Description:
British ex-diplomat MICHAEL BLAKE has been blinded and is confined to his flat in Cairo. Every few days a visitor comes to read to him. It’s a year since he took early retirement and booked a long–awaited birding trip on the Nile.
Half way through the voyage he meets LEE YONG and finds himself falling for her. But she’s falling for REDA, their tour guide. He isn’t all he seems either and when the Egyptian revolution kicks off, BLAKE finds himself embroiled in a tangled web of love and intrigue. When REDA is captured and thrown into jail, BLAKE will be forced to decide – to help LEE YONG and join the revolution or stand aside and risk losing everything.
Set against the background of the events of January 2011, BIRDS OF THE NILE is a powerful story of loss and self discovery as three disparate characters, each with their own agenda, seek to come to terms with change. Part political thriller, part love story, BIRDS OF THE NILE reminds us of the complex nature of global cultural interaction and how, as individuals, we try to deal with it.
There is considerable debate in writing circles as to the ‘value’ of our work. We are constantly encouraged not to undersell ourselves - ‘because you’re worth it’ as we’re told in the well-known advert for beauty products. These sentiments strike me as all very well coming, as they often do, from those who occupy the privileged position of having an established and loyal online readership. Such people are presumably in receipt of considerable income from their writing – and good luck to them, I have no doubt that they’ve earned it. Anyone who can sell their ebooks via Amazon and make money at it certainly has my respect.
Let’s begin by looking at the maths. Assuming my ebook retails at £4.99, the royalty from my publisher would be around £1.70p per copy. With sales in the tens per month rather than the hundreds, my revenues would barely cover the cost of maintaining a website. If I cut the price to £0.99p, my royalty drops to around £0.15p per copy and I’d have to sell over ten times as many to achieve the same result. Financially speaking, it just doesn’t make sense. So as far as being online is concerned, getting rich I ain’t.
GUEST POST
TO BE RICH? OR TO BE READ?
For the month of July I’m taking the radical step of considerably reducing the price of my ebook, BIRDS OF THE NILE. This means I will effectively be giving it away and as a professional author it has caused me to have some thoughts as to whether I should be doing this.
There is considerable debate in writing circles as to the ‘value’ of our work. We are constantly encouraged not to undersell ourselves - ‘because you’re worth it’ as we’re told in the well-known advert for beauty products. These sentiments strike me as all very well coming, as they often do, from those who occupy the privileged position of having an established and loyal online readership. Such people are presumably in receipt of considerable income from their writing – and good luck to them, I have no doubt that they’ve earned it. Anyone who can sell their ebooks via Amazon and make money at it certainly has my respect.
As yet, I’ve struggled to do so. Some people tell me it’s down to ‘genre’ and that literary fiction simply doesn’t trade very well online. The vast majority of my sales have come through face-to-face promotions at literary festivals and in bookstores and my greatest online successes have come by way of the KDP free promos. Even then, I don’t seem to manage the number of downloads that others seem to achieve. I don’t suppose for one moment that I’m alone in this and I suspect that the vast majority of the ebook publishing public is in exactly the same position. What alternative is there then, for those of us who want to spread our word via the net?
Let’s begin by looking at the maths. Assuming my ebook retails at £4.99, the royalty from my publisher would be around £1.70p per copy. With sales in the tens per month rather than the hundreds, my revenues would barely cover the cost of maintaining a website. If I cut the price to £0.99p, my royalty drops to around £0.15p per copy and I’d have to sell over ten times as many to achieve the same result. Financially speaking, it just doesn’t make sense. So as far as being online is concerned, getting rich I ain’t.
But I didn’t start writing in order to get rich. If that was all I wanted I’d have kept my day job in Life and Pensions, an occupation that provided me and my family with an acceptable standard of living for over twenty years. I started writing because I was called by it, I’m driven by it and I want to express myself in a way that Financial Services could never allow me to do. And in that respect, it’s far more important to me that my work should be enjoyed and if I’m lucky, understood. That means it has to read and read widely – and if that involves effectively giving it away for the purpose, then so be it.
One day I may be in the exalted position of being able to charge sensible prices for my work online. This will enable me to continue in a profession which both fascinates and frustrates me, but one to which I am bound. In the meanwhile I will go on making it available as cheaply as possible in the hopes of securing that established and loyal readership I strive for.
only 0.99
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About the author:
N.E.David is the pen name of York author Nick David. Nick tried his hand at writing at the age of 21 but like so many things in life, it did not work out first time round. Following the death of his father in 2005, he took it up again and has been successful in having a series of short novellas published both in print and online.
Nick maintains he has no personal or political message to convey but that his objective is merely to entertain the reader and he hopes this is reflected in his writing. Besides being a regular contributor to Literary Festivals and open mics in the North East Region, Nick is also a founder member of York Authors and co-presenter of Book Talk on BBC Radio York.
His debut novel, Birds of the Nile, is published by Roundfire.
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