I have always been suspicious that book give-aways are counter-productive, but I am open to learning that I am wrong, so I have decided to conduct an experiment. To that end, I have added a page to this, my busiest website, for book give-aways, although it will probably become a permanent feature of the blog.
Megan Publishing Services had an average of 90,000 page-views a month in 2015, although I don’t know much about the demographics. However, given the title of the blog, I assume that most surfers know that it must be about reading and writing before they click the hyper-link to get there.
If you are an author who would like to test whether book give-aways work in your case, please follow the link at the bottom of this page. Likewise if you are a reader wishing to take advantage of what you will find there.
(I have also added links to some free videos that have given me food for thought recently).
If you, as an author, would like to run a book give-away for a limited time only, say, the first week of the New Year, that is possible too – just pass me the dates when the give-away should be live.
For those of you who revel in statistics, I should be able to provide an insight into how many times your book was downloaded, which I don’t think I have seen any other site offering. At the end of January, I could run a short poll to find out how successful the book give-aways were, if there is enough interest.
Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.
