The Swedish author Carl-Johan Forssén Ehrlin has written a second book aimed at helping parents get their children to sleep.

Ehrlin’s first book, The Rabbit Who Wants to Fall Asleep was published last year – firstly, as self-published book through Amazon’s CreateSpace. Penguin Random House bought the publishing rights to the title when it reached number two in the UK’s book chart.

The Little Elephant Who Wants to Fall Asleep, illustrated by Sydney Hanson, tells the story of a character called Ellen the Elephant journeying through a magical forest that leads to sleep. Along the way, she meets different characters and has soothing experiences aimed at helping children relax and doze off.

The book will be published in the UK on 6 October and in the US on 4 October.
Ehrlin’s first book has been translated into 43 languages and sold in 44 countries world-wide. International sales currently exceed 1.6 million copies.
 

How do you get more book sales without spending your life on social media blowing your own trumpet?

The question was addressed by Chris Syme in an article in Digital Publishing News this week. While social media users are predicted to hit 2.72 billion by 2019, the important issue is engagement according to Syme.

Prior to algorithms, selling stuff was all building up numbers – the more people who followed you, the greater the numbers seeing your content. Today, however, three of the major platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) use engagement algorithms that will restrict reach – i.e. if you’re not engaging your followers, they won’t see your posts.

It’s more important than ever before to create content that people like, share and comment on, so dull, thinly disguised marketing posts are often a no-no.
Syme highlights that average baseline engagement rates are abysmal. On Facebook (March 2015), the average organic post* engagement rate was less than 3 percent for pages which have more than one million likes. For smaller pages that have less than 1,000 likes, it was just over 22 percent. People seek out more personal connections.

So what’s an author to do. Syme advises several things:

1. Learn how to write better content. For this, you’ll need to keep an eye on the analytics. What gets the most engagement? Where was it posted? When was it posted?
2. Know your target audience well. What social media they use and what kind of information they are looking for.
3. You don’t need to use every social media channel, but you should use each one appropriately. Actions on one platform may not work on another.
4. Find out what’s your best channel for selling and use it that way.
5. You need a website, a Facebook business page and an email list to market successfully online. These are the three main ones for selling. You might want to add other platforms depending on your audience (say Snapchat for YA books, for example).

*A non-sponsored or boosted post

Comely Bank Publishing published its first collection of short stories today (Monday 20 June 2016).

100 Not Out by Gordon Lawrie pulls together a collection of flash fiction stories organised according to certain themes. Gordon has been writing flash fiction for more than two years and this collection represents the best of those efforts.

If you are looking for an ideal commute read, then 100 Not Out is a great choice. As you might guess from the title, each story is a maximum of 100 words long - so if you get interrupted during reading, it'll be easy enough to pick up where you left off. 

The book is available as an e-book only. You can buy it on Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords and iTunes and also from our book store.

We'd love to know what you think - so if you love it, please review the book on GoodReads or Amazon. 

Got a short story in you? Why not submit it to our sister website, Friday Flash Fiction?

If you haven't managed to guess from the title, Friday flash fiction is short stories written on a Friday, though we're happy to accept stories written on other days too!

We look for stories of 100 words or less. It's a fun exercise and it will help you with your writing and editing. There's no room for padding or unnecessary words if you've only got 100 of them to play with.

If you like short stories in general, why not head to the site for some entertainment? And a reminder, Gordon Lawrie's 100 Not Out collection of flash fiction stories is due out on Monday 20th June. You can get your copy here.

Weekender - Comely Bank Publishing's latest novel offering will be published later this year.

Set in Edinburgh's very recent past, Roland Tye's debut novel Weekender follows the intertwined lives of a series of the city's residents.

As the life of each different character touches the next, we move through the weekend discovering a city of contrasts: a city of wealth and poverty, drugs and desire, sex, and love, despair and redemption.

Yet Weekender is above all a novel that surprises, and it's a book that's guaranteed to generate discussion about favourite characters and the situations they find themselves in.

Weekender will be available in local bookshops and on Amazon, Kobo, iTunes and Smashwords. You can also buy it from our bookstore. 

In just 7 days time, on Monday 20th June, Comely Bank Publishing will launch Gordon Lawrie's 100 Not Out a collection of his best short stories written over  the last few years for the Friday Flash Fiction website. Priced at just 99p, it's fantastic-value reading designed to while an hour or two away on a bus or train journey on a Kindle or iPad. It's available from all the usual ebook outlets.

But you don't have to wait that long, because if you've made it this far then you can download a copy now from our bookshop, priced just 98p so that we (hopefully) absorb any taxes you might be asked to pay. Why not go and have a look?

​In the meantime, here's another sample:

Need some entertainment for your bus/train ride home? 100 Not Out is a collection of (very) short stories by Gordon Lawrie.

The Comely Bank Publishing founder has pulled together the best of his Friday flash fiction. The stories are no longer than 100 words each and are compiled from Gordon’s contributions to the Friday flash fiction website and a group of the same name on LinkedIn.

The stories are divided into themes. From comedy, to crime there’s a mini genre for everyone. The book costs a mere 99p – less than a bottle of Coke and far better for you. It’s an e-book only and it’s available from the Comely Bank Publishing book store. The book will also be available to buy from Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords et al later this month.

In the meantime, here’s a sample of the book for you.

Ill-Starred by Moonlight
They’d met in a club, a holiday romance; one thing had led to another.

Now they were lying on the beach in the warm night.

“I love you, Claire,” said Asif. “Will you marry me?”

She knew he wasn’t being serious. “I love you, too. But my parents insist that I marry a prince.” That wasn’t the real problem, of course. “Let’s count the stars together instead.”

Asif took the sky on the left. They counted 714.

“I’ve an idea,” he said. “Let’s elope.”

“Where to?”

“I have friends on Pluto.”
​
“That’s agreed, then,” said Claire. They kissed on it.

The self-published author Adam Croft has signed a publishing deal with Thomas & Mercer.

The Bookseller reports that Croft’s deal came about as a result of him achieving biggest-selling book by a self-published author on Amazon. Thomas & Mercer is Amazon’s fifth publishing imprint and it focuses on thrillers and mysteries.

Croft self-published his ninth book, Her Last Tomorrow, at the end of 2015. He has sold about 150,000 books altogether in the UK and 500,000 including international sales. The book is on track to sell more than £1 million-worth of books, mainly through Kindle according to the author.

The Thomas & Mercer deal includes worldwide rights got paperback, digital and audio, English and translations. Her Last Tomorrow will be edited and re-published in October of this year in digital format and the paperback will be published in November.

Croft will also be publishing another novel with Thomas & Mercer – Only the Truth, which is due out in the first quarter of 2017.

Croft told The Bookseller that the deal has paid off his mortgage. He credits Facebook advertising with boosting the sales of the book. He took Mark Dawson (another successful self-published author) online course and created ads on Facebook for his existing books. Early results were promising.

Having done the same with Her Last Tomorrow, within weeks of advertising the book was earning four figures a day and topping online charts.

​He is currently in talks with film and TV agencies.
 

What makes good cover design? Digital Book World tackled this point in a recent blog post by e-book expert Catherine Dunn.

Good cover design will make your book stand out, but what is good cover design? The article suggests that writers look at the competition, both in hard copy and online, and then make a list of what works and what doesn’t.

A great design needs to work across all formats – print and as a thumbnail. Detailed backgrounds and pictures can get lost in a thumbnail version, something the writer should bear in mind.

The cover design also needs to convey the book’s genre. While writers might shy away from being pigeon-holed, readers do need visual clues to help them decide if they want to read your book. If you’ve written something that is aimed at the chick lit market, then the book cover needs to resemble others in that genre. Ditto crime.

If the cover design doesn’t match the genre, then you risk getting bad reviews as the reader was expecting something different.

Fonts need to be legible in thumbnail size and designs should avoid typography that is over-complicated or blends into the background.

The article also advises that the writer should think about sequels, as this will have an impact on the design. Books that are in a series should look roughly similar so that readers recognise an author they have read (and hopefully enjoyed) before.
​
Naturally enough, the article advises that writers use professional designers with book cover experience. In addition, the spine and back cover should be properly designed too so that the books looks the part.