WordPlay Writers' Forum
Wednesday 16 January 2013
Thursday 22 November 2012
Tracking Book Sales
Hey all, just read this which seems like some good advice:
Author Central
At Amazon's Author Central you can click on the Sales Info tab to see graphs of your book's ranking.
authorcentral.amazon.com
NovelRank
A free service for authors to track their Amazon Sales Rank through Amazon's various stores around the world. Sales quantities are only estimates.
www.NovelRank.com
Metric Junkie
A free service that displays Amazon Sales data through charts and graphs. You can track sales and estimate product market share.
www.MetricJunkie.com
Sales Rank Express
Another free service. Sales Rank Express pulls together sales rankings from Amazon and NovelRank. A nice feature here is the ability to see "pairings". Pairings reflect books that are bought most often by the same customers, and this information is presented by Amazon to customers in various ways to encourage additional purchases.
www.SalesRankExpress.com
RankForest
A tracking service for both Amazon and Barnes & Noble stores. A free account will let you do some limited tracking on one book; however you will need to pay for more features or to track multiple books.
www.RankForest.com
Books & Writers
Another service to track your book rank on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Their Rank Monitoring Service allows you to receive hourly, daily, or weekly email updates of rankings and view charts tracking a book's ranking over those intervals. It costs $10 per year for 1 - 2 books; $20 per year for 3 to 10 books.
www.BooksandWriters.com
RankTracer
This service offers analytics and customized graphs from Amazon. It costs $3 to track a book at one Amazon store for 3 months, or $9 for a year.
www.RankTracer.com
Finally, although it can be a lot of fun watching your book's sales rank - if it's improving anyway - it is usually more productive for your writing career to spend less time watching your rank and more time working on your next book.
Author Central
At Amazon's Author Central you can click on the Sales Info tab to see graphs of your book's ranking.
authorcentral.amazon.com
NovelRank
A free service for authors to track their Amazon Sales Rank through Amazon's various stores around the world. Sales quantities are only estimates.
www.NovelRank.com
Metric Junkie
A free service that displays Amazon Sales data through charts and graphs. You can track sales and estimate product market share.
www.MetricJunkie.com
Sales Rank Express
Another free service. Sales Rank Express pulls together sales rankings from Amazon and NovelRank. A nice feature here is the ability to see "pairings". Pairings reflect books that are bought most often by the same customers, and this information is presented by Amazon to customers in various ways to encourage additional purchases.
www.SalesRankExpress.com
RankForest
A tracking service for both Amazon and Barnes & Noble stores. A free account will let you do some limited tracking on one book; however you will need to pay for more features or to track multiple books.
www.RankForest.com
Books & Writers
Another service to track your book rank on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Their Rank Monitoring Service allows you to receive hourly, daily, or weekly email updates of rankings and view charts tracking a book's ranking over those intervals. It costs $10 per year for 1 - 2 books; $20 per year for 3 to 10 books.
www.BooksandWriters.com
RankTracer
This service offers analytics and customized graphs from Amazon. It costs $3 to track a book at one Amazon store for 3 months, or $9 for a year.
www.RankTracer.com
Finally, although it can be a lot of fun watching your book's sales rank - if it's improving anyway - it is usually more productive for your writing career to spend less time watching your rank and more time working on your next book.
Thursday 15 November 2012
New Book Signing Details
Hi All,
a small inconvenience, a minor irritation, but this is Spain, after all!
We have had to make a small change to the book signing running order, here's the new details. I'm sorry if there's any inconvenience, things beyond our control. For those authors who were to be at the Shorts for Autumn signing on 21st November, could you move that to 1st December, please?
Saturday
8 Dec FALLYN – Kathy Rollinson
a small inconvenience, a minor irritation, but this is Spain, after all!
We have had to make a small change to the book signing running order, here's the new details. I'm sorry if there's any inconvenience, things beyond our control. For those authors who were to be at the Shorts for Autumn signing on 21st November, could you move that to 1st December, please?
Saturday
17 Nov MY GENTLE WAR – Joy Lennick
Wednesday 21 Nov LOSING HOPE – Nikki Dee
Saturday
24 Nov FALLYN
– Kathy Rollinson
Wednesday 28 Nov MY GENTLE WAR – Joy Lennick
Saturday 1 Dec LOSING HOPE – Nikki Dee
SHORTS FOR AUTUMN - Anthology
Wednesday 5 Dec SHORTS FOR AUTUMN - Anthology
Wednesday 26 September 2012
Authors sued by Penguin
Penguin have sued several authors for return of advances and interest.
Just as interesting as the colossal amounts is the subject matter. Nothing that we, as single authors or as a group, could not have written.
Includes a $20k advance for 'a narrative about fishing lures and their history'. Hooked me when I first read the title.
Or what about a two book deal signed for $35,000 for 'a guide to managing Type II diabetes for women' and 'a cookbook for diabetes with approximately 125 recipes'. $35,000? That's more than icing on the cake, surely? Are there 125 ways of saying 'leave the sugar out'?
Will bring more details to next forum.
Just as interesting as the colossal amounts is the subject matter. Nothing that we, as single authors or as a group, could not have written.
Includes a $20k advance for 'a narrative about fishing lures and their history'. Hooked me when I first read the title.
Or what about a two book deal signed for $35,000 for 'a guide to managing Type II diabetes for women' and 'a cookbook for diabetes with approximately 125 recipes'. $35,000? That's more than icing on the cake, surely? Are there 125 ways of saying 'leave the sugar out'?
Will bring more details to next forum.
Tuesday 25 September 2012
Notes from our Last Forum
Forum Meeting September 2012
We covered a lot of ground on our return after the Summer
break, but here’s a quick summary:
Fallyn and the
Dragons
While we were away, Kathy Rollinson, writing as K J
Rollinson, has seen her first novel, Fallyn and the Dragons, published. It’s on
sale through Amazon and can be ordered through book retailers. It’s also
available as a Kindle eBook. It will be reviewed in the October TIM
publication, too. Great news, Kathy, well done!
CreateSpace Discounts
We chatted about the ability to use discounts for
prospective customers through the CreateSpace website. When you publish through
WordPlay, we can set up a series of discount codes to help publish and sell
your book. These discounts can be as high as 55% from rrp, and this is the
discount that we give to the author. Though you won’t get much (if any) royalty
by using this maximum discount, the sales will show on your book sales numbers
and improve your ranking.
Also, the author will then be able to then sell books
direct, seeing larger profits on those direct sales.
Kathy is using a 25% discount code to give to TIM readers: a
great marketing idea.
Kindle News
In August's
KDP Newsletter, there is an article about new author, Theresa Ragan, who,
after 20 years and dozens of rejects from the traditional publishing route,
decided to publish through Kindle. A year later, and she’s sold nearly 250,000
books on the Kindle. Showing that it’s never too late to start, and that,
perhaps, readers know more than agents and publishers!
While we’re talking about Kindle; the Fire is now on sale in Europe! Hurrah!
Shorts for Autumn
Our fiction quarterly, Shorts for Autumn, has been returned
to us in proof format. Writers are going through their stories now, making
final grammar, spelling, and punctuation changes. Then we’ll be uploading and
publishing.
Winter Quarterly
Get your pens out, and your fingers working on the keyboard.
We need your short stories, up to 5,000 words each (minimum 1,000 per story,
over all maximum of 10,000 and overall minimum of 3,000) for our Winter fiction
quarterly anthology. Closing date is 4th November for publication in
January/ February.
Birthday Bash
This year our Birthday Bash will be on Thursday February 28th.
We are holding it at a brand new restaurant in Playa Flamenca. The cost will be
€17 per person, friends and family welcome. We will have our own private room,
and the evening will run as follows (with menu choices):
7pm: Canapes on
Arrival
7:30: Starter served –
French
Onion Soup
Chicken
Flautas with Soured Cream (Mexican, slightly spicy)
Moules
Marinieres (Mussels in white wine and cream broth, French)
Mushroom
and Herb Risotto (Italian, vegetarian)
Latina
Ensalada (Mixed Salad with prawns and cheese, cumin and lemon dressing, USA)
Lemon Ginger Sorbet
Main Course –
Chicken
Morrocan Style, with Coriander and Pine Kernel Rice
Medallions
of Beef with Rosti potatoes, Sauce Bordelaise
Pan
fried cod fillet, chives and horshradish mash, beurre blanc
Lamb Zacetas (with sweet chilli,
red wine and prunes)
Seafood
Curry, with basmati rice and Naan bread
Vegetarian Paella
Penn Al Erbe (Penne pasta, spinach,
broccoli, asparagus tips – vegetarian)
Selection
of vegetables and sautéed potatoes on table
Dessert
Bread and Butter Pudding
Baked Cheesecake with raspberry
coulis
Dark Chocolate Tarte, vanilla ice
cream
Peach Melba
Break
Cheeses and biscuits served at
bar
Reconvene at tables for awards
There will be wine
and water served at the table during the meal (all other drinks at own expense)
Places can be secured
by a €5 deposit, and at the next forum we’ll give out menu sheets, etc.
And finally…
We are trying to arrange a “WordPlay Week with Bookworld
toward Christmas, for all new books published this year. So let’s get working
toward a fantastic time over the next couple of months, with all getting read!
More news on this next forum.
NEXT FORUM MONDAY, 8TH OCTOBER at 11am EMERALD ISLE, LA FLORIDA.
Thursday 20 September 2012
Costa Blanca News
Hey all,
just to let you know, Kathy Rollinson is featured in this week's Costa Blanca News. A great article about alliteration.
More words from us later today,
Speak soon
Michael
just to let you know, Kathy Rollinson is featured in this week's Costa Blanca News. A great article about alliteration.
More words from us later today,
Speak soon
Michael
Thursday 30 August 2012
Funeral Arrangements
Ian's funeral is at La Zenia Church, Saturday 1st September 2012 10:30 am.
Then after at Clarke's Bar, Playa Flamenca, next to Maggie's.
Wear something blue, if you have.
Then after at Clarke's Bar, Playa Flamenca, next to Maggie's.
Wear something blue, if you have.
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