End of First Year Accounts

          December 29th, 2012
                                           It was this time last year that I discovered the free download promo on Kindle and it was about then really that I should count as the start of my Kindle business. In 2011 all that was to be uploaded was.

                                           I got a Kindle for Christmas and started filling it the other day. There were 36,000 odd free books on Kindle. I went through the first five hundred pages and downloaded about 200 books, but hadn't by then encountered any of my nine books which were free then. Despite that, the nine books were downloaded about 600 times. I don't suppose folk are finding these books on Kindle. They must be finding them through the relevant computer sites, but I don't see how.

                                            Since the start of the year, I've been sent about £68 by Amazon. I've probably made about £30 in the States, but they don't give you a cheque till you've made $100. Maybe next year.

                                            My books download about six a month. This is what I was expecting when I put the prices up to the 70% mark. I think it's making marginally more money at the higher price.

                                            I'm going away in a few days, probably for three months. I'm going to the Holy Isle to meditate. Anyway, I suspect I might have been selling the odd book due to the odd foray into the Meet Our Authors forum. This month I sold four books in the states, but they were all sold to someone on the Meet Our Authors thread. So I'm expecting the sales to just collapse when I'm away.

                                              There are no computers where I am going. When I get back, I'll start writing again.

                                             
                                         

First contact!

          I think I got my first book published around 1985. My first radio play was broadcast around 1981. Just once, someone wrote me a letter about one of my radio plays. No one has ever contacted me about a novel ever. There have been reviews. That was it until I looked at my seldom used Hotmail account yesterday. Someone sent me an email. They said it was okay to reproduce it, so here it is.
           

Did you really write Are you boys cyclists? It's one of my favourite books. I bought it years ago when I had lots of money and I had a phase of just buying books randomly, judging them by their covers. I don't do that any more as I don't have any money. But I loved your book. I just recommended it to an old friend, so I googled it and found your blog. I like they way you write. But you don't write it any more.

So what are you doing now? Any more books?

Cheers,

Ivan

Much better than someone telling you to go and take a flying ....

City Whitelight review!

          Unexpectedly came upon this review of City Whitelight. A four star one!

         

 Dark urban dystopia adventure, 7 Oct 2012

By 

hyperconformist "likes books"

Amazon Verified Purchase(What is this?)

This review is from: City Whitelight (Kindle Edition)

Took a chance on the kindle edition and loved it. A sort of dungeon-punk urban (Scottish!) dystopia, great writing and characters - like the previous reviewer says, the feeling and atmosphere really lingers after finishing the story. My only complaint is I would have liked more, the ending certainly feels like a set-up for a sequel. Will certainly look into John McKenzies other books now.

          It's always nice when the reviewer doesn't title the review: Excoriating!

Getting on!

          His face came up on the telly news this morning and I thought: I know him! It was Stuart Blackburn, the guy who directed and toured my play Busted all over Scotland about a year or so after he left drama school. Here's the item on him:/http://www.itv.com/coronationstreet/news/newproducerrevealed/
Anyway, he's now the producer of Coronation Street. It seems he's been producing Emmerdale. If you're into producing drama on the telly, it probably doesn't get much better than that! Ain't that great?

More Money!

          It's always nice when you get an email from Amazon telling you they're going to send you some money. It seems most unlikely! So they sent me another £11.51 the other day. That's about £58 since I had the ten books up about a year ago. A pound a week!

          Nothing much else has been happening. I sometimes post on the Meet Our Authors fora, and someone bought the kidbooks because of that last week, but I don't really think it makes much difference. But if you look at it as money for old rope, any money at all is great. And people are getting a chance to read the books.

Ancient Futures and The Fatal Shore

          I read an obituary today of Robert Hughes. It said he was an art critic. I knew him as the writer of The Fatal Shore, a book about early Australian settlement. Since it did a history degree at university, I have read a lot of wonderful history books, but  The Fatal Shore is up there with them. Loved it. I read it just before I spent a year in Western  Australia which is where I started writing Ancient Futures. There is a scene in a penal colony in this book and it was inspired by stories in The Fatal Shore. I thought I'd mention that since the boy just died. Ancient Futures is free today.

Sales in July

          It's the 31st today. In July I sold eleven books. Four of these were for Are You Boys Cyclists?. Perhaps this is because I mentioned in a forum that it was mommy porn! Who knows? I'm surprised to be selling any.
          In June I sold eight books. In May I sold seven. This month I had all this free book promo time and kept putting the books up for free. I don't know if this helps, but why anyone should buy my books anyway is beyond me when there's so many out there for free!

TheBlissBook! Nice review!

          I just found this review of TheBlissBook. Nice since it got a lousy one before!

          Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars I loved it! 11 July 2012

By A Happy Reader

Format:Kindle Edition

I am not Scottish, and I'm not familiar with some of the Scottish slang which was in this book. However, that didn't alter my enjoyment of the story and the plot. I am also a teacher in a secondary school, although I teach in England, so I could relate to some of the things which the author was talking about (though I haven't quite resorted to killing any of the Senior Management Team..)

The clever blend of humour and educational material about Buddhism really impressed me, because the two seemed to fit well together. As I said, I had to sometimes think about what some of the slang meant, but I got the general idea.

Overall, I thought this was a very funny read, and it is a good book if you're just looking for a quick read and a few laughs.

          Last week I had TheBlissBook up on the free book promotion. In one day it downloaded sixty times in the states. You'd expect it to download half of that in Blighty normally, but TheBlissBook was downloaded only ONCE and that at half eleven at night when the downloader was probably drunk. This has to be because of the lousy review it got from some idiot who doesn't know the difference between fiction and non-fiction. The disparity cannot be for any other reason that I can think of. I'll be able to tell for sure when I put up Ancient Futures on the free book promo. That picked up a lousy review from someone complaining about the editing when I think there was something amiss with her reading device. Oh well. It's a free world out there in cyberspace and it's populated by loonies of course.

Alma Mater

Promoting ebooks again!!

          Last week I had to clear some of my old junk from my mother's house and came upon the parcel you see in the photograph. This is the original copy of Alma Mater. I was writing this from the age of about twenty two till I was about twenty six, then I put it down again, took it up after trying to write other stuff, put it down again .... as you do! I think the first draft was half a million words long, but I decided to re-write it by  cutting out the first two years of university and it went immediately from half a million to a quarter of a million words. A brilliant piece of editing!

          The travails and circumstances the re-write was done in are told in Are You Boys Cyclists? This book is FREE to download today.

           I've been trying not to look at my Reports on the publishing site, but I did today and I have only sold one book this month. Last month I sold eight, with three being at the rock bottom price, the others at $2.99. I decided that I'll have to avail myself of the free book promotions again since this is really my only marketing tool and I can put books through these promotions without having to spend too much time at the computer. I have ten books on Kindle so that gives me fifty days of free promotions. I guess that means something from me will be free for the next wee while on five out of every six days. Right now I'd rather they were getting read than not.

Are You Boys Cyclists? review.

I found this four star review of Are You Boys Cyclists? this morning.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 Highly entertaining... but beware! 3 July 2012

By J Bryden Lloyd

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am ashamed to say I thoroughly enjoyed this.

This book contains violence, graphic sex and drug use. But far more than that, it is the story of a writer seeking inspiration from his life, and seemingly realising he might have to look elsewhere.

A word of warning... No, nothing to do with the sex and drugs and stuff... This was written by a genuine Scotsman. A man with no pretence of going out of his way to use "The Queens English", or any other English come to think of it.
That, above all else, endeared me to this book. I grew up in Scotland and the dialogue, the characters, the humour, the familiar words I've not heard in years - they all just made this what it is. (I even found myself reading this in a scottish accent - Do you know how disconcerting that is?)

Whatever your nationality, this is the sort of book you can easily enjoy. Yes, there might be the occasional word you don't understand, but honestly... look through the little things and a wonderful story of life emerges that will make you giggle (at the very least).

P.S. Would love to know what happened to that car at the end!

Starting Over

          I had to do some writing work over the last year to get my ten books up on Kindle. I had to use a scanner on the dead tree books I had and edit that. That kind of thing, but not any new writing. I thought I should wait and see what developed with the Vajrayana meditations before writing again. I wanted my next book to be about raising inner heat and visiting Kopan Monastery in Katmandu, a place I've been to once before.

          Anyway, I started back writing this afternoon. Who knows when I'll be able to get to Kopan? I wasn't wanting to writer another novel for the sake of it, but I have one thriller, Remote Control, already on Kindle and I've been working on and off with the sequel for ages intermittently. But I've got a Buddhist angle I can take now that I can put the main character in a quandary about killing people and allow him to ruminate as to what actually constitutes a person; what are we made of, etc., in terms of body and soul. So I'm starting to write again and that's really cheered me up!

           The titles of these posts may be a bit awry since a toolbar is blocking the title section of the blog!

       

Sales In June

Sales in June

          In June so far, and it's the 12th today, I have sold two books out of the ten on Kindle. I'm pleased to say that one of them was In The Land Of The Demon Masters, so no one has bought that for months and I know it's a really good book for twelve year olds. It's still at the lowest price I could upload it at because twelve year olds sometimes don't have a lot of money!

            I've managed to avoid looking at the reports section of my account for six days, which is a kind of record since there was a kind of compulsion developing to have a look whenever I logged onto to the internet. When I put up the prices to $2.99, I wasn't expecting to sell many copies, and I don't think my books will sell many copies in future.

            I was speaking to someone with a reading device at the weekend and she told me she'd never bought a book for it since she could get everything she wanted to read for free. I wouldn't buy ebooks if I had a Kindle either. Since they brought out this five day free promotions thing around Christmas, why buy books? 

             I'm trying to give up on doing any marketing for my books since I don't think it makes much difference to how much money I'd make. But I really haven't been doing any marketing! I sometimes have a look at Meet Our Authors fora, but that's about it.

              It's been very interesting doing this Kindle stuff though and I'm very pleased that my books are somewhere where someone can read them if they want to. 

              

          Promoting Ebooks again and again!

          I think it was last weekend that I put all ten of my ebooks up for free, and I did a bit more this time to get them noticed. I put a message on Facebook and found out lots of other ways to spread the word that my ebooks were free for a couple of days. Whether this did any good or not is hard to say, but the amount of downloads is what I would have expected if I'd done nothing. I think there were about four hundred downloads in total, but about half of them were for Ancient Futures. I assume this is because of the lurid cover. I cannot think of any other reason. Bugtown  was second on downloads, but it has got two cracking reviews.

           So where are we now with the ebook selling game? It looks like you can hardly give them away!! There have been twelve sales since the start of the month and that was unaffected by the free promos. Somebody told me that perhaps they weren't selling because they were at rock bottom prices, so I have put all the prices up to $2.99, which is the minimum for 70% royalties, except for Bugtown and In the Land Of the Demon Masters, which are still at rock bottom prices because I wrote them for young people and they sometimes don't have much money!!

Free Ebook Promotions Again!

          Free Ebook Promotions Again!

          I tried to put my ten ebooks up for free as part of my cunning marketing strategy. In fact, it's just about all of my marketing strategy, but I tried a bit harder to get downloads this time. So I spread news of this fantastic offer around, using links I'd found out about from one of the Meet Our Author threads. I must have spent a good hour and a bit telling folk about this free download business. I think if you were interested in the links, they are all mentioned in previous posts. Maybe the Facebook one isn't. You search  FB for "free ebooks" and you can find places to leave messages (or warnings!) there.

          I do not know if going the extra mile made any difference, but it probably did. The downloads were as follows:

           USA - 440

            UK  - 150

    Other places - 17.

            So that's about six hundred downloads. The great thing about Kindle for me is that these books have some kind of life! Otherwise, nobody would get a chance to read them.

             And the most popular download by a mile and a half is Ancient Futures. The next favourite download was Bugtown. This is odd since it's a book for readers of about twelve, but it has had a couple of  five star reveiws!

Some money!

           Amazon sent me £11.64 yesterday; money from January and February! I'm going to be rich! Rich, I tell you! That's about £35 I've made from Kindle since the ten books started going up about this time last year. I've put the money aside and when I gets to about £100, I'll buy myself a guitar. Not a Kindle!

           Since spending the weekend at the Samye Ling, I've been able to sit in a half lotus meditating for two and a half hour sessions, and much enjoying it!! And all the aggravation about Kindle stuff has abated. The trick is not to go to the reports section, or go near Amazon to look if any new reviews have come in!!

Ancient Futures Republished (Almost)

          I got an email a couple of weeks ago telling me that someone had put in a review of Ancient Futures saying the proofreading was so bad, she couldn't read it, and gave up completely after ten pages! Dearie me!

          I had a friend who helped me with some proofreading and particularly uploading the books, so I thought maybe there had been an error and he'd uploaded the copy I got after scanning the original. The reviewer said that on one of  the pages all the Os had been replaced by As (or the other way around!). This is the kind of thing you have to correct after scanning, and sounded convincing.

           Ancient Futures sells way more than any other of my books and this made the information I received particularly distressing. Had I sold an unreadable book to these people?

          I know now what I should have done. I should have gone into my bookshelf on Kindle and found the book and checked the Preview section which gives you a look before you publish the book, and afterwards, as if turns out. Or I could have looked at the book on the Kindle thing I have on my computer.

           But I did instead was to unpublish the book i.e. take it off Kindle. Then I was faced with the daunting prospect of reading and re-editing an old book of mine, and in some ways I'd rather poke sticks into my eyes!

            I realised almost immediately that there was nothing wrong with the text. I found less then ten spelling or scanning errors in the whole book. So I don't know what was going on there since the reviewer had a real name and seemed genuine when I contacted her to apologise. A mystery.

             Today I tried to republish the book and I think I probably cocked it up! I am not calm when I do things on the computer with my books. At this moment, the book is in "review" by Kindle and won't appear in time for me to have another go before I go away to the Samye Ling for a long weekend.

              Trying to find something good about all this .... the book was alright. If sweeping heroic epics is what you like, you could read something a lot worse.

               This has really jaundiced me to this whole Kindle experience. Or my Kindle experience. I've just wasted hours and hours of my precious life for nothing. That's the end of me looking out for reviews!!!!
         

Promoting E-books again! 5 Day Promos.

Thought this might interest anyone thinking of doing the 5 day promos. I lifted it from Meet Our Author forum. Didn't get the name of the author.


I am at 33hrs of day one promo with 12,550dls. Shameless plug to get a few more goes here--->http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007W9F4A8

Now, what I did and didn't do. I ran my promo for 5 days consecutive, because I figure I did this for 1. Exposure 2. "Likes" 3. Reviews. Why would anyone start a promo for less than 5 days? I have 40 likes in one day...why wouldn't I build on it? In short do the 5 already. You'd be mad as hell if you landed on a blog or some other sites radar after your > less than 5 day promo ended right?

I put word out on these FREE sites.
pixelofink.com
icravefreebies.com
centsablemomma.com
thedigitalinkspot.blogspot.com 
Reviewers Roundup on FaceBook
LinkedIn Writers Groups
My FaceBook Page(only have 200 friends or so)
Kindle bazaar forum.

** Some sites above take a day or two to get to your book, so sign up THE LATEST a day before you start your 5 day promo.**
See? NO TWEETING or whatevering, Google plus oneing,lol(still not sure to what those two are:) THERE YOU HAVE IT 100% FREE

Trouble with Ancient Futures

          Ancient Futures picked up a very bad review the other day, not that the reviewer had read the book. But the reviewer said the book was so strewn with proof-reading errors and it seemed like some of the original scan hadn't been corrected. One of the pages had all the letters O replacing all the letters A, and that is what sometimes happens when you scan a document into the computer. The reader never got passed page ten and this is very unfortunate since she said she was really looking forward to reading the book. 

          This seemed like a bit of a disaster, so I deleted the book and contacted the reviewer with profuse apologies.

           Last night I downloaded my copy of Ancient Futures, a word document (I don't have a Kindle) and was prepared to start correcting it. I only found two mistakes in the first seventy three pages!!!

            So I have no idea what's happening here. My friend, who did most of the uploading of the other books himself, and I uploaded Ancient Futures a good year before we ever did anything else on Kindle, just as an experiment. We must have uploaded the wrong document though I don't see how.

             I wasn't looking forward to looking at Ancient Futures again by any stretch of the imagination, but was pleasantly surprised at how good it was. Now that I've started it, I'll finish it and make sure there are no other errors in the text. Then I'll upload it again.

              If anyone reading this has Ancient Futures on their Kindle, how's about having a keek to see if it's a mess and letting me know? And if you've any idea as to what might have happened here, I'd be glad to know that as well!

Bugtown review! Five stars!

I've just come across a five star review of Bugtown! I must say I think the criticisms within both the long reviews this book have had have been spot on. What's great about the arrival of independent publishing (Kindle) is that I couldn't get an agent or a publisher to read it despite being a school librarian and having had adult novels published before. Anyway, here's the review.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Very entertaining. Not perfect, but great fun., April 21, 2012

By 

J Bryden Lloyd "J Bryden Lloyd" (Author - UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bugtown (Kindle Edition)

Book Review: Bugtown by John McKenzie
Reviewed by J Bryden Lloyd

Writing Style - 3.5/5.0 (Good)
This is a fun book, more than a demonstration of writing prowess, and as such it offers plenty to the younger readers who will undoubtedly have a lot of fun reading it. The narrative is good and flowing, the dialogue between the siblings who are the two main characters is fun, and typical of children in their age-group, although from time-to-time I felt it could have been a little tidier.

Character Development - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good)
At the start it isn't obvious where the characters are meant to go in terms of development. The older sister, although a leading presence, does appear to remain the most two-dimensional of the main characters, while the younger brother claims the lion's share of the work the author seems to put in. Added to this you have the `bugs' of the title, who it seems are not what they appear to be, the baby... who isn't a baby, the beggar... who isn't a beggar, and even Santa makes an appearance, but guess what? Yup! He isn't Santa.
On top of that lot, the sister appears to be some sort of body-guard at points during the story, while the brother becomes Robert The Bruce incarnate, complete with a craving for - and the ability to wield - a `great big Scottish sword'.
Each develops in their own way, and although there are occasions where an adult reading this might frown and question what they have read, these characters are built very cleverly to encourage a child's imagination.

Descriptive - 4.5/5.0 (Excellent)
From the start, the author carefully builds the world the children find themselves in, along with the clothing and the events happening around them. The walled town with the castle at its centre is nicely vivid and the varied residents of the town, as well as the children's reactions to them, are nicely defined.
The banquet hall scene is very well built and described, and the subsequent happenings within it are cleverly entertaining. This leads on to some fast-paced scenes where the author keeps up some quality descriptive whilst keeping the action running.

Language & Grammar - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good)
This is clearly aimed at a young audience and with that in mind, it keeps a rigid level of understanding and a considered language level designed to challenge, but not overwhelm.
I found a few little foibles and minor technical issues in the grammar. Primarily the creeping use of terms and words more local to the author than to the potential general audience of the book. There were also a handful of editing issues, but these were not significant and not widespread.
In an ideal world, perhaps anglicising some of the text would make this a more appealing read to a wider audience.

Plot - 4.0/5.0 (Very Good) - MILD SPOILERS
Admittedly, the main plot is a little drowned amongst the sub-plots, and there are things that remain frustratingly unexplained, specifically the how and why of what the children are doing there in the first place.
The supposed `rescue' of the baby turns out to be far more complicated than it sounds, and ends up as a kidnapping, which leads to a kidnapping from the kidnappers, and then the actual rescue by the initial kidnappers, to retrieve the baby from the second group of kidnappers in order to help the baby get back to where he started... are you following this?
In fact, this is a very entertaining element within the plot, and one that does appear to serve to tie up a few of the loose ends.

General - 4.5/5.0 (Excellent)
Once you get past the opening section of this book, things begin to happen at a reasonably fast pace. No, not everything is explained as you might like, but I don't think this is the point of the story, which takes these two ordinary siblings and throws them into a place where even they don't know what's going on.
This fact alone makes certain reactions, arguments and events in the story entirely realistic, as the sister's sole purpose is to get home, and the brother just wants to rescue the baby... and occasionally have a big Scottish sword.
No, this isn't a great work of literature, but it is light-hearted, cleverly original and a lot of fun.

Worthy of four stars, but I have to admit the brother and the baby characters made this much more fun. I more-than liked this story, so five it is.

Selling and Promoting Ebooks on Kindle

Selling and Promoting Ebooks on Kindle

          Someone told me on the Meet Our Authors forum that the "sweet spot" for selling and thus promoting your ebooks on Kindle was 99cents. So I've just reduced all the prices to 99cents and that comes to about 75 pence in British money.

          The ten books of mine on Kindle were selling at $1.60 in the states and about £1.04 here in Blighty for the first nineteen days of this month and sold in total twelve books. That's about £4 in royalties. But some of the books are hardly selling at all. The main sales are in Ancient Futures, followed by Bugtown and The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. I have no idea why those are selling and the other ones aren't!!!

First American Review for TheBlissBook

          I was very pleased to come upon this review of TheBlissBook today! It was written by an American lady from West Virginian whom I encountered on one of the threads at Meet Our Authors on Amazon. This is the second review (there was one for Remote Control a couple of weeks ago) that has come about from posting on one of these threads. Both books were found by the reviewers from posting on the thread about the free five day book promotions, so they have worked to that extent.

4.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully funny!, April 12, 2012

By 

Jimelle Salyers (Spencer, wv, US) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: TheBlissBook (Kindle Edition)

This is a story about a frustrated and manic school librarian who must deal with the red tape, bad teachers, and clueless administrators that seems to be a part of all school systems. and boy, does he deal with it! A romping, hilarious, fun read!

Free Ebook promotions - Second stint of the Five Days free stuff!

          Thought I'd post how my second go at the five day free promo was going.

          Last Tuesday I put my ten books up free and the downloaded about 1,000 times. I then put them up free for the Saturday and Sunday of the Easter weekend and they downloaded about 500 times. For ten books these are very small figures of course. Also, two of my novels downloaded about a third of the total for no good reason that I can see!

          For the last five weeks my books have been set at over $3 and they've been bought at a rate of less than two a week. Previously, when they were at rock bottom they were being bought at about one a day.
If gettting reviews is what selling these ebooks is about, then it would make sense to put the books back to a far lower price and hope for more sales and more reviews. So far I've had one review from free downloads. I think a review I got otherwise for Bugtown is why folk are downloading it for free. Can't see any other reason.

          I've decided then to cancel next weekend's free book promotion because of the laws of diminishing returns, and reduce the prices to about a pound or so that I get about fifty pence a book.

          Later: The books in the states are now at $1.60 which makes them cost £1.01 in Britain. I'd really like to just forgot about these books for a while!! There's something out there called an indie publisher and I'm not it. Park the books, walk away, que sera sera!

Free Ebook Promotion on Kindle yesterday!

          Yesterday my ten free kindle books were downloaded just over 700 times in the United States and just over 300 here. Almost half of the numbers of downloads in the states were for Ancient Futures and Bugtown. I can only imagine this is because folk fancied the covers. Of the 300 downloaded in Britain, Ancient Futures was way ahead again, but second most downloaded one was The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. This was rather pleasing since that's one I'd like folk to read!!

            I got this message yesterday on the Meet Our Authors forum.

            Jimelle Salyers says:

LOL, John! Never hand someone your book and say, "good luck with that"! It's bad marketing:) J/K

I was a school librarian for a year and so far, according to your book, Scottish schools are EXACTLY like American schools. Too much admin, not enough learning. I'm just not as imaginative as your protagonist. Probably a good thing. This is such a funny book so far - and I have a pretty demanding sense of humor. Thanks for a fun couple of hours this afternoon; I can't wait to finish it.

         The books will be free again on Saturday and Sunday this weekend and next!

Promoting Ebooks again and again!

          I took part in the 5 Day Free Book Promotion for ebooks on Kindle beginning at Christmas. About 3,000 downloads resulted from this. This isn't a lot. Someone on a Meet Our Authors forum post got 12,000 downloads for one book. I got one review, a good one, for Remote Control.
         
           During all of March the ebooks were on sale for just over $3 and five books were sold all month. That's five books sold between the ten books on Kindle.

            Much as I would like to just forget about promoting these ebooks, I think you'd got to make a wee effort anyway. So I've made all my books free on Tuesday, April 3rd. Let's hope for lots of downloads and a few good reviews!

Prologue of City Whitelight

          I just posted this prologue on the Meet Our Authors forum, so I thought I'd just put it here as well. 

Prologue

           When the destroyers had passed on and the dust settled, the few who remained began to build a maze of narrow alleyways encircled by a wide moat. Within the waters of this Outer Ring, a town grew up which could be defended - defended street by street. They called it the Medina.

Later, after many years had passed, a terrible plague visited the Medina, sparing those who fled across the Outer Ring, mostly people of property and capital - the rich. And just as the Medina was built for defence, so at that time it was easy to surround. While the plague raged, the rich severed the Medina from the beginnings of their New Town until almost all who remained in that warren were dead. Even when the plague disappeared, the people of the New Town remained separate. It suited them to stay that way.

Time passed. And outside the slowly shrinking waters of the Outer Ring, in what became known as the Borders, factories were built. Those from the Medina who could find work, worked there and at night returned to the place where the population multiplied despite the most abominable human conditions, bred and spilled out into the marsh where once the waters of the Outer Ring had been. Soon enough, some from the Medina began to live in towering tenement slums built beside the factories.

But the system which bound together the various parts of the city began to break down and that area at the heart of the place, which became known in its entirety as Centrum, was gradually encircled with wire and a band of derelict waste prowled by wild, ferocious dogs. Except for the Grand Bazaar at the edge of the Borders, where things were bought and sold each day, the inner city was completely isolated.

Yet for many years still men were allowed to pass through the Grand Bazaar and work by day in the New Town. Then one morning, without warning, an edict was posted banning all movement from the heart of the city. Rumours of a new plague, or so it was thought, caused Centrum to be sealed off completely. But nothing was said, no reason given.  

             For almost two weeks now a hush of expectancy hung over the centre of the city, but all that was ever heard from the direction of the New Town were dogs baying at the moon. Yet on this night a storm brewed and the dogs were silenced. ... 

Cold Killing!

PROLOGUE

The detective was wearing a dark suit under an overcoat more expensive than you might expect, and he was flanked on either side by two other men of slightly smaller stature. None of the three men seemed seriously intent on their drinks and sat there quietly, and gave the impression of waiting for someone, or something. All of them, the detective and the two others, were too well dressed to be in such a bar. Incongruous clientele.

The walls of the Horse’s Head hadn’t been repainted in over forty years. The three men, the only patrons apart from the man asleep with his head on a formica tabletop, were sitting more or less facing the double doors. The bar was to the left of where the three conscious customers were sitting, and the bar man stopped rubbing on the beer glass he’d been rubbing on for quite some time, looked up at the clock again, then slipped through to the back.

The double doors burst open right about then and a traffic warden came running into the bar then stopped. He wore a false beard, which seemed on the point of falling off, and his face underneath was reddened, his eyes like saucers on stocks, the pupils hugely dilated. The massive dose of multifarious stimulants on top of the whisky had the sweat bursting, pounding out of him. Pulling a gun from inside his tunic, he started quickly towards the table where the three men sat, firing as he went.

Bullets went into the throat and head of the men on either side of the detective, and he was shot in the shoulder, but then the gun jammed and the man dropped it. He pulled a sharpened chisel with a custom made hand guard from inside his tunic and he grabbed the detective by the hair, knocking over the table as he dragged him onto the floor, stabbing him on the head and neck as he went.

The detective came to rest on his back, the head held down by the hair as he was stabbed in the throat, then many times in his face, then several times through both eyes. He was dead by the time his forehead was being stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and stabbed and the stabbing didn’t seem to be ever going to end as a furious madness gleamed out of the face of the man in the traffic warden uniform, his lips pulled back, the gnashing teeth bared.

The traffic warden didn’t stop stabbing till the skull over the deceased eyes collapsed into his brain. There was blood all over the traffic warden, the corpse and the floor by the time the murderer finally stopped stabbing and scooped out a handful of the detective’s brains. He stood up and threw the brains, still as if in a mad fury, at the wall. Then he stretched out his arms, one hand still holding the chisel and shouted in exultation.

Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass! Traffic Wardens, ya bass!

Two other traffic wardens came running through the door then, one with a red blanket which he threw over the killer’s shoulders. The other picked up the gun and the beard and all three traffic wardens rushed out.

The drunken man asleep with his head on the formica topped table claimed later that he never heard a thing and neither he did.

   -----------------

I've decided to write another book after all. At first it was going to be called The Revenge of the Traffic Wardens, but it'll probably end up called Cold Killing. This will be the second book in the series which started with Remote Control. I'm going to write at least one more book with Jimmy McGovern as the main protagonist. I've been working on the ideas for this book for quite some time now and all I have to do now is write it.

I going to write it using very short chapters since I like the look of that and short chapters make for easy reading.

I've sold about three books on Kindle during March so far. But this is at the new price of about $3 and I'll make the same from selling three books at that price as I would selling eighteen books at the old price. I'd rather have more readers than more money, but I don't think this current price if off-putting. The problem is, as usual, that the ebooks are more or less invisible, and they are attracting reviews very slowly. But I'd rather spend time writing than going around the net telling folk how good my books are.

A couple of folk with Kindles have told me that they've had trouble finding them, but since I don't own a Kindle, I can't think why that should be. If you put John McKenzie into the Amazon books search engine, the books come up, at least on my computer.

Promoting Ebooks on Kindle again!

14th March, 2012 - 2:50 p.m.

          I managed not to look at the reports section of my Kindle account for nearly two weeks. What restraint! All this month so far I have kept away from the Meet Our Author forums and I've done bugger all to promote the books. Around the 20th of February I put all the books up from 77p to $3:50 since I can't believe it's that sales are that price sensitive.

          As it turns out, it looks like I sold 12 books in February before the 20th, when I upped the price, and since then, according to the month to date unit sales (these are in the Reports section) I've sold one book in March. Though it has to be said that one book at the new price is worth six books sold at the old price to me in royalties, this is still a bit disappointing.

          However, if I look at the Prior Six Weeks Royalties reports, it shows that I've sold about twenty two books since the royalties moved up from 35% to 70% (i.e. from the 20th of February and the price change), but in this section these sales are not showing up as royalties. Well, one of them is. They might be somehow connected to the free book promotions but I don't see how. The books go into the Prior Six Weeks Royalties section seems to receive data week by week and some of these books are registered as being sold in March, but aren't showing up in the Month to Date sales.

           So I'm pretty sure I've sold only one book in March since that looks like being the only one I'll be paid for. But there is something odd about the reports.

            I noticed when I was looking at my Kindle account that I had omitted somehow to put in the IBAN and BIC numbers for my bank account. Probably made a mistake when I was trying to save it. Anyway, this might account for the fact that I've received no money from the States. If I've made £23 or so in Blighty, I must have made ten dollars in the States by now. I guess I'll see at the end of the month.

            I think I saw somewhere that folk got alerts for price drops, so I've dropped all my prices today from $3:50 to $3:25.

             I suppose all this Kindle stuff has given me an interest. But I will try to avert my attention once more from the Reports section, and stop footering with that kind of thing every time I log on. Well, I'll try.

           
     

First Remote Control Review!

Well, here it is!!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Uppers and downers, 7 Mar 2012

By 

Stuart Ayris (Tollesbury, Essex, England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Remote Control (Kindle Edition)

Remote Control is a smartly written, well paced novel that follows a few days in the life of Jimmy McGovern, an ex-army drug addled drug dealer who has just suffered a relationship breakdown. The fact that his ex-girlfriend has been arrested as part of an anarchist plot to assassinate the Prime Minister, well that just adds greater to confusion to his already confused state of mind. As the novel moves swiftly on Jimmy becomes ever deeply involved in all sorts of machinations that lead inexorably to violence.

As a novel, Remote Control has a brilliantly realised main protagonist in Jimmy. His chaos, his daily attempts to get his life in order and his struggles to attain some form of equlibrium in his entirely messed up world are very well written; reflections on life, pragmatism and humour abound amidst the madness. I would go as far as to say that some of the dialogue reminded me of the circular madness of Catch-22 which is praise indeed!

The first half of the novel is cracking although I was left a little confused by the final few pages. Perhaps I had missed something on the way but I struggled to make full sense of the ending.

Overall I would recommend this book highly in order that you can spend a few days in the mad head of Jimmy McGovern. Well worth a read!

H

Second Royalty Payment!

February 28th at 7.50 p.m.
    
          I got just over £10 at the end of November. Today I was told that I was getting a payment of £13.32. Of this, £2.08 was from October, £3.38 was from November, and £8.32 was from December. Since I put the prices up a wee while ago, I don't suppose I've sold more than a couple of books, but every one makes me about £1.50. Since the sales were obviously increasing in December maybe I should have left the prices at rock bottom, but who knows?

Sales in February!

          In the first twenty days of February, my ebooks have sold twelve copies. I've done nothing to market them at all.
     
          I started a thread in the Meet Our Author's forum about pricing, and so far I've been told the books will have to be priced at $2.99 to meet the 70% royalty band.

          I'm coming round to the opinion that having the books priced at the lowest possible price is having virtually no effect on sales. At first sight this doesn't seem rational, but you can get hundreds of downloads if the books are free and almost none if the books are priced at 77p, which is less than I pay for my morning paper. I think the whole thing works on visibility. It's harder to find books at 77p than it is if they are for free.

          Also, last month my top selling book was Ancient Futures. In December, it sold two copies. In January it sold eighteen copies. It has one jokey review on the American site and none on the British one. It may have had a selling bounce from the five free day book promotion, but I doubt it.

          The books I'd like folk to buy are The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf  and TheBlissBook. In January, these books sold nine and five copies respectively, so making them dead cheap isn't shifting them so far.

           I suppose the best thing I should do as regards the pricing and such is to leave things as they are, but I think I might put up the prices, at least on the books that have to nothing to do with Buddhism; the ones that are just novels. Maybe I'll put up the prices on the latter and leave the former dead cheap. Don't know what to do really, but I'll do something soon!!

          Later: I've made all my books cost $3.50 in the USA and whatever that converts to elsewhere. I think it means they'll cost around £2.20 in Britain. You have to have the books at $2.99 to hit the 70% royalty band. So I've put them at a wee bit more than that because I think if you lower the price at any point, some folk get alerts, so making it a wee bit over the 70% barrier makes a wee bit of sense.

          If you want to download them at the cheap price, you'll got about twelve hours from now, it seems.

           Hopefully, this is the beginning of my not having to spend time trying to market ebooks when I should be writing them or meditating!!

Promoting ebooks: After the five free days, what price?

          I had some free book days left from the fifty free days I got on my ten books at the end of January, but I've decided to hold off with them till the end of February. There's a couple of reasons for this.

          I found it impossible to see if I was actually selling any books during January since the figures were muddled in with the "sales" you get accredited when a free download happens. So from the start of February the statistics are coming up clean since they start at nothing at the beginning of  the month. This month so far I have sold seven  books. So I'm selling just about a book a day.

          So far I don't see any affects from the five day free book promotions. I haven't had any new reviews from it. I guess I can judge the results of that at the end of February as well.  The only marketing I was doing before this free book day promotion involved leaving links to the books in the Meet Our Authors forums, and I assumed that was how I was getting sales, but I'm not going to do that this month.

          To market ebooks properly would take all day. It's a job in itself. What I'd like to do this month is nothing at all and see how many books get sold. My assumption was that the links in the forums were providing sales, but the books might have been bought for other reasons.

          If the continue to sell at about a book a day, I'd like to find out with the optimum selling price would be. My assumption was that books would sell more at the lowest price, which is why the books are at 77p, but the royalty cheque I got on 25th November last year was payment for books sold before the end of September when the books were about £2. That puts you in the 70% royalty band, which is where I'd rather be. It may be that selling them at the cheapest price might put folk off!

          So I'll just keep my eye on the sales this month and come up with a pricing strategy then.

Promoting ebooks through the Five Day Free Book Promotion!

Tuesday 31st January, 2012

          This will be the last day I'll be running any of my ten books through the five day free book promotion scheme until the end of February anyway. I put ten books on Kindle last year, so that fives me fifty free book promotion days. So far I have used forty one of these days. I'm not going to continue with this through February partly through diminishing results - there are far few free downloads happening now that I'm putting books up free again for one or two days - and partly because I want my download records clear of free downloads so I can see if I'm actually selling any books!

          On the 25th November, Amazon sent me £10:88 in royalties. I've discovered that they pay royalties 60 days after you've earned them, so those royalties were earned in September or before, when the books were all in the 70% royalties higher price band. I've had nothing from them since and I think the books have been at their cheapest possible selling price since around the 15th of October.

          I think the next thing will be to see if the free downloads affect sales in Febuary. So far the free downloads have produced no reviews at all. Someone on a discussion thread reckoned they got one review for every 185 ebooks sold. I've only picked up four or five reviews so far and none came from free downloads!

          I cannot see much difference between selling a book for 77p (this is the lowest price now that VAT has been reduced) and giving it away for free, but there are hardly any sales at 77p and quite a lot of folk seem to download the books if they are free. Here are my figures so far:

           41 days on the five day free book promotion.
           2,360 free downloads approximately.

          I looks to me that there is not much chance of a writer like me making much money out of Kindle ebooks!! I don't write in genres in any consistent way. What I'll do over the next month is see if sales have been affected at all by the five free book day promotions (which I very much doubt!) and then probably decide once again what price to put the books at. And then put this whole ebook thing on the back burner, which is where it would have stayed had I not stumbled upon this free book promotion nonsense.

          To promote your ebooks yourself you'd need to be prepared to spend a lot of long, boring hours doing  clicky clicky stuff, and if I'm going to spend time on the computer, I'd rather be writing. This week I started writing again after a  year where all I did was scan, edit and upload old books. Anyway, once I'm settled into writing a book again, I don't expect to be spending much time doing stuff like this!

Promoting Ebooks again!

          I stumbled upon this scheme whereby you give Amazon the right to lend your ebook and they allow you to give away your ebook in a five day promotional thing. At first sight it doesn't seem to make much sense, but amazingly enough you can get hundreds and hundreds of downloads for something that's free and almost none for something that's almost free. I suspect this is all about visibility. It was pointed out to me in the discussion thread I started about this that there are web pages, etc., set up to advertise what you can get free on Kindle, but none advertising books for 77p. Maybe folk are just filling up their devices. It's hard to work out what is going on.
       
          Anyway, I've got ten books on Kindle and ten on this scheme, so I've got fifty free book days in total. After using thirty two of these free days, just under three thousand four hundred free ebooks have been downloaded. This isn't a lot compared to other people's results. Some folk are getting 1500 downloads a day. Funnily enough, the book of mine which I expected to download the most, Remote Control  because it was a thriller was downloaded the least. So I don't understand what that's about!

          So far I haven't picked up any reviews as a result of giving the books away. Reviews seem to be important, but it's nice that some folk might get round to reading the books. And word of mouth is the only way anybody is going to hear of these ebooks, so giving them away every now and again has got to be a good idea.

          Only one of my books was borrowed during this time, so it's not as if it cost me sales.

           The download rate definitely drops after a couple of days. I put the first books up for five days in a row, but I suspect that it would be best to put up books for a day at a time. The rest of my eighteen days will be single days.