One of the frustrations for many authors is finding a way to get their books in front of potential readers. Unless you have penned a blockbuster for one of the Big Five publishers and have benefited from one of their big-ticket publicity and marketing campaigns, your work might remain unread and unknown for years.

In the past, community newspapers wrote and published book reviews, making the work of local authors available to readers. Few print newspapers that still survive do that today. The same goes for local radio and television stations.

So, what’s an untried author to do?

In 2007, Amazon provided a way around that conundrum when it launched Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It allowed authors and those with aspirations of becoming authors to self-publish their work on Amazon’s massive Publish On Demand (POD) platform. Within a few years, readers were presented with millions of books they otherwise would never have seen.

Unfortunately, with so many books to choose from on Amazon, readers were often forced to wade through a lot of detritus before discovering a quality read. That is still the case today.

As a Substack columnist, I have often wondered if the Substack platform might be a good place to introduce readers to my work. The thought occurred to me that perhaps serializing or posting a few chapters of the first book in my Finding Billy Battles series might be an effective way to acquaint readers with the books.

So, beginning this Saturday and continuing once a week for the next few weeks, I will be sharing, at no cost, several chapters of Book #1 in the Finding Billy Battles series.

I am proud to say that each book in the series has won a number of literary awards. You can read about some of those awards and read reviews of each book on my Amazon book page, https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/B001KHDVZI/?ccs_id=24ac3875-21a9-421b-9a04-ec9dcb645d14, or my website, https://ronaldyatesbooks.com/

My objective in writing the Finding Billy Battles series was to tell a compelling story by weaving fact and fiction into what I call “faction.” Most of the events, places, and people in Billy’s life are real, and I have attempted to be as accurate as possible with those facts.

If you choose to follow Billy Battles on his rousing and sometimes perilous journeys—and I hope you will—I welcome your thoughts about the book. Feel free to drop me a line at jhawker69@gmail.com.

Tomorrow I will publish the Preface and Prologue, followed by the Introduction for Book #1 in the Finding Billy Battles series. During the ensuing weeks, I will post a new chapter each succeeding Saturday.

I hope you will join Billy Battles on his incredible 100-year-long journey through life.

–30—

(About the author: Ron Yates is a multi-award-winning author of historical fiction and action/adventure novels. Before turning to fiction, he was a foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and Professor of Journalism at the University of Illinois, where he was also the Dean of the College of Media. As a professional journalist, Ron lived and worked in Japan, Southeast Asia, and both Central and South America where he covered several history-making events including the fall of South Vietnam and Cambodia; the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing; and wars and revolutions in Afghanistan, the Philippines, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala, among other places. His work as a foreign correspondent earned him several journalism awards, including three Pulitzer Prize nominations.

The books in his “Finding Billy Battles Trilogy” have won multiple awards, including the Goethe Grand Prize Award for Historical Fiction and “Best Book of the Year” from Chanticleer International Book Awards, the Book Excellence Award, and the New York City Big Book Award. Ron proudly served four years of active duty in the U.S. Army Security Agency.)