Visiting the source of Sam

Yesterday I had a Grand Day Out at the Ingram premises near Milton Keynes.  Months ago – I forget how – I came across the interesting fact that Ingram (a book distributor and now parent company to IngramSpark, the print-on-demand service that I use for my Sam Plank books) runs open days.  You go along to their offices/factory and they give you a talk about their services, a tour of the printing bit and a sandwich lunch.  I really, really wanted to see the printing bit and my husband, being a production engineer, is always up for touring a factory, so off we went.  And I can highly recommend it as a day out.

The Ingram people we met were, without exception, extremely helpful.  The open day I chose was geared specifically to IngramSpark clients – they also do days for people who use their more commercial printing services – and we were a mixed bunch, from one chap who said at the outset, Manuel-like, “I know nothing”, to those of us who had been through the POD mill and were vaguely familiar with most of the steps.  That said, I did learn quite a few new things – for instance, I had always steered clear of IS’s Global Connect option but have now signed up, ready for the orders to come flooding in from India and China.  And the printing process is a marvel to behold, from the giant rolls of paper (they have stocked up, given Brexit…) to the wonderful Infinitrim machine that grabs a stack of books in its mechanical arm and then – whoosh! – trims them all with a guillotine blade.  (If I were the manufacturer I would have called it the Triminator and persuaded Arnie to advertise it.)  And exactly as promised, the books are indeed printing on demand: you see them coming out of the Infinitrim and each book is different – it’s not a “print run” in the traditional sense but the fulfilment of thousands of orders for individual books.  There is even a Tardis-like structure waiting to come into service to speed up sorting and packing the books after printing.  (No photos: we had to sign non-disclosure agreements and pinky-swear to secrecy.)  And the sandwiches are delicious.

Joking aside, I found the day useful for two main reasons.  Firstly, we were shown all the paper types and cover finishes and trim sizes, so now I know what’s on offer.  And secondly, we met the staff who will be the ones answering any IS queries – and they were so generous with their time that I feel confident that any POD problems I might have will be dealt with promptly and kindly.  In these days of webchats with robots and emails to help departments that go unanswered for days, that’s something to be celebrated.

Be careful what you wish for

Last autumn CreateSpace – which I had been using for my print-on-demand paperbacks for nearly a decade – was bought out by the Amazon behemoth and absorbed into its KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) offering.  Monopoly concerns aside, I was delighted for two reasons.  Firstly, KDP customer service offers a call-back service to anywhere in the world (CreateSpace would call only US numbers, so I never spoke to them).  And secondly, whereas CreateSpace POD paperbacks were printed in South Carolina and it took ages and cost a fortune to have them delivered to the UK, KDP POD paperbacks are printed in (it turns out) Poland, which is much closer and therefore quicker and cheaper for delivery.  With a spring in my step and a song on my lips, I placed an order for twenty copies of “Fatal Forgery” with KDP on 29 October 2018.  And then it all went wrong…

• 29 October 2018: Order placed for twenty copies
• 12 November 2018: Order arrives – and eleven out of the twenty copies are trimmed far too meanly, with the title disappearing off the edge of the cover.  Using the fab new call-back facility, I explain the problem to a nice person at KDP and they tell me to return the faulty eleven copies for a refund and then place another order – which I do.
• 18 November 2018: The replacement eleven copies arrive – with exactly the same poor printing.  I speak to another nice person at KDP and explain the problem, and they say that the matter will be escalated to a manager.  After about a fortnight – with several chasing calls and emails in the middle – the manager finally confirms that the eleven replacement copies I received were the same ones I had returned…  Apparently the stock system was delighted to find just the right number of copies on their return shelves to fulfil a new order.
• 16 December 2018: The manager places a new order for eleven copies, and says that I can keep the eleven dodgy ones (otherwise, if I return them – well, you can guess).
• 24 December 2018: Four replacement copies arrive.  I chase the remaining seven copies and am told that the manager ordered only four and not the agreed eleven – this nice person at KDP orders another seven.
• 9 January 2019: The seven copies arrive – with two of them packed so badly in the box that their covers have bent and they are not suitable for sale.  I speak to another nice KDP person – they are all charming and seem genuinely saddened by the poor service I have received – and they order two replacement replacement copies.
• 18 January 2019: The two replacement replacement copies arrive.

Et voilà – it’s as simple as that!  A mere 80 days after placing my order for twenty copies, I have them.  Didn’t someone manage to get all the way around the world in that time?  I begin to dream longingly of South Carolina….

Shades of Forgery

Matters are moving forward at a sedate pace in my quest to use IngramSpark as well as KDP for my print-on-demand paperbacks.  The cover of “Fatal Forgery” has been suitably tweaked to accommodate the slimmer spine of the IS edition (because IS uses thinner paper stock and over nearly 300 pages – 150 thicknesses of paper – it makes a difference), and I have today received my proof copy from IS and am happy with it.

I am now working out my next steps, which will involve (scarily) un-publishing my current KDP paperback and then republishing it with the new ISBN that I bought for the IS edition – all paperbacks of the same title, regardless of who actually prints them, must have the same ISBN.  This would be simply an administrative thing – unpublish then upload the files again – except that I am not sure what will happen to all the lovely reviews on Amazon that are associated with the current KDP paperback.  I certainly don’t want to lose them, so I’m investigating if/how I can get the reviews carried over to the “new” paperback.  It may be simple (if the reviews are associated with the title) or it may be awkward/impossible (if they’re associated with the ISBN).  Who knew that writing the darn book was by far the easiest part of the process?

On a related subject, it has been very interesting to compare the look of “Fatal Forgery” as produced by the different printing presses:

On the left is the original version, printed by CreateSpace in (I think) South Carolina.  In the middle is the version that I now get from KDP (who took over CreateSpace, and moved the printing for UK authors to Wroclaw in Poland).  And on the right is the IngramSpark version, printed in (I think) Milton Keynes.  They all use the same cover file from the point of view of colour – it’s only the trim dimensions and spine width (and spine print size) that are different.  And yet, how different they look!  The cover designer said this about the trio: “The one on the right appears to be slightly closer to how it was intended than any other.  Somewhere between the one on the left and the one on the right (but closer to the right) would be as intended by me.  The one in the middle is much too bright.”  Thankfully very few buyers will see the difference as they won’t have all three versions, but I thought you might find it interesting – and it certainly shows that being too precious about precise shades of colour when designing a cover might not be worth the fuss!

A right royalty rumpus

Part of being a self-published author is dealing with the money side of things.  I am extremely lucky in that, for me, writing is a hobby and so I do not count on it for my income.  (Just as well, considering it makes me £25 per week.)  I do hope that one day I will be able to rely on it a little more, but for the moment, it’s an enjoyable side-line.  And this is why I have never bothered getting to grips with the royalty situation.  (Isn’t that a marvellous word for something rather ordinary?  Here’s the explanation from etymologyonline, one of my most-used websites: “c. 1400, ‘office or position of a sovereign’, also ‘magnificence’, from or modelled on Old French roialte [12c., Modern French royauté], from Vulgar Latin regalitatem, from Latin regalis.  Sense of ‘prerogatives or rights granted by a sovereign to an individual or corporation’ is from late 15c.  From that evolved more general senses, such as ‘payment to a landowner for use of a mine’ [1839], and ultimately ‘payment to an author, composer, etc.’ for sale or use of his or her work [1857].”)

Don’t get me wrong: I have a fair grasp of how much I make from each copy sold.  (It’s a bit approximate, because it does vary according to country of sale, exchange rates, etc., but it’s about £1.10 per paperback copy sold on Amazon, and £1.10 per Kindle book.)  But what mystifies me is that every month I get five royalty payments.  Yes, five.  Three of them come accompanied by statements, while the other two sneak in alone.  The three statements cover purchases made in pounds, US dollars and euros.  But I have no idea what the other two payments are for.  On my bank statement all five payments say simply that they have come from “Amazon Media”.  And so I tot them up and bung them on the tax return.

But now change is a-foot.  I have received an email from CreateSpace (the print-on-demand company that I use, which is – like almost every business under the sun – owned by Amazon) announcing that “CreateSpace and Kindle Direct Publishing will become one service”.  KDP is the service I use to sell my Kindle books, and CreateSpace authors seem to have little choice in the matter (pick your battles, as my grandma used to advise), so I have pressed the button to migrate my CreateSpace titles to my KDP account.  On the surface, this seems like a good development: I can now go to one dashboard to see all my sales – POD paperbacks and Kindle books.  But I can’t help thinking that things might not be that simple…  For a start, I’m going to have to wait longer for my £25: “CreateSpace pays monthly royalties 30 days after the end of the month in which they were earned while KDP pays monthly royalties approximately 60 days after the end of the month in which they were earned.”  And those royalties might well shrink a little, as they are calculated after the cost of production is deducted, and “some low-page count books will see an increase in printing fees when they are printed in the UK and EU”.  It remains to be seen how low is low when it comes to page count…

Party for poison pens

Great excitement: I have just been invited to participate in “What’s Your Poison?”, the summer crime party held by local bookshop Heffers.  I missed it last year, as I was away on my writing retreat, but this year the stars are in alignment and on Thursday 6 July 2017 I will be rubbing shoulders with fellow crime addicts and writers.  Do come along if you’re around: they are always lovely events, with some terrific books on show.  And I will be handing out bookmarks!

I have been asked to prepare a three-minute reading from my latest book, which is “Portraits of Pretence”.  I don’t do readings that often; when I am asked to speak (quite rarely these days, as I have not been putting enough effort into chasing speaking opportunities, bad writer that I am) I tend to focus on the process rather than the product.  And people are usually so fascinated by the mechanics of self-publishing and print-on-demand that we run out of time.

But I do know that choosing the right excerpt is quite an art.  You need something that can stand alone (I don’t like doing big explanatory introductions) and yet tempt your listeners to buy the book so that they can read on; that gives a flavour of the main character and perhaps a couple of others; and that hints at the plot without giving anything away.  I’m going to have to give this some thought…

Putting Sam on the map

Some time ago I mentioned that I was hoping to include a map in what I was then calling “Plank 3”.  This became “Worm in the Blossom”, published in October 2015 with no map.  But I have news.  I live in Cambridge (east of England) and recently some maps appeared in the windows of local shops, highlighting some street art in our neighbourhood.  The maps were just wonderful: black and white, with clear lettering, and beautiful little drawings of local landmarks.  Perfect for Plank, I thought – but bound to have been done by some fancy-pants design studio in London.  However, after asking a few questions, I discovered that the artist lives about ten minutes’ walk from me, and what a lovely man he is.

Jon Harris is perhaps even more batty about Cambridge and about history than I am, and is blessed with the ideal skill for communicating his enjoyment: an ability to draw glorious maps.  I met him this weekend in a café in town and explained what I envisaged for Sam, and he got it immediately.  We bonded over a love of Ronald Searle’s drawings and – to cut to the chase – Jon has agreed to do Sam’s map for me.  Or rather, Sam’s maps.

We decided, after I had explained the concept of the series of seven books, that what we need is eight maps: one “base map” showing the four or five key Sam locations (his house, the Great Marlborough Street police office, Newgate and so on) and then a version of this for each individual book, showing the base key locations plus the places that feature in that particular book.  So for “Fatal Forgery”, for instance, we would add Fauntleroy’s bank and the Coldbath Fields house of correction, for “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” Freame’s bank would appear, and so on.

As for how to distribute these maps, this is still a little uncertain, but what I am thinking is this.  For the books that are already published – “Fatal Forgery”, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” and “Worm in the Blossom” – we will prepare the relevant maps and then have them available as a free PDF downloads from this website.  I will also put a note in the front of each book to that effect, so anyone who buys the books from that point onwards will know where to find the maps.  I don’t want to actually add maps to these books as it’s a bit of a swizz for people who have already bought them.  But for new books – “Plank 4” onwards – I will put a map in the paperback book itself and offer the free PDF download as well.  The map in the book might have to be slightly abbreviated, given the limited space available on a paperback page, but the PDF one will be the full monty.  E-books, I suspect, will not have maps – apparently diagrams are the very devil to get into e-books and I don’t fancy wrestling with it for days.  So e-book buyers – past and future – will be directed to the PDF downloads.  I think.  We’ll have to see about the technical stuff as we go along.

But for those of you who said you’d like to have a map so that you can trace Sam’s footsteps, just a little more patience: it’s on its way!

Picking nits and splitting hairs

I have just had my fifth review of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” on Amazon, and it’s a lovely five-star one – you can read it here.  And one bit of it that made my grammar-loving, spelling-obsessed heart soar was this: “This is the first Kindle book I have read which had virtually no spelling or grammatical errors of any kind.”  (I choose not to focus on the word “virtually”, as I have read even best-selling paperbacks where the occasional typo has slipped through.)  But recently I have been reading quite a few Kindle books myself, and I have to say that the standard of proofreading is generally very poor.

Those who disagree with the whole concept of self-publishing often cite this as one of their main objections – that self-published books have not been subjected to quality control (of plot and form, or indeed of spelling and grammar).  The former is a different problem, but when it comes to checking your manuscript for errors of spelling and grammar, what can you be thinking?  I have just given up on one novel which – although very exciting and gripping – distracted me on almost every page with the misuse of “it’s” and “its”, “your” and “you’re”, and the use of the comma where a semi-colon or full-stop was needed.  I know that some people missed grammar classes at school, that some people have English as a second language, that some people are dyslexic.  But if you’re going to ask people to pay good money to buy your words, and invest good time in reading them, you need to take the trouble to check those words.

I have a degree in English, so my grammar and spelling are pretty good.  But when you have written your own book and then read it several times (I read “Fatal Forgery” about twelve times, and “Canary” about ten), you stop seeing it properly.  So I asked my lovely beta reader Roy to have a go, and he spotted dozens of things that I had missed (as well as raising some excellent plotting points – thank you again, Roy).  Once the books were published, I asked friends who read them to PLEASE let me know if they spotted anything, as the beauty of print-on-demand is that you can update the file whenever you like – so errors can be corrected immediately, and any copies ordered from then on are the corrected one (there are no piles of old, uncorrected stock).

The Big Week is here!

Apologies for my silence – I was away on holiday in Crete for a week, girding my loins for the Big Week of Publication.  My husband – slow reader and therefore typo-spotter extraordinaire – was also reading my proof copy of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, and yesterday I made my final, final corrections (thankfully only a handful of very small ones needed).  (A bit nerve-racking, his reading of the book, as it was the first time he had read it – he prefers not to read works-in-progress.  So I spent three days hovering over him whenever he was reading, asking, “Where are you up to now?”.  Poor man.  At the end, I asked him which bit he liked best, and it wasn’t what I would have guessed at all, so that’s interesting.)

When we arrived home, two massive boxes of copies of “Canary” were waiting with a neighbour, so three review copies have been sent out, as well as “thanks” copies to my beta-reader, and to the lady who gave us permission to use a document from her late husband’s collection as part of our cover design, and to two relatives who are not Amazon-y.

So what does this week hold?  The paperback and Kindle files have been uploaded to Amazon, as it is something of a dark art to calculate when they might appear, so I thought sooner rather than later might be sensible.  Hopefully they will be in situ, resplendent in their golden covers and ready to go on Friday.  I am tripping over stacks of copies of “Canary”, so they need to be distributed: six copies are going to Hammicks in London today, care of husband and a Boris bike.  Heffers have ordered twelve and David’s ten, so I’ll deliver them tomorrow myself – both are local to me here in Cambridge.  Then I’ll be turning to my “people to tell” list, and working my way through that on Friday – it’s journalists who have kindly written about me before, my own websites, the Society of Authors, and then odd little extras like a poster for my local Department of Criminology.  I tell you, being self-published is not for the faint of heart or weak of cycling leg!

Planning for publication

I am aware that when I started this blog, my intention was not to waffle about what it means to me to be a writer (in short, I earn some money by putting words onto paper/screen) but rather to explain to others who are considering becoming self-published authors what the process is like.  So for today’s update….

As explained in my last post, I ordered – and have now taken delivery of – my proof paper copy of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”.  It looks lovely, and so I have ordered my bulk purchase of 75 copies.  It sounds a lot, I know, but I have worked it out quite carefully (and, when ordering from CreateSpace, it is advantageous price-wise per copy to order more rather than fewer).  To begin with, I contacted the three bookshops who are very kindly already stocking “Fatal Forgery”.  I showed them the cover and back cover blurb for “Canary”, gave them the publication date (still aiming for 31 October) and then asked if they wanted a few copies – and they all said yes (twelve, ten and six copies respectively).  I then contacted the lovely people who reviewed “Fatal Forgery” and asked if they would be interested in reviewing “Canary”, and so far two of them have said yes.  Then there are gift copies for some family members, for the man who kindly beta-read both “Fatal Forgery” and “Canary”, for the woman who allowed me to use a family document on the cover of “Canary”, and for my two local libraries.  And then – here’s the optimism kicking in – I’ll need a few on hand to re-stock those bookshops!

The interesting thing about self-publishing is that, in order to be able to buy these copies, I have to actually publish the book – but I don’t want to publish it properly (i.e. list it on Amazon) just yet.  So I have “stealth-published” it, so that it is listed only on the CreateSpace website, which hardly anyone visits as a bookshop – and at the end of the month, once I have distributed all the copies as listed above, and lined up my other promotional activities, I will publish it fully, with all guns blazing.

Incidentally, quite by coincidence, I was invited back onto our local radio station this week.  I wrote about this last time I went – and that was an invitation I sought because I was trying to promote “Fatal Forgery”.  This time they invited me, and I went along without really thinking about the timing, and on reflection I think it was an error.  The presenter very kindly mentioned my name and that of my book almost constantly – but kept having to point out that “Canary” is not yet available.  It would have been better to be able to say go and buy it now!  So, as with most things, it really is all about the timing.

All over bar the selling

Put out the flags!  I have just ordered my paper proof copy of “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat”, and paid extra for it to be sent by rocket-powered carrier pigeon from the US so that it should arrive by the end of the week.  In my mind, that’s it: I will read the proof copy, of course, but my main intention is to check the quality of the printing and paper – the proof-reading has been done already.  That said, over a quarter-century of writing documents, I have learned to accept the Golden Rule of Proofing: no matter how many times you, your friends and even paid professionals proof-read a document, something will always get through.  It’s a bit like weddings: something will always go wrong, and the sooner the bride-to-be accepts this, the happier and more relaxed she will be in the run-up to the big day.  (For me, the caterers forgot to bring coffee cups, so people drank their coffee out of champagne glasses.  And you know what?  No-one gave a hoot.)

Once the proof copy has shown itself to be of excellent quality, I will order my author copies – for me, for family members who do not live in Cambridge and are not online (so can’t buy their own copies), for reviewers who have kindly agreed to have a look, and for the three bookshops who very generously have agreed to stock “Canary” alongside “Fatal Forgery”.  So – barring misfortune such as a fire in the printing works – I’m online to meet that publication date of 31 October.

I’m feeling a bit bereft, as “Canary” has been alongside me for so long now.  But luckily I was listening to the radio the other day, and a magazine item caught my ear.  So now I am fairly sure I know what is going to be the central crime of “Plank 3″…