If you’ve been an avid reader of my blog since its conception back in September, you will have been following my story; you will have noticed that in the space of the last ten months I’ve gone from Amazon employee to writer – to put things very simply. 
 
While that has happened, I’ve been an Army Reservist throughout, I’ve been writing the whole time too, its just that ‘writer’ sounds better than ‘unemployed’.  I’ve had my property business as well and I’ve also got my never-ending DIY project, AKA my house, to keep me busy.  Oh and there’s my kids too!  I almost forgot about them; I really should work on that.
 
That’s me in a nutshell, always a million irons in the fire.  Well now I’ve decided I want to try another one, I’m thinking I could be a public speaker.
 
It turns out people get paid to speak in public!  Wow.  Sounds like an easy way to make money!  I’m good at waffling at crowds, surely I could make some money there, too.  And if I’m famous I can use my platform to sell books.  LOL!!!  Yeah, its another ‘Charlotte Goodwin fantasy’ I’m afraid.  There’s been many over the years, and I’ve turned some of them into books.
 
Shrugs
 
I can’t deny it, I’m a chancer.  I see chances and I take them.  Or at least have a go at taking them.  I throw my hat in the ring for all kind of things that may or may not lead to something good.  It’s an approach that has sometimes paid off.  Sometimes not.
 
Anyway, I figure if I want to get paid for talking in public, phase one of this plan is to make samples of me talking and see if people like what they see.  Hence I made a video and posted it YouTube.  It’s the first of many more I plan to make. 
 
This one is about my reflections on leadership.  I’m an Officer in the British Army, if you weren’t aware.  I lead people.  Take a look at my video if you want to learn more…

The re-write of the Queen of Vorn is underway!  If you aren’t one of my devoted fans you may be wondering what The Queen of Vorn is all about.  You may only be reading this blog because you have clicked a link to my website expecting to find some awesome author who’s been published by Bloomsbury and is the next J.K Rowling…um, sorry to disappoint.  If you aren’t in the Charlotte Goodwin fan club just yet, you may not be aware that The General’s Son isn’t my first book.  
 
Silence.  A pause while my audience gasps.
 
I actually wrote my first novel about twelve or so years ago.  It was a YA novel about a teenage girl who had to save a Pegasus from an evil queen.  I tried to get it published.  I failed.  I gave up on writing…until October 2021 when I started again.  With a vengeance.
 
After a holiday where I’d got back into reading and a return to a job where I was bored, I decided to fill my time with scribbling down a novel that had been rattling around my head since soon after I gave up on my first.  By Christmas of that year I’d finished the first draft.  Then the sequel followed, then a third book was spawned.  I’d completed all three hundred thousand or so words of The Homecoming Trilogy by around May last year.  And I missed my characters, so The Offspring Trilogy was born.
 
It’s a stand-alone trilogy, set some twenty years after the first.  I’d finished drafting this one by September 2022.  Then there was editing and covers and all the rest of it; my first book hit the market in March this year.
 
Anyway, I digress.  I’m here to talk about book one, um, that is the second book I wrote.  AKA book one of The Homecoming Trilogy, the story of how Emma took back her throne.
 
“How Emma took back her throne,” I’ve quoted this bit because if you were to read my original draft, a few chapters in you would probably be thinking “hang on, this book sounds like its more about a girl called Lila,” and you’d be correct.
 
Back in Autumn 2021, I was a young, naïve author who didn’t really know how to write books.  I had a rough idea of how my story would look and I just started writing.  I wrote.  I enjoyed it.  I finished.  I realised that I’d spent far too long going on about Lila and her back-story, but my book was my baby; I couldn’t bear to take an axe to almost half of it.
 
But now I have.  I’ve written another five books since the Queen of Vorn was drafted.  I’ve learnt how to plot a book.  I think I have half an idea what I’m doing when it comes to writing now, and I’ve sharpened my literary blade.  The axe has swung, The Queen of Vorn has been well and truly mutilated.
 
I hacked it, chopped it, then took a load of pieces and binned them.  I grabbed a load more and re-jigged them.  Then I realised there were some gaps and I came up with a plan to fill them with more cool stuff.  Now I’m in the process of stitching them all back together.
 
I’ve often thought, in another life, where I had rich parents who actually supported me properly to get a decent education, I might have become a surgeon.  I think I’d have quite enjoyed the intricate work of fixing the human body.  That’s not really an option for me now, I can’t be a medical surgeon, but perhaps I can be a literary surgeon?

​Its that time, I think.  That stage in a writer’s career we all hit at some point.  That moment when cold hard reality slaps us in the face.
 
I admit it, before I published I may have been a little deluded.  I may have been awash with a bit more optimism than was called for.  Despite having read about all those authors who sold next to nothing having self-published, I thought it would be different to me.  I convinced myself that if I got a decent cover, if I hired a professional editor, if I produced not just a traditional-publisher quality piece of work, but a quality novel with a great story, then surely people would buy my book.
 
Erm, no.  They won’t.  OK, fine, some people will.  I’ve managed to get a few sales.  My graph is above.  If the two-month trend to April continued, I’d be doing great right now!  But then May happened and sales dwindled again.  Why?  Well it’s because in April I went a bit mad on a few Facebook groups I’m in.  I managed to persuade a good number of people in one or two of those groups to buy my book.  I also bribed a load of Officer Cadets in my Army unit to buy it, too.  This approach briefly got me to #10 in Science Fiction Adventure on Amazon.co.uk…see post on 18th April.  I had optimism, back then.
 
I’ve exhausted those options now; I can’t get the people I’ve persuaded to buy my book again.  So now I’m left with trying to sell it to total strangers.  How the hell do I market to them?
 
Ads, apparently. 
 
Mmm, so I had a bash at Facebook ads.  I read up on them, apparently, they work better than Amazon ones.  I made an ad that loads of people said looked cool.  I got loads of clicks as a result and um, no sales.  Lots of people clicking my ad, but when they got to where I sell my book, they decided not to commit their cold, hard cash.
 
Now I’m trying Amazon ads, again.  I tried them a while ago.  I wasted money on them.  This time I’ve paid an agency to run them for me.  I’ve tweaked my blurb and my bio on Amazon too.  I’m hoping it might help.  We’ll see.
 
I keep spending money on my books.  I’m not making much back.  Between sales of paperbacks, kindle, including the kindle version on offer at $0.99 or £0.99 and pages read on Kindle unlimited, I’ve made a grand total of £264.04.  That doesn’t even cover what I’ve spent on ads and ad agencies.  Not by a long shot, never mind what I’ve spent on covers and editors.
 
Cue big, long sigh.
 
I’ve been told Amazon ads take a while to work.  Mine have been running for nearly two weeks.  Let’s see if that changes.  If not, well, I just don’t know how much longer I should throw money at selling books – all suggestions welcome.

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