The Importance of Networking

It is important that a writer meets with readers, other writers and representatives of the publishing industry, which is why Keith Jahans is representing Peatmore Press Ltd at the London Book Fair 2022.  Writing fiction is a solitary pursuit so it is easy for an author to loose contact with others and become unaware of those he or she he writes for.

The publishing industry does not stand still and neither does the technology it uses.  Readers’ tastes change so does the way they interact with the written word and there is a need to keep abreast of current trends.  It is imperative to understand how people feel about books and how they interact with writing.  The only way to be sure that authors are not left behind is to get out and meet readers to find out how they feel about fiction.  But one important fact that remains constant is that everyone enjoys a good story.

 

 

 

 

Enhanced Ebooks

Back in the mid 1990s I visited the London Book Fair.  I had written my first novel, “Cogrill’s Mill” and although there was some interest from a few agents and publishers none of them were willing to take a chance on an unknown writer.  I downloaded a pdf to a CD, labelled it with a book cover I designed and set off to promote it at the book fair.  No one was interested because during this time no one had heard of Ebooks.  So I gave up on the idea, formed my own publishing company and went down the print-on-demand route and began printing my own paperbacks.  A few years later someone approached me and asked if I had any Ebooks for sale.  I had not as I was busy promoting my paperbacks.  Then low and behold the Ebook phenomenon took off.

I was still promoting my paperbacks but it was not difficult to produce them simultaneously as ebooks.  Initially, I posted them on Amazon in Mobi format which was being used by Amazon for their electronic Kindle readers.  Then other platforms were developed, notably by Kobo.com, Google and Apple.  I visited a gathering of ebook enthusiasts at a Soho café in London where I met someone who told me that the way to go was with the epub format as Apple was using this to produce interactive ebooks.  He pointed me to Apple’s interactive version of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland which featured videos embedded in to the text.  I checked it out and remembered one featuring a caterpillar on a toadstool smoking a cigarette.  Later I vivited the London Book Fair once more and found a small number of publishers producing epub books with videos embedded in the text mostly used as promotional tools.  I was smitten.

Amazon was sticking to its mobi format so I began to produce my own enhanced epub ebook to showcase on Apple as what were then called ibooks but are now called Apple books.  I decided to utilise a book of short stories as a few of these I had turned into audio books.  So I inserted two audio books into the text at the beginning of two short stories and embedded a video trailer advertising the whole collection before the contents page.

I am still promoting this ebook.  The problem I found was that the files I made available to download are much larger than text only ebooks.  This may be off putting to the average reader.  In addition Apple has proved difficult for a small independent publisher such as me to work with so now I have made this epub book available free of charge on Google Play and Kobo.com.  Readers can download this themselves by following the link below or it can be open to read on line without downloading it at

https://play.google.com/store/books/details/Luke_Johnson_Crime_and_Passion?id=YvK0DwAAQBAJ

 

Keith Jahans

Crime and Passion enhanced ebook is available at:
http://peatmore.com/crimeandpassion.HTM

The Enhanced Ebook

In the early years of this millennium, I produced my first novel, Cogrill’s Mill, as an ebook in pdf and took it to the London Book Fair on a CD.  But the publishers or agents I spoke to there did not want to know.  A few years later someone contacted me to ask if I had any ebooks for sale, but I had already set up my own publishing company and was busy producing my first books in print on demand to spare the time to revisit the market for ebooks.  Then just a short time later a number of large companies entered the arena offering a variety of different ebook formats and the digital publishing revolution began.

Around this time I met someone at a book publishing conference in London who said that the way to go was to publish in Epub format.  He told me about the success of Apple’s enhanced ebook publication of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  I was immediately interested and went about producing enhanced Epub editions of a few of my own books.  Unfortunately, my marketing strategy at the time was not very good and the books languished on the Apple iBook store without selling.  Instead, I concentrated selling my ebooks on Amazon using their marketing strategy, but I could find no way to produce a multimedia ebook in the Amazon Kindle format in the same way I could for Epub.

Now, as a reward for my readers, I have made the enhanced Epub edition of my first collection of short stories, Crime and Passion written under my pennames of Luke Johnson and Jack Lindsey, available as a free download from Apple Books for portable devices and from Kobo.com.  If you like the stories you are welcome to seek out my other books at http://peatmore.com.  Please leave an honest review for any Peatmore Press book you read as this will help promote my writing.

Keith Jahans

The Free enhanced ebook is available for download at
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id879916042 and at
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/crime-and-passion-3

Book Giveaways

The best way to promote your book is to give away free copies.  The next best is to reduce the selling price to less than a US dollar or GB pound.  But only for a limited period as every author deserves some monetary reward for the effort they have put into its creation.

I have published two short story collections and two motorcycle travel books for less than one GB pound, but these have been written to showcase my writing rather than to generate much income, therefore their price is set deliberately low.  Peatmore Press has published four short audio books through acx.com but here the price is set by acx and Peatmore Press has no control over this even though it would like to set this to less than 1 GBP to bring it in line with its other showcase works.

Most of my free promotions are given away online, as ebooks since these formats entail no cost to the publisher.  It is these that generate the most take ups by readers as hundreds are downloaded at a time.  Some copies may be given free to selected reviewers, but the majority of the copies that are given free during a promotion period do not generate reviews.

I buy most of the books I read and review each one as I feel this provides the author with valuable feedback whether I like the book or not.  I find it sad that those who get hold of any free book from an author do not find time to follow my example.  It is even sadder when these books end up on pirate websites and sold for profit.

 

Keith Jahans

 

Peatmore Press Books

Independent Book Seller Needs Help

I received the following message via Linkedin and am posting it below as an example of the challenges faced by independent book sellers.

Keith Jahans

 

Jim Hart 1:09 AM

Keith, thank you for being part of my LinkedIn circle. You are one of an

exclusive group who value the written word, art, learning, and

community, a group of thinkers, creators, doers of deeds.  I value and

respect you and your connection.

Connye & I founded The Published Page Bookshop for and because of

people like you. For decades we have worked to build a truly unique

“old school” bookstore, where creativity, passion, ideas, and

excitement flow from the shelves and fill the air. Where new authors

are introduced to the public, and old treasures are preserved and

shared with new generations, a place of community. I think we have

succeeded. You can see far more of our shop in pictures and videos by

clicking on the link below.

But our wonderful shop is facing a crisis. Unless we can meet our

mortgage holder’s demands, we are in eminent danger of foreclosure,

and closing the doors of this wonderful bookstore.

Your contribution of $5.00 will help us keep the doors open.  And if

you can share this request with your own friends and acquaintances,

thank you.

We believe it is important to have physical bookstores, where

neighborhoods meet, where children discover the love of books and

reading, where authors and poets can meet and interact with their

readers, where literature and culture fill the air.

If you believe in these things also, we would love to have your help

keeping them alive. Connye and I have invested everything we have

toward those goals. We think they are worth fighting for, and hope you

agree.

Far more information about our shop and about Connye and me is shown

on our GoFundMe page:

https://www.gofundme.com/ThePublishedPage

If you would like to discuss this in person you can reach me by email

at jimhart@publishedpage.com

My personal cell for text or voice is 817-217-0656

Connye & I both hate to ask for help. If we didn’t believe this shop

was worthy of being saved we would not ask. If you can help, thank

you.

Blessings,

Jim Hart, Owner

Genera/categories

Deciding on which genre or category your book fits into can be a difficult decision for any author.  Of course the easiest way is to decide this before beginning writing but it is not always that easy as the book evolves during its creation.  Yet this decision is important for anyone who is serious about its marketing as it is the means by which any bookseller, librarian or online marketer places it on their shelves.

The largest online seller is Amazon and, if you use this outlet, it will place a book into one of its categories if you decide not to do this yourself when completing its online submission form and sometimes it can get this wrong.  The best way to seek this out yourself is to search for a book which is similar in subject matter, style and tone to your own and look at the category Amazon fits it into or how other booksellers and libraries place it in their catalogues.  Concentrate on those which top the best seller lists and try to identify the key words used in searches.

This method is not necessary foolproof as I have found that sometimes Amazon alters the categories even after you have listed them using its KDP direct website.  It may have even found a better slot than you first envisaged so make sure you keep this under review.  Amazon allows authors/publishers a chance to choose two categories for its KDP publications so it is better to slot your book into two different subgenres to help prospective readers find it (see example below).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This comedy thriller ebook is available at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00K2ACUOW.
The paperback can be found via
http://peatmore.com/giffordsgames.htm

Keith Jahans

The Mystery of the Peatmore Press Amazon Paperback Novels – Update

It is interesting to report that the staggering listing of $615.72 on amazon.com and the outrageous listing of £2,431.99 on amazon.co.uk for the Peatmore Press book, Cogrill’s Mill, have now disappeared from its book pages since I posted my blog on 23 July.  I am glad to see that someone has been paying attention to my posts.

Keith Jahans

The Mystery of the Peatmore Press Amazon Paperback Novels

Listings for the paperback versions of Peatmore Press novels have disappeared from amazon.com and amazon.co.uk with one exception; the exception being my first novel, “Cogrill’s Mill,” on amazon.com.  This novel is still listed as being available from my Company, “Peatmore Press,” as an independent trader at $10.00 plus postage and packing which is about right.  The listings of the company’s other novels have been removed from amazon.com and there are no listings for any paperback book from Peatmore Press as an independent trader on amazon.co.uk.

Peatmore Press’s status as an independent trader was removed from amazon.co.uk about a year or so ago, presumably because we did not sell enough books through the Amazon web page.  That is understandable because as a retailer Amazon has a perfect right not to sell any books it does not deem profitable.  But there is another exception which is quite staggering as one independent seller is advertising Cogrill’s Mill at a staggering $615.72 on amazon.com and an another for an outrageous £2,431.99 on amazon.co.uk. (See www.amazon.com/dp/B005NACKBY and www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005NACKBY).  I call this staggering and outrageous as Cogrill’s Mill is available through the Peatmore Press website (www.peatmore.com) and can be ordered through any bookseller for £6.99 (for peatmore.com there is an additional charge of £2.01 for postage and packing).

This occurrence is not by any means unique.  Check out the article by Shaunacy Ferro (see https://tinyurl.com/yd7m7q8x) with regard to “One Snowy Knight” a historical romance novel by Deborah MacGillivray, which at one point a paperback version was advertised on amazon.com for $2800.  This advert has since been removed, but the article makes interesting reading.  It will also be interesting how long these highly expensive adverts on Amazon stay listed following the publication of this blog.

My kindle ebook versions of the Peamore Press novels continue to be listed on Amazon as they continue to sell or have been available under various promotion deals approved by us.  My own theory is that the listings for paperbacks have been removed as Amazon would prefer it if we republished these paperbacks using their own publishing service known as Create Space.  This is just a theory so I may be wrong about this.

But if anyone who reads this can tell me how this phenomenon has been allowed to happen.  I would be interested to hear from you.

Keith Jahans

This image was copied from the amazon.co.uk Cogrill’s Mill book page on 22 July 2018.  The Kindle edition normally retails at £4.00 but on this day the price was reduced to £0.99 as part of a short term book promotion run with Peatmore Press approval.  But look how the price differs from the paperback offer, which does not meet with Peatmore Press approval!

Summertime Reading

Summer is here and there is no better time to spend the day outside reading on lazy sunny days.  It will soon be the holiday season in the northern hemisphere so choose some books to take with you to while away idle relaxing moments.

It is a good time for authors and publishers to release books so that bookstores at airports, train stations and holiday resorts can stock up to help travellers make those last minute purchases.  Peatmore Press is no exception and has launched its fourth novel which is the first I have released under my own name.  It is a crime thriller and I am told by those who have had a chance to turn the pages that it is a good read.  But see for yourself and let me know how you feel about it.

Keith Jahans

Published on 2 July 2018
and can be bought by following the links at
http://peatmore.com/magicbullets.htm

 

Book Piracy – Threat or Opportunity?

My first thought when I discovered that my books were being pirated was that someone was stealing from me.  One site even claimed that they had over 2000 downloads of one of my ebooks.  That is several times more than I have given away with Amazon Kindle free promotions.  But they could have, and probably were, lying as after all they had been behaving dishonestly.  I emailed them a complaint and they seemed to have desisted as I can no longer find it on their site when searching via Google.

Such sites are dangerous to download from as it is possible that any downloads might contain viruses that could at best disrupt your computer or at worse steal your encrypted data/passwords.  I even found the black and white cover of my novel “Cogrill’s Mill” on a colouring page website.  Now that was something I did not expect and made me think that I was possibly missing out on a promotion possibility.

Everyone expects that their hard format books will be lent or given away to charities at some point.  I have given my own titles away or sold them at vastly reduced prices as part of promotions so I suppose I can look on pirated copies as another means of book promotion.  My only request is that someone who reads a book they have acquired this way, and have enjoyed it, will seek to reward the author for entertaining them by buying a legitimate copy from an approved retailer.  After all that is the way some of us seek to earn a living.

Keith Jahans
Editor, Peatmore Press