David George Richards's Blog, page 4

January 2015

I hope you all had a nice Christmas and that you are enjoying the New Year.

It seems like Christmas was so long ago, and yet this time before Christmas and you couldn't avoid Christmas songs in all the shops. As usual the commercial aspects of the season are quick and efficient: Out with the old and in with the new. Almost overnight on Boxing Day mince pies are replaced by hot cross buns and chocolate cream eggs spread over the land like a plague. Not that I am not partial to the odd cream egg, but I really like mince pies, and it seems that they are only permitted to be hunted down, shot, and rapidly consumed for a short period in December. Shame.

I am off to have an eccles cake.

December 2014

Merry Christmas to everyone at Goodreads!

May you enjoy the Festive Season in the way that suits you best, whether at home with friends and family, a good book, or on a wildly extravagant Festive holiday.

See you next year.

November 2014

My brief holiday break in October is now long gone. It is officially Winter, or at least that is what the clocks have told us. But then my wife and I have rarely been bothered by time other than by its passing. I am late for most things now, whether it is getting up or going to bed. At work I am on flexitime, so I am in late and out late. And I work at weekends. In fact I am writing this at 4:21am. I must be on New York time.

Although my two free ebooks don't actually earn me any profit, I can never resist checking how many of them have "sold." At one time I uploaded them to various sites that promoted free ebooks. This tended to get them noticed and gave them a rather hefty boost at the beginning. But that was maybe two years ago, and as time moved on and I stopped any kind of promotion, both titles slowly began to find their own level.

It is interesting to see how the sales go up and down on their own depending on whether they are noticed or not or there is a review posted. But the general trend now is downwards. "A Fine Woman" is still the leader. It is being downloaded at about ten to one when compared with "The Beginning of the End." Or at least that is how the Amazon and Barnes & Noble results look. "A Fine Woman" is also very popular on Apple, and in a host of countries. Hopefully they will continue on their own way like that for many more years.

See you next time.

October 2014

October starts my Christmas season with my wife's birthday and our anniversary. Fortunately the nasty lurgy infesting my throat I described last month seems to have at last succumbed to a full frontal antibiotic attack led by a determined heroine armed with a flame thrower. Or was that Aliens? Anyway, I am feeling a lot better now, if not perfect just yet. So I am on the mend. I am also on holiday from the day job for a week so I can stay home with the wife and enjoy lazy times together.

On the writing front my books are still out there, I don't promote them anymore, and the two free ones are still the main movers. As for the rest, the other three books in The Friendly Ambassador series also get picked up occasionally as a result of the free starter. I am thinking about making The Lost Girls free as well, as this would be a starter into The Return of the Sixpack and The Tale of the Comet. But I will probably think a bit longer before doing anything at the moment. I doubt if there will be any wild break-outs on the horizon, but I have long accepted that.

Only eighty-odd shopping days to Christmas.

See you next time.

September 2014

So far September has been warmer than August. Not that I have taken advantage of this as some evil lurgy has infected my throat. I am not sure what it is, but it certainly isn't a frog. This has resulted in coughing bouts and loss of voice, particularly in the evenings. For about three weeks. I have tried all the over the counter meds I can get hold of, and although some things get better, the lurgy always seems to survive. Now I am on antibiotics, so it is obviously a lot nastier than I even thought. Hopefully with the help of the antibiotics I will kill it before it kills me.

I continue to get the odd ebook sale from various online retailers that stock them, but my two free ebooks are still the big sellers, if you know what I mean. But apart from that there hasn't been any other movement. So although I remain patiently waiting for my enormous breakout moment, I am not holding my breath. But then again, I don't promote my books or my website, although I have done in the past. I just leave them out there as my writing legacy with the full knowledge and acceptance that I will never add to them. It's not a bad legacy though.

I am off to take my next horse tablet.

See you next time.

August 2014

Schools are out and the roads are quieter. You can tell it is Summer, it's raining buckets and it is windy. Situation normal then. Mind you the Summer has been pretty decent so far, so I can't complain too much, but I probably will.

What has been more annoying is a script thingy bug that keeps interfering with my website. It writes hidden adverts and links to all my html pages. It is something to do with the permissions for the webpages. I notice it because I use frames on my website and the added text means they don't fit, so I notice the change pretty quick. It has happened twice now and the only way to get rid of it is to re-upload all the pages from the latest back-up and update the permissions. It's worth checking your webpages from time to time in case you have had a visit from the pesky thing.

I managed to sell a few ebooks in The Smashwords Summer and Winter Sales Promotion last month. As usual the free ebooks got the most attention. Still, it allowed me to get a few more of my stories into other people's hands. Time will tell if they actually read and review them.

See you next time.

July 2014

This month is Smashwords Summer and Winter Sales Promotion, and as usual it runs from the 1st to the 31st of July. Also as usual I am silly enough to take part, so all of my ebooks are now at half price at Smashwords when you use the coupon provided. Just remember to enter it when you go to the check out. I also have a couple of extra ebooks that can be obtained for free with a free coupon. So if there was anything that took your fancy, but the fancy wasn't strong enough for you to part with any cash, it might be worth finding out just how much you can save this month. Remember that there are also a great many other authors and their ebooks taking part, so check out the freebies and cheapies.

You have until the 31st of July to pick up a bargain.

And that's it.

See you next time.

June 2014

Do any of you have a subscription with Scribd? Smashwords delivers books to Scribd, so authors who remained opted in to the Scribd channel got a free subscription. It took me awhile to get round to looking at some of the books on there. The content seems to be changing with more books being added all the time, but science-fiction wise I only managed to find a couple of books that I liked. One of these books I had read before while another was something new. They were easy to read online at Scribd and so the experience was worthwhile, so I will probably use it again. There are a lot more books on there since I first looked in, and as I said it seems to be growing. It will be interesting to see how it develops.

So far royalties for my books seem to trickle in on a fairly regular basis from Smashwords, Amazon and Google. Nothing pretentious, but it seems to be a constant trickle. At least it means some people are reading them. And what reviews I get seem to be positive on the whole.

Now back to the day job.

See you next time.

May 2014

I had a little email from Amazon at the end of April entitled, 'A Reminder on KDP Pricing,' which indicated Section 4 of their pricing policy. After a few question and answer exchanges by email, and refering to Section 4, I was surprised to learn that the 70% royalty option had the additional requirement to price ebooks at other retailers at a level 22% higher than at Amazon. I must say I had not noticed that before, so I have no idea if it has always been there or if it was only recently introduced. Until then I had been under the impression that you only needed to keep your ebooks at $2.99 or above to comply with their requirements. Well, as I am not exactly raking it in at the moment, although I do also get very nice and welcome emails from Amazon advising me of periodic payments, I have now ditched the 70% royalty option and switched all my ebooks back to the standard 35%. It doesn't really make that much difference to me, and so I have left my prices at $2.99 as well.

I suppose it is a gentle reminder to always check the small print, even after you have signed up.

It is interesting to look back over my publishing exploits over the years, and it is clear that Amazon have had a big influence on my progress. I have been publishing my books with them since 2006, from Amazon Shorts, BookSurge and CreateSpace, to MobiPocket and KDP (or DTP as it was back then). After eight years it is still an interesting ride.

Oh, and this month marks the fourteenth birthday of my website.

See you next time.

April 2014

It's sad to see that Diesel now also seems to be closing its online ebook retail store, this straight after the Sony closures in March as well. Rather than the ebook online availability growing it appears to be getting smaller. I didn't get many sales through Diesel, but I did through Sony. Regardless of that though I am equally sorry to see them both go, as they both carried my ebooks. I will miss them. I will also miss seeing those links on my List Page.

As I mentioned last month I took part in Read an Ebook Week and like usual I got a few downloads. But I have noticed over the few years that I have taken part in this that it is mainly the books that are on a free offer that get downloaded. Those at half price or higher hardly move, but if it is free it goes. And that is even when the price is hardly more than a USD. I think that says a lot about human nature and the word "free." We all like a good deal, don't we?

My books have had a few updates on Goodreads recently. Mainly due to auto updates through Smashwords. I only noticed this had happened when I saw the odd missing cover. Anyway, a bit of tidying up went on over the past month with the generous support of GR librarians.

See you next time.