IT’S only taken me 40 years to write and get my debut novel published. Now for the hard part.
I’ve written about thousands of people during my career as a local journalist but telling their stories and being ‘out there’ as the subject, rather than the messenger, does not come easily. Still, I have a book to promote, have exhausted sales to friends and family and, nice as they are, you can’t spent ‘likes’ on Facebook.
It’s a book largely about newspapers but I don’t want it to appeal just to journalists because there are some great (obviously) human interest stories within it.
So, I sit down to write four press releases, hoping to strike the right balance as I give each a different intro. One is for the two regional papers for whom I’m still a ‘veteran columnist’, one for the group that includes the weekly paper I used to edit, one for local radio and TV and one for the trade press.
It seems to be working because, within two days of emailing various newsdesks, there's been a ‘short’ in the Nottingham Post and a full page in the Derby Telegraph, with the same story on its website. I've been invited to appear on Erewash Sound and (armpits wet at the thought!) Notts TV, UK Press Gazette has tweeted to its 80,000 followers and I've done a ten-minute interview on Radio Derby, for which I spent a nervous night rehearsing only to find that the reality was much more pleasant than I’d feared.
I’ve had several sales as a result of all this activity and hear that a wholesaler has ordered some copies in case retailers show an interest.
It’s been a dream getting to this stage. Now, if only I could see my work on a table in Waterstones…