Okay so maybe the title is a bit of an exaggeration! In my latest blog about my journey I talk about the usual progress on my books, my face to face sales efforts and more.

Newsletter

I sent out my latest newsletter yesterday with the main aim of sharing a promotion for free PA books, enticing people to give reviews and to give out free audible copies of IN THE END. So far this has been the most successful mail shot I’ve sent, achieving an opening rate of 30% and a click rate of 7%. Four people contacted me for audible codes, so hopefully they will turn into reviews. Watch this space!

Staines Pop Up Book Stall

Last Saturday I co-hosted a book stall with the lovely Suzanne Rogerson in the centre of a busy part of Staines upon Thames shopping area. The weather was amazing, but the footfall was not so great. We found it difficult to attract many to the stall, having to compete between a busy charity stand aggressively trying to attract conversations and a photo company on the other side who would leap on families to drag them to her stall.

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I did manage to sell a book, get a couple of mailing list subscribers and Suzanne’s sales were a little better than mine so it wasn’t a total bust. It certainly hasn’t dampened my spirits and we think we’ll be heading back there closer to Christmas where a signed book from a local author would be the perfect Christmas gift!

Local Author Pop Book Shop

An amazing opportunity dropped in my lap last weekend and I’m grabbing it with both hands. This Saturday Suzanne and I are taking over an empty shop in Eton High Street and we’ll be selling our books and at least two other local author’s novels as well. I have no idea how this will go but I’m willing to try anything once. Of course I’ll be letting you know how it goes down next week.

BEFORE THE END

I completed the rewrite of BEFORE THE END this week and it’s back off to my beta reader. I’ve already had great feedback from the first 150 pages, so that’s a massive relief off my shoulders. Although Laura hasn’t yet got to the point in the book that she hasn’t already commented on, so I hope there’s nothing major in the latter chapters. If there is then I’m ready to deal with it!

Work is well underway on the cover for the follow up book and after wracking my brain for most of yesterday I’ve decided on tag line for the cover and I can’t wait to share it with you!

Marketing And Promotion

My mailing list is building well. I’m almost at 400 subscribers now and I’ll continue to advertise for now. Apart from advertising the amazing review I got last week, I haven’t had much time for anything else. I will be looking at generating advertising videos for social media shortly, so if anyone has any suggestions for any cost effective editing and stock video tools that would be great!

My second Kindle Select period is over and I’m not re-enrolling. It marks sixth months since the release of IN THE END and I’m astounded at the success so far. I don’t keep a running total of sales quantity but I think I’m around 400 books sold from the sales income, which is wild success by my measure! Over the coming weeks I’ll be working to push out IN THE END to other vendors such as Google and Apple.

Awesome Interview

This week one of my fellow PA authors published a great interview I did with him a few months ago. He’s mad as a hatter which makes for a great interview style and you can check it out here.

I don’t think I’ve missed anything out (although I had and edited the post!), so that’s it for me for today. This next week I plan to split my time between getting IN THE END wide, writing book 3 and Survivor Volume 2. Catch you on the flip side!