Another one bites the dust

Tags

Daunt Books, Heffers, sale or return, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

In my last post I mentioned that Heffers – my local bookshop, and the first physical one to stock the Sam Plank books – had changed its book ordering system and no longer places orders with small publishers, only through the large distributors.  This is a hassle, but one that I shall navigate in January.  And now I have lost another physical stockist: Daunt Books.  I was never in their flagship Marylebone branch – the one with the amazing oak shelves and gorgeous skylights – but the manager of the Cheapside branch did take a chance on me, reasoning that book-buyers in the City might be more interested in financial crime…  And indeed the books sold slowly but steadily.  I contacted the shop earlier this week, to ask if they need more stock for Christmas, and “my” manager has left and the new fellow wants me to collect the remaining copies he does have.  Ho hum.  So that’s two down.

What I need to do is work out what is going on.  The books did sell in Heffers, but I have now fallen foul of their new ordering system – and so the solution is for me to learn how to fit with the new system.  But if Daunt is returning their copies, I assume the books didn’t sell well enough, or quickly enough, to justify their shelf space (it is quite a small shop).  Again, I will wait until January and perhaps contact the chap to ask his view: is he purging self-published books in general, in readiness for (à la Heffers) ordering only from large distributors, or is it my books specifically that weren’t selling?

I’ll add it to my enormous – but exciting – list of things to do once I am a “proper author”!

All change!

Tags

Fatal Forgery, Gardners, Heffers, marketing, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Notes of Change

Hello everyone – just a quick update so that you know I’m still here and still (albeit very slowly) writing the final Sam Plank book (“The Notes of Change”, due out on 25 February 2022).  The life of a self-published author is never dull: just when you think you’ve got a grip on some part of the publishing process, it slips away from you.

As regular readers will know, the very first bookshop to stock my physical paperbacks was my beloved Heffers, the university bookshop here in my hometown of Cambridge.  Their crime buyer – the renowned Richard Reynolds – is a great champion of indie authors, and he was kind enough to take a chance on “Fatal Forgery”.  It obviously sold well enough for him, as he took all subsequent books, and even invited me to take part in various crime fiction events at the shop – where I met people who (entirely unprompted by my pleading or their pity) called themselves “fans”.  Over lockdown, of course, things halted in the bookshop world, and when Heffers finally opened up again my books were (through no fault of their own – it’s a system thing, going purely on how long it is since a copy sold, and very little sold during lockdown) deemed to be “aged stock” and put into the sale.  No problem, thought I: I’ll simply get another order and take in some new copies.

But no.  In a bid for greater efficiency, Heffers has streamlined its book-ordering system and now does not allow its booksellers to make arrangements – like mine – with individual authors or small publishing houses.  Instead, all orders must be placed through the big book distributors, such as Gardners.  Now, I have jumped through the many hoops required to get my books listed on Gardners, and what happens is that a bookshop places an order in response to a customer order, Gardners passes the order to me (as the publisher of record), and I then fulfil it.  I know this, because I have once done it for Heffers – and “fulfilment” entailed me jumping on my bike and cycling it over to them.  I believe I fulfilled the order within an hour of it being placed, which surely is a record.

So come January – when I am a more full-time author – I will go into Heffers and find out exactly what I need to do to keep my books on their shelves: I want them to have stock all the time, waiting for casual purchase, not just when a customer orders a book.  I think it means changing my settings on Gardner, which will require a gathering of strength, a cold compress to the head, and industrial quantities of Jaffa Cakes.  Wish me luck!

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.

War and squeace

Tags

Amazon, Good Housekeeping, Gregory Hardiman, Heffers, marketing, research, review, sales, The Solo Squid

The past week has had a split personality: of the time I was able to allocate to writing (rather than working, or unloading the dishwasher, or talking to men about guttering – not a euphemism but a boring reality) I spent half on researching the British army in the early nineteenth century and half on thinking of ways to promote “The Solo Squid”.

With regard to the military research, I think it’s probably no spoiler to say that life in Wellington’s army was pretty grim: one chap wrote to his mum about staggering off the battlefield and carrying his own severed arm to the nearest farm, where the farmer gave him cognac for the pain before cauterising the stump and slinging the arm onto a bonfire.  I assume the arm he had left was his writing arm…  I can safely say that my brain is now chock-full of handy nuggets of infantry info that I will probably never mention but which give me a lovely feeling of security as I inch towards meeting Gregory for the first time.

And as for the squid, it’s a tricky one: finding potential readers for a book about working alone is not easy, as such people by their very nature tend not to congregate.  But I am taking comfort from the five five-star reviews that have appeared on Amazon and am now concentrating on thinking of clever ways to get the book in front of the right people.  I went into Heffers (our local university bookshop) today and asked the chap in charge of the business section to promote the squid from the bottom shelf to the waist-level “ledge” which is considered the ideal place to catch the passing eye, and I think we can agree that it is a great improvement:

     

And in the middle of the night I had a wheeze of an idea.  I am a dedicated reader of “Good Housekeeping” – it’s my version of fantasy, as I gaze upon the pages of elegant homes and nutritious meals.  And they often feature women at work – women who have started their own companies or had a world-changing business idea or (as this month) who run charities.  And the squid, I thought, could offer two perspectives: running a one-person business, and being happy at work.  I researched the features editor and – as luck would have it – she has written her own book about happiness.  So I emailed her this morning with my terrific idea, and we shall see.  Perhaps you should all write in to “GH” and say that you were considering taking out a subscription but had been put off by their lack of articles on how to run a happy one-person business….

Apologies for the awful title of this post, but it seems that the word “squid” lends itself to fanciful thinking: one reviewer has written about the book promoting “squidology”, while someone else mentioned its “squisdom”.  How I wish I had thought of them.

Piggies and podcasts

Tags

bookmark, Cambridge 105, Heffers, indie publishing, piggy books, Richard Reynolds, Samuel Plank

I know this blog is usually about my fictional writing, but I do also write lots of non-fiction to do with my day job (which is anti-money laundering consultancy).  In fact, my first foray into indie publishing (which used to be called self-publishing) was with my non-fiction titles, and specifically a whole suite of books with pink pigs on the covers.  These “piggy books” explain the anti-money laundering requirements to directors and staff in various jurisdictions, and six of them deal specifically with the UK.  Where is she going with all of this blather, I hear you cry.

Well, whenever the money laundering legislation changes I have to update the piggy books, and at 8pm on Friday 20 December 2019 the UK government updated its money laundering legislation.  And the deadline for businesses to comply with this legislation is 10 January 2020.  Yes, that’s in about a fortnight’s time.  (We knew we’d have this deadline because the legislation is based on European legislation, but frankly – with the general election and concomitant awfulness – we assumed that the government would simply miss the European deadline, figuring that there’s little that Brussels can do to us now.)  Rushing out the legislation just before Christmas, and with no publicity to warn affected businesses, is plain slippery.  And – for me and my piggies – panic-inducing.

As a result, I spent the weekend before Christmas close-reading the new legislation, marking up the old legislation to highlight the changes, and then re-writing the relevant sections of all six UK piggies, before re-formatting them and re-publishing them.  It took three long days, as I was determined that anyone coming into work today would have a new piggy available to help them with the new legislation.  And how many have I sold so far?  Not a one.  Bah humbug.

On a much more positive note, just before the piggies and I went into silent retreat, I caught up with a podcast of one of my favourite on our local radio station.  “Bookmark” is broadcast every fortnight on Cambridge 105, and its topic is “books and writing with a local slant”.  I was particularly interested in the episode from 14 December 2019 as the crime buyer at Heffers bookshop – the sainted Richard Reynolds – was talking about his Christmas book recommendations, and I had a book token burning a hole in my pocket.  I was scribbling down his suggestions when (at 44:40, not that I’ve played it over and over again…) he mentioned me!  My Christmas cup runneth over.

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!

Happy publication day to me

Tags

Cambridge University Library, Heffers, Heir Apparent, marketing, publication date, sales

As an indie publisher, I am responsible for all aspects of my book’s production – including celebrating its launch day.  So today’s the day, folks: “Heir Apparent” is now officially launched!  Hurrah!  To mark the occasion, I have taken the day off work and devoted myself to matters cultural and, specifically, bookish.  My first port of call was the Cambridge University Library, where I dropped off a copy of the book to be added to their collection (posterity and all that) and visited their current exhibition: “The Rising Tide” looks at the history of women at the university and is terrific.  I particularly enjoyed discovering that women who campaigned to be awarded degrees (the cheek – of course we should have been happy to do all the same work but not get the recognition at the end) were condemned as “nasty forward minxes”.  Anyway, here’s the front of the UK with its wonderful book bollards – you can spin the books around and make them as neat or random as you want.

I then toddled along to Heffers – the university bookshop – and admired the display of “Heir Apparent” on the ledge in the crime fiction department.  For those who do not know Heffers, “the ledge” is a fab place to be, as it’s just at eye-catching and browsing height.

After that it was an excursion to the Fitzwilliam Museum to inspect the recently renovated ceiling of their main gallery – just look at that moulding.

They also had an exhibition of Rembrandt’s sketches of nudes, and I reckon that this one is ignoring him because she’s reading in bed.

And through it all I wore my most celebratory wet-weather footwear: red Fly boots.

Heir is here!

Tags

Amazon, Hart's Books, Heffers, Heir Apparent, launch, publication date

I tried, I really did: I tried to hold off until Friday, the official publication date for “Heir Apparent”.  But I had to publish it on Amazon before I could order any author copies to send out to bookshops and reviewers, and once I had published it, it appeared on Amazon, and once I saw it on Amazon, well, can you blame me?  IT’S HERE!  “Heir Apparent” has been published and you can all buy it for everyone for Christmas – click any of the links scattered about this website.

I did consider a launch party this time but it was hard to make the numbers work.  I mentioned that I was contacting a couple of bookshops to ask about the possibilities of a launch shindig, and they both responded – which was very kind.  The Cambridge one said that I could hold a launch party but that I would have to pay for the venue (to cover staff costs, etc.) – I can’t remember the exact cost, but it was about £75.  The Saffron Walden one very kindly offered a free venue – but I am realistic enough to know that hauling my friends and contacts from Cambridge to Saffron Walden (about fifteen miles away) on an autumn school night would be tricky.  I might have a blow-out when I have completed the Sam series and hold a “celebration” rather than a “launch” – and then I can choose a better date and location.  This time, the publication is being marked by (a) chocolate cake at home, and (b) lunch out on the “proper” publication day (Friday 18 October).

In the meantime, I am doing what I assume all authors do on such days: I am stroking the cover of the book and smiling smugly.

Flying(ish) off the shelves

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CreateSpace, Discovering Diamonds, Faith Hope and Trickery, G David, Heffers, Kindle, Plank 6, research, review

I’ve been a bad blogger, I know, but I have an excuse: I’ve been away on holiday.  I spent a week in Galle, in southern Sri Lanka, and I can report that – lovely though it is – Sam will not be visiting it in future books.  Although Ceylon was a British “possession” in the 1820s, I can’t imagine Martha being keen on her husband sailing off for distant tropical lands – and Galle was a pretty rackety place back then, with more formal policing confined to Colombo, nearly seventy miles to the north.

Now that I am back in Blighty, I can update you on the launch of “Faith, Hope and Trickery”.  After a tense time when my original order from CreateSpace nearly failed to show up before my departure on hols, the box of books finally arrived an hour before I left and my husband was roped in as delivery boy to take the reserved copies to my two local bookshops, Heffers and David’s.  Here they are in prime position in the window of David’s – note their wonderful promotion of me as an “local (award-winning) author”, referring to my Discovered Diamonds award for “Portraits of Pretence”!

A couple of lovely reviews – both stating that they think “FHT” is the best of the Sam series – have appeared on Amazon (you can get a taster on the Reviews page).

And I have just worked out my sales figures for the Kindle edition, and in March 2018 (the month of launch) I sold eleven e-copies.  Paperback sales are harder to calculate, as the CreateSpace website is not updated instantly, but I think we’re looking at ten copies sold via Amazon in March, plus the ten delivered to Heffers and the three to David’s.

Meanwhile, the withdrawal symptoms have started already, and I am turning my mind to “Plank 6” – I’m researching the history of the Cayman Islands, and of plant-based poisons…

Breaking cover

Tags

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.