We have lift-off!

To my relief, the launch party on Wednesday night went well. About 25 people turned up, which was enough to make the room feel comfortably full – there were the usual late apologies for absence, but you have to expect that.

Everyone seemed to enjoy the event, and my reading, and – most importantly – I sold all 37 copies I’d brought with me. (Why 37? That was as many as I could carry in my holdall without giving myself a hernia.) Mind you, I only found out afterwards that my brother-in-law had been indulging in some creative marketing – two copies for a tenner, that sort of thing. I would have preferred it if he’d cleared it with me first, but I can’t really complain: as he said, the important thing is to get the book into people’s hands, by any available means.

So now the real marketing effort begins. I’ve got a book about marketing books which suggests that, once the book is published, you “apply the ‘one a day’ rule by doing something every day to support your book’s sales effort”. That sounds like sensible advice, and I’ll be doing my best to follow it.