Read An Exclusive Extract From The New Vinyl Handbook

As the publication date draws ever nearer, an author’s day becomes ever busier.

Small callouses appear on the end of fingers ill-used to holding pens for signing books. Additional respect is given to *actual successful* authors who sign cartloads of books in bookshops.

I was able to spread the signing of just under two hundred books over the course of four evenings while watching Philip Glenister’s Gene Hunt flirting in a uniquely Mancunian way with Keeley Hawes’ Alex Drake in a re-run of Ashes To Ashes on Netflix, which is probably not a luxury JK Rowling had when sitting in Waterstones greeting three thousand school children and their hassled parents brandishing copies of Harry Potter and The Order of The Goblet of the Phoenix of the Chariots of Fire (I think that’s what it was called).

It’s good fun trying to match the names of those who have ordered the book to their Twitter and Facebook handles…

And then there are the attempts to tell people who aren’t familiar with Every Record Tells A Story (much as it pains me to admit it, but there are such folk) who might be interested in the book if they knew it existed.

The delicate balance of doing so on social media without becoming a pest is a tricky one of course. I can’t help feeling some people might be tempted to mute or unfollow if the hawking of product gets a bit much. And who could blame them?!

Then there is sending out books to book reviewers while crossing fingers they don’t hate it and post a one star review, or worse, ignore it completely (hey, at least if they hate it, it’s publicity, right? Hmmm, maybe).

One way to attract attention is by sharing an extract of the book with new potential readers, and so I was delighted that Classic Rock Magazine have shared this prior to publication, with an excellent reader-gabbing byline:

“What do you get when a jazz drummer, a former abattoir worker, a guitarist without a full set of fingers and a trainee accountant walk into a bar? The birth of heavy metal, that’s what…”

I can’t argue with that! I think I could do with a sub-editor to come up with gold like that…

Here’s a link to the extract…I hope you enjoy it!

And don’t forget (he says, getting the plug in) you can only order copies of Every Record Tells A Story: A Vinyl Handbook by clicking this link to the i40 webstore…