This little piggy went to America - wee-wee-wee

The American market is such a difficult one to break into, particularly for books written in British English and with a very British sense of humour.

Despite doing very well in the UK, 'Sell the Pig' had done nothing more than land a tentative trotter on the other side of the pond. But thanks to the most amazing marketing help from my new publisher Ant Press, this little piggy has now got all four trotters in the trough Stateside and is the Amazon No 1 bestseller in its Senior Travel category both in US and UK markets.

I had so much help from New York Times bestselling author Victoria Twead. Sell the Pig went on special promotion for the month of October through various outlets but notably through the amazing BookBub who were fantastic to work with and incredibly helpful. It was a nail biting time waiting to see if the sales would start to go up and huge thanks to Victoria for being constantly at the end of a message to reassure me, and to put up with my squeaks of delight as little old Pig started its steady climb up through the rankings.

There are more than 1.5 million books in Amazon's Kindle store and Pig made it up to #No 54 of all of them, a truly remarkable effort for a modest little first instalment memoir in a fairly specialised market. And Pig's spectacular rise has had a great effect on little brother 'Is That Billinge Lump?' which has also reached No 1 in its category on more than one occasion.

So now I suppose I had better get on and write Part III. I promised to start it this winter. As we often get snowed up here, it's good for making me sit down and write as there is not a lot else I can do. They are threatening us with the worst winter in 100 years, so I dread to think what that is going to be like. Just as long as I still have electricity - my hands are getting too bad to hand write a full length book these days!

More praise for Sell the Pig

Like most writers, I am a shameless tart for feedback. I absolutely love reading what people have to say about Sell the Pig on various sites Like Amazon.

But perhaps some of the hardest to come by is that dished out, often very grudgingly, by the ferocious pack of fellow writers on sites such as Authonomy. So it's always nice to get some positive feedback on there, like the latest comment for Sell the Pig from author Bea Sinclair:

"I have now finished reading all of the posted MS and can confidently say that "Sell The Pig" is a well written and very enjoyable memoir. The author's good humour shines through, even in the most difficult of circumstances. Tottie is not afraid to say those things that we often keep to ourselves. Every character is drawn in just the right amount of detail and the story flows from their reactions to the trials that befall them. I wish this book every success and it remains on my shelf."

Authonomy has a complicated ranking system whereby books move up through the ratings according to the number of comments they have, and who has left them, and how many bookshelves they are on. Of several thousand books on the site, little old Sell the Pig is currently sitting at No. 285, having shot up the charts in the very short time it has been there, only since February 2013.

All the more amazing as non-fiction, and memoirs in particular, often performs quite badly there.

So if you've not yet read Sell the Pig why not give it a go? The sequel should be out by the autumn and watch this space for some very exciting news about a change of publisher for the sequel.

Although it's not essential, you'll get more of a feel for the sequel if you read Pig first. It's available from all the usual Amazon outlets as well as from The Book Depository, who offer FREE worldwide delivery. What are you waiting for?

Sell the Pig - coming soon in paperback!

It's beginning to look a lot like a paperback!

Latest estimate is that Sell the Pig should be out as a real, hold it in your hand paperback book by mid January 2013. It has a brand new cover picture, which I hope you will all like, and there are some  images inside (black and white in this first edition) so you should finally be able to put names to faces.

I do hope you will like this new version, it has some minor changes from the Kindle version. Perhaps if you enjoyed reading it on Kindle, you might be kind enough to suggest the paperback to your friends.

Here's a quick sneak peek at what the new cover looks like:

and yes, for those of you who magnify it enough to read, I know there's a typo there, it will be picked up on the next round :)

I'll keep you all posted here, on Twitter and on Facebook, the Dark Side, when I get final confirmation of the release date.