Contact and Links – Say Hello!

15 thoughts on “Contact and Links – Say Hello!”

• Julian Brooks

  24 June 2025 at 23:53

  Hi,

  Your novel Semblance of Storms explores the disarray of a writer’s life with compelling intimacy. The chaotic mix of creative pressure, complicated family dynamics, and tempestuous relationships set against literal storms builds a sharp, moody atmosphere. There’s something magnetic in how you parallel external hurricanes with the protagonist’s internal collapse a dynamic that will speak to readers who appreciate fiction layered with emotional weather and personal unraveling.

  I came across your book on Reedsy Discovery and after evaluating its Amazon performance, I can confidently say there’s strong marketing potential here. I see real opportunity in aligning this story with the right audience by placing it on high-traffic Goodreads Listopia lists curated for literary fiction about writers, emotional domestic drama, and creative crises, refining your Amazon categories and keywords to attract readers drawn to stories of artistic pressure and vulnerability, and developing visual assets like striking mockups and a cinematic trailer that reflect the tension between control and collapse.

  I also offer a One-Line Blurb Transformer to sharpen the emotional pitch of your storefronts, a Narrated Flipbook Sampler that captures the novel’s reflective tone, and a Bestseller Algorithm Spike designed to push momentum through strategic discovery channels.

  There’s a lot here that resonates deeply with readers drawn to quiet intensity and complex relationships. Looking forward to knowing your thought about this!

  Warm regards
  Julian Brooks
  julianauthorconsulting@gmail.com

  • Philip G Henley

    25 June 2025 at 08:06

    Many thanks for your message and kind words about Semblance. Marketing continues to be a no win solution. Costs way exceeding any benefit. Thank you for your interest but I have never seen any ROI for any marketing campaign on any platform.

• Yomith

  10 August 2025 at 16:12

  Hi,
  If you’re looking to get your book seen by more readers, without wasting time or money, I’d love to help.
  I’m Yomith by name, I partner with Reedsy Discovery and I help authors like you stand out, get discovered, and sell more on Reedsy and across other listings with three powerful tools:
  – Reedsy Discovery Visibility Boost: A targeted approach to increasing your traction on Reedsy Discovery, helping you attract more upvotes, reviews, and early reader engagement.

  – Kindle Visibility Boost: Optimizes your Amazon presence with smart keyword targeting, category tuning, and page enhancements that help convert browsers into buyers.

  – AMI (Author Market Insight): Custom research that pinpoints exactly where your ideal readers are, and how to reach them, so your outreach is focused and effective.

  These aren’t one-size-fits-all tactics, they’re tailored to your book, your audience, and your goals.
  Would you be open to a quick chat to explore if this could be a good fit for you?

  • Philip G Henley

    10 August 2025 at 16:22

    Hello Yomith. Thank you for your message. I have tried Reedsy. No success the same as all the other platforms that promise lots, take money and deliver nothing. Everyone making money from authors except the authors.

• Mary Ann

  8 June 2026 at 15:47

  Hello Philip,

  My name is Mary Ann, and I’m an audiobook narrator specializing in immersive, performance-driven storytelling that brings emotionally rich and suspenseful stories to life through audio.

  I recently came across Contador, and I was immediately intrigued by its mystery-driven atmosphere and sense of suspense. Stories that combine tension, intrigue, and complex characters have a unique ability to captivate listeners, and Contador feels like the kind of narrative that could translate especially well into an engaging audiobook experience.

  My narration approach focuses on emotional authenticity, cinematic pacing, character depth, and listener immersion, particularly for stories built around mystery, suspense, and psychological tension. I also provide broadcast-quality, platform-ready audio suitable for professional audiobook distribution.

  I wanted to reach out because your novel feels like the kind of story listeners would enjoy experiencing through audio, where the atmosphere, unfolding revelations, and emotional undercurrents can create a powerful connection with the audience, and I’d love to know if audiobook narration is something you’ve ever considered for it.

  How do you imagine the suspense and mystery of Contador unfolding for listeners through audiobook storytelling?

  Warm Regards,
  Mary Ann

  • Philip G Henley

    11 June 2026 at 16:00

    Hello Mary Ann. Thanks for your interest. I produce audio books via the ACX platform. Auditions etc should be completed there. This is a Spanish version. The English version has already been completed.

• Elijah King

  8 June 2026 at 18:21

  Hi Philip G Henley

  I hope this message finds you well.

  My name is Elijah King, Literary Assistant at P. English Literature (PEL) a global literary media and arts organization established in 2020, based in Leeds, United Kingdom.

  We spotlight authors whose works deserve wider visibility, and your writing stood out to us.

  To date, PEL has:

  * Interviewed over 1000+ authors globally
  * Featured over 1500+ literature and artworks
  * Hosted conversations across fiction, theatre arts, nonfiction, music, poetry, and academic literature
  * Distributed interviews via YouTube. And organized book club meetings and festivals.
  ⁠
  Our founder and host, Peter Okonkwo, is an internationally recognized writer and journalist interviewer whose work has been recognised and endorsed by the Arts Council England (ACE) and Bristol’s Black South West Network.

  We would love to invite you to appear on our June Author Interview Series, where you’ll discuss:

  * Your book(s)
  * Your writing journey
  * Themes, inspiration, and impact.

  What you get:

  * A professionally hosted Zoom interview (in person if you are based in England)
  * Multi-platform audio & video distribution
  * SEO-optimized promotion to reach new readers
  * Long-term discoverability (not a one-time post). You can access our previous interviews via this link: https://youtube.com/@p.englishliterature

  Please note: This is a promotional interview, and there is a $59 appearance fee, which covers production, and editing costs. There is absolutely no obligation to participate.

  If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, simply reply “Interested”, and we’ll send you the official invitation and scheduling form.

  If not, feel free to reply Not Interested, or Cancellation if you have received this invitation before, and we’ll respect your decision.

  Thank you for your time and for contributing meaningfully to the literary world.

  Warm regards,
  Elijah King
  Literary Assistant | P. English Literature
  Tel: +447514761519

  • Philip G Henley

    11 June 2026 at 16:04

    Not interested

• Sienna Garcia

  9 June 2026 at 19:37

  Dear Philip G. Henley,

  Some crime novels are about catching criminals. The most compelling ones are about what happens when the criminal wins.

  Declan Williams has survived investigations, rivals, betrayals, and relentless police pressure. He has risen from suspect to kingmaker, a man whose influence stretches from Ibiza and Barcelona to London, Los Angeles, and deep into the forests of Colombia. Yet the higher he climbs, the more dangerous the fall becomes.

  What makes this story immediately compelling is that it understands a truth at the heart of organized crime fiction. Power is never secure. Every victory creates a new vulnerability. Every alliance creates a new threat. Every problem solved generates two more waiting in the shadows.

  The cartel’s operation continues to expand, but so do the forces working against it. Corrupt officers become liabilities. Former enemies become uneasy partners. International law enforcement agencies grow increasingly determined to penetrate the organization. Meanwhile, personal loyalties and emotional entanglements threaten to become just as dangerous as any police investigation.

  You have written a crime thriller that thrives on constant pressure. The tension does not come from a single investigation or one looming threat. It comes from the reality that Declan’s world is built on unstable foundations. Violence, money, influence, and fear may create an empire, but they can never guarantee its survival.

  What also stands out is the scope of the story. This is not a local crime novel confined to one city or one investigation. It is an international criminal network operating across borders, cultures, and jurisdictions. The movement from Ibiza to Barcelona, London, LA, and Colombia gives the narrative a scale that feels cinematic while maintaining the personal stakes that keep readers invested.

  From a marketing perspective, this creates a significant opportunity.

  Right now, many readers may discover the book as a traditional crime thriller. That audience is certainly important. But the novel appeals to several distinct reader groups simultaneously.

  The organized crime reader fascinated by cartels, criminal enterprises, and power struggles. The international thriller reader who enjoys stories spanning multiple countries and law enforcement agencies. The psychological crime reader drawn to morally complex protagonists operating in shades of gray. And the suspense reader who thrives on betrayal, shifting loyalties, and the constant threat of exposure.

  Each of these audiences is looking for something slightly different. Some are captivated by the criminal empire. Some by the cat-and-mouse pursuit between law enforcement and organized crime. Some by the psychological burden of maintaining power in a world where trust is impossible.

  What excites me most about the Declan Williams series is that it places readers inside the machinery of power rather than simply observing it from the outside. Readers are not just watching a criminal organization. They are experiencing the difficult decisions, compromises, and consequences that come with controlling one.

  Over the years, I have worked with authors whose books sit at the intersection of crime, suspense, and international thriller fiction. My focus is not broad promotion or generic campaigns. It is identifying the specific reader communities most likely to connect with a story and creating the visibility pathways that help them discover it.

  As I looked at Declan Williams’ latest journey, several highly specific opportunities stood out to me opportunities connected to the novel’s international scope, cartel dynamics, morally complex protagonist, and cross-over appeal between crime fiction and global thrillers. They are tailored to this series and its readership, not a standard list of marketing services.

  If you would be interested, I would be happy to share a few concise ideas on how those opportunities could be developed further.

  Professionally,

  Sienna Garcia
  Book Marketing Specialist

  • Philip G Henley

    11 June 2026 at 16:02

    Thank you for your message. As always it depends on how much and what is provided for that cost. An indication would be helpful.

    • Marian Keyes

      13 August 2026 at 11:11

      Hello Philip,

      I hope you’re doing well.

      I recently came across To the Survivors, and its focus on what happens after survival—the grief, loneliness, and challenge of rebuilding—made me curious about your writing process.

      When you were developing the story, was there a point when one of the survivors or their choices took the narrative in a direction you hadn’t originally anticipated?

      As a fellow novelist, I always find those unexpected turns in a manuscript fascinating, and I’d genuinely love to hear whether that happened while writing this book.

      Warmly,

      Marian Key

      • Philip G Henley

        14 August 2026 at 09:28

        Hi Marian.
        Thanks for coming by. I’m doing very well thank you hope you are too.
        To answer your question, yes several times in this story including several draft chapters that didn’t make the cut. Other sub plots. In particular the lead MCs always wanted to have a say. This was especially the case after the initial political set ups, when I tried to kill off virtually every character. That decision remained critical all the way through. Who should survive and how?
        It was and remains a surreal experience of the characters demanding I write more. Almost psychotic at times. There were also multiple occasions when I wondered how I would get to a point I had already written but the story came out fast and furious. That’s when i really love writing. Sleep is delayed or abruptly terminated when an idea won’t go away or a character insists I finish their bit.

• Marian Keyes

  13 August 2026 at 11:09

  Hello Philip,

  I hope you’re doing well.

  I recently came across To the Survivors, and its focus on what happens after survival—the grief, loneliness, and challenge of rebuilding—made me curious about your writing process.

  When you were developing the story, was there a point when one of the survivors or their choices took the narrative in a direction you hadn’t originally anticipated?

  As a fellow novelist, I always find those unexpected turns in a manuscript fascinating, and I’d genuinely love to hear whether that happened while writing this book.

  Warmly,

  Marian Key

• Jerry William

  28 September 2026 at 12:20

  43 Reviews, 3.6 Stars, and a Series That Deserves a Second Life

  Hi Philip,

  I hope you are doing well.

  I came across An Agent’s Demise recently, and the premise did something most espionage thrillers never manage. It made the intelligence failure the crime scene. Intelligence analysts and agents have gone missing. Some may have been killed. The press and the police suspect a serial killer. John Slater was near the latest victim, he is evasive, appears to have no history, and he might be the killer. The second Iraq war and the intelligence network may link the victims. The Metropolitan Police’s Special Branch investigates, with the help or hindrance of the Intelligence Agencies. The mistakes made in creating the dossiers used to support going to war are supposed to stay buried on both sides of the Atlantic. But a killer strikes, and everybody is not telling the truth.

  That is a premise with real teeth. And then I read your bio, and the premise stopped being a premise. Nearly eighteen years in the Royal Air Force. A career in IT and programme management. An IT Director role before retirement. You did not research this world. You lived in it. The intelligence failures, the interagency friction, the quiet compromises of the pre-war period — you bring a lived understanding to all of it.

  What I noticed when I looked at the Amazon page, though, is something you may already sense but haven’t seen spelled out.

  An Agent’s Demise was published in 2013. That is thirteen years ago. It has 43 reviews, which is a real readership. And it sits at #17,558 in Espionage Thrillers and #2,401,622 in Literature & Fiction. That gap tells the whole story. Readers who specifically want espionage thrillers are finding it. The much larger audience of spy fiction readers, historical thriller readers, and fans of le Carré-style political intrigue are not.

  And there is a second signal in those 43 reviews. The average rating is 3.6 stars. 41% gave it 5 stars. 31% gave it 3 stars. 11% gave it 1 star. That is not a book with a quality problem. That is a book with a positioning problem. Readers who find it are having very different experiences, and the most likely explanation is that the book is promising one thing and delivering something else — or delivering something specific that some readers love and others were not expecting. That is fixable. And it is the kind of problem that a strategic relaunch solves far better than more marketing alone.

  The series itself tells a similar story. Book 2, An Agent’s Rise, has a 4.5-star rating — but only 4 reviews. Book 3, An Agent’s Prize, has a 5.0-star rating — but only 1 review. Those are not books that failed. Those are books that were never given a real chance to find their audience. And they are sitting right behind Book 1, waiting for a reader base that has not yet been built.

  THE REAL PROBLEM

  Here is what most authors never hear, especially about a backlist title: Amazon is not a bookstore. It is a search engine, and it treats a thirteen-year-old book the way it treats a thirteen-year-old book. The algorithm has already made its decision about An Agent’s Demise based on years of data, and without deliberate intervention, that decision does not change. The book will continue to sell to the small, specific audience that already knows to look for it, and it will remain invisible to everyone else.

  The deeper issue is the series. You have three books in the Demise series. Book 1 has 43 reviews. Book 2 has 4. Book 3 has 1. That is not a series that is compounding. That is a series where the first book carries almost all the readership, and the later books are functionally unknown. A reader who finishes An Agent’s Demise and loves it has no clear, visible path to the rest of the series. A reader who discovers Book 2 has almost no signal that Book 1 is worth their time. The connective tissue that turns a series into a flywheel — the reading order, the cross-references, the shared promotional positioning — is not in place.

  And here is the harder truth: the 3.6-star average on Book 1 is a mixed signal that new readers are interpreting as a warning. Readers comparing An Agent’s Demise to competing spy thrillers, many of which have 4.2 or higher averages, will hesitate. That hesitation is not about the quality of the book. It is about the fact that the book is not currently positioned to reach the readers most likely to give it 5 stars. A book with a polarizing reception needs a sharper promise, not just more eyeballs.

  WHAT I AM SEEING RIGHT NOW

  Your keyword architecture is not yet capturing the full breadth of readers this series should reach. Readers searching for espionage thriller, political thriller, spy fiction, post-9/11 thriller, or intelligence community fiction are not all landing on your pages, even though several of those searches describe this book precisely. A backlist title that has not been actively optimized in years is almost certainly missing the search terms that today’s readers are actually using.

  Your category placement is currently narrower than the book’s actual audience. Espionage Thrillers is accurate but it is only one entry point. There are higher-traffic subcategories around political thrillers, historical spy fiction, British espionage, and military intelligence fiction where An Agent’s Demise would rank in the top 100 consistently and sit in front of readers who are already primed for exactly this blend of Iraq War intrigue, interagency friction, and British intelligence procedure. The readers who devoured le Carré, Mick Herron, and Charles Cumming are not finding this one.

  The description is doing solid work but it is not fully converting the readers it reaches. The opening hook is strong, but the description spends time on backstory elements before the central stakes are firmly established. Readers browsing on Kindle make their decision in the first three sentences. The hook needs to lead with the conspiracy: a serial killer targeting intelligence analysts, a suspect with no history, a murder investigation that may expose the lies that took Britain and America to war. That is the promise the book actually delivers, and it needs to be visible in the first two sentences.

  The series infrastructure is a hidden asset that is not being used strategically. With three books, you have a complete espionage arc that readers can move through in a weekend. But right now, the series page does not communicate that. Book 1 readers are not being guided to Book 2. Book 2 readers are not being guided back to Book 1. And the 4.5-star and 5.0-star ratings on Books 2 and 3, which are genuinely strong, are not being used to signal to new readers that the series gets better as it goes.

  Your author identity is a hidden asset that is not being used strategically. You are not just a spy thriller author. You are a former RAF officer with nearly two decades of service and a second career in corporate IT leadership. Your bio mentions a second book, To The Survivors, in a very different style and genre. That range, and that lived experience, is exactly the kind of author story that builds loyal readership. It needs to be front and center, not buried in a bio block that most shoppers never expand.

  WHAT MY TEAM DOES

  We go through all of this in a structured, methodical way, with a particular focus on repositioning rather than just promoting. We rebuild your keyword and backend search architecture across the entire Demise series so Amazon connects every book to the full range of readers actively searching for espionage, political thrillers, and British intelligence fiction. We move the series into tightly targeted categories where it can rank and hold position in front of readers who are in buying mode. We sharpen the descriptions so they convert the readers they reach, leading with the conspiracy, the stakes, and the impossible position in the first two sentences. We develop a steady, ethical review growth strategy that builds on the 43 reviews you already have and pushes the average upward over time. We position the series on Goodreads Listopia where spy thriller readers actively build their reading lists. And we build the connective infrastructure between all three books, so every reader who discovers Book 1 becomes a candidate to read Book 2 and Book 3.

  The result is not a temporary spike. It is giving a thirteen-year-old espionage thriller and its two sequels the second life they have already earned.

  THE BOTTOM LINE

  You wrote a book about the lies that took Britain and America to war, and a murder investigation that threatens to expose them. And you brought to that story nearly two decades of RAF service and a second career in corporate leadership. The readers who find An Agent’s Demise and love it are the right readers. The problem is that not enough of them have found it yet, and the ones who did were not always promised the book you actually wrote. What is missing is the infrastructure to make sure the readers who would feel that in every page can find you, and the series can keep growing.

  I have prepared a short visibility breakdown for the Demise series showing exactly where the gaps are and what closing them would look like in practice.

  Reply with “Send my assessment” and I will have it in your inbox within 24 hours.

  Best regards,
  Jerry William
  Book Marketing Strategist

  • Philip G Henley

    29 September 2026 at 10:46

    Thank you for your detailed breakdown of the performance of An Agent’s Demise and its sequels. It would be interesting to receive some guidance but the underlying concern will be cost for the assessment and service.