Marketing, promoting, meeting and lecturing: something of a book week really. I didn’t do any lecturing, except to our puppy. Monday was our CHINDI meeting. There’s always a lot said and done at these meetings, but last Monday was entertaining, watching two of our group trying to “live video chat” between their laptops. It worked after a fashion, but their skills, and ours, need polishing. It’s all to do with live chats with readers on our website and seeing how efficient we can become — make us look more professional. If we can crack this, it will be beneficial in the future. Four new members were introduced, some surprisingly successful in their writing careers. It was good to hear what they’ve done and know that it brings so much more to the group. Because they all had to introduce themselves, it was decided that the members there would do the same. I think it worked well.

CHINDI were at it again on Wednesday at Chichester Library, giving a seminar on book indie publishing as part of the Chichester Literary Festival. There was a good turnout where four of our members gave a PowerPoint presentation on how to get your book published and the pitfalls to avoid. All this information is contained in the group’s excellent book: “Before You Press Publish”. The book is available on the website www.chindi-authors.co.uk

I began a Facebook ad aimed at building my subscriber list. I’ve gone from a fairly slow, organic growth of about one or two a day to about twenty a day. I don’t know how long I’ll run the campaign for, but I have a budget limit and may leave it to run its course. From time to time I’ll tweak the audience, make a couple of changes and see if the result bombs or takes off. It can be an exciting, frustrating and head scratching experience. I also paid for a low key promotion and the results are — “low key”. Serves me right.

I’m making slow progress with my novel. I have passed the 30,000 word mark, so that’s something to be pleased about. I sketched out a kind of ‘data flow’ diagram, putting in names, places and links, but it’s beginning to look more like an “Activity on the Node” rather than a clear picture of what I’m up to. And if that expression is not clear to you, don’t worry; it’s got nothing to do with writing.

So what lies ahead? More writing for me of course and more training for Tuppence (our puppy). If I could get half of my writing discipline into the dog, I would be doing well. And today I must put the price of Hell’s Gate back to its pre-promotion price; I might sell a few. Oh, and I am reading through one of our group’s latest novel: The Front of the Wilderness Generation by Jeremy Good. Why not have a look on our CHINDI website and see what it’s about?

So that’s it for another week. I wonder how many more words I will have added to my book, or how many more sign-ups? Watch this space and wish me luck.