Promotional prices on Amazon.

There are two basic promotional prices on Amazon – the ‘Free Promotion’ and the ‘Kindle Countdown Deal’. When I’ve done the ‘Free’ in the past I’ve had up to a few thousand downloads of my novels, but each time I’ve got less and less. Admittedly this probably has a lot to do with me doing […]

Pen names, or the trouble with having a common name.

Ok, so my given name is Craig Brown. In the UK this is not exactly an uncommon name. There’s a reasonably well known writer with the name who isn’t me, there was a Scottish soccer manager, and so on. When I started out writing I tried to think of ways to counter this, mostly involving […]

Createspace and print editions.

Createspace. Amazon’s resource for creating, amongst other things, printed editions of books. Even as a fan of the Kindle for publishing I do have to admit to there being a certain thrill to holding a physical book in your hands. We all started reading with print so it speaks to something deep inside to have […]

Serials and collected editions.

Once a serial is finished how long should you wait before listing the collected version? Once the collected edition is up, how long should the serial episodes be up? Should they stay available forever, or be taken down? Honestly, I don’t know. The collected edition of my serial, New Dawns, probably went up way […]

When reality interferes with your writing.

As I have said before, I have gone for a complete change in career and I am currently in the middle of a year-long course learning to be an Early Years Teacher. This includes a lot of work at university and a lot of time in a placement at a nursery, along with family and other […]

Starting something new

I’ll admit it, things are tough at the moment. I’m studying full-time on a course where we (the students) are not getting as much support as we might hope for, my funding has been cut and the workload is huge. This doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing and it means my motivation levels […]

A short update on numbers.

Ok, time for a quick update on where I am at with download totals. Overall 5,143! Much higher than I was expecting. That breaks down to: Second Time Lucky? 1,607 Sovereign Nation 1,639 Chasing The Future 325 New Dawns, Season One, Collected Edition 738 New Chances (New Dawbs, Season One, Episode One) 767 New Dawns, […]

Why do you write? What are your goals as an author?

There are as many answers to these questions as there are authors but I think most authors can be broadly divided into two camps – the ones whose answers mention money and success a lot and those that don’t. I am one of the writers who does not mention money as a motivator – don’t […]

Failure to Launch.

No, not the awful rom-com. That is a movie so bad I think it may technically qualify as a crime. Instead I am talking about the launch of my latest book, New Dawns, which collects the serial I published recently. For the launch two promotion were booked in, one was booked on 23rd November and […]

Serial Fiction

The final part of New Dawns, Season One, went up on Amazon on Friday. First time I have published a novel in serial form and the first time I have written a Christmas story to finish off a book. The collected version will be out in a couple of weeks (on 5th December) so I […]