Category: The Heiress Of Linn Hagh

250,000 sales for 'Heiress'!

20/8/2022

'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' Sells a Quarter of a Million!

I've recently received the good news from my publishers that The Heiress of Linn Hagh has now sold a quarter of a million copies worldwide!
I'm absolutely delighted and doing my happy dance around the kitchen!

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News: Karen Featured In Local Newspaper

21/3/2016

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

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News: Sales of 'Heiress' reach a milestone

14/3/2016

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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... ;)

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

9/6/2015

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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

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News: GoodReads Giveaway

21/5/2015

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Goodreads giveaway for
'the heiress of linn hagh'

US ONLY
Thomas and Mercer are running a Goodreads Giveaway for the 'Heiress of Linn Hagh' from now until June 9th.
Follow the link to find out more.

'Heiress' Giveaway

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News: Audiobook update

7/5/2015

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the heiress of linn hagh - audiobook

This week I received a surprise parcel from the postman. It contained my author copies of the audiobook of 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh.' I spent a giddy few hours happily listening to the talented narrator, Michael Page, telling me my own story. Thomas and Mercer have done a brilliant job with the production and I loved it. If you want your own copy, click on the link on the picture below. They are available to pre-order and will be available on June 9th.

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News: Audiobook update

6/4/2015

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My Audiobook Narrator:
Michael Page

Michael Page

I am delighted to announce that this week, Michael Page, an award-winning narrator, will begin work on the audiobook of The Heiress of Linn Hagh. I have heard a sample of Michael reading the novel and I loved his voice; his ability to age it for older characters and - most importantly - his wonderful Northumbrian accent. Apart from the awards Michael has won, which I have listed below in his biography, he has also narrated several Ian Rankin 'Rebus' novels. I'm thrilled to have such a prestigious narrator and never dreamt that signing with Thomas and Mercer would move me into this league. I am so looking forward to the publication of The Heiress of Linn Hagh on June 9th.

Michael Page has been recording audiobooks since 1984 and has over two hundred titles to his credit. He has won several AudioFile Earphones Awards, including for The War That Killed Achilles by Caroline Alexander and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch. As a professional actor, Michael has performed regularly since 1998 with the Peterborough Players in Peterborough, New Hampshire. He is currently a professor of theater at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he lives with his wife, Jane, and two daughters, Camilla and Chloe (when they are not away at college). He has a particular interest in Shakespeare and Eastern European theater and travels frequently to Hungary and Romania.

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News: Brand new look for 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

17/3/2015

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new book cover for
'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

Thomas & Mercer (Amazon Publishing) have finally revealed the brand new book cover for their edition of 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh.' This is the third makeover this gal has had in three years but I definitely think it is the best version yet. I have finally got what I always wanted; detectives galloping on horse-back towards a Northumbrian pele tower. So pleased with everything, especially the colours. On the paperback you can just see golden candlelight glimmering in the windows of the Linn Hagh. I'm delighted that Sandra Mangan's quote is also on the front cover. I've dined out on that quote over the last few years. Publication date for this Thomas & Mercer edition is 9th June.
I can't wait.

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Article: Bow street magistrates' court

5/12/2014

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The Fascinating & gruesome history of
bow street magistrates' court

Bow Street Magistrates’ court, was the thriving centre of policing in the crime-ridden capital of England for two hundred and fifty years. Now abandoned, empty and awaiting conversion into a hotel and museum, the silent and ghostly building has seen some of Britain's most notorious criminals cross its threshold - and it still hides some grisly secrets today.

In the mid-18th century, every fourth shop in London was a ‘gin house;’ a vast sex trade sprawled across hundreds of brothels and gangs of highwaymen and cut-throats terrorized the roads on the outskirts of the capital. There was a growing call in the city to find an effective means to tackle the increasing crime and disorder. In 1747, Sir Henry Fielding, novelist and magistrate, persuaded the British government to establish a police force based at number 4 Bow Street in Covent Garden.

Fielding brought together eight reliable constables, who soon gained a reputation for honesty and efficiency in their pursuit of criminals and later came to be known as ‘The Bow Street Runners.’ But Fielding faced an uphill struggle against both organised crime in the capital, and the mistrust of the politicians who paid for his policemen.

By 1809, the year of my Detective Lavender Series of novels, Bow Street Magistrates' Court had been expanded to include several of the neighbouring properties and prison cells had built built around the back. The number of police personnel had dramatically increased and a horse patrol had been established to bring some law and order to the crime-infested outlying areas. Principal officers were restyled ‘detectives’ and had various roles. Apart from supporting their colleagues in the capital, they were often sent out to help magistrates in the provinces with difficult cases. They provided security for the Royal Family and the Bank of England and took part in undercover work in periods of insurrection, for example, during the Luddite riots in the Midlands

The arrest of Emmeline Pankhurst

Bow Street remained a magistrates’ court until 2004. During its two hundred and fifty year reign as Britain’s best-known police station, it has had both the famous, and the infamous, pass across its threshold. From the legendary lover, Giacomo Casanova, to the murderer, Dr. Crippen, and the notorious East End gangsters, the Kray twins. Other notable inmates include: the famous mother and daughter suffragettes, Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst; the brilliant, homosexual playwright, Oscar Wilde and more recently, the Chilean dictator , General Pinochet.

Bow Street Magistrates’ court now stands empty, waiting for its conversion into a hotel and museum. It has an ornate frontage which mirrors the creamy and elaborate façade of the Royal Opera House on the opposite side of the road. But at night, it is silent, dark and brooding compared to the noisy, brightly-lit bistros and taverns on the rest of this busy street. Its façade is built with pearlescent Portland Stone and it glows eerily in the moonlight.

Around the back, the building is stark, plain and ugly, with many twentieth century extensions. A high brick wall with barbed wire encloses outhouses, prison cells and a courtyard, which was used as an exercise yard for the prisoners. My hotel was slap-bang next door and I took these photographs while leaning out of a second floor bedroom window with my camera.

I was surprised to learn that the site had been continuously occupied since the mid-16th century. As a result, before it can be refurbished an archaeological study is being carried out.

'What are they hoping to find?’ I asked the hotel manager. And added hopefully: 'Regency handcuffs?'

'No,' she replied. 'Human remains.’

The scales of justice

'But it's a court house - not a church graveyard,' I said, startled. 'It's not consecrated ground!’

‘I don't think it mattered back then,’ she replied with a certain amount of glee. 'If someone died in prison two hundred years ago and was a pauper, they'd just drop them into a hole. There's also a rumour that there was a lime-pit on the premises for disposing of any fever victims.'

I've always known that gaol fever was rife in Britain's overcrowded prisons during this era, but personally, I'm still hoping that my informant had a fevered imagination herself. The thought that my protagonist, Detective Stephen Lavender, and any of his noble colleagues might have been involved in callously disposing of dead prisoners beneath the courtyard slabs of Bow Street Magistrates' Court, just does not bear thinking about.

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News: Amazon Publishing to Take over Detective Lavender series

11/11/2014

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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

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250,000 sales for 'Heiress'!

'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' Sells a Quarter of a Million!

News: Karen Featured In Local Newspaper

News: Sales of 'Heiress' reach a milestone

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

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

tHOMAS & mERCER pUBLISH
tHE hEIRESS OF lINN hAGH

News: GoodReads Giveaway

Goodreads giveaway for
'the heiress of linn hagh'

News: Audiobook update

the heiress of linn hagh - audiobook

News: Audiobook update

My Audiobook Narrator:
Michael Page

News: Brand new look for 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

new book cover for
'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

Article: Bow street magistrates' court

The Fascinating & gruesome history of
bow street magistrates' court

News: Amazon Publishing to Take over Detective Lavender series

MY self-publishing ADVENTURE

Archives

Categories

'The Heiress of Linn Hagh' Sells a Quarter of a Million!

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

tHOMAS & mERCER pUBLISHtHE hEIRESS OF lINN hAGH

Goodreads giveaway for 'the heiress of linn hagh'

the heiress of linn hagh - audiobook

My Audiobook Narrator: Michael Page

new book cover for 'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

The Fascinating & gruesome history of bow street magistrates' court

MY self-publishing ADVENTURE

Archives

Categories

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

tHOMAS & mERCER pUBLISH
tHE hEIRESS OF lINN hAGH

Goodreads giveaway for
'the heiress of linn hagh'

My Audiobook Narrator:
Michael Page

new book cover for
'The Heiress of Linn Hagh'

The Fascinating & gruesome history of
bow street magistrates' court