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.

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 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

Saturday 8 Dec                     FALLYN – Kathy Rollinson

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.

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 4^th November for publication in January/ February.

Birthday Bash

This year our Birthday Bash will be on Thursday February 28^th. 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.

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

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.

A Loss Beyond Compare

This morning between 7:30am and 9am, Ian Govan (writing as Ian Alexander) passed away.

A sudden death, seemingly from a massive and quick heart attack, has taken Ian from us.

He was a top friend, my best friend, and avid supporter of all new and upcoming writing talent. WordPlay was his brainchild, and I am proud to have been asked by him to begin the venture and help lead it to where it is today.

He loved writing in all genres, but particularly social commentary. He found many friends at WordPlay, and was continually amazed by the talent that the group unearthed.

He will be sadly missed.

The last article that he wrote will be appearing in next week's CBN, on sale 7th September 2012. It is an article that observes the nuances of the English language (that he loved), with his typical wit dotted throughout.

The novel that he has written jointly with Joy Lennick will be published later this year.

Our condolences go to his family and friends, of whom he had many.

Short Story Competition

Wow, no blogs for a while, and then two in a couple of days...WordPlay is just like waiting for a bus!

There's a great short story competition that you might like to take note of. Cash prizes, and three categories: short, shorter, and shortest!

Anyway, here's a link to those nice people at Words with Jam:

http://www.wordswithjam.co.uk/#/short-story-competition-2012/4540010935

Congratulations!

WordPlay wants to say a very big well done to member Janette Davies who has had a short story published in the TV Choice Magazine (edition dated around 18th July).

Janette said that her decision to submit a story was a spur of the moment thing, and she did so because of the confidence that WordPlay has given her with her writing.

She also said that we wouldn't believe it - well, we do. That's the thing: we know that all our members have a tremendous talent.

So a big congratulations to Janette from all of WordPlay. We're sure this is only the start.

Why not purchase a copy of TV Choice to read "Lana Turner" by Janette Davies?

ROLL FOR INSPIRATION

Hey guys and gals,

If you are stuck for a little inspiration for stories, why not try the following. I think you'll be amazed at how many story lines you could come up with:

Next Week's Forum

Hi All,
Next week's Forum, as ever on the second Monday of the month, 14th May at 10:30am at the Emerald Isle, La Florida, looks set to be interesting.

We're going to button down the new Quarterly Book, and give deadlines etc for story submission, and then bring all up to date on other news in the market. Hopefully there will be good news for at least one of our members! Don't forget to bring along your news etc.

And, for those that have been involved, have a look at the image attached and let me know what you think. It's only draft at the moment, so we can change it around (eg, I know there's some name changes needed!).

NEW COMPETITION DETAILS

At this month's forum meeting, the membership present discussed the Ezine and how we could best promote writing for its sections. It was unanimously decided that giving writing for it a competitive edge could add an extra dimension and increased relevance to content.

Each month, we will be running a competition for writing in two different Ezine categories. The winning entries will be selected by the Ezine category host and either Michael or Ian. That entry will be starred in the Ezine, and the winning entrant in each category receive free forum entry for the month in which he/ she won.

This month's categories are:

ARTS and ENTERTAINMENT
Write a review of a film or book, or a play. How about a music cd, or a performance that you recently went to? Or you might decide to describe a trip to an art gallery, or a museum. Think outside of the box, and put some personality in your piece. 300 or 400 words should be more than ample.

SPOOF
Write a spoof letter to the editor. You decide the subject, just make it a little light hearted, maybe even tongue in cheek. Or could you write a letter that describes an "actual" happening? Remember the Panorama Spaghetti April Fools? The choice is yours

Send entries to wordplaycompetitions@mail.com as a word document attachment by April 1st!

Upcoming Forum and Ezine

Hi everyone,

Ezine


with the Ezine deadline approaching, just a reminder that we are looking for submissions in all categories. Of particular interest this month is the opinion and comment category:

• What do you think about he state of football, especially the goings-on at Rangers?
• How about the Middle East, with Iran and Syria trying to outdo each other as bully boys?
• Is the elongated presidential battle in the US already getting you down?
• Any TOWIE fans out there want to own up?
• And surely Jeremy Kyle has upset you these last few weeks?

Next Week's Forum

Lots to bring you up to date with, including:

• Electronic book lending
• Update's on members' publication plans
• 2 more anthologies in the pipeline

Don't forget the Your Shout section: anything you want to discuss, bring your topic along!

Anyway, that's it from us for now, see you all soon,

Michael and Ian

WordPlay Update 18th February 2012

Hi everyone, here's a few bits and pieces from the last week:

EZINE
As ever, submissions for the quarterly ezine are needed in all categories. If you've got something to say, write it down and send it in!

Here's the timetable:
March 9th Last date for submissions to be received by email to wordplayezine@mail.com. These will then be collated and sent to the hosts to do their bit.
March 16th Hosts to send their completed sections back to Ian
March 19th Formatting etc
March 26th Publication

FORUM
We held February forum at the Emerald Isle, La Florida on Monday 13th.

News:

• Ian said a few words about the Birthday bash, and was able to present the (joint) Member of the Year award to Georgia Varjas who had been absent on the night. Other award winners were:

WordPlay Open Mic Prose Champion 2011: Evie Barton
WordPlay Open Mic Poetry Champion 2011: Margaret Rowland
WordPlay Competition Judge of the Year: Yvonne Diamond
Most Improved Writer: Kathy Rollinson
Member of the Year: Michelle Edwards

• Barnes and Noble have taken the decision to stop displaying Amazon published books on their bookshelfs
• London Book Fair is at Earls Court on 16th to 18th April. Further info here:  http://www.londonbookfair.co.uk/
• Our new Facebook page is here:  http://www.facebook.com/groups/243107339094353/ Why not join the group and invite your friends? We want this to be an open forum for all things writing, and will be using it to help promote the group and its members' work
• Precinct 25: Stories have started to come through to Michael, who will start collating what he's got and set a meeting date for the next Precinct 25 get together. Emails will be winging their way to the P25 writers!otagonists

Georgia asked if members and readers of the Ezine could send in their thoughts on what they would like to see in the poetry section to wordplayenquiries@mail.com so that she can ensure that it meets needs. We think this is a great idea, and want to ask for comments band suggestions on the whole Ezine, not just the poetry section. So get your thinking hats on, and send in those suggestions!

CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOPS

Our latest workshop was held after the Forum, and covered Themes and Inspiration, Genre, Planning and Structure, Point of View, and Strong Opening

The next workshop is to be held on Monday March 10th, at 1:30pm in the Emerald Isle, and will cover Character, Conflict, Protagonists and Antagonists, Situation and Circumstance, Plot Development, and Denouement.

If you want to come along, email us at wordplayenquiries@mail.com for more information.

OPEN MIC

The next Open Mic night at Chadwicks, Villamartin, is to be held on April 24th at 7:30pm.
Competition theme for the night is '3 Random Words', and the words to be used in your piece - poetry or prose - are:

Purple, Blacksmith, Dusk

Entries to be sent to wordplaycompetitions@mail.com by Friday April 20th.

Upcoming Events

After our successful annual awards evening we at WordPlay are embarking on our third year of 'encouraging writers to write and getting them read'.

February sees the second of our Creative Writing Workshops taking place, in addition to the first Open Mic night of the year.

It's full steam ahead on the publishing front, too, with the group anthology 'Precinct 25' progressing nicely and Ian Alexander/Joy Lennick's collaborative novel in the final phase of editing. We anticipate a further 10 books to be published through WordPlay during the course of the year.

Open Mic Night

On Tuesday 7th of February 7.30pm at Chadwicks, Villamartin.

Competition theme is 'The 29th Day'. Poems limited to 40 lines maximum, with Prose at no more than 600 words. Pleas email entries to wordplaycompetitions@mail.com by Friday 3rd of February.

See you all there, don't forget to bring a friend!

Creative Writing Workshop


On Monday 13th February starting 1.30pm at The Emerald Isle, La Florida.

This month we look at: Themes and Inspiration; Genre Selection; Planning and Structuring; Creating a Strong Opening (to your story).

There will mid-afternoon refreshments, served as usual.

The cost is 25€ for this workshop, or, a discounted rate of 80€ for the remaining five workshops in the series.

For further information email wordplayenquiries@mail.com

Birthday Celebration

WordPlay is two years old this week, and there is plenty to celebrate. Membership is up, our on-line magazine WordPlay Quarterly grows apace (now available at www.issuu.com), we are publishing books on behalf of our members, and we have now started running our own creative writing workshops, the first of which was enthusiastically received.

Our purpose of encouraging writers to write and getting them read has certainly been achieved, and continues to be built upon.

We look forward to further expansion over the next twelve months, and welcome you all, members, or otherwise, to be involved in our success.

Join us on Facebook:

WordPlay on Facebook

WORDPLAY ANNUAL DINNER 2012

Our Birthday Bash this year is to be held on January 22nd, at The Emerald Isle, La Florida

Arrive 6pm
Bubbly and Presentation of Awards

7:30pm
Dinner Served

Starter:
Home made Vegetable Consomme
Home made Pate
Bruschetta
Ham and Melon

Main Course:
Goats Cheese and Red Onion Tarte Tatin
Sweet and Sour Chicken and Rice
Steak and Ale Pie and Mash
Ham and Mushroom Quiche and Salad

Served with a selection of vegetables and chipsert

Dessert:
Baileys Cheesecake
Bakewell Pie and Custard
Fruit Salad
Ice Cream

After Dinner, tables may join in the quiz.

Then its dancing all the way to the sounds of Nick Gold through to the finish! (He may even let you have a sing if you want!).

We need numbers and menu selection asap.
Attendees will be seated at tables of eight.
Friends, family, all welcome.

Cost is €18.50 per person, with a €5 deposit payable.

If you are coming, please let us know by email (wordplayenquiries@mail.com), and tell us your choices of starter, main, and dessert.
If you have a few in your party, let us know names and menu choices, and we'll ensure you are at the same able. For extra large parties we can extend table size.

Forum Agenda and Workshop Confirmation

Agenda for the Forum at the Emerald isle, La Florida, Monday 9th january 10:30 am:
News:
Birthday Bash
U3A
Ezine Update
Blog and new Facebook Page

Ian will be updating all on a current book project, that could be copied by all.

Michael will be updating on freelance opportunities, and the value of a back catalogue

We will be giving all the Birthday Bash menu options. Only 3 weeks to go and we want to make it even better and bigger than last year.

We'll also be picking another theme 'out of the hat' for discussion, and rounding off with 'your shout'.

Also some big news about how WordPlay will setting up our 'pseudo publishing' arm, and how its going to make publishing far easier for all our members.

Hopefully see you all there, and please feel free to bring others along,
Michael