Procrastinating Packer

After four years at the foot of Kilimanjaro I am moving on.  The time has come and now once again I have to pack up my life.  Easier said than done.  For I am the ultimate procrastinator, the person who says "I'll do it next weekend."  Unfortunately I am starting to run out of weekends.  The movers have dropped off the boxes which are stacked against the lounge wall staring at me, willing me to assemble them.
But as I am about to start I decide it's very necessary for me to check my email first, see what friends are doing on Facebook, maybe have a shower and wash my hair.  Procrastination.  It's my worst enemy.
It's not like I don't want to leave, I do.  I am over power cuts, slow internet, ants, geckos, barking dogs and all the other things that wear me down.  But it's the people who are hard to leave behind, friends and co-workers and the mountain which looked so beautiful yesterday evening as the sun's last rays turned the snowy top pink.  Four years is quite a long time, you make connections and leaving them behind is never easy.  This however, is the lot of the international school teacher.  It's a transient world with people coming and going all the time.  Something you never get used to.  Some connections you'll keep for a lifetime and others you'll make empty promises about keeping in touch.  But of course this has nothing really to do with the packing and sorting I should be doing now.  Best to get started I guess.

Marketing your Books

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You've just written your book and are now dreaming about relaxing on a beach in some exotic location with a good book.  Forget about that dream.  Writing was the easy part.  You now have to market your book and that is the unfun part.  Marketing is a serious amount of work and time.  If you don't market your book nobody will know it exists.  If they don't know it exists then they will not know to buy it.  So get yourself off that beach chair and fire up that old laptop and get started.
Author Platform
In a nutshell, this is your footprint on the worldwide web.  You develop this by having a website, a blog, using social media, writing articles, guest blogging and commenting on others' blogs.  The more active you are on the internet, the larger the footprint you will leave.  The easier it will be for readers to find you and your books.
Marketing 101
Freebies
There is a lot of discussion about giving your books away for free.  Some authors don't believe in it and say they didn't put all the hard work and effort into writing the book just to give it away.  Others say it gets your name known and out there.  If you want to give away books you need to sign up with Goodreads.com and list your book as a giveaway.  Alternatively put your book on Smashwords.com and give away a discount coupon.  KDP Select gives you 5 free giveaway days every 90 days.  How much longer this will last for, nobody knows.  I haven't found KDP Select particularly successful in the longterm.  You get a lot of people downloading your book onto their Kindle because it is free.  They don't always read it and aren't necessarily your target audience either, which can result in a sucky review.  Also, you have to give them exclusivity which is never a good thing as you miss out on a lot of other ebook retailers.
Blogs, Blogging, Guest Posts, Commenting and Virtual Book Tours
It's so easy to set up a blog it's frightening.  There are scores of places where you can get a free blog.  You have to post regularly, deliver good content and don't spam or only try and push your books on people.  If you have friends with blogs, offer to do a guest post and reciprocate.  You can also organise your own Virtual Book Tour, or pay someone else to organise it for you.  Once again there are countless people advertising on the net who arrange your blog tour for about $30.  You will get some exposure and reviews.  Find blogs similar to yours that you can sign up for and be sure to comment on them regularly.

Book Reviews
I'm a great believer in what you put out to the universe you get back.  If you review other books people will review yours.  Get into the habit of reviewing everything you read.  Post the reviews on Amazon, Shelfari, Barnesandnoble and Goodreads.  Don't pay people to review your books.  There are many people out there who are prepared to exchange reviews.  If you want to go that route you find review exchanges on Goodreads Forums, Createspace and Amazon Forums.
Social Networking
Twitter, Facebook, Pininterest, Google+, Linkedin are the more common ones.  For writers there is also She Writes, Goodreads, Kindleboards and Shelfari.  Join the groups, comment frequently and get yourself known as an oracle of useful information.  Don't spam as that will make you unpopular.

Try and work out a schedule for yourself so you can do a little every day.  Take on too much and it becomes overwhelming.  Good luck with your marketing efforts and have an awesome Festive Season!
Cindy



Wonderful Watamu

The worst part of a holiday is that it ends.  I think I could easily live the rest of my life on holiday.  Unfortunately, commitments like children mean I have to keep working.  But I can dream.  How wonderful it would be to have enough money to be permanently on holiday.

Watamu was wonderful!  Kenya is a great destination.  It's about an hour and a half north of Mombasa depending on how fast you drive, and about half an hour south of Malindi, along the fabulous Kenyan coast.
We stayed at Turtle Bay Beach Club, all inclusive - all meals, drinks, snacks, etc, etc for approx $150 a night for the two of us.  It was a bit less, but it's too early in the morning for my head to attempt conversion sums.  That includes the use of their hobie catamarans, kit surfers etc.  Siobhan even went scuba diving in the open sea and is now hooked.  She swam with two stingrays.  Seeing that she now wants to get a diving certificate, I guess that being permanently on holiday is not an option and I'll just have to keep working so I can keep paying.

Being addicted to history (I wonder if there's a 12-step program for it) I was keen to explore the Gede ruins about ten minutes drive from Turtle Bay.  Interesting, seriously.  The city state was abandoned when a drought caused wells to dry up, and people to die of disease in the 17th Century.  It must have been magnificent in its day.  Apparently, the people of Gede were peace-loving and refused to take sides when the Sultan of Mombasa was having a go at the Sultan of Malindi and they got caught in the middle.  Another reason why the city was abandoned.
After that little taste of history, I was determined to continue following the Portuguese around the world, having already been to Angola, Mossel Bay, Mozambique, Goa, China and Malaysia.  While Siobhan was diving on the coral reef, I headed north to Malindi which was where Vasca da Gama had stopped just before he visited Goa in India for the first time.  I checked out the cross he put up in 1498 and the chapel he built the same year.  A tiny limestone and thatch building, but the first church in East and Central Africa.  Very cool.
Much to Siobhan's (and probably mine) chagrin we had to leave Watamu, vowing to return whenever we could. 

We stopped off at Saltlick again on our way back after taking a shortcut through the back of beyond on some hair-raising dirt roads.  This time we saw the most amazing sight, a herd of over 40 elephants, many tiny calves that were still small enough to walk underneath their mother's bellies, descend on the watering hole.  Siobhan took the most stunning photographs, and I told her she might need ton re-think studying drama and rather focus on photography.  I made the silly mistake after being so caught up viewing her great shots, that I stupidly promised her a fantastic camera for her sixteenth birthday in September.  I guess that means I have to add a few more years onto my working life before I can retire to a cottage next to the sea. 
You can see the rest of the Watamu photos here

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/set=a.10150554707695444.652623.795715443&l=c21a70f257

Back at school now and this hectic term has started off to be just that.  I'm not sure how I'm going to manage to fit in some writing time, but will just have to give it a go.  I have two book projects on the go at the moment - How to say no to sex for the suddenly single, and Redesigning yourself for the multi-tasking generation.  And then of course Kerri and I stumbled upon this great idea for a novel when I wanted to advertise her skills on Facebook so that she can get a good and decent man. 

I wish I had more time for my writing.  I need that cottage by the sea so I can watch the waves from my window while I write up a storm.  Sigh.  My book sales for March and April have been sensational, hope it keeps up.  Okay, enough about wonderful Watamu.  I might just jump in my car and head back out there when I should be WRITING!

Have a great week!
Cindy