Self-promotion. A chore without reward?

Afternoon folks,

Did everyone have a lovely jubilee? If nothing else having four days off work has been a delight. Mind you, the wife has worked every day but she gets paid lots so fair play to her.

Anyway, self-promo. I'm not a fan simply because I work full time and what little free time I do have I like to use to write books. If I spend an hour in an evening touting myslf around the internet it leaves nothing left for crafting the novel. Of course, logic suggests that if I don't do some promotion then nobody will buy my books as they won't know they exist.

This, I suppose, is true. To an extent. If you're a best selling author shifting thousands of copies then surely self-promo is pointless as the sales and word of mouth will feed into each other. I sell in dozens rather than thousands (so far) but I've found that no matter what promo I do my sales are pretty consistent month on month.

For example last month I did a couple of days promo and then only because my debut book, Playground Cool, was lauched in paperback. But I was busy at work and also decorating bits of my house, so that didn't leave any time to promote. Yet at the end of the month I'd sold near enough the same amount as the month before.

Anyway, since I did have time today I've posted on several Amazon.com discussion threads, also on Kindleoards and Book Blogs. I will post on Amazon.co.uk later and on Goodreads, as well as this blog post obviously. This will automatically appear on Facebook (hi facebook) and that will be about it. Will it lead to sales? Probably a couple. But then I reckon I might have had those anyway, sooner or later.

If you work it out in terms of a job, then self-promo for an author selling the amount I do is expensive i.e. an hour a day of promo for 2 sales? That's about £1 in royalties. Who on earth does anything for a pound an hour? Of course, if one of my books starts to take off and an hour of promo equalled a hundred sales, a thousand? Then all of a sudden that's a great return. But making that leap is proving hard, not just for me but for thousands of other writers in this position. We all know the game and the rules, promo, lots of it, on all the right websites. But it's so time-consuming!!!

So what to do?  I will do some promo, as much as I can be bothered to do, and hope something sparks and takes off. But it's not the be all and end all. I'd rather spend the time writing books than promoting them.

5* Amazon Review

Evening folks,

That's right gang, I have received my first five star review for Playground Cool! Ironically, or not, it's from the same lady who posted such a favourable review of All the Fun of the Fair. She is now my number one fan!

Needless to say I've tweeted about the review, put it on Goodreads and on Kindleboards, it's satisfying stuff.

Anyway, here's an extract:

Mr Sinclair has certainly mastered the art of writing credible fiction from both a woman's and a man's point of view. The story held my attention right the way through and had me laughing, crying, getting angry, rooting for the underdogs and screaming at the lying, cheating sc*mbags!
I think it is a little grittier than the mainstream Chick-lit I have previously read and I personally think that actually makes it better.

Network blogs and Amazon tags

Evening dear reader,

Today's big news is that I've changed my Twitter profile pic to be the cover of my latest book All the fun of the Fair. Will it help sales? Unlikely. But it looks good.

Also, I've joined Networked Blogs and as such now have five followers for this blog! Hello followers!! Welcome aboard. Spread the word.

I'm also making a bit more effort on Kindleboards which has resulted in a sharp increase in the number of 'likes' and clicks on my book tags on Amazon which can be no bad thing, although it has yet to led to an increase in sales.

With that in mind I've sold just shy of sixty copies so far this month which is great by my own standards. I have also written 2500 words of the second in my crime thriller series.

Crikey, I nearly forgot. In a fit of drunken ambition last night I submitted an extract of The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe to a couple of agents. I won't name them in case they read this and feel obliged to represent me (HA!) but based on past experience I'm not holding my breath.

Until next time...

I'm now on Kindle Boards!

Afternoon all,

It's a grim day here, gales and rain all the way which is why I'm inside blogging.

I now am a member of Kindle Boards and a very nice bunch they are too. I've created a page for my books, added links, photos, all sorts. I'd recommend the site to anyone who is a keen reader or, indeed, an author.

My Playground Cool product page is here. The Storyteller page is here.

Aside from that I've edited just over fifty pages of the next novel - All the fun of the Fair which will be launched just as soon as I finish editing the remaining 300 pages.

There will be a sample available via YouWriteOn shortly, which members can review.

I have yet to hear back from the agents, or from Bang, about The 24 Hour Jazz Cafe so I'll assume no news is good news.

Right, I'd best crack on and edit more pages because Liverpool are playing Bolton on ESPN at 5PM.

Until next time...