The fifth book in my Lou Elliott mystery adventure series has just been published

Hello! It's out there at long, long last - Secrets in the Mountains is the fifth book in my Lou Elliott mystery adventure series. I meant to get it written and published ages ago and it should never have been this long.

Unfortunately, the demands of day-to-day life, not least the growing care needs of our 12-year-old autistic son, lovely boy though he is, are unrelenting and it is a case of squeezing my writing in around other priorities. But what I found while writing Secrets in the Mountains is how great it was to be reunited with my fictional characters, Jack, David, Emily and the irrepressible Louise Elliott. How the Johnson children's poor parents Paul and Liz must worry for their offspring when she's around!

Well no, that's not entirely fair. Lou, now thirteen, is a lovely girl. She's someone who I, as a father of a ten-year-old girl, would be proud to call a daughter. Of course, what's disconcerting about Lou is that lots of strange things seem to happen when she is on the scene.

The children's fifth adventure isn't going to reassure Mr and Mrs Johnson a great deal. Mum and dad rather stick their foot in it with their children this time. They have taken them away camping to a lovely campsite in Snowdonia where Lou, at the start of the book, is poised to join them. Unfortunately, the parents  go and admit to the children that one reason why they've gone camping this year is to keep them well away from those disused manganese mines on the North Wales coast they got stuck down the previous summer. The children love going to the family caravan at Abersoch and weren't very pleased to learn that they had effectively been banned from the place! And all because Jack and David were overheard saying they'd quite like a return visit to the mines.

Mr Johnson seeks to make amends by taking the children out for a treat in Snowdonia and unwittingly sets rolling a chain of events that leads them to what I would say is their most exciting, and at times terrifying adventure so far.

I hope readers of the Lou Elliott series will enjoy the latest addition. It's only available on Kindle at the moment but a paperback version will be coming out shortly. It moves back from the more "mystery detective" thrust of Trouble at Chumley Towers, to very much the "action and adventure" category. It was exciting to write and I hope you will be excited to read it. Do let me know how you get on with it, if you have time! My email address as always is georgechedzoy@hotmail.co.uk

I'll blog some more on the book when time permits.

All the best,

George

Variable sales since price rise, and a fantastic email

If I'd written this blog entry three nights ago, it would have been to report cheerfully that my price increase from 99p to £1.99 had gone swimmingly and had, if anything, helped increase sales.

But pride, as always, comes before a fall. I had four UK sales over the weekend at £1.99 and a sale on Monday evening, but nothing since. I also haven't had a buyer on Amazon.com in over a week. But for now at least, I am going to hold firm at £1.99.

I do think it is a reasonable price - a fair mid-point between the prices that established publishing houses charge and the bargain basement indie brigade who flog their wares for 77p or less. As I suggested in my last post, if authors such as myself insist on selling books that cheap then ultimately writing novels will be reduced to being merely an amusing hobby, never a career, and that would be a shame.

Anyway, cheering me up somewhat is the following fantastic email I received from a reader who clearly shares my love for the Lleyn Peninsula - she's a "northerner" where the peninsula is concerned (Nefyn) while I'm a southerner - Abersoch. This is what she had to say about Smugglers at Whistling Sands:

Hello George, I have just bought a kindle touch and yours is the first book that I have read. It was recommended by my friend as we both have a caravan on the Llyn peninsular mine is at Morfa Nrfyn at Dinas and my favourite beach is Whistling sands!! I have loved your novel what an enchanting story I have read it in two days and being a busy mum with three young children that is a mean feat!! My ten year old is going to start reading it tonight I am so excited to go to Porth Ysgo on my next visit to my caravan I also love pith Dinllaen where the ty Coch pub is on the beach Thank you 

When people take the time and trouble to write to you with comments like that, it really does make it all worthwhile. And that's why I want to make it as a novelist - the sheer satisfaction of producing something creative that others will enjoy.

Has America fallen out of love with my adventure novel?

I ask this dramatic question because my children's adventure novel Smugglers at Whistling Sands has been downloaded from Amazon.com's Kindle store only a total of once since the start of April. Usually, my US sales amount to around half the sales I get on Amazon.co.uk.

I have been reasonably pleased with the UK sales I've achieved, although to some of you my figures will seem laughably small. I ran a free promotion on Sunday, April 1 which resulted in 102 downloads on Amazon.co.uk and 62 on .com. Since then I've sold a dozen ebooks at 99p (having put the price up recently from bargain basement 77p).

Certainly, it is disappointing at a time when there is some evidence of me building momentum this side of the pond, to have had just one sale in America so far this month. All the more so, in fact, because I get quite a few American readers of this blog.

I have not suffered fewer UK sales at 99p compared to 77p, indeed they seem to have risen somewhat. The biggest challenge of course, for an unknown, self-published author with his debut novel is being spotted. There are plenty of potential readers of a children's mystery adventure story like mine who would be only too willing to pay a pound or a dollar and a half for my book - thousands probably. They just don't know of its existence yet.

But therein lies good reason for optimism for me and any indie author/publisher who believes they have produced a good novel - when it's discovered it will sell - definitely (well, almost definitely!).

Memo to all Americans out there, please give my book a try, I think you'll like its British charm! Click on the Amazon.com product link to Smugglers at Whistling Sands on the right hand side of this page. Thanking you already!

Small price rise for my novel - to push up sales, not decrease them!

Today, I put the price up of my Kindle ebook Smugglers at Whistling Sands from 77p to 99p in Amazon's Kindle store and the equivalent in US dollars.

I have made this decision because I feel that the minimum price of 77p may, in the eyes of the reading public, look a little too "needy" and desperate for a sale and perhaps suggest that the book is of inferior quality.

There are an enormous number of 77p books out there and some of them, it has to be said, are not the greatest of efforts. On the other hand, there are some good self-published books and I like to think that mine is one of them - certainly the reviews so far have been very positive.

For any established author, you cannot indefinitely sell your books at 77p if you hoped to make a living out of it and I don't think anyone would expect people to. But this price rise of mine is not about improving profit margins - that doesn't interest me at the moment, I simply want to get my book as widely read as possible. For the record, the price rise will only increase my royalty by about 5p or 6p per book.

It's worth a try and I can always put the price back down from 99p to 77p if it doesn't work. As for my sales, they have been very modest but they do keep coming, at the rate of one or two a day, fluctuating between zero and three most days, the majority on Amazon.co.uk, but a sizeable few on Amazon.com.

I still wholeheartedly stand by a previous blog entry in which I said emphatically that a new author must sell cheaply in order to persuade readers to give his/her book a try. What I and other indie authors must do is to use every selling strategy at our disposal to push our books - while still leaving time to write new ones, of course!