Sally Jenkins

463434 © Judwick | Dreamstime.com

For the greater part of this year I’ve been working with my wonderful agent, Juliet Mushens, to get my current manuscript into tip-top condition. She is now happy with it and last week it went out into the big wide world of publishers. My fingers are firmly crossed but, as I know from my experience two years ago, there is many slip between cup and lip. I’m not saying much about the actual story except there are no murders and it’s infinitely more cheerful than Bedsit Three or The Promise.
Juliet recently re-opened to submissions if you’re currently querying agents and think she might be a good fit for you.

I’ve also continued writing occasional articles for The People’s Friend and was asked to pitch ideas this week for Christmas 2022! As I’ve said before, finding the ideas is by far the hardest part of article writing. Correction: finding ideas that haven’t already been covered in some shape or form by a magazine with such a long history is the hardest part of article writing. The good part about writing for The People’s Friend is the quick response to most pitches – I usually get a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ within a week to ten days and the ‘pitch black hole’ of many publications is non-existent.
There are submission guidelines on The People’s Friend website if you fancy having a go at writing features for them.

Kindle Direct Publishing for Absolute Beginners was selected by Amazon as one of November’s Kindle Deals. Amazon have discounted the book to 99p and given it a little bit of a push. So far it has sold about three times more than in October which is good! And it’s currently got orange bestseller flags in both the Amazon Electronic Publishing and Digital Media categories. But at 99p my royalty rate drops to 30% so financially I won’t make any more money, however I’m hoping the boost the Deal has given me will generate a head start for December when the price returns to normal.
If you’d like to nominate any of your books for an Amazon Deal, go to your Amazon bookshelf and click the Marketing tab along the top of the page. Scroll down to see the option to nominate your e-books. It’s free of charge and so worth a try. There’s more information on the Amazon help pages.

Now I’ll stop typing so that I can cross my fingers again!