Under the covers

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cover, design, Design for Writers, indie publishing, proof copy, proofreading, research, The Solo Squid

One of the most exciting aspects of indie publishing is having control of the appearance of your books.  I once spoke to a “professional” author (i.e. one whose books are published the traditional way, via a contract with a publishing house) and he said how much he loathed the covers of his books – and I thought that was very sad (a bit like having to admit that your children are ugly).  As regular readers of this blog will know, I have no visual artistic talent at all, but I know a man who does – and he is “my” marvellous cover designer Andrew, at Design for Writers.

I am about to publish a short business book called “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  Andrew has done the covers for the Sam Plank books and for all the money laundering piggy books, but “the Squid” is a new venture.  His first requirement was for me to look at other business books aimed at the small business and tell him the covers I liked and disliked; among my dislikes were anything too shiny and corporate and American or anything too cute-sy and homemade.  And – of course – I wanted a squid on the cover.  (Inevitably, with my love of research, I spent a happy half-day reading about the differences between squids and octopuses, and the use of squids in legend, literature and medicine, and discovered that those who study squids are nicknamed cephalopodiatrists.)  Poor Andrew – imagine trying to make artistic sense of that lot.  But he worked his usual magic (which, like all magic, requires enormous amounts of work behind the scenes) and came up with two options:

   

I adored them both, of course, but in the end plumped for the blue/sea-green cover for a few reasons:

• The red cover looks more mysterious – perhaps better suited to fiction than to a business book
• The subtitle – and particularly the word “happy” – is much more obvious on the blue cover
• The shape of the squid on the blue cover coincidentally quite closely matches the squid-like bullet points I have used in the text of the book
• Some people said that they found the red squid scary!

Andrew is now completing the back cover and spine of the book and then it’s on to the next stages: ordering a paper proof (which I always do with a new title – I don’t bother if it’s just a revised version), final checking and editing – and then publication.

With many thanks to Andrew at Design for Writers for permission to reproduce his cover designs in this blog post.

A new series for a new year

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constable, cover, Design for Writers, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid, university constable

As you know, I am spending my December working on a non-Sam project – it’s a non-fiction book about running a happy one-person business.  I’m calling it “The Solo Squid”; it just came to me one day (as I thought about how a solo entrepreneur has to do everything, from mending the printer to chasing the unpaid invoices, as well as actually doing the work – so the eight arms of the squid are only just enough) and everyone I mention it to says that they love the title.  I have finished the first draft and the editing of that starts today, while on the cover front (so to speak) I am at the exciting point of waiting to see what the miracle-workers at Design for Writers have managed to create for me.  I’m hoping to publish the Squid early in January, which will be an exciting start to the new year.

But I have not abandoned historical fiction, not by any means.  As regular readers will know, I have decided that I am going to put the final Sam book on hold (not least because I cannot bear to say goodbye to him) and instead get started with the first book in my new series – that’s “Hardiman 1”.  The new series is set in the same era – the 1820s – but this time in Cambridge, my home town.  Gregory Hardiman is a university constable, which gives him licence to move around the city and stick his nose into all the colleges and departments (which may not have been called “departments” in the 1820s – perhaps “schools”?  I’ll let you know…).  And one thrilling difference between Sam and Greg is that university constables still exist!  Yes, I can go and meet Greg’s current day successors and ask them all about the job.  I have been in touch with the University Marshal (an office now held for the first time by a woman – a former bomb disposal expert, no less) and she has invited me to come in and meet her and her constable colleagues in the new year.  Even more exciting (is it possible!), her email says this: “As a Constabulary, we continue to use many of the items that were in use in the 1820s”.  So I may be able to actually see items that Gregory would have used.  January is going to be a fabulous month.

Sam and the cephalopods

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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!

Writing projects a-go-go

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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”.

Breaking cover

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cover, design, Design for Writers, Heir Apparent

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.

Shopping for publicity

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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:

• Booked time with my fabulous cover designer – that’s Design for Writers – to make sure that they will be available to work on that sixth cover next summer
• Done some fun, extra research on Regency jewellery in preparation for my November monthly update – if you fancy getting your mitts on that, you can subscribe by clicking on the map to the left…
• Appeared in the magazine published by our local shopping mall, the “Grafton Press” – you can see it online here.

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.

Covered in glory

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cover, Design for Writers, Discovering Diamonds, Faith Hope and Trickery, Samuel Plank

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.

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.

Breaking cover

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cover, Design for Writers, Faith Hope and Trickery, Heffers

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.

And breathe…

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cover, Design for Writers, editing, Faith Hope and Trickery, formatting, plotting, template

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!