Hello everyone,
Now that I have my ‘land legs’ back and additional ballast around my waist, I delved into the inner workings of the A-Jay Blog Site to dig up some statistics which, whilst well behind Adele or Goldfrapp, nevertheless are to me, surprising. After all, I appear to have a fan in Azerbaijan!
Anyway, here are ,the statistics;
2 1/2 months after the voyage, visitors keep coming. There have been 6,434 ‘Views’ from all over the World (even Jersey!), and almost 1,314 ‘Visitors’. I received 193 ‘Comments’ but perhaps tellingly, only I person ‘Liked’ it! April and August were the most popular months. Apparently ‘Thursdays at 1000’ was the most popular day to visit the site.
So, to whoever it was who ‘Liked’ the site, thank you! So did I! 🙂
Its taken a while to get round to it, but here is a link to My Maps, which shows A-Jay’s Guernsey Shetland route.
for now, toot toot!!
JMW
Water Rat, a Channel Island 22 
John, Well, well – you are popular. I think you could publish yourself. Pen & Sword publishing might help. Gwynne Price, the bomber pilot next door, had his bomber command book on this crew’s exploits (Bob’s Crew) published and printed by CPI Books. The contact is Elizabeth Rowe (01323 434700). You might pick up CPI as Antony Rowe Printers as well. Elizabeth’s email is ebowie@cpibooks.co.uk (i think). Gwynne suggest that you gvie Elizabeth a call first and mention his name. Best of luck. Hope all is well in Guernsey. Martin
Thanks Martin, very useful. I doubt it will have the interest that Gwynne P{rice’s book did.
Best wishes
JMW
Hi John, I shall lay claim to the “Like” comment, because I thoroughly enjoyed your blog.
I’m glad you writing about your voyage and will buy your book as soon as it is published.
All the best to you Tony Woollcombe in Melbourne Australia
That is very kind of you Tony. I am not sure I’ll get the boat to australia, but wandering days are definitely not over. Thanks for all your support. Best wishes. JMW
John, why tie yourself to a single publisher. People I know have sent draft copies to as many publishers as they can find and have received several positive replies. If the book is as well written and interesting as your blogs you will have no problems. Good luck my dear friend
Excellent work CMJ! No help on the publishing front I’m afraid. Will ring for a chat very soon. All the best from Rach and Ted 😄
Good to get your message. Look forward yo a chat. JMW
John. Well done – I’m impressed and I haven’t read it yet! You could try publishing through kindle books.
Hi Rick,
Thanks. Catch up with you soon. JMW
Hi John
Good luck with the book but no idea how to get published I’m afraid. I enjoyed your many salty tales and definitely think its worth trying to publish.
We have been very busy as we have just bought a buy to let property and have spent the last week doing it up. We were disappointed by the state that it was left in and have had to clean and redecorate extensively. Also some rooms were rather lurid colours so we had to neutralise the décor to improve rentability.
Slowly adjusting to retirement (and no plans to work). Our settling in was somewhat disrupted by the fact that Fiona returned from India with pneumonia which went undiagnosed for 4 weeks. She then needed an extensive course of antibiotics as the Indian strain is resistant to the drug of choice in the Uk (amoxycillin). All told it was the best part of 3 months before she was fully recovered. Once she was diagnosed the NHS very good – but before….
We are off to Spain for 3 weeks in February splitting the time between my sister in law’s house (near Seville) and a villa in Estapona that friends of our are renting. My sister and brother in law are joining us for 11 days too, which will be fun.
We have outline plans to visit Guernsey to catch up with you, Alan and John, probably late spring. In the meanwhile there is always a bed for both of you if life brings you to blighty – we are only an hour from London on the high speed train.
Best wishes to all the family
Warm regards
Nick
Hi Nick,
Thanks for your news and good luck with your property. Shocking news about Fiona’s pneumonia!! Hope she recovers fully. I am sure you will keep busy in retirement so guess there will be adventures to come. I look forward to seeing you over here next year, which is the year Sam (our son) gets married. Best wishes. JMW
‘I was planning on going the self online publishing route which is just getting bigger and bigger. You have to do your own marketing and whatnot but nowadays with the internet there are so many effective ways of doing that. The traditional publishing route just seems too difficult to really make any money as a writer as they take most of it, and the marketing often isn’t all that either. Also, with something as niche as sailing, I would have thought it would be quite easy to market to that specific niche using online marketing tools – Facebook advertising and the like. If they were interested in this route, they should take a look at this site which is v helpful: http://www.thecreativepenn.com I don’t know so much about traditional publishing but there is this woman I know of who is a literary agent but also runs courses and workshops on getting published. Might be useful to look at: http://jacqburns.com http://londonwritersclub.com Hope this might be of interest John, it is from my cousin who is just about to publish her first writings and I asked her for any tips. Di Tooley