Category: On Book Marketing
The Kindness of Strangers
Three years ago the opportunity came my way to interview Fay Weldon for the Historical Novel Society. To say I seized on the chance would be an understatement. Weldon is a household name, a woman whose writing career spans 5 decades, who has written 34 novels and many short story collections, TV dramas and plays […]
Asking Questions, Finding Community
“You ask the best questions,” Kristy Woodson Harvey exclaimed, if you’ll lend me the liberty of saying people can exclaim via email. Working at home as a writer can be a lonely business, and I’ll take human contact and emotion in any form I can get some days! But through the beautiful world of the […]
The PHD I Didn’t Do and the Digital Apprenticeship I Did
‘Are you going to enrol for a Phd?’ As a longterm author with a varied back list, learning digital skills was a higher priority. ‘No. I’m going to do an e-apprenticeship instead.’ I opted for a digital apprenticeship to revitalize my literary output. Mistake or a significant learning experience? I needed to re-organise my literary […]
Becoming a Publisher: Patrician Press
Publishing has always been my main career but I have written several children’s books over the years. Having, however, always wanted to write for adults, in 2012 I completed my MA in Creative Writing at the University of Essex. It was then that I was inspired to create Patrician Press. I starting publishing my own […]
The Dos and Don’ts of Promotional Blog Tours
When I invited my blog followers to host a guest post to publicise my forthcoming novel, I never imagined I’d be embarking on a marathon tour of twenty-five posts over five weeks. I’m not sure if that makes me someone to emulate or a narcissistic masochist but, for what it’s worth, here are some suggestions […]
Is Marketing Harder Than Writing?
I used to think writing a book was the hard part. I was wrong. Getting your book read is the hard part. I’d tinkered with short stories and penned a few poems over the years, and there was no denying my love of the written word but the thought of writing an actual book – […]
Letter to My Pre-publication Self
It’s now 8 months since the book was first published, so I decided to invent time travel (patent pending) to give you a preview of what will happen and what you will learn during this crazy, baffling, exciting, scary time. You can thank me later. 1. Writing the book is not job done. It’s just […]
Top 3 Truths About Book Marketing
Would you rather help 10 women change their lives or sell 1,000,000 copies? Honest reader feedback is the most precious thing an author could wish for. In the world where you can pretty easily buy and swap reviews, people reading your book and telling you it has had an impact on their lives make all […]
Why Am I Terrified To Launch A Book?
When I hear people say “no one is talking because they’re all glued to their smartphones and computers” I totally disagree. In the world I live in I’m connecting with more and more and more people globally and IRL (In Real Life for those that don’t know). I’ve been at yoga workshops and had people […]
Facebook: Love It or Leave It?
Back in February a writer/friend, Donna Zukaitis Falcone, posted a question on Facebook: Building a platform as a writer: Can it be done without Facebook in the 21st century anymore? Do the old tried and true ways still work in a digital age? She sparked a lively conversation, and it struck an especially resonant chord […]
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