I think I’ve been at this for 30 weeks, I may have skipped the last two because of all the other stuff I have been doing so I’ll say 30 now (damn that’s a long time.) Any who, it’s gone fairly well so, from humble beginnings, and all the rest. My series on what it is to be a small time writer, that I did last week was well received, thanks, check it out here >>> if you haven’t already.  I thought I would continue the theme this week with the launch of Rose’s story, my second book, low bow thank you, I suppose first things first, Rose is out and I’m really happy with it. I found it a little bit difficult, more so than the first book, because I could kind of visualise myself in the main roles of Teo and the rest, whereas with Rose’s story the main character is a young girl, so not so easy but saying that it was liberating and  I enjoyed it a lot so I hope you pick it up now from here here>>

So let’s get into the next section in this series so tune in same time, same place every day this week.

Launching your books – well, you finally finish writing and you’ve now got to think about marketing. I read a lot of things as well as see a lot of things out there about how to be a professional writer where they all state you need to think about your marketing and the market in general way before you start to write your book, which I suppose is fine if you are a professional writer, writing articles for news papers or a script writer or writing a story that somebody else’s has set up the groundwork for, but to write like I think the most of us do, from the heart and in the moment, then we are not thinking about marketing or who you are going to sell to. And do we ever really know that anyway? I mean, look at me, I sell my books to people of all ages; from folk in their sixties, professionals who went to Oxford/Cambridge and at the same time twenty something’s and new wave hippies – I don’t think many of us are thinking about who we are ‘aiming’ at or even about launching our book so it’s catches all of us on the hop, I mean I’m wholly to blame for this with myself. I write a lot and now have two books out there but I didn’t learn from the first book and got caught somewhat on the hop with Rose’s story. I’m not experienced like some but I have been doing this for a solid year now so I should have  known that I needed to put time into marketing and I should have made more contacts and all the rest to help get out there to more people, to make this launch a bit more explosive, but the reality is for most of us low level writers or new starters is that we don’t have the time to Skype other writers, phone contacts, go to functions and writers networking events and all the other nonsense you read about. All that is OK for some rich kid in London but for most of us it isn’t, we don’t have the time or capital to do any of that. All we have is our passion for writing with perhaps some access to utilising social media.

I’ll be honest I wouldn’t do all that anyway, even if this Rose’s story blows up and I sell millions of copies it’s just not me. I love writing for the sheer pleasure of writing and I believe most of us don’t think about ‘audience’ – we have a story to tell – it isn’t just a job so can’t be approached in that way, although I know some do, which may be right for them but with my limited experience I find it all about the passion and enthusiasm for the project you are working on.  However, you do need to get it out there so I recommend looking into adverts and the like early on in the process.  I expect you, like me, when you finish a book, put it out there with no pomp and ceremony and then start tweeting loads of people about it.  I did this the first time I released a book and to be honest with you it’s not a good scheme, the issue is, as I said in my series last week, the pool of writing is polluted as there’s so many people trying to do it – either for a job or hobby and just people who want to leave a mark so that the writing world is flooded with books and that means that even with the biggest friendship group in the world you’re not going to really make much of a dent without sound targeted advertising, which is definitely something I’ve learnt from my early attempts. I suggest you do start with giving it to your friends and family as a pre-launch, a day or two before and ask them to leave a review. At the same time get some advertising going, local radio, local papers are good, if you get into your local indie bookshops that’s even better. I do recommend Facebook advertising, maybe Twitter but  more so Facebook just because their analytical tools are a bit stronger and overall the crowd on Facebook are going to respond to your advert better as I feel Facebook users are a little more responsive and appreciative of hard work where as Twitter is more for those who already have a big following – it is a  beautiful social media and I’m sure I would use it more if I had a few hundred thousand followers but at the moment it’s not worth the energy, if you’re trying to get yourself out there and recognised its next to useless. This is where I differ from all the articles in magazines and Buzz feed who claim that it’s the big thing you have to use. They use it because they’re in the business and have contacts but if you are like me, outside of their world then trust me it’s useless. They say you should tweet an artist and get them to re-tweet you to make yourself interesting but it doesn’t lead to sales in the way they suggest. It might work for some people but the amount of energy you need to put into that is probably five times more then you put into actually writing your book in the first place which to me is madness, so you’ve got your Facebook adverts and maybe you’ve got some twitter going so you’re looking good that’s a solid start.  Let’s take a break until tomorrow, so tune in tomorrow, same time. Meanwhile please help out the viral campaign for Rose that’s happening right now its started at 6 UK time,so get on board and copy and then share this link http://www.amazon.co.uk/Roses-Story-Tomos-Roberts-ebook/dp/B013CGWDDK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1439224706&sr=8-2&keywords=tomos+a+roberts

see you tomorrow.