Fear not; my marketing campaign for Good Vibrations: Crossing Europe on a Bike Called Reggie continues a pace. It is my current mission to get the book onto the shelves of a bookshop. So far I have proof that Good Vibrations has made it as far as Iain Harper’s bookshelf and this morning, Chris Hammersley sent me a picture of Good Vibrations on his bookshelf – here it is in the picture. However happy that makes me feel, I still strive to see my book on the shelves of Waterstones or another high-street bookshop. I was in London today for a course, handily taking place just off Regents Street so I took the opportunity of wandering over to Charing Cross Road to see if, by any chance I had made it into Waterstones, Blackwells or Foyles. Of course it hadn’t! Why should I? That didn’t really come as much of a surprise. I was however on the lookout for any independently-published books that would give me hope that Good Vibrations was in with a chance. I couldn’t find any on the ‘travel’ shelves at Waterstones, Blackwells or Foyles, but I did find something of interest in Stanfords, the travel bookshop. This book – You’ve Gone Too Far This Time, Sir! – by Danny Bent is also a self-published book about cycling printed by the same printing company as Good Vibrations. I’ve already sent some information and a copy of my book to Waterstones, but I don’t hold out much hope. Perhaps I should, however, send a copy to Stanfords. I think I’ll do so at the weekend.

In other publishing developments, I got a very positive email from a company called Cordee – “travel & adventure sports book shop” – saying that they would be interested in listing Good Vibrations. I need to get back to them with distributor information but I think they supply some high-street cycle shops, notably Evans, so it’s not impossible that their customers may also one day enjoy reading my book… We shall see!