The Bookshelf 2022

The demands of my day job meant that I read fewer books in 2022 than I have in previous years. I know that’s no real excuse, but it’s the only one I have and I’m sticking to it. That and Barkskins, which crawled by at a snail’s pace and took me about three months to finish. I must admit I was slightly disappointed with Richard Osman’s Thursday Murder Club, too, given that I’d heard so many good things about it. There were just too many characters who kept popping up willy-nilly and then disappearing just as fast.

Pick of the year is probably Florence De Changy’s The Disappearing Act: The Impossible case of MH370. Things like that just shouldn’t happen in this day and age. Unless they are supposed to happen.

Stranded by Bracken Macleod (2016)

The Legend of the Dogman by David C Posthumus (2022)

Terror Peak by Edward J McFadden III (2022)

HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil by Adam Selzer (2019)

Springsteen: The Mojo Collector’s Series by Various Authors (2021)

The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman (2021)

The Purisima Hauntings by Hazel Holmes (2022)

The Disappearing Act: The Impossible case of MH370 by Florence De Changy (2021)

The Very Best of Classic Rock by Various Authors (2022)

Mothman: Return to Point Pleasant by Scott Donnelly (2022)

My Life in Dire Straits by John Illsey (2021)

The Ghosts of Hexley Airport by Amy Cross (2022 version)

Barkskins by Annie Proulx (2016)

Out of Time by Various Authors (2022)

Underneath by Robbie Dorman (2019)

The 27 Club by Lucy Nichol (2021)

The Golden Key by J. Keiller (2022 version)

You can see last year’s list here.

The Bookshelf 2021

It’s that time of year again, when I humbly present to you a complete list of the books I read this year. Or last year, by the time you read this. I’m sure there’s a few missing. This list seems pretty short! In my defence, there are a few 600-page beasts. The pick of the long-form fiction was Stephen King’s Later. I read most of his books, and it can be hard to tell when his form dips because the overall quality is so high. It’s only when you read something as good as Later and then compare it to his existing arsenal that you realize he isn’t called The Master for nothing

I deliberately read some books last year by writers I’d never read before, the pick of which was The Book Club by C.J. Cooper, a thriller my mother urged me to read. I also read a Richard Laymon book for the first time in 20-years, that brought back some memories and reaquainted me with the word ‘rump’ (if you know, you know) and and A LOT of anthologies.

By the way, that isn’t my bookshelf in the photo. It’s just a photo of a massive set of bookshelves I stole from Google. Sorry to disappoint.

The Greatest Survival Stories of All Time by Cara Tabachnick (2019)

Outpost H31 by Sara Jayne Townsend (2020)

Welcome to the Splatter Club by Various Authors (2020)

You Should Have Seen Her by Amy Cross (2020)

Jester of Hearts by Various Authors (2020)

Later by Stephen King (2021)

The Newspaperman by Sal Nudo (2018)

The Chill by Scott Carson (2020)

Dark Places, Evil Faces Volume II by Various Authors (2018)

Suicide Forest by Jeremy Bates (2014)

Moth Busters – Freaky Florida Mystery Adventures 1 by Margaret Lashley (2019)

Nang Tani: She Takes her Vengeance in Blood by Lee Franklin (2020)

Watched by Iain Anderson (2021)

It Calls from the Forest by Various Authors (2020)

The Book Club by C.J. Cooper (2019)

Railroad Tales by Various Authors (2021)

Savage by Richard Laymon (1993)

Terror Tales of the Scottish Lowlands by Various Authors (2021)

JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation by Steve Thomas (2000)

The Legend of the Dogman by David C Posthumus (2022, ARC)

Handmade Horror by Various Authors (2021)

You can read my 2020 list here.

Time for Horror

Funny thing, time. And not funny ha-ha. It’s the one commodity you can’t buy, yet is by far the most valuable. And anyone who says that money can’t buy you love has obviously never been to Bangkok. It’s often said that a dying millionaire will gladly give up all his riches in exchange for just a few more minutes of life. Since I’ve never died or been a millionaire I can’t vouch for it’s veracity, but it certainly sounds plausible. The vast majority of people don’t want to die, and do anything to avoid it. That’s why you read about murder victims being stabbed 130 times or something. I’d wager the person doing the stabbing didn’t want to wield their blade that many times, either. Imagine how exhausting stabbing someone 130 times must be. I need a sit down after chopping up a chilli pepper. The stabber would probably much prefer the victim keel over and drop dead with a soft, world-weary sigh after one strike the way they do in movies, but that rarely (if ever) happens. I once saw someone get stabbed at a football match. It just pissed him off.

It grates on me when I see people complain that they’d love to write something, but just haven’t got the time. Not enough that I’d want to stab them 130 times. But close. The reason is, we all have shit going on. Day jobs, night jobs, kids, pets, hobbies, demanding relationships, drug addictions, all of which we balance with the countless other responsibilities that come with being grown up. However, the harsh truth is that we always find time for the things we really value. Things we really enjoy doing. Things we can’t live without.

We all have the same 24-hours in a day. You, me, Stephen King, Lady Ga Ga. The only difference is what we do with those hours. Most writers seem to be ‘morning people.’ I know, right? The mere thought is enough to make most people’s blood turn to ice. The aforementioned Sai King is a shining example; his routine involves getting up early, going for a walk, getting the bulk of his writing done before midday, then slacking off as the day grinds on to its inevitable conclusion.

One of my most productive times as a writer was in my early twenties when I worked full-time at a local packing factory. It was my job to put the little bar codes on boxes of pills. Hundreds of boxes a shift. Thousands. You probably know the score. Your supervisor sets you a target of 15,000. You bust your balls to hit it, and when you finally achieve as much, they simply raise the target to 15,500. this, I’m told, is management.

At its best the job was fraught with difficulty, like when the bar codes won’t go on exactly as they should, or they were blurry or something. And at its best, when everything was going well, the work was mind-numbingly boring. I was alone a lot, meaning that I had hours and hours every day to think about what I was going to write about when my shift ended. I’d run through endless scenarios in my head, putting my characters through all kinds of shit and filling in ever conceivable plot hole. It helped pass the time. When I finally got home I could easily knock out 1500 words or more in an hour or two before going to bed. No messing around. No hesitation marks. No gazing off into space waiting for the perfect word to pop into my head.

Later, when I left the factory and writing became my actual job, and I could spend all day writing if I wanted to, I just didn’t. You know what it’s like; you get wrapped up in a juicy news story or disappear down some rabbit hole or other and everything else fades into the background. Recently, I wasted almost half a day reading about Biffy Clyro b-sides and CD bonus tracks. I don’t even fucking like Biffy Clyro. Who does? They haunt that horrid middle ground between indie and rock without ever fully committing either way, trying to be all things to all people and only succeeding in being nothing much to anyone. So yeah, as my deadline looms ominously closer I procrastinate and generally do anything except write. And it’s not just me. I’ve worked with dozens of writers, and we’re all the fucking same. Well, most of us. There’s always that one guy who does everything on time, and perfectly. Don’t we all hate that dude? The rest of us just watch the clock tick down until, when we can put it off no longer, we start writing. At least that’s my modus operandi. And guess what? I never miss a deadline.

The point I’m trying to make is you can achieve anything you want if you put your mind to it. You just have to put your mind to it. I don’t want to look back at a life of wasted time and missed opportunities, being all bitter and resentful. If only I’d done that, or this, if only I’d found the time. Don’t wait until it’s too late, and don’t you dare point fingers and blame other people for your own shortcomings. Take control of your life, take responsibility, and most importantly, figure out what’s important to you and then spend as much time as is humanly possible doing it. If your thing is horror, immersive yourself in it. Read books, watch movies, explore abandoned mental hospitals, sit in graveyards at midnight. Hell, tie yourself to a chair and force yourself to watch the Star Wars Christmas special from 1978 on repeat if you have to. Trust me, it’s probably the most horrible thing you will ever experience. Savour the dread and soak in the blood.

It doesn’t even need to be good horror. If you’re a writer, for example, you can learn just as much from reading a terrible book as you can from reading a classic. You just learn from the other end. You learn what NOT to do. What’s deemed ‘Good’ and ‘bad’ is subjective, anyway. Have you seen Death Ship from 1980? About the tourists whose cruise ship sinks and are then picked up by a WWII-era German prison ship controlled by a mysterious dark force? No? I’m not surprised. Not many people have. TV Guide called the movie “ludicrous” and gave it a one-star rating. Me, I loved it. Fuck the TV Guide. What’s not to love? Shipwrecks, Nazi zombies, Richard Crenna from the Rambo films. And if all that wasn’t enough, look at that poster!

I advise you to seek it out immediately while you still can, before a rogue terrorist cell nukes the internet or something and you won’t be able to stream it or order it from Amazon. All this calls to mind a depressing yet entirely accurate line from Iron Maiden’s classic tune The Clairvoyant, “Isn’t it strange that as soon as you’re born you’re dying?”

Like I said, it’s a funny thing, time. And not funny ha-ha. We should make the most of it because as someone much smarter than me said, ‘time we enjoy is not time wasted.’ Or something. And if you’re reading this I am 100% sure you’d enjoy Death Ship. By the way, you can read about more hidden cinematic gems, both old and new, in my RetView series.

This piece was first published in the Terror Tract ezine.

The Promotion Experiment

Like most hybrid or indie writers, the most difficult things for me is making sales. Writing is the easy part. They say you have to spend money to make money, so for the past three or four months I’ve been doing an experiment; instead of spending all my spare dosh on booze and kebabs (can’t go out in the midst of a global pandemic anyway) I decided to put all the money I make from writing during that period back into writing. Or more specifically, into marketing and promotion.

As you may be aware, there hundreds of promo sites and services out there and most of them cost money. Bookbub is the undisputed king, which I wrote about before, but as far as the multitude of others are concerned, it’s hard to know which ones are truly worth the money they charge and which aren’t. Hence this little experiment. There is little scientific basis behind it. I didn’t do a ton of research, I just looked around to see how much various promo sites cost and what people were saying about them, and tried a few. I’m going to be completely honest and transparent with my figures, so don’t laugh. Believe me, I’m well aware that some people out there sell more books me.

It’s a sad fact that one way to grab new readers is to get on your knees and beg them to read your work for free. Though it’s not really free for them, they’re still giving up their time and energy. Giving away free books is a controversial marketing technique in itself. Some writers feel it devalues the product, and makes things worse for everybody in the long run. If readers get used to being given free books, why would they ever bother buying another book again?

I can see their point, but in my experience giving away freebies has been hugely beneficial. To clarify, I’m talking about free Kindle promos here which run for a limited time, one to five days, rather than permafrees or books given away on newsletter sign-up. For starters, people who would never normally read my books are given the opportunity to check them out, and if they like my stuff it might encourage them to pick up another one and pay for it. They might even leave a review somewhere. Plus, an increase in downloads, free or otherwise, improves your author ranking and skews various algorithms in your favour, all of which adds to your visibility. For obvious reasons, if you’re going to run a free promo on one of your books you’re better off making it one of a series, or at least having a healthy back catalogue.

CONFESSION: I also write rip-roaringly, thigh-slappingly funny travel books under a super secret pseudonym. It’s difficult to promote something when you can’t even put your own name to it, so because THAT GUY had a new release a while back (book 3 in a series), I thought I’d invest the lion’s share of my budget into giving him a little boost. The Fussy Librarian is one of the better-known services but they aren’t cheap, and some strategizing is required to make it worthwhile. The series is about China, so to capitalize on the Western media coverage I scheduled the promotion to run during Chinese New Year. I made the first book in the main series free, left book two up at normal price (1.99) and put book three up for pre-order at a reduced 0.99. Then I paid a whopping $48 for a spot on the FL site and in their ‘non-fiction’ newsletter blast, and waited to see what would happen.

By the way, spots in different FL newsletters have different prices, related to the amount of subscribers each one has. But if you’re a first-time user, you can input the code 10OFF at check-out to get $10 off the regular price, which for me knocked the fee down to $38. Not to put too fine a point on it, the results were incredible. On the day of the promotion, my book was downloaded 1016 times, and a further 258 times over the next few days. Okay, the pessimists might say that all I succeeded in doing was give away over £2500 worth of books. But if only 1% of those who downloaded it leaves a review or even just a rating (optimistic, I know) I’ll be more than happy. In addition, during the same time period the second book in the series sold a dozen copies and I picked up six pre-orders for the third which off-set the cost somewhat.

Verdict: Hit

EreaderIQ have a list of requirements almost as long as your arm. Novellas and collections are ‘unlikely’ to be accepted, your books should have at least five reviews and should be free or deeply discounted. A place in their email blasting in the ‘horror’ category which, according to the site, reaches 9,500 subscribers, costs $10 (other categories have different rates). I put my recently reissued and revamped novel Sker House forward for this, which was duly accepted. The day of the listing it sold 9 copies, and the day after it sold another 3. Not bad. But because I had to discount the book so much, I made a slight loss on my investment.

Verdict: Partial Hit

Readfreely are less particular. $6 (gold level, again there are different options) buys your book a spot in their newsletter and promotion across their social media platforms. It’s difficult to quantify how big their reach is, but as they have less than 4,000 Twitter followers, which is a great indicator, I’m guessing it isn’t great. I put X4, my latest collection, forward for this one at it’s regular price of £1.99 (though I said it was being discounted from 3.99. Shoot me). X4 sold one solitary copy on the designated date, which sucks, but over the next few days sales of my other X books increased and I sold several of each, which may or may not be related. I’m not convinced either way.

Verdict: Miss

Because this is one of the most cost-effective options, I repeated the process with one of my pseudonym’s rip-roaringly, thigh-slappingly funny travel books. The results were similar.

Verdict: Miss

There are two connected sites, Freebooksy and Bargain Booksy. One is for free books, and the other, surprise surprise, is for bargain (reduced) books. I opted for the latter, and paid $25 to have X4 included in an email blast to 77,000 subscribers. On the day of promotion, X4 sold a dozen copies and, mirroring the pattern in the last promo, my other x books also benefitted from a sales bump and sold another dozen or so between them.

Verdict: Hit

The last, and most recent thing I tried was Amazon ads. I’m a complete novice at this. You need an effing degree in economics and marketing just to work out which key words to use. Like most things it’s a case of trial and error. Basically, you set a daily budget, choose your settings, and are then billed per click. I set a budget of $5 per day for 5 consecutive days on my psuedonym’s latest release, which resulted in just five clicks at a total cost of about $3.40 and no sales. Then I ran a similar promo on X4 with a higher budget over a longer period of time and got similar results but for a bigger outlay (around $18). It was at this pint I realized I must either be doing something wrong or Amazon ads, like Facebook ads, were a complete waste of time. I hear stories about people making a killing from Amazon ads. I might try it again at some point in the future after I learn more about it but for the time being, I think I’ll lay off them.

Verdict: Miss

So, all things considered, it was a mixed bag of results. I must admit that in the back of my mind I’d hoped all this effort would at least give my Amazon ranking a lasting boost. But the moment I stopped actively promoting, my sales virtually flatlined. Turns out worthwhile promotion of any kind is expensive, but if you don’t promote you don’t get any sales and you throw money down the drain anyway. There are, of course, reasonably effective ways of marketing your work for free using social media and cross-promotion, if you have the time and the energy. Maybe I’ll write another post about that at some point. In the meantime, I hope other indie writers, who may be as confused and bewildered as me, can get a few pointers from this post. It all boils down to doing your research, knowing your target market, and choosing the right places to invest based on your budget and readership.

I think.

The Bookshelf 2020

As is customary, below is a complete list of all the books I read, from cover to cover (or from 0 to 100%, as is increasingly the case) in 2020. This list is a bit longer than other recent reading lists, we can blame being in self-isolation half the year for that. I won’t bother counting the books I gave up on. There’s been a few. I’m disappointed with myself for not finishing Infinite Jest, though proud of the fact that I made it to about 30%. From what I gather, it’s one of those books you either love or hate. I fell into the latter camp. Too wordy, dense, and pretentious. I deserve some credit for persevering as long as I did with it.

To compensate, this list also a couple of shorter books. The Craft Beer Textbook is only 38 pages long. But it’s still a book, and I still read it so it counts. I finally got around to reading the second Secret Footballer book, which I remember buying at Heathrow airport a few years ago. It was great until he started talking about literature and quantum mechanics in an obvious attempt to show us he’s more than just a footballer. I made a conscious effort to branch out a bit and sample some work by authors I haven’t read before, and generally speaking I made some good choices. Pick of the bunch was probably Nick Cutter’s The Troop which, fittingly, is about a rogue virus. Kind of. I don’t know why it took me so long to read it, but it’s epic. Stephen King, Amy Cross and Jason Arnopp were as reliable as ever, and Adam Nevill’s mini-anthology Before You Wake is well worth a look.

The Horror Collection: White Edition by Various Authors (2019)

Resurrection: A Zombie Novel (Book One) by Michael J. Totten (2014)

Ghoster by Jason Arnopp (2019)

Can I Say: Living Large, Cheating death, and Drums, Drums, Drums, by Travis Barker (2015)

Bloody London: A Shocking Guide to London’s Gruesome Past and Present by Declan McHugh (2012)

After: Undead Wars by Various Authors (2018)

The Institute by Stephen King (2019)

I Was Jack the Ripper by Michael Bray (2017)

Wales of the Unexpected by Richard Holland (2005)

Sex, Marry, Kill by Todd Travis (2014)

Mountain of the Dead: The Dyatlov Pass incident by Keith McCloskey (2013)

Test Patterns: Creature Features by Various Authors (2018)

Billy Joel: The Definitive Biography by Fred Schruers (2014 ed)

Logging off by Nick Spalding (2020)

The Craft Beer Textbook by Jonny Garrett (2020)

Sunbather by Frank Floyd (2020)

The Lighthouse by Keith McCloskey (2014)

If It Bleeds by Stephen King (2020)

Ten Chimes to Midnight: A Collection of Ghost stories by Amy Cross (2019)

Haunted World War II by Matthew L. Swayne (2018)

Stranger Than Fiction by Chuck Palahniuk (2004)

The Troop by Nick Cutter (2014)

Vampires, Zombies and Ghosts: Volume 2 by Various Authors (2019)

American Hoarder by Jason Arnopp (2016)

If Flies Could Fart by Justin Boote (2020)

Tales from the Secret Footballer by The secret Footballer (2014)

Walkers by Graham Masterton (1991)

The Haunting of the Lost Traveller Tavern by Cat Knight (2019)

Brewtality by Various Authors (2020)

Before You Wake: Three Horrors by Adam Nevill (2017)

The Ghost of Old Coal House by Amy Cross (2020)

My Christmas Story by Rayne Havok (2016)

You can read my 2019 reading list here.

Demon Tree @ Haunted MTL

My short story Demon Tree is now free to read on the new horror website Haunted MTL, which features a steady stream of news, reviews, and horror fiction definitely not for the squeamish. I also did an interview with them recently, which you can read here if you’re interested.

There’s a little pine forest near my childhood home in south Wales, and on summer days I enjoy walking through it to get to the country pub on the other side. It’s a beautiful area, with rolling mountains, a sea of green, and wild horses roaming the fields. But there’s something weird and ominous about that forest. Maybe its the way the shadows move, or the way the canopy steals the sunlight. It just makes you uneasy, and you can’t help but hurry along the narrow path that takes you through. When I get to the other side, I always wonder why I didn’t take my time. I wanted to try to express the way it makes me feel in a story, and hence Demon Tree was born.

Something else that often goes through my mind when I go to that forest is the role trees and the natural world played in Celtic Britain. The druids worshipped trees, with each one said to have a different significance, and some were considered sacred. I thought it might be fun to play around with that concept a little and reverse it. Throw in some graphic and (I hope) unsettling imagery, and you have a story.

I hope you like it.

And do check out Haunted MTL for all your horror news. 

Suitably moody pic stolen from Google images.

The Bookshelf 2019

As is now customary, below is a complete list of all the books I read, from cover to cover (or from 0 to 100%, as is increasingly the case) last year. I gave up on more than a few, which I won’t bother to name. Life’s too short to read a shitty book.

I didn’t read as much as I would have liked in the first half of the year, but in my defence a couple of entries in this list are absolute monsters. I actually started the longest, Sleeping Beauties, weighing in at 702 pages, about eighteen months ago. I kept drifting in and out of it. All things considered, let’s just say that it was far too long and meandering. A good editor could cut at least 30% off the word count and not lose anything from the plot. I had high hopes for the Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware, but I rolled my eyes so much reading it that by the end it was like a physical affliction. Amy Cross hit another couple of home runs, but probably the best book I read last year was Lost at Sea by British journalist Jon Ronson. A selection of essays and investigative reports, it’s not my usual thing but I found it both insightful and refreshing.

I’ve been making a conscious effort to read more widely, which is why I gave some new writers a shot. At least, writers new to me. And I fell back in love with the short story and read a bunch of anthologies, the pick of which being Body Horror: Trigger Warning. And I’m not just saying that because one of my stories is in it. Ultimately, however, I returned to Dean Koontz after a long break. I actually forgot how good the guy is. At first, anyway. But then a dog and a demented serial killer turned up like they do in all his books and I had to suffer yet more preachy, religious overtones. Sigh.

 

Signal Failure by David Wailing (2016)

Private Number/claws by Derek Muk (2018)

Stranded by Renee Miller (2018)

The Lighthouse by Amy Cross (2015)

The Last Days of by Jack Sparks Jason Arnopp (2017)

The Woman in Cabin 10 by Ruth Ware (2017)

Filthy Beast: Diary of an English Teacher in China by White Buffalo (2018)

Bad News by Amy Cross (2019)

Body Horror: Trigger Warning by Various Authors (2019)

Living After Midnight: Hard & Heavy Stories by Various Authors (2010)

Sleeping Beauties by Stephen and Owen King (2017)

The Nowhere Men – The Unknown Story of Football’s True Talent Spotters by Michael Calvin (2014)

Room 9 & Other Stories by Amy Cross (2018)

Lost at Sea by Jon Ronson (2012)

The Neighbour by Dean Koontz (2014)

Take the Corvus: Short Stories & Essays by Luke Kondor (2018)

Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill (2017)

The Corona Book of Ghost Stories by Various Authors (2019)

The Taking by Dean Koontz (2007)

Zombie Punks Fuck Off by Various Authors (2018)

You can check out last year’s bookshelf HERE.

 

 

The Bookshelf 2018

Below is the now-customary list of every book I managed to read cover-to-cover in 2018. I know I am cheating a little by including a couple of novellas, and even the odd short story. My rule is, if they stand-alone, they are eligible. Besides, to even things up I also devoured a couple of absolute monsters. Reviews are linked.

And this isn’t my actual bookcase. I stole this image from Pinterest. But it’s still cool, right?

Extreme Survivors: 60 Epic Stories of Extreme Survival forward by Bear Grylls (2012)

100 Word Horrors by Various Authors (2018)

Craven Manor by Darcy Coates (2017)

Just a Bit of Banter, Like by Chris Westlake (2017)

Wales and its Boxers: The Fighting Tradition by Peter Stead & Gareth Williams (2008)

The Ritual by Adam Neville (2011)

Last Man Off: A True Story of Disaster, Survival, and One Man’s Ultimate Test by Matt Lewis (2014)

Friend from the Internet by Amy Cross (2018)

Craigslist Horror by Max Hess (2017)

The World’s Most Haunted Places by Jeff Balanger (2004)

Call Drop by John. F. Leonard (2017)

Bird Box by Josh Malerman (2014)

Eat the Rich by Renee Miller (2018)

The Outsider by Stephen King (2018)

The Chase by J.L. Rose (2018)

Lost Highways by Various Authors (2018)

Fearful Fathoms (Volume 1) by Various Authors (2017)

Black Shadows Under a Blood Moon by Roma Gray (short story) (2018)

Haunted Cardiff and the Valleys by the South Wales Paranormal Research Group (2007)

Spree Killers: The World’s Most Notorious Gunmen and their Deadly Rampages by Al Cimino (2010)

Everyone Loves You When You Are Dead (And Other Things I learned from famous People) by Neil Strauss (2011)

Tales from the Murenger by Michael Keaton (2017)

Classic Rock Unseen by Various Authors (2013)

Quad by Toneye Eyenot (2018)

Tales from the Lake 5 by Various Authors (2018)

Readers’s Digest: Great Mysteries of the Past by Various Authors (1991)

Please see HERE for last year’s expansive list!

Dead of Night

My latest release, an updated version of my 2010 novella Dead of Night, is available now!

Young lovers, Nick and Maggie, decide to escape the city for a romantic weekend deep in the idyllic countryside. The excursion soon degenerates into a maelstrom of terror when one of them comes face to face with a centuries-old civil war soldier. Together, the couple flee into the wilderness, but soon find themselves engaged in a mortal battle with a group of long-dead Confederate bushwackers.

PLEASE NOTE: This is a story of extreme horror and is not suitable for children.

Dead of Night is available now on ebook and paperback.

The Bookbub Experience

People have reported mixed experiences with the book marketing company Bookbub. There are both success stories and horror stories. For what it’s worth, I’m going to share mine.

First, a bit of background. Bookbub is a service which provides readers with free or heavily discounted books. Writers pay to have their books included in ‘Featured Deal’ email blastings which can reach hundreds of thousands of potential customers. The details vary, depending on the genre and package you select (which again varies according to your selected territories and size of discount you are offering).

Lots of other book promotion companies use a similar model, but with Bookbub being the biggest, it represents the best results. It’s also the most expensive. But most writers look at the fees as a necessary expense. You have to spend money to make money, right?|

To even qualify for a Featured Deal, your book also has to fulfill certain criteria like have a set number of reviews and a professionally-produced cover. It also has to undergo a quality check. It isn’t easy to be accepted. My book Sker House was rejected several times before finally being selected a few months ago. Upon acceptance, I chose my package, paid the exorbitant fee, and waited anxiously to see what would happen.

At first, things didn’t go to plan. It was entirely my fault. Long story short, when I dropped the price of Sker House to qualify for the Featured Deal I misjudged the currency conversion rates in the US, Canada and Australia, which resulted in the book not being the price I said it would be on the dates I said it would. Bookbub rightly pulled my promotion for not adhering to the rules. To their credit, they were great about it, and after I emailed them to explain my mistake and did a bit of begging, they reluctantly agreed to reschedule my promotion at no extra cost.

Phew.

As an indie writer with a dozen or so books out there, unless I do some kind of promotional activity, I consider myself lucky to sell a handful of books a day. I am under no illusions. I know a lot of writers sell more than me. Some sell less. You can imagine my surprise when I got up the morning my Featured Deal went out to Bookbub’s subscribers, checked my KDP account, and found Sker House had sold close to a hundred copies in just a few hours. Every time I hit ‘refresh’ it showed more sales. At its peak, I was probably selling around a book a minute. Sker House has done reasonably well since it came out. I did a successful blog tour to help it along, and it picked up some decent reviews. But nothing I’d done previously came close to this.

I logged into Author Central and checked my author ranking to find I was suddenly sitting pretty at number 71 in the ‘Most Popular Horror Writers’ category. By some strange twist of fate, I was also number 72, because Amazon evidently thought C.M. Saunders and Christian Saunders were two different people.

The sales kept coming, and my alter-ego and I kept climbing the charts. Later that evening, a couple of hundred sales later, I peaked at numbers 37 and 38. I might have gone even higher. I like to think I took the Number one slot from some befuddled old bloke called Stephen King at some point whilst I slept.

Of course, it couldn’t last.

After the initial sales flurry subsided, Sker House continued selling in double digits for a few days afterwards. By then, it had gone back up to full price, so I received a higher royalty percentage. By my calculations, taking into account the reduced promotion price and the associated royalty percentage in each territory, I needed to shift around 800 downloads to cover my costs.

That’s a lot of books.

I didn’t really expect to sell that many, and I didn’t. At the final reckoning I got close, maxing out at just over 600, but there were other benefits. On average, my daily sales remain higher than they were before. Over the promotion period I also sold more copies of my other books than I usually do, which I didn’t factor in, and my KU ‘pages read’ went through the roof. I usually get several hundred a day, but since the promotion that has increased to several thousand and has remained consistent ever since. One day, I had over 7,000, probably my highest ever. Over a month later, and those numbers are still holding. I’m optimistic that all these sales and reads will translate into a couple of new reviews in the not too distant future. Also, my blog hits increased exponentially, more people have followed me on Twitter and my Facebook author page, and then there was the small matter of cracking Amazon’s Most Popular Horror Writer list for the first time. I feel like I’ve finally reached then next level.

So the all-important question everyone wants to know, did I make a shit load of money?

No. All things considered, I’ll probably just break even. But I certainly don’t regret doing it. Between the hundreds of sales, the extra exposure, and the thrill of it all, it was a worthy investment.

Long live Bookbub.