‘Ramblings’ is a category used on our blog Megan Publishing Services http://meganthemisconception.com to identify posts relating to random thoughts.
‘Ramblings’ is a tag used on our blog Megan Publishing Services http://meganthemisconception.com to identify posts relating to the ramblings of Welsh writer Owen Jones.
PLR ebook providers are a source of useful, relevant, important information! Find out more about this undervalued resource below.
PLR stands for Private Label Rights. This means that someone else has created an article on a topic, which includes the research and the writing. If the article fits in with the requirements of what you would like to write about, then it is potentially useful to you. The authors of such articles give, or sell, you permission to use their content in your publication, and then sell copies of it under your own name as if you had written it.
What Are PLR Ebooks?
Many PLR Ebook providers sell bundles of targeted PLR articles in the form of ebooks. Such ebooks may contain ten to twelve PLR articles on closely related, niche subjects.
Why Should You Buy PLR Ebooks?
Two of the reasons why writers and publishers buy PLR ebooks are that they are a fast and cheap way of obtaining content for a publication. For example, if you see a great skin care product that you would like to promote, you can either spend days researching and writing a dozen articles on the subject, or you can spend $20 on pre-written material and start selling immediately.
The Pros & Cons Of PLR Ebook Providers
There are various pros and cons of using PLR ebook providers. However, they are basically the same as when buying any product. Quality is of prime importance. In the case of PLR, this means material that a professional has diligently researched, professionally written and not oversold. In other words, you don’t want to be able to find your article on dozens of competitors’ websites around the Internet. This is called fresh content.
Where To Go For More Information About PLR Ebooks
So, if you’re looking for more information about PLR ebooks, then you should check out our collection of 125 niche PLR ebooks on this blog. Furthermore, ours are unique for several important reasons. A professional novelist has written them, and many of the ebooks exist in several languages. This means that you can sell to other countries with confidence using the exact same sales campaigns. This is what professionals do. Just look at ads for the same products in Britain, Spain, France, Germany, the USA, etc… They are all basically the same!
Now, you can do that too!
Conclusion on PLR Ebook Providers
There are plenty of places online where you can buy niche PLR ebooks. However, most of them have been poorly written, overspun, and oversold. No other PLR ebook provider except Megan Publishing Services offers niche PLR ebooks written by a professional novelist and translated by professional native translators. This means that you can run the same sales campaigns simultaneously in several countries.
PLR blog content for Writers Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com
PLR blog content is useful for reasons that will suit many people including discerning authors. This may seem strange since you would expect them to write their own material. The fact is that they do, but a great deal of work goes into writing a good article or post, and sometimes even authors just don’t have the time to produce writing of high quality. This is where good PLR blog content can be useful. A good PLR author will have done the necessary research for the piece.
Find a reputable PLR provider
There are reputable companies out there offering PLR articles. However, most of the firms you will find are just reselling other people’s work that has been spun and respun so many times that it doesn’t make sense any longer. Yet others are selling plagiarized content. If you find one that offers high-quality PLR content, then you should make a note of it.
Choose a PLR topic or keyword phrase
Once you have chosen a topic or keyword phrase to help you find the article you need, you need to decide what kind of article you want. Do you want an ezine article, how-to article, social media post, blog content, or something else?
Find PLR blog content based on that topic
There are several ways to find content. One option is to search The Internet. Another option is to use a paid service. Obviously, one method is cheaper and the other more time-consuming.
Add images, videos, links, etc.
Once you have found an article that you think would work well for your business, you need to ‘make it your own ‘. You can do this by adjusting the style of the piece to match your own. You can also add some additional elements to make it more appealing to your readers. This includes adding images, videos, links to other articles, and even testimonials.
Publish your PLR content!
Once you have produced a good article from your PLR blog content, you should publish it as soon as possible. It will help you build authority and credibility with readers and the search engines. Repeating this process regularly will help you build up your own collection of high-quality PLR blog content.
Welsh author, Owen Jones, was born in Barry, Wales in August 1954 to an industrious, working-class family. He had four brother, three of which remain alive on Earth. To distinguish him from other Welsh authors with the same name alive or deceased, his middle name is Ceri (Keri).
Early Life of Owen Jones.
Welsh author Owen Jones went to Colcot Primary School, High Street Junior School, and then Barry Comprehensive School. He joined ‘The Comp’ in 1965, the first year it was open. His year’s school intake would later be referred to as ‘First Year Comp’. He was chosen to sit for the Oxford entry examination in 1971. However, he passed it over because his girlfriend was going to Portsmouth Polytechnic. He also studied there – Russian Language and Soviet Studies – and his replacement for the exam went to Oxford.
After finishing his degree, he moved to s’Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in The Netherlands for nine years. Then he worked for his father with his brothers for thirteen years. In 2004, he moved to Thailand with his Thai wife. He is still there now, living in her remote rice-farming village in the north.
The Welsh Author Emerges.
Owen began creating websites to pay the bills at first. However, they needed a lot of fresh content to keep them high in the search engine rankings. In 2011, he realised that he had 145 websites and had written 1,200,000 words that year to support them. After a few beers one night, it dawned on him that he was writing the equivalent of ten largish novels a year to support websites that would crumble after his death. He had always enjoyed writing, and had started a book in 2004, when he first arrived in Thailand. He resolved to finish the novel.
Owen Jones’ Books.
He published Daddy’s Hobby, the first volume in the series Behind The Smile: The Story Of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya in April 2012 – eight years after he had started it. However, volume two, An Exciting Future, appeared six months later, and Maya – Illusion, volume three, three months after that.
Within seven years, he had written fifty-two novels. These included twenty-three novelettes called The Psychic Megan Series, which is based on ideas that he had learned from his Spiritualist family, and set in Barry. Meanwhile, Behind The Smile has grown to seven volumes comprising 720,000 words. He finds it difficult to stick to one genre, he says. Although most of his books involve some supernatural or paranormal content.
However, even that is not the full story. He has written a military drama mini-series called Dead Centre, which is about a new form of terrorism barely contemplated because it is so awful.
Prolific Welsh Author’s Future.
I asked him why he has not sought representation in the traditional publishing industry. He replies that he had made several half-hearted attempts to attract interest from literary agents five or six years ago, but he gave up, because so few of them replied. I also asked whether he might try to become a traditionally-published Welsh author again. He replied “Maybe”, but didn’t look at all enthusiastic. “I think that The Psychic Megan Series might be ‘quite easy’ to sell. However, writing to these people and waiting months for a reply is such a mind-numbingly boring slog!”
In my opinion, the 68 years old Welsh author from Barry, Owen Jones, has never really cared whether he goes down the traditional route of well-known authors or not. He is quite happy sitting in his quiet, remote Thai village organising the translation and narration of his existing books, and writing the occasional new one.
Owen Jones , the extremely prolific Welsh author, now has more than a thousand books with his name on registered at the British Library, so he must be doing something right!
Is there an Alien House near you? How could you find out whether you have extraterrestrial spacemen for neighbours? People tend to fall into two camps. Some are quite worried about having visitors from Outer Space, and others relish the idea of meeting extraterrestrials. It is presumed that, if there are extraterrestrial spacemen (and spacewomen) living here on Earth, then they must be living in an off-worlder abode… hidden in full view.
Sightings of Alien Neighbours.
People report having seen visitors from Outer Space in hundreds of places around the world. Many of these are genuine reports from people who are convinced that they have experienced real extraterrestrial contact. However, there are many reported sightings that are obviously just hoaxes too. Still, people have reported seeing strange lights in the sky, and even hearing sounds that they believe could only have come from ET ‘s or their UFO’s.
Check with local law enforcement agencies.
This might sound daft, but if you think you might have seen aliens or something unusual, contact your local police station. They will, or might (depending on your luck), investigate the situation and get back to you. However, if you feel that you have discovered ET neighbours, then you might be better off contacting the government, or plain-clothes police officers.
It is unlikely that you have discovered an off-worlders’ dwelling just because it looks dilapidated, old, abandoned or unused. Equally, I doubt that aliens would want to draw attention to themselves. For example, by employing overly futuristic designs built into the architecture of their homes. I’m sure that if ET’s are living on Earth in an extraterrestrial abode, then it will appear quite normal. On the other hand, it may be large enough to have substantial grounds for landing their craft in. An old mansion or colonial house in the country, for example. Somewhere off the beaten track, perhaps shielded from casual view by natural woods or hills.
Call your local news station.
If you fancy becoming a local celebrity (or thought of as a nutter), you could report that you think you saw something strange in your neighbourhood to your local radio station. They might investigate and report back to you. You could also try to corroborate your suspicions online or by talking to local residents.
Alien House – a fantasy novel.
Welsh writer, Owen Jones, has written a fantasy novel about just such a dwelling. He has sited it not far outside his home town of Barry, South Wales. In the story, Michael, the central character, believes that he might be going mad, when his Alter Ego, Ralph, tries to persuade him that his new-found friends are spacemen and spacewomen, who live only a few miles away in an alien house. Eventually, his innermost thoughts worry him so much that he asks them outright.
If you want to find out what happens next in this fantasy novel by Owen Jones, please click this link:
Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger is a deadly assassin who hunts the streets looking for victims. She is looking for revenge on paedophiles!
Lily’s Childhood.
Lily was a happy little girl, who grew up with her loving Thai parents. They owned a small village shop near the Mekong River and were of Chinese extraction. Both parents worked hard in the shop, but her mother also grew fruit, vegetables, herbs and flowers in their garden both to eat and to sell. He favourite flower was the Tiger Lily, which her parents and grandparents had used as medicine. However, only an expert could use it as such, because it was one one the most deadly plants in south-east Asia, despite being one of the most beautiful.
The thought tickled Lily’s mother, and Lily too, when she was told the story. She already had known that she had been named after it. This idyllic childhood lasted until she was eleven, when a family friend, who helped out in the shop occasionally, and whom she called ‘uncle’, started to take an unhealthy interest in her.
Revenge.
After more than a year of tricking her into massage his penis ‘because it hurt’, and unwanted groping and fondling, Lily was at the end of her tether. She had long wanted to tell her mother, and had even tried half-hearted a few times, but she could not bring herself to talk about the child abuse. It was too painful… too embarrassing. She also feared that her mother would not believe her and the consequent loss of face.
One day in the school playground, she saw a huddle of boys laughing strangely in a tight group. She struggled to get a look, and saw a boy holding a smartphone showing pornography. When the boy spotted her pretty Elfin face, he asked, “Would you like to do that, Lily?” The woman in the fil was performing fellatio, and Lily ran away as the boys laughed. It had never crossed her mind that her uncle had boasted to anyone, but maybe he had, she thought. She thought she would die of shame
As it happened, her secret had not got out, but it didn’t seem like that to Lily.
The next time that her uncle came for a massage, Lily surprised him by taking it in her mouth. He groaned with pleasure, and then in agony as she bit it off. She never saw him again. The police exiled him from the province and sold his property as compensation for Lily.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok.
Lily had to put up with the shame and embarrassment of the whole village knowing what had happened for another six or seven years, before she was able to use the compensation money to escape to Bangkok to fulfil her dream of becoming a paediatrician – a doctor for children.
However, costs were more than she could ever have predicted from the only environment that she had known, her village. She needed help, and sought it from wealthy boyfriends. Gradually, she discovered that some of them liked her especially because she was petite. She was five feet tall, weighed less than ninety pounds, but was all in proportion, and had the most beautiful pixie face.
As it dawned on her that these men could be like her old ‘uncle’, she began to despise them. Something began to twist in Lily’s brain. She started having nightmares, and plotting revenge.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok was being born.
Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger.
Lily began to play on her youthful aspect, inviting men to like her because she appeared young, but sexually active. She learned advanced make-up skills and bought young styles of clothing. She could look any age from about thirteen to twenty-eight, and she began prowling the streets to test her disguises. By day, she was sweet, but rather distant, beautiful diligent, hard-working, medical student Lily, but by night she was Tiger Lily of Bangkok – Prowling Avenger!
She killed with meat-skewers, and her calling card was a Tiger Lily.
Tiger Lily became famous throughout Thailand, but feared by all men in Bangkok!
Lily killed about a dozen men that she had found guilty of paedophilia, and feared capture several times but was never caught. Eventually, the need for revenge dissipated and she left the Prowling Avenger to sleep in perpetuity, or at least until someone woke her up again…
Sidebar: The book of this story – Tiger Lily of Bangkok – and its sequel, are available in a dozen languages. There are more details on this blog.
Daddy’s Hobby by Owen Jones is the first novel from this Welsh writer. It explores why so many girls work in Pattaya and how they fare. It is his best-selling book.
Daddy’s Hobby by Owen Jones is an insightful look at why tens of thousands of young women choose to enter the Pattaya sex tourism industry, and how many of them get on. They and other attractions bring more than a million tourists to Pattaya every year. Most of them are men with money looking for a good time.
Daddy’s Hobby by Owen Jones – Origins.
In the mid-to late Seventies, Owen Jones was working in the south Netherland’s city of s’Hertogenbosch (Den Bosch) in Noord Brabant. One day, a popular new bar opened up at the bottom of the street he lived in. It was a ‘Relax Bar’, a concept he didn’t understand, but he liked the sound of the music. One afternoon, he ventured inside. The bar was practically empty despite the fact that the landlord was very friendly and played lots of Heavy Metal, which was very popular at the time.
After a while he noticed a few scantily-clad young ladies looking at him from the darker recesses at the back of the room. When he went to the toilet, he was left in no doubt what a relax bar was. The owner/barman, whose name was Rick, I think, played the Meatloaf album ‘Like A Bat Out of Hell’ from cover to cover three or four times a day and sold marijuana, which had been decriminalised. This record more than any other brought the ‘house dancing girls’ out onto the floor.
The bar was called ‘Daddy’s Hobby’. I liked everything about it including the name, which I thought was very clever. Within a month or two, it was the busiest bar in the city. However, sadly, within a year, Rick had been murdered and his bar burned down. We all thought that it had to do with drugs.
Daddy’s Hobby by Owen Jones – Development.
In the early 2,000’s Owen Jones moved to Pattaya, and started going out with the cashier of the first bar he had a drink in. It put him in a ‘trusted position’ with ‘the girls’. Soon most of the thirty-odd girls who worked there were seeking his advice. Their favourite topic was how best to write saucy texts and emails to their ‘boyfriends’. Most of these had already returned home to their wives or girlfriends in Europe and elsewhere, but mostly the UK. That bar was a more flagrant example of Rick’s Daddy’s Hobby, but without the drugs.
After a few weeks, he had inadvertently collected many scraps of paper with translated messages on them. So, he sought the girls’ permission to write them into a book. No-one disapproved when he promised to use false names. It was funny, he said, because all the girls and most of the clients were already doing that anyway. Everybody was lying, especially the men. He recalls that he had never met so many navy SEALS, SAS, commandos, MI5 and CIA operatives in his life before. Not a one of them was a carpenter or civil servant, and they were all single, looking for a wife!!
There was no other name for the book than Daddy’s Hobby, subtitled Behind The Smile but for various reasons, it took him eight years to self-publish it.
Daddy’s Hobby by Owen Jones – Sequels.
Owen Jones used the name of Lek for his lead female character. She was also the life and soul of the bar, and didn’t mind the author using her real name. She too is sadly long dead. He used the Welsh name Craig for the main male, although there are many other dramatis personae in the novel. When he was writing the book, it was the Lek character that dictated to him in his head what he must write. He had already determined that the book should be 100,000 words long, but when he reached that level, it was clear that Lek hadn’t finished her story. So, Owen closed book one, published it, and started a sequel.
You may be wondering why it took eight years to bring Daddy’s Hobby to market, if it was being dictated.
“Well, when I looked at Craig’s character I could see too much of myself… I just was not prepared to share it at that point”, he says. “I nearly gave up several times, but Lek and I stuck with it and produced a result”.
He did not like the idea of calling the second volume Daddy’s Hobby 2, so he gave it the name of a significant chapter in volume one, An Exciting Future. It now needed a series title to bind them together and that became Behind The Smile. The books are frequently referred to as Behind The Smile.
Lek kept up the pressure for several more years until Behind The Smile consisted of seven volumes, of 720,000 words.
Daddy’s Hobby – the Future.
“Although the Lek in my head was the inspiration of the actual stories, encouragement came from elsewhere. It was also more important”, he says.
“My stepmother hated the book, and two of my three brothers have never mentioned any of my fifty-odd novels. However, one thought it was fantastic though, and asked me to write a sequel. I had also run a competition for a free copy. Coincidentally, the woman who won it was a student journalist, who wrote an encouraging review. I opened the door to Lek again, and started volume two.
“Suddenly, I started to receive encouragement from complete strangers all around the world. Unfortunately, I have still heard nothing from friends and family from my home town. It used to upset me a lot, until I learned that that was quite common in the UK. People seem to resent someone improving themselves”.
He claims to know three readers, who hadn’t read a book since leaving school – one of them being eighty-four! Two others have since written novels, and one has moved to Thailand to see it ‘for himself’! Many readers have sought him out for a drink when they are visiting Thailand, and others went to Spain and Wales to meet him.
Owen says that he hasn’t been back to Pattaya for several years. However, when he was last there tourists and expats knew of his books, and some had read them all. Its particularly affected him when a young Thai woman ran up to him, kissed him on the cheek, and said: “You’re the lovely man who writes nice things about Pattaya bar girls, aren’t you. Thank you very much”.
Every month, he sells several box sets of seven, who can only be going off reviews or recommendation.
Behind The Smile by Owen Jones – Narrations and Translations.
In these days of Covid, it has been difficult to find further inspiration for what he calls the Lek Series. Between 2016 and 2018, he and his Thai wife (that first girl, the cashier, that he met in Pattaya) lived in Andalucía, Spain. From 2018 to 2020, the tried living in Wales. However, Pritti Patel and the Tories made it too difficult for his wife to obtain a residency permit. He says that he will never forgive them for that.
However, while in Spain, Owen started to have his books translated and narrated. Principally in Spanish so that he could sell them to the local Spanish as well as the expats. He soon started to receive offers of collaboration from all over the world in fifteen languages. Since living back in Thailand, and he has been in lockdown in the village because of Covid-related travel restrictions. So, he has been concentrating on these narrations and translations. He now has more than one thousand books in thirty-eight languages registered in his name in the British Library.
“I still would prefer to be writing fresh material though”, he adds with a hint of sadness.
Welsh Writer Gives Top 5 Tips for Aspiring Writers
Keep writing!
Welsh writer, Owen Jones, is from Barry, South Wales. He has loved language and languages all his life. This love manifested itself in learning nine languages and a constant stream of writing. However, for a very long time, he didn’t even consider writing books. They were for reading. He enjoyed writing during his formal education, and after that wrote letters to his friends and family. At twenty-eight years of age, he bought a computer, and began translating professionally. Ten years later, he became an office manager meaning more writing. The proliferation of the Internet was a boon for Owen. He started building websites and creating content for them.
Websites
By 2011, he had 145 websites and was writing 1,000,000 words a year as content for them. One day, he decided to write a book instead of all the content, and, so his first novel, Daddy’s Hobby was published in 2012. By 2018, he had written fifty-odd novels of varying length, and 125 manuals. Four years later, he had organised the translation and narration of many of those books, so that in 2022, he had one thousand books registered in his name at the British Library. Here are the top five tips of this prolific Welsh writer.
Tip One:
Keep writing! Even if you only write a few paragraphs a day, keep writing to train your mind to get into the zone! The most useful advice I ever got was from a footnote in a desk diary. It said:
“If you want to be a writer, write for ten minutes every day”
You will probably not see the full sense of this advice unless you really think about it. For example, I cannot write for ten minutes every day. Why? Because when I start writing, hours fly by! I can get into the zone just by picking up a pen, or opening a new document on my computer!
Tip Two:
Don’t worry about grammar or punctuation in your first draft. In fact, I can’t write like this, but I know that it does help many writers. The idea is that worrying about grammar slows the flow of creativity. I, personally, find that there are seconds to minutes when I have to pause to order my thoughts, and during these moments, I correct the typos that my word-processor highlights. I don’t worry about dates and fact though. If I refer to a factual event, I mark it with three question marks. It is easy to search for ??? during editing.
Tip Three:
I found it difficult to commit myself to a point of view at first. I was frightened of opening myself up to ridicule. Make no mistake, when you write, whatever you write, you are telling people something about yourself, even if you don’t want to, or mean to. Your politics, your beliefs, your opinions and your thoughts will become apparent to an astute reader. Often, I am the last to know or see a deeper meaning in my writing. I often learn a lot from an insightful reviewer.
This is scary, or it is to me… less so now that ten years ago, but it is still worrying – a little.
I think that the best way around this is to use social media. Express yourself on Facebook, Twitter or whatever you like, and write articles for your blog (start one). People will criticise you, mock you, question you, and some might even agree with you or even praise you. You will learn to ride with the punches and enjoy the non-criticism.
Tip Four:
You will probably be your own editor, proofreader, researcher publisher and promoter. That’s a lot of hats, but it means that whatever gets to market is your responsibility. It’s all yours… you have no-one to blame. If you spell February throughout your book as ‘Febuary’, someone will pick it up and mock you for the mistake. As common as it is, you are not allowed to make it. I was once asked to proofread a book by an acquaintance. It was humorous and well written, but the basic premise was the Celts versus the English. The problem was that he thought that the Welsh were basically English, not Celtic.
When I enlightened him, he scrapped the book, wasting nine months of work. And why? Because he hadn’t done ten minutes of research.
You will need to get facts right, and spelling and grammar are facts, whether you like it or not. The way to get around this is to read a lot and pay attention to what you read. Become a master craftsperson, don’t settle for remaining an apprentice. After all, books cost roughly the same whether the writer is famous or not, so would you expect a reader to want a well-written, professional-looking book, or your effort that is shot full of holes? Would you employ a carpenter who used second-hand, bent nails and a hammer from The Cheap Shop?
Tip Five:
Be yourself, I am a Welsh writer, and write about what you are passionate about. Yes, there are authors, mostly historical writers, who will choose someone from history, research that person and then write a biography, but that is what they like doing. However, most novelists write fiction. I do, but there is always some truth in my novels, and I usually wrap in some factual events.
Don’t worry about what other people think. They will either love you or hate you. Either way, they won’t affect your life. So just do what makes you happy, as long as what you write can’t be ridiculed for inaccuracy. I don’t mean political or religious bias, you’re allowed that, but many facts are indisputable, so don’t make mistakes with them.
If you don’t already know what your style, genre or voice are, hopefully, you will discover them. It is quite important. Especially if you want to attract an agent and a publisher. Most writers struggle with this, but reading, writing and ‘publishing’ your work will help you discover them. Reading widely, especially, helps you develop your own style and voice as a writer. You should read fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and plays. You should also read magazines, newspapers, blogs, and websites. This gives you an idea of what other people are doing with language.
Welsh Writer
I write because I love words. I love to follow an idea. They’re my lifeblood. I like to learn, so research is a pleasure for me. I write for myself, and for others. I write to share my thoughts and feelings. I write to entertain, and to educate. I write to inspire, and to motivate. I write to contemplate, and to understand. I write to connect, and to communicate. I write to create, and to discover. I write to live, and to learn. I write to laugh, and to cry. I write, because many people don’t listen.
Owen Jones, from South Wales, came to writing novels late in life, but has been writing since 2004. He published his first book, Daddy’s Hobby from the series Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl in Pattaya in 2012 Many of the novels he has written have an element of the supernatural and paranormal about them, although his first did not. Owen Jones grew up in a family of Spiritualists, where the subjects of reincarnation, ghosts and the Afterlife were normal topics of daily conversation.
Bibliography
Owen Jones has written more than fifty books of fiction on subjects ranging from ghosts, Alien Intervention, and UFO’s to witchcraft, the occult and Life after Death. He also writes for websites and blogs, and his books have been translated into many languages – about thirty-six, so far.
He also writes fiction without the supernatural element, such as the two biographical series Behind The Smile, and Tiger Lily of Bangkok, the spy-thriller Andropov’s Cuckoo, and the police/military drama Dead Centre.
His first book was published in 2012, and he went on to write more than fifty-odd others in following ten years, the number of which has been multiplied many times over in narration and translation. In fact, he now has more than 1,000 books bearing his name registered in the British Library. In addition to writing books, he also produces podcasts.
Who Is Owen Jones?
He was born in 1954 and grew up in Barry, just outside Wales’ capital city, Cardiff. He attended the Colcot Primary School, High Street Junior School and Barry Comprehensive, until leaving Barry for university in Portsmouth, where he studied Russian. It was his sixth language after English, Welsh, French , German and Latin. He studied in Leningrad and Kalinin (Moscow) while at university, and later taught himself Dutch while living there. Owen has travelled extensively, living, working and studying in several countries. He describes himself as a linguist and writer.
What Does His Work Involve?
His work involves writing short stories, novels, and non-fiction books. Besides the novels, he has written a series of How to… manuals. The latest, How to Take Care of a Pet Rabbit, was published in late 2022. It is the 126th in the series. These days, he is still writing novels, but a lot of his time is taken up with the creation and organisation of the translation and narration of his existing work.
Why Should I Read Owen Jones Books?
If you enjoy reading about the ‘occult’ – especially the ‘white’ side of it, then you will love Owen Jones’ books. They contain elements of the supernatural and paranormal, and he often uses real life events to illustrate his points. His background in Spiritualism, with a father who was a Healer and clairvoyant, and a mother who admitted to being a White Witch, ensures that his approach to these subjects is not ‘just made up’. Whatever your beliefs, Owen Jones’ stories do accurately reflect the credo of his family and most of their friends in (South) Wales, which has long had the reputation for being home to Druids, witches and wizards.
The Latest on Owen Jones
These days Owen Jones lives with his wife in her remote farming village in northern Thailand, where he is learning Thai, since no-one else there speaks English except his wife. However, we suspect that he would have started learning it anyway. It’s just in his nature. Here are a few quotes that you might like:
‘Born in The Land of Song,
Living in The Land of Smiles’.
Owen Jones
‘I write about what I see… or think I see… or dream, and, in the end, it’s all the same really’.
Owen Jones
‘I do not seek to walk in the footsteps of the wise people of old.
I seek what they sought’.
Matsuo Basho
Further Reading
If you want to read more before taking the plunge, you are already at the right place (or you need to go to our blog). This blog contains hundreds of links to Owen Jones books in all their translations, narrations and formats.
If you use our fresh, niche PLR ebooks for authors, writers and bloggers, you’ll be able to promote your business on steroids, or be able to rapidly create a new one! This is a great way to earn extra money while you’re at home. All you need is a computer and Internet access. You can be use them to create extra cash in the short-term while you build up your portfolio of books and articles.
PLR Ebooks.
PLR stands for Private Label Rights. These PLR ebooks have been written by someone else, but you can use them under your own brand name to promote your own business interests. They’re perfect for creating your own product line, building a passive income stream or promoting your own books, novels or business. No matter what that business is – writing, accountancy, corner shop, affiliateships, flower arranging, dog-walking – anything! You only need to pick the PLR ebook that is relevant to your business and use the articles it contains to promote your own business on and off-line. Do you need articles in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese…Russian? No problem, they are available too!
There’s no shortage of PLR ebooks on this site, and they are all fresh, original, and available in languages other than English too. In fact, there are 126 different titles available in English alone, plus about 500 in other languages. If you’re looking for something new, check out our lists, because they are growing every week.
PLR Ebooks for Business.
You don’t need any special skills to use them. All the heavy lifting – the research and writing – has already been done. You only need a computer and Internet access. These books are perfect for authors, bloggers, and other writers who want to make money online. They’re also great for people who want to start their own businesses.
Here’s how it works…
All you need to do is choose a PLR ebook that has articles relevant to your (intended) business or product, and use them to create a blog or website, or add them to your existing online publication. It is always best to tweak them a little to be arrow-targeted to your own business. However it’s as easy as that. For example, you would probably want to add a line mentioning your name, your company name, the product and your address. If the article says ‘black leather chair’, you might want to change that to ‘black, white or brown leather chair’. Simple alterations like that.
You just find a great topic (or topics) that you think will make money. Then you buy the rights to publish the ebook of articles as your own. Then, you get to keep 100% of the profits from every sale made from your promo.
Extra Income.
If you’re looking for a new source of income, we’ve got some great ideas for you. Whether you’re looking for something to help you earn extra cash while you sleep, or you just want to build a passive income stream, there’s no shortage of ways to make money online.
The best part is that you can start making sales right away. There’s no waiting around for a writer to produce a book for you, and you don’t have to write your own!
PLR Ebooks for Authors, Writers, and Bloggers.
We have already compiled a list of our favourite PLR ebooks for authors, writers, and bloggers. These books are ready to go to work for you as soon as you publish them. They’re written by a professional author who understands how to research a topic, and write quality content that will attract readers.
The PLR Ebook Listings – PLR stands for Private Label Rights – on our blog were all written by the professional novelist Owen Jones. PLR means that you can sell someone else’s product as if it were yours. In other words, you can create an ebook or course and sell it under your own name.
PLR EBOOKS
Our PLR ebooks contain between eleven and twenty 500-word targetted articles on one particular niche subject. Take a look, there are 126 of them so far on a wide range of topics. Look in the title bar to visit the PLR ebook listings. Many of these 126 ebooks have also been translated (and some narrated). Using these ebooks is a great way to make money online! It will save you scores of hours in research or hundreds of dollars having new articles written from scratch.
Making New Products and Money Online
You can use the niche articles to build your list, promote your business, generate leads or give yourself a holiday from writing content. You could also use them to create a new website or course. If you’re looking for ways to make money online, then you should consider using PLR ebooks. There are plenty of people who would love to use or even buy the products you can make with them! So, why not peruse the PLR ebook listings now, and let them do the heavy lifting for you?
Creating a Blog from PLR Ebooks
These days, creating niche websites or blogs in order to sell products and information is one of the most popular ways of making money online. One of the easiest ways to do this is by choosing your niche, say Skin Care or Remote-Controlled Vehicles, buying an ebook of targeted niche articles and creating your own blog. Then you look for affiliate programmes and integrate the into your blog to make commission on sales. The whole process can be completed in hours! Furthermore, these website or blogs are online publications that you that you have created yourself using PLR and operate under your own name. It’s up to you, they can be on any subject from how-to guides to lists of tips and tricks to physical products like make-up.
Choose a topic that interests you.
If you’re interested in writing about something you love, then you’ll likely enjoy writing about it more than writing about something you hate. You might even find that you learn new things along the way. In fact, I can guarantee it! The material fro the PLR ebook listings will teach you things you didn’t already know, but it will also spur you on to find out more.
Find a good author who has a good track record
This is one of the keys to success. You have to be able to trust the author to have done his or her research thoroughly, and not to have oversold the niche ebook. Owen Jones has written over fifty novels. He enjoys researching and he enjoys writing about topics related to what you want to write about. Part of his research is to seek out popular topics. Not only that though, his philosophy is not to oversell the ebooks. So, just take a look at his work, read some of his stuff, and tell me if I’m wrong.
If you find that he has made a good job of the books in the PLR ebook listings, you should be able to use some of them. That saves you from having to struggle to reinvent the wheel! 🙂
In this article, we’ll show you how to write your first book as an indie author based on the first-hand knowledge of Owen Jones, the indie author of 50+ novels and 125 manuals in English over the last twelve years.
Writing your first book as an indie author is a great way to share your knowledge and experience with others. It’s also a good way to earn some money. Whether you earn more if you’re self-published or not is difficult to say. However, this guide will teach you how to start writing your first book today.
Fiction or Non-fiction.
The first consideration is whether it is your intention is to write fiction of non-fiction. Perhaps you already have an idea for a gripping novel, or a non-fiction topic that fascinates you. If you don’t already have an idea for a novel, which can also be non-fiction of course, it is difficult to just invent one on the spot. Unless, perhaps you go for the life and times of a local celebrity past or present.
Choose Your First Book as an Indie Author
However, if you love what you do, then you might enjoy writing about it. Furthermore, if you enjoy writing about something, the chances are that you’ll be happy about researching and learning more about it every day. So, choose a topic that interests you, and you’ll find yourself naturally gravitating toward it. Like ‘Making Wine from the Grapes In the Garden’.
To Plan Or Not To Plan?
Or in writers’ technical terms, are you a planner or a pantser? As in ‘flying by the seat of…’ I personally do a bit of both, however, I plan less in a novel that I do for a manual. After all, a manual is factual, so in our example, if you forget to talk about feeding your grapes it’s a pretty serious omission, but if I forget to tell you something about a character in a novel, the chances are that you’ll never know about it. Still, before I start to write a book, I think about it for a few days and write down all relevant thoughts. With my novels, I usually know where I want to start and where I want to finish, but I’m not sure how to get there. It’s a lot like being in Cardiff and wanting to drive to Portsmouth with time being unimportant. You put those two points into a route planner and you get various routes. The way points are your initial chapter headings.
Start Writing!
So, I now have my starting point, a few cities along the way and my destination, but that doesn’t mean that I have to go that way when I get into my car. I may have to divert because of roadworks, or I may fancy stopping off of in a pretty little village for lunch. It is the same with a work of fiction for me. Sometimes, the final destination changes too! And titles change all the time, especially if your characters talk to you as mine do.
How Long Is The Journey?
A popular saying amongst writers is that the book is finished when the story is over, but it’s not always as simple as that. In Daddy’s Hobby (above), the protagonist, Lek, would not stop talking to me…telling me what to write and how to say it. It was my first novel, but I had done some research and it told me that a first novel should not be much more than 100,000 words. I tried to stop several ties, but Lek would not keep quiet. When I got to 112,000 I just went on strike. However, she still kept talking to me, so I started a sequel. By the way, that series ran to over 800,000 words in seven volumes! It is easier with non-fiction. When you have told the person’s factual story, or you have explained how to grow grapes and turn them into wine, the book is over.
Editing, Proofreading, Formatting and the Cover.
Now, you have a different set of decisions to make. Do you edit, proofread, format and publish the book yourself or farm it out? A lot of indie authors find this the boring bit, although there is worse to come, more on which later. I do it all myself, but it is not so easy. The way I look at it though is that it is better to discover your weaknesses and learn from your mistakes. I have learned that if I read through it immediately, I will miss most of my typos. It is a common phenomenon. Your brain remembers what it wanted to write, and that is what you see – even in a 100k-word novel! It is quite amazing So, I wait a fortnight, but during that time, I design the book cover in my head, and write a title, subtitle, and description (blurb) for the book. Give your thoughts on the cover to a professional cover designer and let them get on with that, while you write, rewrite and perfect the blurb. If you have any of the fortnight left, create an author’s blog, and write as many different draft Tweets as you can.
Marketing Your First Book as an Indie Author
There are many, many opinions on this topic. Some say to start marketing as soon as you start writing, if not before! So, their theory is that you explain the journey, a sort of running commentary, as your book progresses. Some actually tell the (bones of) the story too. Others just talk about the nuts and bolts of writing or / and the emotions that it generates. I usually start my promo in the two weeks before editing starts.
TIP: as I write, I might mention something I am not sure about, say the date of a famous battle. I mark these uncertainties with ***, so I know to check them on the edit.
My routine is to start sending out Tweets and other promo material to social media now. I combine the editing and formatting and read through my book twice, which often takes a week. Then, I correct every mistake that I see as soon as I see it, and I eliminate the ***’s. Then, I scan the book fairly quickly to see if the formatting is regular. I find that this is more important than getting it ‘right’.
H1 for the title; H2 for chapter titles; all chapters start on a new right-hand page, etc, etc. Then, I do a search the text for *** and eliminate any that remain.
Finally, I read through it again slowly for the last time. Everything has to be perfect in my eyes now, because that is it. Many authors will then send the completed product to beta readers, friends and family, who will point out even more errors. This can be embarrassing, but not as much as if you publish with them in the book.
Publishing Your First Book as an Indie Author
You don’t have a lot of options as an indie writer. You will become an indie publisher to, and the best way to start is at Amazon KDP. It’s pretty straight-forward to complete an ebook, paperback and hardback within a couple of hours. When you are done, your book will be published within 72 hours. Then real work of selling your first book as an indie author begins.
However, that is a whole other story – a sequel perhaps 🙂
You’ve written a great book. Now what? How do you market it so people buy it? In this article, we’ll show you how to go about selling self-published books. Book promotion is harder than writing for most indie authors.
Assuming that the book has been edited, the first step in selling self-published books is to check, improve, and rewrite the metadata. This means that the title, the subtitle and the book description must be the very best that you can imagine. It is possible to redo these details later, but it is far better to get them right the first time around.
After all, people do judge a book by its cover and the first words that a potential reader will see of yours are those on the book cover. When you are happy with the metadata, get a cover made up and publish your book, let’s say on Amazon KDP, and you are ready to go.
Now, you need to figure out how to promote it. This includes getting reviews on the Amazon bookstore, writing press releases, and, possibly, finding an agent, but that’s optional.
Create an Author Website.
If you’re self-publishing, you should consider creating an author website as part of your author platform. An author website will help you build credibility as an expert in your field. It’s also a place where you can share your work with others. If you create a blog, you can keep in touch with your readership by writing regular articles on aspects of your books and life. Blogger is free.
Build an Email List.
Once you’ve published your book, you need to start building an email list. This is one of the easiest ways to promote your book because you can send out emails to your subscribers at any time. There are free options available like Mailchimp.
Promote Your Book.
There are several different ways to promote your book. One of the simplest is to use social media. If you’re not using Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, etc., then you should be. These sites allow you to easily share links to your book and blog with your followers.
Sell Books Directly.
Another option is to sell your book directly through Amazon KDP. This is an easy way to reach a large number of potential buyers at once. However, there are some drawbacks to selling your books directly through Amazon. First, you must pay a fee to list your print book. Second, you must wait until your book sells enough copies to qualify for free shipping. Finally, you must keep track of inventory yourself. You could buy, say, twenty author copies at a time from Amazon, and sell them signed through your blog, but then there’s shipping to take care of too.
Special Offers.
Many publishers and aggregators, such as Amazon and Smashwords make it easy to make promotional offers with discount coupons or time sensitive price reductions. These special offers often work well to boost sales just before the summer and Christmas holidays. You can also run competitions, raffles and give-aways.
Grow Your Audience.
This takes time and patience. Some people have a gift for self-publicity, but most find it difficult. You can join blog tours, host virtual book reading parties. Give away book markers, pencils and keyrings, all bearing your contact details. You will need to write articles for your blog, and post regularly on social media. You could also publish press releases, contact your local paper and ask your local library to buy a copy. A sequel often helps in selling self-published books too. Readers like box sets and series.
Learning how to sell books as an author is one of the most difficult things you’ll ever do. It is far more difficult that actually writing a book. However, if you follow these tips, you’ll be on your way to success!
Authoring a book is a great way to share your knowledge and experience with others. It’s also a good way to earn extra money while doing something you love, but actually selling a self-published book can be frustrating and disappointing. Selling books is not like selling other items like, say, coffee pots. Books are cheap items, often costing less than a cup of coffee, although it takes fifteen to twenty minutes to drink a coffee, yet about a week to read a book! Nevertheless, readers demand excellence, and satisfaction on a higher level than they do from the coffee vendor!
Not only that, but readers think that they are taking a big risk with their $5 if they spend it on an unknown writer, so this is where you as an unknown indie-author have to come from.
Create A Good Cover Page.
You need to make sure that your cover page has a professional appearance. This means that the font should be large enough so that people can read it easily. Also, the background colour should match the theme of your book. If you’re writing a children’s book, then use bright colours. If you’re writing about politics, then choose a dark background. So, perhaps, if you are new to this, you could employ a skilled agency. The one that produced the cover above charged $38 for the design in four formats, which is a fantastic deal. (See below).
Write A Great Title.
Make sure that your title is catchy and interesting. It should also be short and concise for a novel, longer perhaps for non-fiction. Don’t write something like “How to sell books as an author.” Instead, try something like “The Ultimate Guide to Selling Your Book as an Author” or “Selling Your Book as an Author – Step by Step”. Novels will require a similar, but slightly different, approach. Look at other titles in your genre on a best selling list.
Find The Right Platform To Sell Books As An Author.
There are so many different platforms out there that it’s hard to choose just one. If you’re looking to make money online, Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) might be right for you. KDP allows authors to upload ebooks directly to Amazon’s website. Once uploaded, readers can purchase books through Amazon’s site. Some authors prefer to go for the scattergun approach and publish on all platforms. There is at least one publisher that will spread your book around all the famous companies and hundreds of unknown ones. (See below).
Build Relationships With Other Authors.
You should also consider building relationships with other authors who write similar books. This will help you find common ground and build trust between you and your potential customers. It’s also a good idea to join groups where people share ideas and experiences related to writing and publishing. Such groups are available on private websites, writers’ organisations, writers’ influence groups, and The British Library etc. Facebook, Reddit and Tik-Tok also host authors’ discussion pages.
Promote Yourself And Your Work.
If you’re looking to sell books as an author, you need to promote yourself and your work. Start by creating an author website that includes a biography, links to your books, your social media accounts, and contact information. Then, start sharing your story online through not only traditional social media like blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest, but also Tik-Tok, Inkitt and Wattpad.
Marketing Books
You will need to know something about marketing, promoting or advertising. It’s all the same really. If that is an alien concept to you, then you will need to realise soon that that is part and parcel of being an indie-writer. No-one is going to sell your books for you. Publishers and aggregators will put them on their virtual bookshelves, but no-one will know that they are there unless you – yes, you! – tell them. You can employ people to help you, but it is hard to know who is a honest and who is not; who knows the job, and who doesn’t.
I think that the correct ratio of writing to promoting is 3:4, but I have a lot of books to promote and have been doing it for more than a decade. If you have only one, or two books, perhaps you will get away with 2:5. Although, that depends on how much you know about marketing. Perhaps, 3:4 is still right, until you you know more about how to sell your book(s).
Sell Books as an Author!
Learning how to sell books as an author is a very difficult journey. It can seem soul-destroying, but you have to take comfort from every little success. If you are lucky, you will meet some fantastically interesting people, and you will receive the snippets of praise from readers that keep an author going.
In order to rank higher on Google, you must optimize your content. In this article, you will learn how to rewrite PLR content to create unique engaging articles.
First things first, what is PLR? PLR stands for Private Label Rights. It is content that another person has written, which you have the right to reuse. You may have been gifted the right, as in the case of free PLR, or you may have bought it. It is not permissible to copy an article just because you like it. This is intellectual property theft at worst and plagiarism at best and search engines will penalise your website or blog for using it. They will also penalise you for just pasting PLR onto your site whether you have the right to or not. This is multiple use content and is deemed to add little to no value to the user’s experience, because it is available elsewhere. So where do you go from here?
Choosing The Right Content
Obviously, one, if not the only, solution is to rewrite the PLR content in your own words. Rewriting PLR articles is an easy way to improve your rankings in search engines. It will also give you more flexibility when creating new content for your site. You would be forgiven for wondering what the point of acquiring PLR is, if you have to rewrite it yourself anyway. It is important to realise that free PLR on a popular subject has probably been rewritten, at least to some extent, hundreds, or perhaps, thousands of times. How many variations is it possible to derive from one 500-word article? OK, an almost infinite number is probably the correct answer, but a powerful analyst like Google would see through your content. So, my advice is never to use free PLR unless it is on an obscure topic. Always buy from a reputable source, because then you know that the writer has researched the topic, and not sold too many copies. I also recommend that you buy a bundle of targeted or niche articles on one topic. It offers more choice, more ideas and more opportunity.
Find Out Which Keywords You Should Be Targeting.
If you’re looking to write original content for your website, then you need to find out what keywords you should be targeting. This means finding out what people are searching for online and writing content based on those searches. You can use tools such as SEMrush to help you with this process. It will show you what keywords people are using when they search for certain topics. Once you know what words people are typing into Google, you can start creating unique content that stands out from the crowd. Find your ideal content by using your chosen keywords or key phrases. So, enter something like “PLR on yellow teeth” into a search engine, if that is your chosen topic. Purchase your bundle, and select an article to rewrite.
Write Unique Articles That Stand Out From The Crowd.
Read, re-read, and re-read that article until you understand it thoroughly, then I would start by bracketing off the existing headline and writing your own. You can change the title at the end, if you like. Something might come to you. Putting the title, and all subtitles, in brackets will remind you that they are not yours. You will need to create headlines that grab attention. If you write headlines that grab attention, then you’ll naturally attract more readers. This means that you’re going to get more views, shares, likes, comments, and subscribers.
Rewriting Tips
Many re-writers (and translators) create a blank paragraph above the one they are working on. The trend these days, is to keep the paragraphs and sentences short. Other tips include not using the same words in the same place as in the original and definitely replacing word pairs or phrases. It is difficult to edit technical or medical terms, but some alterations are usually possible and there are often British and American spellings (but stick to one or the other in each article). It is useful to use the technical term only once and then replace it with terms in common usage like ‘lumbago: backache, back pain, lower back pain’. Good source PLR makes a big difference, so buy quality PLR. It spawns ideas, cuts down on research and provides tramlines to guide you in the creation of exclusive content containing engaging information. Another point, is that good PLR in English is fantastic for those whose other tongue is not English. PLR gets a bad press because lazy people misuse it. However, in the right hands, it can be used successfully to publish a flood of high quality, targeted niche article content for your online publication fairly quickly, which will help you gain traffic and kudos, enabling you to become more successful in affiliate marketing.
Silly, slightly off-topic answers are a strong hint that you are writing to an ACX bot!
In case you haven’t read the previous article on my recent experience with ACX, I’ll give you a brief resume before talking about how to spot an ACX bot.
ACX accused me of fraudulent audiobook sales in June last year. They don’t discuss it with you, or even give you an opportunity to ask questions, explain, or even apologise. You are guilty and you are scum.
End of story.
Fraudulent Claims of Fraudulent Sales?
Well, I hoped that it was, anyway. Then a few days ago, almost exactly a year later, I received an email from Audible saying that 12 of my audiobooks had shown traits of further fraudulent sales. They actually showed me the list, which really surprised me. However, I have never promoted eight of those twelve ever, because they were volumes 16-23 in a series and authors always promote the first three or five even. I want readers to start my series on volume one, not volume 18! It makes obvious sense, right?
However, the same person had narrated all twelve of the books.
So, having been told that my account was to be closed, I wrote to the 124 narrators of my 174 audiobooks using the ACX message board.
ACX Bot
The next day, I received a very shirty letter from a DEBRA from ACX. It was very long-winded, and slightly off-topic, but basically it told me in dodgy legalese about the consequences that I could face, if I continued to threaten ‘my narrators’.
I asked ACX/Audible to show me the threats, but am still awaiting a reply after two months. That is typical ACX/Audible high-handedness. All I did was inform the narrators that the books that they had worked so hard on would disappear in a puff of wind when my account was eventually closed.
Many contacted me.
So did Debra.
However, not with a reply to my previous question, but with even more ludicrous threats. I called her out again , but the cycle repeated… four times in all!
Then the penny dropped. Debra could not read or react in a human manner because ‘she’ is an ACX bot.
On the fifth stupid email, I wrote only that discussing such matters with ACX bots no longer interested me. That was two months ago and I have not heard from Debra since.
I can imagine a group of spotty, spineless, youths in Silicone Valley having a great laugh at my expense for trying to discuss any serious topic with an ACX bot. However, emails containing stodgy, slightly off-topic, seemingly automated text littered with dodgy legalese that do not answer concerns that you have previously brought up are examples of how I think that you can work out how to spot an ACX bot.
I’m sorry if I’m boring you, my regular readers, but I currently have a Book Cover Obsession.
As you probably know, I wasn’t like this even a couple of months ago, but that is a sign of how rapidly these things can get a hold of you. Or, me at any rate.
In my defence, book covers are extremely important to a writer, but I just hadn’t realised how much before.
My Book Covers
As people, we are admonished not to judge a book by its cover, but the plain fact is that we all do that several times a day. So, I am getting to grips with this now, and am commissioning 2-3 covers a month. Today, I was trying to decide which the next two should be, and I noticed that my two worst selling books have black covers! Well, have black as the predominant colour (or shade, for the pedants).
Obsession
I hadn’t realised that before, but why hadn’t I? Probably, because I made them, and think that they fit the story perfectly. However, when you analyse it, I know the story, but a potential reader does not! It could be off-putting, I suppose. It was amateurish, but now I a using professional book cover designers.
Someone said that black on the cover is acceptable, if there is a death in the story. Well, there is, but the book browser doesn’t know that. I think that people can get too bogged down in symbolism. Another person Tweeted that two bullet holes on the cover of a murder mystery might signify that it is the second volume… Really? My guess would have been that the shooter was a poor shot.
Interpretation
Not only that, but not everyone takes the same thing home from reading the same book. I have talked to many readers over the last ten years who loved a book of mine, but had a totally different take on what it was about… and their interpretation was just as valid as mine.
There is one fantastic reviewer who actually taught me what two of y books were really about! How about that?
It’s why I love reviews. I often learn things about my books that I didn’t know, and I mean that quite literally. However, when will this book cover obsession pass? I don’t know… when all my novels have better cloths, I suppose.
I have always thought that my book cover sense was pretty good. Why would I think that? Well, I have been reading all sorts of books for all sorts of reasons for about sixty-five years, and I have published more than eight hundred books over the last twelve years.
It amounts to a lot of experience, I think you’ll agree.
However, book sales have been dropping off this year, and most pro’s will advise an author to look to his or her book covers in such a situation, since people do judge a book by its cover despite the sages’ clear advice.
I checked my top sellers and found nothing wanting. Still, it is difficult to be objective about one’s own work, so I took them to websites where people will evaluate them.
Book Cover Evaluation Sites
There is a Facebook Group called: ‘Does My Book Cover Suck’.
Nobody liked any of my top three covers! It was like a punch in the face 🙁 My pride and joy was being rubbished, and what was almost as bad, I could see what my critics were talking about, once the problems had been pointed out to me.
Now, I have eight hundred book covers, as I said above, so I realised that I had a very big, and potentially, very expensive problem.
Book Cover Sense
After a few beers of commiseration with my book cover sense, or during them, actually, I set to work on a fix. Eight hundred times any figure is a lot of money, so I first went to Fiverr and the like. However, you won’t find anything book-related there for $5 any more. Book covers were averaging $35-$60, so I gave that up.
QR link to book cover designers
To cut a long story short, I found a firm that surpassed my expectations and came in at a very reasonable price. Furthermore, people, even total strangers, have started complimenting my covers again.
The book cover above is one that came from there.
Here is my link to their site (the QR code leads there too).
Go check your book cover sense, and take a look at some of their off-the-peg designs! Prices start at $10! Or have one totally unique, tailor-made for your book
My blog stats for last month were quite unusual, but then so, perhaps, was my own personal activity on it I will explain.
For the first time ever, that is in more than twenty years, my blog received more visitors from the UK than from the USA! For the first three weeks, up to three times more. By the fourth week, that had evened out to about 50k from each country and by the month’s end, America was just in front.
Years ago, China was always in the top five, but nowadays, it rarely ranks in the top ten. Third and fourth are Germany and The Czech Republic, which is normal, although the Czech Republic is so small compared with the other top three that it is surprising really.
Fifth and sixth are the rivals Ukraine and Russia, but again, the difference in populations is enormous. Far behind come France, Canada, Spain and Australia.
My blog is hosted in the USA, and where it is hosted has a big effect on the number of visitors and where they come from. Britain is about a fifth the size of the USA, so how could it get more visitors in three weeks? In fact, the total number of visitors was up by 10%. My content is universal, not aimed at any country.
Odd Blog Stats
Another strange fact is that AwStats reports my blog having received 135k pageviews, but Google says that there were only about 500.
Can anyone answer that one for me, please?
So, what have I been doing that could have influenced the blog statistics so much?
Well, I spent most of the month updating book pages with new covers and more relevant meta descriptions. That’s all. I suppose I changed about thirty pages, but I can’t for the life of me see why changing 30/1700 pages would have that affect on my blog stats. Can you?
