Book Talk and buying a puppy

March 26^th.

I held my Book Talk event last Saturday and enjoyed it immensely. About fifteen people turned up, which meant there was no over-crowding in the room, and I managed to sell a few books. That wasn’t the purpose of the event, but I took my books along just in case. I have seen both the one hour videos of the two hour event, and if I’ve learned anything, it is that questions from the floor cannot be heard when it’s only me who has the voice microphone. If I hold another event in future that’s being filmed, I will have to remember to repeat the questions for the benefit of the camera. Because I was talking from a personal experience of traditional and self-publishing, I managed to sound like an expert. I’ve no doubt that some people will, or could, challenge me on some of my statements about the book world, but I will stand by everything I said. I think most people there gained something from the talk, and quite a few of them have asked me to e-mail the notes I used to guide me through the afternoon. The notes were simply an aide memoire, but helpful to jog people’s memories. I have been asked when I will be doing another talk; it was from someone who couldn’t make it. I had to tell the lady that I am not planning on another, although if I was invited to do something along similar lines, I would probably consider it. Trouble is, what could I talk about other than my own experience as a writer; I would just be repeating myself?

My book sales are still healthy following my BookBub promotion. It is now almost two weeks since the event, and I am selling about forty books a day. My Amazon rankings are dropping slowly, but that is to be expected. At the moment I am at 12000 plus. I can also see where my sales are distributed among my titles. Sometime later, I will be able to distil the figures and see which books are selling better than others. It might help me when working on another campaign. I did receive a questionnaire from BookBub asking me about the promotion and my results. At the end I was asked if I would be prepared to take part in another survey. I said yes because I want to keep my name in BookBub’s lexicon of so-called “Partners”. It might help if I try for another promotion.

I am pushing ahead with my current WIP. I’m up to 10,000 words now and already changing my mind about which way the story will go. I did a small re-edit earlier, changing some of the ‘clues’ I usually drop in to confuse the reader. As the story goes on, the clues will be revealed and leave the reader thinking what a brilliant thriller writer I am! That’s the plan, anyway. Fortunately I haven’t got too far into the story to let the changes make much of a difference, but I will have to remember where I put them and not forget to use them. Scrivener helps with that.

On the domestic front, we bought a Cockapoo puppy last week. It will be handed over to us in about three weeks’ time. We already have put photos up on Facebook, and will be going over to the breeder tomorrow to spend an hour of so with “Tuppence”. We’ll do this each week until we can bring her home. Then the fun begins. Wish me luck!