Good days and not so good days.

February 13^th 2016

On the whole my week has been good in places and not so good in others. The kitchen didn’t happen: the suppliers called to say they couldn’t fulfil the order, so we had to reschedule the delivery. This meant phoning the kitchen fitter and making other arrangements. I picked up a head cold (man-flu for those who know how it is), which has left me coughing and sneezing all over the place. And so far I’ve had no real interest from the public in my advertised book talk. I popped round the gift shop earlier in the week to find that no-one has put their name down. I put out another advert on our on-line Streetlife, but so far only one person has said she might come. It looks like I’ll be pulling the event if nothing has changed by the end of the month. I even had another cancellation: a neighbour, who I don’t know, phoned me earlier this month and asked if I could advise him on getting his memoires published. I agreed, but he phoned and called it off. Don’t know why; but it’s no big deal.

On the book front, things are looking decidedly better. My Facebook advert for my latest thriller, A Dangerous Game, seems to be bringing home some pleasing results. This week I have sold about one hundred books (overall about 250), keeping my averages up at a healthy level compared to my averages before the FB advert. And during the week, our book group, CHINDI, had a Valentine’s week promotion offering their romance titles at a discounted rate. To move this along the romance authors in the group agreed to do an on-line Q & A session. Three authors shared an hour each in the evening over three days. I was on-line Wednesday and had to field a lot of questions about my book, Past Imperfect, and the reason why I, as a thriller writer, decided to write a romance. It was all good fun and it looks like we may be exploring other events like this. I also put my name down for a book event in Selsey in West Sussex during August. It’s a table top book sale, but publicity nevertheless.

Another big step for me is submitting my book to BookBub for a one day promotion. Pat suggested I do this and offered to pay for it as a birthday present. It’s too expensive for her, so I’ve agreed to share the cost. It’s unlikely that my book will be accepted, but I live in hopes. If it’s rejected, I’ll submit another of my titles which has a reasonable track record. For those of you who do not know what BookBub is, it’s an on-line promotion site for authors, and their results can be pretty spectacular. I was lucky enough to get one about three years ago and had covered the cost of the advert in twenty four hours. My book continued to sell for about two weeks beyond the one day promotion.

Right now I am reading through The Boy from Berlin, and hope to have a paperback available within a few weeks. I need to design a suitable book jacket, so will need to spend some time on that. So there’s a lot going on in the Parker book world. Let’s hope it continues. Wish me luck!