Getting my priorities straight

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, independent publishing, indie publishing, MailChimp, mailing list, marketing, promotion, publicity, self-publishing, Society of Authors

I find myself in limbo.  I have a full-time job (although I do work for myself and therefore have more flexibility in my working pattern than do traditional employees) and my main hobby during my free time is writing historical fiction.  But writing is no longer the solitary and focussed activity it once was.  The advent of self-publishing (which is gradually renaming itself “independent publishing” – I suppose to remove the suggestion of vanity and self-indulgence) means that those of us who fail to find an agent and traditional publisher can still publish our books, but this leads inevitably to a vary crowded marketplace.  Even taking as a tiny and unscientific sample the “indie authors” whom I “know” through my own membership of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors, hundreds of books a day are being published.  It’s marvellous, in that there is going to be the perfect book for every reader, but as an author, how do we elbow our way to the front and shout, “Here it is, your perfect book – it’s the one I’ve written!”?

And this is really the nub of my post today: how can the hobbyist author – as opposed to the full-time professional – find time to do what is necessary to stay afloat and visible in the publishing world?  Before you get out your notepad, I should confess that I don’t have the answer – or at least, nothing more revolutionary than “you just have to find the time – as with most human endeavour, effort in will lead to results out”.  For myself, I concentrate on my monthly Sam Plank update distributed via Mailchimp to my mailing list of (I’ve just checked) 43 subscribers.  It works for me because (a) I’m doing the research anyway and it’s fun to distil some of it into an update, and (b) all the received wisdom about book marketing says that a mailing list of loyal readers is more important than anything.  But I know I’m dabbling in an amateur fashion, and when I see what full-time authors can do – probably ably supported by publicists and publishers – I am green with envy and mournful with inadequacy.

In my darker, more envious moments I remind myself of two things.  One: when I retire from full-time work (hah!) I will be able to do all this publishing and promotion properly.  And two: if I have an hour or two to devote to the author side of my life, I should spend it on writing and not on worrying about publicity and marketing.  After all, I could have the slickest sales campaign in the world, glitzy enough to make John Grisham weep into his inkwell, and it would be worth nothing without having the words between the covers, ready to sell.  So that’s my moan for today, and I’m off to write a scene where poor Wilson has to tell a mother that her son has died.  Cheery.

A plea from the Squid

Tags

Amazon, Facebook, indie publishing, promotion, review, self-publishing, The Solo Squid

Right, everyone, I need your help.  Back in January I published a little non-fiction book called “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  It’s based on my own quarter-century of doing just that, and focuses on how to enjoy working alone.  It’s not a “how to set up a business” guide, nor a “grow your business and take over The World” manifesto: it’s simply full of advice on how to work alone and be happy doing so.  But sales have stalled, as have reviews – the two are, of course, connected.

In my view, this should be a prime time for “The Solo Squid”: many more people are working from home for the first time, spending a good deal of working hours alone, and some of them will decide that they prefer it to being in an office and will stay solo once the pandemic is over.  I am trying to reach these people, with news about the book and also with hints and tips on working alone via the book’s Facebook page – I call it Squisdom (forgive me).  But it’s really hard to get to the right audience.

With my Sam Plank books, I know I’m looking for people who are interested in financial crime, or police history, or Regency stories – and they gather in various groups that I can find.  But “people who might want to work in a one-person business” is not an actual category.  There are entrepreneurs – but most of them want to turn their back-bedroom business into a gazillion pound empire.  There are small business owners – but many of them are looking for specific advice on tax matters or employment legislation.

So can I please ask for your help?  If you know anyone – in any type of activity, be it a hairdresser or a poet or a financial adviser or a tutor or a gardener or whatever – who works alone or is thinking of doing so, please could you point them first to the Squid’s Facebook page (so that they get the idea of what the Solo Squid is all about – you can follow the page so that you get a notification each time I post, which is about two or three times a week) and then to the book’s page on Amazon?  (The book is also available in high street bookshops – including via their online sales channels.) And if you have already read the book, please could you leave a little review on Amazon – without enough reviews, it languishes at the bottom of the business book pages. (You don’t have to buy a book on Amazon to be able to leave a review there.)

Many, many thanks to you all from the Squid and me!

Best writing day ever?

Tags

author talks, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, indie publishing, library, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Solo Squid

Many writing days are rather uneventful: enjoyable, certainly, but uneventful.  So when a writing day comes along that is exciting, I like to tell you about it.  And yesterday was a doozie.

For a start, I spent a good part of the morning with the Cambridge University Marshal and the Pro-Proctor for Ceremonial.  The what, I hear you cry – but if I tell you that these two are part of the office that employs the university constables, you will understand my excitement.  Quite apart from being lovely people, they were both an absolute fount of knowledge and so generous with that knowledge.  I now have a much clearer idea of the character for the narrator for my Cambridge series – for instance, I was going to give him a limp, but they said that constables (in the 1820s) needed to be fleet of foot to catch naughty undergraduates and so perhaps a eye injury (very common in war veterans of the period) would be more suitable.  I have pages and pages of notes and leads and ideas – just fizzing.

In the afternoon an email pinged in with the heading “The Solo Squid”.  This book was published on Sunday (paperback and Kindle version) and I have been a bit nervous about it: it’s a business book but not in the usual way, in that it doesn’t give guidance on setting up a business or dealing with the taxman or turning your company into a world-beating brand.  It simply encourages people to enjoy working alone and to take steps to make life as a one-person business professionally and personally fulfilling.  And I did wonder whether people would read it and say, what a load of self-indulgent piffle.  So I opened the email through squinted eyes, prepared for the worst – someone outraged and demanding a full refund.  But what did I see?  “The Solo Squid arrived from Amazon this morning and I have to say I read it all in one sitting – as such I felt compelled to contact you and to say thank you so much for writing this… Thank you once again for a superb read – something that I will endeavour to recommend to a number of business associates who have also risked it all to go it alone.”  I literally danced around the office – and the lovely fellow has already posted his thoughts as an Amazon review.

And in the evening I gave a talk at our local library on life as an indie-published author.  It was a packed room, as you can see:

I had notes to guide my talk and to make sure I didn’t miss out anything crucial, but there were so many questions and such a lot of interest – and I even sold a handful of books.  I love encouraging others to give indie publishing a go, and it is a great boost to know that my experience will help other authors and budding writers to take the plunge.  What a day!

Under the covers

Tags

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.

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.

Vanity, thy name is Susan

Tags

author, author talks, Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival, HULF, indie publishing, marketing, self-publishing

On Saturday I spent the day as a speaker and an audience member at the quite unique Hawkesbury Upton Literature Festival.  It was launched in 2015 by my indie publishing heroine and friend (now that I have met her in person) Debbie Young, and apparently goes from strength to strength.  What is most unusual about it is that it is free.  There is no booking and nothing to pay – you simply turn up and go along to the things that interest you.  Hawkesbury Upton is a lovely village near Badminton in Gloucestershire and it is blessed with both a variety of public spaces that serve beautifully as book festival venues, and a resident population that seems happy to turn out in force to support the HULF.

As an author, I took part in a panel discussion on the theme of “Writing Influenced by the Day Job”.  The panel was chaired by an accountant and the featured authors were a military nurse, a commodities trader and an anti-money laundering obsessive.  And as a bookworm, I attended panels on the themes of “Around the World in 8-ish Books” and “The Best of British”, as well as a handy session offering some self-publishing marketing advice and a fascinating insight by a chap who is writing the “Oxford English Dictionary” (not single-handedly).  The 2020 HULF is already being planned, so get the date in your diary right now.

Between bookish matters I succumbed to vanity and attended a photo shoot with a photographer who specialises in portraits, e.g. the moody author ones you see on book covers.  I took the precaution of washing my hair and applying clear mascara – that’s about as much as I did on my wedding day, as I’m not very cosmetic-ky – and toddled along to look both moody and authorly.  From the selection I was sent I have narrowed it down to two contenders for my official author image to go on book covers, magazine articles, Booker Prize publicity materials, etc.  Which do you prefer?  (I have them both in black and white as well, but I thought you might like to see what I wore to be bookish.)

 

Boxing clever

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, box set, glossary, indie publishing, Kindle, pricing, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

As many of you will know, the “indie” (independent) publishing world is very co-operative, very inclusive and very helpful.  I belong to a marvellous organisation called ALLi (sounds like “ally” and it’s the Alliance of Independent Authors) and their members’ forum on Facebook is the place to go with all manner of writerly and self-publisher-ly queries.  The joy is being able to follow in successful footsteps of those who have gone before, and it is in that spirit that I have created my first box set of Sam books.

Before you get too excited, I should clarify that it is an e-box set of e-books – nothing physical here.  The idea is that readers of series really like series, and box sets appeal to them.  If you set the price right it can represent a saving on buying individual titles – and readers do love a bargain.  And if your series is longer than the box set, you are encouraging people to persevere further into the series.

As for how much work is involved, it’s not too onerous.  Obviously you have to create a single file out of the separate book files – for me, this was a fairly simple cut and paste exercise, with a bit of jigging to create one glossary out of two.  You then have to put an overall title at the beginning; in my case, I went for the rather predictable “The Sam Plank Mysteries Box Set One: Books 1-3”, with the three separate titles listed below.  (I said “Box Set One” in case I decide to do another one with later titles.)  And then I put bookmarks and hyperlinks into this title so that people can jump straight to the book they want – although I imagine that most people will read straight through, and the Kindle keeps your place.

Then there’s the cover.  I did contact my cover designer to ask about cost but decided that I could do something myself that is just good enough.  After all, the individual covers are eye-catching and beautiful, so I simply created a single image out of the three covers.  I have no talent at all for design, so I went to the ALLi forum and put up two different options for the cover – and people very kindly suggested various improvements (including having the faces looking at each other instead of turned away, although I do worry that the yellow fellow is now staring rather too appreciatively at the red girl).  And here it is:

With combined interior file ready and cover assembled, all I had to do was upload them to KDP – and decide on the price.  The total price of buying the first three Sam books in Kindle version is £9.97 so I priced the box set at £5.99 – in effect, people get the third book free.  I uploaded it yesterday, and so far I have sold one.  As ever, I’ll keep you posted.

Surveying the reader-scape

Tags

ALLi, Alliance of Independent Authors, historical fiction, indie publishing, marketing, MK Tod, reader survey, research, Samuel Plank

One of the great pleasures of being an indie author (indie being independent – so self-published, published through a small publishing house, etc.) is the community you join of other indie authors.  I have recently signed up with ALLi – the Alliance of Independent Authors – and am very much enjoying reading their guidance, advice, discussions and debates.  I am also hoping that my own profile will appear on their website one day, so I will keep you posted.

One very well-respected indie author whose work I follow closely is MK Tod.  Her introduction to historical fiction – like mine – was a teenage obsession with Jean Plaidy and Georgette Heyer, and she now writes books with a WWI setting.  However, she has also made a study of people’s reading habits – albeit mainly people with a love of historical fiction, as they are the ones who find her blog and therefore her “reader surveys”.  She has just published the results of her fourth such survey, containing the thoughts of 2,418 respondents from around the world, and it is well worth reading.

From my perspective – as a keen writer and rather unsuccessful seller of historical fiction – there were a couple of questions whose responses I was most eagerly awaiting.  The first was “In historical fiction, which time periods do you enjoy?”.  And I am relieved to see that mine (nineteenth century) is the second most popular (after twentieth century).  Nineteenth century settings are particularly popular with women, and with those aged over thirty – which perhaps explains the requests I have received for “more Martha” in the Sam books!  And the second was “Reflecting on your fiction reading, how relatively important are the following factors?” – including plot, characters, authenticity and so on.  As Ms Tod herself deduces from the responses, “feeling immersed in the novel’s world” is the most critical factor for readers, followed by “authenticity” and “superb writing” – and as readers age, “superb writing” becomes increasingly important.  This is a great relief to me, as I spend so much time – granted, I love doing it, but still, it takes effort – on making my setting, language and characters as authentic as possible, and encouraging readers to follow Sam into the heart of London in the 1820s.

As someone hoping one day to make a living from writing, I was also interested to read about people’s book-buying habits and preferences.  And this survey – which, again, has an historical fiction bent – tells me this about my target audience:

• They get their books mainly through Internet purchase or borrowed from a library
• 75% of them “frequently or exclusively” use print books
• Their most trusted source of recommendations is friends, followed by well-known book review sites or blogs
• They enjoy reading articles about an author’s work, and following authors on Facebook and Twitter
• They don’t use social media as much as I had thought, and the feature they most value on social media (when they do engage) is book reviews.

Traditionally published authors have entire marketing departments at their disposal, to track and react to this sort of information.  For those of us working alone – the indies – MK Tod has provided an invaluable service, and my own thanks go out to her.  This will certainly inform my future marketing plans.

Just write, or something like it

Tags

blogging, Discovering Diamonds, indie publishing, Pinterest, Plank 5, research, self-publishing, writing

A dear writer friend of mine, Janis Pegrum Smith, has just started a blog sharing her experiences as a indie writer – i.e. one who writes and then self-publishes her own work, just as I do.  The blog is called – aptly – All on Your Jack Jones, and in her first post Janis passes on some excellent advice that she was given by Bernard Cornwell (a chap who knows a thing or two about writing bestselling historical fiction): just write.

In recent weeks I have found myself somewhat blocked as a writer.  In fairness to myself, I have been very busy at the day job (three overseas trips in November alone) and also fighting various minor ailments (the joy that is root canal work, and now a delightful cold caught from one of the eighty-seven people sneezing in my train carriage last week).  In other words, there has not been a lot of quality, unwoolly head-space left for producing top-notch historical fiction.  But over this weekend I have forced myself to turn on the Mac in the back bedroom (regular readers may remember that I keep an old Macbook called Flora [after Flora MacDonald…] specifically for the Sam novels, so that I can keep him entirely separate from the day work on my Windows laptop) and – to paraphrase our chum Bernard – just do something that contributes to the writing.  It’s less snappy, I’ll grant you that, but I really think it might have cleared that blockage.

So what somethings have I done?  Well, I have tweeted about Diamond Tales, the sparkling initiative with which I am involved during December.  I have done a lot of research into London printing presses in 1828 and what they looked like and what they were producing.  (You’ll see why when “Plank 5” comes out.)  And I have allowed myself to add a few more pictures to my Plankish Pinterest board, and experiment with dividing it into book-themed sections (a new Pinterest feature).  I’m not a particularly visual thinker – it’s all about the words for me – but by exploring websites that I might not usually visit I have picked up a couple of very interesting details to drop casually into my plot.  And how I love a casual plot point…

And here’s the real surprise of it all: once I had paddled around in the printing press and Pinterest and plot point shallows, I thought, well, I’ll just write that quick description while it’s fresh in my mind.  And before I knew it, I had written – actually written – nearly a thousand words.  Thanks, Janis and Bernard!

 

Longlist long-shot

Tags

awards, Historical Novel Society, indie publishing, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, The Man in the Canary Waistcoat

Some time ago I told you the exciting news that “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” had (a) been reviewed (favourably) by the Historical Novel Society, (b) picked as one of their Editor’s Choice titles for that quarter, and therefore (c) entered into the running for the 2016 HNS Indie Award [as it’s independently published].  That longlist of thirty-eight contenders has just been whittled down to a shortlist of nine, with the overall winner to be announced in September 2016, and sadly “Canary” has not made it.

I was initially – momentarily – cast down by this, but then I reminded myself: the HNS is international and highly regarded, it’s dealing with exactly “my people” (historical fiction), and they considered “Canary” one of the thirty-eight novels of 2015 that best exemplified (to quote their website) “excellence in indie-published historical novels”.  Excellence!  And as my cheerleading husband said, if I can make the longlist with my second novel, who knows where I’ll be with my seventh!  Onwards and upwards and, as Sam would doubtless point out, the job itself is reward enough.  How many people get to spend hours immersed in the company of such fascinating characters living in such interesting times?