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News: 'Murder in Park Lane' Published

13/2/2019

Fifth Detective Lavender Mystery
An Instant Best-Seller

Murder in Park Lane, the fifth novel in The Detective Lavender Mystery Series, was published on February 12th 2019 and within 24 hours it was already in the Top 200 on Amazon.com - and had a Best-Seller tag.
At the time of typing, it is the best-selling novel in Historical Thrillers.
Go, Lavender!

News: Wonderful sales for 'The Sculthorpe Murder'

21/6/2017

'THE SCULTHORPE MURDER' REACHES 50,000 SALES

I am absolutely delighted. My publishers have just informed me that 'The Sculthorpe Murder' has already made 50,000 sales worldwide in the 9 months since its publication. It seems unbelievable that this many readers have followed Detective Lavender and Constable Woods to the third book in the series. In addition to this, the reviews on both sides of the Atlantic have been fantastic! It has an average of 4.8 out of 5 stars in the UK.
My happy but crazy imagination is now trying to work out what 50,000 readers look like...it's a football stadium full, isn't it?
Cue happy author dance around the kitchen....

News: Amazing sales for 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

23/12/2016

'Heiress' Reaches Milestone 100,000 Sales

Santa came early to me this year with some amazing news about the Detective Lavender series. THE SANS PAREIL MYSTERY passed its 50,000 sales milestone and THE HEIRESS OF LINN HAGH passed an incredible 100,000 sales! My publsishers sent me a commemorative plaque to mark this milestone which now has pride of place under my kitchen Christmas tree until I can find it a permanent home.
My publishers are delighted with the continued success of the series - and the fabulous reviews 'The Sculthorpe Murder' has achieved in the UK.
I'm a very happy author and I sincerely hope that Christmas 2016 turns out to be as wonderful for you as it has for me.
Take care, and thank you for all your support. Karen xxx

News: Karen Featured In Local Newspaper

21/3/2016

There's a lovely article in Middlesbrough Gazette today, written by Bethany, Lodge - one of my former pupils!

News: Sales of 'Heiress' reach a milestone

14/3/2016

50,000 SALES OF
'THE HEIRESS OF LINN HAGH'

I have just received a congratulatory email from my publishers, Thomas & Mercer. They tell me that since last June I have sold 50,000 copies of the first novel in The Detective Lavender Mysteries: 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh.'
This is on top of the 20,000 copies I sold before that when the novel was self-published.
I am completely over the moon about this but am having trouble visualising such incredible sales! Happy author here.
You may also be interested to know that when the book was first published by Knox Robinson Publishing back in 2012... it only sold a miserable 35 copies in twelve months.
Ah, the difference a decent publisher can make... ;)

nEWS: nEW eDITION OF 'tHE hEIRESS OF lINN hAGH'

9/6/2015

tHOMAS & mERCER pUBLISH
tHE hEIRESS OF lINN hAGH

Today is publication day for the T&M edition of 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' and I still can't believe it is happening...
...my smile says it all.

'Heiress' on Amazon UK

'Heiress' on Amazon US

News: Amazon Publishing to Take over Detective Lavender series

11/11/2014

MY self-publishing ADVENTURE

Two weeks ago, I had an incredible experience.

I was head-hunted by Emilie Marneur, the Senior Acquisitions Editor, from Amazon Publishing. She wanted my Detective Lavender Series to publish under their Thomas & Mercer crime fiction imprint. She had read ‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ and loved it. She wanted to know if there was any chance we could work together on the series. After some discussion, she offered me a jaw-dropping deal in order to take over the books. I know that it was jaw-dropping because my mouth couldn’t formulate words properly when I phoned my sister immediately afterwards.

Needless to say, I am absolutely delighted. Stunned, surprised and shocked. But absolutely delighted.

I live a quiet life in a sleepy North East fishing village where nothing ever happens. As a rule, Senior Editors from major publishing companies don’t just materialise unbidden out of the autumn mist and offer Marske residents amazing publishing deals.

After we had discussed the deal and I agreed to sign up with Amazon Publishing, I asked Emilie how she had heard about me. Why had she picked out me from the hundreds of thousands of self-published authors on Amazon? She just laughed, kept her secrets and said she had ‘special antennae.’

‘It must be their website algorithms,’ my brother, the IT specialist, suggested later. ‘Their computer churns out the sales numbers. A piece of paper containing details of the sales of ‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ will have landed on someone’s desk and set a chain reaction in motion. ’ He is probably right. Emilie seemed to know all about me, my publishing history and my sales before she contacted me.

So what is my publishing and sales history? What is so special about ‘Heiress’ that it attracted such esteemed interest and I received this amazing offer?

As some of you may know, this time last year I was unhappily locked into a miserable contract with a small, traditional publisher of historical fiction. In the twelve months that Knox Robinson Publishing owned ‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ they priced the eBook at $12 and only sold 38 copies. I regained my publishing rights last Christmas and self-published ‘Heiress’ in February, priced at a more sensible $2.99. For the first two months, I made a handful of sales.

In April, the eBook sales in the USA suddenly started to take off. This happened while I was away on holiday in Turkey and I’m still not 100% sure what the catalyst was which kick-started my sales. However, I think it may be something to with a favourable review I received from Cathy Cole, one of Amazon’s Vine Reviewers. I had randomly contacted Cathy through her website when I first published the novel to ask for a review. I had no idea that she was a Vine Reviewer for Amazon at that point. In fact, I had never heard of the program and had to research it later. All I knew was that Cathy was kind lady, who liked my novel. I now realise that she must have a big group of followers in the States. I came back from Turkey to discover that Cathy’s review was up and that ‘Heiress’ was suddenly selling about ten eBooks a day in America on Amazon.com. And most importantly, it now had a low rank in the Amazon sub-category: Historical Mysteries.

I immediately put the price down to $0.99 in order to make it more attractive and to try and to keep the momentum going. I was desperate to keep the eBook visible in those rankings. I really do believe that being visible, and staying visible, in a popular Amazon sub-category is the key to success.

I only had eight reviews at that point so I scrabbled around to get a couple more reviews on Amazon.com (not easy when you’re a Brit and most of your family, friends and fans are on this side of the pond.) Once I had ten reviews, I entered ‘Heiress’ into an Ereader News Today (ENT) promotion. It worked. I sold 200 copies of the eBook in the States. Thanks to this promotion, the ranking stabilized – and rose further. To my delight, dozens of new and positive reviews also began to appear. It seemed that the Americans couldn’t get enough of my Regency mystery set in rural Northumberland. I was over the moon as the sales steadily rose. After such a slow, frustrating and disappointing start with my previous publisher, ‘Heiress’ was finally being read – and enjoyed. It wasn’t about the money at that point. I was simply elated that after all those years of hard work and frustration my precious novel had finally found an audience.

Gingerly, I edged the price back up to $2.99 but the book remained in the top thirty of .com Historical Mysteries throughout the summer – sometimes reaching the top twenty. On one hot, giddy day in August, I sold 130 eBooks. Or rather, on one hot, giddy NIGHT I sold 130 eBooks. Because of the time difference between the UK and the US, most of my sales are at night. I go to bed and when I check my sales first thing in the morning I’m often hundreds of dollars richer. It’s definitely the best way for a woman to earn money while lying on her back.

Conscious that my reviewers were asking for more stories, I turned my attention to my other novel and a short story I had lying around about Detective Lavender. I organized editing, proofreading and book covers and published them both in August. They also started to sell well in the States, in the wake of the success of ‘Heiress.’ I have now sold nearly 13,000 eBooks since April – 99.9% of these are in the US. Paperback sales have also taken off. Recently, my royalty payments have been higher than the salary I received when I was teaching English at a British Secondary School.

So yes, my brother is probably right. An Amazon computer must have highlighted the fact that a lot of royalties were being paid to a small, middle-aged, ex-teacher in the remote north of England for her historical whodunit. This set off a chain reaction in Amazon HQ which resulted in Emilie’s email and the offer from Amazon Publishing. I’m meeting her for lunch in London next week and will grill her again to try to get to the bottom of this. I may be small but I’m determined, and the mystery writer within me is desperate to confirm my suspicions.

Do I have any doubts about signing up with Amazon Publishing after my previous bad experience with a publisher? No, I don’t. I expect the two publishers to be poles apart. Even though I know that we will have to sell twice as many books in order to maintain my current level of income, I am confident that the Amazon marketing machine can do this. I look forward to ditching the administration, formatting and constant sales promotion which go with being a self-published author and becoming part of a team again. All Amazon want me to do is write a book a year. Bliss. I have a good friend who already works for the Thomas & Mercer imprint and he can’t praise the company highly enough. Apparently, they are brilliant to work with and involve their authors at every stage of publication, from book cover design through to the editing. I have complete confidence that with the Amazon marketing machine behind it, my Detective Lavender Mystery Series will sky-rocket and reach thousands of new readers that I can’t reach myself – especially in my home country where I have sold diddly squat.

And after all, that is why we have that compulsion to write, isn’t it? To tell our stories to as many other people as possible. I feel incredibly lucky that I have been able to realise my dream and I hope that this account of my experience helps somebody else to realise theirs.

‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ will be published by Thomas and Mercer in June 2015 and three months later in October, they will publish the second novel in the series: ‘The Sans Pareil Mystery.’

Buy ‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ on Amazon.com

Buy ‘The Heiress of Linn Hagh’ on Amazon.co.uk

'The Missing Heiress' to be published by KRP

14/6/2012

SECOND NOVEL TO BE PUBLISHED BY KRP

I am delighted to announce that my second novel, The Missing Heiress, will be published by Knox Robinson Publishing on December 6th 2012. It is the first in a new series of Regency mystery novels called The Detective Lavender Series.

Set in Northumberland 1809, The Missing Heiress is a spin-off novel from my first book and features two of the minor characters: Detective Stephen Lavender and his good-natured sidekick, Constable Woods. Their first case in the series takes them back to Northumberland to investigate the mysterious disappearance of a beautiful heiress.

Detective Stephen Lavender was a real historical figure. One of the first principal officers with the Bow Street magistrates court in London, he became the Deputy Chief Constable of Manchester after the formation of the police force by Sir Robert Peel. Landowner, Nathanial Ogle, called Detective Lavender up from London to solve the mystery of the Kirkley Hall Robbery in 1809 (the subject of Catching the Eagle. )  Ultimately, Lavender was the man who placed our ancestor in the dock. But we don’t hold that against him.

I loved creating the characters of Lavender and the comical Constable Woods when I wrote my first novel, and I quickly decided that that I didn't want to let them go. The strong personality of the intelligent detective became one of my favourite characters and the dialogue and rapport which developed between him and his fictional assistant was great fun to write. I felt that I had created a winning duo of crime fighters.

I’ve always enjoyed a good mystery. In fact, many years ago I wrote ‘Murder Mystery Weekends’ for Raven Hall Hotel and won a Yorkshire Tourist Board award for them. Last year, the first seeds of a plot for a whodunit began to germinate in my head. Before I knew it, I had a Regency mystery to solve and as far as I was concerned there were only two policemen in England who could crack this case. I sat down at the computer and The Missing Heiress was born.

Writing Heiress was fun. It slid off my keyboard like silk and I finished it in ten months. Because it is pure fiction,  I never felt constrained by historical fact and it was an unfettered pleasure to write. I particularly enjoyed creating the female characters in The Missing Heiress. My first novel was dominated by men because the historical records decreed it so; they dominated the crime, the investigation and the ensuing court cases. In Heiress I created a diverse range of women from the delightful young maid, Anna; to the mysterious gypsy girl, Laurel Faa Geddes and the intelligent Katherine Armstrong. I loved breathing life into these women and hope that I gave them a significant voice in this book.

The Missing Heiress is already available to pre-order from amazon.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Missing-Heiress-Detective-Lavender-Series/dp/1908483709/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339439394&sr=1-1

American Amazon jumps the gun...

30/10/2011

American Amazon jumps the gun...

I feel I ought to let everyone know that amazon.com in the United States of America have been very, very naughty. They have ignored my publisher's embargo on releasing Catching the Eagle before 8th December. It is now available to buy in the USA on the Amazon.com website.

http://www.amazon.com/Catching-Eagle-Regency-Reivers-Charlton/dp/1908483032/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1319987765&sr=8-1
...
If you live in the states and are interested in buying a copy of the hardback novel for Xmas presents or personal pleasure, then this is your chance to get in there before the Brits. We got the Harry Potter books before you did - but you can get Catching the Eagle first. Likewise if you have any American friends or family whom you think may be interested in purchasing a copy then please forward the news.

And please don't forget to leave a review on the Amazon website once you have read it... ;)

I am slightly bemused by all this and have been warned that Amazon.co.uk may follow suit. It is completely out of our control. We just have to go with the flow. Amazon seem to be a law unto themselves. Nothing changes at the UK end as far as I am concerned - the book launches etc. will commence as planned. I am hoping for a silver lining out of this confusion. Hopefully, we will get more sales as the next couple of months are the biggest book buying months of the year... :)