by admin | Mar 20, 2016 | costs, formula, genre, Publishing, self-publishing, Uncategorized
Sometimes a thought arrives by a very circuitous route: this one started with reading ‘Lancashire Life’, one of those glossy mags that abound in England and mirror the lives of that tiny fraction of the population that can afford what lies within. As I am not one of that tiny fraction, I bought a copy last month because they were running a review of my first crime novel ‘Cruel Tide’ and I was chuffed and curious. The book page was at the back and what struck me as I leafed through to find it was the number of advertisements for wedding venues, bridal shops, ‘mother-of-the bride’ shops and so on. This in turn prompted memories of some recent family weddings where the purpose of the exercise seemed to have been lost in a morass of unnecessary and costly rituals, mostly imported from the US. That experience, reinforced by the countless wedding industry adverts made me wonder, yet again, about what drives people to want what others have, and to do what others do, rather than stick to what they feel comfortable with. Why do we ape others rather than represent our true selves?
The more I see of the publishing industry, the more of a ‘business’ and less of a creative enterprise it seems to be, at least currently. My impression is that the current obsession with ‘fads’ is relatively recent, probably since the acquisition of money to stay afloat in troubled times became the main imperative. Editors and publishers are no longer the gatekeepers of quality in this enterprise. Their role has been replaced by the agent, a mediator between the writer and her means of public expression, who lives by taking a percentage of the writer’s earnings. If your livelihood depends on the certainty of financial success, and the people you are selling to are also risk-averse, all of you are intensely concerned with finding books that will sell big and sell fast, creating and then riding a public wave which is powerful but transient, a wave to be surfed not a long-distance ocean swell.
This is the breeding ground of trends, fads, fashion, whatever term you choose. Everyone in the book business is now on the look out for sure things, and the only evidence they have to use is the last sure thing. If we analyse what made the last successful book popular and replicate it, then we might catch the wave before it fades and make some money. The problem for books is that they cannot, or should not, be written fast. If you want to catch the wave, you haven’t got time for a book to be written. Instead you go yet again through the pile of stuff you already have, looking for the desired combination of criteria. Speed is of the essence. No time to read more than a chapter or two, if that. Agents talk constantly about ‘falling in love’ with a book as their only criterion for choosing one book over another. This has to be a ‘coup de foudre’ not a long, measured appreciation. Quick flick: does it have the necessary genre features that the last best-seller had? Does it fit the bill? Is the author photogenic and have a good story? Can we sell this big and fast? If so, let’s go. If not, throw it back onto the ever-mounting slush pile.
I know it’s not as simple as this, but to someone on the outside of the conventional book business looking in, this is how it feels. Writing and publishing a book, like planning a wedding, can be an expression of your approach to life and your individual values. Or it can be a way of demonstrating how fashion conscious and competitive you are. The big fashionable wedding will get into the glossy magazines, where the wedding planners’ choices and expenses will be scrutinised by others. And the publishers’ choice of a handful of manuscripts, which are then lavished with expensive editorial and promotional support, will get noticed by the book business cogniscenti, which then adds to the hype and presumably increases sales. Fads and fashions create a barrier between the ‘in-crowd’ and the ‘out-crowd’: the in-crowd are necessarily and frenetically peer conscious and competitive, while self-publishing outsiders like myself are free to follow our own paths with some chance of staying true to ourselves.
by admin | Mar 13, 2016 | Authenticity, ethical questions, fact-based fiction, Fallout, genre, historical fiction, research, Sellafield, Uncategorized, West Cumbria, Windscale fire
At the Words by the Water festival in Keswick last week, we were able to witness two versions of the same real events and thereby to compare them. The events in question concerned the life and work of Alan Turing, the mathematical genius whose work enabled the German ‘enigma’ code to be cracked during World War 2. The first presentation came from Turing’s nephew Dermot Turing who gave us five ‘myths’ about his uncle and proceeded to use his detailed knowledge of the family and the history to replace these myths with something closer to the truth. His talk was followed by a showing of ‘The Imitation Game’ a 2014 film ostensibly about Turing’s life and war work, and the events leading up to Turing’s death by suicide in 1954.
At the end of his talk, Dermot Turing urged us to enjoy the film we were about to see, but warned us that the Alan Turing we were going to see portrayed was not, perhaps, the real man, but a filmic construct. He didn’t use those words: in fact he was very polite about a film that demonstrated each of the five myths that he had previously been at pains to deconstruct. No point in railing against it, I suppose, although I doubt whether my reaction would have been so measured.
The film was much heralded when it was released. I can’t recall all the fulsome epithets used by the critics, but some of them at least thought it was very good. But did it actually tell the story accurately? No. In some crucial respects, the needs of the film, the demands of the genre and the presumed expectations of the audience clearly over-rode any semblance of historical accuracy. One example: Turing was already working on the German code before the war began and had cracked it by 1941, but in the film the breakthrough is beset by technical and political difficulties and wasn’t achieved until much later in the war, as the need for it became ever more urgent, creating a false tension that never actually happened.
The script – in my view – was dire, cliche-ridden and sentimentalised. I checked later: the scriptwriter was American and born in 1981. To what extent, I wondered, were both the script and the unfolding of the story affected by the demands of the 3 act structure so beloved of film-makers: – the ersatz crises, the bullying army officer, the cynical MI6 man, the fresh-faced young man who had by some fluke turned up in the code-breaking team. And then there was Keira Knightley as the only woman on the team. Words fail me. Why her, again? I assume I was expected to suspend my disbelief for the sake of the story, but instead I was increasingly irritated by the whole sorry mess.
On the way out I began thinking about my own attempts to weave real events into a fictional setting, and whether I too should be castigated for sacrificing authenticity in pursuit of a good tale. The issue is most pronounced in the third book of my West Cumbrian trilogy ‘Fallout’, which is set against the backdrop of the nuclear reactor fire at Windscale in October 1957. I had 90,000 words rather than an two hour film script to play with, but still the responsibility to portray the real events as accurately as I could weighed heavily on me, for two reasons. First, it was a point of pride that I got my facts right. And second, Windscale is just a few miles up the coast from where I live and the fire happened not that long ago, within my memory and those of many people who live around me in this area. You can’t, and shouldn’t, muck about with the known facts when many of them are known by so many. My research was careful and meticulous. Even if it made a better story I couldn’t make the fire last longer, or less long, or do more damage, or require intervention beyond the means of the local men who managed to get it under control. So why did the makers of ‘The Imitation Game’ claim to use a real story, take such liberties with it, and get away with it? I can be very critical of my own attempt to blend fact and fiction but at least I tried to respect the events rather than abuse them.
Historical fiction that purports to represent real events raises particular challenges when those events are within living memory. It’s something I’d like to think more about as a writer, and try not to imitate ‘The Imitation Game’.
by admin | Mar 8, 2016 | costs, marketing, Pricing, Publishing, readers, research, self-publishing, self-publishing workshops, Uncategorized
There was some very interesting discussion of this question at a workshop on self-publishing I led recently. Sixteen or so people round the table all had different goals, starting points, skills, strategies and experiences. Some did everything themselves, and used time and perseverance rather than money for the project. Others – me included -needed professional help with all or part of the process, and were able and prepared to pay for it. Others spent all their money on producing the book, but then found themselves with nothing left over to use for promotion, without which their beautiful books were still in their boxes cluttering up the house. Some just about covered their costs; some were nowhere near doing so; one or two had lost more than they could afford. I’d expected at least some stories of financial success, but heard none. Maybe the quiet ones at the table were doing better than they wanted to share.
There’s no question that almost all self-publishing projects will cost you something, either money or time, and probably both. There’s also no doubt that producing an ebook is much easier and cheaper than any other format, and you can sell heaps if you put a ludicrously low price on it, but the effect on sales is ephemeral. Publishing a paperback is a more difficult, but carries with it many more opportunities for promotion and direct sales.
I’m often surprised that many aspiring self-publishers don’t appear to have thought the process through, although that’s understandable given its complexity. If you truly understood the whole process it might be so daunting that you would never even start. One of the more unfortunate of the workshop participants regretted that she hadn’t attended a workshop like this two years before, and we realised why when she recounted – very bravely I thought – the series of mistakes she had made and the loss she’d incurred.
I may have had some advantage in this ‘business project’ game having been self-employed for many years, and having some idea of how to think ahead financially. Before I took the decision to self-publish I knew enough to calculate how many books I would need to sell, at what price, to retrieve the money I had shelled out at the start on the costs of ensuring a high quality paperback. The costs were for critique, editing, design and printing, and came to around £5000 for a 1500 print run. I also knew that bulk printing is cheaper than ‘print on demand’ (POD), and that unit costs are a function of quantity. How did I know that? I did enough initial research to think through some of the details and their implications. I was then able to work out how long it might take to recoup the money, and an approximate ‘rate of sale’. I reckoned it might take two years to recoup the outlay on the 1500 print run, and that turned out to be about right, although the necessary promotion strategy developed very slowly. I should have thought longer and harder about ‘How will people know about your book and why should they want to buy it?’
Once printed, and before sale, the books have to be stored somewhere. I ended up paying for dry secure storage, although I could at a pinch have saved that money by persuading friends and family to store a few boxes each for me. When the first print run was all sold, at a profit of about £4 per book, and I could reprint, then the the unit production cost would go down by about 50% while the price would remain the same, which makes for more profit. I priced the ebooks so that they too would generate about £3-4 each, as the up front costs are minimal. I have used Kindle Direct Publishing, which seemed very complicated to start with and required patience to reach any level of confidence. It’s paying off though: ebooks sales are steadily increasing, and £80-£100 per month is quite a healthy return, in my terms at least. The more books you have to sell, the better, but the outlay of time and investment to produce one book each year, as I currently do, is very demanding for someone with a job or a family, or both.
None of this is rocket science. But listening to people’s experiences the other day I realised what a struggle some self-publishers have. One person had sent off their precious manuscript to an outfit who promised to publish and make her rich. She has not seen any money, as the company she’d trusted went bankrupt, having sold her work on to another bunch of charlatans who also went down. What a mess. Now she has no money left to find out what she may be entitled to, and is lost the commercial maze that she tried unsuccessfully to avoid in the first place.
There’s lots more to say about the financial aspects of self-publishing, and I’ll hold some of it for future posts. I hope my recent two-hour workshop was helpful, although it could have been longer, and pressure of time didn’t enable me to get detailed feedback. There are so many writers out there considering self-publishing, and so many unscrupulous people keen to exploit that interest, that I find myself wanting to help with the basic practical details. Will running workshops on self-publishing generate greater sales of my books? I doubt it, but it feels like something that needs doing.
by admin | Feb 29, 2016 | author platform, readers, self-publishing, Uncategorized
I’ve just done an interview with Paul Teague for his forthcoming podcast series about self-publishing and it got me thinking about the challenge which faces all self-published authors – how to get people to notice your book when you haven’t got the budget for promotions that traditional publishers have.
Let’s assume that you have no money to spend on promotion: what can you do at no cost? First, there’s the local newspapers in your area. Every day, or every week, they have papers to fill with local news. They don’t have the staff or the time to sniff out stories of interest to their readers, and you can help by taking your story to them, in a form that they can use with minimum effort. If you have a tame PR person among your acquaintance, get them to show you how to write a press release, and then do one to send out. Alternatively, look at the newspapers and magazines that people who might be interested in your book would be most likely to read, and analyse the articles in there. How long are they, what kind of headline, and content, and style? Write something like this about your book, thinking of a ‘hook’ that might attract the interest first of the editor and then of their readers. Visual stuff helps too. Do you have a picture of yourself holding the book, or talking to a group about it? Is it of good enough quality to go straight into the paper alongside the article you’ve written? If so, send both the piece (with the word count in brackets at the end) and the picture to the features editor with a note explaining who you are, and ask if they could use it. In my experience, they will, and you now have a few hundred words and a picture in your local newspaper for nothing.
What about your local library? They often have readers’ groups, or do special author events. If you write or see the person responsible locally for organising these groups, tell them about your book and what you might enjoy talking about, and see if they’re interested. Don’t expect to be paid for the talk or your travel. This is a ‘loss leader’, but they will promote the event, again with a blurb and a picture around the area and probably online as well, and if you ask they will invite a photographer from the local paper to come and take the picture for publication with a short caption explaining what you were doing, what the book is about. That’s two promotion strategies in one shot, and again it costs you nothing but your time and travel.
Local radio? They need to find newsworthy local stories for hours of air time every day. Check out the presenters online, listen to what they do and then decide which of them and their listeners might be interested in your book. Write, email or call them and be persistent if needs be, without being a pain. Send your chosen person a copy of the book and a summary of its content, and some ideas about what you might talk about. The presenters often have a journalism background, so a well-presented press release would be familiar to them too. Radio is far easier to get access to than television. They might be wary of whether you will come across well on radio, so if you’ve had any prior experience in this field they would find that reassuring. They won’t pay, and might suggest that you go to the nearest studio and have your interview from there. My suggestion would be that you go to where the programmes is being made and have a face to face conversation with the presenter, which comes across far better, and you have then you have actually met the presenter, which will help if you want to go on the programme again with your later books.
All these approaches take time, but without them you may have a great book and no buyers. Doing any of these for the first time may seem difficult or nerve-wracking, but so it is with anything new, and your confidence grows with practice and experience. The second step is so much easier than the first. There’s lots more you can do: this is just a start.
by admin | Feb 20, 2016 | plotting, self-publishing, writing
I’ve never been an editor. I’ve never been on a course on how to do it, or read a manual. But I’ve been on receiving end of a number of editors’ work, and I think I’m beginning to understand what a good editor does. Here’s what an editor does that works for me as a writer.
- The good editor asks really good questions about the plot plans as they develop. Some writers don’t plan at all, which means that the editor has to wait till the first full draft is available before they can ask these questions, by which time the writer may be thinking about the effort of re-writing, not whether the editor’s comments are valid. If you’re trying to write a story with twists and turns, as I’m trying to do, it takes more confidence than I have to embark on that without a pretty good idea of how those twists and turns are going to work. A few days ago I sent my editor Charlotte the outline I’d been working on, arranged roughly in chapters so we could both see how the ‘arc’ of the story would look. She read it very carefully, and came back with questions and comments such as: ‘why is that sub-plot left hanging?; ‘is that clue feasible?’; ‘should there be a reference to x earlier in the story?’; ‘does this tie in with the same character’s details in the previous book?’. Because I trust her, and she reads a lot and has a good ear for a story, I consider each point she makes, go back to the outline and think some more. The second draft of the outline is always better than the first.
- With some idea of the overall shape of the story, the editor is a good sounding board for key scenes or chapters as the writing develops. Sometimes I agree with the comments or suggestions she makes, sometimes I don’t but it’s a good idea to be asked to think again occasionally. If she likes the ways things are going she’ll say so, which is encouraging when you’re ploughing on day after day, trying to find a balance between a pragmatic need for progress and the search for perfection. Sometimes she and I will talk in depth about a section of the work, and disagree. Then she says, ‘This is your book, so the final decision rests with you,’ and it does. In the early days it took me a while to realise this. It’s easy to feel badgered by an editor when you lack experience and confidence in your own work.
- When the first draft is done, off it goes for really careful scrutiny. Now the editor is concentrating on the finer detail. Charlotte is especially good at checking chronology: ‘Surely,’ she might say, ‘the events in Chapter 13 must be on a Sunday, not on a Friday, so would that shop be open?’ The writer might be tempted to respond, ‘Who cares? Poetic licence’ etc, but you and I both know that some reader somewhere will spot any anomaly and tell you about it, which can be VERY irritating.
- Second and third drafts will follow, and more, each carefully checked. The daunting process of proof-reading is already underway, and typographical errors are picked up as we go, before the final preparation for submission to printer or ebook publication. Reading the ‘proofs’ is of course the final process, but by that time only minimal changes are possible. Woe betide any writer who wants to change anything much at this point. If you are making both hard copy and ebook versions, conversion from one to the other may create some typographical problems and require further proof-reading. I reckon the last proof copy was read by me, Charlotte and our book designer several times before it went to print and there are still three tiny errors, which kind and careful readers have been quick to point out. These will be dealt with before any reprint. The misprints are usually of punctuation, such as comma instead of full stop, or type-setting such as one extra space between words. It’s embarrassing when someone spots them, but the margin of error is three or so words out of one hundred thousand, which isn’t bad in the great scheme of things.
Charlotte is an old friend as well as a professional editor, so that could be helpful or not, depending on her expertise and our trust in each others’ judgement. It’s good advice not to have a friend teach you to drive, but the editor/writer relationship is – or should be – less fraught than sitting side by side in a potentially life-threatening situation. I commission and pay for the editing and book design services that she and her partner provide. The book designer handles the layout of the book, works with me on decisions about headings, illustrations and other design matters, chooses and liaises with the printer. Yes. it costs, but the quality of my self-published book is now as good as anything produced commercially, and I have had final word on every part of the process.
That’s how it works for me. I’m interested in how other editors and writers work together.
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