Back to the grindstone

At least half a dozen people have read the book and asked when the next one is coming out. Now I thought I was just 'writing a book' as part of some unspoken bucket list but now I am intrigued to see if I even can do it again.

Even though I invented pretty much everything that happened in G&D I realise now that I used a lot of filler info from my own experience. Now I will have to invent all of it.

Gulp

It's been a quiet couple of months, pushing copies of the book onto people who show an interest and getting extremely good reviews from them.

A milestone a couple of days ago when the local bookshop Queens Park Books put three copies on their shelves.

And there it is! Wow!

Of course, we have yet to see whether it catches anyone's eye...

Yellow Pages

Had a JR Hartley moment today when C wanted to give someone a copy of The Book of Starters that I did the photography for in 1996.

Fortunately, I didn't have to traipse around the second-hand bookshops. C found it on eBay for £2.50 in about 10 seconds...

Back in the day #1

On my first day driving the 31 bus back in 1977, I drove past some roadworks at the junction of Earls Court Road and Old Brompton Road.

Immediately afterwards, I heard the bell being rung repeatedly. It took a few moments to register and remember that this was the emergency stop signal from the conductor. I pulled up in Redcliffe Gardens, stopped the engine and went back to see what the problem was.

My conductor was standing on the platform calmly smoking a fag, so I asked him what the problem was. He turned his head upwards and nodded. I followed his gaze and saw that the upper deck had a large hole ripped in it.

I was amazed. Apparently, as we had passed the roadworks, a mechanical digger had swung into the bus, gouging away several feet of the upper deck.

I asked if anyone was hurt, whether there had been anyone up there.
The conductor said, "Just one bloke, black fella, he got off the bus, white as a sheet!"

Post free giveaway weekend

You could say that there was a vast increase in downloads - 33 over the weekend as opposed to 23 (paid) since August 26.

I suppose it has taught me a little about how to use Witter. However, 33 seems a small number considering how much info I put out there. I will be very interested to see if any reviews come of it. Everything I read now says free giveaways are BAD as people don't read what they have got for free and then if they do, leave shitty reviews.

Unless anything truly appalling happens between now and then, I shall give it another try mid-December and then put the book on any/all other e-book outlets.

Twitter

Oh Jeez. I have just been given a tutorial on using Twitter. How does anyone have the time..??

Giving it away

This weekend - November 15/16 I am giving away the Kindle version of George and the Dragon

I have been following a marketing game plan from DigitalBooksToday. It has left me totally baffled about forums, twitter etc I hope I have put the right bits in the right place. You have to know by now that I am not a social-media animal!

It will certainly be interesting to see whether a give-away results in any downloads at all, there seem to be thousands of them on offer and I cannot really see how my marketing might stand out...

Watch this space!