Book Review: ‘A Notebook For Living Adventurously’ by Alastair Humphreys

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Adventure, Book, Book Review, Books, Fun, Happiness, Hiking, Journal, journaling, Mental health, Motivation

What This Adventure Journal Book Is About

My Review

This book is based on the questions that British Adventurer Alastair Humphreys asks his guests on his podcast.

At the time of writing, I’m enjoying working my way through each question. I’m finding that it’s a fun way of journalling based around my hiking experiences. Writing in this way helps me to gain a deeper understanding of myself, and to reflect on past achievements and future dreams.

Staying focused on what drives a person is important to making dreams come true, and this book is an encouraging resource for any lover of the outdoors to make those dreams happen. Answering the questions is garunteed to stop procrastination.

I’m looking forward to answering all the questions. I highly recommend this book for any seasoned or newbie lover of the outdoors.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐/⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ (5/5)

Buy Links:

SELF-PUBLISHING UPDATE: EARLY DAYS ON MARKETING THE BOOK

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Adventure, Author, Blogging community, Book, book marketing, Books, creative writing, Hiking, marketing, Self-publishing

Hello Everybody,

I just wanted to briefly share some early insights on marketing a self-published book.

This is by no means a definitive guide. I just wanted to share a few issues I’d found that may help others attempting to self-publish.

THE MARKETING ADVENTURE BEGINS

Next Monday sees my hiking book, Adventure Dayze, go ‘live’ on Amazon. It’s actually been out about a month, but my main aim in the first four weeks was to get word out to family and friends, and to build up a few reviews.

I’ve also used that time to create my Facebook page and to put together a list of blogs, podcasts, tourist boards etc as I start to promote and market the book more from Monday 5th July.

LESSONS LEARNED

My approach has been a little different to the advice I’d researched on how to market a self-published book. Normally, having a team of readers to review the book before the launch and doing a few other marketing bits and bobs is the regular way. However, it was important for me to focus on getting my book out there first and dealing with the other steps one at a time. My mind works better that way as I can give more thorough attention to each step.

That said, for my next book there’s things that I’ll definitely do differently before the book launch (e.g. getting it reviewed) as I can see the benefit in that.

What I appreciate is that I’ve had some great advice from my mentors, Jessica Coleman (editor) and Hollie Marsh (marketing), that is steering me in the right direction, and that the way I’m presently doing it is okay. It’s so important to have people around you that help you to believe in yourself.

Overall, this is all a learning curve and I’m enjoying the whole experience.

WHAT’S NEXT?

I’m returning to Rutland on a camping adventure holiday this weekend.

Then, it’s time for the marketing to begin properly.

I’ll put posts up about all this in the next week or so.

If you’ve self-published or are about to, what has your approach been? Or, if you’ve enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a comment. It’d be great to hear from you 

Discovery Prompts: Books

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blogging, Blogging community, Books, Childhood, Comics, Discovery Prompts, Novels, writing

Comic books were my first reads. As a kid in the 1980s, on Saturdays I’d run to the local store and buy Buster, Whizzer and Chips, The Beano, The Dandy and Whoopee. If I wanted more, then I’d have to do a lot of chores.

I’d spend ages reading and re-reading them becoming lost in the lives of the characters. For one reason or another they were all my best friends.

Well into my teenage years I’d spend ages in the local library or first- and second-hand book stores. Each book was a separate world or universe daring to be discovered. At this stage in life I developed a love of fantasy adventure stories. Books evoke emotions, develop rational thinking and, obviously, help you learn new things. There’s nothing more rewarding than gaining a fresh perspective on something that you thought you knew or how one phrase – one small phrase – used by an author sums up a feeling you’ve found so hard to describe.

As I’ve gotten older I still read a lot of fantasy novels and comic books. Hiking has become a big passion in my middle years, and so now I read a lot of travel books as well. Plus, as a parent there’s no greater joy than sharing the countless worlds that books have to offer with your children.