A month of Notes

Tags

Amazon, Barnes & Noble, bookshop, Draft2Digital, Google Play, Gumroad, Kobo, marketing, Notes of Change, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Smashwords

And here I am, a whole month later.  That was a deliberate gap, in case you’re wondering: I decided to take a break after publication, have a holiday, and come back refreshed and full of fab ideas for book promotion.  Well, two out of three ain’t bad!  When I was working full-time, I could carve out space to do the actual writing (which I love) but not for any marketing (not so much love here…).  Now that I have stopped work, I am hoping to take a more professional approach: my ideal routine would be to spend two days a week writing, one day researching and one day on marketing.  And so I have not beaten myself up about abandoning “Notes of Change” to its fate after publication, as I know that before too long I will be revisiting the whole series with a proper marketing/promo plan.  (I’m going on a long train journey next week – four hours each way – and my goal is to spend most of it on preparing that plan.)

Meanwhile, I thought you might like to hear how “Notes of Change” has done in its first month.  It’s the first book for a while that I have published “wide” – i.e. on platforms other than Amazon, as well as on Amazon itself.  And here are the latest stats:

• Sold to bookshops: 10 copies
• Sold via Amazon: 25 copies
• Draft2Digital: zero
• Google Play: zero
• Gumroad: 1 copy
• Kobo Rakuten: zero
• Barnes & Noble: zero
• Smashwords: zero

So that’s a total of 36 copies.  On the plus side, I’m getting excellent reviews – five five-star ratings on Amazon already.  So onwards and upwards, as I promise my poor little books that I will give them the promo help they deserve.

It’s alive!

Tags

Amazon, bookshop, Heffers, Heir Apparent, Nielsen, orders

Many moons ago I wrote about my efforts to be listed on the Nielsen catalogue, so that my books could be ordered through – and supplied to – any bookshop in the land.  The Nielsen people were lovely and helpful but the system was convoluted, and in the faceof its ongoing silence I have never quite had faith that it is working for me – perhaps the emails are going into a spam folder.  Every couple of months I log in to check that there isn’t a queue of dozens of orders waiting for me, unloved and unfulfilled, but of course, nothing.

And then this morning – there it was!  An email from Nielsen BookNet with the subject line “New Book Order”!  With trembling fingers I opened it.  Someone wanted a single copy of “Heir Apparent” – so not exactly a bulk order, but someone out there, somewhere in this fair nation of ours, had taken the trouble to request, nay, demand that their bookshop acquire my book for them.  And which shop is it?  In which distant county does it sit, serving customers I shall never meet and of whose lives I know nothing?  Well, it’s Heffers.  Yes, the bookshop only seven minutes’ walk from my own front door.  The bookshop that already stocks my books, and has done from the very start.  It’s a mystery, but I have clicked the button that says that I shall attend to the order forthwith, and in about an hour I shall walk briskly into town and hand over the book.  I’ll save on postage and – if feedback is encouraged from the bookshops – I should get a top rating for speediest order fulfilment ever: five hours from placing the order to receiving the book.  Amazon, eat your heart out.

Sam and the cephalopods

Tags

bookshop, cover, Daniel Auteuil, Design for Writers, Heffers, Heir Apparent, John Irving, Luca Zingaretti, Martha Plank, promotion, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid

Is there any better way to spend an evening than locked in a closed bookshop and talking to avid crime readers about the Sam books?  Short of having Daniel Auteuil and Luca Zingaretti as waiters, handing out cherries coated in dark chocolate (the cherries, not the actors – although…), I can’t think of how to improve the experience.  And so you can imagine how thrilled I was to be invited to read at the Heffers annual “Murder Under the Mistletoe” festive crime fiction event.  “Heir Apparent” was even in the window of the shop:

It wasn’t just me, of course: I was one of ten authors featured, and we each read a three-minute extract from our latest book and then gave our recommendation for a good book to read at Christmas.  I chose a passage from “Heir Apparent” that doesn’t talk about the crimes at the heart of the plot – inheritance fraud and identity theft – but rather examines the relationship between Sam and Martha, and that between Sam and John Wontner.  I think it was well-received – at least, people laughed in the right places.  Not many of the other readings had much humour, and one is still giving me nightmares.  And for my Christmas recommendation I chose “The Prayer of Owen Meany” by John Irving – he’s one of my very favourite authors, and the description of the nativity play in “Owen Meany” is one of the very funniest things I have ever read.  As Victoria Wood would have said, it made me snort chips up me nose.

In other writerly news, I am working hard on the text of “The Solo Squid” – my non-fiction handbook on how to run a happy one-person business – and am moving onto the exciting stage of thinking about the cover.  I’ve done my research into the differences between an octopus and a squid (both have eight arms, but the former has a round head while the latter has a triangular head with two fins as well as two long tentacles and a backbone) and have told the marvellous team at Design for Writers my ideas of how the cover might look (with reference to similar business-y books on Amazon whose covers I like or dislike).  From this unpromising sow’s ear, they will create their usual silk purse.  He’s no Sam, but I hope the squid will gather his own fans – perhaps I should give him a name…  Only squidding!

A bookshop no more

Tags

bookshop, Livraria Lello, Porto, research

This post is not about my writing – which is fairly dormant at the moment, as I take a little rest and concentrate on the day job – but it is bookish in tone.  Last week I had a few days at leisure in Porto, in Portugal, and one of the prime tourist sites there is a bookshop.  It’s called Livraria Lello, founded in 1869 in the university district of town, and one of the oldest bookshops in the country.  Its current home – a magnificent and quirky pale building of turrets and curlicues – was opened in 1906.  But for tourists other than book-lovers and students of architecture, the attraction is that it is rumoured to be the inspiration for a bookshop in the Harry Potter books (Flourish and Blotts in Diagon Alley, apparently – I have not read any Potter…).  Some people even claim that JK wrote the first book in the shop, which is unlikely as there’s barely room to sit down – a café seems a more likely location, and anyway, according to her own website, Porto was only the start of things: “Taking her notes with her, she moved to northern Portugal to teach English as a foreign language, married Jorge Arantes in 1992 and had a daughter, Jessica, in 1993.  When the marriage ended later that year, she returned to the UK to live in Edinburgh, with  Jessica and  a suitcase containing the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.”

Regardless of the truth of the matter, Lello is now a tourist attraction of such magnitude that in order to get in you have to go to the ticket office two doors down, pay €5 for a ticket (redeemable on purchase of a book) and then queue up to get into the shop itself.  Now I’m not against this process: if you’re running a small shop that attracts five thousand visitors a day, most of whom would simply gawp and not buy a thing, what else are you to do?  And it is certainly a gorgeous place – here is the façade:

And this is the wonderful staircase:

And the stained glass ceiling:

What I did find disappointing is that it is such a rubbish bookshop: it’s all style and no substance.  There is a bored-looking chap dressed as Harry Potter posing for photos, and a whole backroom given over to HP books and merchandise.  Although visitor numbers are controlled, they are not controlled enough, and as I tried to browse the shelves – you know, to actually buy a book – I was bumped and jostled and even asked to move because my bright yellow coat would “ruin our photo”.  I asked one member of staff if they could help with a question about stock and they said no, “because I’m looking out for shoplifting”.  And when someone did say they could help me, it was to confirm that they had no books on writing, or on literary criticism – and this in a bookshop right next to the university.  So here we have a bookshop that is now functioning only as an attraction, with nothing of substance in it – a gorgeous cover with no pages inside.  The Lello brothers – prominent members of Porto’s intellectual bourgeoisie in the late Victorian period – must be turning in their graves.

Writing projects a-go-go

Tags

Amazon, Book Report, bookshop, Cambridge, cover, Design for Writers, designer, Gregory 1, Heir Apparent, Plank 7, sales

Here I am, three days after the official publication of “Heir Apparent” – and it’s still exciting!  The new book is selling well: the wonderful Book Report tells me that I have sold sixteen copies via Amazon (I’ll have to wait for the Amazon report to see how many are paperback and how many e-books) while I have delivered nineteen copies to bookshops and sold four copies direct to friends.  That’s *counts on fingers and toes* thirty-nine copies in the first week – although of course the bookshop sales won’t bring in any money until they actually sell to customers.

So what’s next?  Well, I’ll actually have two writing projects on the go at the same time.  The first is a non-fiction book that I have been planning for a while, on my experiences of running a one-person consultancy business – how to be happy and productive while working alone.  (I hadn’t really thought of it applying to authors but I suppose it could… there’s another target market.)  I’ve done the planning and “plotting” (different for a non-fiction book but still important – you always need a beguiling narrative and a sensible structure to keep people turning the pages) and decided on the title: “The Solo Squid”.  It’s partly because when you run a one-person business you have to do everything yourself and you can end up feeling that you need at least eight arms, and partly because early on in the book I talk about working alone being a different kettle of fish and this gave rise to a marine theme.  I’ve booked the cover designer (Design for Writers – who else?) and set myself a January 2020 deadline – better get cracking!

And the second project is *drum roll please* the first book in the new series, set in Cambridge in the 1820s (well, of course) and narrated by a university constable called (I’m almost certain) Gregory Hardiman.  A little while ago I asked for your views on whether I should do “Plank 7” before or after “Gregory 1”, and you were fairly evenly divided on the matter.  Smarter commercial brains tell me that it might be good to get people hooked on a new series before they finish the old one, so that they have somewhere to go.  But, I will confess, the deciding factor was my own cowardice: I simply cannot imagine life without Sam and Martha, and this decision puts off the dreaded day when I will have to put the final full-stop at the end of “Plank 7”.

All over bar the selling

Tags

Amazon, bookshop, Draft2Digital, editing, Gumroad, Heir Apparent, KDP, Kindle, Kobo, proof copy, publication date, Smashwords

Aye, as Sam would say.  It’s done.  Over the weekend I completed the final editing of “Heir Apparent” and cut and pasted it into the template that I use for the interior formatting.  It’s a bit of a beast, at 377 pages, but everyone who has read it tells me that it needs the extra space because it is more “twisty-turny” than the previous novels.  That would explain the headaches I had during my writing retreat…

I have now ordered my paper proof copy – I’ve checked it online, but it’s important to check it in the flesh, to make sure that the paper quality is good and that the cover looks as spiffy in real life as it does on the screen.  Plus, I can dance around the house waving the proof copy in the air – I just look daft if I do that with my laptop.

I have also emailed all the lovely bricks-and-mortar bookshops which stock the Sam books to ask how many copies they would like of his chunky new adventure – it’s one of my great pleasures to cycle to my two local bookshops on publication day and drop off their orders.  That said, “publication day” is a rather elastic concept: it’s all very well me pressing – with great fanfare – the giant “Publish!” button on KDP, but then it’s up to Amazon.  One of the Sam books took four (fevered) days to appear; another was listed within the hour.  I’ve learned to chill about it – but for general celebratory purposes, I’m aiming for the long-promised Friday 18 October.

So all that is left to do now is, erm, format the five e-versions that I need (Kindle, Draft2Digital, Gumroad, Kobo and Smashwords) – I’ll certainly be cross-eyed after that lot.  And then I’ll need to sell some books.  Easy-peasy.

Ups and downs

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, bookshop, Hart's Books, library, Plank 6, research, word count, writing

I’ve snaffled myself a writing afternoon in the middle of the working week – don’t tell my clients – and have enjoyed the crazy research threads that you follow when starting out on a new plot.  Among my search terms today: apothecary, infarction, st martin’s lane, acne and butler’s pantry.  Allowing for trips down numerous research rabbit-holes, I am reasonably pleased with just under 890 words written in (what is currently) chapter three of “Plank 6”.

And as if to reward me, an interview I did with the Alliance of Independent Authors – which I joined last month – has appeared on their blog.  I can’t imagine there’s anything you don’t already know about why I love financial crime, but just in case – here’s where you can read it all again.

In other news, I hear from Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden that five tickets have been sold so far for my talk there next Wednesday.  It sounds like it’s going to be an intimate little session but they are often the most fun.  And once you’ve done a talk to three people in a tiny local library, five in a bookshop sounds like riches indeed!

Taking Sam to Hart’s

Tags

bookshop, Faith Hope and Trickery, G David, Hart's Books, Portraits of Pretence, WH Smith

For some time now, I have been hoping to get Sam and Martha into a fifth – a fifth! – bookshop.  I know from hard, perhaps even bitter, experience that the big chains are a no-go for self-published, unknown authors.  I have spent a great deal of energy on trying to convince my local branches of both Waterstones and WH Smith to feature my books on their “local interest” shelves, but it seems that even these are furnished by head office stock control elves, so I have given up on that for now.  But one independent bookshop in my local area has been on my radar for some time: Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden.

Saffy – as I am afraid we call it in our house – is a delightful small town about eighteen miles from where I live.  In the summer I go there most Sundays as the stoker (back half – the one who does all the hard work) on our tandem, as it is a lovely cycle ride.  Over the years I have seen Hart’s (founded in 1836) falter, fail, close – and then reopen with great success in 2016.  On the publication of “Portraits of Pretence” and then “Faith, Hope and Trickery”, I emailed the bookshop to ask to be considered, and heard nothing.  I resolved to go in in person, to plead my case and hand over a book.  But every time I was in the town, I was sweating – sorry, glowing – profusely from my cycling exertions and far from the image of a trustworthy author of respected historical crime fiction.  And then yesterday (I know, not a Sunday, but the weather was so good that we did it anyway) we cycled into Saffy and I decided to take a chance, sweaty and un-booked though I was.

And reader, the shop’s manager could not have been nicer.  He listened to my tale as I glowed gently by the front desk, and immediately agreed to take five books – a copy of each – into stock.  A customer was waiting to pay and said that the series sounded perfect for him and that he would “haunt Hart’s” until they arrived and then buy one immediately.  Given my recent experience in David’s in Cambridge, I am beginning to see that standing by the till and catching people with their money in their hand is the way to sell books.  The upshot is that, from tomorrow (after our usual tandem ride, with the addition of a pannier containing five books and a handful of bookmarks), Sam will be stocked in his fifth bookshop and third county (Essex).

The fastest sale in the west

Tags

bookshop, Faith Hope and Trickery, Fatal Forgery, G David, pricing, sales

Last week I told you about the fabulous window display in David’s bookshop in Cambridge.  But if you peer closely, you will see that something is missing: the first book of the series, “Fatal Forgery”.  Of this particular blue volume, the shop was – shock! horror! – out of stock.  So I emailed them to point out this dire state of affairs and they asked me to drop off two more copies.

When I was next in town, I did just that.  The nice chap with whom I deal – a motorcycle enthusiast called Brian – was in the antiquarian department of his shop chatting to two American ladies.  He broke off his conversation to say hello and I handed over the two books.  “What’s that?” asked one of the ladies, holding out her hand.  “Historical fiction?  London?  Regency?”  She read the first page.  “I’ll have it!”

In short, I watched a bookseller make a 100% profit on my book before my very eyes, and was delighted to do so.  If I could immediately sell half of the books I deliver, I’d be laughing all the way to the bank.

Let us talk of many things!

Tags

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.