Hai & Happy New Year

Happy New Year! 

How exciting. I've got so much to do this year I'm positively anxious to get going. Before my next blog post which will be looking forward at A Demon Day, I'm going to look back on my progress with my first book since I hit the three month benchmark yesterday.

Book One of the Rae Wilder Novels skipped past 40,000 downloads. That is just ... um ... I am speechless. And I still don't have my iBookstore stats (over 300 ratings with an average of 4 stars), which I'm dying to get my hands on as I think they'll be good. The book is doing good in the Nook store with over 650 ratings giving me a flattering 4 star average, and over 100 written reviews! I've gotten an amazing amount of feedback on my Facebook Fan page and via Twitter, and managed to respond to over a hundred of you that contacted me over the festive season. Thank you all for your kind words and support! Another gem is that I've got over 45,000 reads on WattPad.com, whoop whoop. I'm hoping to do a giveaway at some point in late Jan/early Feb so please watch out for that. I'll also be giving my "fans" an excerpt of A Demon Day (Book Two) with the second books trailer on the site. 

The Hardback Edition of the book is now available to buy via Lulu with 40% off  – £10.79/$16.30 (List Price is £17.99/$27.18) and it is free to download. If you buy please do leave a review and let me know what you think of the quality, cover design (to the left), interior, etc. I think these things are important to the overall enjoyment of the book. I had a good time with Lulu.com. It was easy and enjoyable. If you're an Indie Author and want to do a hardback I recommend it! The only thing I had trouble with was the file up-loader (kept getting error responses). The Author Spotlight is a great idea too and will be useful when I release other books.

The Paperback Edition is out soon via Amazon.com (final cover to the right). So it will be a couple of weeks yet as I was not happy with quality of the proof interior, I had to go back to the drawing board. It will be priced at £7/$10.99. Amazon have put me through the grinder. Their cover designer is okay, but I made an effort to design my own covers. Needless to say having to abide by trim sizes is bloody annoying. Plus there is a 48 hour approval, so if you get it wrong you have to wait and start again. It adds so much time onto everything. I know it sounds like I'm always hating on Amazon, but all my experiences with them are so negative ... this year will be better *stubborn face*.


There will be a number of chances to get your hands on free copies of the Print Editions and I will post the giveaway schedule soon. I'm still thinking of new promotion ideas, but March will signal the end of my six month focus on TDG. My attention will shift to the promotion of the sequel. Admittedly, I don't do much by way of marketing (the hard sell ... shudder) as I want to focus on the writing itself. Now I've had a chance to see what's out there, and how people respond on different platforms I've worked out a marketing plan that's best for me and my work ... my style. I should get to see it in action for Book Two.


I have three book blog reviews for TDG to point your attention to Book'dOut, Clandestine Sanctuary and The Literary Housewife (my favorite as her review style reminds me of mine). A big thank you to those three for taking the time to read and review.

In closing, I hope everybody is well rested after the break we had and ready for the year ahead. I am. I've got a ton of New Year resolutions I am 33.3 per cent certain I will keep until the end of January ;)