Should I stop writing, or keep going?

Regular readers might have picked up from recent posts that I’m having a bit of a crisis about my writing and whether to continue. It’s not about whether I can write: I think I can, and have published some good stuff. Readers love my books and tell me so. No, it’s not about quality, it’s about commitment.

arizona asphalt beautiful blue sky

When I decided to write my first novel, about ten years ago, I seriously underestimated how long and how difficult it would be to finish and get it published. I thought I would find a publisher – wrong. I thought it would fly off the shelves – also wrong. Getting it into print, into bookshops and into readers’ hands was all more difficult than I anticipated.

I anticipated an easier ride the second time around, so I wrote another one, then another, and so on. Now my sixth novel ‘Burning Secrets’ is out, and although the process does indeed feel a little easier, that’s mainly because I’m no longer surprised by how much time it takes.BURNiNG_SECRETS_AW.indd

In the years since I started writing I’ve established a loving relationship, nested happily into my new community, and retired from my education consultancy. My life is happier and more settled than it was, but now I want to make sure that I’m pursuing more of my interests, without the writing becoming the cuckoo in the nest that pushes everything else out.

I’m probably thinking too much about it, so I’ve decided to stop deliberating for a while, enjoy the summer and then come to a proper decision. To help the process, I’ve booked myself into a four day writing course in September, away from home, with unfamiliar people, to let the right choice bubble up into my mind more clearly than it’s doing now.

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It’s an Arvon course, which is some guarantee of quality, although as I’ve learned before, you’re still dependent on the skills of the tutors and and the commitment of the rest of the group. I paid a lot for one Arvon course that was not well led, and distracted by group members who seemed to have come for the entertainment and late night drinking. I spent the whole time in my own room writing. My mood was reflected in what I wrote that week – the darkest passages of my first book ‘A Good Liar’.GoodLiar_COVER.indd

One of the tutors in September is the author of one of my favourite books – ‘The Pike’ by Lucy Hughes lucy-hughes-hallett-costa-book-awards-2013-in-london-k775c2Hallett. It’s non-fiction, but such a great read that I’m sure I’ll learn from her. I just hope she’s a good a tutor as she is a writer. The components of the course look useful too – plotting, narrative voice, dialogue, and more. And no doubt there’ll be discussion about publishing, promotion, and other aspects of the business of taking a book to market.

My hope is that by the end of that week my mind should have cleared, and a decision about whether to continue will have materialised out of the current fog. It could go either way.

 

Local or global promotion?

The story so far… I tried putting one of my books on the Kindle free list. 115 copies were downloaded, and quite a few readers were reading ‘pages’ during the four days of the promotion and shortly afterwards. No way of knowing whether there will be a longer term impact on sales.


downloadLast week I tried another of KDP’s suggested strategies, where the price gradually increases over four days – I think. Seemed complicated, but I gave it a go with another of my books and kept my eye on the ‘promotion’ results. Nothing. Nada. Nichts. Not a single download, at any of the ‘staged’ prices, and no impact on the ‘pages read’ numbers. I deliberately didn’t do a lot of Tweeting etc about the ‘promotion’ as I wanted to see whether price alone was the reason for people choosing to download.

The conclusion of these two deeply unscientific investigations is that you can guarantee a high level of interest in your ebook only if you give it away, for free. I find that pretty depressing.

In the past week I’ve experienced another form of ‘promotion’, which started small and then stepped up. Much of my readership is based in Cumbria, where all my books are set. Many of my readers are pre-digital, and the limit of their internet engagement will probably be Facebook, reading but not posting. There’s an FB page run by a a group in my local town and I use it to check dates, events, things for sale. I posted that my new book would be out on June 6th and a few details about it, and the post was shared quite widely. One of the people who saw it was obviously a local reporter looking for a story, and he rang me and asked a few more questions. The exchange took about five minutes and I thought no more about it.

The following day, this was the front page of the North West Evening Mail, based in Barrow-in-Furness and read all over South West Cumbria. There was a fuller article on an inside page, with quotes from my website and more information. It doesn’t raise my international profile, but the people who read this will get their signed paperback copy and pay the full price on the cover. Maybe thinking small and local is the way to go.IMG_0637

Do book ‘promotions’ work?

Well, I put ‘A Good Liar’ on the Kindle free ebook list last week and 115 copies were downloaded over the five days of the offer. At the same time the number of (KENP) pages being read of both ‘A Good Liar’ and ‘Forgiven’, which is the next book in the series, both went up markedly. FORGIVEN_2017There may or may not be a connection. This week I’ve tried another Kindle promotion strategy, putting ‘Forgiven’ into the process where the price progresses from low back to the ‘normal’ of around £4 over four days. No noticeable increase in downloads as yet, but I admit I’ve been too busy to do anything about telling anyone about the promotion. At least there’s some income from this strategy, but it doesn’t look particularly effective so far.

More news on that next week. In the meantime, I’ve sent the new book ‘Burning Secrets’ to the printers and can do no more with it until the delivery arrives on May 31st. I know I should be more proactive about promotion, but I need a break after the struggle to get all the production stages completed on time and make all the necessary decisions. And I had a big birthday party to organise and then enjoy – which I did, very much. pexels-photo-634694.jpegLoads of people came from away, and it was great to have a steady flow of visitors on the following morning, so we could catch up properly.

I could have put flyers about my new book on the tables at my party, and made a little speech about it, and had a draw for a free copy, but I just didn’t want to to do that. This was an important personal occasion, and the books are about what I do, not who I am. Does that make sense?

Hitting the big 70 puts things in perspective, and running around pushing people to buy my books isn’t top of my priorities. There are many readers, especially in Cumbria, who enjoy the books and say so, and have been anticipating the new one for some time. I’ll do the usual round of meetings, talks, festivals and radio, and hope that will draw some new readers in too. The ebook and Amazon sales will be picked up by my US distributors Fahrenheit Press and its charismatic MD Chris McVeigh,who knows the book selling business far better than I do. I could do with a similar ‘champion’ here in the UK – someone who loves my work and knows how to promote it – and does so for love, not money. Maybe that’s unrealistic, and lazy!

‘Free’ ebooks: what are the implications?

After my post last week about the ludicrously low prices that are being charged for ebooks, I decided to try something. I put one of my novels – the first one, ‘A Good Liar’ – onto a four day free offer, starting on April 23rd, which happened to be my birthday. free dreamstime_xxl_24924655(Considering my qualms about this method of book promotion, you might call it an ‘unhappy birthday to me’. ) Ever open-minded, I wanted to see what would happen in both the short-term and as a possible more lasting consequence.

I’ve just checked the figures on my KDP dashboard and 97 free ebook copies of ‘A Good Liar’ have been downloaded in the past two days, 72 on day 1 and 25 yesterday. Will the downward trend will continue over the next two days? Apart from listing the offer, I did nothing more to publicise it. I assume that Kindle have a list of freebies that tight-fisted readers trawl through. It only takes seconds to click and costs them nothing, but then what? Do they actually read the book, or check the first page or two and discard those that don’t appeal?

By the weekend I’ll know the total number of downloads. What I will not know is how many, if any, of these free books were read. I could check the Amazon reviews, but very few readers actually bother to submit anything. I could check hits on the website, or sales of the other books in the series – all of which are still listed at the ‘normal’ price of around £4 – £5. I’d be surprised if a freeloader was prepared to pay that for a book, unless they were so enamoured of the story that they simply had to read on, and that would be great.

My curiosity is piqued. Maybe I should try another experiment, temporarily reducing the cost of one of my books to 99p, to see if that makes the same difference. I could use it as part of the promotion campaign for the new book, which is due in early June. That book will handled by Fahrenheit Press, who have the ebook rights to my crime novels. I’ll be interested to see what their fairly idiosyncratic approach to promotion does to raise reader awareness.

I’ve done ‘loss leaders’ before: in my previous life as an international education consultant I did work ‘pro bono’ sometimes, just to introduce myself to a new client, confident that ‘work generates work’ and that more jobs would follow, and they always did. With book sales I’m less confident that a free offer will produce a lasting effect. That could be because my books are not as good as the contribution I made as a consultant, although I do get a gratifying amount of positive feedback. Or maybe as a relative novice,  I just don’t understand how book selling really works.balance sheet dreamstime_s_114698015

Fortunately, I don’t expect or need to make a living from writing and publishing my own books, in paperback as well as ebook formats. But I don’t expect to make a loss either. I work hard at my writing and want readers to enjoy the result. I find and pay good people with expertise to edit, typeset, proofread, design the covers and print my books. All those paperback production costs need to be covered, and that depends on the delicate balance of sales and pricing. Conversion to ebook is relatively cheap, but I still don’t want to undervalue the work that goes into my novel, in what ever format. There’s the dilemma.

 

Opening paragraph: it has to be good!

hardback bookAlmost at the end of the writing and editing process on the new book now, and the last thing on the list of issues to deal with is the opening paragraph. The current version has been written and rewritten countless times over the past few months and before I’m done it’ll be started all over again. Not many lines, maybe half a dozen sentences, but I want to get it as good as I can.

It’s always a challenge. In a short space you have to give the reader a sense of place, time, character and the impending story, and every word counts, like poetry. It’ll be the first thing the curious potential reader will look at, and probably the first thing I read aloud when I’m presenting the book. I’ve read the first paragraph of ‘A Good Liar’ many times over the years since it was published and I’m still pleased with it, and I want to feel the same about the first paragraph of this book too. It’s almost there, but it’s still too clumsy. I’ve tinkered with it until the words start to blur. Now’s the time to start it all over again.

The other crucial section of course is the ending, the final few sentences. All the major plot points are sorted out by then, no more twists, just a ‘human interest’ scene and a shred of dialogue to leave the reader interested in what might come next. I think I’ve got that. So the first paragraph will keep calling to me until the deadline for sending it to the designer is upon me, or I just can’t bear to look at it any more. In either case, by the end of next week it’ll be done. Thank heaven.

What’s the story on ‘quotes’ for book covers?

With the ms of the new book with the copy editor, I’m thinking ahead to the upcoming stages of the book’s production. I’ll be using the same cover designer as on the previous five novels, and have a brilliant photo image already bought and paid for: now I’m wondering about the ‘back cover blurb’ so that the designer can get started.

All of which brings me to the business of finding a ‘quote’ ie. a brief endorsement of either the book, or me as the author, taken directly from a credible source who is willing and able to provide a phrase or two and put their name to them. Amazon readers’ reviews don’t cut it, I’m sorry to say. I’ve used ‘quotes’ on only two of my previous books: the first, on the reprint of ‘A Good Liar’, was hardly effusive, but its source was impeccable in Margaret Forster, an icon of the literary world and a famous Cumbrian. She told me when we started to correspond that she didn’t normally do any kind of endorsements, and I was both surprised and delighted when she agreed to this…..

GoodLiar_COVER.indd

‘Historical background is convincing, and an excellent ending’ 

CRUEL_TIDE COVER front

‘A thrilling tale of corruption and exploitation’

The second was from William Ryan, a very successful historical fiction writer, for my first crime novel ‘Cruel Tide’. I’d met him on a course and appealed to him directly, not through his editor or agent, and again was very pleased when he agreed. I’ve not managed – until now – to get a ‘quote’ on any of my other books, but that’s not through lack of effort.

There appears to be some unwritten protocols and other barriers that stand in the way. First, it’s very hard to find a way of approaching an author to ask if they would be willing. I’ve recently been reprimanded because the approach wasn’t made indirectly by my editor. If I had an agent, the approach could presumably have been made that way. Authors don’t widely share their email addresses, understandably, and it is not in the interests of an editor, agent or publisher to have their precious ‘client/commodity’ distracted by a gesture of support to another author, especially – horror! – a self-published one.

Secondly, authors who are successful enough that their name counts for something are obviously going to be very busy people. A recent approach to one was rebuffed by a litany of the pressures that the person was currently having to deal with, which meant that there couldn’t possibly be time to glance through a proffered manuscript and offer a few words. I had used the phrase ‘a quick read’, which was been batted back to me as if it denoted a lack of respect.

The third possible reason for my relative lack of success in my efforts has been the suspicion that authors are asked (or expected?) by their agents and/or publishers to offer quotes only to writers from the same ‘stable’ as themselves. Heaps of ‘quotes’ appear routinely in newly published books, inside as well as on covers: presumably the people who provide them have been able to find the time for the ‘quick read’ or whatever it takes to enable a few phrases to be offered for this purpose. There are ‘insiders’ who scratch each others’ backs in this aspect of publishing, and there are ‘outsiders’ like me, and possibly some of you. As a self-publishing author of what is still known as ‘genre fiction’, I’m accustomed to being treated as some kind of low life, but it still rankles occasionally.

In my darker moments I wonder if this reciprocal endorsement accounts for the stellar ‘quotes’ that sometimes appear on the covers of books that are really not that good, or not up to the usual standards of the author. In my even darker moments I wonder how some of the books on the shelves ever got published at all without apparently being subject to a properly critical edit. Could it be that once your name is known and will sell a book on its own, you can get away with mediocrity?

On a more positive note, my latest book will have a quote on the cover from a well-respected writer in the crime fiction business. It will be what’s known as a ‘generic’ quote, speaking to my books as a whole rather than the new one in particular, and the person providing it – for which I’m very grateful – is someone I happen to know a little from sharing a book festival panel. We’d met and talked, and I could approach him directly without offence. I did, asked politely, and he agreed. Hurray.