Samovar on the Table

First lesson after Book Launch: Be Patient!

AuthorHouse delivers first batch of books. Website goes up, personal Facebook is on, press releases to local media are distributed, bookshops put in tentative orders with a polite ‘will see how it goes’, Friends on Facebook are encouraging. And then nothing. For one week, then two weeks. Console myself that we are going through a harsh winter, nobody is going out of their way to pass by a bookshop.

Then a message from a friend abroad: ‘Got your book online. Loved it.’

The leading English-language daily, Cyprus Mail, gives the book a two-page spread with photographs and a thoughtful and intelligent write-up (see Reviews) in its Sunday edition on 12 February.

Local bookshops start putting in more orders. Someone I have never heard of leaves a message on my Facebook page saying he found the book fascinating. Slowly messages come in from people who have not just bought the book but read it and liked it.

Run out of my stock of paperbacks. After just two months send in a second order to AuthorHouse.