Coming Out as a Writer ...

As those of you who read my blogs (and facebook posts) know, I've always been a little reluctant to "come out" as a writer, particularly locally, where I suppose I'm something of an active member of the community - school governor, member of various village committees etc. And then my wonderful new neighbours/friends started gently pushing me - and making me drink far too much wine. So I did a paperback as well as an ebook. And then a jewellery party turned into a book-signing...

The trouble with print-on-demand (POD) publishing, is that you don't have stock. Books are printed as and when you need them, or a customer orders them. Which is good as you don't have a huge outlay for books which - let's face it - may never sell. CreateSpace is a US company and while a customer can order a book in the UK from Amazon and have it printed and shipped in the UK, to order stock at "cost", I can only order from the US. And unless I want to wait 6-8 weeks, the postage rates are so high that it becomes almost impractical to do it at all.

A book signing is scary. I reckoned that people would have a look out of curiosity and maybe think about reading a sample on Amazon later on, so I had a load of postcards printed up (aren't QR codes amazing things?) for them to take away. And I ordered 6 books which was about all I could afford, given that they might be sitting around in my study for quite some time.

The week before, I happened to glance at my invoice and realised that the date I'd paid for delivery by was not the date they were actually delivering. Note to self: screen shot any other orders I make and always check every detail. So - book signing and no books? Help! Back to Amazon and with no time to order from the US, I had to order 6 books from Amazon UK as a customer and pay for priority delivery. Of course, these books cost me more, but I will get a royalty for each sale as if they'd been bought by any other customer.

The books arrived. And I complained. My US proof copy had been awesome, but these just looked - cheaper, somehow. The cover wasn't printed perfectly on the spine and the overall quality was inferior. To be fair to Amazon, they offered me a credit discount which I accepted. Note to self: quality control is everything! If I hadn't needed them urgently, I'd have returned them - but then if I hadn't needed them urgently, I wouldn't have bought them in the first place, would I? As it was, my profit margin dropped sharply as I ended up selling at a lower cost - but I wasn't doing it for profit.

I realised several things at the book signing:

1. Very few people knew I was a writer - and they were impressed. I mix socially with a lot of writers so had forgotten that most people aren't.
2. People read all sorts of things - and not necessarily what you'd expect. They weren't totally put off either my books or me when I tried to tell them I write dark and nasty stuff and not chick lit...
3. Not everyone has an ereader. And they don't know or care about Amazon samples and "look insides" and other things. They are not even that bothered about quality - of the physical book, I mean, not the content. They just want to read a good book. I hope those who took a postcard away will still look me up online and find out more.
4. My friends who have read my stuff really do like it and aren't just saying so to soothe my fragile ego! I'm getting pestered for the next book to be out in paperback - which will happen as soon as I get some more reviews for the ebook (so I can grab another pull-quote for the cover of the paperback)

I sold all 6 of my books. When my CreateSpace stock order finally turns up, two books are already spoken for. I've "come out" as a writer in my little Cheshire village. All in all - a success, I think!

Flashmobbing

Flashmob. Wikipedia says: A flash mob (or flashmob) is a group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual and seemingly pointless act for a brief time, then quickly disperse, often for the purposes of entertainment, satire, and artistic expression.

So the modern version of what we all used to do as kids then? Stand in a busy place – a shopping centre (open air, obviously), park, or anywhere that isn’t enclosed – and look up at the sky. Squint a bit and point. If you’re with a friend, exchange a few oohs and aahs. Sooner or later somebody will want to know what you’re looking at, but won’t want to ask so will look up too. It then takes on a life of its own à la Emperor’s New Clothes, as nobody will want to admit they haven’t a clue what’s going on. When you have gathered enough of a crowd, walk away. It works. I’ve done it.

Of course these days with the internet and social media available to everyone everywhere, it’s easy to call up a group of friends instantly if something’s going on. So here’s an idea … take a paperback of your book, or maybe two or three if you can, into your local bookstore. Or any place that sells books, but refuses to stock your book because you’re an indie (read sub-species) and Gardners or whoever won’t deal with you. Hide said books on shelf and leave. Can you get into trouble for putting stuff into a shop, as opposed to stealing it? I don’t know.

Call up your mates. One or two initially. Get them to go into shop and rave loudly about your book. Call some more up. Of course there aren’t enough books to go round. And you’re a local author! Why doesn’t the local bookshop have more of your books?

Of course they won’t be able to pay for them as the books aren’t on the shop’s stock system. Which means they don’t exist as far as the shop is concerned. But with any luck the manager will hear all the fuss and come out, and if there’s an ISBN on the book and it looks professional, he just may be tempted to buy some stock to satisfy these fans who have met you recently at some literary event (be creative…) and want to buy your books.

You might have to persuade your “fans” to come back and actually buy the book later, of course. Or even at the time, if the manager is astute enough to facilitate this. But he might order more. And then you’re on the system aren’t you? You officially exist.

Have I ever done this? No. If you try it, let me know how you get on.

Piper is Live!!!

Paying the Piper is the sequel to the Crime Writers' Association Debut Dagger Award long-listed thriller Hamelin's Child.

Kindle only right now at amazon.co.uk and amazon.com, but it will be available in other formats as soon as I can sort it. Check out the Buy Links page which I'll update as other markets arrive.

Paperback will take a few weeks.

Thanks to everyone for their support.

And thanks even more to the wonderful SM Johnson who has featured me on her blog today! Awesome that somebody 'gets' my writing so completely.

Marmite and Reviews

I write marmite books. For those people unfamiliar with the term, marmite is a yeast-based extract (actually a waste product of the brewing industry) commonly spread on toast. It’s USP has always been “you either love it or hate it”. Personally I can’t stand the stuff.

But I write marmite books. People either love them or hate them – my thrillers anyway. That’s OK. But then friends and neighbours – family, even – want to read them, and inwardly I cringe. I’m not worried about whether they’ll like them or not; everything is subjective and we all have different tastes in reading material. But that in itself is the key. I want people to read my books because that’s the kind of thing they read, not because they know me.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m grateful for the support – more than you or they will ever know – but if people don’t normally read the kind of stuff I write, then they’re not going to like it. It’s dark. It’s nasty. And they’ll be reading the book, looking at me and thinking … well, I don’t really want to know what they’re thinking. I have no excuses. It’s what I write – my characters want me to tell their story and I do, to the best of my ability. The bad bits as well as the good bits. Because without the dark, the light has no real meaning, does it?

I sent Hamelin’s Child off to a big US review blog site about a year ago or more. Now when I send books off for review, I forget about them. I don’t hassle reviewers. If it’s not their cup of tea, that’s fine. I’ve already moved on. In retrospect, sending a marmite book to a general book reviewer is probably not the smartest of moves, but there you go. So I’d totally forgotten about this review until it appeared, and it rather threw me. 3* is fine – and in fact, given the review itself, I’m surprised it got that high. I was a bit down-hearted, but everyone is entitled to their own opinions and I have no issues. Comment on the review? Never. Maintaining a dignified silence is the only way to go. Brush it under the carpet and forget about it – I’ve had worse and I’m sure I will again.

And then I had a 5* review on amazon – both the US and the UK sites. Somebody had read this blog site review and was intrigued enough to download a sample which they liked so much, they bought the book. They enjoyed the book so much, I not only got a glowing review but a further comment to say they’d read it twice more in the week afterwards.

So what does this prove? That opinions differ, certainly. But that all “advertising” works too. Remember those truly awful television adverts? The ones that are so bad you swear you’d never buy the product on principle? But you remember them. And when you see the product when you’re out and about, you might just be tempted to see what it’s like, if it's really as bad as you thought it might be. It’s the same with a not-so-good review – it’s still exposure. Even on a big site, where lots of book-buyers are going to read how badly-written the reviewer thinks your book is, there will still be people who want to see for themselves – and who turn out to be pleasantly surprised.

The worst thing for the independent writer is obscurity. You’ll never get a good or a bad review if nobody ever sees your product.

Paperbacks & Planning Applications

So Hamelin's Child is now available as a paperback via amazon (all sites - just replace the .co.uk with .whatever in the url). Costs a bit more than the ebook, but that's down to the printing process; physical paper and book-binding costs money unfortunately and then there's the postage. But it does look good and I'm very pleased with the result.

And Paying the Piper is (finally) on a last read-through on my kindle. I think I've dealt with all the feedback from my wonderful beta-readers (Marj & Laura - you are so much appreciated!). So if I can put aside real life at some point, I will try to get it uploaded shortly. As I've said before, if you haven't already, then do let me know if you want me to email you when it's available.

Real life? I'm currently embroiled with our local action group Moulton Matters, trying to oppose a planning application to build almost 150 houses on the edge of our lovely small Cheshire village on two fields that are used by dog-walkers and nature-lovers. Feel free to add your voice at the Cheshire West & Chester's website if you'd like to object to dumping a huge housing estate onto an infrastructure that is already creaking (primary school is full with a waiting list, narrow roads often gridlocked at peak times, Victorian drainage system full-to-literally-bursting, no jobs nearby, one small village shop with no car park). There are plenty of brownfield sites nearby perfect for re-development - but they make less profit, so they'd rather grab our greenbelt instead. Feel free to support us - you don't have to live here.

Moving on ...

I was hoping to have my new thriller Paying the Piper out for Christmas. Sadly that's not going to be the case - way too much editing work required, but I want it to be the best it can possibly be, so I'm not rushing; it will be out just as soon as it's ready and I can move on. I'm living in a weird literary limbo right now and I can't quite bring myself to drop this particular ball - I'm not a good enough juggler to manage several projects at once.

But it's given me time to reflect on other stuff. After over 17 years in our lovely Cheshire cottage, we're thinking of selling up next year and moving on. I've never lived this long in one place before and I'll be sad to leave, but it's the right time to downsize, especially if we want to fund daughter's continued stage career! I'm open to anything property-wise and the internet is an amazing tool - where would we be without rightmove.com? Last time we did all this, it was paper-based, getting sent house details in the post and buying property newspapers. I think we'll stay local but whether it will be old house or new build, estate or not, project or ready-to-live-in, I have no idea. Exciting times! So long as I have a study of sorts, I'll be fine.

Heart and Soul

As I've said before - on this blog and others - it's not write what you know but know what you write. And to do that, you have to live your story, engage with your characters, become the people in whose lives you are interfering when you drop crises on them like bombs and expect them to deal with it. So don't you owe it to your characters to suffer with them?

A big 6 editor once told me that my street-kid Lee sounded way too educated. In reality, she said, he'd be at best poorly-educated with a limited vocabulary and wouldn't necessarily have the words or emotional maturity to deal with situations the way I'd written. She had a point. When I stepped back, I realised that Lee was speaking with my voice and while I'd tried to dumb his dialogue down a bit, it clearly wasn't working. It took me a long time to get inside his head and put his own words into his mouth rather than mine. And once you step inside somebody else's skin, even in fiction, you become that person.

As a reader or a writer, to get that emotional connection requires some effort on your own part. It makes you vulnerable when you walk in someone else's shoes, feel what they feel - the good and the bad. It can make for an amazing experience. But you leave something of yourself behind every time.