One of my favourite pastimes is hurling verbal abuse at the television set. In some respects it comes with the territory, being in my late fifties and of a belief that everything was better in the 1970’s it’s only natural that I should rage against the machine as it were. And when I say hurling verbal abuse at the television I don’t mean at the actual device itself; I mean why would I? It’s done me no wrong. No, what I rant and rave at is the constant torrent of utter, contemptible shash that passes for entertainment these days.

Not that I actually watch the telly all much due to the reeking river of decaying digitised offal that flows from it, but when I eventually get round to switching it on my hackles do have a tendency to rise rather. And the very worst offenders of televisual dross, I find, are the adverts.

I think my issue is that the vast majority of TV commercials aren’t actually aimed at me. They can’t be surely, and if they are then they haven’t checked their demographics very well if they think I’m going to be persuaded to play online bingo by some irksome little twat-wazzock from Leeds in a red suit and a hat that makes him look like the leader of the Diddy Men.

Or do they, perhaps, expect me to rush out to buy a new fabric conditioner because some grinning, doe-eyed, Northern Irish yummy-mummy tries to convince me to in an oh so sincere “isn’t life great because I’m covered in painty handprints and toddler vomit but don’t worry because my washing powder is just the best at removing stains” monologue?

Maybe they expect me to reach for my phone and order a takeaway meal that will be transported to my home by a baseball-capped, be-hoodied young man on a bicycle purely because the advert was accompanied by a bile-raising hip-hop soundtrack?

Who knows? But one thing is for certain, they’re wasting their precious time with me.

However, I do understand that marketing in itself is quite a fine art and even though those commercials I mentioned are clearly not aimed at yours truly, they are intended for someone. Someone will see them and be induced to play bingo, buy laundry softener or order greasy junk food on the basis of them.

If I’m going to be totally honest though, the truth of the matter is that those bods in the marketing departments are really rather clever and extremely good at what they do. They do know and appeal to their specific target audiences and undergo a tremendous amount of market research before those horrors of advertising go on air.

And here’s the thing…

I wish I did!

People often ask me if it’s hard to write a novel. I answer in the affirmative that of course it is. It takes a long time to produce between 70,000 to 100,000 words and make it both coherent and entertaining. But the truth of the matter is, that’s still a damn sight easier than trying to sell the bloody thing.

I’m no own-trumpet blower but I do know my way around writing and producing a novel. I’ve done it seven times now so you’d think I would do. What I struggle with immensely is getting it into the hands of readers.

My friend and fellow Indie Author, Julia Blake, recently posted on social media that she had spent a whole week actively pushing one of her books on Facebook and Instagram and yielded only one sale as a result of her labours. And I find that so sad because not only is Julia a very funny lady, she’s a very accomplished and prolific author and deserves a lot more for her work.

Like all indie authors actually.

The horrible truth of the publishing industry these days is this – if Julia was a presenter on GMB or This Morning and if I was a celebrity chef or some grossly overpaid opinion-on-legs on the panel of The X Factor then we’d have publishing houses queuing around the block to sign us up regardless of whatever literary drivel we produced.

And best of all, the marketing would all be done for us. We’d barely have to raise a finger except perhaps for a bit of book signing at Waterstones. We could just sit back and watch the sales roll in.

As it is, we’re independent authors and have to do the vast bulk of our promotion ourselves and this is where I hold up my trembling little hand and say, “Please sir, I’m absolutely shite at marketing.”

And I am. I can be totally honest about it. I’d be more successful as a street sweeper than I would at advertising and raising awareness to my products.

My biggest problem personally is my own reticence when it comes to putting myself forward. I feel almost apologetic about it and I don’t know why. Maybe, like so many of us, I fear rejection or dismissal. Mockery even, perhaps.

After all, who am I? I’m not famous by any stretch of the imagination. My main claim to fame is that Ian Gillan of Deep Purple once angrily threw me off the stage after I’d climbed out of the crowd onto it. Oh, and of course, not forgetting that Princess Anne once told me to get out of her f***ing way! But I was only a child at the time so that one probably doesn’t count. Still, a brush with royalty none-the-less!

My second biggest problem is that I hardly know where to start and my efforts have been pretty dismal.

I have approached some local book shops and two of them now stock my novels but that’s as far as that goes and over the counter sales have been less than spectacular. I do try and promote my books on social media as much as possible but my adverts (for want of a better word) are cack-handed and amateurish to say the least. And I have approached online bloggers and reviewers with varying degrees of disappointment and financial loss. You can only get ripped off to the tune of £35 so many times before you knock it on the head and reach tearfully for the corkscrew.

The next thing I’m hoping to try is advertising directly on Amazon, Facebook, Instagram etc. But that doesn’t exactly come cheap and I’m on a limited, no, restricted, budget here. Plus I’ve heard how some people have received a lot of online abuse from opinionated, unthinking berks merely because the author’s adverts have had the temerity to show up on their Facebook feed. And I’m not sure I have the patience to bite my tongue if some keyboard warrior wants to go toe-to-toe with me. I’m sure I would let myself down badly if I did.

So, that’s my conundrum folks. I’ll happily sit and write the books all the live-long day, but ask me to promote them and I turn into a panic-stricken, gibbering, dishevelled wreck of a man.

I am currently re-reading “How To Market a Book” by the fabulous Joanna Penn and I’m really taking my time with it and trying to glean every single scrap of advice that I can. This will be my third time of reading so it might start to finally register. Who knows, I might be about to turn a corner. One can only hope so.

Actually, I’d better get back to it. In the meantime please could I encourage you to tell people to buy my books. They will thank you for it. I promise.