Several times over the last few months I have found myself apologising for my personal lack of faith in the Labour Party despite their respectable standing in the opinion polls. So I was mildly amused to find that my scepticism was shared by millions of others and that these polls were seriously in error.
I can understand why the rich and the powerful vote for "their" party - where I struggle is when I meet educated colleagues who work in the public sector who publically and privately endorse the Conservative Party. "Red Ed" had so much ammunition at his disposal - for example the rich have been given tax cuts while the poorest in society are fined for having too many bedrooms in their homes - but nothing he said seemed to make a difference to these people where it really matters, in the ballot box.
What I can see is that these people who have voted Tory have happily taken from the state, in various combinations of health care, emergency services, education, child benefit and maternity pay but they now plan to pull the ladder up behind them.
But I can live with that if they had researched the issues before making their decision on which way to vote - but some clearly didn't - being content to act in the way the Daily Telegraph tells them.
Monday, 11 May 2015
Wednesday, 8 April 2015
Report on my writing projects
My assorted writing projects fall neatly into a number of sub-groups.
There are the books where marketing material can be posted to one or more Facebook groups. Despite the fact that the percentage of active participants in these groups seems to be well under 5% the sheer size and number of the groups means that book sales of between 5 and 30 copies a month is a perfectly reasonable goal. My astronomy and our grave-hunting books fit into this group.
Then there are the extreme niche books where there isn't a Facebook group when enthusiasts gather to share their hobby. The Biggles Companion (now renamed "The World of Biggles") is my best example of this genre. The only place where the book is marketed is the Amazon site but this seems to have been enough to generate 2 - 5 sales per month for the last few years.
The ghost writer books have been hard for me to promote as ghost writers, almost by definition, don't shout out about the books they have co-authored. The notional authors have been promoting the books to friends, family and specialists in the field and they have fairly consistently achieved 10 to 20 sales per month.
All three of these groups can be regarded as successes but there are a few books I have written where the sales have been minimal. These failures have been books where the target audience has been mainly UK based and the subject matter has been specialised and where there isn't a relevant Facebook group. This "triple whammy" needs to be remembered when planning future publications!
UPDATE - April 14th 2015
There are the books where marketing material can be posted to one or more Facebook groups. Despite the fact that the percentage of active participants in these groups seems to be well under 5% the sheer size and number of the groups means that book sales of between 5 and 30 copies a month is a perfectly reasonable goal. My astronomy and our grave-hunting books fit into this group.
Then there are the extreme niche books where there isn't a Facebook group when enthusiasts gather to share their hobby. The Biggles Companion (now renamed "The World of Biggles") is my best example of this genre. The only place where the book is marketed is the Amazon site but this seems to have been enough to generate 2 - 5 sales per month for the last few years.
The ghost writer books have been hard for me to promote as ghost writers, almost by definition, don't shout out about the books they have co-authored. The notional authors have been promoting the books to friends, family and specialists in the field and they have fairly consistently achieved 10 to 20 sales per month.
All three of these groups can be regarded as successes but there are a few books I have written where the sales have been minimal. These failures have been books where the target audience has been mainly UK based and the subject matter has been specialised and where there isn't a relevant Facebook group. This "triple whammy" needs to be remembered when planning future publications!
*****
UPDATE - April 14th 2015
This was a well-constructed argument but one with which I tend to disagree.
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