Remember those two wee ‘gift books’ I was asked to ghost-write for Summersdale Publishers last year? Well, I finally found one being stocked in a proper, actual shop!

I know some big retailers like Waterstones, Barnes & Noble and others carry it – but to date, I’ve not come across it on the shelves of any bookstore I’ve looked. So, you can imagine my excitement when I saw ‘How to Survive Retirement‘ in my local town of Johnstone, Renfrewshire.

My wife and I visited the shop last weekend to have one of her paintings framed, and just as we were leaving the shop … there it was, looking all smug and pleased for itself in prime viewing position on the book rack.

This prompted a long conversation with the shop owner, who has now expressed an interest in displaying my self-published efforts. Funny how one thing inevitably leads to another. 🙂

‘How to Survive Retirement‘ and the ‘sister book’ ‘How to Survive Being a Grandparent’ are also of course available worldwide through Amazon’s various platforms. And they are selling! As I write, one is ranked around the 7,000 mark, the other around 11,000.

This doesn’t sound terribly impressive, perhaps, but bear in mind they’ve been available now for ten months and generally hold a steady ranking within and around the 10,000 mark – out of a reported 44,000,000 books available across Amazon.

In fact, just before Christmas, ‘How to Survive Being a Grandparent‘ reached inside the Amazon Top 1,000 best-sellers.

Yeah – it’s no biggie. But I write for fun and to keep me off the streets, so it’s nice to celebrate these wee successes.

(There’s hope yet for my proposed book of dodgy limericks!) 😉 🙂