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An Amazonian jump: Obscurity to #1 in one day

I'm feeling pretty smug happy about my KDP Select promo. The bottom line is that The House of Closed Doors went from the total obscurity of an Amazon sales ranking of 120,462 to #1 in the Historical...

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The economics of self-publishing: post-promo sales and piracy

I promised I'd blog about my post-KDP-promo sales for you, so here it is. For those of you who are new to this blog, I put my novel The House of Closed Doors into free book promotion mode for the last...

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Book review: A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel

A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary MantelMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: my local library. Spoilers but only if you never knew the French Revolution = wholesale death and that real...

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When self-publishing isn't self-publishing

Something's been bugging me. "Is it too obvious to blog about this?" I asked an author friend. Her reply was along the lines that nothing's too obvious when it comes to giving advice to writers who...

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Self-publishing numbers: keep calm and keep writing

I can't resist posting in reply to this pronouncement by literary agent Janet Reid, who claims that:To get noticed, you have to sell a lot of books. By a lot I mean more than 20,000.Notice that Reid...

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Book review: Misery by Stephen King

Misery by Stephen KingMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: well, I was staying in my niece's old room while I was in England, my sister and her husband being happy empty nesters, and there it...

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Amazon rankings, Goodreads and reality checks

I'm going to talk about numbers again, mostly because of something on Goodreads that made me chuckle. But first, if you haven't been paying attention read this post about my KDP Select promo for The...

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A new angle on the Titanic

This is a guest post by Chris Angus, author of The Last Titanic Story. How on earth, I asked him, did he find a new angle on a story that's been retold so many times? This is Chris's response:What...

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Book review: Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork

Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. StorkMy rating: 4 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: my local library.Marcelo is 17 and has Asperger Syndrome, which means he's on the high-functioning end of the...

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Book review: Falling For Your Madness by Katharine Grubb

Falling For Your Madness by Katharine GrubbMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: purchased on my Kindle.WARNING. I am Katharine Grubb's critique partner. You are therefore free to disregard the...

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When your self-editor's giving you grief

I can't afford a developmental editor. I think that's common to most self-publishers; while we acknowledge the necessity of paying for copyediting before our books go to press, a great editor to work...

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Book review: The Casual Vacancy by J.K. Rowling

The Casual Vacancy by J.K. RowlingMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: my local library.It took me a while to decide to read this book; I had really enjoyed the Harry Potter books but would not...

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My top 10 fiction reads of 2012

This has been a great reading year for me. For one thing, according to the very handy Goodreads stats page, I read nearly twice as many pages in 2012 as I did in 2011! Historical fiction dominated but...

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I had GOALS? Or, what's different about this year's New Year Resolution

Happy New Year, Dear Reader!One of the first things I do in the New Year is to get the last year's blog posts printed out in book form, because it's somehow very satisfying to flick through the pages...

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Book review: The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa Gregory

The Kingmaker's Daughter by Philippa GregoryMy rating: 3 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: purchased through Waterstones. UK edition, signed.Despite my eternal resolutions not to read any more of this...

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On a scale of 1 to 10, what will be your pain level when Barnes & Noble...

The news that Barnes & Noble is closing stores seems to be making people rather sad (except those who gleefully remind us that B&N were the Amazon of the 1990s, edging small stores out of the...

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Book Review: Becoming Queen by Kate Williams

Becoming Queen by Kate WilliamsMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhere I got the book: purchased online. Amazon? I've had it for a while.This is, in a sense, a two-part book, and the blurb is pretty deceptive....

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Oh, the melodrama!

As a long-time reader of Victorian fiction, I’ve read a lot of melodrama. At the time of writing I’m reading Mary Barton by Mrs. Gaskell, which contains melodrama in spades, especially the scene I’ve...

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I shall call it . . . Waldo

So I finally caved and bought an iPad (just a 2, which has become the Toyota Camry of the gadget world: you know it's going to give value but nobody gets real excited about it except the driver).Here's...

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It's GIVEAWAY time! Win a $30 Amazon gift card and more!

THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED. WINNER TO BE ANNOUNCED SOON!I love this particular giveaway. Family friendly, aimed at booklovers, no tagging other people or memes or anything I actually have to think...

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