Writer Sanctum
Writer's Haven => Quill and Feather Pub [Public] => Topic started by: TheLadyNyra on September 28, 2018, 12:49:12 AM
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Why not have one for the British and Irish writers too? Anyone out there?
Have you all managed to sign up to the UK AMS service (or whatever they've changed their name to)? I wasn't seeing much movement on it until the last week. Since then I've been getting sales via it and it's now paying for itself.
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Does it count if I have a British passport but happen to live in Australia?
No? Well, back to your regular programming then!
Actually, being serious for a minute, Amazon UK is the biggest market for my fiction, so I wouldn't mind checking in on this thread occasionally.
Also, bit of a tip, but if you email KDP support you can ask them to add your books to several categories involving 'British/Irish fiction'
Handy for amazon.com.au and .ca
e.g. on Amazon.com.au and amazon.com:
Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Literature & Fiction : World Literature : British
Get in quick before it's filled with man chests.
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Ummm, I totally think the passport counts!
Also that's a really good tip!
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Go to https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/contact-us
Then click Book Details, Update Categories And Keywords
The email is half filled out already.
Ummm, I totally think the passport counts!
Bonza sport!
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I’m a Brit reporting in, ma’am. :mhk9U91:
I tried the original AMS on both my permafree first in series and the second which was $2.99/£2.99. I couldn’t really make head nor tail of the results, but they were massively underwhelming.
I’d love to try again with the UK AMS service, but I’ve no idea where to find it (I think someone said you needed an Amazon Advantage account). Besides, I really don’t understand all the jargon connected with ads and fear I’d just be throwing good money after bad. :icon_cry:
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Excellent tip!
Hello, another Brit here. Up in rainy (what else?) Scotland. Just South of Edinburgh, though I work in the city (hate the commute).
Have been using UK AMS for a while. Was doing okay but I was burning through my non-existent budget. Can't seem to change my daily budget on the site. Was previously £5 a day (two ads), then I lowered it to £1.50 each. Now I want to raise them to £3 each.
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I'm using AMS UK a lot, and have been for months. It's still a bit of a mystery, but at least the new reporting is light years ahead of the US site.
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I’m using AMS UK a lot, and have been for months. It’s still a bit of a mystery, but at least the new reporting is light years ahead of the US site.
Where did you find it and how did you get in, Simon?
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Ugh, I wish I remembered how I got into the UK AMS now. I know that I created an account but didn't 'finish' setting it up...
/frowns/ Okay, that sounds weird, but I know that was the case. Then I used something from that 'account' to gain access to the AMS stuff, but I genuinely can't recall what these things were!
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You have to sign up for Amazon Advantage UK, but don't go any further than creating the account. (Don't enter any financials, for example.) Remember, you're not actually going to be listing and selling products, just advertising with AMS, so you don't need this to be fully configured.
You have to use a different email address to your KDP/Amazon UK signin.
After that you can join AMS using via Amazon Advantage UK, and *as far as I know* you don't have to pay anything. (They haven't charged me a monthly fee, but then I didn't put in any financials. Maybe at the end of the year they'll go 'ello, 'ello, 'ello wots all this then?)
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I was hoping someone would start a UK thread. :banana: I'm in the South East :mhk9U91:
I don't use AMS anywhere, but then again maybe I should in the UK because the vast majority of my sales and page reads come from the amazon.com site (I'm a prawn).
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I've just noticed this. Also in cold, rainy, windy Scotland. If only I could get my head round AMS but there is so much else going on that I think my mind is nearing full capacity. Maybe in the Xmas holidays...
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I'm in Oxfordshire for about two-thirds of the year and in Seattle the rest of time, so it's soggy no matter where I am.
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Greetings from Norwich, a fine city.
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I'm an Ex-Pat in Greece so, I totally need a base in the UK. At the moment I survive on a postal address in Gloucester.
Even though I write as a Brit, 90% of my market overall is US-based. Whilst I would like a bigger home market I don't think I would be very successful with AMS. I'm not sure what the UK people would react to, except price. I did try and join them a while back, but they required a VAT number to proceed. There was no way around it then.
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Hello, :mhk9U91:
I'm in Argyll - on the rainy, soggy west coast of Scotland, although I'm originally from Liverpool.
I sort of glaze over when I read the 'how to' AMS posts - all those algorithms and keywords. I have one automated ad running, which has done zilch so must get onto that. Must check out the UK one. Adds it to long list!
Just gone wide as KU was beyond underwhelming. So far, Apple seems to like me better than Amazon, although still very prawny.
I didn't notice the D2D sales report until after I made my first book free a few days ago - doh! Maybe I should have waited for a while. However, I am planning a quest for the Holy Grail - Bookbub - so guess free is a necessity to be in with a chance.
Have a good day.
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I don’t know how much difference it made, but after several knockbacks I updated my BB profile to include everything (even a pic), and got a featured deal with the next application.
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I don’t know how much difference it made, but after several knockbacks I updated my BB profile to include everything (even a pic), and got a featured deal with the next application.
Yes, they certainly value commitment on your part. I'm certain it was why I got an acceptance within 5 hours of applying. I'd given them a whole gamut of data from my previous BB and I think that was useful to them. They do have a post-promotion debriefing link that asks some pretty decent questions.
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Hello, a Londoner here. My books have held steady in the UK for as long as I've been publishing, while my US sales have gradually ramped up. The UK now accounts for just 25% of my earnings, according to Book Report, but I can't get out of the habit of thinking of it as my primary market.
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Another Brit here - in not-so-sunny Scotland. Unexpectedly glorious day yesterday, raining cats and dogs today and we're expecting gales tomorrow. Again. Good times.
Oh, sorry - continuing the stereotype that we're all obsessed by weather, I think that's enough weather chat from me today!
Haven't ventured into AMS (or whatever they are called now) yet - waiting for my series to be done before I get serious about the marketing. By then, I'll be working on the next project so probably won't have much time for marketing. :icon_mrgreen:
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I'm Glaswegian but live in Spain.
(If you're interested)
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London based here, hopefully getting into this seriously now having published a few shorts a few years ago.
I have an awful lot to learn, learning to write well probably the biggest hurdle
Sorry Nathan I'm a Tractor Boy, though I guess I'm the one that should be sorry these days!
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Nice to meet you all! :pdt
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Scottish people don't refer to themselves as British; neither do Welsh people; nor Irish people (why they get a separate mention, I don't know). I'm NOT British; I am English.
Anyway, now I've got that off my wotsit, I am glad to be here, if only to use the cool emoticons or whatever they're called. :clap:
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Scottish people don't refer to themselves as British; neither do Welsh people; nor Irish people (why they get a separate mention, I don't know).
The big island is Great Britain.
Ireland is a smaller, but still large, island.
Lesser Britain (Brittany) is in France.
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Sorry Nathan I'm a Tractor Boy, though I guess I'm the one that should be sorry these days!
I won’t hold that against you mate, at least not while we still maintain the unbeaten streak between us and the honours stay at the top end of the A140.
We’re probably the only two people on the entire forum who know what that means!
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The big island is Great Britain.
Ireland is a smaller, but still large, island.
Apart from the large chunk in the north of the small island of course. Most people I know from the north there would probably take offence at that statement, as would most from the south! I’m married to one of them (from the south) and every time we have an argument, Irish independence or the potato famine gets brought up somewhere!!
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Scottish people don't refer to themselves as British; neither do Welsh people; nor Irish people (why they get a separate mention, I don't know). I'm NOT British; I am English.
Anyway, now I've got that off my wotsit, I am glad to be here, if only to use the cool emoticons or whatever they're called. :clap:
Rangers fans would beg to differ.
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Apart from the large chunk in the north of the small island of course. Most people I know from the north there would probably take offence at that statement, as would most from the south!
Not sure which bit they'd take offence at. The island names are geographical and unrelated to nationality. As Doglover said most inhabitants of Britain regard themselves as Welsh, Scottish or English, rather than British. More complicated in Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom but not Great Britain. Some there regard themselves as mostly Irish a but wouldn't want to give up UK benefits, others have a complicated identity with religious and mostly Scottish origins and a strong allegiance to the UK. I have relatives in all parts, and would usually say I'm English, but in some circumstances would say I'm Irish.
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I stand corrected. The U.K. does include Northern Ireland, but Great Britain doesn’t. Every day’s a learning day!!
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At the last census I recorded myself as being Scottish, British and European, but events have conspired to make me ashamed to be British and on the way to not being European any more so I will 'only' be Scottish in future.
I share an office at my day job with someone from the Irish Republic, and what really annoys her is any suggestion of deference to the Royal Family!
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Hello from Lancashire. I do feel British not English. Dunno if that means anything.
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Hello from the Highlands of Scotland (way up near Inverness). I tell people I live at the back of beyond, and then four hours on bad roads beyond that. grint
I used to think of myself as British - mostly English, but with Scottish and Welsh blood in the mix. I was born and raised on Merseyside, lived most of my adult life in Surrey, then moved to Nairn a few years ago when we got tired of chugging up and down the M6 several times a year. Now I think of myself as Scottish. Still get bitten to death by the bleeping midges, though. They can smell my English blood.
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Still get bitten to death by the bleeping midges, though. They can smell my English blood.
:icon_lol2:
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Hello from the Highlands of Scotland (way up near Inverness). I tell people I live at the back of beyond, and then four hours on bad roads beyond that. grint
I used to think of myself as British - mostly English, but with Scottish and Welsh blood in the mix. I was born and raised on Merseyside, lived most of my adult life in Surrey, then moved to Nairn a few years ago when we got tired of chugging up and down the M6 several times a year. Now I think of myself as Scottish. Still get bitten to death by the bleeping midges, though. They can smell my English blood.
Those flippin' midges. It's amazing how much misery can be created by something so small. I don't venture out unless smothered in Smidge.
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Just to add myself to the Brit parade.
Slap bang in the middle of England although, continuing the theme, I do consider myself British first and anywhere else later :)
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I'm Welsh - and consider myself Welsh, British & European :)
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I'm originally Swiss, but been abducted by a British partner and now live in England. To make matters worse, I was abducted to Essex :icon_mrgreen:
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I'm originally Swiss, but been abducted by a British partner and now live in England. To make matters worse, I was abducted to Essex :icon_mrgreen:
I lived in Essex for a while. I feel your pain :hehe
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I'm English, born & raised in London, living in the land of the concrete cows & roundabouts for the last 40+ years. grint
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Hi All, I'm an English expat now living in Ireland (so I'm gonna check both boxes on the thread title!).
SILLY QUESTION: I'm hoping to upload to Amazon this weekend, can I set a publish date for Wednesday 31st? I've read it can take up 72hrs for a book to be cleared by Amazon, is that still true in these ever-changing times?
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Hi All, I'm an English expat now living in Ireland (so I'm gonna check both boxes on the thread title!).
SILLY QUESTION: I'm hoping to upload to Amazon this weekend, can I set a publish date for Wednesday 31st? I've read it can take up 72hrs for a book to be cleared by Amazon, is that still true in these ever-changing times?
Hi Paul, it should be fine. I've never had a book set up for pre-order that hasn't gone live on Amazon within 24 hours.
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Hi All, I'm an English expat now living in Ireland (so I'm gonna check both boxes on the thread title!).
SILLY QUESTION: I'm hoping to upload to Amazon this weekend, can I set a publish date for Wednesday 31st? I've read it can take up 72hrs for a book to be cleared by Amazon, is that still true in these ever-changing times?
Hi Paul, it should be fine. I've never had a book set up for pre-order that hasn't gone live on Amazon within 24 hours.
That's great! Thanks for answering that for me, Robin. grint
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Hi All, I'm an English expat now living in Ireland (so I'm gonna check both boxes on the thread title!).
SILLY QUESTION: I'm hoping to upload to Amazon this weekend, can I set a publish date for Wednesday 31st? I've read it can take up 72hrs for a book to be cleared by Amazon, is that still true in these ever-changing times?
Hi Paul, it should be fine. I've never had a book set up for pre-order that hasn't gone live on Amazon within 24 hours.
That's great! Thanks for answering that for me, Robin. grint
No problem!
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I’m English, born & raised in London, living in the land of the concrete cows & roundabouts for the last 40+ years. grint
Then you’re about 15 miles down the road from me. Small world! Grin
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I'm English, born & raised in London, living in the land of the concrete cows & roundabouts for the last 40+ years. grint
I’ve been round and round and round that town hundreds of times. But for real roundabout excitement I just got to Hemel Hempstead.
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I’m English, born & raised in London, living in the land of the concrete cows & roundabouts for the last 40+ years. grint
Then you’re about 15 miles down the road from me. Small world! Grin
Not far at all :mhk9U91:
I'm English, born & raised in London, living in the land of the concrete cows & roundabouts for the last 40+ years. grint
I’ve been round and round and round that town hundreds of times. But for real roundabout excitement I just got to Hemel Hempstead.
Oh, is that worse than MK? Don't think I've ever been there. Grin
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I'm Irish born and bred. Grew up in Dublin but live in the countryside now. And like the Lady Nyra, I've definitely seen an improvement in sales in the UK store since I managed to get my head around the AMS (or whatever they're calling themselves now) ads.
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Oh, is that worse than MK? Don't think I've ever been there. Grin
It’s worse.
http://www.roundaboutsofbritain.com/maggic-roundabout/
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Oh, is that worse than MK? Don't think I've ever been there. Grin
It’s worse.
http://www.roundaboutsofbritain.com/maggic-roundabout/
Interesting page, thanks, according to that MK has the most :)
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Hello from Somerset, land of history, mystery and the smell of the country air (or as it's more commonly known, manure!).
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Hello from Somerset, land of history, mystery and the smell of the country air (or as it's more commonly known, manure!).
Where the cider apples grow :icon_lol2:
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Chiming in from Cork. We hosted the Eurovision once.
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For those of you who have .co.uk or EU-based domain names here is an interesting snippet that might interest you.
"as a result of GDPR Nominet have automatically redacted your personal information from the WHOIS database. This information is therefore no longer available publicly and only law enforcement and approved parties can view it."
This gives EU domain name holders privacy without paying extra for it (such as 123.org do) when it's an automatic GDPR legal requirement.
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Londoner here though currently living in Devon.
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I'm Irish born and bred. Grew up in Dublin but live in the countryside now.
Culchie! grint
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I'm Irish born and bred. Grew up in Dublin but live in the countryside now.
Culchie! grint
:hehe - As far as the locals are concerned, I'll always be a jackeen.
Hi to all the other Irish and British on the board. :mhk9U91:
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Scottish here, living in Taipei. Originally from Glasgow. Trad author with ten books published, but making gradual headway into self-publishing, first with a short story collection and possibly later with books published online as and when they're written.
I'm curious if anyone has been following the recent decision by the European Commission to recommend giving taxation of digital ebooks and newspapers a swift, hard shove into oblivion.
My short story collection sells reasonably well, but 90% of my sales are in the Uk, which means literally hundreds of pounds of my income has gone to an outdated tax I regard as punitive on reading and learning and the uptake of digital forms of communication.
References: https://publishingperspectives.com/2018/10/european-publishing-welcomes-ecofin-ebook-taxation-decision/
and
http://www.marcusward.co/vat-e-books-to-be-reduced-rated/
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Hello from Somerset, land of history, mystery and the smell of the country air (or as it's more commonly known, manure!).
One of my sons lives in Somerset, the other in Devon.
Back to the roundabout discussion, I was pleased to see the Magic Roundabout in Swindon at the top (possibly should be the bottom) of the list. I remember many years ago, travelling to a training course in Swindon and seeing our supervisor going around another segment of the roundabout. How we ever ended up in the same place for the course I'll never know.
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Is anyone else in the UK having problems with Amazon UK not crediting sales to the Month to Date chart?
It started for me on April 4th and I now have 13 missing sales - i.e. they are shown as units ordered on the Sales Dashboard, but never appear on the MTD. All other stores appear to be working normally it’s just the UK site.
I also published my latest book on the 7th April and added it to Author Central on .com and UK. It was added to the American site fairly quickly, but although AC UK says it’s been added, it still isn’t showing up on my Author Central page.
I’m wondering if I should contact them. The missing sales are all full priced books (£2.99) and that’s a fair chunk of royalties for this prawn to lose.
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Hi Gerri,
I've just done a quick tot up of my UK month to date, comparing what's on the sales dashboard if I isolate month to date to what's on the actual month to date section of the reports, and I found that I was down by forty-seven sales. Things can often take a while to trickle through from the sales dashboard (payments processing slowly or what have you) though, but it does seem like there's a major discrepancy there. For me it's over a few books and it'd take me a while to figure out which ones. I'm going to leave it for a few days to see if one catches up with the other.
I'm hoping it'll sort itself out. If not I'll be joining you in contacting Amazon. I was just thinking my UK total looked a little lower than usual - now I know the reason :(
I'm in Ireland, and we had a bank holiday yesterday - could that, coupled with the Easter weekend, have caused some delays in processing payments, do you think? Was there a bank holiday in the UK yesterday too?
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Thanks, Fee.
Yes, it was a Bank Holiday here as well. I doubt that that is the explanation, unless all UK staff had a two week Easter Break that started on the 4th of April. Grin It’s been going on for longer.
I was missing 9 sales when I went to my mum’s for Easter on Good Friday (19th) and it’s now up to 13 sales unaccounted for.
I can check mine on Book Report, so I know exactly which books it relates to, even though I can’t be sure of the dates the sales were made. I’ll give it to the end of this week to see if they miraculously appear. After that, there will be a strongly worded (though probably grovelling) email to Zon.
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Ah, I don't have Book Report and have no idea when this started. I just looked at the raw numbers so far until I get a chance to go through it in more detail. I wouldn't have known about it at all had you not posted - so thanks for the heads up. I'll post again if my numbers catch up - or if I have to resort to getting in touch with Amazon.
Here's hoping that it miraculously sorts itself out :)
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Hi all, newbie from the cultural desert of Ipswich, here! Well, I say "desert"; it's more of an inhospitable, sterile moonscape, really...
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Hi, M J, and welcome. Never been to Ipswich, so I’ll take your word on its lack of cultural delights.
What genre do you write/prefer?
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Hi Gerri! I write "supernatural adventure" stories, I guess. That's the nearest genre I can find, anyway. About fifteen years ago, someone coined the genre "The New Weird", but the term never seemed to take off and it's definitely not on the BISAC list. In fact, I was sure it was a definite genre until the fateful moment someone actually asked me to explain it.
"You know, it's a bit like The Rivers of London meets Angel Heart. No, I mean, if China Mieville rewrote Big Trouble in Little China and played it straight. You know? A bit like that."
[Blank stares]
"Look, it's a bit Tomb Raidery, a bit Neverwhere-esque, just a bit Lovecraftian... Where are you going? It is a genre, I swear!"
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Hi M J, nice to see another addition to the Brit List. :mhk9U91:
I think I've heard of New Weird, or something similar.
I'd pay to read a Tomb Raider-meets-Neverwhere-meets-Lovecraft.
I'm writing a Trainspotting-meets-Dracula story at the moment but it's not as Weird as it sounds. Grin
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Hullo Doctor!
Dracula meets Trainspotting sounds like a good call. Vampires need to get all sordid and grimy again, I reckon. Are you going to do the Scots dialect thing, like Irvine Welsh? Or set it as a series of interconnected mini-stories?
Well, you can find my novelette "The Talented Man" on Amazon (and everywhere else) for free, so you don't even have to pay. (Security contractor, Kieron Rose, tries to hold it together in a run-down Cairo mansion on the border between worlds. Cultists, looted antiquities, supernatural forces, the whole nine yards...)
The sequel, "Eventide", is out in the wild too. (Set in London and following Rose's dodgy former colleague, Holden, as he tries to atone for his past and survive against the odds. Victorian occultists, Egyptian-revival temples, revenants roaming the underground and evil spirits in the night...)
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Hullo Doctor!
Dracula meets Trainspotting sounds like a good call. Vampires need to get all sordid and grimy again, I reckon. Are you going to do the Scots dialect thing, like Irvine Welsh? Or set it as a series of interconnected mini-stories?
Well, you can find my novelette "The Talented Man" on Amazon (and everywhere else) for free, so you don't even have to pay. (Security contractor, Kieron Rose, tries to hold it together in a run-down Cairo mansion on the border between worlds. Cultists, looted antiquities, supernatural forces, the whole nine yards...)
The sequel, "Eventide", is out in the wild too. (Set in London and following Rose's dodgy former colleague, Holden, as he tries to atone for his past and survive against the odds. Victorian occultists, Egyptian-revival temples, revenants roaming the underground and evil spirits in the night...)
Hey, M J
I'll be sure to check those books out.
I'm going for the Irvine-Welsh dialect, but not as intense (honestly, as a born and bred Scot, I struggled to read Trainspotting on occasion.). I'll put a small translation list at the beginning and end of the book, but as though written by the sweary Scottish vampire himself. Should be entertaining!
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I'm going for the Irvine-Welsh dialect, but not as intense (honestly, as a born and bred Scot, I struggled to read Trainspotting on occasion.). I'll put a small translation list at the beginning and end of the book, but as though written by the sweary Scottish vampire himself. Should be entertaining!
Yeah, dialect is always tricky -- I like the idea of the character-narrated vocab list. The protag in my novelette is a Yorkshireman and someone did say that they kept forgetting that fact until some of his dialogue made it obvious, which was a little jarring. Well, I couldn't exactly make him as Yorkshire as Sean Bean stuffing ferrets down his trousers whilst narrating the memoirs of Thora Hird, so I thought I'd just run with it.
Good luck with the story, anyway -- sound like a great idea! (I hope you appreciate the lack of Scottish vampire puns in this post. It's a disease I struggle with...)
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I just joined. I haven't been to a writer's site for a long time. I'm excited. I was born in Northern Ireland, have cousins in Southern Ireland. Have lived just outside Edinburgh and also in England. All of that was a long time ago I've lived in US for years, but I miss the UK and Ireland, and think I could get both a UK and Irish passport if needed. At the minute I'm a lonely American.
When I first published my novel (8 years ago) it sold better in the UK. Now it has withered. I see you are using actual names, sorry, I guess I may change my name later. I think I'm going to run into some friends here because was on kboards for years.
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I'm making my first trip to Britain in September this year- long way to go for an Aussie! :) Am going for my niece's wedding but have a few extra days to explore. Top of my to-see list is Kew Gardens. I also want to visit Tooting as it features in my next book. Anybody here from Tooting?