by admin | Feb 7, 2014 | Explicit details, Fallout, readers, self-publishing, trilogy, writing
Writing a trilogy is trickier than I thought: I’ve written the three novels in ‘Between the Mountains and the Sea’ as three ‘episodes’ set ten years apart, but readers may not tackle them in chronological order. No matter how much you want her to start at the beginning, every reader may start wherever she wants. As a consequence, I can make no assumptions about what the reader already knows about previous events or understands about the characters.
Other series I’ve read with pleasure, notably the Patrick O’Brian ‘Aubrey and Maturin’ stories, make very few concessions to the reader: if you’re lost, that’s your problem. But I have tried to be a little more accommodating, and there’s the rub. For the ‘experienced’ reader I can afford to be implicit, letting them fill in the gaps from what they already know. For the ‘novice’ reader however, implicit is harder: it may drive them back into the previous episodes for greater understanding, or it might drive them away altogether. More details and back stories sometimes need to be provided, which could threaten the flow of the plot and risk annoying those for whom the repetition is unnecessary.
On the whole I think explicitness has won out, but while writing recently the final stages of Part 3 ‘Fallout’ I’ve tipped towards ‘less is more’. The main thread of the story is the one that really matters, to me at least, and is reasonably well tied together at the end. I had planned to have a big ‘set piece’ as a penultimate chapter, to update the wider cast of characters and make their futures more explicit, but when I got to that stage the big scene lost its appeal. I knew I was done when I started to cry, and didn’t want to dilute the final impact by writing more.
So the ms of ‘Fallout feels almost complete. It will have to be read out loud and crafted more thoughtfully, sentence by sentence, but the main work is done, a couple of weeks before my self-imposed deadline. Is that a good sign I wonder? After the protracted agonies of the first novel this has felt alarmingly straight-forward. If there’s something seriously awry I’m counting on my wonderful editor Charlotte to find it. Mick, my partner, has been reading as the draft has unfolded and his feedback has been invaluable, but he may be too close to see the faults clearly, as I am myself.
I recall this feeling of anti-climax: restlessness, uncertainty, desperate for feedback. The urge is to start on the next stage in self-publishing, the nightmare of promotion and ‘marketing, but I’m trying to be patient – not my strong suit. By next week I may know more and feel differently. Watch this space.
by admin | Dec 6, 2013 | self-publishing, selling, writing
Some years ago, even before I’d finished my first novel, I began to think about getting it published. All the advice said, you need an agent, and I dutifully bought the Writers’ and Artists Yearbook and trawled through it for those interested in my ‘genre’, although I wasn’t altogether certain (then or now) what my ‘genre’ really is. Is my work ‘commercial fiction, or ‘women’s’ or ‘literary’ or ‘historical’? I picked out a dozen agents – all based in London, I noticed – studied the various labyrinthine submission requirements, followed them scrupulously, and waited. Suffice to say, all that transpired after many weeks was a series of generically worded negative responses. After a while I found this so discouraging, not to mention the waste of time and money, that I carried on writing, finished the first novel, decided it was the first of a trilogy, and started the second. Should I try again to find an agent? I thought not.
Self-publishing to my own high standard was an enjoyable project. The resulting two books, professionally edited and designed, look good and sell well. I’m proud of them both as ‘objects of desire’, moderately pleased with the content of the first, and much more pleased with the content of the second. But the hardest part of self-publishing has been promotion and marketing. I am an outsider in the book business: looking at the potential avenues for getting my books to a wider audience I now realise how many of them are blocked simply because I published myself.
Many of the fiction awards and competitions do not allow self-published books; it’s almost impossible to get a review; booksellers can be sniffy and suspicious; requests to be part of literary festivals are brushed off. Everyone in the publishing and book business seems to assume that self-published books are vanity projects of questionable merit, which should be kept at arm’s length.
So I return to the issue of whether I want, or need, an agent, not to find me a publisher but to help me promote and market the books I publish myself. Published writers I have asked about this can’t help me as they have never had to think about it. There are occasional examples of successful self-published writers who have been approached by agents, but this is to get them a ‘proper’ publishing deal, not to help them move forward without one. Maybe it’s just not possible: I don’t know enough about it, and wish I understood more.
I wonder this would be easier if I lived in London or a major conurbation. In the rural fastness of West Cumbria it’s hard to find a ‘writerly’ community with advice and experience to offer. And so for the time being I shall finish Part 3 of my trilogy, carry on doing what I’ve done so far, and see what happens. Patience, Ruth, patience.
by admin | Nov 24, 2013 | self-publishing, selling
When I published my first non-fiction books about education, many years ago, we sold through old-fashioned mail order, and directly to clients when I was working with them. Then I started writing fiction, and set up a website where customers could buy my novels as well as the non-fiction books, using Paypal. I thought we would sell more that way than any other, but that has proved to be quite mistaken. The majority of my paperback novel sales have been through retailers around Cumbria, to local people and to some of the millions of visitors to the Lake District every year who enjoy – as I do – reading about where they are. Ebook sales have been quite good, but again seasonal, with the winter time being slower than the summer, reflecting the number of people who are visiting and seeing my books on sale. We sell through Amazon, and through other bookshops that use distributors such as Neilsen, but not many compared to the actual bookshop sales.
Looking ahead, my hope is to reach more readers, within and beyond the Cumbria region, and that the larger bookshop chains will then be encouraged to stock the books. I need to publicise more, and that’s a goal for when the full trilogy is finished and out there, by early summer 2014. The publication of Part 2, Forgiven, boosted the sales of Part 1, A Good Liar, and the third one ‘Fallout’ could have the same effect. I hope so. But setting up this new WordPress blog has prompted me to consider whether I want to sell books through this website. I think not. To do so would mean an upgrade to allow me to use the site commercially, and is it worth it for the proportion of sales that have come via that route? Instead, I think I’ll use this site to blog about the writing process, use the written word to clarify my own thinking, and engage with other writers and readers too.
If people want to buy my books, they have various opportunities to do so, in both paperback and ebook form. Sales will not be spectacular, but there’s no sell-by date on historical fiction and sales should be steady year by year. Already we’re re-printing ‘A Good Liar’ as stocks of the first 1500 print run are almost finished. Word of mouth and a little local publicity seem to be working. Now if I could just persuade people to buy the books rather than lend their own copy to every friend and relation who wants to read it, that would be good!
by admin | Nov 23, 2013 | self-publishing
My old website on www.ruthsutton.co.uk looks impossibly clunky now, but there’s some good blog posts on it, so the current challenge is to lift some of that into a new glitzy WordPress ‘website’ that I’m trying to build.So far, no joy, but I’ll keep working on it.
Hopefully tomorrow at this Guardian masterclass we’ll learn how to post photos and video, which could be great if I can manage to do all that myself. Don’t want to have to rely on – and pay! – someone else to do those things for me. Only when I feel that the website reflects me without embarrassment will I feel happy to use it as a proper ‘author platform’. Is a bad website worse than no website at all? I suspect so.
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