Monday, July 4, 2011

Can I even give away 500,000 Ebooks before xmas?

    Welcome back, my merry band of followers, who now number five in total by the way. I had hoped to double the number of blog-followers to 8, but alas, I failed in my mission. Nevertheless, on Day 3 of my experiment, I have received 63 views of the blog and managed to sell one more book, The Sunday Club. No, no, please stop, the applause is deafening.
    So, what have I done in the quest to promote my book in the past 24 hours? Well, yesterday, I purchased the cheapest item possible from Amazon.co.uk, which then allowed me to post on the UK Kindle site. I then proceeded to advertise my blog and my books in the "Thriller Forum".
   Then, this morning, I decided to upload one of my books to smashwords.com. I had already downloaded the excellent formatting guide which would allow the book to be forwarded to Apple, Sony, B&N plus several other retail sources. So, I spent almost four hours reading through the guide and  formatting the novel. Then it hit me. The little red lines under certain words. Upon double checking, I was ashamed, embarrassed and furious to realise that the finished book, which I ha already uploaded to Kindle, wasn't the final draft. My God! Some of the spelling mistakes were horrendous.

My tip of the day: Even though you have spent months working on your novel. Don't be overly eager to get it out there in Ebookland. Check it and re-check it. As we all know, quality will sell itself. But when you constantly add apostrophes where they shouldn't be, it won't help your fan-base or reviews. BTW I have also re-uploaded The Sunday Club on Kindle (Hopefully minus all spelling mistakes).

     Now I don't know about anyone else, but I am a two finger typist. I can't look at the screen when I'm writing, I have to look at the keyboard. To make matters worse, I get carried away. When I am on a roll, I drink red wine and smoke constantly until a chapter is complete. I then tend to look at my watch and realise that I should have been in bed fifteen hours ago. This is part of my character. My genetic makeup. I verge on the obsessive, but this is how I write, this is how I live. I want to succeed. I want to sell my half million books by Christmas and then donate the money from the next book to charity.

    So, as we stand today, I have 3 US Sales. But as I sit here today and the Lord is my witness, I will conquer the UK market in the morning!

    Am I downhearted? A little.
    Am I going to prove that this can be done? Bloody right!

    Stay tuned my friends. Only 172 days and 499,997 books to go!

   

BLOG VIEWS TODAY

United Kingdom25
United States
16
Canada
8
India
4
Croatia
3
Germany
2
France
2
Ireland
2
Jamaica
1

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