Taking my own medicine

Tags

fiction, Plank 7, The Solo Squid, writing

Some time ago I wrote a small non-fiction book titled “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  In it I shared the “squisdom” I had acquired over twenty-five years of working alone, and to augment it I post “Squisdom for today” twice or three times a week on Twitter and Facebook.  But in recent weeks I have not been happy at all at work – for obvious reasons – and over the weekend I realised that there were two bits of my own advice that might help.

Firstly, in the book I make much of the fact that we each have our own preferred working pattern.  I am an early bird – much more creative in the morning and then fit only for admin and filing by the end of the day, while my husband is pretty much the reverse.  And yet I have persisted for months now with doing my day job, well, during the day, and then turning to my fiction writing in the evening – when my brain has turned to mush.  As an experiment this week I am turning it upside-down: I do some writing first thing and then get on with my day job.  (I appreciate that it is a luxury for me to be able to decide when I do what, but that is one of the many benefits of being a Solo Squid – you can arrange your own working timetable.)

And secondly, we all know how off-putting it can be to tackle a large project, and in “The Solo Squid” I recommend breaking things down into digestible chunks – don’t say (as I have been saying…) “I must write this book”, but rather say “I must write for thirty minutes”.  Much more realistic, much more achievable, and much more satisfying – in that you can say every day “I wrote for thirty minutes”, whereas you cannot very often say “I wrote a book”.

So I am putting both bits of my own advice into practice: I am spending the first thirty minutes of every working day on my fiction writing.  So far so good – I’ve managed three days, and already I’ve written for ninety minutes more than I managed last week.

And now… looking up!

Tags

Goodreads, review, sales, The Solo Squid, writing

Just a quick post today, to share my happiness.  In my last post [I always picture a sombre bugler when I write that] I updated you on sales of my books, including my little business book – “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”.  And today I have received this lovely message via Goodreads (which I have linked to receive automatic sharing of my blog posts):

As one of the 16 who bought the Solo Squid e-book, please accept my thanks!  I felt I had a friend as I read it through what has been a tough year for my own business.  Your shared thoughts helped me work out whether I should give up on the business or keep going (I kept going and am now pretty busy).

Isn’t that just the loveliest thing?  I enjoyed writing the Squid, but to know that I actually helped someone to make important decisions is so exciting.  So if you’ve ever finished a book and found it has made a significant difference to you in some way, why not send the author a quick note?  I am grinning madly at mine, so I know how marvellous it is!

And if you’re now thinking that the Squid might be worth a look, here’s the link: http://mybook.to/solo_squid.  I also have a Squid Facebook page (www.facebook.com/TheSoloSquid ) and Twitter feed (https://twitter.com/TheSoloSquid ) – they feature the same information, but I try to upload a bit of “squisdom” two or three times a week.

Looking backwards and forwards

Tags

Amazon, Gregory 1, Kindle, paperback, Plank 7, plotting, promotion, sales, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid, writing

And here we are, staring into a whole new year – there can’t be many among us who are sad to see the back of 2020…  I know that my creativity took quite a knock; much as I admire all those who managed to use the endless weeks and months of lockdown to burrow into their projects, I have to admit that constant low-level anxiety and uncertainty took up most of my brain space.  As a result, I am now confronted by two stalled books – “Gregory 1” and “Plank 7” – and I am very much hoping that 2021 will be different.

Self-pity aside, I must gird my loins and look at my sales figures for the past year.  But despite Amazon reporting target-busting sales and (apparently) people turned to reading for comfort and escape, the boom has not quite hit my own titles!  In 2020, I sold 36 paperbacks across the six titles in the Sam series, and 185 e-books.  (But before you pat me on the back for those e-books, I must confess that 153 of those were downloaded for free during a promotion I ran in March/April.  So only 32 of the e-books brought in any money.)  And my little business book – “The Solo Squid” – sold 12 paperbacks and 16 e-books.

And so to money: with an average royalty of 90p per sale, my life as an author netted me about £86.40 in royalties in 2020.  Unfortunately, I also had to pay £200 for the cover for “The Solo Squid”, plus my memberships of the Society of Authors and the Alliance of Independent Authors (neither of which I would do without), so I’m actually about £350 in the red.  But as I don’t drink (yet…), smoke, or collect diamond jewellery or expensive cars, it’s a hobby I can afford.  And once I can reclaim some of this mis-used brain space, I can get back to enjoying it.  Happy new year to one and all!

The advertising game

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advertising, Amazon, Facebook, Gregory 1, Gregory Hardiman, magistrate, promotion, research, sales, Samuel Plank, The Solo Squid

It’s been a weekend of two halves, with regard to my writing.  On one hand, I have made a tiny bit of progress with “Gregory 1” – the first Gregory Hardiman book, set in Cambridge.  I have learned a lot about coroner’s inquests, and I have decided on a couple of confidants for Gregory – yes, a coroner, and perhaps a surgeon as well.  I found John Conant – a magistrate – an invaluable part of the Sam series, as the two men were able to discuss their work, and I feel I need someone in a similarly educated position for Gregory.  (I have also discovered that he doesn’t like being called Greg; Samuel Plank was perfectly easy with being called Sam, but Gregory insists on the full Gregory.  I wonder why…)

And on the other hand, I have been running an experimental Facebook ad for the past five days.  I have a dedicated Facebook page for my non-fiction business book “The Solo Squid: How to Run a Happy One-Person Business”, and for weeks now they have been tempting me with a £5 “credit” to try an ad to promote the page.  And in a moment of weakness – OK, a moment when I should have been writing but convinced myself that doing something commercial to promote a book was actually just as good as writing [spoiler alert: it isn’t] – I went for it.  I signed up to spend up to £1 a day for five days promoting the squid page to potential buyers of the book, with an ad to entice them to click on a link taking them to the Amazon page for the book.  I will admit that I didn’t put a great deal of thought into the ad or its settings, simply accepting the Facebook defaults for most of it, on the basis that as this was my first ad, they would do their best for me in order to suck me in for future campaigns.  I did limit the ad a little, by asking for it to be shown to both genders in the age range 25 to 58 [I figure that the very young aren’t setting up their own businesses quite yet, and those at the end of their working lives aren’t looking for guidance], in the US and the UK [prime English-speaking nations] and with a declared interest in entrepreneurship.  This netted me a potential target audience numbering 11,000,000, which Facebook assured me was ideal.  And off we went.

Five days later, Facebook informs me that my ad run has finished.  Over the five days it was seen by 1,399 people, eleven of whom clicked the link.  That cost me £4.80 of my £5 credit – or just under 44p per click.  Looking at the Amazon sales figures, I see that in the same period (10 to 14 June 2020) I sold no copies of “The Solo Squid”.  I’ll keep an eye on the sales in the next few days in case one of the eleven clicks put the book in their basket for later purchase, but based on this small and most unscientific experiment, I can safely say that I will not be investing the Grossey fortune in Facebook ads.  Back to the writing board.

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!

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.)

Desperately seeking squid-lovers

Tags

editor, marketing, research, review, The Solo Squid

Only a quick update today, as I am working overseas this week – on the Channel Island of Guernsey – and writing has to take a back-seat.  But yesterday morning I had a spare hour and spent it sending emails to the editors of magazines that serve communities of people who are likely to work alone, telling them about “The Solo Squid” and offering to send a review copy or write an article about the joys of solo working.  On my flight the previous day I brainstormed a list of possible communities – accountants, therapists of all sorts, florists, etc. – and then researched suitable publications and the names of their editors.  I wrote a succinct email and tailored it to each magazine, and off they went.  None of them bounced back so I assume they reached their targets.  And so far I have had a response – positive or negative – from no-one.

I know, I know: it’s only a day since I sent the emails.  And I assume that the editors of some of these publications are part-time or volunteers or inefficient – or all three.  Working full-time and being pathologically efficient myself, I sometimes forget that.  Readers of historical fiction tend to gather in online communities, even thoughtfully subdividing themselves into relevant categories – lovers of historical crime, or devotees of Regency fiction.  But marketing a niche, non-fiction book is hard!

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.

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.