Heir is here!

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.

Close reading and cover design

After the frenzied writing and word-counting of my writing retreat, it probably seems as though I have gone a bit quiet now – but that is the nature of the editing beast.  I have so far read the whole of “Heir Apparent” three times myself (including once when my printer went moody and missed out two whole chapters and I couldn’t work out why the plot made less sense than usual…) and now it is being read for typos, spelling, etc. by my husband.  He is a very precise person – engineer by training, bike mechanic by passion – and therefore good at looking closely at things.  Plus it gives him such pleasure to be able to point out spelling mistakes to me, an English graduate – the things we do for love.

While all of that is going on, an author’s mind turns to thoughts of publication.  And to that end I have been:

• Writing the “front matter” for the book – which (for me) means:
  • gathering extracts from reviews of the other books in the series – these go on the very first pages of the book
  • deciding on a classical quotation to start the book – I can’t remember why I first did this in “Fatal Forgery”, but it’s part of the process now, and quite good fun for someone who had no classical education
  • writing the dedication
• Co-operating with the cover designer – by which I mean I give him some rambling drivel about how I think the cover could look, and he creates something amazing out of it (we’re nearly there now – I’ll show it to you soon)
• Planning the launch – I’ve emailed one bookshop which (perhaps in a moment of madness after a reading) offered to hold my “next” launch party (they didn’t know I’ve never had one before).

After “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” (book two), I did write myself a list of pre-publication tasks, which had been invaluable: when you’re preparing a paperback and several e-versions, there’s a lot to remember.  And at the end of the list, I have written: Don’t worry about a specific publication date – Amazon will publish when it wants to.  Good advice.

On a related note, you know that I have my free guide to the Sam Plank series?  When I published it, I managed – through publishing on another site and putting that price to zero and then asking Amazon to price-match that zero price – to get the guide listed for free on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.  I assumed – fool! – that this meant that it would be free on all Amazons, but apparently not: a friend in Belgium emailed to say that Amazon.fr was trying to charge her 99¢ for it.  What to do, I wondered?  Thankfully, my friends at the Alliance of Independent Authors came up trumps; I put a query out to them and they suggested contacting Amazon directly and asking to have the publication price-matched across all Amazons – and it worked.  Live and learn, live and learn.

From little acorns

Well, this is a very strange run-up to official publication!  Knowing Amazon as I do, I uploaded my paperback and Kindle files on Saturday, as last time it took them about four days to get everything listed and catalogued, and I wanted it all to be in place for this coming Friday – Publication Day.  And wouldn’t you know it, they processed everything at lightning speed, and – great excitement – copies of “Portraits of Pretence” have already sold (three paperbacks and four Kindles).  However, I am (mainly through lack of time to do anything else) sticking to my original plans to do the proper launch on Friday, with updates to websites, links on Twitter and so on.

Friday is exciting for another reason.  You remember me talking about marketing “hooks”?  Well, a couple of years ago I went on a Grand Day Out to London, and visited, for the first time, the Wallace Collection in Manchester Square.  This is a little art gallery – formerly a collection in a private house – whose most famous exhibit is Frans Hals’ “Laughing Cavalier”.  But they also have a delightful collection of miniatures…  And when I started plotting “Portraits” in earnest, and realised that I wanted those portraits to be tiddlers, I went back to the Wallace and also spent a day reading their full miniatures catalogue in the University Library here in Cambridge.  So a couple of weeks ago I emailed the Wallace curator of miniatures, explaining that my book had been inspired by her collection, and asking to call in to meet her, thank her, and present her with a book – which I am doing on Friday.  I am also hoping to persuade her that I should give an author talk on the book and its origins.  I’ll let you know.

A Topping evening

I told you a while ago that I had managed to persuade Topping & Co Booksellers in Ely to allow me to have a sort-of-launch event for “Worm in the Blossom” at their shop.  I drove over there on Sunday to (a) check that they hadn’t thought better of it, and (b) deliver some books for the event.  And look what was outside the shop:

Yes, that’s my name up there with some big hitters – although of course the really big draws are put on in the cathedral (seats 1,230… perhaps a little ambitious at this stage in my writing career).  But very exciting to find that I am part of a Literary Festival.

And so to last night.  I made some little flash cards for myself, to remind me of the main topics to cover – Toppings had asked me to speak for forty minutes about the novels themselves and the self-publishing process in general, to be followed by twenty minutes of questions.  But in the end I hardly referred to the cards at all – once I’m talking about Sam, it’s hard to stop me.  There was a good turnout:

What you can’t see are about four people sitting behind the photographer (husband, lured along with promises of post-talk pizza), and another half-dozen sitting on the steps to my right.  The man in charge said he was surprised at the large numbers, so that’s promising.  And people were so interested and asked so many questions – it was a sheer delight.  One of the oddest sensations was meeting strangers – as opposed to friends and family who read the books out of love – who had chosen to read the Sam books and came along to tell me that they enjoyed them and to ask really detailed questions about the plots and characters.  It made me feel, possibly for the first time, like a real, commercial author – writing books for sale to the general public.  And as I was leaving, the organiser said that they would like to book me for the launch of “Plank 4”, so I’d better get writing…

Piles of Plank

As regular readers of this blog will know, I self-publish my novels through an American firm called CreateSpace.  And when I order copies, they are printed in America (South Carolina, I understand, which conjures up all sorts of images of decorous Southern ladies sipping mint juleps on lace-fenced verandahs – although it’s almost certainly a cavernous factory in the rough part of town) and then shipped to me.  And, with international postage, volume is the key: buy more, and you pay less per copy for shipping.  So I try to save up my orders and do them all at once.  Which means that this happens:

What you are looking at here is the “spare” desk in my office, now groaning under the weight of one hundred copies of “Worm in the Blossom”, thirty of “Fatal Forgery” and thirty of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  Aren’t they lovely?

Deciding how many to order was half-calculation, half-wishful thinking.  I had pre-orders for eighteen “Worms” – fifteen for bookshops and three for friends who don’t like using Amazon and can’t get to my local bookshops.  Then there’s my almost-a-launch-event at Toppings in Ely on 26 October – I don’t know how many they will want, but let’s say at least a dozen.  And I have talks booked at my local library and for the Rotary Club next spring.  And of course the bookshops will want re-stocking (that’s the wishful thinking kicking in, right there).  In the meantime, I’m getting hard stares from my husband who now has no desk space for wrapping parcels, doing crosswords, etc.

Sam beats the deadline

For nearly a year now, I have been telling people that “Plank 3” – “Worm in the Blossom” – will be published on 16 October.  That’s the date on my countdown clock, on the left.  But now – whisper it – I find myself ahead of the game.  The paperback “Worm” is ready, and today a poor benighted courier delivered a hundred copies to me.  They are, to be frank, something of an obstacle in my very small hallway, but it is exciting to see them in all their ruby-red glory.  And in spare moments I have just about Kindle-ified the text, so with a few more hours’ work that too will be ready to upload.

So do I stick to my promised launch date, or do I just go with it and get the Worms out there?  The organised part of me says that I should stay with the original plan, while the excited author part of me wants to shout, “It’s here!”.  And my husband just wants the blasted things out of the hallway.

(And at the back of my mind is the little concern that if I admit to everyone that “Worm” is completely finished, then there’s no excuse for me not to get cracking with “Plank 4″… – due out in October 2016.)

The event that launched a thousand books

I don’t get out much these days, what with the wind and the rain and the endless, endless editing, but last night I made an exception.  A friend of mine has just published a book – a memoir about caring for two elderly parents with dementia, called “But Then Something Happened” – and she kindly invited me to her book launch.  It took place after hours at Heffers, our local book emporium, and I went along (a) to show support for Chris, (b) to hear more about her book, and (c) to find out what a book launch might entail.

For this is one of the things that the self-publisher often sacrifices: a real, physical book launch.  You can do one, of course, but it sort of misses the point of self-publishing as I am doing it (i.e. with a print-on-demand paperback and an e-book) as you really have to have stacks of your book there on the night, for people to snap up and for the author to sign with a flourish.  But I did wonder whether there were elements of the book launch that I could adapt to my self-publishing purposes.  I am sure Chris will forgive me for saying this, but the discussions about dementia, with audience members adding their own experiences, were the least interesting part of the evening for me.  The bits I really liked were when she read out extracts from her book – because, I suppose, these are well-crafted and carefully selected descriptions rather than on-the-fly answers to questions.  So I think what I need to do is choose one or two tip-top scenes from my own book and get those out there ahead of the publication date, to give people a taster of what’s to come.  (I know that Amazon offers the “Look Inside” feature, but I’m thinking of before publication rather than once the book is for sale.)

So this weekend’s tasks are:

• Do final, final, really, really final edits.
• Choose two good scenes to publicise.
• Watch “Love, Actually” again – listen, my husband is off playing golf for the weekend, so it’s my only chance.  Please don’t judge me.