Active again.

I decided to write my blog a little earlier today
because I find myself making excuses for not getting the entry out on a Monday.
Last week has seen more activity in the promotion and marketing effort I’m
putting to my books. One major achievement for me was the production of one
thousand bookmarkers. I designed them myself, although I listened to
constructive criticism from family and friends, and had them printed at a small
printers in Bognor. I picked them up last night and am delighted with the
result. Why a thousand? I want to distribute them in places where people will
pick them up and maybe look at my website, find out who I am and perhaps buy a
book. I plan to use my family in this (they already know), and expect the
distribution to cover about six areas in UK, couple of places in Sydney and
one, at least in America. This isn’t about distributing leaflets and flyers,
and sticking them under car windscreen wipers: it’s more of a kind of
subliminal advertising. It isn’t something that has been suggested to me; quite
the opposite: I dreamed this one up on my own. Bookmarker advertising isn’t
new, I know, but with luck I can get a kind of placement advertising simply because
my bookmarkers will be found in unexpected places. I hope so, anyway.

I have also cranked up my promotion for The Eagle’s
Covenant. I have had four, five star reviews posted on Amazon, but there has
been no quantifiable result in the numbers I’ve sold, so just how effective
those reviews will be I’ve no idea, but I’ve decided to concentrate on pushing
the title until well into the New Year.

Another step in getting myself known among the community
is to go to a meeting of the Chindi Authors Group. This is a group of Chichester
Indie authors who meet once a month in Chichester. Their aim is to help each
other with promotion and to generally encourage each other. I will be there on
Monday evening and I hope I can learn something from them and perhaps help
anyone there to learn from my experience as a long time writer. I’ve looked at
their website and seen the good reviews their books have attracted on Amazon.
Earlier this month they had a seminar in the Chichester library where about
seven of the group were doing a Q & A session. There were quite a few
people there in the audience. It’s this kind of event that can only help
writers like myself to become established in the local, book loving community,
and I hope we can all profit from this.

I began tentative steps with my dusty, old manuscript
yesterday. Having now purchased the Scrivener programme, I began using it
yesterday. I will be compiling my research material into separate sections
first. Then I will begin reading through my manuscript to bring my mind back to
the place I need to be with regard to the story line and character profiles. I
expect to be entrenched again by January and push on from there: hopefully
completing the novel by the summer. Wish me luck!