Promotional flyers for advertising your book

'Real life' can sometimes be just as effective as the internet for promoting a book...

Flyers for one of my early books.

A while back I reported on how one of my best sales periods came after I created some promotional flyers to advertise my books, and then distributed them to party-loving backpackers at the Full Moon Party in Koh Phangan (when I wasn't partying myself, that is).

My original flyer creations were fairly amateur efforts and weren't going to win any awards for graphic design, but they got the job done and helped gain me a few extra sales in the week that followed that Full Moon Party.

Since then I've designed more eye-catching flyers and used them on a few occasions with successful results. As you can see from the photo above, this time I went for colour flyers and for the design I basically just used the front cover of the book, then added a short text explanation to inform people where they can download the book.

Funny Amazon reviews

Tongue in cheek reviews found online...

Internet reviews are a great way of praising excellent products or warning of less than great customer service. Sometimes though, as well as being informative, many reviews are also entertaining. Here's a selection of reviews found on Amazon which made me chuckle...

1) What a bargain!

Unfortunately I don't own an 85" TV so I had to
make do with this photo of an 18" TV instead.

First up is a review of a top of the range cutting edge 85" Samsung TV. Yes, that's right ... an 85 inch screen! As you'd expect for such a large TV, the price is also quite large, and the TV clocks in at a few dollars under forty grand! ($39,997.99 to be precise.) It's a great TV, but at such an exhorbitant price there may be financial implications for anyone buying one, as highlighted by this first review:

"This TV is fan freaking tastic!!!! We are now living in the box it came in but even that is roomy and quite comfy!!!!"

Perhaps the first reviewer should have paid attention to the wise words of the following helpful reviewer who travelled back from the future to leave some very useful advice:

"I am coming back from the future to write this review, and to let everyone know you can buy this TV for $699 in 2015. It still looks great though."

I suspect the bit about travelling from the future may actually be made up, but I wouldn't be surprised if the 2015 price turned out to be true.

The latest facebook hoax

The best way to respond to internet hoaxers...

Sammy The Seagull with his face pixellated to protect his privacy.

Over the last week, most people on facebook will have noticed some of their friends posting a long-winded message stating that they don't give facebook permission to use their photos, information or posts, and that violation of privacy can be punished by law UCC 1-308-11 308-103, etc, etc. Apparently, UCC 1-308-11 308-103 doesn't even relate to online privacy (and even if it did, I'm pretty sure that an American law wouldn't be much use for people in the rest of the world), and it turns out that the message was started by a sneaky prankster.

To me, the art of bluffery should only be used for playing good natured tricks on people and having a bit of daft fun. The best way to deal with an online hoax like this therefore is probably the way one facebook friend responded to it, i.e. by posting the following message:

New Year's resolutions for 2015

Last year I made five New Year's resolutions, and managed to succeed with four of them, so this year I'm going to see if I can go one better and make it five out of five successful New Year's resolutions. Here are my resolutions for 2015...

A low key scene.
Much like the plot in my forthcoming short story.

1) Publish a short story

This was the one resolution which let me down last year. However, I recently finished the first draft of one short story, and whereas my first full length book deals with an evil genocidal plot, things are more low key in this short story. It's a simple everyday 'slice of life' story, and it features minor characters from my previous books. Hopefully I'll get it published later in the year.