The week zips by when you have a lot to do, but so does the day. This morning I took my wife to the doctor. Then I went up to our local hospital to chase up an appointment I needed but hadn’t received. Spent about an hour and a half in there and achieved little. Dash back home for a dental appointment, then a short break before my weekly snooker match with my mate, Ricardo. Now it’s early evening, I’m fed and watered and getting down to the business of writing my blog, a bit of keyboard practice and then an hour of ITV4’s highlights of the Tour de France. There, I managed all that without mentioning Andy Murray and the British Lions. Definitely a good weekend to be British. Pity Lewis Hamilton couldn’t contribute by winning the German F1 GP.
So what else have I been up to? I’ve added more words to my latest novel. I’m now up to 19500. I won’t be writing today though, but because I don’t stick to an average amount per day, I’m under no self-imposed pressure. The aim is to reach 100,000 words by the end of the year and hope my publisher likes it enough to make me an offer. Of course, in this day and age of indie publishing, if my MS is turned down I can at least publish it myself.
The eReader News Today (ENT) are posting my novel A COVERT WAR as a ‘Bargain Book of the Day’ today. That will be on for 24 hours. I think this is an excellent way, and not costly, to publicise my work and get my name further out into the public domain. The price has been dropped to $0.99, and that will be held there for perhaps a day longer than the promotion. I won’t know for a little while how well the book sold, but ENT usually contact me within a week asking for their money: a percentage of that day’s sales. Perhaps by next week I will know how well or badly I’ve done.
It’s difficult to know which is the best way to go to promote my books. If I wanted to spend a lot of money I could reach further out into the public domain, but that wouldn’t guarantee my books would sell. Although the process of building your name can be slow, once it has taken off, the overall affect could be dramatic. But in order to do that I would need to have good reviews and make the readers feel confident that in my books they will find the escapist entertainment that satisfies their quiet moments when all they want to do is to curl up with a good book. I hope I can do that. Wish me luck!
