Well, dear reader, now that you're here, why not read on a little more...
As a recently published author, I've been dabbling with a variety of different marketing techniques to increase my 'visibility' and thus increase those all important sales figures - some have worked...and some, it has to be said, haven't.
This blog, for example, now has a steady following of fantastic people who are spreading the word of its wit and wisdom (I am confident that my target of 1.5 billion pageviews a week will be surpassed before the end of the year) and in so doing are also spreading the word about my books.
My Facebook page 'IveReadItHaveYou' has just reached the dizzy heights of 20 'likes', and I've just orchestrated a serious membership push to double that number (though the jury is still out on whether that will work, especially given the confusion and perplexity caused by Mr Doyle's posting on Facebook last night!).
I've contacted local newspapers to see if I can arrange an article, but alas, to-date no-one has had the courtesy and good grace to even respond.
I recently contacted a local book club to see if they would be interested in adding my book to their reading list - still awaiting a response on that one, but fingers crossed. More positively, the book club at work has indicated that they'll look at putting Part 1 on their list...thanks Mags, you're a star!
There's a couple of little posters in my car (which have QR codes on them for fast access via smartphone to my book on Amazon...which, you have to admit, is pretty techno-savvy of me) though I doubt whether anyone's ever used them; there are some mugs at the office with the same QR codes, and a bunch of 'I've Read It Have you' business cards which are being randomly handed out by the faithful.
And then there's good, old-fashioned word-of-mouth, still the most successful technique I've found (apologies to those who know me whose tits I have probably bored off in the weeks since my book went live! Your tolerance of me is truly commendable.)
And then there's Twitter.
Hmmmm.
What to say about Twitter.
Well, on the positive side, it is through Twitter that I linked up with Indie Author Land who were kind enough to conduct an interview with me (though it was more of a questionnaire to be filled in than a Frost-Nixon face-to-face conversation) and then publish the results on their web-site and promote through Twitter and Facebook (shame the first tweet had a link in it that didn't work):
http://www.indieauthorland.com/archives/3212
There are actually some quite funny answers, even if I do say so myself!
On the negative side, though, I'm coming to the conclusion that Twitter is just not for me. Yes, I have 109 followers, but I'm not entirely sure whether they are following me because they are interested in what I have to say, or simply because by following me they know there's a good chance I'll reciprocate and that will boost their own number of followers, and it's the number of followers they have that's important to them.
And there's just so much noise on Twitter. How anyone with 10,000 followers can even begin to sift through the banality and desperate 'Read Me'-ness of it all to find something really interesting, I have no idea at all.
I suggest most of the people on Twitter just simply don't bother reading what other people tweet because all they're really interested in is what they themselves have to say!
If that's true, then it's just a question of trying to get as big an audience to shout at...and where's the point in that, when no-one's actually listening?
So, once again, my sincere thanks to David Njoku for taking the time to put my rambling nonsense on his web-site - you are top-notch!
ps Am I the only one who's had a little smile at the way the much vaunted, ITV-presenter-orgasm-inducing 'Spanish Flair' has been ruthlessly crushed by German Footballing efficiency in the two Champions League semi-finals?
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