About Me

Tollesbury, Essex, United Kingdom
I was born in the Summer of 1969 in Dagenham, just on the border of East London. School was largely unproductive but enjoyable, setting me up for something of a wayward but interesting life! On leaving school I had various jobs including putting up stalls at Romford Market, working in a record shop, putting up ceilings, gardening and road sweeping. After resigning from an insurance company to play in a band, I found myself unemployed for two years. Then finally I got back on my feet and I've been a psychiatric nurse since 1997. I wrote A Cleansing of Souls when I was 22 years old and followed it up with Tollesbury Time Forever almost twenty years later. I started writing The Bird That Nobody Sees in September 2011 and it was released in July 2012. In terms of writing, my heroes are Jack Kerouac and John Steinbeck. I would also include Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan and Tom Waits as literary influences. So that's me I guess - scruffy, happy and in love with literary fiction, music and life...

Monday 16 April 2012

Tollesbury Time Forever Update - APRIL!

Well I hope everone is doing fine in their worlds!

In keeping with  the initial motivation for this blog - monitoring the journey of Tollesbury Time Forever from last Summer's frustrations onwards - here are the latest figures...

January 2012

US sales -      28
UK sales -     272
Other sales - 1

Total sales - 301

February 2012

US sales -    31
UK sales -   135

Total sales - 166

March 2012

US sales -      187
UK sales -     118
Other sales -  1

Total Sales -  306

Total Combined Sales

US sales -     246
UK sales -    525
Other sales - 2

Total - 773

Of obvious note is the huge increase in US sales in March. I have no idea how this came about but it is wonderfully welcome. The sales gave me the final push I needed to start the process of acquiring my US tax number which I hope to get through in the next few months! UK sales are gradually reducing and 'Other sales' are remaining steady at....well....1 every six weeks. But that 1 still means as much to me as any other. When I started out in January 2012 I hoped maybe to sell 100 overall - so I really am still getting my head around these figures.

Of note to those in a similar boat to myself - getting used to the old eBook KDP Select ocean - I have kept the price at £1.53 now for a good few weeks and intend to do so. Yes there has been a drop off of UK sales but I don't think this is price related. It's still very early days in the life of Tollesbury Time Forever so we shall see what we shall see. I also don't plan to offer the book free anymore using the KDP Select Free Promotion days. I've seen recently books that have been offered free and it seems to have had, as well as a welcome up turn in sales, the less than welcome spread of unpleasant reviews. I think I would rather keep things as they are. At least if I get a rubbish review I would have got a pound or a dollar out of it!

My days of checking every few minutes for sales are well over too, having received some fine advice which I will now share...

"Just because you press that F5 button all the time it won't make people any more likely to buy the book - all it does is stop you finishing the ceiling downstairs and stops me checking Ebay." -

Rebecca Ayris (wife) - March 2012.

Tollesbury Time Forever has been top of the Literary Fiction Average Review Rankings (UK) for the last seven weeks with a total of 59 reviews (5 five star) which is so pleasing. The actual sales rankings are up and down as you might expect but I guess that's the nature of the fluid model that Amazon employs.

So all this gives me great impetus to finish The Bird That Nobody Sees. I've written the first 45,000 words concentrating very much on the plot and dialogue. I'll add in descriptions, made-up words, ramblings and nonsense when I go back over it then hopefully I can release it by the end of August 2012 at the very latest.

Well take care good people. Please leave comments here if you like!

6 comments:

Sean Patrick Reardon said...

Thanks for sharing. TTF is is still the best I have read to date, since it came out. Good luck with the latest!

Stu Ayris said...

Thank you Sean as ever! You'll be the first to know mate when The Bird That Nobody Sees is done!!

Paula RC said...

I'm hoping to upload my book soon so it was very interesting to read you posting and see how it all works.
Good luck with your next book.

Stu Ayris said...

Thank you Jarmara! Hope it all goes well for you. If there's anything you need, want to ask, or aren't sure about, just let me know! Much better to learn from my mistakes!

Paula RC said...

Wow Thank you, Stu. I may take you up on that as I don't live that far from you.

Stu Ayris said...

Any time! I'm a generous soul really!!