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It's been a while. It looks like the last time I posted on my blog was in 2022, when I reviewed my then brand-new Microsoft Surface Duo with a promise to provide a follow-up review at the six month point. I didn't write that review up and that phone is now in a drawer, replaced by the One-Plus Fold. I'd become less prolific with blogging and obviously real life got in the way. I'm going to rectify that in part by writing the belated long-term review of the Surface Duo and a more relevant review of the One Plus Fold and the linked One Plus Watch 3 that I bought earlier this year - those reviews are coming soon.
Since that last post I've published my tenth novel, Bronze, which I totally forgot to promote on the blog (I actually thought I had, but I've checked and it seems I didn't) and retired from teaching. Just before that period I became ever more involved in the day-to-day activities in NewsBiscuit - the UKs longest running satirical website and the subject of another planned blog post as I'm now a writer, editor and part owner of NewsBiscuit. That is almost certainly part of the reason blogging took a back seat.
But before those posts I ought to explain what motivated me to resume the blog (and the shameless hijacking of the popular TV documentary title about the north Wales football (soccer) team that has had such success in the last few years.
Back in the early summer after some internal correspondence with other NewsBiscuit editors where we'd been discussing ways to attract new writers I did a Google search and found out there's a writers' group just down the road in Wrexham, the town recently elevated to City status and made famous by the documentary (and by succeeding in getting back to back to back promotions in the last three years). How did I not know there was a writing group locally? I sent an email and received an invitation to talk to the group about writing for NewsBiscuit at Wrexham library. I'll cover the thrust of my presentation in the NewsBiscuit blog post coming soon - today I want to big up the Wrexham Writers' group.
Most of the group are self published or hoping to be self published authors covering various genres - crime was well represented, with other genres including poetry being well represented. A local genealogist M K Jones discussed her experience of courses on how to use Instagram to promote books - spoiler alert, it sounds like the courses swim in shark infested water. Mary admitted that being more familiar with Insta would have helped. She's sanguine about the situation, she acknowledges she got some value from the course but my take is the jury is out regarding it being a useful marketing tool. BTW she's a lovely lady, well versed in history and her books are worth a look.
After M K Jones we had Simon McCleave. I was probably in the minority who didn't know who Simon was (but recognised the books) so I should have. Simon was a scriptwriter for many popular UK TV shows until recently and six years ago he decided to try his hand at murder mystery novels. He's now published 39 (if I heard right) and some of his books are being filmed in north Wales as I write. I guess we've all been there (apart from the filming bit), but the difference is Simon did a shedload of research into self publishing, Amazon Ads, Facebook Ads etc and devoted his days into writing and marketing. I, for one, couldn't do that while working and find being retired I seem to have even less time. I'm thinking of returning to work just so I can book holidays!
Simon, I'm guessing, found himself in a position where he could afford to immerse himself in full time writing. Probably a gamble but it has certainly paid off. He explained how initially he spent the morning writing and the afternoon marketing, and I got the impression this was at least five days a week. Six years in he's sold over three million books, is undoubtedly involved in the filming of them (I don't think he actually mentioned that in the session, I gleaned that off his website later) and now he pays people to do the marketing.
Top takeaways, for writers out there, are to create a mailing list but crucially don't use it entirely to overtly market new releases. Use it to build a relationship with existing and potential readers. He uses both Amazon adverts and Facebook adverts, however he appeared less convinced by the Facebook efforts while acknowledging if the target audience is older it has a purpose.
As an aside I have three FB accounts and don't use any of them. One is supposed to be my private family account that I started, like nearly everyone else, sometime in the last century, seemingly years before it was created. It was probably called Friends Reunited back then. I created an author account with the intention of using it for promoting my books and practically everyone on my private account joined it and started using it for family and friend messaging which probably confused the heck out of the North Americans who followed it, if only out of curiosity. I'm not sure I know which one is which anymore. The third account was created to help launch Project: Evil and was in the name of B L O'Feld, the megalomaniac main character and I had a lot of fun posting fake evil messages from him. I made up his birthday as 1st January and he gets birthday messages most years!
Anyway, back to marketing. I mentioned to Simon that I found the Amazon marketing rather opaque and his description of how it works didn't clear much of the fog. In a nutshell it seems Amazon have algorithms that target likely readers and Simon expects sales income to outstrip costs by a ratio of at least two to one. I'll do some more research and perhaps that'll be a topic for a future blog.
After Simon's marketing piece, which was inspirational and the reason why I'm resurrecting this blog, I rattled on about NewsBiscuit in the hope that in a roomful of clearly passionate writers one or two might come over to the dark side. NewsBiscuit isn't really that dark but we're economising by leaving the lights off.
Then, to round off the session the meeting chair, Dave, discussed a couple of projects linked, in a roundabout way, to Wrexham's 150th celebrations next year. Wrexham as a settlement has been around a lot longer than 150 years - the football club celebrated it's 150th last year - but 1876 is seen as an important year for the town and there will be a number of projects all through 2026 celebrating this and helping to tie in to its bid for City of Culture. The writing group has a couple of projects linked to this and I'll double back to this in a future blog post.
Wherever you live, if you're a writer (or put up with one) consider looking up the local writers' clubs. It could be a useful investment of your time. And if you want to join a mailing list, my author email is on the side. I'll let you know when I post a blog entry, if you like.
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In the US Bronze is on a countdown promotion starting Sunday 14th September at $0.99 for the eBook, rising to $1.99 on the 17th September before reverting to the full price of $2.99 on the 20th September. All promotions commence at 8:00 am PDT on the stated days.
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