My author visits this week.

I thought I'd tell you about my author visits this week.

I had a great time at The Warminster Writer's group, who made me really welcome. We had a lovely chat about all things publishing, my books and writing in general.

We also played a few writing games and I explained the difficulties and joys of writing for children, and read a couple of my stories to them.

They were a fabulous bunch, varied and talented in their own ways. I enjoyed hearing some of their work too.

 I had a good time, finishing off with a book signing of three of my physical copies including the best sellers, Hairy, Scary Spider!  Pipsy the Penguin and Football is Fantastic!


Then later on that same week I had two children's groups to visit in Bath. We had lots of fun, played loads of games about descriptive writing, ate chocolate cookies and generally had a good laugh.

We read some of my stories, dissected some of the sentences and made them brand new. We played Toady Twisters, a going on holiday game and a describe the item game. The children showed lots of enthusiasm and came up with some brilliant suggestions and went home brimming with new ideas, along with some of my stories to read. It was well worth the visit.

If an author gets a chance to visit a writing group or a class of children, I'd advise to go for it, it's a fun evening or day out and gets your name into the community a little bit more.

It's taken a long time, but 'Football is Fantastic!' my 'Early Readers' best seller in children's sports has been made into a paperback.

I don't use createspace, but have them printed locally, so the only place to get a signed by the author, first edition, at this moment is on ebay.UK.

Soon it'll be on my website too.

The size and shape matches exactly with Hairy Scary Spider? - they're similar in size and feel to the Mr Men series - so with all nine of my titles together they'll look great on the shelf.

This really is a laugh-out-loud children's story and has become a UK children's sports best seller, so it's good to see it in print.


Football is Fantastic! paperback.

Helpful hints to marketing your ebook.

 After two years in the self-publishing business and four bestsellers in their genres, I'm often approached and asked, "how do you market your ebooks?"

So here's a few helpful hints.

Be patient!

Promote whenever you can, but don't be me! me! me! Buy! buy! buy! No-one likes a pusher.

Be more patient. These things take time, from the upload to the reviews coming in. Everything will slowly build. A friend of mine who is approaching 250 thousand downloads tells me how she only sold 40 books in her first year.

Write more books it's the best way to advertise all your titles. If someone is attracted to one of your stories they will search for more. Not many authors do well if only one title.

Use the tools that Amazon gives you. Have a fantastic cover, a brilliant blurb and an up-to-date Author's page.

Don't be afraid to make changes to your blurb, author's page or even your actual book. Listen to your reviewers with an open mind. Have they got a point? Make changes if necessary!

Don't be offensive. There are people who will leave you with a bad review if they don't like what you're saying or you're saying it in a dogmatic way.

Make sure you do some promoting every week whether on your blog or facebook page. Join forums that are genre related and post meaningful threads, be helpful to the group.


Oh! One last thing... be patient!