As this blog is being posted, I’m scheduled to be at the Red Hut Cafe at Ski Run Blvd. and Lake Tahoe Blvd. in South Lake Tahoe, Sunday, August 3rd, 8:30 a.m.
That should be a piece of cake, right? You spend a couple of hours hanging with the breakfast crowd and the fans who come just for books, signing books and chatting about Owen and Spot. And when it’s time to clean off the signing table, you order up an Owen’s Omelet and chow down. The life of an author is pretty sweet.
Oh, but there’s a few other things to do.
In the last week since my book launch, I did a talk at the South Lake Tahoe Library, an appearance at the Bookshelf in Truckee, an appearance at the street fair Truckee Thursday, and another talk at Shelby’s Books in Minden, Nevada. Like Sundance Books the week before, I had a good crowd at my talks, 70-something at the library, 40-something at Shelby’s, and they bought a lot of books. Yea!
I also let people from out of town order personalized, signed books, and I spent part of every day fulfilling those orders. Part of a book launch also includes sending out review copies to select reviewers and book bloggers.
Bottom line? In the previous eight days, I’ve signed 837 copies of Tahoe Ghost Boat and 164 copies of my other titles and shipped them out or hauled them to bookstores. (Yes, I did get my fingers trapped in packing tape twice, but I haven’t yet gotten a signing cramp. Probably because my handwriting is so bad and irregular that my fingers never make the same moves twice.)
Between the signing and shipping stuff, I do emails. Already people are writing about reading Ghost Boat. So far, they all love it, although I’m well aware that if someone doesn’t like it, they’re not likely to write and tell me. As everybody knows, emails take a lot of time, but what a great task for a writer to have!
As of this writing, Amazon has sold 441 ebooks of Tahoe Ghost Boat. Based on previous experience, that number will swell in August and quickly outpace paper books. In the last year, I sold four times as many ebooks as treebooks, so I now look at my physical books as walking advertisements for ebooks. I feel very bad for bookstores caught in the ebook squeeze, but for many if not most authors, ebooks are an amazing gift from the tech gods. If you get good reviews, people will click the buy button, and Amazon puts the money directly into your account, no work necessary from you. After these first few days, nine people have posted reviews of Tahoe Ghost Boat. When that number climbs into the 100s (my last book Tahoe Chase now has over 800 reviews), more readers will notice, and that will translate into good sales.
In the coming months, I will have many more events, all of which will be listed on my events page: http://toddborg.com/Events.htm
There’s just one thing missing in all of these great experiences that authors have.
Time to write.
As with most lines of work, the business of writing is mostly business. But without at least one new book each year, most writers can’t maintain a writing career. So within a few months, I need to shift into stealth mode and get the next book written!
Until then, I hope you like my new book!
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