21 Wednesday Aug 2019
Posted in Uncategorized
It’s here! It’s here! The cover for “Heir Apparent”! Andrew at Design for Writers has done his usual magic with my incoherent and garbled requests – and isn’t the grey elegant and slimming.
I’ve had a slice of chocolate cake to celebrate – the skeleton reminded me of the dangers of not eating enough for elevenses.
26 Friday Oct 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
cover, Design for Writers, Flybe, Grafton Centre, MailChimp, marketing, Plank 6, publicity, Regency
It’s all been a bit quiet here recently, hasn’t it? That’s mainly because just sitting and writing, with occasional forays into research, is not much of a spectator sport, but rest assured that work continues apace with “Plank 6”. And here’s what else I’ve been doing recently:
The idea for this last one came to me a few months ago when I was walking through the Grafton Centre in Cambridge and spotted that they had their own publication, promoting the shops and businesses in the centre but also highlighting Cambridge-y things – presumably to tempt out-of-town visitors to return again and again. And friends who work in periodical publishing tell me that freebies like this are always on the look-out for contributed content because they rarely have the budget to buy in the services of more than a couple of writers. I contacted the editorial email address given in the magazine, suggesting a piece on local authors, and they sent back a set of about six questions – which, as you can see, basically form the piece.
So that would be my top marketing tip for this month: look around for local or trade publications that might welcome unsolicited contact, and think of a way to connect you and/or your writing to their target market. You might remember that I managed to get into Flybe’s in-flight magazine last year, by writing a piece about London as a destination, while managing to mention Sam Plank or my writing in every paragraph… I’m cunning like that. If you can send them a fairly finished piece (with the Flybe one, I looked at past issues of the column and used the same questions to formulate my own submission), they might well use it pretty much unchanged, just to be able to fill a page with minimal effort. And who knows who might be off on their hols on Flybe, or doing their Christmas shopping at the Grafton Centre – it might be that TV executive casting around for inspiration for their next Sunday evening costume drama, and there will be Sam and Martha, just waiting.
31 Thursday May 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I know I said that I would shut up for a fortnight, but this is just too exciting to wait! As regular readers will know, the one area in which I splash the cash in self-publishing is my covers. Well, not mine: the covers of my books. Although I know you shouldn’t judge a book, etc., I also know that a cover that screams “homemade on my daughter’s drawing program” or “bought cheap because it sort of matches my story” does you no favours at all. Potential readers need to know that they are in safe and professional hands, and a quality cover image is their first indication of that. Sadly I am blessed with the artistic capabilities of a cross-eyed walrus – I would no more design or draw my own book cover than I would rewire my own house.
Thankfully, back in the mists of time when I was working on what would become my very first self-published book, I was pointed in the direction of an outfit called Design for Writers. Now that’s a name I can understand – they sound like experts to me. That first book was nothing to do with Sam – it’s a non-fiction book about the prevention of money laundering, which is my day job – but Andrew at DfW immediately knew what I was on about and produced the first of many “piggy” covers. (Here’s one of them.) And when it came to my first foray into fiction with “Fatal Forgery” (try saying that in a hurry!) there was only one place to go.
Since then, Andrew and his wife Rebecca have been wonderful. Each time a new Plank comes out, they take my rambling description (“well, it’s a bit darker than the last one, with a preacher, but not a Wesleyan preacher, and I need a sermon in the background – one from London if you can – and someone said that purple might look good, and no, I don’t have a title yet, until the vote closes next month”) and create a marvel from it. And so this is really their success rather than mine, but the fantastic purple cover of “Faith, Hope and Trickery”, with the overwrought yet devilishly dishy young man emoting like billy-o, has been given an Honourable Mention rosette in the May 2018 “Cover of the Month” awards on the Discovering Diamonds book review blog. And now I really will be quiet. But only for a fortnight.
23 Wednesday May 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
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.
26 Monday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
What can I say, but taa-dah! Here is the wonderful cover for “Faith, Hope and Trickery”:
You will recognise the usual three elements: engraving of a figure, blurry background document, and bespoke font-ed title. I can’t begin to tell you the trouble we had finding our figure this time – all the standard preachers were too old or too 1790s or too wiggy or too static, and often all four. But eventually we found this rather Byronic chap, emoting in a graveyard, and the marvellous people at Design for Writers very kindly gave him some preaching bands – the white things at his collar – borrowed from another image.
As for the colour, the choice was unanimous. I don’t think I mentioned this – should have done – but on Valentine’s Day I was guest speaker at a crime book club which meets at bookshop Heffers in Cambridge, called Crimecrackers. I had a whale of a time, as I always do when asked to speak about Sam, and when I told them about the plot of “FH&T”, they all chorused that the cover should be purple – ecclesiastical purple. And so it came to pass.
21 Wednesday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Just a quick update to let you know that I have heard from Roy the plot man, and the news is good. He does have some (as always perceptive and excellent) comments, but his overall view is favourable: “I found this story most enjoyable… Also, I find that you have developed your factual storytelling to include more human emotion and this adds greatly to the overall readability. In conclusion, a lovely book. Possibly your best.”
I cannot tell you what a relief this is; when you’ve been writing a book in isolation for eighteen months, you definitely stop seeing it objectively. For all I knew, it was complete self-indulgent drivel, and handing it over for the first time to someone else is terrifying.
The plan now is to spend the next few days incorporating Roy’s suggestions into “Faith, Hope and Trickery”. I will then read it all again myself, then print it out for proofreading by my husband, who is a very slow and therefore observant reader. Then it’s final checks before cutting and pasting the text into the interior template. At this point I allow myself the fun task of choosing chapter names – at the moment, they’re just numbers and dates. Then I will know the page count, which CreateSpace needs in order to generate the cover template for me to send to the cover designer. Heavens, when I write it all down, there’s still plenty to do in just over a month – I’d better get on with it!
09 Friday Feb 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
Just a quick reminder that today is your last chance to have a say on the title of “Plank 5”. I will be closing the poll at the end of the day, and then sending the chosen title to the marvellous people who design the cover for the book. They already have my ideas for the figure and the document that will go on the front, and I’m homing in on the back cover blurb, so the title is the last remaining element.
I’ve had a look at the title poll results so far, and with twenty-nine votes cast there is a clear front-runner, but – as they say in the world’s leading opera houses – it ain’t over ‘til the fat lady sings. And she’ll be tuning up in about fourteen hours’ time.
25 Thursday Jan 2018
Posted in Uncategorized
I can see the finish line – “Plank 5” is almost there. And as I wrestle with the final chapters, I have lined up my usual fabulous team to help me to publication: the cover designers at Design for Writers; my husband (for eagle-eyed proofreading – how he does love to catch me out in a spelling mistake); and Roy in Jersey. Roy’s job, right from “Fatal Forgery”, has been to read the first proper draft for sense, looking for inconsistencies and what he has taken to calling “plot holes”.
Isn’t that a great phrase? You can just imagine them, nasty great gaps in the story that sit there unseen. Your reader is cruising along, enjoying the journey, when all of a sudden, crash! They go into a plot hole and – metaphorically speaking – the wheel comes off and the journey is over. I’ve spotted a couple of them myself (along the lines of “but how did he know that she would be there?”, or “what made her ask him that?”) but no doubt Roy will see a few more. Sometimes the writer has her nose so close to the tarmac that she can’t see the plot holes herself…
27 Monday Nov 2017
Posted in Uncategorized
Tags
audiobook, blogging, Design for Writers, Discovering Diamonds, Guy Hanson, Hart's Books, Martha Plank, Samuel Plank, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat, Worm in the Blossom, writing
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!):
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?
13 Tuesday Sep 2016
Posted in Uncategorized
It’s here – the cover of “Portraits of Pretence” has been finalised!
Like the other three Sam Plank books, it consists of several elements: the title, the background image and the foreground image. The title was all your work, so thank you for that. The background image was reasonably straightforward: I knew that I wanted an auction catalogue, so I found images of suitable ones and my fabulously talented cover designer created his own version, which looks very fine. But the foreground image – readers, what a palaver we have had with this one.
To be fair, some of the fuss was of my own creation. In my initial brief to the designer, I said that I wanted a miniature portrait of a little girl of about five. But I wrote this brief before finishing the book, and the little girl portrait became less important to the plot in later drafts. Plus, when I looked for suitable images, they were all a bit saccharine for my taste. Moreover, when the poor designer did a mock-up of the cover with one of these images, it looked wrong because the three earlier Plank covers have full-length figures on them, not just head and shoulders. Wording it as carefully as I could, I said that I didn’t like the girl, and moreover, I wanted an altogether less wholesome image to reflect the plot changes. In short, I wanted a woman in the nude.
Now this is tricky when it comes to Amazon and Facebook, because they are rather puritanical in their tastes, so the search was on for a nude yet tasteful woman, in a line drawn format that could be adapted for foreground use. (I’m not sure on the technicalities, but I know that colour images are harder to turn into lines, and some images are difficult to divorce from their backgrounds.) My cover designer, trouper that he is, threw himself wholeheartedly into this new search. And he came up with this young lady and – here’s the clever bit – found that the title could be positioned to obscure her derrière. Thank goodness you were far-sighted enough to choose a title of the correct length – anything shorter might not have worked.
As far as the publishing process goes, I have now uploaded the interior and cover files to CreateSpace and am awaiting the result of their initial scan. (Quietly confident, as I’ve done this before.) Then I can order my author copy, which should be with me within the fortnight, and then – if all is well with that – I can order the copies that I will want to distribute on publication day, 21 October.
