Word is spreading

A quick progress update: my shiny new website is up and running – indeed, you may even have come to this blog from there. If you can think of a good reason to do so (or even if you can’t), please link to it from any site you run or contribute to. It all helps with the Google rankings, where I’m still all but invisible compared to David Williams’ book.

I’ve already had a couple of helping hands: David Eldridge has posted the cover (designed by his company) on the Two Associates blog, and those nice people at the London Writers Club included a picture and some kind words on their most recent email newsletter, which you can subscribe to from the website.

A site for sore eyes

Right, where were we?

Well, the big news is that my new website is finally starting to take shape. I got a first look at it at the weekend, and spent much of Sunday uploading the copy. It still needs a few tweaks (not least because formatting text in WordPress turned out not to be quite as straightforward as advertised), but the developer is working on it and I’m hoping to make it live in the next week or so.

In terms of marketing, the website is the biggest difference between my first and second forays into self-publishing. Back in 2002, I had a launch party for Grown-Up People, and I paid Xlibris for a selection of promotional materials (business cards, bookmarks and postcards) containing details of the book and how to order it, which I sent to anyone who I thought might be interested. I did the same via email, but the sum total of my efforts still came to fewer than 100 copies sold, and none to anyone I didn’t know personally.

Having a website to promote First Time I Met The Blues should, in theory, make it easier to market the book. For starters, I can send the link to anyone who I think might be interested – not just friends and acquaintances, but likely sources of publicity as well. Then there’s the possibility of people finding the site via a link from another site – assuming I can get anyone to create those links – or a search engine. (Type ‘first time i met the blues novel’ into Google and this blog comes up in second place on the listings, beaten only by my nemesis, David Williams.) And once they’re there, they can order the book and pay me using PayPal. Simples, as the meerkat says.

The website won’t just flog the book mercilessly, though: I am planning a couple of other features that readers, and potential readers, will hopefully enjoy. But more about that when it’s ready to unveil to the world.

What’s in a name?

Like everyone else, I’ve occasionally used the enormous powers of the information superhighway to search for namesakes, famous or otherwise. Years ago, as a TV listings writer, I came across the actor Tim Turner, who appeared in a few films and was best known for playing the Invisible Man in a 1950s adaptation of HG Wells’s novel – a character whose face is never seen, swathed as it is in bandages throughout the series.

That’s as famous as my namesakes get, as it happens – unless you’re reading this in Washington State, where (to quote from www.timturnerband.com) “singer, songwriter, guitar player extraordinaire, Tim Turner has been plying his craft in the Seattle area for three decades”. So, when I rather belatedly turned my thoughts to the question of setting up a website to promote First Time I Met The Blues, I had my fingers crossed that I could snaffle the ideal address.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to think again, as a quick search revealed that www.timturner.co.uk has already been taken by a computer repairman in Bude who advertises himself as the ‘PC Doctor’. At least there isn’t much chance of us being confused, I suppose. But it does mean that I’ll have to choose something a little less slick, like ‘timturnerauthor.co.uk’ or ‘timturnerwriter.co.uk’. Not perfect, but better than nothing.