Friday, August 26, 2011

Out of the Blue

Yesterday I had two interesting phone calls. The first was from a mentor and friend who asked if I would be interested in teaching her adult education class at the community college this fall. She is having some medical issues that will prevent her from being able to teach. I am very flattered that she thinks I am qualified to teach the class, but quite frankly the call caught me totally by surprise. I have been giving the question a lot of thought, and we are going to discuss the matter further today.

The second call came from the owner of Six North Cafe, a family owned business with two locations in St. Louis. They periodically have authors come to the cafe and talk about their books/do book signings. She got my name and phone number from the owner of Pudd'nhead Books, which I thought was interesting in and of itself. The authors are scheduled to come in either late Wednesday afternoons or Saturday mornings. I am very interested in this opportunity, but if I decide to teach the class noted above then Wednesdays would be out for me. But it sounds like fun!


Saturday, August 6, 2011

Market-less

I haven't posted anything here lately because, quite frankly, I haven't been doing too much with Provenance Publishing. I spent a week and a half up in Iowa helping out with my mother-in-law as she had carotid artery surgery, and my Internet access was sketchy at best. At least until I set my father-in-law up with a wireless router. I was pretty proud of myself for being able to do it alone, except for the assistance of my new BFF from Pakistan. Or wherever the Belkin representative was located. It was so great to be able to get on the Internet up there with my laptop, instead of having to borrow my father-in-law's computer.

I have not sold any copies of my dad's book, nor have any copies of my house history ebook sold yet. I know that they will not sell themselves, and that I need to be doing my marketing. For some reason I lack the motivation right now. I need to get my website organized to promote the books, and I hope to work on that next week. I also need to sit down and update my marketing plan for dad's book, and work on figuring out the Kindle angle for my ebook. I thought smashwords.com got you into the Kindle market, but apparently I was mistaken. I guess I have my work cut out for me next week.