Friday 25 March 2011

When Worlds Collide

I'm participating in an authors' promotional event at work on Monday. At Cheshire Police headquarters. In the canteen. There are four or five us involved and I think the others all have actual physical books to display and sell. I have 100 not-very-good cards from Vistaprint (the proof copy printed out way better on my home pc than on their cards). How do you sell an ebook other than online?

But I shall appear on Monday and put my cards on the desk. Maybe stick around and have a chat with the others. Possibly even put in an appearance at lunchtime when it gets busy (the canteen that is, not the queue to look at my cards). Because my jacket cover has been up on posters all week with my name on. And my guilty secret is out. I'm an author. And not only do I write - I write sex and drugs and other unspeakable nasty things. What on earth work colleagues are going to make of it all, I don't know, but I suppose "coming out" was inevitable as soon as I uploaded my book onto kindle. After all I want to sell it and if people don't know it's there, they can't buy it, can they?

Wish me luck!

Tuesday 15 March 2011

Monday 14 March 2011

Sales Report!

So we're up to a huge total of 30 UK kindle sales of Hamelin's Child so far. Can't hand in my resignation yet then. But I do have 4 5-star utterly fabulous reviews on Amazon UK - and not all from my mates either! Handful of US sales and no reviews as yet, but then I have only just discovered that the UK and US sites are completely different. I've been whoring myself around the UK discussion boards and it looks like I'll have to do the same on the US ones too.

I don't find PR easy. Despite the fact that this novel was long-listed (top 20) for the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award a few years back, there's still a small part of me that wonders whether everybody is secretly laughing at me. It may well be as much do with the controversial nature of the content as anything else, but I've been doing some research over the past couple of weeks and there's a lot worse stuff out there.

So I've been contributing to facebook discussions, guest blogging, grabbing every opportunity to yell "ME! ME! ME!" on other peoples' blogs and generally trying to put myself out there. Not sure I'm ready for an all out assault at work yet (there are a couple of guys selling their books in the work canteen in a couple of weeks), but we'll see how brave I'm feeling. It's kind of hard to sell an e-book anywhere other than online.

Thursday 3 March 2011

Setting the World on Fire

So OK, I haven't made the best-sellers lists yet. But this kindle thing is curiously addictive. I can't resist the temptation to keep checking the stats on Amazon. Some good reviews, but so far they're from people I know - what I want is for people I don't know to take a look. I feel like I'm coming out of the closet at work, as slowly people are starting to pick up on the fact that I write (mostly due to the amazingly talented Pete Gorrell who has designed my covers for me). It was lovely to get a response from a work colleague who'd bought and enjoyed my novel - a response from a reader, rather than a writer and somebody who is less concerned with plot and point of view and structure, and more interested in whether it was a page-turning read (apparently it was). So my confidence is slowly building, although I expect to be contemplating the motorway bridge when I get my first bad review, which will happen. Can't please everyone. 


But I'm glad I did it. So far, anyway