Advice for aspiring authors 

As my book continues to over deliver I just want to say to anyone who is thinking of writing a book just do it. When I conceived the idea for writing about my experiences on Everest I was told by a few individuals in the publishing trade that I would struggle to make an impression as Everest is old and tired news. I was told no several times over. I didn't listen. I knew I had a compelling story, so I took the steps to crowd fund and self-publish. 

Fast forward 18 months and the book is regularly inside the kindle chart top 5 for mountaineering in the UK, fleetingly hitting the #1 spot in April 2018. And do you know what? I am not a writer as such. I just had this story inside of me that I wanted to get out onto paper. So I did. 

I am now almost on the verge of the book receiving 100 reviews. There are only three other books that have achieved this on Amazon UK. Two of them are former New York Times best sellers and the other is by the now world famous British adventurer Bear Grylls. So when I say I am punching well above my weight you can see what I mean. 

So what, you may be thinking. Big deal! 100 reviews is nothing. And compared to let's say a Harry Potter novel that is absolutely true. But, this is a big deal. The mountaineering genre is never going to set the world alight. You could argue that there has only ever been one book that broke the mould, the ground breaking 'Into Thin Air', a book that spawned movie deals and made its author a household name. That was never going to happen with me, so I set more modest targets. The fact that (so far) 84 people have took the time to let the book buying public online know what they thought of my book is deeply gratifying to me. 80 readers found it good enough to leave me a positive review. I am indebted to each and every one of them.

Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Do it