Hear ye, hear ye!

After something of a gap owing to other commitments (including working with the Royal Shakespeare Company, darlings! Only the best for us!), our wonderful audiobook narrator Guy Hanson has just started work on the third Sam Plank book, “Worm in the Blossom”.  Guy has the perfect voice for Sam – warm, mature, humorous and gently London.  And having read both “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, he’s also a dab hand (throat?) at adjusting his voice to encompass Martha, Conant, Wontner and all our other regulars.

If you’ve not yet sampled audiobooks – ideal for car/train/plane journeys, and good company when gardening/jogging/dog-walking – did you know that you can get a free 30-day trial to Audible (the audiobook arm of Amazon)?  With a free trial you get:

• One free audiobook of your choice – which you can keep even if you cancel after the trial (and if you’re an Amazon Prime customer, you get two free audiobooks during your trial)
• Unlimited listening to the Plus Catalogue, which contains thousands of Audible Originals, podcasts and select audiobooks (including mine, of course)
• After the 30-day trial, you can download one book a month, with unlimited access to the Plus Catalogue, for £7.99/month (which renews automatically)
• And you can pause or cancel your membership at any time.

(In the interests of openness and transparency, I should tell you that – should you take out a trial or membership through my link – I get what Amazon calls a “bounty”.  Sadly not a yummy coconut chocolate bar, but just some ordinary money.)

So if you’re tempted to meet Guy/Sam and make a Sam Plank novel your free starter audiobook, here are the links: “Fatal Forgery” and “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Please send cake

It’s time for the annual totting-up, as I prepare my self-assessment tax return and work out whether being an author makes me any money at all, or whether I am in fact paying for the privilege.  (Incidentally, my top tip for filling in tax returns – and indeed any complex form – is this: if you don’t understand the question, the answer is no.)

First, some stats for you:

• I have self-published 21 non-fiction books (all about anti-money laundering, all in paperback only), five Sam Plank novels (all in paperback and various e-formats, and the first two as audiobooks as well), one collection of articles that I wrote for the local newspaper (paperback only) and one box-set of the first three Sam Plank novels (e-format only)
• I have also self-published a guide to the Sam Plank series, with the first chapter of each novel and a glossary of Regency terms, but that’s free and so it brings in no royalties
• In June 2015 my tax return revealed that I had made just under £1,500 from the writing side of my professional life
• In 2016 that disappeared into a net loss of £44.87
• In 2017 I increased my net loss to £288.71 – obviously too much spending and not enough writing
• In 2018 I bucked the trend and went into the black, making a net profit of £1,338

So what can I report this year – up or down?  Profit or loss?  In the period 6 April 2018 to 5 April 2019 (that’s the crazy English tax year for you), I made a net profit from my authorliness of £1,294.31.  In essence, that’s royalties and sales minus cover designs, promo materials and membership of the Society of Authors.  It works out at £24.89 per week.  At this rate, I’ll be lucky to afford even a modest garret.

Don’t forget to vote for the title of “Plank 6” – for £24.89 a week, I’m certainly not choosing my own titles.

(And in case you’re wondering, the blog title is from a letter my father sent to his mum from university in the 1950s, which we still have in the family archive and which reads, in its entirety: “Dear mum, Washing enclosed.  Please send cake. Pete.”)

I have a dream

At the weekend, for reasons too complicated to explain, I spent a couple of hours thinking about my dreams – not the sort where your teeth are falling out while you’re being chased by your O-level maths teacher for your overdue homework, but the sort where you imagine and plan for the future (as in “hopes and dreams”).  The brief was to dream big – to write down anything, regardless of likelihood or practicality.  Of course several of my dreams related to the Sam books and I thought I would share those with you:

• To publish two more Sam Plank books, taking the series to seven
• To hear one of the Sam books read aloud on Radio 4 as their “Book of the Week”
• To win “The Selfies” in April 2019
• To see “Fatal Forgery” on sale in Tesco and Waitrose [one for the numbers, the other for the snobbery…]
• To open a national newspaper and see one of the Sam books unexpectedly and favourably reviewed
• To have the Sam series recommended by Mariella Frostrup
• To see the Sam series turned into a Sunday evening costume drama on the BBC, with Claudie Blakley playing Martha – Sam is still to be cast.

Here’s Claudie in “Lark Rise to Candleford” – and maybe moody Brendan Coyle would work as Sam…

What surprised me when I went back over my Sam dreams was that none of them mentions money.  Sure, winning an award or getting a review heard/read by thousands would increase sales, but what seems to matter to me is a wide readership rather than earning a fortune.  I do appreciate that I am in the lucky position of having a day job quite apart from my Sam writing, which means that I do not have to rely – thank goodness! – on Sam income, but still, it’s shown me that I am motivated by getting people to read Sam rather than by getting them to buy books.  I’ve blogged before about my unhappy experience with libraries and the PLR system, but despite this I would be just as happy to see more people borrowing the Sam books as I would to see sales increasing.  (I just love checking our local library catalogue and seeing all the Sam books out on loan.)  So that’s the dreaming done – now on with the reality of writing.

Penny-pinching Planks

After all the excesses and jollity of Christmas it’s back to the cold, hard reality of work.  And as this is supposed to be a warts-and-all blog about self-publishing, that work includes totting up my Plank sales for 2017 and trying to work out how much I have made and whether I can yet afford that elegant villa in Ischia.  (Spoiler alert: I can’t.)  Calculating royalties is rather a dark art, as Amazon seems to pay an ever-changing percentage and I have negotiated different deals with different bookshops (for whom I have to order and then deliver copies, so have to take that cost off before I begin), but I’ve had a go.

• “Fatal Forgery”: 20 paperback copies at an average of £1.10 royalty each; 27 Kindle copies at £2.09 each; 9 audiobooks at £1.50 each
• “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”: 6 paperback copies at £1.10 royalty each; 13 Kindle copies at £2.09 each; 10 audiobooks at £1.50 each
• “Worm in the Blossom”: 4 paperback copies at £1.10 royalty each; 15 Kindle copies at £2.09 each
• “Portraits of Pretence”: 8 paperback copies at £1.25 royalty each; 20 Kindle copies at £2.79 each

That makes a grand total of £242.25 for the year.  Out of this will come tax, and then of course I have paid for cover design, promotional materials (such as bookmarks) and the big unknown: my writing time.  Ah well: it might just pay for a nice pair of sandals for that Ischian idyll.

Fits and starts

I seem to do nothing on this blog at the moment but apologise – and here I am again.  I have been working on “Plank 5”, honestly, but my day job has been so busy recently that I haven’t had any extra capacity to write this blog as well.  Nonetheless, you might like to know what I have been up to with regard to Plank writing and promotion (other self-published authors will recognise the juggling act!):

• The audiobook “Worm in the Blossom” (the third Plank book) is currently being recorded by the wonderful Guy Hanson of Go4pro audio, who just is Sam – he’s up to chapter 21 (of 40). When he completes a chapter he sends me a link to the audio file, and I listen to it while reading along in the book, and send back any corrections that need to be made.  As you can imagine, I can’t do this on the same day as I am writing “Plank 5” – otherwise I would muddle the plots.
• I have booked time with the fabulous Design for Writers cover designers so that they can work on the “Plank 5” cover in February 2018.
• In idle moments, I have allowed myself to find some possible images for that cover, and I have also started to assemble a list of possible titles for the book…
• I have contacted another independent bookshop in a nearby town – Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden – to see whether they would like to stock Sam. I’ve had no response to my email, so I think I’ll have to call in in person – I should imagine they get hundreds of email approaches.
• I have been selected by the angelic Helen Hollick to be part of her seasonal promotion of “discovered diamonds” – independent and self-published authors of historical fiction. Her idea is to feature an excerpt from a different novel each day in December, from the 3^rd to the 23^rd, with the theme of “Diamond Tales”.  As those of you who have read “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” may remember, Sam decides to mark his silver wedding anniversary by buying Martha a ring…  His scene will appear on the “Discovering Diamonds” blog on 16^th December, but I urge you to look at all the others – who knows what gems you will unearth!  The diamond-themed excerpts will start on 3^rd December 2017, on this blog.  (You can also click on the “Diamond Tales” logo on the left.)  A wonderful Christmas present for this author.

I think that’s it for now.  Thankfully things are slowing down with work as people – oddly enough – don’t want to be reminded about financial criminals in the run-up to Christmas, so I am hoping to get some good stretches of writing time during December.  Martha would have no truck with this procrastination, would she?

Riches (are still) beyond my wildest dreams

At this time every year, I have to face learning whether I can retire to a glorious chateau somewhere and devote myself to my Art, to my Muse, to my Writing.  For non-UK readers, we have a bizarre situation where our tax year runs from 6 April of one year to 5 April of the next.  (It’s all to do with an ancient new year’s day being on 25 March, and then the Gregorian calendar getting involved.)  And so around the start of May I dig out all of my records to find out whether I have made any money from being a writer over the past year.  Last year, you may recall, I made a loss of £44.87 – in other words, for the honour of spending hours and hours and hours on writing and trying to sell the blasted things, I had to hand over nearly fifty quid.

Would this year be any better, I wondered?  I added up all the royalties I have received from Amazon, Smashwords and ACX (for the audiobooks), and the lovely cheques I have received from bricks-and-mortar bookshops.  And then I subtracted all the things I pay for in order to create these books.  (I should say that I don’t charge myself anything for office space, heating, lighting, printer cartridges and so on, because all of that is charged to “other Susan” for my day job.)  But I do include, for instance, paying for the design of book covers and bookmarks, and ordering copies of books from CreateSpace to deliver to those bricks-and-mortar bookshops, and subscribing to the Society of Authors.

And I can report – taxman please take note and pity – that this year I have increased my loss to a rather worrying £288.71.  I have gone a bit mad on the covers this year (two paperbacks and two audiobooks), but still, it’s rather sad, isn’t it?  What I shall do is divide it by twelve, and reason with myself that my hobby is costing me only £24 a month.  Ho hum.

And the winners are…

Thanks to everyone who took part in the competition to win a free download code for the new audiobook of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, the second Sam Plank novel.  (The audiobook of the first, “Fatal Forgery”, was released last year, and work will soon start on number three, “Worm in the Blossom”.)

The answer to the question Which world-famous department store is now located on Great Marlborough Street in London, opposite where Sam Plank was based at his magistrates’ court police office in the 1820s? is Liberty.  Of course it was not there in Sam’s day – it did not open until 1875 – but if you toddle along to that part of London you can still see a small part of Sam’s place of work.  The Courthouse Hotel is now on the same spot as Great Marlborough Street Magistrates’ Court, and one of the hotel’s restaurants is in the old court-room.

Sorry: always thinking about Sam!  Back to the competition.  And the winners are:

• Graham Thomas
• Leigh Moss
• Susan V
• Edward Murphy
• Peggy Denk

Your emails with Audible instructions and your personal download codes are on their way to you – many congratulations.  And if any of you feels moved to leave a review…  Well, you have to ask: regular readers (and fellow self-published authors) will know that reviews matter enormously, for morale, guidance for improvement, and seduction of new readers, and for Amazon ranking purposes.

The “Canary” sings

It’s been quite the week in Sam Plank land – first my “Book of the Month” accolade for “Portraits of Pretence”, then the arrival of the bookmarks, and now the publication (if that’s the word) of the audio edition of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.

Guy the narrator has been working like a Trojan in recent weeks, sending me clutches of chapters of “Canary”, and I have had a ball listening to it all again.  I haven’t read it since I published it, and it’s been great to hear it.  Even more importantly, it is very useful to have it to remind myself of certain character traits and biographical details as I start to wade more deeply into “Plank 5”.  Here’s where I spent most of the past weekend, during that sunny spell:

That’s my A4 “Plank 5” notebook on the left, filled with my favoured plotting method: plot points written in boxes and then joined together with arrows – some going across several pages.  If I had a dedicated writing office (I do have a desk, but it’s in the back bedroom, which is sometimes needed as, well, a back bedroom) I would have a plain white wall for the affixing of coloured Post-It notes, but as I don’t, the arrowed book will suffice.

So now the audio version of “Canary” is available.  (If you’re curious about the royalty/bounty side of audiobook sales, I’ve written about it before here.)  I trust that Audible (the audiobook member of the Amazon stable) will promote it to people who bought the audio “Fatal Forgery”, and I will need to get the word out there as well.  As before, they are going to send me a clutch of promo codes for free downloads, so I will consider how best to use those.  Last time, for “Fatal Forgery”, I offered them on a suitable audiobook forum in Goodreads, so I may do the same again.  Any other suggestions?  I could run a competition, I suppose…  Let me get back to you on that one.

Progress on all Planks

I once spoke to a professional author – a full-time writer – who said that one of the aspects of his job that he had not anticipated was the overlap of books.  And now I know what he meant.  At the moment I am (a) writing “Plank 5”, (b) trying to promote “Portraits of Pretence”, and (c) checking the audiobook version of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  So here’s where I am with each of these.

“Plank 5” now has a completed first chapter and outlines for another twelve chapters, and I have been doing a great deal of reading around non-conformist religions in 1828 – from the familiar Methodists and Baptists to the more evangelical and (in those days) wacky Ranters.  We’re a bit too early for spiritualism, which is a shame, as I’d love to write a séance scene!  I am also looking at epidemics, but I’m not going to tell you why…

“Portraits of Pretence” is slowly, slowly gathering more reviews, including this lovely one today on Helen Hollick’s “Discovering Diamonds” blog (“Independent reviews of the best in historical fiction”, so I’m very flattered to have made the cut).  This means that I can now proudly display this logo all over the place:

And in a review on Amazon of the same book, a Mr L Moss said that “Worm in the Blossom” had been his favourite book of 2015, so that’s something I remind myself of when I am struggling with Ranters and epidemics.

And my fabulous narrator Guy has just sent me the final chapters of the “Canary” audiobook, so I shall listen to them over the weekend and we might just be able to audio-publish next week.  After a good start, the “Fatal Forgery” audiobook sales have slowed right down, so I am hoping that Guy will still be willing to record the other Plank books (we’re on a 50/50 profit share through ACX).  And if anyone has any ideas for how to promote audiobooks, please share them – I’m struggling a bit with this one.

Reading aloud: before and after?

As regular readers of this blog will know, I am gradually – very gradually – creating audiobooks of the Sam series.  I am doing it through a website called ACX – owned by Audible, which is in turn part of Amazon – and the basic deal is that the narrator and I share any profits fifty-fifty.  The narrator I found for “Fatal Forgery”, Guy Hanson – in essence, he’s the voice of Sam – has kindly agreed to stay fit and healthy so that he can narrate all seven books, and he’s now working on “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  He uploads chapters to ACX and I listen to them and ask for any changes.  Sometimes there will be a wrong word or a mispronunciation or a misplacing of stress, but Guy is so completely Sam-ish that my requests are few.

However, as I listen to my words read aloud, I do sometimes think, “Hmm, that’s a bit clumsily written”, or “I’ve used that word three times already this chapter – I should have thought of another”.  And sometimes Guy’s words do not exactly match the text but actually improve on it, making it smoother.  I have read the advice that authors should read their books aloud before publishing, to catch just such instances, but I’ve never done it.  I wonder whether I should from now on…

On the positive side, there is a quite a bit of Martha in “Canary”, and it is really helpful for me to reacquaint myself with her as I launch into “Plank 5”, which will focus more on her.  For instance, I have just heard her say this when spotting a fortune teller at the Bartholomew Fair: “Who would want to know their future?  If it’s bad, you’ll waste your life worrying, and if it’s good, it will be a lovely surprise.”  In “Plank 5”, I intend to have her rethink this position, giving Sam cause for great concern.