my dashboard dominated by an ultimatum for tax information that I quite frankly can't be arsed with, Amazon seems like a very unfriendly place for my books to be.

So, I've decided to go out the way I came in, with my first novel on KDP Select. It's changed names since early 2012. But the name change hasn't seen a massive raise in the downloads.

My books have never scaled the heights of those who've had their freebies downloaded by thousands through KDP Select. Couple of hundred is the best I've seen. Back in the day.

But for me, Amazon's had its day. They don't want self-publishers on there, and this turgid tax info request is just another way to get people to drop out.

And, I think in my case, it's worked.

Over and almost out.

Advertising On Google Adwords

This is the second in a very occasional series that follows my experiences of advertising my books on various web platforms. The first, Advertising on Goodreads can be found somewhere else in the blog.

The reasons why I was drawn toward advertising my novels on Google, were, errr, it's Google. Everyone knows it. Plus, if I spent something like 30 quid in the first month, I'd get 75 quid of free advertising. That's, like, 75 quid of free advertising.

The writing of the ads was a bit of a challenge, and that's saying something, seeing as I do the writing of ads for a living. The word count is strict, and it's on a line by line basis. You basically get three lines to work with, one's your title, the other two explanation, and there's a final fourth one that's your link.

There's never enough room to say what you want to say. But the big question is do they work? Well, Google likes a stat and they can give you plenty. Like how many times your ad is clicked.  But crucially a clicked ad does not equal a sale. And despite attracting plenty of clicks which is what you pay for, I've not experienced much of a spike in sales since I kicked off my various campaigns.

But, if Google is still doing some kind of introductory deal like the one I experienced, then it's got to be worth it as some kind of advertising is always better than no kind of advertising.

Just don't expect amazing results. As I said in my last advertising related post, ads on the Internet are not very effective, whether you're an unknown writer or an unbelievably huge and wealthy multi-national.