Mixing it with books and people

October 25^th. 2015

An end to an eventful week in which I made some progress with Ingram Spark, my current ‘work in progress’ (WIP) and more or less being forced to buy a few copies of my latest paperback as a ‘fall back’ position. I’m trying to achieve a successful upload for my paperback with Ingram Spark, and I’m hoping I can use their print copies for my book launch in November. Without going into details, I have had technical problems, which took a long time to sort out, but now I am waiting for them to let me have a look at a digital proof copy. If it looks OK, I can order one and, fingers crossed, get more sent before November 13^th. If it looks unlikely, I’ll order a quantity from CreateSpace in UK.

I have ordered postcards from Vista Print. These are the front and back of my book. I’ll put these around the room when we have our book launch on the 13^th. Should be here this week. Tomorrow evening we have a rehearsal for the book launch at Woodies in Chichester. That will be fun, but absolutely necessary to make sure we get things right on the night. After last weekend when we had the W4W event, I have more confidence in CHINDI’s efforts to promote our books.

As for the WIP, I have edited about 2/3 of the MS. According to my software programme, I have analysed 1.4 million words, although I have only edited 62000 in reality. It feels like it sometimes, but with luck I will have completed the edit by the end of this month, then I’ll print it out for Pat to read through. I have also come up with an idea for a book jacket. Once I’ve finished the WIP, I can begin on that. If I can crack all the minor problems, I expect to be close to a book launch in January. By then I’m hoping to have mastered advertising on Facebook, and will spend something on that. If I get it right, it should give my sales a real boost.

Last Thursday I gave a book talk at our local, cancer drop-in centre at Tavern House in Chichester. I sat with about six people and talked about books, how to publish them and the problems that can be encountered as well as the ease with which we can all become published writers these days. I like to think I encouraged them. I know they were there because they wanted to listen to a chat on writing. Three of them had actually put pen to paper but had never believed they could get anything published, or that it was worth even trying. I changed their minds on that score. I won’t be back at the centre for at least eight or nine months, if I’m invited of course, so I’ll never hear how much I influenced them. I did tell them about our OBL on the 13^th. A couple of them seemed interested.

Tonight (and again next week), there will be a webinar with Mark Dawson and Joanna Penn on Facebook advertising. If you can believe everything you hear about FB advertising, then this time next year I’ll be a millionaire. Wish me luck!