Just Books

Judging a book by its cover...

Judging a book by its cover...

People say that one should never judge a book by its cover, but it is widely acknowledged that having a great book cover is the best way of selling books. It seems that people do not pay any heed the ancient advice.

To be fair to readers though, there isn’t a lot more to go on when one is standing in a bookshop with a choice of two novels in one’s hands. Otherwise, there is the title (and subtitle), the author’s name, but it could be an unknown, and the blurb, which could be the best piece of writing that the book contains!

Don’t laugh! It really could be... it could have been written by an expert for the author.

Why, only recently, Elon Musk admitted to doing exactly the same, and he is far from being the only one... very far!

I also recently saw a writer asking the question whether it was more important to have a good book cover or to have the book well edited. The overwhelming response on the forum was that if the cover is unappealing then no-one will ever know about the poor editing!

Most people judge by appearances in their everyday lives anyway, don’t they? Clothes, fruit, people... and books.

Once you realise that, it is obvious what you have to do to have a chance of selling books.

Book-selling Magnets

To this end, I have started to revamp some of my father's books... with his permission, of course. I have learned how to make fantastic-looking 3D covers, and even better posters incorporating them!

We are also looking at professional cover designers to see if one catches our eye.

Nevertheless, we are both very proud of the book selling magnets, that we call cards, and are confident that they will increase sales.

Here's hoping for a bigger share in the book selling market :-)

PS: If you are a writer and would like to see whether I can help you with a book-selling magnet card too, please get in touch using the form at the top of the page :)

Best wishes,

Chalita.

** Update ** If you are looking for a new cover for your book album or website/social media click the link below for a unique cover with unlimited updates for less than $40!

My Favourite Covers.

Daisy's Chain

When the property is there, but it's value is not being realised…

I know an author... Yes, all right, my father, Owen Jones, who has 1250 publications registered in his name on Amazon. Furthermore, they are all original books penned by him. However, he is not making a living from the books that he has created.

Many of his original works in English have been translated. Not only that, but all those books in English, and many other languages, exist as ebooks, paperbacks, audiobooks and even hardbacks.

I'll say it again: 1250 publications with his name on them to date!

However, they are earning next to nothing... a giant pizza a week. He is not really making a living from books. In fact, he was earning more from his first few books ten years ago, than he is from all these hundreds now.

Book Sales

This doesn't seem right to me. When I ask him about it, he says he likes writing and working with other writers both home and abroad. He suggests that he has probably fallen behind modern marketing methods.

I don't know whether that is true or whether his low sales are attributable to the global slowdown that is a result of Covid. Nevertheless, whatever the reason is, there has to be a way to improve his situation.

Anyway, I am determined to find out how we can rectify the situation. When we do, we are willing to share our findings.

Selling Books

So, are there other authors out there in the same boat? Is there anyone out there who knows how to cash in on all this intellectual property?

I'm looking for a marketing expert who is willing to help us for a fair, even generous, percentage of sales. Furthermore, if the scheme works for us, then I would gladly refer you to other writers.

Please contact me, if you want, using the form in the title bar.

Best wishes,

Chalita.

Daisy's Chain - set in the rich person's paradise of Marbella, Southern Spain

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Selling books

Don’t judge a book by its cover...

People say that one should never judge a book by its cover, how many times have you been given that advice? However, it is widely acknowledged that having a great book cover is the best way of selling books. It seems that people do not heed the ancient advice; and why should they? We judge each other by appearances, even first appearances, every day, so why wouldn’t this apply to every item we are considering, including books.

Only recently, Elon Musk admitted to doing exactly the same, and he is far from being the only one... very far! Not only that, but he is an intelligent person, who has demonstrated his ability in many business ventures such as PayPal, Tesla and Space X – household names!.

I also recently saw a writer asking the question whether it was more important to have a good book cover or to have the book well edited. The overwhelming response on the forum was that if the cover is unappealing then no-one will ever know about the poor editing!

It is simply just true... most people judge by appearances.

Selling Books

Once you realise that, it is obvious what you have to do to have a chance of selling books. To this end, I have started to revamp some of my father's books... with his permission, of course. I have learned how to make fantastic-looking 3D covers, and even better posters incorporating them!

We are both very proud of these book selling magnets, and are confident that they will increase sales.

Here's hoping for a bigger share in the book selling market :-)

PS: If you would like to see whether I can help you too, please get in touch either via the form in the title bar or by searching for my profile on this blog.

https://meganthemisconception.com/my-books/daisys-chain/

3D book cover card

Sales magnets...

My recent foray into creating 3D book covers has been an outstanding success, so this is just a quick update, and a pat on my back :-)

My colleague and father, Owen Jones, has been so astounded by his new artwork that he has said, to quote: " I have admitted elsewhere on this blog to having been distracted by short-term gains and destroying the foundations of my business. "One of the casualties, perhaps the most serious, has been my failure to keep up with modern trends in book covers, because people do judge a book by its cover! Just as the owner of a clothes shop would not dress the mannequins in the window only once in ten years, neither should an author set and forget his or her book covers.

"Chalita has opened my eyes to this, and it is now all too obvious. She has dragged my book covers from the Stone Age to the 22nd Century in just two days, and me along with them!"

OK, he is my Dad, but I agree with him :-)

3D Book Covers

He used to promote using his 2D book covers, well-designed though they were, and leave it at that.

The problem is, that that was good enough a couple of years ago, but it definitely is not now.

Nowadays, an author needs a 3D cover as an absolute minimum. Even better is a composite of the cover in several formats, and best of all.... that composite should be part of a collage, which we are calling a Sales Magnet Card (after the Twitter cards), or a Sales Magnet Flier.

If you don't know what I am taking about, then you are out of touch too, but look at the image at the top of this post for an example.

However, if you would like me to help you display your book covers to their full potential in a Sales Magnet Card, please get in touch via the form in the top menu bar (CONTACT US) or leave a comment below.

Best wishes,

Chalita

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Ex-pat Slang...

Mushrooms in Thailand

If you know any ex-pats who live in Thailand, you might sometimes hear them referring to themselves strangely as 'mushrooms'.

It means that they feel that they are being 'kept in the dark'... not told what is going on on a daily basis. You see, very few ex-pats in Thailand actually speak enough Thai to say more than 'Hello'. Thai is a very difficult language, even for a linguist like me, so the average Anglo- Saxon has little chance... especially the older ones. Anglo-Saxons are renowned for not learning foreign languages, but in the case of Thai, most ‘falang’, which basically means Caucasian, struggle with the language.

By the way, I am Welsh, a Celt, and we are taught two languages from a very early age, so that makes it a bit easier for us, but it is still hard. Thai bears no relevance whatsoever to any European language.

Mushrooms

Anyway, mushrooms... I too have experienced the mushroom effect, but most of the time welcome it, because I need time alone to be able to write my posts like this and books. However, what I really, really don't like is being left out of things without being asked.

For example, the day that I am writing this is St. Valentine's Day, but my wife is sitting with her friends and I am sitting alone.

This is not acceptable, but routinely passes as normal, leaving ex-pats who live in remote villages feeling lonely and ignored.

If it hadn't been for my book-writing, I would have left the village for the city years ago, because Thai women daren't leave their men alone, or like mushrooms in the dark there, because there are so many bars full of so many girls looking for a way out, and that usually means pairing up with a falang.

The Thai girl has the whip hand in her village, but the mushroom has it in the city.

Building an Author Platform

The Author's Ultimate Tool

Until about New Year 2020, I took care of my author platform assiduously. Decisions were always made with reference to it, and I pampered it with fresh content every single day.

I had all the social media sites too, but my pride and joy was my blog, which I had started in 2013, a year after I published my first book, because that already had its own website.

Anyway, I attacked the problem of not having an author platform with my usual zeal, and I was writing an article a day for the blog. That level of activity was bringing me in about 10,000 unique visitors per month, who made about 30,000 visits and read about 250,000 pages.

Every month...

My Author Platform

I was proud of it as I am a one-man band.

I could sell advertising space. In fact, people regularly approached me with offers without my having to advertise.

Then came the fateful date of January 2020.

I had a brainwave, put it into practice, and within months, I had increased my earnings ten-fold. It was going so well that I took on a couple of virtual assistants to help me. I hadn't written a book at that time for several years, because I needed to make money, and my existing books just weren’t making it.

However, now that the money was flowing, I could return to writing.

Three months later, Facebook had banned my blog for spamming, and Audible had de-listed my most popular twenty-odd audiobooks for ‘fraudulent activity’.

How or why has never been explained to me despite scores of emails to Audible.

So, with my writing life in tatters, I returned to my blog.

I had not kept up my previous level of activity, and so, as I ignored my blog, unbeknownst to me, it had sunk to the level where it no longer showed up in search results... At least, not in the first ten pages, whereas it had been on Google page one.

OK, I have books now, but otherwise, to all intents and purposes, I am having to start again with my author platform.

Keep On Top of Things!

Let it be a lesson to you.

No matter how much things seem to change in your favour, do not ignore what you already have... the very things that gave you the leg up in the first place, because if you take your eye off the ball, well-meaning employees can screw things up for you, and you can even do it for yourself :-(

When you are steaming full ahead chasing the money, be sure that you are not destroying the foundations of your business with the wake like I did.

Owen Jones

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Village food in Thailand

Healthy Thai food

You may have read elsewhere on this site about how a typical Thai family cook targets meals to the family's health. However, some people do not have anyone to cook for them, or the family cook does not know the craft in detail. It is easy to understand how this can happen. Parents can die young, or perhaps didn't know themselves because they flew to the city to earn more money, for example. Such people often rely on takeaways, as they do in the West.

Healthy Village Food

Takeaway Thai village food is usually provided by more mature ladies, who often have no other means of support. These people know their onions... the food is excellent, but it is meant for general consumption.

So, it is not targeted at any one person’s specific health problems.

How could it be?

Thai Cooking

However, that is not a big problem, when you compare bags of home-made Thai village takeaway food, as in the picture above, with boxes of Macdonald's chicken nuggets for who knows what the poor chickens were fed on, how they lived or how they died?

Village Food is not like that, you only have to know what is best for you yourself.

I was walking around the village at five o'clock this evening and stopped at a shop for a beer. An elderly woman placed eight bags of home-made village food on the counter next to me at 50p each. She had sold the lot within 30 minutes.

Village Take-Aways

£4...wow, big deal, you may be thinking, but if she does that twice a day and makes 50% profit, it is a massive supplement to her £15 a month state pension.

And what trouble is it to cook a bit extra when you are cooking for the old man anyway?

As I am was walking away, she was just delivering six more bags of barbecued meatballs for the evening diners.

Softly, softly, eh?

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

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Or how to keep up with the Joneses!

Modern Digital Designs for The Megan Series

My Dad, Owen Jones, is a writer, as regular readers of my blog will already know, and has been a author of books for ten years on February 21st 2022. I was a teenager then, but I remember the excitement of the occasion very well.

It had taken him about fifteen years to produce a book from his father's automatic writings as a Spiritual Healer, and the last thing that he had to do was produce a cover for the book.

Looking back on it, it probably shouldn't have, but it did come as a shock that he would have to do that as well. Now, my Dad knows his way around the Internet, but this was a totally new experience, and it was for me too.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, he did that and uploaded everything to the leading online bookshops of the day.

Book Cover

The cover was basically a flat image of the front cover of the book, but that was what all authors were providing at the time.

However, over the years, some more design-savvy authors began to provide more eye-catching cover images.

As far as I recall, it began with spread-eagled shots of the front and back covers plus the spine. They were definitely a big improvement.

Modern Digital Designs

After that, book covers went 3-D, and that is even better in my opinion, as a general item, but there are specialised uses for all three styles.

Finally, so far, that is, some authors are putting modern digital designs and the 3-D covers with the blurb on a relevant background image, and that is the bee's knees in book advertising covers for me.

Look at the postcard I made for my father at the top of this page.

I am thinking of learning how to do this, so if you are interested, please encourage me to get into modern digital designs with an email.

Best wishes,

Chalita.

Our Koi Carp Pond

Me and Koi Carp, still willing to learn...

Yesterday was a busy day in the scheme of the the way my retired life has panned out. Although I am still an active author, I don't get to write much, and the the tasks that I have to perform to maintain my existence in Thailand are even fewer.

I'll explain that a little more fully. I have written 175 books, but they have been narrated and translated into 1,000+ other books, so most of my active day is spent promoting those 1,200 books.

As far as tasks needed to be performed in order to be allowed to remain in Thailand: 1) I need a visa, which I obtained last Friday; 2) I need health insurance and 3) I need adequate protection from Covid 19. Yesterday afternoon, my wife and I had our booster injections, and last night we arranged our health insurance.

So, by our standards, yesterday was an extremely busy day.

My Koi Carp

By now, you're probably wondering what all this has to do with Koi carp... Well, nothing really, but in between those two events my wife, a few friends and I had a meal of whitebait, pumpkin and beer, and then we went home. I sat in the garden by our new fish pond and dangled a hand in the water lazily.

I was surprised when one of the larger fish, the red one, nudged my hand. It sped off, but slowly returned and did the same again.

It repeated this action about half a dozen times, but as it completed the last touching, it flipped over on its back, gasped for air and died... all in about three minutes!

Now, what I would like to know is: was that fish asking for my help, or did something on my hand kill it?

If you have an opinion, whether you know Koi carp well or not, please leave your thoughts below.

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

Our sister blog: The Amiable Dragon

Every Cloud has a silver lining...

Side-effects of covid-19

There have been several medical side-effects of COVID-19 noted, but I want to talk about social side-effects.

There is no social security in Thailand. So basically, if you don't work and your family or friends don't help you, you only have three options: to innovate, to steal or to die.

Poor Thais are not prone to stealing, and they have no fear of death (because of a belief in reincarnation). However, there have been some amazing changes in our little village and the nearest town.

Side-Effects of Covid-19

Our village consists mostly of farmers and farm labourers. Covid has hit the sales of produce because of the restrictions on travel.. This means that there is a glut of food in the local vicinity.

Well, one solution has been to instigate take-away services. At least three café/restaurants have sprung up with a take-away option in our village. This is amazing! Before Covid there were no delivery services, and there were no food websites or telephone contact numbers.

Social Change

I should think that there will be no going back. Covid-19 has speeded up progress in our remote, sleepy village by necessity. People are coming here from all around to buy food, since delivery is usually not available if the client live more than a kilometre away.

Other people, especially in the younger generation have started blogging and monetising their blogs, or selling products via Facebook. Some are even writing seriously for the first time ever!

Side jobs

Older women have always made baskets and craft items like that. However, now they are beginning to think about setting up a village or personal website. What I can really say about the Covid-19 crisis locally is that it has sharpened many people's wits out of necessity. Nevertheless, I can't see people going back to their old ways. Not even when the threat of death from Covid becomes just a part of life. In fact, in a way, it already is in our village. Even though we have had only two cases here and no deaths.

In my opinion, the side-effects ofCovid-19 have accelerated social change in rural Thailand, and if here, why not in similar locations worldwide?

Best wishes,

Chalita