Day 1 of the Big Book Giveaway!

It's here! This is my publication party week, to celebrate the launch of The Hating Game paperback on Wednesday! I'll be giving away 34 books over the week to say thanks for all the wonderful support I've received over the past few months.

A big thank you to JC Martin, who's donated two copies of The Rage of a New Ancestor ebook, and to Sangu Mandanna, who's donated a copy of This Perfect World by Suzanne Bugler.

Today, I'll be kicking this off by giving away six books! All you need to do to be in the draw for the remaining books this week is just follow my blog or comment on Facebook on my blog link.

So here we go!

Without Alice by DJ Kirkby goes to... KAREN GOWEN!

Breakthrough by Stephen Tremp goes to... NAS DEAN!

This Perfect World goes to... PAM READER!

Choice of a Marian Keyes book (courtesy of Jessica Bell) goes to... SUSAN MILLS!

The Leopard (courtesy of Hilary Melton-Butcher) goes to... ANDREW CULTURE!

E2 by Matt goes to... GODDESS OF BLAH!

Yay! If you could all email your address or email (in the case of ebooks) to me (talliroland AT gmail.com), I will make sure your prizes get sent out. Congrats to the winners!

A few people outside of the UK have asked where they can buy my book, since my publisher doesn't have a distributor in Canada or the US (so it won't be in the shops). It will be available on Amazon.com and Amazon.ca eventually, but for now the best place to get it from is The Book Depository, with free worldwide delivery.

Drop by tomorrow when I'll be giving away another crop of books! I'll also be on Catherine Ryan Howard's blog as well as Sangu Mandanna's (where she'll be giving away a signed copy of The Hating Game, too!).

Happy Monday!

My Pretties *insert cackle*

It's a bit of a sick day here chez Roland,with Mr TR down for the count and me feeling a bit under the weather (which, by the way, seems endlessly grey and drizzly these days). But... look what came by courier today to cheer me up!

Aren't they pretty? What's cheering you up today?

Oh, the lovely Lucie Wheeler (who is getting married soon!) interviewed me on her blog today! Lucie's super nice and even if you don't have a chance to read my rambles, pop over to say hi if you can.

E-Books and February Sales

To tie into L Diane Wolfe's post today -- where she asks three authors (including me!) -- to discuss the publishing options facing authors today, I thought I'd talk a bit more about my e-book experience so far.

February is almost over, and this month's sales of The Hating Game are almost at 2,000 on Kindle alone. Hopefully, by the end of the day, they will have topped it! Given that February's a short month, I'm thrilled with the number of copies people have bought. A massive thank you to everyone who has supported my debut novel so far and fingers crossed it continues. So far, total Kindle sales since December 1 have almost reached 4,000 (half of that generated this month!).

The great thing about e-books is that they don't need to fight for shelf space. There are no returns -- once an e-book is up, it's there for good -- which means e-books have more of a chance to succeed for a longer period of time. And, as I mentioned over at L Diane's, e-books don't face distribution issues that smaller presses like the one I'm published with often run up against.

Putting out the e-book before the paperback has proved to be a successful strategy. Strong sales figures means the book now stands a bigger chance of getting into stores, and word of mouth generated by e-book publicity has helped drive pre-orders. Not only that, but when the paperback launches next week, it will already have a plethora of reviews, since any review written for the Kindle version automatically appears on the paperback listing.

And on that note, if you're in the UK and you'd like to win a paperback copy of The Hating Game, head on over to Chick Lit Reviews!

Happy Monday, all!

Mega Bookosity

As I've mentioned once or several thousand times, to celebrate the launch of The Hating Game paperback on March 9, I'm having a launch week! Why limit the fun to one day when you have all week to celebrate?!

During this week, I really want to say thank you to everyone in the blogosphere, Twitter, Facebook and beyond who has helped The Hating Game so far. To that end, I'm holding an epic book giveaway each day from the 7th of March to the 11th!

My original list of books included the following:

The Dating Detox, by Gemma Burgess
eSquared, by Matt Beaumont
Over You, by Lucy Diamond
Like Bees to Honey, by Caroline Smailes
Wasted, by Nicola Morgan
The Dresskeeper, by Mary Naylus
Without Alice, by DJ Kirkby
From Notting Hill with Love... Actually, by Ali McNamara
Naked in Knightsbridge, by Nicky Schmidt
50 Ways to Find Lover, by Lucy-Anne Holmes

And now, thanks to the ongoing generosity of authors and bloggers, I'm happy to add the following titles!

Circle of Friends, Book V: Heather, by L. Diane Wolfe.










Notes from Nadir, by Lisa Maliga










Hands on the Hips, by Jhon Baker







Follow the Cowherd Boy, by J.A. Joshi













A Heart to Mend, by Myne Whitman







And! These wonderful people have donated the following:

Through the Eyes of a Hurricane, by Tracy A Spaine, by Tracy
The Nanny Diaries, donated by Theresa Milstein
Be Careful What You Wish For, by Alexandra Potter, donated by Len
Brilliant, by Rachel Howard, donated by Jennifer Hoffine
Love in the Present Tense, by Catherine Ryan Hyde, donated by Corinne
The O Henry Prize Short Stories, donated by Ann Ormond
TBD, donated by Deniz Bevan

UPDATE: Jen Daiker has donated a copy of The Hating Game by me!

Make sure to visit the week of the 7th when I'll be drawing winners every day! A big thank you to everyone who donated (and there's still loads of time, if you have extra books on your hands).

Have a great weekend!

Books, Books, Booooks! And a Celebration!

Looking at my calendar, I was slightly stunned to see that the paperback version of The Hating Game launches two weeks from this Wednesday (March 9th)! Eep!

Lots of people have asked me what I'm going to do to launch the paperback. Well, the short answer is... not as much as the ebook launch. Publicity is rolling along thanks to everyone's support of the ebook, reviews are still coming in, and everything's going quite nicely! Some wonderful people will be posting interviews with me on their blog, too -- I'll keep you posted on that.

I want to use my launch week, from March 7-11, to say thank you to everyone who has tweeted, Facebooked, blogged, liked or had anything to do with The Hating Game... basically, anyone who reads this blog!

Each day during the week of my launch, I'll be giving away a minimum of two books -- possibly more! Since I am the Queen of Rubbishiosity when it comes to remembering other people's contests and such, all you need to do to enter this one is just be a follower! Let's make it easy, shall we? :)

I've read and enjoyed each of the following books, and I'm sure you will, too!

The Dating Detox, by Gemma Burgess
eSquared, by Matt Beaumont
Over You, by Lucy Diamond
Like Bees to Honey, by Caroline Smailes
Wasted, by Nicola Morgan
The Dresskeeper, by Mary Naylus
Without Alice, by DJ Kirkby
From Notting Hill with Love... Actually, by Ali McNamara
Naked in Knightsbridge, by Nicky Schmidt
50 Ways to Find Lover, by Lucy-Anne Holmes

If any authors would like to donate ebooks/ books as prizes, drop me a line or a comment! I will add a little blurb about your book and a link to your blog/ site to the bottom of a future blog post before the giveaway.

Happy Monday! Hope you drop by two weeks from today to see who has won some wonderful books.

1,400 Thank Yous!

Before I launch into today's celebratory post, I just want to say massive thank you for everyone's lovely thoughts and wishes on my last post about Egypt. We managed to talk to our family a few times over the weekend. Although there were a few dodgy moments, everything seems to be safe now and people are excited for change. Fingers crossed!

So! It's Monday, and I'm in the mood for celebrating! It's possible I've had too many mini Reese's Pieces (thanks, Shannon!), but chocolate-fuelled energy aside, I'm happy. Why, you ask (or not -- I'm going to tell you, anyway)?

The Hating Game has sold 1,400 copies on Amazon UK this month! Yes, 1,400! In January! Since the cover change, the books usually sells between 70 to 100 copies daily and it's in the top 50 on Amazon Kindle (UK) right now. I can hardly believe it!

A HUMONGOUS THANK YOU to everyone who has promoted, bought, reviewed, talked about or commented on anything to do with my novel! It's thanks to all of you that my debut novel has been successful.

Now... let's party!

Getting it Right

Happy Monday!

You may have noticed that the cover of The Hating Game has changed. Yes -- again. Late last week, I had a conversation with my publisher, who told me that while the book was selling well, she still didn't feel it was reaching its target market. One of the biggest worries was that that the sinister-like red and black cover was turning off prospective female buyers who might think it was more crime than rom-com.

So we took the plunge and made the change. And guess what? Sales jumped almost immediately. On the first day after the change, I sold almost four times more copies a day than usual, and the trend is continuing.

Once the initial launch momentum had worn off, The Hating Game usually fell anywhere from around 350 to 600 in the UK rankings, depending on the day. Since the cover change, it's been between 150 to 200. It's still early days, but it's pretty safe to say the new cover is having the desired effect.

That's the great thing about Kindle. If something isn't working, then it's easy to change. Would it have been better to have all this figured out, pre-Kindle publication? Well, yes.

But better late than never!

Reminder: Significant Other Blogfest this Friday!

Thank You - and Results!

What an amazing day yesterday was for me -- and all down to the help and support of people on Twitter, blogs and Facebook. An enormous thanks to all who spread the word about my debut novel and what I was trying to accomplish. As a fellow blogger, I know posting something like yesterday's post often receives low comments -- and as a reader, I realise it can get quite tiresome seeing the same thing again and again. So... thank you!

I'm thrilled to tell you that I made the Amazon Kindle Bestseller Top 100! More than that, actually -- I made it into the top 25! My best rank was number 24. Amazon.com (which I reckon has many more books and therefore more competition) came in at number 460 on the Kindle list, a number I'm ecstatic about, too.



One of the craziest moments of the day was when my publisher sent me an email with a link to the Amazon Movers and Shakers -- I was at number 1, ahead of Dickens (!) and Sophie Kinsella!

I'm not ashamed to admit at several points, I actually welled up at how many people were supporting me. If you followed the hashtag #TheHatingGame, you could see friends and complete strangers buying, retweeting, tweeting --- even one amazing tweeter @PamReader live tweeting as she read my novel!

And then when I hit the blogs! I was so chuffed to read all the wonderful comments and posts about my novel. I tried to make it around to everyone (and I'm still trying; please bear with me!), but by the end of the day, I felt like I'd run a marathon trying to keep up with everything and around midnight I collapsed, stuffed full of celebratory cake (courtesy of my husband) and pizza (courtesy of the local takeaway). Big thanks also to my parents who organised a wonderful bouquet of flowers to be delivered!

A few people have asked me if my Web Splash met my expectations. The answer? No. It didn't. It was so much better than I'd anticipated. Without a doubt, it was one of the most exciting days ever, and quite honestly I couldn't think of a better way -- or better people -- to spend my novel's birthday with.

Thank You.

The Wonderful World of Promotion

Ha. I say that ironically, of course, because sometimes self-promotion can be downright cringe-worthy. I speak from experience, having had to approach bookstores first-hand to stock my London guide book. Luckily the results were generally positive... but still my face flamed and my hands shook (you can read about it here).

But it's great when you see author's promotional efforts -- with unique and innovative methods -- pay off. One recent example of this is the interactive widget developed by author Caroline Smailes for her book Like Bees to Honey. I've seen this everywhere on Facebook, Twitter, blogs... and I quickly became addicted myself!



This is a brilliant example of an author thinking out of the box to generate book buzz! I hope to do a similar thing with The Hating Game, something like this to do with ex-boyfriends or ex-girlfriends, perhaps? :)

What out-of-the-box methods of book promotion have you seen?

Cover Up!

My publisher's just sent over the latest cover design for The Hating Game, and I have to say that I love it (although quite honestly, I've looked at it so many times I've sort of lost perspective)! It's starting to seem real, even though I'm engrossed in a load of edits and I'm moving at a snail's pace!

I'd love to get your opinion on it! The novel is firmly chick lit and we hope the cover gets across the genre as well as the general 'theme' of the book. Can I implore you to cast your vote in the quick poll below? Any thoughts and feedback also appreciated!

Thank you and a virtual cupcake (or glass o'wine -- or, who am I kidding, both -- to you!)

Free Online Surveys