Another busy week. When are they not these days? It’s a good job I’m loving this so much!

Events

This week I’ve arranged a table at the Gerrards Cross Book Fair in April and two more signing events, one in Staines, Middlesex in a couple of weeks and another in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey in May. I’ll be announcing these two later next week.

This Saturday sees my big signing event in WHSmith in Reading, Berkshire. The posters should have been up in the store for a week or more by now so I’m hoping at least people will know I’m coming. I’ll be overflowing with spare books in the car just in case I whip up a frenzy. However my target is to sell at least one more than at my last event.

I added a few more bits to my signing kit, including business cards promoting my mailing list, see below and a bright red table cloth. I’m very excited to be attending a signing again. I can’t wait!

In the longer term and especially for the book fair event, I need to decide whether to invest in a Square Card Reader so I can take card payments at the event, or risk having to turn people down. I think I may just leave it and if it is a problem I can repeat the event with a card reader. It’s only going to be worth it if I’m going to lots of events later across the year.

I’ll be adding an events page to my blog in the coming days, so I can keep the news all in one place.

Marketing and Promotion

I have two main attacks on this front, the first is to slowly build an audience with groups and forums in the horror and post-apocalyptic fields and the other is general free promotion.

For the latter I’ve signed up to bookhippo.uk, which I’ve heard is an effective site for promotion of UK books under around £3.50. There is no charge for the service but also no guarantee your book will go out in one of their daily mailers. The only requirement is that your book is on Amazon and it has been professionally edited. We’ll wait and see if I get picked and any effect it has.

For the genre based promotion I’ve been signing up to genre related sites and facebook groups, both for fans and authors. I’ve been giving away content and short stories, plus interviews from my blog and they’re being lapped up. Promotions will be starting quite heavily next week so it’s another one I’ll be watching.

In one of the groups I had the opportunity to join a cross-promotion with sixteen other zombiesque authors for a very small fee. The organiser set up a site with all our books on (focusing on Kindle Unlimited) and provided all the collateral, all we need to do is share through blogs, mailing lists and social media to drive people to the page where they can see the books. Here’s the page if you fancy taking a look. I’ll be doing a standalone post later in the month too.

Seems like a little thing, but I’ve also finally got around to adding an email signature. It’s free advertising so why not. It includes my real forename, author name, website address and a quick byline for the book. I didn’t add an image for the book as I thought that might be a little over the top.

Win an Audiobook

Today is the first draw from the people in my mailing list to win a copy of my audiobook. There’s still time to join the list and to be eligible to win an audible.co.uk audiobook of In The End. More details here!

I’m also looking for ideas of what I can give away to any territory. If you have any thoughts then let me know.

Before The End Progress

By the end of today I hope to have finished my self-edits and after a quick format over the weekend it will be off to the development editor for review. It’s also off to my cover designer so he can get his inspiration.

That will leave me to concentrate on my magnet novella. I couldn’t help but do some work on it last weekend and I came up with an idea for the cover. I thought I’d share it with you below. This is just a mock up. I intend for it to come across as a non-fiction book, which I thing it does. Absolutely nothing about it has been decided, but I like where it seems to be heading.

It would be great to see what you think of this rough draft.

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Useful Tip

For those of you with books or audiobooks on sale through the Apple or iTunes store I found out this week that they provide a service called a Link Maker which lets you create a custom link or even a button for your product.

Here’s the address: linkmaker.itunes.apple.com

Here’s the resulting link for my audiobook in the US store: https://geo.itunes.apple.com/us/audiobook/in-end-their-fight-for-survival-is-only-beginning-unabridged/id1453187307?mt=11

That’s it for me. Next week I have an in-depth interview with a great Sci-Fi author timed for his new release, plus an after action report from my signing event and lots more I’m sure!