On Saturday 11th October I held a book signing for my novel SLUR at Thackeray’s Books in Denton, Manchester. The event went well and I enjoyed meeting members of the press and public.
Signing some Books
It was good to get the support of the lovely Margaret, proprietor of Thackeray’s Books, and her husband, as well as my brother Barry who helped with the lifting and shifting. Some of my good friends also turned up to give moral support and were good enough to stay and have a chat and a cuppa once everybody else had left.
Margaret, Barry and Myself
The event was attended by The Tameside Reporter, About Tameside monthly magazine and a representative from the Denton town team who kindly announced the signing on the news page of their website. The Denton town team was set up to support the revitalisation of Denton town centre based on the Portas recommendations relating to British high streets. It was lovely to meet the town team representative who also bought three copies of SLUR for Christmas presents.
The book signing will be featured in the Tameside Reporter, which goes to print on Thursday 16th October. It will also be featured in the November edition of About Tameside magazine, which is circulated at the start of the month.
Margaret and Myself
Whilst I was at the event one of my very good friends invited me to a school open day to set up stall selling my books next Saturday. She suggested that my non-fiction books, Kids’ Clubs and Organizations and Great Places for Kids’ Parties would make ideal purchases for parents. Plus, some parents may even want to treat themselves to a copy of SLUR at the same time. After the success of my book signing event, I’m looking forward to taking part in the open day this coming Saturday. Ironically it’s at the secondary school that I attended many years ago.
Heather Burnside Author 
I’m so pleased it went so well. I hope you sold quite a few copies of Slur. What a marvellous turn out with the support you received! I’m so happy for you that you’re receiving extra publicity as a result. I think the school open day idea is totally brilliant! Maybe you could approach other local schools for similar? Well done Diane… fabulous to see everything coming together after all your hard efforts. X
Thanks Alice. I’m looking forward to seeing what impact the newspaper feature has. The book shop proprietor told me that customers start coming in asking for a title once it is featured in the local newspaper so fingers crossed. 🙂
This is a lovely post, Diane. To see the photos of your first fiction book signing and how happy you look, it just makes us smile too. It’s nice to see how the local press is keen to feature a local author. The idea of presenting your other books at the school open day is great. These are all excellent opportunities to find new readers.
Thanks Martina. It was lovely having the support of my brother and close friends (my hubby and daughter were at a uni open day). I’m sure that I would have been a lot more nervous without them there. 🙂
Pleased to hear the book signing was such a success Diane. I see Slur has a lot of good reviews on Amazon now, particularly Amazon.co.uk. Looking forward to reading it soon.
Thanks Guy and thank you for purchasing a copy of SLUR. I hope you will enjoy it. 🙂
Glad it went so well, Diane. And good luck with the ongoing promotion – in my view promotion is much harder work than writing! Will make sure I get a copy from Amazon.
Thanks very much for the support Mark. I totally agree with what you say about promotion. It takes up a lot of time, which doesn’t leave much time for the job of writing. 🙂