Give Me Just A Little Of Your Time

To paraphrase the old Chairmen of the Board hit.  I'm taking a brief sojourn from my antipodean adventures to seek your help.

Today, my book 'Steady Past Your Granny's' received a review.  It was short and to the point.  It said 'GREAT' and gave the book 5 stars.  This brightened my day considerably.  Now, you may not really care whether my day has been brightened considerably or otherwise, and I wouldn't blame you, but it did make me think about this whole business of promoting our books.

I'm sure I speak for most independent authors when I say that very few of us have an advertising budget of any sort.  If we did have one, it would doubtless dwarf the meagre remittances from our book sales and make the whole affair pointless.  We are therefore forced to rely on the few, free outlets available to us (Facebook, Twitter etc.) as a means of attempting to bring our wares to the attention of the general public.  This can make us a bit of a nuisance at times.

However, if the readers would give us a bit of a hand, we could minimise our 'BUY OUR BOOKS' efforts and concentrate on producing more things that you want to read.  Can I suggest the following?

1.  Leave a review - there is no such thing as a book having too many reviews.  I can't speak for all authors but I read every one and I'm grateful for them all.  Even the 1 stars at least show that someone was sufficiently moved to make a comment.  I know when I'm looking for a new book, I always make a practice of browsing the reviews to get a feeling as to whether it will be my sort of thing, or not, and they're usually pretty accurate.

2.  Tell your friends - there's nothing more valuable than 'word of mouth' recommendation.  If you've enjoyed a book, let others know so that they can enjoy it too (or, alternatively, question your sanity and ask whether you should get out more) ;-)

3.  Tweet and Share - again, if you've enjoyed a book and you see something about it in the social media, please pass it on.  It's our only way of getting a wider readership.

We value every single read, comment, share and review, so please let us know what you think.

This is today's review, for which I'm very grateful:

'GREAT' review