A quick update on my Copromote boost for my kids' book "Linus & The Leprechauns": so far 55 copromoters have retweeted my original Tweet of one week ago; this has given me a 5,500% boost to my Tweet and a reach of more than 106,000 Twitter followers. Not bad for a FREE promotion, eh?

On the writing competition front, I'm looking up all the websites suggested by a number of blogs to see which ones I might like to submit short stories or novellas to. Here's one for Narrative Magazine, which you can subscribe to or download free back issues to see what style of writing they like:

http://www.narrativemagazine.com

Awards a US$4000 new and emerging writers’ prize for the best short story, novel excerpt, poem, one-act play, graphic story, or work of literary nonfiction published in the magazine. The deadline for the 2016 award is 15 June.

While my Copromote adventure still goes on (and from strength to strength), I'm using the last few weeks of the current year to put together a schedule for writing competitions I wish to enter next year and for entries I might like to submit to literary magazines. It's really time-consuming weeding out the contests that aren't open to word-wide writers or that are clearly scams, but looking through literary magazines' sites that accept unsolicited submissions has been quite an eye-opener. Some offer free downloadable back issues, so writers can have a read and be clear of the style the magazine prefers before deciding if submitting anything is worth it. I also discovered http://proofpositive.com/write-for-us/ which accepts guest posts on a variety of publishing and writing related issues. Having one's author interview published together with ebook promotion is also a good way to get more Google exposure and visibility.

Thought I give you a little update on my Copromote boost for my kids' book "Linus & The Leprechauns". So far 35 fellow copromoters have retweeted by original Tweet with the sale link since last Friday. That means a boost of 3,500% for my own Tweet and a reach of 69,366 Twitter followers!

Given the usual conversion rate into sales is about 1%, it's not a bad start - and I have a week more to go, I think for this particular Tweet-boost promo. Side effects have been that I've also managed to pick up far more Wordpress followers, because I have had more views for my Wordpress blog. How? I updated my readers with the results every few days. More exposure on Twitter has also resulted in a steady increase of followers there, as well as boosting my followers on Copromote itself. I find that when I see very successful campaigns from others, I make a mental note on what to do for my nest boost, so that's been really helpful, too.

The paid-for Copromote service seems expensive at a cost of $49.99 per month, but when I see that some people's sales link for their product is retweeted by so many copromoters that they have a reach of more than 700,00 people...well, it's worth it every cent, methinks. I've yet to see if this is going to result in sales, so I'll probably do another couple of "boost" experiments before signing up to a paid-for service.

And if you want a really good laugh at the end of a long day of ebook promotion, be sure to stop by in rural Lincolnshire, where Linus & The Leprechauns are causing havoc in the lives of Troy and Herb "Thunderpants".

Having tweeted a sales link and link to my aboutme.com page yesterday and boosted it with Copromote, I've already had 13 people retweet my sales link, which magnified my reach 1,300% and allowed me to address just under 47,000 Twitter followers so far. Each promotion runs for about 14 days, so I've still got a good chance of reaching a very large audience on Twitter with my sales link to Linus & The Leprechauns. It's free, it's easy and fun - and in turn you promote other people's products and earn more followers. What's not to like, Bookrix authors?

If I'd known what I know now about how pricing of one's books effects the chances of getting free or very cheap promotion, I would have made different choices. Have been researching various "free" ebook promo sites and most demand that books must be made available for free or for no more than 0.99 cents. However, there are a few that will promote ebooks free of charge that have bargain prices of either $3.00 or less of $5.00 or less. It's a time-consuming process weeding them out. I still believe one of the best places - and FREE - for promoting anything is copromote.com, where people promote each other via Twitter/Tumblr etc. You build up virtual credits each time you promote somebody's product/tweet. When you've build up enough credits, you can post your own promotional "boost" which other people in turn can retweet/repost to their followers. I tried this out last year with a blog post about my former flatmates theatre performance in London and we managed to get a respectable tweet audience of just under 57,000 people. Here are other sites that will accept your Free or Bargain ebooks and promote them: • http://awesomegang.com/submit-your-book/
Bookgoodies.com, BookGoodiesKids.com, Pretty-Hot.com, DiscountBookMan.com and MyBookPlace.com. For a small fee you can up your promo game and become a featured author/book. Most of these insist on author interviews, basically a brief form you complete with a few questions about your work and yourself. Means extra exposure, so only good. Good Luck everyone, I'll start signing up "Linus & The Leprechauns" to a few of these soon and let you know what, if any, results I'm getting.

It seems entering writing contests here on Bookrix is rather a waste of time. Twice now I've entered a story contest only to find there was only one other person also game to put their writing before judges. Lame, to say the least. So I shan't bother with any more contests here - leaving me more time to write books and short stories for paid publication and stories for renown magazines that will, if published, benefit me far more as a writer than any Bookrix contest ever could. I bet plenty of writers before me reached this conclusion here. I've just joined scriggler.com, which seems a far livelier, mostly London-based writing and reading community. They have podcasts and regular meetings at pubs where writers get to read out their stuff to a small audience. Now THAT sounds like much more fun.

Am extremely annoyed that thanks to Bookrix inability to properly deal with picture uploads, my Little Book of Halloween was rejected - then I received two emails with conflicting stuff about why it had been rejected. When I said, fine, delete the damn thing, I upload it somewhere else, suddenly the "revise" nonsense came up and I couldn't delete the book until those 14 days are over- even though THEY had rejected it. In other words, I'm being penalised for Bookrix's own failings to provide children's writers with adequate software.

So, if you're looking for some of my stuff - I've stopped sales for most of my books and will in future be uploading books elsewhere, be they for adults, YA or kids. The Halloween book will now be missing its main sales slot of the year - thank you very much, Bookrix.

I'll read it right now!

Hehe, the Bookrix-Fairy must have picked up my lament yesterday and waved her magic wand...for hey presto, suddenly picture upload was much easier and drawings actually hopped to where I wanted them to be. The ghastly Halloween deed's done, I've finally completed all 10 chapters of The Little Book of Halloween and it's on for sale - although still undergoing the Bookrix-Fairy review process at the moment.

Now for my next trick: the lovely Sarah Chipperfield has completed her illustrations for my Early Reader book one in the Flippety Floppet series, yay! I'll be busy completing the writing and editing process of my story. The illustrations are so cute, I can't wait to publish the book now. Happy Sunday, everyone!

It seems that Bookrix really doesn't cater for professional children's writers. Have spent the last two days trying to upload my new book, The Little Book of Halloween, first in a series, but I don't think I'll bother publishing the rest of them here on Bookrix. Uploading anything with pictures is just a pain in the butt. Every time a picture is uploaded it is positioned at the beginning of the chapter, instead of where it's supposed to go.

Since one can neither adjust pictures to be aligned or wrapped by text, nor drag them properly - it only works for a few paragraphs at a time - it is such a time-consuming and frustrating experience. Am totally put off using Bookrix now for my Flippety Floppet picture book series. It looks "pants" too, not at all how I wanted it to look. Many images that have text on them come out squashed and will have to be redone. How come other platforms can provide authors with these things, but Bookrix seemingly can't?