Local Heroes

The Altrincham, Cheshire branch of Waterstone’s bookshops have invited me to become involved with an event which seems to me to be a good marketing initiative. It’s called Local Heroes, and involves authors who live locally to the Waterstone’s branch in question recommending some favourite titles, and also having the chance to promote their own books.

For a mid-list author like me, this is appealing. It’s very difficult to get one’s books into the shops in any quantities, and so it is correspondingly difficult to generate real sales. My books seem to sell quite well on Amazon, and a number of positive Amazon reviews that I’ve received recently have definitely helped (so a huge thank-you to any of those reviewers who happens to read this blog post!) It will be interesting to see, therefore, whether this initiative helps sales in my own back yard.

Choosing which books to recommend is inevitably difficult. I’ve gone for books, fact and fiction, by Kate Summerscale, Andrew Taylor, Ann Cleeves, Maxim Jakubowski and Laura Thompson.