Promotion and Recession

In the never ending quest for success, recognition, popularity and sales, the author group I belong to, Acclaimed Books Ltd., is still searching for the Holy Grail. We’ve tried a number of things, none of which have really helped to push the boat out, but we have been trying. And you can only fail if you don’t try. So we are exploring new avenues, one of which is a kind of e-zine; a magazine on line. We still struggle independently of course; all trying to attract readers to our titles, but our collective conscience is beating steadily alongside those independent promotions. With luck we will have come up with that one idea that lifts us up closer to the top of the pyramid.

I will be promoting five of my six titles around Christmas on Kindle Select. Why only five? Because No.6, THE BOY FROM BERLIN, is still under contract to my publisher, Robert Hale. They have released it as an e-book, so my promotion for that is simply a side-show to whatever promotion my publisher comes up with. For the other five though, I may try a blitz approach at Christmas and put them all on a freebie on Amazon’s Select programme.

 I haven’t got any further forward with my podcast recording of HELL’S GATE, but that isn’t an immediate problem. When our administrator at AB.c, Peter Lihou comes up with a test version of the e-zine, I expect we’ll all pile in and get our recorded word on-line. I’m looking forward to it. This is one of the plus parts of being an indie writer; trying different ways of promoting, which means a ‘hands on’ involvement. And the results could be attributable to the amount of effort I put into it.

I expect to be getting on with preparing SHADOW OF THE WOLF for Amazon. It means copying the book using a scanner, and then tidying it up and saving it as a Word document before converting it to Kindle. It could be a long process, but as it’s a relatively short book, about 190 pages, it’s up to me. I am thinking of increasing the word count as I go through the book, simply to give my readers a bit more for their money. Not too much though; I might spoil the flow.

I won’t get a great deal done tomorrow because of some work I have to do at our church (technical stuff), and I’ve no idea how long I’ll be there. Tomorrow morning we are visiting a sick friend, which will take up most of the morning. Oh, and because the chemists are on strike here in the Alicante region of Spain, I will be queuing up at our local chemist who is due to open for one day tomorrow. This is what recession does to countries. Here in Alicante, the chemists haven’t been paid for the medicines they stock since April 15^th. It’s a scandal. And I have to say that there’s no doubt that the political leaders who are responsible for this have been paid their salaries. See you next week!