It’s been a hectic week.  In the days leading up to the free days for Pirates on Amazon I followed lots of advice and emailed people, tweeted websites and signed up for exposure on literary, read and review and kindle sites.  Thanks to you all.  On the day I followed the advice from World Literary Cafe, contacted the sites I’d been in touch with, sent messages with the info to others, and tweeted like mad.

It doesnt come easily, tweeting like mad.  Like many authors I find putting my book up there saying ‘Buy me – I’m free!’ rather embarrassing.  Saying it once or twice maybe but being back on there hour after hour, I was sure people would be sick of me.  But, remembering how often I normally look at Twitter… if you tweet all day, some of your potential fans may spot one or two of them.

WLC suggests we need three tweets to notice and more to remember to do something.  I had lunch with a friend on Wednesday and she said the freebie on Pirates and reminded her to download Princelings; she had started it and was enjoying it!  So the reminders definitely help people who already have an intention to buy.

Keeping up the ‘presence’ after the free period was another piece of advice.  Again, you feel people will be sick of you, but there was another download of Pirates showing this morning, and that is outside the free period.  In fact I’ve seen a tweet a few days late for a book that looked interesting , and bought it anyway, so if I’m like that there must be others!  And Kindle books don’t generally break the bank.

I found Toni Kappes information on how to tweet effectively very useful, especially the link to Twaiter – which has turned into Gremln.com.  I didn’t find it that straightforward to set up scheduled tweets, because the Help didnt help!  But I did find somewhere eventually that said just type the message above your lists of tweets and then you’ll see a button for ‘once’ or ‘recurring’.  Well, after that it was easy!

The most importnant thing I think is to get some reviews for the books.  I am very grateful to the people that have reviewed them already.  It makes such a difference to read a blurb online and see that other people have read it.  I would suggest looking at both the .com and the .co.uk reviews if you are in Europe, there seem to be some cultural differences that affect the views we have of characters.

One message I have taken on already is to be explicit about my characters being guinea pigs.  I have no need to be shy of this.  It saves my readers a lot of confusion trying to work it out.  And I’ll check the pace of the third one as well, to make sure it hasnt got any spots that drag, as opposed to let the reader take a breath.  More action may be needed too.  I rewrote more bits of Pirates than I did of Princelings, and I have some large chunks of Lost City ready to be rewritten. All those editing blogs are being taken to heart!

Here’s to the next free days.  I may reschedule the last ones to make sure I’m here, ready to tweet like mad!  Looking forward to it.

Learning from the first free days
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