Mummy’s got swag!

That is the kids’ assessment of my first speaking appearance resulting from our book, Love versus Goliath. Mummy’s got swag!

Mike Jeremy hired me as a guest speaker at a migration agent seminar. This was my first speaking engagement related to our book. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Mike very much for taking the risk. Mike had never actually met me, he knew me only from social media. He had no personal experience of my public speaking skills, but he was intrigued by our case. I could tell over lunch he was nervous, but once I took the floor I do believe he was happy. Risk and reward – the risk paid off.

I did warn Mike I would go over time – I ALWAYS go over time. Actually, I don’t think I was too bad, I did try to watch the clock!

I really enjoyed doing the presentation. It was an opportunity to share information and our experience to a wonderfully attentive and interested audience. I have noticed some search terms hitting the web site tonight that are obviously the result of people wishing they had written down my website URL at the time!

So many of the course attendees came up to me at the end and thanked me, congratulated me and asked questions. It was really lovely.

Mike sent these Tweets:

Mike’s reaction

I am doing it all again tomorrow!

To top the day off, Love versus Goliath clocked up 5-star review number EIGHT on Amazon! My problem is I have people begging for a paper edition and I am still working on getting our book into cold hard print. I hope I will have it finalised next week.

Earlier today I read reviews of a book that supposedly tells authors how to sell 1,000,000 copies in a short period of time. I thought it looked interesting, until I discovered via the reviews that the author paid for reviews. I know there is a debate in the industry about this. I think it is fair enough to pay professional reviewers, providing their reviews are honest. I am taking this opportunity to say I have not paid for any reviews. A couple of the reviews are from beta readers of the book who had followed this website. They were not paid to be beta readers, they were interested in the journey and the book. They were, as beta readers, recipients of free copies!

I certainly encourage readers to provide reviews (gently, I hope – nudge, nudge to any out there!) because reviews are the life-blood for independent authors like me.

All in all – I had a GREAT day!

PS – for the older fuddy-duddies who don’t know – “swag” is a good thing.