Promotion, can't do without it.

March 13^th. 2016

I sent an e-mail to my subscribers yesterday letting them know that I was promoting Roselli’s Gold with a BookBub advert on Monday and had dropped the price to £0.99/$0.99 for the promotion. Yesterday I sold 11 books. Roselli’s Gold is the kind of book that rises up and disappears in my sales figures, so it was a kind of tongue in cheek e-mail, hoping for something but expecting nothing. So, a nice little surprise. In a way it was something that was suggested by Nick Stephenson in his video about following up after a launch. As readers of my blog will know, I launched A Dangerous Game six weeks ago, and need to give potential readers a reminder that the book was a recent release. I couldn’t promote that with BookBub, but I was able to add the rider to my e-mail that I had reduced the price of this as well. Hopefully, people will pick up on that and buy a copy.

I ordered five paperback copies of A Dangerous Game today and decided to use the Amazon prime 30 day free trial for this order. They “guarantee”  delivery the next day. It will be interesting to say the least; five paperback books printed, despatched and delivered in twenty four hours? Watch this space!

I have pressed on with my latest work in progress (WIP). No title yet, but I am using Marcus Blake as the lead character. My readers will recall him from A Covert War. I thought it was about time I jumped on the series bandwagon and started using a character in a sequence of thrillers. Whether I’ll ever get that far remains to be seen, but I will plough on with this, and depending on what transpires, I’ll use Marcus in later books as well.

I am also looking ahead to my Book Talk at our local Arts & Crafts Gift shop on Saturday 19^th. I have limited the numbers to twenty because of the size of the room, and now have about twelve names down. I did have more but a couple pulled out. I think that’s always going to be the pattern; not everybody can stick to a date, particularly when something else (better?) turns up. Anyway, to that end I have produced a kind of aide memoire to get me through the two hour talk. I will make it available to those who turn up, if they want it, and possibly offer it to my subscribers. This isn’t a selling book talk: it’s about helping those people who want to know answers to questions they may have been afraid — or too shy — to ask.

On the domestic front, we have the kitchen fitter due tomorrow. The place will be in turmoil for a while, but hopefully there won’t be any problems. Wish me luck!