The Unlikely Story Of My Book Becoming A Bestseller!

Sea Sores began with writing about daily life in my home town on the south coast of England, around 2015 to 2017. Compiled with coffees on lunch breaks and while sitting in ear shot of the shale and shingle after work. I set about creating a mosaic of sketches, which once joined together, aimed to make an abstract impression of an anonymous life lived in the city of Brighton and Hove.

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I took on the challenge of completing it through the pandemic and by June 2020 it was ready to launch through Amazon.

During that time I had created a social media account to share my writing. I told some of my followers the book was about to go live and sat back expecting it to sell a few copies, if I was lucky!

It was to my amazement that a day or two later, I received a screen-shot from a writing friend in the states saying.”Congratulations!” On closer inspection I saw my little book was number one of the new releases in the British and Irish contemporary literature category! Not exactly top of the New York times bestseller list but still a bestselling publication all the same, sitting along side Stephen Fry and a retrospective of Edward Thomas!

Quite frankly I had never expected it to find an audience so quickly but the feeling was one of great satisfaction.

There had been no official support, I’d never sent the book to any publisher. I had worked with a lovely editor called Chloe Murphy, but that was it. I was a painter once and the obligation to produce and put art out seemed self-containable in its pleasure. So I took on all aspects: The graphic design of the cover, getting up a buzz about it through social media, and pre-publishing elements through my love of videography.

In truth I have to thank the friends and fellow writers on the dreaded social media hamster wheel, because it helped me greatly to grow an audience, one who appreciate and understand my voice. I’ve been sharing spoken word videos of pieces from the book for sometime and I think this also influenced sales to get going so quickly.

Here’s a sample of some pieces from: Sea Sores – A Brightonian Book

Sea sores is poetic finger print, but one which encapsulates a time in my life we may all be familiar with — the passage of the middle sea where we have neither achieved our dreams, healed our wounds, or lost our ambition to achieve both.

There is a period in all our lives where our mind is sharp and our emotional dexterity vivid. A moment our engagement with love, laughter, relationships and internal spiritual struggle which become the crucible of our future life long consciousness.

Brighton played a huge role in this formation time. It’s a city with the same dynamic hunger, of an appetite, one which has every social and economic demographic half a stride apart, aside its Victorian terraces to its sedated suburban sprawl.

Brighton threads along the southern coast of England and is both surrounded by and submerged within the natural world. On one side the living channel waters and the windswept, isolate South downs to the rear. These natural barriers creating a sort of city state cut off from the rest of the world, through the revolving seasons and sedimentary years progress.

Brighton calls in stowaways and misfits, party seekers and hipster families from all over the country and planet. It’s a metropolis of new beginnings, scrawled over the impact of unfinished ones. In this collection I brought together sketches of this contrary nature and it’s universal reflective qualities, which I would hope mirror us all—regardless of locality, age, or even era.

UK Amazon for the paperback, audio book and Kindle.

US Amazon for the paperback, audio book and Kindle.

http://nickjohnwoodmailcom.contactin.bio/

Here’s the link to different countries depending on where you are.

If you want to try a new book and learn a little more about what I’m writing about please check out the links below to the UK or US Amazon. Let me know if you do take a copy into your home, of like to know what you thought, best wishes.

Nick