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.

Sign up, sign up!

Tags

Cambridge, Gregory Hardiman, historical fiction, marketing, publicity, research, update

I know, I know – I’ve been distracted again!  But this time – rare for me – this post is actually topical.  I was reading about the history of Cambridge and I came across several stories about when the bubonic plague hit town in the seventeenth century.  Well, it had been there before, but the seventeenth century was bad, with dangerous outbreaks in 1610, the 1620s, 1630 and then the big one (the Great Plague, as we all learned in primary school) in the 1660s.

Now I’m baffled as to why more of you don’t sign up for my monthly updates – which elaborate on the historical details behind the books – so this is a bit of a teaser.  The update that is scheduled to go out on 1 May is all about plague and pestilence in historical Cambridge, but I won’t tell you much here, apart from a couple of taster highlights:

• The expert at the time was a German “plague doctor” called Dr Milne
• Windows were removed from churches to allow fresh air to blow through
• Forty pest-houses were built on Coldham’s Common, which is still a green area and presumably home to lots of skeletons.

If you’re keen to know more, sign up for the monthly updates!  (And if plague is not your bag, the June update features a hot air balloon and a water velocipede – my research is nothing if not wide-ranging.)

Taming the squid

Tags

Facebook, Gregory 1, marketing, publicity, research, The Solo Squid, Twitter

“The Solo Squid” – my book about how to run a happy one-person business – has hit the same wall as the Sam Plank books: everyone who reads it says that it is good, but not enough people are reading it.  I don’t want to fall back into Twitter (for the reasons explained yesterday) but I do want to get the squid message out there, and so I have created a new Facebook page.

The theory is that the Solo Squid page will showcase the book, yes, but will also share tips and ideas on the theme central to the book: enjoying working alone, and being satisfied with that work status (i.e. being content with a one-person business and not plotting world domination).  To keep it manageable I plan to source and share one piece of squisdom every day or two, and I am going to be ferocious about keeping to the squidology – no veering off-message.

Like so many marketing ideas, it may die a death in a month or two, but that’s the nature of the marketing beast.  On the other hand, I should practise what I preach, and in the book I advise forgetting about formal marketing strategies: “Rather, I recommend starting at the end and asking yourself this one question: what can I do to make sure that my clients remember me in a positive light?”  And if my FB page can offer a helpful idea or a crumb of comfort to a lonely or struggling or exhausted solo squid, who then tells other solo squids about it, then I’m happy.

(And in case you’re wondering about my fictional life, I can assure you that each weekend I am immersed in research for the first Gregory book.  I have been reading a wonderful tome called “Annals of Cambridge”, which is a highly subjective – and at times unintentionally hilarious – record of the main events that happened in the city, organised by year.  And in 1830 we had this gem: “On 3 December 1830, apprehension having been entertained from the excited state of the labouring classes in many of the adjacent villages that there might be some disturbance in the town on the following market day, 800 of the [6,500 male] inhabitants voluntarily attended at the Town Hall and were sworn as special constables. Not the slightest disturbance occurred.”  I can guarantee that that little over-reaction will find its way into a Gregory book.)

Bye bye birdie

Tags

marketing, publicity, sales, Samuel Plank, tweeting, Twitter

As some of you will know, I serve in a voluntary capacity as a magistrate (perfect for crime research…).  A large part of our work is sentencing, and at this stage in the proceedings a defendant will often say in mitigation, “But miss, I’ve got mental health”.  We know s/he means just the opposite, but every time I hear it I reflect how grateful I am that, for almost all of my life, I have indeed had mental health.  And in a bid to keep things that way, I have decided to stop using Twitter in my private and writing lives – although I shall keep a very inactive account for work purposes, so that people can find me.

When I realised that my narrator Constable Sam Plank would live beyond one book, I decided to hide behind his name and created the @ConstablePlank Twitter handle.  I did this on the advice of more experienced authors, who said – without exception – that the key to selling lots of books was to have an active social media presence.  And (like everyone else) I have no way of knowing whether that is true: it is impossible to know what proportion of readers were alerted to the Sam books via Twitter (or Facebook or this writing blog or Amazon searching or shop displays).  But what I do know about Twitter is this:

• Anything that I post on Twitter can just as easily be posted on Facebook or this blog
• My tweets – like everyone else’s – disappear within hours, if not minutes
• Nearly all the tweets I read from the authors that I follow are – like mine – attempts to sell more books, which becomes rather dull quite quickly
• Too many tweets are unpleasant in tone
• Twitter sucks up too much of my time, as I seem to be addicted to scrolling through yards and yards of irrelevant tweets.

This is to take nothing at all from those of you who enjoy tweeting and/or enjoy reading tweets.  It’s just that I have not got from it what I was hoping (over and above book sales), which was an insight into the writing process and the lives of other writers and therefore a sense of community.  (Plus, if I read the phrase “hand sanitiser” once more, I may indeed get mental health.).  So for now, @Constable Plank is no more.

Life-sized Sam

Tags

banner, marketing, publicity, signing, WH Smith

Did I tell you that I have managed to secure a book-signing at my local branch of WH Smith?  (For overseas readers, it’s a major high street newsagent, stationer and bookseller.)  I spotted a call to arms from WH Smith, encouraging authors to arrange signings, and leapt in with both feet.  For those of you in the east of England, I’ll be sitting in splendour at the Cambridge city centre branch on Saturday 6 April 2019, from 11 am (I am reliably informed by the store manager than no-one buys books before that hour on a Saturday.)

And to advertise my presence, I wondered what to do.  I’m hoping that the shop will put a poster in the window, and head office has promised to put my signing on their Events blog.  But how to draw people’s eyes to little old me, in amongst the arrays of magazines and stationery and birthday cards?  And then it came to me: I need Sam!  And here he is:

This is a pull-up banner of the sort used at conferences and similar events.  I ordered it online for the princely sum of about £30, having downloaded a template (which gave the size and some sample text boxes) and then spending an hour designing it.  I’m sure I have made a dozen design faux pas, but it’s clear, eye-catching and readable, which is all I wanted.  I’ll need to sell a few books to cover the cost but I figure I can use it at other events – or just set it up in the corner of the lounge for company.

(And I’ve made progress on another one of my writerly dreams: I’m assembling an e-book box set of the first three Sam books.  More on that later…)

Shopping for publicity

Tags

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.

Hart’s and minds

Tags

author talks, CreateSpace, Hart's Books, KDP, money, publicity, sales, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

Is there anything an author enjoys more than talking about her books?  It’s certainly easier than getting on with writing the next one.  And yesterday evening was a great treat as I spoke to a small (I think we had eleven in total) but terrifically interested and engaged audience at Hart’s Books in Saffron Walden.  Hart’s – as a printer, stationer and bookseller – has been associated with Saffron Walden since 1836, and the current bookshop is part of the Daunt family but retains a very independent feel.  I’d had my eye on them for a while but I rarely look my best in Saffron Walden: it’s the usual destination for our Sunday tandem rides (there’s a local café that does a wonderful fried breakfast which is my reward for cycling twenty-five miles) and I’m always a sweaty, fly-dotted creature when I arrive.  Not the best image to persuade a bookshop that you are a serious writer of worthy tomes.  But one Sunday I just took a chance, and the manager Max was sufficiently impressed by my enthusiasm – or so desperate to get my pungent carcass out of his shop – that he agreed to stock Sam.  And when I suggested an author event, he kindly agreed.  And that was last night.

At such talks I am never sure which aspect is going to chime with the audience: the books themselves, or the history behind them (of policing and justice, or of London), or the writing process, or the self-publishing procedure.  And so I start with a general introduction – how I came to write the first book, why I wrote four more – and then (if the audience seems keen) open it up to questions.  Well, last night “keen” was an understatement.  I’d barely spoken two sentences before the questions started, and it didn’t let up for over an hour – fantastic!

I promised myself that I would always be completely honest in my answers, particularly when it comes to money issues – people need to know that it’s not the route to quick riches.  And in the spirit of full disclosure, I can report that last night’s event garnered me about £7.65 – that’s about 45p per book, and we sold seventeen.  (It’s not that the bookshop takes an enormous cut – their deal is to keep a perfectly reasonable 35% or 40% of the cover price.  It’s just that we self-published authors have to supply the books ourselves, so by the time I have ordered them from CreateSpace, sorry KDP – recent take-over – and paid for them to be sent from the US to me in the UK, and then given the bookseller his discount, I’m left with about 45p per book.)  As I say, not the route to riches – but just the most enormous fun and I wouldn’t stop doing it for the world.

Good with words, hopeless with numbers

Tags

author talks, historical fiction, Plank 6, plotting, publicity, research, Shelford Feast

I am a very organised person.  I have the equivalent of a B at maths “A” level (I did the International Baccalaureate instead, albeit in the pre-computer dark ages).  These two parts of my character have united in the Sam Plank series, in that I (a) plotted all remaining six books in the series as soon as I had finished the first one and realised I couldn’t live without Sam, and (b) decided that the books would be set in consecutive years (“Fatal Forgery” in 1824, “The Man in the Canary Waistcoat” in 1825 and so on).  Simples, as they used to say.

And so I find myself beavering away on “Plank 6”.  I’ve been researching inheritance law and body-snatching (the former more confusing, the latter more gruesome).  And I’ve been setting it all against the background of events in 1828.  Yesterday I was putting together my supplies for the Shelford Feast (I’m speaking at their Literary Evening tomorrow – we’re up against England in the semi-final…) and printing little price-lists for the books.  Against each book price I wrote a little description of the book – and realised that “Faith, Hope and Trickery” (book five, and published in March 2018) took place in 1828.  You see my error.

It’s not hard, is it?  I have ten fingers for the complex calculations.  If book one is set in 1824, of course book six will be set in 1829.  Back to the drawing board.

Sam takes centre stage, or rather page

Tags

Faith Hope and Trickery, marketing, publicity, Samuel Plank, self-publishing, Susan in the City, Velvet Magazine

One of the very hardest things about being a self-published author is the marketing – which is a fancy name for thinking of ways to sell more books.  Traditional publishing houses have whole departments devoted to this, albeit rather less lavishly staffed and resourced than in times gone by, whereas it’s just little old me at Grossey Mansions Publishing.  (Not a real name, but I quite like the sound of it.)  I try to think of one thing a week to promote Sam in all his five flavours, but it’s not easy.  Occasionally, however, something comes along to give me – and him – a real boost.

Many moons ago, I wrote a weekly article for my local newspaper, all about the joys (or otherwise) of living in Cambridge.  “Susan in the City” appeared every Monday for a decade, and indeed I have gathered my favourite eighty of those columns into a little book.  During my time at the paper I met an editor called Alice Ryan, and when “Faith, Hope and Trickery” was coming over the horizon, my marketing task for one week was to contact Alice – now editing the Cambridge edition of a glossy lifestyle publication called “Velvet Magazine” – and ask/beg her to feature me.  And she did!  And here it is, in all its full-colour, double-page, April splendour:

(If that’s tricky to read, you can go to the online magazine instead and head straight for page 64.)

“Velvet” is a giveaway magazine – a rather superior one, in my opinion – and so my lunchtime outing today is to the local hairdresser to scoop up a few copies, which should please Sam as a former barber.  As always, I’ll let you know if the publicity leads to extra sales.

A gong for Sam

Tags

blogging, Book of the Year, Discovering Diamonds, Helen Hollick, marketing, Portraits of Pretence, publicity, Samuel Plank, self-publishing

Yesterday I was driving home from visiting family and listening to the news on the radio.  They announced who had been given a New Year Honour (for overseas readers, here’s what they are), and I had a little daydream about how marvellous it would be to be recognised (à la Lady Antonia Fraser) for services to literature.  Once home, having been offline for a couple of days, I checked my email and good heavens!  I found that I had been given something even better!  “Portraits of Pretence” – the fourth Sam Plank novel – has been chosen by influential book review website Discovering Diamonds as their Book of the Year for 2017.

Discovering Diamonds is a wonderful place.  I stumbled on it – or rather, the people behind it, before it was created – right back at the start, just as I published the first Sam Plank novel, “Fatal Forgery” and was looking for reviewers.  Everyone associated with the website – and in particular our marvellous leader Helen Hollick – has been incredibly generous with their time, expertise, guidance and encouragement.  If you’re a fan of historical fiction – of any era and in any formats, whether e-book or paperback, Victorian or Roman, self-published or traditionally produced – their reviews are unmissable.

Regular readers of this blog will remember how excited I was when “Portraits” was chosen as their Book of the Month in March.  And now to find that I have scooped the annual award – well!  Naturally Sam would dispute my role, as Helen quite rightly points out that he is the hero of it all: “The three main characters have, through the absorbing series, become good, fictional, friends.  I find them believable, plausible and very likeable.”

I know the fashion is to say that awards don’t matter, that the work itself is the reward.  And of course I do love writing the Sam Plank stories.  But they are not edging Grisham or Rowling off the bestseller lists, there is no-one from the BBC knocking at the door and begging to be allowed to make them into a Sunday night corset drama, and my marketing efforts cost much more in time than they generate in income.  And so an award like this does matter – it matters enormously.  Hopefully it will generate some publicity for Sam, but more importantly it confirms to me that I can write, that the books are worth reading, and that I am right to continue.  Thank you, Helen: to me, this award is priceless.