I was delighted to gatecrash Ian W Sainsbury’s Friday night chat last week. We discussed Alpha/Beta Readers, book covers, Facebook Groups, the joy of editors, the wonders of notebooks, Ursula Le Guin and why whenever Ian hears my voice he thinks of dog poo…
Tag: Ian W Sainsbury
Live Show – The Aftermath
A huge thank you to everyone who came to last night’s online launch for The Crow Folk! I think a splendid time was had by all. If you missed out, or want to relive the giddy joy of it all over again, it’s here in its entirely for your viewing pleasure…
Thanks also to Caimh McDonnell for compering magnificently, to Ian W Sainsbury for the joyful sing-a-long-a-pub-knees-up at the end, to Emily and Kai for tech support, Dominic King for bringing us to the world via the BBC, to Sara Cox for her sage advice in the run-up to launch, to Claire for her lovely veg, and to George for once more reprising the role of Pumpkinhead.
The Crow Folk is now out there and belongs to you lovely readers. I sincerely hope you really enjoy it… and if you do, there’s more on the way. Not only will book two be coming in October, but I’ll also be releasing a quartet of short stories featuring the mysterious Miss Charlotte. Watch this space for more news on that soon!
How To Market Your Book On YouTube – Episode 5
Are you a debut author or seasoned writer needing to know HOW to market your book? Or HOW to promote your book on YouTube?
In this 5th episode author Mark Stay and video marketer Jeremy Mason reveal more book marketing strategies and tips for authors.
WHICH of their video marketing strategies have worked so far? WILL they hit their 1000 target for pre-sales before Feb 2021? WHICH digital marketing techniques will they enlist? WHICH book marketing strategy will be put to the test next on their ambitious (some may say foolhardy) quest?
In Episode 5 you will learn: Lots of book marketing strategies, finding the route to market for your book, insider hints and tips that will help you with marketing your book. We talk about: Tweetdeck, Canva, Goodreads, BookFunnel, Groovepages, book events, pre-orders, book signings, pitching yourself for publicity and more…
People are saying Lovely Things about The Crow Folk
People are starting to say lovely things about THE CROW FOLK!
It’s available to pre-order in paperback, eBook and audio. It’s on NetGalley now, or you can have an exclusive peek at the opening here: https://witchesofwoodville.com/#library
I can’t tell you how terrifying it is to be compared to Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones! I get the Worzel Gummidge comparison — a big influence on this book in particular.
Rewrites ago-go (and other updates from the writing desk)
You may recall that I have a movie on the way! The last few months have seen some fun and frantic rewrites prompted by the usual pre-production budget and scheduling shenanigans. During all this I’ve seen concept art, storyboards, set designs, creatures and all kinds of exciting stuff. I’m hoping to be on set soon (once I get my COVID test results) and I reckon I might have some fun stuff to reveal to you all…
New Books…
Apologies for being so cagey, but I do have a new book series on the go… It hasn’t officially been announced yet, so I’m not how much I should tell you, but if you were to, say, click here you might find out a little more…
I’ve just finished a draft of the second book in the series and it’s going out to a couple of trusted readers for their brutal feedback. I’ve also been shooting a trailer for the first book in the series. I hope it conveys the fun spookiness of the books, though I suspect the scariest thing in it is my lockdown hairdo. Here’s a still from the video and I hope to have the finished edit for you soon…
“Keep ’em peeled…”
The Bestseller Academy
The other thing that’s been keeping me off the streets is The Bestseller Academy. The brainchild of my co-presenter and m’learned colleague Mr Mark Desvaux the academy is a mix of craft and inner game coaching based on everything we’ve learned in nearly four years of the podcast. Our first intake is completely full, but if you want to know more you can sign-up with no obligation here…
Speaking of the Bestseller Experiment podcast, we’ve had a great run of guests recently, including Sadie Jones, James Swallow, Adele Parks, Rachel Winters and Patreon Deep Dives with Caimh McDonnell, Paul Ardoin and more. Have a listen and get inspired!
What’s Been Keeping Me Sane…
Books
I’m still doing a lot of comfort reading and I dipped back into Pratchett again with GOING POSTAL, a book I didn’t really enjoy first time round. This was released at peak Pratchett, with two or three books coming out a year, plus spin-offs, and I think I took them for granted and whizzed through them. I gave it the time is deserved and it was a much more enjoyable read. Worryingly prescient too, what with certain orange-hued world leaders tinkering with the post office…
I was partly inspired to re-read Going Postal by Marc Burrows’ excellent biography The Magic of Terry Pratchett, which really reinvigorated my love of the man’s writing. Highly recommended if you’re a fan.
I also really enjoyed Ian W Sainsbury’s Bedlam Boy series. Released as three novellas in quick succession these are pacy and super violent and grimly satisfying.
Film & TV
I loved the first episode of Lovecraft Country, which ticks so many boxes for me: monsters, social commentary, monsters, a mysterious quest, monsters… I’ll definitely be watching more.
My son and I have been rewatching the James Bond films in order. Favourites so far are From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, Diamonds Are Forever, Live and Let Die, and The Spy Who Loved Me. Octopussy is up next… ah well it was a good run.
Music
Did you know that Janelle Monáe write science fiction concept albums? I only just discovered the joys of Dirty Computer. This track is like Prince crashed the set of Tron and Bladerunner and I love it…
Neil Young’s Homegrown is a time capsule from his Harvest days and it’s truly magical…
And I’ve been brainstorming ideas to the score from Tales from the Loop by Paul Leonard-Morgan & Philip Glass. It’s as hypnotic as you’d expect…
Stay tuned…
Coming soon: shots from the set of The Little People, news on my book series, and a recipe for jam roly-poly. Tell your friends!
Till next time…
Mark
The End of Magic challenge, week 7 – Bloggers and giveaways
On 9th July I made a big ol’ public declaration to sell a thousand copies of my fantasy novel The End of Magic by Christmas, and I promised to keep folks in the loop with the ups and downs of sales and marketing with a weekly update.
A few caveats…
- I can only do this in the USA… Unbound have the UK rights and I have no visibility on sales other than the twice yearly statements.
- I’m going to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
- I’ll be counting both Kindle and Paperback sales.
- Here’s week seven!
The big change in strategy has been to stop with the expensive ads on Facebook, Bookbub and Amazon and instead to build my readership. And that means bulking up my newsletter and getting bloggers to review my book to drive a little buzz.
I started by looking online at other authors’ blog tours. Both Mike Shackle and Edward Cox have had recent blog tours with their new books – both of which are similar enough to mine – and they posted these handy images with the details of the bloggers…
I spent a day visiting the websites of these bloggers, finding out how they accept submissions (they all do it differently) and dropping them a line.
I also did a small blog tour when The End of Magic was launched in the UK in February and I got in touch with a couple of bloggers who had offered to review, but hadn’t posted anything. Immediately, I got a result…
The good news is I’ve had some very positive responses from the other bloggers I contacted. A few weren’t taking reviews (despite the Ed Cox and Mike Shackle blog tours… but that’s what a big publisher gets you!), and a Grimdark blog had the cheek to tell me that it wasn’t for their readers (!!).
When will these reviews go live…? God knows. A few of them post their TBR piles online and they’re swamped. I’ve told them I’ll be happy with anything between now and Christmas.
Next on my list was to start building my newsletter numbers. I was lucky enough to get a proof of the new Joe Abercrombie novel from my friends at Gollancz. I loved it, said so on Twitter, and got a great response from fellow fantasy fans. I had finished with the proof, so I could give it to a charity shop, maybe? Or… I could give it away online to people who subscribe to my newsletter!
This wasn’t officially sanctioned by the publisher, but I have a copy of the hardcover on order from Waterstones, so I figured what the hell, created the giveaway and added the Tweet to my original review…
Joe retweeted the giveaway without any prompting from me and the result at the time of writing has been…
… which is nice. Lots of new fantasy fans who might be looking for something read after Joe’s book.
To be in with a chance of getting your hands on it, simply sign up to my newsletter here before 23:59 UK time on Saturday 31st August. Full terms and conditions are here. Good luck!
After last week’s FB video (did you know I also put a video version of these blogs on my FB author page…?) Sam Missingham – my guardian angel of marketing – got in touch to tell me about Story Origin, who run book and newsletter swaps for indie authors, much like Bookfunnel, though, unlike Book Funnel, Story Origin are currently FREE.
Rather than just fill out the form I interviewed Story Origin’s founder Evan Gow for the podcast to find out how it all works. It should go live as an exclusive for our Patreon supporters next week.
The interview inspired me to get started, and I’ve been accepted for a group promo. This means I give away my short story – How Drust Krax Lost Two Fingers – as part of a group of similar authors to gain newsletter subscribers. It starts on Thursday, so I’ll report back on how it went next week.
Sam Missingham also featured me on her first webinar for The Empowered Author last week. It was a fun session, discussing book sales and marketing and this very quest, and I’ll post a link to the Youtube video when it goes live. Thanks, Sam! Once again, if you’re an author and you’re not following Sam on Twitter or The Empowered Author, you’re really missing out.
I also realised that I hadn’t let my Unbound supporters know about this. 279 gorgeous and wonderful people supported The End of Magic on Unbound and I’m able to contact them via the book’s dashboard. I rattled off a message asking them to spread the word and maybe leave a review on Amazon/Goodreads. These posts are sent via email and need to be review by Unbound and we’ve just had a Bank Holiday weekend in the UK, so it probably won’t go out for a couple of days, but I’m hoping a few of them might say something nice online.
So, how many sales have been driven by all this hard work? Drumroll, please…
Well, no one said this would be a get-rich-quick scheme… but none of my efforts last week will have the immediate impact of, say, an expensive Bookbub ad. I’m planting seeds, folks, planting seeds…
The KU page reads are up and down…
I did get some good advice from my friend Ian W Sainsbury over on FB and here’s the conversation we had…
He’s absolutely right, of course. This is something we discovered when pushing Back to Reality this year. You need a series to really make this work. And, as I’ve hinted at there, I am working on a brand new series.
I also got a couple more wonderful five-star reviews on Amazon UK…
Those both truly made my day… But I’m still stuck on 6 reviews in the US…
Honestly, with whom must I copulate to get a review in the States?? (Not that I’m desperate or anything).
Here’s a summary of last week’s sales…
Kindle units sold: 2
POD Paperbacks: 0
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 489
Royalty: $4.06
Advertising spend total: £0
And here’s the running total…
Kindle units sold: 98
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 9077
Royalty: $46.98
Advertising spend total (since 9th July): $464.00 (and £105.81 in GBP)
AMS: $99.92
Bookbub: $272.70
Still 902 units to go!
That’s a little over 7 a day between now and Christmas.
Thanks again for all your messages of support and to everyone who’s bought the book or spread the word.
If you would like to help, then please do any of the following:
Buy a copy here in the US, or here in the UK
Tell your friends about the book
Leave an honest review on Amazon or Goodreads
I still only have six reviews on Amazon.com. They’re good ones, for which I’m very grateful, but ideally I need at least 20+. I like my reviews to grow organically and they have to be honest, so if you’re American and have read The End of Magic a few kind and honest words will go a long way.
If you have any thoughts or comments on what I might be doing wrong, do please leave them below! Until next week…
Mark Stay Writes 