Thank you :)

I've just finished the first Kindle Countdown promotion for my latest book (yes, I'm fed up with the sight of it too, can't even bear to type the title), and it's been even more successful than I'd hoped.  All the posts I've ever read about maintaining success after a sales spike tell me you have to keep madly promoting to capitalise on your potential Amazon algorithm fab-ness, but to be honest I can't face it.  Perhaps I'm fairly crap at this marketing stuff after all.  Last week's sales hardly put me in the bestseller leagues, but they show what you can do without paid promotion, and with a bit of hard work ~ and help.

.... which is what this post is about.  I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who helped me spread the word around :)

The highest point it reached in the Amazon UK chart was #2124, and it actually slipped into the Psychological Top 100 chart, which is a really hard one to get into, as it's filled with all those hugely popular and mega-selling 'exciting new psychological thriller busting at the seams with suspense and unguessable plot twists so astounding that you will spontaneously combust in amazement and your house might explode too' books that are the new black.  Nearly all the 'also boughts' on my book's Amazon page are now of this type, so I am hoping it will contine to appeal to readers who love this 'grip lit', as my online friend Louise Marley told me it's called.  And that they won't be disappointed about the lack of abducted children/girls on trains/dodgy teachers/gender surprises (though there is a bit of domestic abuse in The Devil You Know.  Okay.  I admit it).

Anyway... much of the success of this promotion has been down to the sharing and retweeting of others, so THANK YOU.  It's also down to some great reviews from book bloggers that, simply by luck, happened to come out this week ~ so a double big thank you to Mrs Bloggs' Books, Whispering Stories and Alison Williams, and to judithanne and thrillergirl who also reviewed it on Amazon this week.  And to all Mrs Bloggs, Alison and Whispering followers who shared the reviews of my book, and everyone who has enjoyed and taken the time to review it since it came out last month, because it's those reviews that make people think, "yeah, I'll risk 99p on this."

I know some writers don't rate Kindle Countdown, but if you wait until the book has a fair few good reviews then really push it to the point of people threatening to slice your head off if you tweet it once more, you can get good results.  I didn't promote it anywhere else (didn't mention it on Facebook or Goodreads).

Michonne: 'If I see one more tweet about that wretched book....'

A word about not paying loads of money out.  I don't have an editor; everything you read is all my own work, ha ha!  Editing your own stuff is something you can learn to do, it just takes practice, hard and repetitive work, and not being precious about what you've written.  By which I mean being as honest as the strictest editor would be about whether something works or not.  I get that not everyone has the mindset to do this (because we're all different), which is why those really good editors exist!  Of course I have a proofreader, because everyone needs one.  I've never paid a penny for promotion, either.  Which is, clearly, why I am not as successful as I might be, but the freedom that my choice of self-publishing brings means that the promotion is all on YOU, too.  Amazon sales are all about visibility.  The problem with most low selling books that are just as worth reading as those in the top 1000 is simply that hardly anyone knows they're there.  If they did, they might buy them. 

THANK YOU again to everyone who helped make this a success for me :)

(Btw, The Devil You Know is always free on Kindle Unlimited.... oh shut up).