Chapter 12 - So who won the battle to be heard next?

 I've said from the very beginning that I have never dreamed in my wildest dream I'd be a writer. I can't believe, even now, that I have written and published two books, but I have and I've really enjoyed the journey!

To my mind, fiction has got to be the most rewarding sort of writing. Your mind is free to write whatever it wants to write... of is it? That's what I used to believe, haha!

In reality, it's the characters in your book that seem to come to life. Their story pops into your head and you find yourself 'having' to write their story! It's strange but true!

So who won through to be the lead protagonist in my next book?

I had thought it was going to be young Nicholas, but I was wrong. His half-brother young John had more to tell. You may remember that young John left Joan, Pulcinella and his brother young Nicholas to seek adventure in the colonies of America. As he boarded the ship, he had been asked his name - 'John' he'd said, then called out to Punchinella (as he always called his Father) just at the same time that the boson asked for his last name. Hearing the name Punch, that's what was written down - John Punch (OK it's a bit of a stretch, but it's literary licence - right!)

Anyway, I found that there was a real person called John Punch who had lived in the Virginian colony during the exact same period, so I chose to research his life and make it the basis for my second book. That seemed fair enough.

As it turned out, the 'real' John Punch is quite famous in his own way. He is known as the first slave of Virginia, the 11th generation great grandfather of Barack Obama (first black President in USA) on his mother's side, and the 10th generation great grandfather of Ralphe Bunch (first African American to win a nobel peace prize) on his father's side, quite a famous family!

To my good fortune, despite his fame, there are only two recorded documents that even prove he existed. Many of the records in that area of Virginia were burned to the ground leaving me carte blanche to make up a fictional life for John. It's been great too, for although only two documents exist for John himself, the owner of his indentures 'Hugh Gwynn' has much written about him one way or another. Married twice with two children by his first wife and one by a lover, later to become his wife and long lost love of his life. Haha! There was definitely a story brewing and the story has been written.

'Memories Of...' by Carol M Mottershead

tells the life and memories of John Punch, his family and friends. It's currently available only on Amazon but will be joining the expanded distribution shortly. I hope you'll enjoy reading this romantic historical and biographical fiction - HAPPY READING!

If you've not yet read the story of 'JOAN - put on a happy face' by Carol M Mottershead CLICK HERE and once again - HAPPY READING!

If you have already read a copy of 'JOAN - put on a happy face' by Carol M Mottershead maybe you would be kind enough to spread the word and write a review on Amazon, Goodreads or on the site you bought your copy from and help a poor starving writer to become a number one best seller! haha!

All the best, til next time... Keep smiling!

Chapter 11 - My next book

 Who will be the central character of my next book?

As I was writing 'JOAN', ideas for a next book would pop into my mind.  Back stories of each character. I made notes on who and what came into my train of thought. I didn't intend to write another book when I started, but I guess the characters got jealous ha! 

Judy and Mr Punch aka Joan and Pulcinella are characters everyone thinks they know all about already, but not the way I'm writing their story. They're not puppets, like in that film 'Judy and Punch' that came out in November 2018. It was interesting to watch... once, and I 'loved' the twist right at the end giving a reason why Punch and Judy went from being performed with marionettes to being performed with hand puppets - that was a jewel! ha! I won't tell you about the ending, but let's just say it was the best bit of the film... to me anyway! 😊

I might write a short story for each of the characters, their back story, what makes each of them tick. I say short, but that depends a great deal on just how much they want their story to be told, some times they get so self-absorbed you know 😊(No... I'm not crazy, I'm just an author and our characters come to life for us lol!)

As you probably realize by now, my story's theme is the puppet show known as Punch and Judy. It's a traditional iconic show, and a favourite seaside puppet show that's been loved by children for over 450 years, so almost all the characters in my story have their own reason for being, and they have their own back story. The difference is that JOAN is immortal. Her family have a secret that Joan knows nothing about. My story is a mystery waiting to unfold with each book bringing the reader just a little closer to the whole truth and nothing but the truth... in my imaginings at least.👍😉

I don't want the blog to be too long, or for you to get bored with my ramblings, I have got a head cold as I write, so I do apologize haha! 

Remember - Joan is available at many online bookstores already

       Amazon   Blackwells   Barnes & Noble   Waterstones

Memories Of... is still being released and is, at the moment, only available on

Amazon  AllAuthor and Author Central

Oops! I gave it away! 😂👍Hope you like it

Happy Reading and Put on your happy face!

Chapter 10 - Don't stand and wait!

 Don't Stand And Wait!

The first thing you learn after publishing your book is you don't just sit on it and wait! The readers won't buy your book if you don't let them know its published and that's when the hard part starts.

For a while I was just putting a post on social media starting with Facebook and Twitter, but then added LinkedIN, Instagram, YouTube, then I found there was still more... Pinterest, Tumblr, Reddit, and more recently TikTok... and there's even more!! It was exhausting! I was spending more time marketing than I was writing the next book, it was tiring!

Bryan's Ad School took over for a while too... learning how to choose the right keywords to advertise and keep them 'relevant' (not what's a major keyword - relevant!) What is relevant? When I learn fully what relevant means I'll let you know. But just get the ads going is what Ad School tell you. Get the book shown to potential readers of your genre (oh! there's the relevancy haha!) 

Like any advertising, the more  people see the name of a product the more curious they become and that's one of the first things to learn... Readers won't always buy your book the first time they see it advertised, they may need to see it a few times, so play the long game, be patient 'zen lemur' Bryan calls it. Don't expect miracles and learn to be patient. A writer doesn't become famous overnight after all ha! 

So I made my ad campaigns on Amazon in both the US and the UK never bidding too high as Amazon suggested (and which I did my first time of advertising and cost me £100 in two weeks! lol!) NO! Bryan in his profit challenges advises to bid low: 34c for a standalone and 39c for a first in the series, In the UK he suggests 16p, it's more affordable for authors, but I'm not so sure Amazon like it haha! 

There's more to learn from Ad School but that's for students who have signed up to his course, so I'm not allowed to discuss that in my blog. Needless to say, his course will and methods will help to identify why a book isn't selling and what you can do about it. Why do you think I changed my book cover and description lol!

Moving on - next time I'll tell you about my next book, working title 'Memories of John Punch'

If you've not yet bought a copy of 'Joan - put on a happy face' here's the link

If you have already bought read and enjoyed my book, maybe you could write a review here? 👌

I hope you enjoy reading my blogs. I've written them for my pleasure, but if they help anyone then my efforts have been well worth it. Happy reading and don't forget... Keep smiling! 😊

      

Chapter 9 The Making of 'JOAN' - Bryan Cohen's Ad School Challenge

Bryan Cohen's Ad School Challenge

... nd every three months

Well here we are again. I thought I had it all in the bag and knew what I was doing and where I was going, but I couldn't have been further from the truth!

Sales of books, once friends and family had done their part, came to a standstill.  I was so fed up... I wanted to pack it all in. What do I do now? Where do I go? Who do I ask for help? 

I hadn't got money to waste and there's a lot of vultures out there just waiting for newbie indie authors to join their social media pages. Yes - many of those social media pages where authors are encouraged to join 'to meet and be able to interact with other authors' ha! They're a breeding ground for vultures. Gathering their prey into safe 'private groups' where they can find potential clients and DM them. Social media seemed a great idea until you realise that most of them aren't open to the public and let's face it, the public are the readers, not other authors, and certainly not the vultures marketing companies that swoop down onto their wannabe prey!

As you can tell, I got pretty disillusioned.

I watched video's, I sat through webinars that I'd heard of on social media sites, and they all gave just a little bit of good advice before swooping in with their sales pitch! Every time!

I tried doing amazon advertising. You have to place a 'bid' ie a price that you're prepared to pay per click and they vary for every 'keyword' you choose to use, and yes, I got burned... almost £100 later and no sales in two weeks I gave up! 

THEN a few months later, I saw Bryan Cohen's Amazon Ads Profit Challenge! My first reaction was 'oh yeah here we go again' but what had I to lose but my time? So I did the 2-week challenge. Followed through with the homework they set, watched the video's they suggested I watched and... no change! Not within those first two weeks.

Bryan Cohen does these profit challenges every three months. Authors at any stage of their career, solitary books, multiple books any size of authorship are all welcome and for two whole weeks they can ask Bryan's team ANY QUESTION THEY WANT! And the offer is genuine! I thought WOW! This is a rareness in itself!

I joined in the next time. There had been a nibble or two since the previous time and, because his  method of bidding for ad space is not to throw money at ads, but to take the zen lemur approach and take it slowly, I was able to afford to advertise for longer. People were getting to see my book on the amazon book shelves at least - that was a good step in the right direction. What's the point of writing a book then sticking it on a shelf and not showing it to readers? My book was at least getting seen and we all know how advertising works... people see something often enough, they wonder what it's all about and eventually they want to give it a try! 

Ad School sounded interesting. The support offered sounded interesting, but I couldn't afford it.  But they still invite you to join them again the next time and they will still give their advice totally free for two weeks every three months... you can't argue with that!

As it turned out, I won a place with ad school... Me? I never win anything! I couldn't believe it! I've been with them ever since and it's not plain sailing I have to admit, but their support, their advice... I'm glad they're there.  I'll keep you informed of when I become a famous author, but in the meantime, it's on with writing my next book.

Joan-put on a happy face is the first of a series - so watch this space :-)

Joan: Put on a Happy face (a fascinating tale of history and fiction) eBook : Mottershead, Carol M: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

If you want to ask questions or just keep in touch email me at carol.m.mottershead@gmail.com

Happy reading!

Chapter 8 The Making of 'Joan' - Marketing my book

Marketing my book 

When you've published your book with Kindle Direct Publishing the next thing they expect you to do is advertise on the Amazon sites. The initial sales page set up is like their publishing - totally free until you get a sale. Even then, I think they're pretty reasonable giving the author 60% royalties less print costs for paperback and hardcover and 70% on eBooks - wow! Compared to traditional publishing and vanity publishing, they're great.

Unfortunately, marketing of a book is the hardest part of all! With traditional publishers they do all the marketing for you, the hard work, the social media, the emails, all done by themselves - at a cost of course! Nothing is totally free when marketing.

It's all well and good publishing a book and putting it on the shop floor ie in this instance the Amazon sales page, but that doesn't make people pick it out of the millions of other books and buy a copy. A sad fact indeed. That's where the cost comes into it. 

Amazon will have you paying the highest prices for bids on advertising your book, believe me, I tried it their way and lost a lot of money (well a lot of money to me lol!)

Bryan Cohen's Ads Profit Challenge was like a breath of fresh air. He showed me how to spend less to be able to advertise more until the sales started to come in. 'The Profit Challenge' is exactly that - a challenge!

For me, the only sales still seemed to be from word of mouth and eventually mouths stop spreading the word lol! I didn't know what was wrong with my book. Why didn't anyone want to buy a copy to read?

Bryan Cohen's Ad School helped me identify where the problems could lie... The first port of call was getting the correct genres - a nightmare for me, it felt, because my book covers so many tropes.

Tropes are storylines for example, in 'Joan put on a happy face' you have tropes such as:

A young girl loses her mother at an impressionable age

A young girl marries an older man, a vagrant, an actor, against her fathers wishes.

A young wife and mother battles with post-natal depression while her husband works all the time.

A young mother uses play therapy to help her young son express himself

A young girl with poor self esteem fights her way into the world of adults, becomes an a travelling performer and a learns to become forceful woman, a woman to reckon with

A wife whose husband turns to drink and drugs and becomes lazy and irresponsible

A wife who is struck by her husband and left to die in hospital, taking their son with him.

A husband who kills his best friend and suffers with depression bordering on madness out of guilt

A husband who suffers post traumatic stress after leading his troupe of actors through wars and death as an immortal who wants to but cannot die!

The tropes go on... I had to start somewhere.

After that, they taught me how to look for other reasons for lack of sales and we looked at my book cover to begin with. This...

eventually became this...

Which do you like best? Let me know in the comments...

In the meantime, til next time, here's another link to the paperback

'Joan - put on a happy face' by Carol M Mottershead

Happy Reading!

Biographical Historical Fiction: Why should I read it?

Biographical Historical Fiction - Why should I read it?

If you're looking for a genre that combines history with a fascinating story, look no further than biographical historical fiction!

This genre offers readers a chance to immerse themselves in another time period and learn about real people who lived through incredible events.

Here are just a few of the many reasons to love biographical historical fiction:

-You'll gain a new perspective on history

-You'll be inspired by the stories of real people

-You'll learn about different cultures and time periods

-You'll be transported to another time and place

So if you're looking for a genre that's both educational and entertaining, make sure to check out biographical historical fiction!

Check out 'Joan: put on a happy face' by Carol M Mottershead out in paperback now

Joan: Put on a Happy face: Amazon.co.uk: Mottershead, Carol M: 9798683476625: Books

Chapter 7 The Making of JOAN - So you think it's all over?

So you think it's all over?

So you think it's all over? My Journey Into Authorship has been a fascinating journey so far, I've found it really enjoyable. I never liked history at school, so suddenly finding it interesting was a major surprise! I had thought my work was done, my journey was over, but it was in fact, just the beginning... The next stage was marketing, or the business side of being an author. Marketing Like a lot of people I thought writing my story, turning it into a book, was all it would take - people would buy it -right? No! Friends and family could support me in my efforts. They'd read and write reviews wouldn't they? I'd only have to ask - or so I thought. Unfortunately, family and friends can only support so far. Then comes the time when everyone you know has been exhausted, you need new blood, it's time to reach out to a bigger market. 'Joan - Put on a happy face' is available on over seventeen Amazon sites worldwide alone! Some are under control of Amazon USA and others... I've yet to find out, even now, two years later. My next step was to sign into their kindle select. Amazon sell thousands of kindle device every year. Many of whom have subscriptions to the kindle library of which Amazon has the largest eBook library 'in the world!' WOW! Millions of books worldwide and my book is one of them... it's exciting! I thought I've made it! Unfortunately, being on a shelf doesn't mean anyone will pick it out of millions on offer to read it. I had to think of other ways... Next I decided to try to get my book into local libraries. There was a hitch. I had to join what Kindle Direct Publishing called their 'expanded distribution'. It doesn't cost me anything up front to join their expanded distribution but if any sales come through those points of contact I lose an extra 20% of my royalties but hey, it's worth it if they're doing the work for me and spreading the word - right?

Libraries and shops outside of Amazon shop won't stock books by indie authors. They feel that they're helping the competition. However, Carol does not like to be beaten, there had to be a way round it, and there was. Expanded distribution costs an additional 20% of royalties so instead of 60% and print costs, I get 40% and print costs, which applies to all sales created through ED, not sales on Amazon. KDP sent the details of my book onto their customers shopping lists, the customer, like any other, then had to choose to buy or sell my book; I'm still waiting for that magical day to happen, but I keep hoping, I keep the faith lol! Always looking for ways to get my book read I decided to try local libraries. I thought get copies to the British Library and it would make my book available to all local libraries in the UK! YAYY! No! There are six book depositories in the UK: British, Irish, Welsh, Scottish plus Cambridge and Oxford Libraries, they were all sent and accepted copies of 'Joan-put on a happy face', I thought I'd cracked it, only to find out that the book could only be read on their premises and was never let out to lending libraries! Marketing was becoming frustrating now. I was spending more time marketing than I was writing and I felt like I was batting my head against a brick wall! I sat through a webinar with some local librarians to find out what the craic was. I heard that they don't have the budgets any more to buy new books especially books from unknown indie authors that might sit on shelves unread, so I asked the obvious 'can I donate my book to libraries to be used around the UK?' I thought there'd be only one head office and that would be it - No! Why would they make it that easy? Aarrghh! I was told I would have to write to each individual central library, they'd review the book if I sent them a copy, then decide if they should purchase them for the rest of the library. I wrote to quite a few central libraries, luckily this time most of them do have emails, but not all of them answered.

Persistence reaps its own rewards My book is now held in Thornaby and Middlesbrough Library and Brent Library, others are awaiting orders to be filled. My book is also available as an eBook, Paperback or Hardcover on #Amazon or at Blackwells Waterstones or any good online bookstore.

For budding authors I would just like to say

'Don't give up on your dream!'

Happy reading!