Yesterday I visited A Lot of Books in Ipswich for my first proper bookstore signing with Once Confronted.

Unfortunately, the mall where the store is located was almost deathly quiet yesterday. We believe that the commencement of school holidays might have had a lot to do with that. Fortunately, I still sold six copies of Once Confronted but it was hard work to win those sales.

As ever at these events, I frequently had significant conversations that encouraged me in spite of the fact they didn’t result in sales. The first two people I spoke to were both fledgling writers and they were interested in the process prior to publication. I talked to them at length about all the work that goes on behind the scenes in order to present the finished product to the reader.

Neither of these ladies were willing to purchase anything on the day. While I would have liked it if they’d both bought at least one of my books, I encouraged them to keep in contact with me via my website, and made sure they wouldn’t forget the URL by supplying them with some of my promotional materials. I gave both of them a Verindon trilogy bookmark and a brochure for Once Confronted and told them to check my website for other events or anything else they wanted to know about my writing journey.

It’s possible neither of them will bother to do that. It’s possible they (and the others who received promotional items throughout the day) will simply discard them and think no more about me. But I know at least one story where one of my bookmarks was used for a while before the user decided to download the entire trilogy. I gained a fan that day, all because I gave them a bookmark and they used it, even though they didn’t do it immediately. That’s the great thing about promotional items – they can yield results at any time!