The Opposite of Publishing's Billy Big Bollocks...

Pst... you. Yes, you. Can you see me? Am I visible? You caught me prepping what I like to call my 'professional marketing campaign'. Even though I have zero knowledge of marketing or the professionalism within it, that's what you've stumbled upon me doing. Guilty as charged. I'm blagging it once again.

The idea is, that in a month or so, I'll start bombarding my socials with pictures, links, and excerpts. If I do it as a planned campaign over the course of a few weeks, there's every chance people will simply give in. They'll pre-order my book as a means to making me go away. It's how I ended up subscribing to The Guardian. There's only so many times you can see the '...we have a small favour to ask' message at the end of an article before the guilt kicks in about reading free journalism. Next thing you know, you're setting up a direct debit and smugly ignoring the begging bowl every time you've read the news. I'm going for a similar vibe/guilt trip here. 

Assembling on tour!

It's all about pre-orders you see. Pre-orders don't count as sales until the week the book is released. (October 7th in this case.) So the more pre-orders I can gather in the build up to October, the more sales I'll have on Week One. Billy Big Bollocks authors would hope to have a continued gush of sales for the weeks and possibly months that followed. For the likes of little indie outfits like myself, the gush of the first week is definitely a trickle by the second. So the more pre-orders I can gather, the better the sales of the book are. And, even though I still don't know how all this works, the more pre-orders/sales on Week One, the more the algorithm gods get involved (providing they've stopped titting around in space by then) and the more likely my book will be promoted and pushed to the top of search engines. Or something. Look, I never claimed to know what I was talking about. I just know I need those pre-orders.

It's hard to write a bio without making
yourself sound like a knob.

It's an interesting task, working out what images and bits of information might tempt the discerning reading public into pre-ordering a book. For me, it's usually down to the cover and blurb. No big science behind it, I just have to be intrigued enough to want more. Others may need something different. I recently took my proof copy to Aberystwyth - where all the action takes place - and photographed it around the town. I've no idea if this will interest people, but fans of the Aber seafront might be up for reading a romp that has that as a backdrop. Or fans of chips. Either way.

Two new family members have 
rocked up since the last book.

So while you've caught me planning the promotional material I'm going to use, I might as well share it with you here. That way I can see how it all looks together. I can see if my blagged campaign of shoving various bits of my book into everyone's nose is likely to pay off. See what you think. Does it make you want to pre-order? Have I guilt-tripped you into clicking the multitude of links to the sales page? Will it make you share the link with everyone you've ever met in your life? I can only hope so. 

Chippy chips feature regularly in  
Assembling. Luckily Aber is the home of
the best fish and chips in all the land.
So that worked out well. Pre-order here!

Have a lovely week, folks.