please put all of your money in Spartacus’ hat… (old Roman nursery rhyme)
Sorry, I couldn’t resist that one 🙂
Well, theweather has finally turned very wintery here in the UK; there are regular frosts at night, sleet showers in the day, and many places have had some snow already. Here in Somerset we had about 7cm/2.5in the other day, but I’m happy to say that it didn’t lie for long. I’m all for a white few days, but not until I’m off work. I don’t know how most er of you feel about it, but if you have to drive to work, I suspect you’d rather see snow only at weekends. I hope you’re all getting ready for the festivities and that you have lots of fun planned.
As you’d expect, things are beginning to hot up on the Spartacus front. The paperback of Hannibal comes out on the same day, making it a great opportunity to increase my profile. I was up in Random House in London last week for a very exciting meeting with my publishers. In the ever changing world ong f pre-publication orders, not everything is yet sorted, but it’s looking as if all the major players: the supermarkets, Amazon, Waterstone’s and WH Smith’s are going to be on board in a big way. There will be big promos on all over the place: great chart positions, half price if you buy both books, a promotional Blood and Sand DVD with the hardback, a competition to win a holiday to Rome and so on.
All very very exciting. I’ll be doing my bit too, with more competitions to win copies of the books, a silver Roman coin, and other Roman goodies. Keep your eyes peeled here, on my Facebook page and on my Twitter profile @benkaneauthor for more details. Good luck!
annis says
Sounds terrific, Ben, an author can never have too much publicity 🙂 All the best for forthcoming sales and for the coming year. Happy Christmas!
Ben Kane says
@annis:thanks! Merry Christmas to you and yours as well. V. sorry to hear about the latest quake in C’church. I hope you’re OK.
In answer to your question where, I can’t remember, yes, pre-orders are very important nowadays, because they fuel the first (partweek) when a book is released. I had 2,000 Amazon pre-orders of The Road to Rome in 2010, which was one of the reasons it shot in at No. 4.