G. Michael Vasey's Blog: The Wacky World of Dr. Vasey, page 38

Do you think that would sell?

So who shouts the loudest?

Am I getting through?

Satisfying you

Seeking an audience

So very hard

Need to sell my soul

Or get a little luck

Nip and tuck

My way to fame

I have ambition

And I’d sell for cheap

Until contrition

Set in and spoiled it

Tweet and turn

Leave a mark

In indelible ink

Or a coffee stain

By the kitchen sink

Listen, I got stuff to tell

Ghosty ghoulies

Scary as hell

Do you think that would sell?

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RIP The Pink Bus

The world of writing puzzles me a lot and hence my fascination I suspect. As of today, I have a #1 bestseller and several other books in the top 50 of one category or another. I even have a fast selling audiobook hit as well. Given that, you might think that a new book of well written, thoroughly entertaining, well edited short stories on the theme of life after death and what happens when we die, would have a great chance of taking off…..

Well, after 3 weeks, I am forced to conclude the The Pink Bus is hereby dead. Just like Monty Python’s parrot. RIP The Pink Bus.

Strange, as I really think its my best work to date as well…..

Hopefully, the audiobook version will sell a little.

You can check out and pay your last respects to the Pink Bus on Amazon….

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Pink Bus Audiobook Giveaway

The Pink Bus in audiobook format narrated by Loraine Ansel is available to any one who comments on this article. Limit of three. Give it a listen and please write a review…

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The Pink Bus – Now in Audio Book Format

The Pink Bus audiobook narrated by Lorraine Ansell is now available at audible and amazon. You can sample a story here called The Gift of Knowing.

This is the first day of a new life. You wake up one morning, and you get out of bed. You find your slippers, light a cigarette, and look for her. Your wife is nowhere to be seen, the only thing you can hear is kids screaming past your house playing football. You walk down the stairs, half-asleep, and head to the kitchen. You want to pour yourself that morning elixir. You head into the kitchen, and you see the white envelope on the counter. You open it. It’s a card. The flowers on the front tell you that it was sent for an occasion. You open it and see your name. You’ve just read a sympathy card—and the sympathy comes from the fact that you are dead, and everyone is at your funeral. You are the occasion.

It all makes sense now. But all the things you should have done—all the things you wished you’d done—flood your mind. One question blurts out above the rest. You now know the answer, but millions of people on Earth still do not.

So now you know how it stands. But have you ever asked yourself, “What happens when I die? If I just cease to exist, then what was the point of it all?”

If you have, then these encounters will chill you. As we travel on our journey, we will explore tales of reincarnation, life as a ghost, life as a god, creating your own reality, and much more. Each is tinged with a little mystery and magic to make you wonder what is the meaning of life.

La-La land is that place we go in our imagination when we daydream. It is a land full of magic, mystery and endless alternatives, tinged with a bit of fear, doubt and uncertainty.

Your guide will be G. Michael Vasey, an adventurer of the paranormal. You’ll learn from him, so why don’t you come with us? All aboard the Pink Bus for a magical tour of reality. It’s later than you think….

THE PINK BUS and Other Strange Tales from La-La Land by G. Michael Vasey is a collection of supernatural vignettes and short stories about dying, death and the other side.

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Don’t Quit Your Day Job

The book writing business is one of those where a very small proportion of authors make any money. The rest of us hope for pennies and must remember to stay focused on the day job if we are to eat. As of today, I have written some 27 odd books across a wide range of topics and my experience to date falls into several buckets as follows;

Published by a publishing Company

Some people prefer to be ‘properly’ published. I have several books that were properly published by a publisher and my experience is that for someone starting out, it simply doesn’t make much sense. Some publishers will ask you to help ‘pay’ for putting the book out and yes, I have done that. I will never recoup that investment. Others are probably struggling themselves and either fail to produce sales reports or delay any small royalty payments. Now, please don’t go looking at my books trying to figure out who I am talking about just take my word for it that unless you can and will sell thousands of copies, you will end up losing money. Not one of the publishers I used ever actually did much to promote the books they rather leave that to the author to do. So about the only benefit I can see is you can say I was published by a proper publisher… well, if that turns you on, be my guest.

Now, in one instance all the above is more or less not applicable. I published a book with a colleague several years ago via a business publishing house. We got paid a sizable fee up front and the book is probably selling well enough to generate additional royalties 7-years after it was delivered. On this book, I made money, I get proper and regular statements and royalty payments are always on time. It is the exception to the rule.

Self-Publishing

I now prefer this approach. You do all the work for sure but you DO anyway! I use Amazon and for a few books, Draft2Digital for broader distribution.

Let’s deal with Amazon first. It is relatively easy to use their tools to produce a paperback or ebook or even an audiobook. They offer a variety of tools also to help get the book going – free giveaways,m countdowns and so on. Royalties are 35% for certain priced books and locations and 70% for ebooks and you can set your own price and royalty for paperbacks although you are constrained by what the market will bear and I would say my royalty rates are 15-35%. On audiobooks, you get 40% for exclusive distribution and generally you will split that 50:50 with the voice talent.

Now, let’s think about this a bit. Let’s say I write an ebook and also put it out on paperback and audiobook and let’s say it charts in the top 10 of a category for several months. By experience, I would say this will earn you around $200-$400. Let’s look at a different way. I want to make $1000 per month and pitch an ebook via Kindle. I start out offering it at 99cents or 99 pence at a 35% royalty rate and, once it takes off a bit, I raise the price to 1.99 at 70% royalty. A little bit of math says that I have to sell between 2857 and 714 per month to make my $1000 in royalties. Let’s say 1000 copies at a mixed price.

Now, if I look at my sales for a book life My Haunted Life Too, a supernatural #1 hit on Amazon, it has actually yet to sell 1000 copies and it has been out over 12-months. Actually, the figure is 905 royalty generating copies and 1189 in total including give aways as of the end of March 2016. Sounds good. But…. about 35% of those royalty generating ‘sales’ were not sales but ‘rentals’ under the Amazon Unlimited program and it pays less than .006 cents per page read. Yes – they track the pages read and pay you on that. So even if someone read the entire book on Kindle as a part of that program, I get 37cents per book based on its 62 pages. So now we realize that to make that $1000 a month, we would need to shift many more books if you were in that program and then hope they were read cover to cover to the end.

Based on my calculation – 2500 ebooks sold or delivered via the Unlimited program might get you $1000 in royalties. Not a single book I have ever written has come close to selling 2500 copies over their lifetime.

Summary

So why do I do it then?

I enjoy it. I enjoy seeing if a book will chart and that people bought and read my work.

I also keep hoping that with stroke of luck, one book will really take off but honestly – that would be like winning the lottery and has about the same odds.

You can help me a bit though – write a short review if you read one of my books and tell your friends….

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April Fool

It’s April 1st

Can March be finished already?

Where did it go?

Does anyone know?

So, it’s spring again

Mr. Weather doesn’t know

Wether to rain or shine

Mother nature is also confused

Not knowing quite what to do

Someone up there must have had a few

But so much to look forward to

Summer is coming

The clock is running

Climbing to the Year’s noon

Meanwhile

Coat or no coat?

Shall I need a brolly?

Better not to be wet and sorry

April showers

Pretty flowers

Allergies playing up

As Nature releases

Yellow dust spread

Like marmalade on bread crust

Mother Nature’s lust

New life arriving

So cool

You old April Fool!

 

 

 

 

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The Survey – Results

I managed to find time to review the recent survey results and the results are quite clear; if you want to sell books it really is down to word of mouth and by the way; paperbacks are still popular. At least that is the findings of a survey of 48 respondents to my recent survey. Now let’s be clear about who responded too as that is important. Around 60% were friends and family while the other 40% were random responses from Facebook and other sources. Still, whoever responded (my sincere thanks), the results are useful and intriguing.

When asked what sort of book people preferred about 47% would rather have a paperback although around 23% enjoyed ebooks. Hardbacks and audiobooks ran neck a neck at 17% each. Actually, I find this result rather strange as most of my own sales are ebooks, followed by audiobooks and only a very small percentage are paperbacks! Plainly, the smell of paper and ink still has an aura that many find difficult to lose.

What is important when people are browsing books looking to make a purchase? Well, it seems that the short description on the back cover or on amazon is the most critical factor and was ranked most highly. To my surprise, the book cover art was ranked least important in selecting a book to read. Genre was of second most importance followed by the amazon seek peek feature that allows you to read the first few pages of a book online prior to buying. Title was next and the author name second to last. To me, this suggests that an author’s brand is not so important as the genre and content of the book however, again, I see evidence all around that certain authors attract readers for their books. Additionally, I find cover art to be critically important especially online and have had reviews in which it is mentioned that the cover attracted them in the first place.

How do people find books to read? By far and away the most important indicated by the survey is friend recommendations at around 31% followed by browsing Amazon at 16%. No other response scored more than 5% including reviews. It is clear that friends recommendations or word of mouth is a key attribute in a books success however, to me, it is a mix of many things that gets a book noticed and purchased including reviews, free promotions and so on. The importance of word of mouth is also echoed by responses to the question about how respondents found my books where friend recommendations was again the highest rated response by a long way at 46% of all responses to the question. However, this latter question also showed that Facebook, interviews and features on the author and blog site wall had a reasonable level of responses as well.

What can we authors learn from this?

Well, bearing in mind it was a small sample and had a high element of family and friends as respondents, we need to take the results with a small pinch of salt as they may not be representative. However, quite clearly, if you want to sell books, you need to have your network working for you via word of mouth. This is the single most important factor and to me, it comes with an element of luck for not everyone bothers to tell their friends about the book they are reading. On the other hand, there was enough in the survey to also suggest that authors need to cast their nets widely and use social media, their own websites, mailing lists along with a good presence on Amazon to drive book sales. It also suggests that authors should pay a lot of attention to the copy they use to promote the book – compelling copy sells books.

Why not take a look at my books?

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Win A Copy Of Your Haunted Lives

Goodreads Book Giveaway


Your Haunted Lives
by G. Michael Vasey

Giveaway ends April 10, 2016.

See the giveaway details

at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

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Amazing Coincidence

This last weekend, we went to a fairly remote location north of Prague for some hiking and sight seeing. On the Sunday, we were trying to decide where to stop for lunch. Initially, we stopped at a pub that looked quite nice but we were put off by the interior and so we set off again. A few minutes later, we saw another place that looked OK so we pulled in. Parking was a bit of an issue as the place seemed quite popular.

We had our lunch and then we walked around and up the hill a little, taking in the pretty hillside cottages and the view. Then, we walked around the back of the pub/restaurant, got in the car and, after a quick chat and change of plan, we started to drive away in one of four different directions possible.

We had got no further than 50m when we saw my partner’s mother and her friend walking along the side of the road towards us. Of course, we stopped and marveled at how it could be that such a meeting could take place. Her Mother was supposed to be in Prague as well.

When you step back and think about all of the perambulations and triangulations that had to take place for this accidental meeting to occur it is mind boggling. We may have stopped at the other pub, we may not have stopped there at all and therefore left lunch early, missing the opportunity. We might not have gone for a stroll up the hill and missed them. They might have parked somewhere else and we would have missed them.

The more you think of it the more bizarre and wonderous it becomes….

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Infinity

Sometimes

You just need to laugh

Life

Irony

It’s a just a cold bath

You think you are in control

You think it’s all about you

But fate says, hey

Wake up!

It’s not about you

But me

You see

I am you reflected

Projected

Onto a silver screen

You wanna laugh?

You wanna scream?

Don’t – it’s just a silly dream

The things you do

The things you say

Irrelevant anyway

Just another way

For Fate to have her evil way

Laugh

Cry

It’s all the same to me

I am, your are, you see?

We are one and in a dream

Life

Death

The coldness of reality

Brutality

Expressed

One way or another

You will discover

It’s just lame

No blame

All the same

A song to infinity

A life laid bare

Just you and then me

A lonely stare

Into infinity

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