Facebook friends are not real

Everybody I can persuade to buy Echo has done so. Some people I don't know have also bought it. I'm now trying to squeeze out a last few sales as I've almost broken even, which I think was goal number five or six twenty blogs or so ago.

To try and drum up the last few downloads I've started a Facebook page. I could have just pushed the book through my personal FB but I'm fairly sure people would get fed up of me shamelessly promoting it at them. Again.

The strategy is about like the one I use on twitter. Post a couple of paragraphs taken from an interesting part of the book. The difference, this time is that I've also set up FB accounts for the major characters and they're going to be commenting, making snide remarks and generally refusing to do what I want them to do. No change there then

It's a real pain in the bum. I have to keep switching accounts. To make it a bit easier I've given them all the same password, but FB software has cottoned on to that and decided I had to prove they were real people rather than sock puppets by asking for a different mobile number for each. Between us we have four mobiles so, if I ask to borrow yours, and then you find a strange text in your inbox, I've just added another member of the crew.

At the moment I'm working through the story set out in Echo. When I've done that I think I'm going to work on a back story for some of them. If you read Echo (and were paying attention), you'll know a little bit about Grace Hemingray, but almost nothing about Eleanor Pearce or Edmond Ash. I'd like to colour them in a little, give them a life before York.

I'd like to think the readers know a little bit about who some of the characters are and what they're like. I have notes on them in a paragraph that I cut from the finished chapter and paste into the new one. it tells me a bit about them. It also helps me remember their first names. Apart from Cavendish, who doesn't appear to have one.

Navigator                 Grace Hemingray loyal but lacks confidence to command
Weapons and tactical Edmond Ash         Cynical whinger
Comms and scans         Eleanor Pearce Geek
Pilot.                       Marcus Dryden.              Daredevil

C/S Cavendish         Pragmatist
LC (Suz)Anna Gregory          Likes sex. With pretty much anybody
P Caitlin Acre         Angry (but funny)
P Helene Cartier            

C Nat(asha)Livingston             (Left handed) medic
P Marianne Nansen
P Jude Cromwell

On a completely different note, I took the hard copy and showed my Dad. Science fiction isn't really his thing so I'm not sure if he'll read it, show it to everybody, or pretend he wrote it.



P Caro(line) Hall Easygoing. Doesn’t say much

After the fuss dies down

It's been two weeks since i published. After a couple of days of good sales it's settled down to one every couple of days. I've just hit twenty copies sold, which i'm really pleased about.There are a few more expected from facebook contacts who are reading other stuff but the initial burst is over.

When i started down the publishing route, i set some goals -
1) Sell one copy - tick
2) Sell a copy to somebody who's not a friend - tick. The comms department asked me to write a guest blog on the PCT site and people whose name i've seen in emails got in touch and said they'd bought a copy
3) Sell a copy to somebody i don't know - tick
4) Sell a dozen copies - tick
5) Break even - there's still some way to go on that one. I need to sell around 60 copies in the UK to do that. (I've sold a copy on Amazon.com but, unless huge numbers of US readers start buying, i'm unlikely to see that money as Amazon will only pay up once they owe me $100)
6) Get a good, independent, review. I was really pleased to see Jim Graham get a fab review on Republicbot.com. Somebody wrote that writers only feel jealousy when other writers do well, but i really don't think that's true. There's room for all of us. Ross and a couple of other people retweeted about Jim's review so i'm not alone in thinking that. So, as soon as one of my readers puts a good review on Amazon, i'll try and use that as a tool to get a review site to have a look at Echo.

So future sales will be a long haul and i'll need to work at if i'm going to cover my costs and be able to pay Cathy for the cover to book 2

Happily it's not about sales. I wanted to be both a writer and an author. I've ticked the author box now, which makes me happy, but the real pleasure is in being a writer. Book 2, which has the working title Clarke (as in Arthur C Clarke) hasn't progressed too far as i wasn't sure what themes i wanted to explore. But i've had the space to give that some thought and i've got some ideas about that now.

7) Get an actual copy printed - loads of people are raving about Kindle and one person bought a kindle just so they could read it (i'm really flattered - happily they think it's a great thing for their holiday reading as i didn't want Echo to cost them £91). ebooks are great, but i think there's still something about having a book in your hands. Particularly if it's mine.