Welcome to our new website
Not Just a Website
Our first-ever blog post is to welcome you to the brand new RTG website! Hundreds of hours have gone into creating it, so we really hope you like it.
It’s taken a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears (okay, maybe we exaggerate about the blood and tears bit) because it isn’t just a website. In many ways, it’s a new concept. Why?
Fair enough, it’s first and foremost a website. Even so, like the RTG books themselves, it’s designed to be different.
Bear with us here...
Where our books are concerned, it’s our belief that for a while now there’s been too much of the same-old, tried and tested formulas. While there’s nothing wrong with that (some authors have seen great success writing what their fans are ‘used’ to) it’s not what we do.
Maybe it’s because as the author, I get easily bored. I can’t package up the same old story in different wrapping. More likely, it’s because we really want to bring you fresh, original stories, which aren’t influenced by what everyone else is doing.
We’ve not achieved that by being weird, out-of-the-box, or writing stuff only a few people like. It’s simply that our mission is to provide everyone with a breath of fresh literary air, and to read enjoyable books which are not like most that have gone before.
So, when it came to the new website, it needed to reflect that philosophy.
Plus, it’s a whole lot more...
One of the main aims of the website is this –
An ever-increasing number of books are now offered for sale on an author’s own website. This is nothing new. What is new is that we offer direct-buy facilities as our primary option.
Yes, our books are available through the usual worldwide platforms... Apple, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Kobo, Borrowbox and more, but we would love you to buy direct.
If you’d like to do so, there’s a big discount available. Ongoing, every time you purchase. (See ‘The Bookshelves’ for more detail on that.)
It’s there to make our books cheaper for you, but it’s just one of several provisos we handed ourselves...
· To make it just as easy to buy direct as anywhere else, and to offer you options as you do.
· To provide longer previews of the series and standalone books, which you can either read on the website, or download for free to read at your leisure.
· To care about every customer, and not see you as some third-party retailers do.
That’s why it’s a new concept.
It’s also why in the coming weeks you might see our books popping up on ecommerce sites where you don’t normally find ebooks. With these sites we control our own destiny, and are not in the hands of others. That’s something very important to us.
Sorry, Amazon
You’ve been an invaluable asset in the past, making it possible for people like us to get published in the first place, without having to persuade traditional publishers we’re one of the 0.5 % of authors who are worth their time. We’ll be forever grateful for that.
Sadly, you’ve now got too big for your own good. The shark in the small pool tends to gobble up all the minnows, as its natural instinct.
Although tended might be a better tense.
Some of those minnows managed to avoid being consumed, and grew up. Our VIP subscribers are well aware we’re no fans of Amazon. At one time they were the only choice for those wishing to be published. In recent years that’s changed, and quite frankly, in 2022 others now do it better.
We apologise to our Amazon readers for that humble opinion... many of you found us through Amazon, and it is still your favourite source of ebook acquisition. We have no problem with that... which is the main reason we’re still on there.
This year however, Amazon has shown themselves up to be a little out of touch with what’s happening. Especially with Kindle Unlimited.
Admittedly, we had many of our books in KU until recently. Bit by bit we’ve taken them out of the progamme, because, well... to be honest, it’s outdated. Feedback from our VIPs and others showed us being in KU was actually harming us.
Amazon didn’t like us leaving. Watching yet another author removing their books from KU wasn’t what they wanted to see.
Let’s leave aside their underhand tactics of re-enrolling our books in KU without telling us, after we’d said we didn’t want them in the programme anymore. What is more telling is that suddenly the page-reads of those that were still in KU apparently plummeted.
We’d expected a reduction on page-reads in July, but five days of zero reads, from a regular daily read of 1 - 2,000 a day or higher?
We’ll say no more.
Our decision to leave KU and ‘go wide’ (selling the books on our own website and the other platforms) was well and truly justified.
As was the decision to build a brand new platform, and market the RTG books in a different way.
So here it is. We’d love to know your thoughts on our efforts, and if there may be something else we can do to make your reading experience better. We do listen!
Please comment on this blog, or use the contact form on the website, to tell us what you think.
How brave are we!
Richard, Ann, and the crew