Just Books

Megan Publishing Services - MPS - Logo

A piece of history...

My (step) father, Owen Jones, created this blog, Megan Publishing Services, in 2013. It was shortly after he had written the first couple of volumes of The Megan Series, and it was meant as a vehicle for that series alone. The logo is the cartoon characterisation of the Megan in the series

He already had websites for his other books such as Behind The Smile and The Eternal Plan - Revealed and a personal catch- all called Welsh Products Online.

Megan Publishing Services

However, as his book real estate grew, and it happened very quickly, he decided to use the Megan blog to represent all his books. So, he rebranded it Megan Publishing Services.

Websites and blogs appertaining to specific series are now not being renewed when they expire. The rebranding of the blog / website has not seemed to matter. Well, to no-one except Facebook, which has labelled Megan The Misconception dot com as a spammer. It's unfathomable!

In fact, people seem to have taken the site and the series to their hearts, even though we have rebranded The Megan Series as The Psychic Megan Series. We did this because it is more evocative of what the theme of the series really is. Megan is, after all, a psychic teen.

In 2020, he handed this blog over to me so that he could concentrate on writing.

Search Terms for MPS

Another interesting fact is that the three most popular search terms used to find our blog in order of usage are:

1] megs publishing services

2] meg's publishing services

3] megan publishing services

People looking for us used the first search term eight times more than the third one! I am proud of that in a strange sort of way. I find it touching that people think of our blog in those endearing terms and, that the search engines accept the compliment.

Amazing, or what?

MPS and #MPS

When speaking about our blog, most people refer to it as MPS, but I have so far failed to make the search engines associate the acronym with us. A search on MPS comes up with boring ‘Members of Parliament’. Likewise, searching for #MPS on Twitter reveals posts about MP’s.

Still, I won’t stop trying to get this blog associated with MPS!

Publishing Services

I'll take this opportunity to explain briefly what Megan Publishing Services actually does. It has two aspects:

1] Readers: we are showcasing about 800 books on this site. Owen Jones has written fifty-three stories and 125 manuals. All of the stories, and some of the manuals have been translated and / or narrated making up the 800 books mentioned above. For example, the first volume of The Psychic Megan Series now exists in 34 languages.

2] Writers: except for the basic writing skills that one learns at school, Owen Jones learned and taught himself how to write books. How to get them translated, narrated and published, and most importantly, how to get them in front of readers who might want to buy them. He is willing to share that knowledge with other (would-be) authors. He is also offering the said 125 manuals as niche PLR articles for writers to use in their own online publications in several languages.

Onwards and Upwards! Megan Publishing Services and everyone who uses it!

Chalita

Tiger Lily of Bangkok ...

Owen Jones

A truly polyglot website!

The strength of this blog, Megan Publishing Services, is the number of other languages that my books are in on it. At least, that’s one of the ways that I see it. I have written fifty-odd novels and about a hundred and twenty-five other books, and people I have never met from lands far and wide have wanted to translate them. This represents a colossal amount of work, effort and collaboration from people right around the globe. I live in Thailand, but I have worked with narrators from Canada to Australia, Europe and the Americas. Then there are translators living from Peru to Mongolia, and most countries in between including all the larger European languages and several Asian and African ones too from Afrikaans to Russian.

At the time of writing, there are about seven hundred translations and narrations in about thirty-five other languages on the Megan Publishing Services blog.

Other Languages

Today, I added books translated into eight more languages new to the blog, namely: Czech, Chinese, Hungarian, Macedonian, Slovak, Telugu, Turkish and Urdu.

And I have more to add. Off the top of my head, I can say that I need to add: Hauza, Igbo, Mongolian, Northern and Southern Soto, and Zulu.

Sadly, no one has offered to translate a book into my own language, Welsh, yet. I’m working on it though. To clarify, I come from Wales, but write in English.

When I have posted a page for all of the other languages that my books exist in, I will add links to each of the books and, possibly, the translators and narrators, so that readers and listeners can get to know the better. I hope that we can help them along in their careers.

Support Narrators and Translators

So,if you are not a native English-speaker, please, follow the link below to see whether I have anything in your language, and know that if you actually buy a book, you will be encouraging the narrators, translators and me to keep this project going.

Thanks to all who have contributed foreign translations, and to all of you who have bought them!

The link to the list of other languages covered so far is: Languages on MPS

Best wishes,

Owen

Tiger Lily of Bangkok Series - When The Seeds of Wrath Blossom!

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl

Sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Google Adsense

The free money machine!

When I started thinking of applying for Google AdSense, this blog was receiving 10,000 unique visitors per month, who visited 30,000 times and read 250,000 pages. Google AdSense's online earnings calculator suggested that those statistics should earn me about $1,000 a month.

That is not to be sniffed at, so I applied, and was granted a license to show Google Ads for AdSense.

However, it was a steep learning curve for me, and there was Covid, and I was getting into commissioning audiobooks from Dad's novels. The audiobooks were going really well, and so Google's AdSense took a back seat, along with the blog in general.

Looking back on it, that was a silly, naive move, since it had taken Dad more than ten years to build up the blog, and I threw away a lot of that effort chasing money.

Anyway, this year I have been concentrating on AdSense, but I have problems. To make Adsense work, you need an active website. The more active the better!

Google Tools

I use Awestats in cPanel for my statistics, as Dad did before for the figures above. It is depressing. I now receive 5,000 uniques (unique visitors), who make 15,000 visits and read 130,000 pages. So, about half of what used to happen.

Right?

Google Adsense

So, why does Google AdSense and Google Analytics report only 300 pageviews a month? Fifty times less?

Last year, the blog earned $2.10 all year. With all my extra work this year, I have earned 30c a month!

How can that be?

If 5,000 visitors are reading 130,000 pages, how can they only be clicking two or three times a month?

I can think of only two possible reasons.

* Google AdSense is not being displayed on all the visible pages

* Awestats is reporting falsely.

What do you think?

I blame Google AdSense :-) (not really).

Update March 2023: A high percentage of the pages on this blog were not being crawled. I think that the reason for this was a blog theme we used to use which would create 'pages' out of Twitter posts, categories and tags. It looked great having thousands of pages, but Google was not fooled because many of them had only ten words or less on them. We are now rooting those pages out and deleting them.

A worrying sign today, we had 6% more impressions than 28 days ago, and 7% more clicks, but the pay rate for them was $0.00 That doesn't look good, does it?

Tiger Lily of Bangkok Series - When The Seeds of Wrath Blossom!

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl

Sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Spontaneous Parties

Just one over the eight...

There is election fever in the air in our village, which often results in more than the usual amount of exuberance, drinking and spontaneous parties. I’m not sure what the election is for, and none of my falang friends is aware of any forthcoming election. However, my wife and her close friends are all interested in local politics. So if they are talking about an election, then something is going on, even if it is some way off. They are keeping me in the dark again... like a mushroom.

My wife and I were having a quiet drink together this evening. It rarely happens more than once a week, when a pickup suddenly arrived across the road.

The Spontaneous Party is on!

The doors flew open and a mind-numbing roar of music hit us.

Now, I am not opposed to loud music per se, I am an old hippy after all. However, my first reaction was to think that it was ridiculously loud for in the middle of our quiet village at 21:00.

Then, I remembered that loud music and parties are permissible until midnight, and who am I to complain about people enjoying themselves?

No Complaints!

My focus switched to how so much noise, sorry, volume or decibels could come from a car. It is deafening even in the open space of the village centre.

Two hours later, and not one complaint!

Not only that, but we have long since decamped from the 'quiet place" where we were sitting to the restaurant opposite where the music is :-). There is a spontaneous party in the making, and the evening has just become more interesting. My wife and her friends are talking feverishly... about elections? Could be, but they are not telling me, and I don’t really have to know anyway. It strikes me that 'The Spontaneous Party' would be a good name for a political party.

I was going to go home and work on my books, but then I have always been a sucker for spontaneous parties... and so has my wife :-), so I guess we’ll just stay here until midnight.

Tiger Lily of Bangkok Series - When The Seeds of Wrath Blossom!

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl

Sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

The silent killer...

High Blood Pressure

My GP diagnosed me with high blood pressure, which is technically known as hypertension, and more sinisterly nicknamed ‘The Silent Killer’, twenty-seven years ago when I was forty. My doctor discovered it during a routine check up, which I often used to miss. (Therefore, I recommend that you make a point of checking your blood pressure regularly). I was prescribed Atenolol 50 and told to take one a day. My blood pressure dropped to 140/80 and stabilised. My doctor was happy with that a month later, and we never discussed the matter again.

Twenty-five years later, I was back in my home town from my travels in Asia, and started experiencing an unusual, quite severe, shortage of breath and swollen ankles, so I went to the doctor. She sent me to a cardiologist, and he asked who had prescribed me Atenolol. I told him the story, and asked why. His reply astounded me.

Atenolol

“How many alternative high blood pressure tablets did you try?” he asked.

“None,” said I, “why?”

"Cardiologists consider Atenolol to be the last resort in a doctor’s armoury in the battle against hypertension," he explained, "because it has several unpleasant side-effects. It is akin to cracking a nut with a sledgehammer, although it rarely does not work on reducing hypertension".

“It is the sign of an exasperated, or a lazy, doctor,” he said tutting. “You have a slow heart beat, called bradycardia, so Atenolol would have killed you soon. You are a very lucky man”.

I guess he was saying that my old GP had been a lazy doctor.

Apparently, my younger, healthy body could handle the rough Atenolol, but my ageing, frailer body could not.

Anyway, we tried three or four other high blood pressure tablets and settled on Ramapril 5mg. My swollen ankle problem and my shortage of breath slowly disappeared and are not a factor now, three years later.

High Blood Pressure Tablets

Over a few days following my visit to the cardiologist, I discussed the problem with some friends of my own age, and all of them knew of the Atenolol problem: “It’s well known round here!” they agreed.

Why am I telling you all this?

Well, yesterday, back in Asia, my wife was watching me take my blood pressure, and asked to have hers checked too (this is a very seldom occurrence, because she never wants to know if she is sick). Her readings were high, since these days many doctors, especially American ones, have set a target of 117/75 with a pulse of 60.

She went to the clinic today and her reading was still a little high.

They gave her... Atenolol 50, but told her to take a half tablet per day.

I hope that this was just an emergency measure to get her blood pressure down quickly, since she has to go back in thirty days for further assessment.

The morals, dear reader, are: check your blood pressure regularly, and request that your doctor reassesses your medication regularly too, because new, the pharmaceuticals release improved high blood pressure tablets from time to time!

Best wishes,

Owen

A man on a mission...

A man on a mission...

We refer to it as my village pub crawl because, about once a week, while trying to boost the number of steps I take in a seven-day period, I also stop in some of the shops along the way for a bottle of cold beer Chang. I say shops on purpose, because there are no pubs or hotels in our village.

In earlier times, I used to enjoy my stroll around the village once a week, normally on a Saturday, but what with Covid and an increased workload, that has reduced itself to at most once per month.

Today, I am especially on the look out for an electrical screwdriver. Small jobs are building up at home, and, it's always the same, isn't it, when you need something, you can't find it. Actually, I suspect that it has been loaned out and not returned, which is often the way of things.

Not that I have needed a screwdriver for at least six years :-) I did have one though, I used to have a pretty good set of basic tools, but they have all vanished.

Hence my walk-about today, or that is my excuse anyway.

Shop crawl

Ninety percent of the people in our village are farmers, or farm labourers. So, they are very practical people, but I don't think that that guarantees my finding a screwdriver here. It’s funny, now that I think of it. However, but the number one item on sale in this farming community is food. They have the best fresh food in the world at their fingertips, yet they hunger after Western junk food like crisps and sandwiches. Not that I consider all sandwiches junk food. However, Thai bread is dreadfully sweet and they stuff their sandwiches with sweet, sugary fillings. Thai food is fabulous, but they generally make a pig’s ear of copying the Western junk food that they see on TV.

Anyway, I have now checked out two shops so far, but there hasn't been a screwdriver in sight...

I will soldier on.

In the fourth shop, I strike it lucky! I find a box of six electronic, and a packet of three electrical screwdrivers for a total of £2.50. I’m happy with that, although the beer consumed on my village pub crawl came to £8.25 :-). Still, mission accomplished, although I will probably have to carry out the jobs tomorrow.

Best wishes,

Owen

Tiger Lily of Bangkok Series - When The Seeds of Wrath Blossom!

Daddy's Hobby - The Story of Lek, A Bar Girl

Sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Being savvy about bought writing...

Holidays on Pexels.com

First of all, I think that we had better agree on our terminology using the phrase 'travel plr ebook' as an example. PLR stands for 'private label rights', which I have always found confusing, but it is definitely not the same PLR as the British Library uses, which has to do with 'public lending rights'. Our term means that someone has written an article and is giving or selling you the right to use it. This right may be completely free of restrictions, or there may be exclusions to it.

So, a Travel PLR Ebook is generally considered to be a collection of related niche content articles. In the case of the niche content ebooks that I have put together (on this site), I have written all of the chapters in the books myself, and there are typically about 15 500-word pieces in each book.

It is important that the content of these books is 'fresh', that is, that it has not been overused. Cheap PLR articles are usually old, and search engines have seen them before, and so will mark them as duplicate content, penalising any website that uses them. This is why I always recommend rewriting niche PLR content a little, so that you know that it is original.

Let's look into how you might use a Travel PLR Ebook as an example.

Travel PLR

Travel is an unusually broad subject, so it would be very easy to find travel PLR articles. Let's say that you run a travel blog, whether it is full of your own experiences or it is an affiliate marketing site doesn't really matter. An active blog needs several new articles a week to keep the search engines happy, to hold or improve your Page rank. This is time-consuming, and there are periods when time may be short. Over the (school) holidays, over New Year, during sickness, for example. At these times, it is handy to have a batch of articles that you can turn to to plug the gap.

My travel PLR ebooks of, say, 15 niche PLR articles, would cover a lot of sick days, or give you a fortnight off over Christmas and the New Year. You could also use these travel PLR articles in newsletters, if you are concerned about only using guaranteed original material. They would be great for an affiliate marketing campaign, in which you are promoting holidays.

A travel PLR ebook of 15 niche, targeted articles, would also be enough to put up a website or blog quickly. You could use ten articles to populate the blog, and use five articles to promote it around social media! In a morning, you would have a fully-functioning Travel Blog that you could further improve later on at your leisure.

Many writers look down on PLR articles, but if used correctly travel PLR or a travel PLR ebook can be a boon for a travel business.

Check out these links (on this blog):

Megan's PLR ebook list: https://meganthemisconception.com/plr-index/

Megan's travel PLR ebooks: https://meganthemisconception.com/plr-ebooks/cars-transport-travel/

Suggestions for using niche PLR ebooks: https://meganthemisconception.com/category/uses-plr/

Regards,

Chalita

Heinz 57 Baby

A long-gone concept…

My brother, Roddy, was a Heinz 57 Baby. Do you have any idea what that means? Searching the Internet will not help you, and Google's results will be particularly disheartening. Google is not a real searcher of Truth any longer, it is a provider of shopping opportunities.

It is very sad.

So, getting back to my brother. He was born two and a half years after me in February 1957, and according to my Mother, who has long since passed away, there was a Heinz 57 competition, or reward, for any baby born on the 57th day of that year, which is obviously February 26th.

Heinz 57 Baby

My little brother Roddy appeared as if on queue and my Mother claimed his prize as a lucky baby. 

Well, that was 65 years ago. He died 43 years ago and our Mother died shortly before him, so I have no point of reference as to what Heinz awarded a Heinz Baby in those days.

I seem to remember that it was a year's worth of baby food, but 57 day's worth would make more sense. A tin a day, but that seems rather mean for a reward that can be awarded only once in a company's history.

If you have any information about the 1957 baby award, I'd love to read it. Please let us know using the comments section below.

As I said above, searching the Internet using the term "Heinz 57 Baby promotion" only revealed really boring adverts for Heinz baby food. You'd think that they would have more respect for their history than that, wouldn't you?

Heinz Food

I will never buy another Heinz 57 food product again.

Anyway, I remember my little brother Roddy winning a prize in the Heinz 57 Baby promotion, even if no-one at Heinz remembers, or cares, that the promotion ever took place. 

Happy Birthday, Rod!

Best wishes,

Owen

If you like vampire stories but are a bit bored with the old model, try this humorous, even funny vampire story set in a remote village.

The most famous Thai beach road...

A book featuring Beach Road Pattaya

Beach Road Pattaya is by far the most famous Thai beach road and is the busiest road in the city of Pattaya as far as tourists, pedestrians and vehicles are concerned. It is also the most scenic because Beach Road in Pattaya runs literally the width of the pavement from the golden sand of the clean beach and only metres from the sparkling blue sea. This is the largest of the beaches in Pattaya.

Beach Road begins at the entrance to Walking Street in the south of the city and continues in a gentle curve for approximately 2.8 kilometres before heading east away from the beach at the Dusit Thani Hotel and continuing a few hundred metres towards the Dolphin Roundabout in the south-east.

Having expressed the dimensions of Beach Road in that way, the flow of the one-way traffic is towards Walking Street. This makes sense because the southern end is less busy, and the action tends to be at the northern, more densely populated area.

Travelling along Beach Road in Pattaya

This is far from being a problem though, because of the Baht Bus service. A Baht Bus is an open sided pickup. The majority of them are privately owned, but city licensed, and charge just ten Baht for any length journey, which means that you can travel from your isolated hotel in the south, the full length of Beach Road to Walking Street and only pay ten Baht.

When you want to return the other way, you take a side-street at right angles to the beach, walk to the end, where you will come to Second Road and the traffic flows in the opposite direction.

Beach Road and Second Road

Between Beach Road and Second Road, there run dozens of side-streets, called soi, which contain most of the bars, of which there are many and various kinds. The nightlife of this Pattaya beach is legendary the world over with all kinds of bars ranging from Starbucks and Planet Hollywood to girly bar discos. There are also fantastic restaurants, especially seafood ones, along the front mostly near the centre of Beach Road, which is around Soi 7.

Must-see

If you want to get a flavour for this exciting beach in Thailand, try searching for: 'Youtube Pattaya Beach Road' and you will find many videos posted.

Beach Road Pattaya is a must-see for any visitor to the city, and a trip the full length of it on a Baht Bus is a must-do.

Best wishes,

Chalita.

Republishing Books

Being honest with yourself about your own books…

Today, some friends suggested that I should consider republishing books from my flagship series Behind The Smile. However, I find it almost impossible to contemplate.

That is a huge concept to get my head around.

It has produced most of my sales for the last decade!

Republishing

Their suggestion was made because we were talking about my book sales, which have been slowing down for about a year. So, they thought that it might be worth rebranding, and then republishing the books in this series.

I am not completely sure what they mean by that. I think that it probably has to do with altering the titles, the blurbs and the genre, and then encapsulating all that in new covers in order to make the series more selectable by a new readership. In fact, a large part of this proposed rebranding would be to create new covers to reflect the new genre.

On the face of it, I like the idea. But when you dig down into what republishing books entails, it involves a massive amount of time and work. After all, I have spent ten years building up a readership for the series as it is and looks now. It is recognisable as it is.

If I change everything, I will have to unpublish the existing series of seven volumes, thereby losing all possible sales on them, and republish the new ones... Effectively starting from scratch again.

Rebranding Books

It is a big gamble.

In an attempt to find out more, I did a search on ‘rebranding books’, and came up with several very interesting articles. These authors didn’t actually go the whole hog of ‘rebranding and then republishing books, but they talked about cover make-overs.

One article was about the legendary Dune by Frank Herbert. I think I remember rightly that it was first published in 1965. Anyway, the interesting bit is that the whole series of five books has had completely new covers every five years ever since! 

Rewriting?

Look the article up, it opened my eyes. I have always written and published books, slapped a cover on them and that was it. However, apparently cover design is also prey to fashion, which is very difficult to pin down, as we all know - look at clothing!

So, I will start with new covers, but I will keep rebranding and republishing open in my mind as an option.

What do readers think of this marketing tactic, and  have any authors who come here any experience with rebranding and/or republishing books?

Regards,

Owen

If you like vampire stories but are a bit bored with the old model, try this humorous, even funny vampire story set in a remote village.