Songbird News – 2nd May 2021

It’s been a while. The March 17th launch of Hunters came and went, so let’s take a look at the news…

As I mentioned above, the Hunters launch happened.
And as Borat would say…

The pre-order for the ebook went great, and since then I’ve been selling something like a book every few days. It’s not JK Rowling numbers, but it’s better than I thought.
The weird thing is though, that the sales have skewed in a strange way. While the pre-order was heavy on the eBooks, since then the Paperbacks are outselling it on a 2:1 basis. Which is odd.
I truly expected it to be the eBook dominating the sales due to it’s relative cheapness and the size of the book. I figured that the kindle version would be more digestible.

Apparently, I was wrong.

The big reason for this I think, is that the paperback has been selling to family and friends. Those who maybe would like a material copy of it. The big issue therefore is getting it into the hands of strangers. Hence I’ve made a few changes this week.

FIRSTLY – I now have a Jon Ford Author Instagram account.
I wish I could take credit for it, but it’s mostly the work of my wifey. Jess is running it and is doing an amazing job. It looks great. Click on the piccy below to find me…

If you’re conversing with me over there, then there’s a 50/50 chance you may be talking to Jess. Don’t worry, if you are, you’ll know it because she’ll tell you upfront!
She’s using the Instagram as an outlet for her creative impulses and a place to talk about the books we’ve read and loved. Hop on over and check it out for that and all the latest Songbird news…

Speaking of which…

The book is available on Amazon (I guess you know that by now!), but what I’ve done this last few weeks is create a ‘SmartLink’ that I can link to things like the logo above so that when you click on them it’ll automatically direct you to the Amazon of your region.

Go on…try it.

It’s a gamechanger, because now I don’t have to put up a dozen links for Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com, etc. Just click and be directed.

Now this was where I found out something fascinating. I can see exactly how many clicks that link gets and from where! Behold…

What’s super interesting is the total number of clicks I’ve gotten. In the 3 weeks or so since I set it up, it’s been clicked on 1,115 times. So I KNOW people have been to Amazon and seen ‘Hunters’. However that’s only translated to around 20 sales, and – as I mentioned above – they’re pretty much all Paperbacks.

So why is my conversion rate so low? Like 1.8% bad.

Is it the blurb? The book length? The price?

So this week I addressed some of these things.

First thing first, I did a little asking around, and got some opinions on how I could amend the blurb. Maybe make it more enticing. Some of the feedback said I should concentrate on matching the blurb to the cover. As the coverart features Gayle, then maybe the blurb should feature her too.

So as an experiment, I changed the blurb to read like this:

Let’s see what happens!

I’ve also attempted to kill two birds with one stone when it comes to addressing the price and length. Again, advice from the Twitter brain-trust said maybe I’d fare better putting Hunters on Kindle Unlimited. The theory is that larger books go down better there, and obviously they’re free to subscibers. I get paid per page read.

So… Hunters is now available on Kindle Unlimited.

I’ll keep you posted as to the results of my great experiment!

---

Work continues apace on Blood to Earth as we target a July/August launch.

The book has now been through Nikki‘s edit and is back with me. The first draft WAS about 161k words, but after she worked her first round of magic, it came down to around 160k.

Now I’m deep into a comprehensive edit and have it down around 158k. It’s VERY SLOWLY coming into shape. I’m aiming for it to be around the same size as Hunters (so around 148k) which means I still have a bunch to whittle out of it. But it’s getting there, and I’m REALLY excited for it.

Not much more to report on this front at the moment, but I’m hoping to have it with Beta Readers in the not too distant future.

---

LOOK!!!!!

Yes, that graph is pretty much the same as last time.

Sorry.

Work has stopped on Tooth & Claw at the moment as I concentrate fully on the edit of Blood to Earth.
It is a shade over 40k words now, though, so it’s maybe about a 1/4 done in it’s rough draft form.

Truth be told, I’m struggling a little on this one to find the ‘arc’. It’s very much going to delve into the resolution of the Vampyrii civil war arc, the clash between Lyssa and Sebastian for control of New Victus. It’s going to feature a lot of Damian and Lyssa, and a couple of new characters I’m introducing. I’m having a little bit of a dilemma in one of the story ploy points I was initially putting in and am now on the fence about.

Don’t worry, though, I’ll work it out.

In the meantime, I have the cover art done by Marlena ready to go. You may have seen it on the Homepage banner, but here it is for those who missed it…

Isn’t is amazing?

Meet Damian Dane, in his Human form and his Dire Wolf alternate form. Prepare yourself for some Werewolf on Vampyrii action! Grrrrr!

In other news…

It’s been a bit of a quiet month in regards other news. But I REALLY want to point you at my last BlogPost, which is the start of a new series of features I’m planning to do with the authors of the books I read of my ‘To-Be-Read‘ list (you can see the list by clicking HERE!)

Anyway, the feature is called INDIE DEEP DIVE and the first one I did was with GrimDark author, Halo Scot about her astonishing book ‘Edge of the Breach‘, the first book in her ‘Rift Cycle‘ series.

I URGE YOU to check it out. Just click on the image of her book below…

Finally, did you all listen to my interview on ‘The Tiny Bookcase’?

If you DID listen then you’ll know I wrote an extra chapter for Hunters.
Billed as ‘Chapter 58 1/2 – My Collection‘ you can now find it here on the website… CLICK HERE TO READ!

But that’s not all. The winners of my Launch Raffle (Steve and Chris) both won a copy of the ‘Black Edition’ of Hunters, which has that chapter put into the book. It arrived this week and here it is in all it’s glory…

They look fantastic, and are winging their way over to the winners this week!
(Sorry for the delay!)

---

That’s all for this week. Until next time folks…

Love & Books