February 1, 2015

Over the last ten days or so I have been circulating round bookshops in the area as a precursor to my next meeting with the Chindi writers group. I have been tasked with getting our books into retail outlets, which is why I have been talking to the owners and managers of said shops. But what a struggle! Two of the shops were advertising closing down sales: “everything must go!” One was no longer in existence; another was without a manager for several days, and the main high street chain offered some hope but nothing definite. With one it was a case of “I’ll make enquiries with head office and ring you back.” The other main chain offered to look at our ISBN numbers and make a decision. So it wasn’t all a big NO, but I don’t hold out much hope. I have still to talk to a private shop whose owner only works at the shop three days each week. Although she was interested, her shop is so small that she would probably only be able to fit a few titles in. I’ll be seeing her on Tuesday with fingers crossed.

This week I am off to London for the International Thriller Writers ‘meet up’. I’m looking forward to that enormously and expect to rub shoulders with some of the leading thriller writers in Europe. I don’t expect to see any American authors because this meeting is for the European members only. I’ll write a full report on the meeting in my next blog. Hopefully I’ll have something to write about.

And another celebration for me was the publishing of my latest novel, Past Imperfect. The official release date was last Friday, but already my copies and those I’m ‘gifting’ to family and friends have already reached their destinations. One of my sons, who has only read my books and no other author, couldn’t put the book down once he’d started. I still wonder why he doesn’t read other authors because there are so many talented ones out there.

Back on to one of my earlier topics about publishing on CreateSpace: I am still frustrated by my own inability to produce an acceptable book jacket to fit the CreateSpace trim sizes. I do get there eventually, but last week I received a proof copy of Hell’s Gate, and decided to I needed to make a small change the interior file. I submitted the file only to have the jacket rejected because it didn’t fit their trim size. It was annoying because I had made no changes to the cover; only the interior. Needless to say I have gone over the process again even though I still am not completely at home with Photoshop. That will be three titles of mine with me as publisher on Amazon; only four more to go. I’ll probably have it all sussed by the time I get to the end. Wish me luck!