While writing my book I had one eye on the end goal – getting people to read it. I read countless articles and tweets about the problem. My book is going to be semi-self-published. I was lucky enough to see a competition being run by my local Council through their libraries, you submit an opening chapter and a synopsis and if selected as a finalist you would be given a mentor and the opportunity to complete the book and get it published.
I had an opening chapter and synopsis lying around on my computer – my final assignment on the Creative Writing course was to produce this. So, I entered and to my surprise they liked it and I was a finalist. I have now finished the book and it will be released later this year. It’s called A Young Man’s Game, and I’ll try not to spam the hell out of it when it is done.
With this in mind, I wondered what could I do this World Book Day for the many self-published authors (also known as independent authors) out there, who don’t have the clout of the big publishing houses to promote and advertise them. According to this site: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-price-for-advertising-in-the-London-tube it costs £63,900 per site for two weeks to advertise a 15 x 48-sheet ad to advertise on the London Underground :shockedface:
I decided I would buy a number of books today written by self-published authors and tweet about them, raising awareness of them to my pitiful amount of followers, and I will be reviewing the books once I have read them on Amazon, and on here if I can find the words to do them justice.
Image courtesy of http://www.ckdawn.com/home.html
These are the books I’ve bought today:
Wrong Place Wrong Time – David P Perlmutter
Dancing At Midnight – Rebecca Yelland
The Havoc Tree – Layden Robinson
Ferryman – Michael Blaylock
A Dangerous Secret – Peter Martin
Femme Fatale – Dominic Piper
The Sleepwalker Legacy – Christopher Hepworth
Melaran – Robert M. Clarke
The Scroll – Samantha Katherine Cohen
The Unfortunate Expiration of Mr. David S. Sparks – William F. Aicher
How To Critique Creative Writing – Norman Turrell
(Because it can’t all be fun and games)
And for the kids, I’m sure my Logan will love it.
Brave Sophia – Tamala Johnson J.D.
All in all, I spent about £20 or so. Twelve books for the price of two books by ‘published’ authors in Waterstones (which I do buy regularly). Quite a bargain. There are titles there that may not be my cup of tea – the ones more geared to romance, perhaps – however, my wife will appreciate any tips I get from them, also I found my ‘thriller’ A Young Man’s Game to have a lot more romance in it than I planned for at the beginning. Maybe I’m a closet romance reader at heart, just put off by the Mills and Boon books my mum used to read by the bucketload in the 80s.
So, the point of this post is about World Book Day. There are thousands and thousands of authors out there, not all of them are on the shelves at Waterstones, or in your local supermarket. The location you pick a book up from doesn’t guarantee it’s quality – I’ve started many awful ‘published’ books, why not try some self-published authors, then tell your friends, follow the authors on Social Media, leave reviews.
Paul
Paul Blake 