Fingers crossed, please

Tags

blurb, BookBrunch, competitions, Faith Hope and Trickery, London Book Fair, Mslexia, sales, synopsis, The Selfies

Nothing daunted by previous failures – Mslexia, I’m looking at you – I have entered another competition.  This one is specifically for self-published books, which is an interesting development as several competitions explicitly exclude self-published works.  This competition is being sponsored by BookBrunch – “the daily online news service for the book industry” – and is called (wait for it) The Selfies.  I was in two minds about applying, as it costs £25 and takes a couple of hours to put together the application, but in the end I reasoned that I certainly wouldn’t be shortlisted if I didn’t enter (unassailable logic) and took the plunge.

As well as supplying the book itself – I’ve gone with “Faith, Hope and Trickery” because the competition is for adult fiction published in the last year – I also had to supply a synopsis.  I haven’t written a synopsis since I first hawked “Fatal Forgery” to publishers and agents, as the synopsis is basically a summary of the plot and is used to persuade publishers/agents to take you on.  It’s not the same as a blurb, which goes on the back cover or on sales websites to tempt readers; by contrast, the synopsis gives away the whole plot including the ending.

I also had to provide information about my marketing efforts and plans, and – deep breath – ‘fess up to my sales figures across both editions (paperback and e-book) to evidence (according to the competition website) “an effective and creative marketing and publicity strategy [and] great sales potential”.  We in the self-publishing community had a discussion about the significance of this question: would the judges simply choose the best-selling book?  Would they take into account that a book that had been published eleven months ago would have more sales than one published in November?  Are sales figures any indication of quality anyway?  I thought about fibbing, but in the end told the truth: 86.

At least the waiting period is mercifully short: the competition closes on 21 December 2018, the shortlist will be announced in late February and the winner revealed at the London Book Fair on 12 March 2019.  So as not to tempt fate, I have put a light, squiggly pencil line through the whole of that March week in my diary, with “LBF” written in the most casual way – you’d barely notice that I even care.

Sam chooses the quiet life, for now

Tags

competitions, Mslexia, publication date, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

I know I’ve been a bad blogger recently, and I apologise.  I’m trying to get a grip on the various calls on my time, and hope to see some improvement now that I have decided to cut down my work – my paid, day job as an anti-money laundering adviser – to four days a week from January 2018.

I have also set the publication date for “Plank 5” as Friday 9 March 2018, which means that I will start that scary countdown clock as soon as I have finished writing this post.

In other news, I heard this week that I have not been long-listed in the Mslexia Women’s Novel Competition 2017.  (You may remember that I asked your opinion on which Plank should be submitted, and you chose “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.)  Mslexia sent a very helpful (standard) rejection email explaining what they were looking for, which I thought might be useful to other writers out there, so here it is:

The one thing that really made the judges want to read on was a central character they believed in, who was unusual in some way, and – absolutely crucial, this – was embroiled in some kind of dilemma, quest or conflict.  Passive characters standing on the sidelines were less likely to engage our readers; however painful their internal lives may be, it’s vital that inner torment is expressed in action and plot of some kind.  If this applies to your novel, you might consider rethinking your main protagonist, to give them a more powerful personality, or simply to give them more to do!

As in previous years, there was a complaint about the use of prologues: ‘almost always an unnecessary device’ that often delays entry into the story.  This applied particularly to prologues set in a different time period, or featuring characters that didn’t appear in the main text.  When someone is reading a lot of manuscripts in one sitting, as literary agents and editors always must do, the need to be gripped immediately becomes especially urgent.  ‘My final selections tended to have a strong voice and plunged the reader straight into the story.’

Indeed all of our judges admitted regretfully that they had to pass over a great deal of exceptional writing because the pace was simply too slow.  In some cases this was because the writer spent too much time spelling out the details of the setting (in the historical and speculative fiction manuscripts especially); in others the dialogue was rather long-winded and repetitive.  And some marvellously creative texts seemed to meander or tail off, rather than propelling the action forwards.

Again as in previous years, many novels started either with the protagonist waking up, or with the words ‘It all began like this…’.  Nothing wrong with those beginnings in themselves, but anything that smacks of cliché is going be a turn-off for a professional assessing manuscripts as part of their job – and it’s such an easy thing to avoid.

It’s disappointing, of course, but as Sam would doubtless say, we’re not doing this for reward and recognition.  I hope he’s right!

Susan on the Shelf

Tags

Cambridge News, competitions, cover, Heffers, marketing, Susan in the City, WH Smith

OK, so it’s not a shelf – and it’s not quite the oak table – but yesterday I was delighted to see “Susan in the City” on the ledge at Heffers.  This is a, well, wooden ledge that runs at about chest height around the mezzanine floor of the bookshop, with the books angled towards strolling browsers, so it’s a prime place to be.  And I am sure you agree that the yellow cover of the book is very eye-catching:

In other news (I know I sound busy, but as all writers will know, it’s much easier to do all of this sort of stuff than to write, and you can still kid yourself that it’s “writing”…), I went into WH Smith and was told that the local manager has sent “Susan in the City” to head office for approval, and that he is going there today on other business and will chase for an answer.  I’m to enquire again next week.

And you may remember that I donated five copies of “Susan” to the Cambridge News (the newspaper in which the columns originally appeared) as prizes in a reader giveaway.  The competition is now closed, and the organiser told me that “we had 30 entries in total – the majority came from Cambridge addresses, with a few from Ely along with a couple from Newmarket and Haverhill.  The five winners reside in Balsham, Sawston, Fulbourn, Stetchworth and Cottenham.”  (Local readers will know what that means – all five are villages outside Cambridge, not Cambridge the city.)  I don’t know quite what I expected, and of course it’s impossible to gauge how many people saw the competition, thought “That’s interesting, but I never win competitions so I’ll just go and buy the book”, but I’m not thrilled with only thirty entries.  The five books cost me £4.50 (sounds cheap, but I bought in bulk and had them delivered by carrier tortoise to save money), so that’s 22½p per person for the publicity!  So maybe not too bad.

A week of promotion

Tags

competitions, CreateSpace, Mslexia, plotting, pricing, promotion, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Twitter, WH Smith

Thanks to all who voted in the “which Plank should I submit to this competition” poll, and the winner (of the poll, not the competition!) is “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  So this weekend I will be preparing the first five thousand-ish words of that for submission, and then it’s fingers crossed until winners are announced in February 2018.

In other news, I have been working in Guernsey all week and so have had little time for writing, but I have managed about 600 words.  I’m still struggling a little with the plot of “Plank 5”, in that I have the basic plot but want more complication – you know how I like to have several strands to the story.  But I am reasonably confident that the additional strands will reveal themselves as I go along – they always have in the past.

On the promotional side of things, I read recently in a magazine that Sophie Raworth (an English news-reader on the telly) has a book review blog.  She seems nice and approachable, and so I tweeted her to ask whether I could send her a copy of “Canary” – it’s set partly in Langham Place, now the home of the BBC, and I thought that might appeal.  I have not had a reply, which perhaps is not surprising.  But I do try!

I have also taken my book of newspaper columns – “Susan in the City” – into the Cambridge branch of WH Smith (a large chain of bookshop/stationer/newsagents), to see whether they would be interested in stocking it on their “local interest” shelf.  The manager seems keen – he said that the sale-or-return basis of my offer was crucial – but he still needs to put the case to head office.  I’m hoping to hear by the end of next week.  As regular readers will know, putting copies in physical bookshops actually costs me money (in other words, it costs me more to order the books from CreateSpace and have them shipped from the US than I make from the eventual sales) but I see it as a promotional move, to get the books being read and – hopefully – recommended.  Although, as with all my promotional efforts, it is all but impossible to assess the success of the approach!

And the winners are…

Tags

Audible, audiobook, competitions, Fatal Forgery, Great Marlborough Street, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom

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.

If you don’t take part…

Tags

author, competitions, Fatal Forgery, marketing, publicity, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan Grossey

I’ve not had great luck with writing competitions so far – i.e. I’ve never won a bean.  I must admit that when I finished “Fatal Forgery”, I thought that entering it for competitions would be a doddle – after all, there couldn’t be that many other people with a completed novel ready to enter, could there?  And a carefully-crafted synopsis (how I hate giving away the ending, but that’s the nature of the synopsis – it’s a summary, not a teaser), and a witty yet self-deprecating author biography.  Could there?  Oh yes there could – thousands of them, apparently.  So I’ve failed to make the shortlist in the Good Housekeeping first novel competition, and the Lucy Cavendish first novel competition, and the Mslexia first novel competition (this last one limited to women, so even fewer competitors, but still – nothing).  Crack out the violins.

But my mama didn’t raise no quitters, and nothing daunted I am trying again.  I have sent off “Fatal Forgery” and its suspense-ruining synopsis to the Guardian Legend Time Self-Published Book of the Month competition.  This was launched in April this year, and every month – from the 1st to the 18th – you can submit your self-published masterpiece.  You have to be an adult UK resident, but apart from that, it seems fairly accommodating.  The only thing is that – for obvious reasons – you can only submit your book once.  *Bites nails in terror*  I didn’t want to be in the first cohort – with all the publicity the prize received, I thought they’d be swamped with entries.  I don’t know how many there were in the end – one article talked about “dozens”, which dozen seem that many to me.  I left the link to the competition in my email inbox, reasoning that I’d work out the optimum time to send it.  And then one day last week I just thought, to hell with it – I’ll send it in.  And off it went.

So now the waiting begins.  The deal is that, if you’ve won, they will let you know sixty days after the closing date for entries.  I entered the August competition, closing date 18 August, so I’ll be standing by my inbox on 18 October.  If there’s nothing doing, I’ll have shot my bolt with “Fatal Forgery”, and I’ll have to try again with “Plank 2”.  Winners so far have been about time-travellers, suffragettes and assisted suicide, so perhaps a Regency police officer would be in good company.