Rolling in it

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Book of the Year, cover, Design for Writers, earnings, Martha Plank, Samuel Plank, tax

One of the great mysteries of life is the self-assessment tax return.  I have had to do these for years, ever since I left the ranks of the employed in about 1989 and became self-employed, and then my own employee, and now a freelance writer as well.  I’m terrifically organised and gather the required paperwork through the year, so completing the return holds few fears for me – but it is always a complete surprise when I find out (a) what I have earned, and therefore (b) what I owe the taxman.

A couple of years ago I confessed to you that being the author of the Sam Plank novels had cost me £44.87 over the year.  Frankly, that’s a bargain hobby compared to my husband’s spending on cycling and golf, but still, I will admit to a slight disappointment on realising that full-time profitable authorship was so far beyond my grasp.  But the picture is much better this year.

Taking into account my earnings from the novels in all their formats, and the outlay I have made on such fripperies as cover design and celebratory stickers, in the period April 2017 to March 2018 I made – made! – £1,338 from being an author.  I’m in the black!  Granted, it’s only £25.73 a week, which would hardly keep me in Jaffa Cakes and trashy magazines, but it’s something.  And on the bright side, by using the National Archives’ nifty historical calculator of spending power, I see that £25 in Sam’s day would have bought me four cows.  Martha would not have been best pleased.

Let us talk of many things!

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Book of the Year, bookshop, Helen Hollick, map, marketing, Plank 5, Portraits of Pretence, promotion, Samuel Plank, title

It’s all happening today!  First of all, the divine Helen Hollick has featured a little piece by me on her terrific historical fiction blog, Let Us Talk of Many Things.  She gave me free rein – rather brave – and I decided to write about how I explore Sam’s London.  And quite by chance I realised that it is an interesting blend of old and new, as my two most-consulted resources are a map from 1827, and the Transport for London online journey planner!

Secondly, I have taken delivery of my “Book of the Year 2017” promotional stickers.  For those of you interested in the financial side of things, I ordered them from Vistaprint, using – with her permission – the logo designed by Helen.  I chose circular, matte, easy-peel stickers to mimic those seen most often in bookshops, and 120 small stickers (3.6 cm in diameter) cost me £26.03 including delivery and VAT.  That’s nearly 22p per sticker and a wild extravagance, but I treated myself.  I have now put them on the copies of “Portraits of Pretence” that I have in stock, added them to the books in my local bookshops, and posted them to the more distant stockists in Ely and London.  I have also been keeping a beady eye on sales for a spike, given all this publicity, but it is so far proving elusive.

 

And thirdly, I will be launching the “Plank 5” title poll at the end of this week.  My creative team and I (that’s me and the husband) are looking at a long list of possibilities in order to narrow it down to the final five.  The big thesaurus is out – the one with its own special magnifying glass – so it’s serious stuff.  Voting will open on Friday.

A gong for Sam

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blogging, Book of the Year, Discovering Diamonds, Helen Hollick, marketing, Portraits of Pretence, publicity, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

Yesterday I was driving home from visiting family and listening to the news on the radio.  They announced who had been given a New Year Honour (for overseas readers, here’s what they are), and I had a little daydream about how marvellous it would be to be recognised (à la Lady Antonia Fraser) for services to literature.  Once home, having been offline for a couple of days, I checked my email and good heavens!  I found that I had been given something even better!  “Portraits of Pretence” – the fourth Sam Plank novel – has been chosen by influential book review website Discovering Diamonds as their Book of the Year for 2017.

Discovering Diamonds is a wonderful place.  I stumbled on it – or rather, the people behind it, before it was created – right back at the start, just as I published the first Sam Plank novel, “Fatal Forgery” and was looking for reviewers.  Everyone associated with the website – and in particular our marvellous leader Helen Hollick – has been incredibly generous with their time, expertise, guidance and encouragement.  If you’re a fan of historical fiction – of any era and in any formats, whether e-book or paperback, Victorian or Roman, self-published or traditionally produced – their reviews are unmissable.

Regular readers of this blog will remember how excited I was when “Portraits” was chosen as their Book of the Month in March.  And now to find that I have scooped the annual award – well!  Naturally Sam would dispute my role, as Helen quite rightly points out that he is the hero of it all: “The three main characters have, through the absorbing series, become good, fictional, friends.  I find them believable, plausible and very likeable.”

I know the fashion is to say that awards don’t matter, that the work itself is the reward.  And of course I do love writing the Sam Plank stories.  But they are not edging Grisham or Rowling off the bestseller lists, there is no-one from the BBC knocking at the door and begging to be allowed to make them into a Sunday night corset drama, and my marketing efforts cost much more in time than they generate in income.  And so an award like this does matter – it matters enormously.  Hopefully it will generate some publicity for Sam, but more importantly it confirms to me that I can write, that the books are worth reading, and that I am right to continue.  Thank you, Helen: to me, this award is priceless.