Best writing day ever?

Tags

author talks, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, indie publishing, library, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Solo Squid

Many writing days are rather uneventful: enjoyable, certainly, but uneventful.  So when a writing day comes along that is exciting, I like to tell you about it.  And yesterday was a doozie.

For a start, I spent a good part of the morning with the Cambridge University Marshal and the Pro-Proctor for Ceremonial.  The what, I hear you cry – but if I tell you that these two are part of the office that employs the university constables, you will understand my excitement.  Quite apart from being lovely people, they were both an absolute fount of knowledge and so generous with that knowledge.  I now have a much clearer idea of the character for the narrator for my Cambridge series – for instance, I was going to give him a limp, but they said that constables (in the 1820s) needed to be fleet of foot to catch naughty undergraduates and so perhaps a eye injury (very common in war veterans of the period) would be more suitable.  I have pages and pages of notes and leads and ideas – just fizzing.

In the afternoon an email pinged in with the heading “The Solo Squid”.  This book was published on Sunday (paperback and Kindle version) and I have been a bit nervous about it: it’s a business book but not in the usual way, in that it doesn’t give guidance on setting up a business or dealing with the taxman or turning your company into a world-beating brand.  It simply encourages people to enjoy working alone and to take steps to make life as a one-person business professionally and personally fulfilling.  And I did wonder whether people would read it and say, what a load of self-indulgent piffle.  So I opened the email through squinted eyes, prepared for the worst – someone outraged and demanding a full refund.  But what did I see?  “The Solo Squid arrived from Amazon this morning and I have to say I read it all in one sitting – as such I felt compelled to contact you and to say thank you so much for writing this… Thank you once again for a superb read – something that I will endeavour to recommend to a number of business associates who have also risked it all to go it alone.”  I literally danced around the office – and the lovely fellow has already posted his thoughts as an Amazon review.

And in the evening I gave a talk at our local library on life as an indie-published author.  It was a packed room, as you can see:

I had notes to guide my talk and to make sure I didn’t miss out anything crucial, but there were so many questions and such a lot of interest – and I even sold a handful of books.  I love encouraging others to give indie publishing a go, and it is a great boost to know that my experience will help other authors and budding writers to take the plunge.  What a day!

Vanity, thy name is Susan

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author, author talks, Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, HULF, indie publishing, marketing, self-publishing

On Saturday I spent the day as a speaker and an audience member at the quite unique Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival.  It was launched in 2015 by my indie publishing heroine and friend (now that I have met her in person) Debbie Young, and apparently goes from strength to strength.  What is most unusual about it is that it is free.  There is no booking and nothing to pay – you simply turn up and go along to the things that interest you.  Hawkesbury Upton is a lovely village near Badminton in Gloucestershire and it is blessed with both a variety of public spaces that serve beautifully as book festival venues, and a resident population that seems happy to turn out in force to support the HULF.

As an author, I took part in a panel discussion on the theme of “Writing Influenced by the Day Job”.  The panel was chaired by an accountant and the featured authors were a military nurse, a commodities trader and an anti-money laundering obsessive.  And as a bookworm, I attended panels on the themes of “Around the World in 8-ish Books” and “The Best of British”, as well as a handy session offering some self-publishing marketing advice and a fascinating insight by a chap who is writing the “Oxford English Dictionary” (not single-handedly).  The 2020 HULF is already being planned, so get the date in your diary right now.

Between bookish matters I succumbed to vanity and attended a photo shoot with a photographer who specialises in portraits, e.g. the moody author ones you see on book covers.  I took the precaution of washing my hair and applying clear mascara – that’s about as much as I did on my wedding day, as I’m not very cosmetic-ky – and toddled along to look both moody and authorly.  From the selection I was sent I have narrowed it down to two contenders for my official author image to go on book covers, magazine articles, Booker Prize publicity materials, etc.  Which do you prefer?  (I have them both in black and white as well, but I thought you might like to see what I wore to be bookish.)

 

Hart’s and minds

Tags

author talks, CreateSpace, Hart's Books, KDP, money, publicity, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

Is there anything an author enjoys more than talking about her books?  It’s certainly easier than getting on with writing the next one.  And yesterday evening was a great treat as I spoke to a small (I think we had eleven in total) but terrifically interested and engaged audience at Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden.  Hart’s – as a printer, stationer and bookseller – has been associated with Saffron Walden since 1836, and the current bookshop is part of the Daunt family but retains a very independent feel.  I’d had my eye on them for a while but I rarely look my best in Saffron Walden: it’s the usual destination for our Sunday tandem rides (there’s a local café that does a wonderful fried breakfast which is my reward for cycling twenty-five miles) and I’m always a sweaty, fly-dotted creature when I arrive.  Not the best image to persuade a bookshop that you are a serious writer of worthy tomes.  But one Sunday I just took a chance, and the manager Max was sufficiently impressed by my enthusiasm – or so desperate to get my pungent carcass out of his shop – that he agreed to stock Sam.  And when I suggested an author event, he kindly agreed.  And that was last night.

At such talks I am never sure which aspect is going to chime with the audience: the books themselves, or the history behind them (of policing and justice, or of London), or the writing process, or the self-publishing procedure.  And so I start with a general introduction – how I came to write the first book, why I wrote four more – and then (if the audience seems keen) open it up to questions.  Well, last night “keen” was an understatement.  I’d barely spoken two sentences before the questions started, and it didn’t let up for over an hour – fantastic!

I promised myself that I would always be completely honest in my answers, particularly when it comes to money issues – people need to know that it’s not the route to quick riches.  And in the spirit of full disclosure, I can report that last night’s event garnered me about £7.65 – that’s about 45p per book, and we sold seventeen.  (It’s not that the bookshop takes an enormous cut – their deal is to keep a perfectly reasonable 35% or 40% of the cover price.  It’s just that we self-published authors have to supply the books ourselves, so by the time I have ordered them from CreateSpace, sorry KDP – recent take-over – and paid for them to be sent from the US to me in the UK, and then given the bookseller his discount, I’m left with about 45p per book.)  As I say, not the route to riches – but just the most enormous fun and I wouldn’t stop doing it for the world.

Press here for publicity

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author talks, Facebook, Hart's Books, marketing, press release, Saffron Walden, Samuel Plank, Twitter

As regular readers will know, one of the hardest aspects of being a self-employed author is the marketing.  It’s not the time it takes so much as summoning the ongoing enthusiasm and imagination – particularly in such a crowded marketplace, when every author and his dog (probably literally) has a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and an Amazon profile, all screaming “Buy my books!” (or, in the case of the dog, “Take me out for a walk!”).  Marvellous though it is that anyone can publish their books these days, it does mean that you have to work so much harder to be spotted in the throng.  But it sometimes seems that the old ways are the best.

I mentioned a little while ago (or did I?) that next month I am doing a talk at the latest bookshop to stock the Sam Plank series – Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden (just the other side of the Cambridgeshire border, in northern Essex).  The shop has its own website with an events page, and I have also listed the event on Sam’s Facebook page.  But what else to do?  The manager of the shop suggested asking the local newspaper, the Saffron Walden Reporter, to publicise the talk, as – if you can believe such a thing still exists – this local weekly paper is delivered free to every address in the town.  Thankfully I have some experience of writing press releases, which I know reporters like as it saves time and fills space, and so I looked up the paper online, checked which reporter’s name was on the book-ish stories, and counted how many words were in the average piece before crafting my press release and emailing it to her.  I also suggested that it would be jolly helpful to have the story appear a fortnight before the event to give people time to get to the bookshop to buy tickets, and then of course we would need to print more tickets and hire a marquee and a warm-up act and lay on extra buses…  I may be straying here into the realms of fantasy.

But, dear reader, it all worked – and here is my press release (with a few improvements, I must admit) in today’s Saffron Walden Reporter.  The bookshop is on standby for the hordes of ticket-seekers, although my own husband has now dropped out as something better has come up.  (To be fair, he’s had a bellyful of Sam over the years.  It can’t be easy sharing your wife with a dead policeman.)

Stiff competition

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author talks, marketing, Plank 6, promotion, research, sales, Sarah Vaughan

Last Wednesday I had some pretty stiff competition.  I was invited to speak at a literary event in a local village, during their annual week of festivities, and on the night I shared a platform with properly-published, best-selling author Sarah Vaughan (she’s even had her most recent book, political thriller “Anatomy of a Scandal”, promoted on London black cabs and on posters in the Tube – she’s that professional an author!).  Not only that, but Sarah and I were battling for attention against “Mock the Week” regular Hal Cruttenden (performing at a comedy event in the same village) and the entire England football team playing Croatia in Moscow.  Nonetheless, a fine band of about thirty people turned out to hear us talk about crime, writing, and crime writing.

Sarah was a lovely person, and since we met has been very generous with her time and her contacts, but I will admit that sharing a stage with her reminded me that I have a long way to go.  She happened to mention that one of her books has over twenty editions in translation, and that the Italian edition alone has sold over twenty thousand copies.  Twenty thousand!  All five of my novels, in all editions, have sold a total of just over 1,400 copies.

But am I daunted?  I am not!  Now that I have sorted out just which year I am writing about, I find that 1829 is a cracker of a year.  We’ve had the hanging of grave-robber William Burke and the first appearance of the Metropolitan Police – and it’s only the end of June.  Added to that, it was a very cold year with a wet, thundery summer and then London snow in early October – very atmospheric.  As Sam might say, we’re doing this because it’s the right thing to do, not because it makes us money.

Good with words, hopeless with numbers

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author talks, historical fiction, Plank 6, plotting, publicity, research, Shelford Feast

I am a very organised person.  I have the equivalent of a B at maths “A” level (I did the International Baccalaureate instead, albeit in the pre-computer dark ages).  These two parts of my character have united in the Sam Plank series, in that I (a) plotted all remaining six books in the series as soon as I had finished the first one and realised I couldn’t live without Sam, and (b) decided that the books would be set in consecutive years (“Fatal Forgery” in 1824, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” in 1825 and so on).  Simples, as they used to say.

And so I find myself beavering away on “Plank 6”.  I’ve been researching inheritance law and body-snatching (the former more confusing, the latter more gruesome).  And I’ve been setting it all against the background of events in 1828.  Yesterday I was putting together my supplies for the Shelford Feast (I’m speaking at their Literary Evening tomorrow – we’re up against England in the semi-final…) and printing little price-lists for the books.  Against each book price I wrote a little description of the book – and realised that “Faith, Hope and Trickery” (book five, and published in March 2018) took place in 1828.  You see my error.

It’s not hard, is it?  I have ten fingers for the complex calculations.  If book one is set in 1824, of course book six will be set in 1829.  Back to the drawing board.

Benchmarking sales

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Alderney Literary Festival, author talks, Fatal Forgery, marketing, promotion, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom

Just a quick mid-week update for you, by way of encouragement.  We self-published authors need plenty of that!  One of our main hurdles is not so much writing the book as publicising it, and without the might of a professional publishing house behind us, we have to grab every opportunity we can to get the word out there.  I am a magistrate, and every quarter all magistrates are sent an e-newsletter called “Benchmark”.  Last time round, I spotted that “Benchmark” – alongside all the legal updates – always has a little story about a magistrate’s life outside the bench, so I contacted the editor and asked if he would be interested in hearing about how, in my day job, I earn money from crime.  I thought the little joke might amuse…  Well, it didn’t offend, and he said yes – and on 2 March a few paragraphs about me and in particular about my crime novels appeared in “Benchmark”, along with a lovely image of the cover of “Fatal Forgery” and a link to the purchase page of my website.

So did it work?  I have checked my sales figures for the day on which “Benchmark” appeared and the following day, and I can report that I sold six copies of “Fatal Forgery” (one paperback, five Kindle), three of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (one paperback, two Kindle) and two of “Worm in the Blossom” (one of each).  This is a significant increase on normal sales, so I think that little article has been a great success.  Sadly for editors around the country, this means that I will be pestering more of them.  Other promotional activities coming up soon: the Alderney Literary Festival, and a talk to the local Rotary Club.