Settling In to the New Year

So of course, for the past two days I have not even tried to meet my daily goal of writing 1,000 words. Between the work for Gentle Pen and my work as a real estate agent -- and oh, yes -- my helping my daughter with her college essays, I have done little work on new work, you might say.

The other day I did, however, manage to accomplish one long-cherished goal: to start recording an audiobook version of DARKNESS AND THE DEVIL BEHIND ME. I recorded the first chapter and will mount it on my website, I hope, today.

In addition, I've been exploring a new way of promoting the book: sending out digital review copies to book clubs and ezines. Since I don't have the budget to send out physical copies, I had to find an alternative. While it's true that many people don't read ebooks, I'd wager than quite a few do. Also, the nice thing about offering a digital ebook is that (a) it's still fairly unusual; (b) the recipient doesn't have another book lying around that goes unread, adding to the physical clutter; and (c) it's environmentally friendly. At first, I tried sending out the ebook directly from my computer with my email program, but that proved to be too time consuming. So I took a trial subscription with a file transfer service. All I have to do is upload the document and the service sends out a notice of a download link. It'll even track who has actually downloaded the document. To tell the truth, I don't expect that many downloads. On the other hand, I can't say I expect fewer responses than I probably would've gotten if I'd sent a physical copy. Anyway, I've sent out about 150 invitations to download the digital review copy and have another 550 or so to send. So that too has kept me busy. I worry, though, how many people will be interested now that Christmas is past. At first, I worried that I didn't emphasize the Christmas angle in the book enough. Now, I'm glad I didn't. Still ...