Author Update and Question

The beginning of the month is a good time for a progress report: what is working and what needs tweaking. It is an exciting period of time coming up.

Will be re-released as an ebook in October

A Gardener’s Tale has been professionally edited and, like a middle aged, overweight individual who has let things go in the last decade (no analogies please), is returning leaner and tighter. The novel has lost weight, some 7,000 words in fact, but still retains the plot and characters.  A Gardener’s Tale will be released later this month as an ebook, in time for…

The Virtual Book Tour kicks off in November. There are eighteen stops along the way with interviews, guest appearances, and reviews being organized under the professional auspices of Premier Virtual Author Book Tours. This is a whole new territory for me and I am excited to see how it goes. My publisher, Three Clover Press, has three authors doing this over the next few months, so it will be a fascinating to see the comparison. One interesting facet in the obvious comparison to traditional book tours is the fact that these appearances will stay on the Internet.  I will learn more about this in the next week and keep you posted.

Unwanted Heroes has been submitted to the publisher and will be released in the new year. Now it is time to focus on book covers and the promotional release. Since I envisage Unwanted Heroes as the first in a series of books revolving around many of the same characters and staying in San Francisco, I am becoming excited at the idea of introducing you to the main characters. They are going to be around for a few years and  hopefully you will become good friends.

I wrote back in August about John Locke who became the first independent author to sell one million ebooks. I just read his latest book in which he analyses his success.  One of the key components of his strategy is to clearly define who his target audience is.

John Locke - 1 million ebooks sold.

This has me thinking. Who are the people reading my social justice novels? I would like to create a clear profile of ‘my readers.’ Could you help me with this? Please leave a character profile of yourself or someone who you would recommend my books to. What are your or your friends’ attributes and demographics? When you imagine someone sitting in a coffee shop reading The Accidental Activist or Unwanted Heroes, how would you describe them?

You didn’t expect homework did you? Still, there is only a pass grade and a very grateful author marking your work.  

Seriously though, thank you for all your help and support.

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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist (now available on Kindle) and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/and on Twitter (#alonshalevsf).

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