by admin | Apr 19, 2015 | A Good Liar, cover, Cumbria, Fallout, Forgiven, historical fiction, Lake District, promotion, readers, self-publishing, selling, title
The publication of my second novel ‘Forgiven’ in 2013 felt very stressful, or at least that’s how I remember it. I felt it was better than the first one ‘A Good Liar’ and had certainly been easier to write, taking a year rather than the previous tortuous four year process. But I underestimated how long it would take to get the final stages of the publication business sorted out, and wanted to get it out into the shops as early as possible in the Lake District visitor season, when probably I should have taken decisions more carefully. Patience was never my strong suit.
The main frustration was about the cover. The cover of ‘A Good Liar’ had taken quite a while to put together and consisted of three parts: a old photo of schoolchildren to place the story in its time; an atmospheric picture of Wastwater to reflect the setting; and a profile of a woman to indicate that the protagonist was female. As one of the booksellers told me, ‘It’s a good cover because it tells the reader about what’s inside.’ When it came to part 2 of the trilogy ‘Forgiven’ I struggled first with the title, which doesn’t give much away, but did pick up one of the themes of the book, and I quite like one word titles. The setting was mainly west Cumbria and the town of Whitehaven in the immediate post-war years, with a family of coal miners at the centre of the action. The cover we ended up with was a gorgeous photo of the local landscape in spring, from a photo taken at about this time of year, when the valley floors were bright green with new grass and there was still snow on the fell tops. A lovely image, but it told the reader very little about the book itself.
From the outset, this book has sold less well than ‘A Good Liar’ and when the third in the trilogy was published the following year, that one sold better too. I began to wonder whether one reason for this might be the enigmatic title or cover of ‘Forgiven’. If the author’s name is well-known then I’m not sure that title and cover matter very much. But I’m expecting visitors to Cumbria to pick this book off a shelf and be interested enough in it to buy it, and why would they, really? They don’t know me from a hole in the ground. They need more at first glance than ‘Forgiven’ could offer them. For ebooks the cover matters less, but for a book on a shelf, competing with others in the reader’s view, the cover matters more.
If I’m right about this, I’m asking myself whether I should approach the reprint of ‘Forgiven’ as an opportunity to ‘re-brand’ it with a new cover. The title is fixed and unchangeable, but changing the cover would be easy and there are many precedents for doing so in the traditional publishing world. As a self-publisher I have absolute discretion about how my work should look, and this could be the time to exercise it.
So, I’m back to the age-old question, what makes a good book cover? The bookseller I referred to earlier takes the functional approach: the cover should indicate what’s between the covers. In that case I might need some reference to winter, hard times and to the pits, and perhaps some images of people of the period. In other words, I could use the same formula as we used for the first cover. Or I could use a more striking image, such as the one I chose for book 3 of the trilogy ‘Fallout’, and enjoy the mixed views that followed. The cover of ‘Fallout’ was designed to surprise, if not shock, the reader and succeeded in that intent, for good or ill.
I’ll have a few months to think about it as there are still enough from the first print run of ‘Forgiven’ to see us through this summer’s busy season. Is a picture of an old coal mine a turn-off for the largely female readership my books attract? Should I hold out for an image of the screen lasses, the remarkable women who worked on the surface sorting and grading the coal, despite the copyright issues that we ran into last time? It’ll be interesting to start again and take longer over the design than I did last time, and even more interesting to see whether a different cover affects sales.
The beauty of writing historical fiction is that it doesn’t have a limited shelf-life: it can be as relevant in ten years’ time as it is now. But the down-side of that agelessness is that it can’t burst upon a waiting world as something completely of its time, new fresh, contemporary. Within the historical fiction genre I’ve tried to avoid the Catherine Cookson cliches, and romanticising a past era that was challenging, complicated and fraught with ambivalence. The cover could reflect some of that at least, rather the rather bland if beautiful image it has at present.
Writing this post has made up my mind. I’ll start thinking about the cover of ‘Forgiven’ now and give myself, and the cover designer I work with, more time to make the best choice. And my new crime fiction book which is due out in November will need a brilliant cover too, which should be ticking over in the back of my mind from now on, while I’m still writing the first draft. Not for the first time, I realise that turning thoughts into words – written or spoken – helps me to pin down what I’m thinking about. I’ll be another year older this week, and beyond the age when my mother’s Alzheimers started. I keep looking for signs that my brain is seizing up, but for the time being, thank heaven, ‘cogito ergo sum’.
by admin | Dec 15, 2014 | critique, dialogue, opening paragraph, pace, promotion, self-publishing, selling, writing, writing workshops
Well, actually, it’s not quite my first. That was at the Borderlines Festival in Carlisle in September – which was a great book festival, by the way – but it was only an hour and a half, not long enough to do anything substantial. Even so, I enjoyed it so much that I really want to have another go, for a few hours this time. I picked the middle of January to connect with people who feel that writing fiction is on their New Year’s resolution list, or whatever intellectual bucket list they carry in our heads and hearts. For me it was the approach of a big birthday that made me think that life is short: instead of just thinking about writing a novel it was definitely time to get started.
So Saturday January 17th was my pick for a date, when 2015 is beckoning. What about a venue? I’m not sure how many people may be interested, so I didn’t want to commit an expensive venue with the pressure of a deadline. Cumbria library service has been very supportive to my wring and publishing, and Kendal library has a good space and helpful people, so that was the decision. Despite all the uncertainties of an untried enterprise, I’m really clear what I want to do during those few hours. Looking back on my own choices, what has mattered to me most as a writer in the past five years has been balancing character, plot and setting and do justice to all three. I’m a good teacher, so with those goals in mind I can put together a learning experience that will – hopefully – motivate, inform and encourage people who like me feel they have a story to tell and need a place to start. And then there’s the business of getting published: I have plenty of advice to offer about that, from hard personal experience. The workshop is called ‘Writing and Publishing a Novel’, and I’ll be interested to see how much time participants will want to spend on each of these two aspects. For me, logic dictates that writing something of real quality has to come first: what’s the point in self-publishing something that isn’t as good as it can be?
So, Kendal Library it is, on Saturday January 17th, from 9.45 to 3.15 with a short break for lunch. Five or so hours is not much but it’s start, and we’ll see how it goes. When it came to a decision about a fee, I had some interesting choices to juggle. To get something similar in London would cost a lot, and with travel on top, but that would be led by a recognised ‘name’ in the business. My books sell well across Cumbria, but I couldn’t call myself a ‘name’ even here, so why would anyone want to come, and how much might they be prepared to pay? In the end I opted for £30, and bring your own lunch. Apart from the cost of a catered lunch you get into all sorts of paperwork about dietary needs and options, and it would be so much easier and more convenient to ask people to bring a sandwich, or a salad, or some leftovers for midday nourishment and let the real business of the day be about the writing, not the eating. Will anybody come? Some will, they’ve already signed up. The main problem will be letting people know that it’s on, and you can help if you read as far as this, if you know someone who lives within reach of Kendal and might enjoy the experience.
Which brings me to the thorny issue of marketing, the self-publishers hardest task. Some local bookshops will carry a poster but others will not. The libraries will advertise, but BBC Radio Cumbria can’t do so, except for local community events, and this workshop doesn’t qualify as that. The local papers might carry something, but if it’s too early it’ll get swallowed in the tide of Christmas stuff. So I think I need to wait until after Christmas, when people are beginning to think about the year ahead. Will it work? I don’t know. I know I can help adults learn something new, because that’s my life’s work, but the business of marketing is still a learning experience for me. I’ll have to be prepared to fail before I succeed – that’s how learning works. If you want to come, by the way, you can go to the ‘Events’ section of my website, sign up and pay online with Paypal. Or you can email me direct on [email protected]. Couldn’t be simpler, and it could be the first step on a road that will give you as much pleasure as it’s giving me.
by admin | Jul 27, 2014 | promotion, readers, selling
In the past month I’ve done a number of ‘speaking engagements’ with local organisations about my books, both the content and the writing and publishing process. Being a self-published author I welcome and need such opportunities to promote my books directly, as the ‘normal’ channels of commercial publishing are closed to me, although authors who do have a ‘normal’ publisher tell me that they too have to arrange most of their own promotion. I really enjoy talking about my writing work and people tell me I do it well. I’ve been trying to work out what I do that seems to be appreciated.
It took me a while to realise that all I’ve learned about ‘presenting’ as a teacher over the past thirty years can be transferred into this new part of my life. I’ve been designing and running workshops and giving talks of various lengths to various size of audience for long enough to know what works. So here are some of the things I try to do:
1. Think about your audience ahead of time. Find out who they are, what brings them together, what they’re likely to be interested in and expect. That’s not to say that you always aim to do what they expect, but it helps to know what the ‘rules’ are if you want to challenge them. For example, if some of the people in your audience are pretty knowledgeable about your topic already, ask for their questions not at the end but before you start, and then adjust your talk to respond to these questions if you can.
2. If you feel you must use an audio-visual aid like Powerpoint, do so with care and as little as possible. ‘Death by Powerpoint’ is a well-known phenomenon in all forms of public speaking and many people are heartily relieved to be able to look at the speaker and not the screen, and sit in light not in the semi-darkness often required for good definition on your slides. Slides work much better for non-verbal visual images, so leave the words to be spoken not read.
3. Outline briefly what you’re proposing to talk about, and check whether that will suit people. That would be a good time to take a specific ‘requests’: ‘is there anything within that outline that you particularly want me to talk about?’ Listening is so much easier if you have an idea what you’re listening for, and have had the chance to shape it. I’m always surprised how much people appreciate the opportunity to be involved in this way, even if they choose not to take it.
4. Be aware of the time limit you’re working to and stick to it. People have lives to lead and to go on too long puts them in the awkward position of not wanting to tell you to shut up and sit down, even though they need you to do so. If there are essential things to add and your time is up then stop, say that your time is up, and give people the option to move on, leave or ask you to continue for a few more minutes. Here again, giving them the choice is respectful and appreciated.
5. Try not to use notes and never, ever, read from a prepared ‘lecture’. If it’s an academic lecture, or very specific and detailed, you might need the information to hand to ensure that it’s correct, but the kind of talks I’ve been doing to readers’ groups and women’s organisations don’t need that level of attributable precision. It should sound more like a conversation, even if it is pretty one-sided. If you’re reading you can’t be looking at the people you’re talking to and picking up the cues and clues they give you. It’s about respect too: the people are as important as your words. They invited you and don’t want to sit looking at the top of your head or -worse still – your half-turned back as you read off a screen.
6. All this assumes that you really know your stuff, but if you’re talking about a book you’ve written yourself you have been immersed in it for months and know all there is to know about it. The more you talk about it, the more the words flow. Practice, practice, practice: if you need to practice at home with just the cat to talk to, then do it.
7. If you want to read passages from your books, the choice of what to read is too hard – I think- to do on the spot and needs to be thought about ahead of time. You can use extracts to illustrate a specific point as you make it, about using accents in dialogue for example, or writing about weather, or introducing a new character through ‘show don’t tell.’ Plot spoilers are out, of course, and in a good book there might be quite a few extracts that fall within that category and have to be avoided. Some extracts might have particular relevance with or resonance for a particular audience: in my local fiction people love to hear mention of a place or event that they recognise. Once you’ve decided on a short list of extracts, mark them up carefully so you can find them fast, and don’t attempt to read them all, making your final choice according to the people you’re talking to, the circumstances, and what you decide at the time would be most suitable. Two or three extracts, of a few paragraphs each, no more, will be enough. Here again, practice reading them ahead of time. Even though you wrote the words yourself, speaking them out loud for an audience is an art form in itself. Too fast or too slow and your listeners tune out. And leave them wanting more, finishing on a upturn or something unresolved. You would like them to read more for themselves, and you’re providing just an appetiser not the main meal.
8. There’s much more to say hereabout respecting and entertaining your audience, but this is probably enough for now. It’s a blog post not an essay after all. One last thing: you need to be positive toward the people you’re talking to, thank them for the invitation, and for their attention when you’re done. Talking about my books is a privilege for me, and a delight. And, incidentally, I’ve sold more books directly in this way in the past month than I have in the past year on Amazon.
by admin | Jul 8, 2014 | cover, Cumbria, promotion, readers, self-publishing, writing
Things seem to have gone a bit flat, and I’m feeling that way too. The third book is out, on schedule, in the shops and on Kindle. Now what? I’m schlepping round the libraries and WIs in Cumbria, talking about ‘Fallout’ and how and why I wrote it the way I did. I’m defending my decision to tackle the nuclear issue, and all that follows from that. I’m explaining why I left the ending of this last part of the trilogy somewhat ambivalent, which I did, after worrying for weeks about the final chapter. I get little shreds of feedback: a second hand comment that the book was fine but the nuclear stuff was too technical and boring, followed by another that the scenes set in the Windscale plant are riveting. Different strokes for different folks obviously and you can’t hope to please everyone, but it’s unsettling nonetheless. Today an email arrives saying that there are words missing in the Kindle version, and down I go again into the slough of despond, even before I’ve checked it myself and fixed the problem, if there is one.
I suppose it’s down to my inexperience as a writer. For the last twenty years or so in my other ‘work’ in education I’ve been more certain of myself, the skills I have developed seem clearer and the feedback more immediate. None of that seems to happen in the writing business, or at least not in the self-published writing business. I don’t have the luxury of a publishing team or an agent reassuring me about what’s happening, and that the decisions I/we made about the plot and the cover and and everything else were the right ones. I’m plagued by intermittent doubt, and yearn for someone who understands books to tell me that I’ve done a good job with this trilogy, not just as a testament to life on the Cumbrian coast in the twentieth century but for the writing itself.
Next week I’m going to the lunch to celebrate the Lakeland Book of the Year for 2014. I haven’t made the shortlist in the one category that might apply, but I want to be there, just to be around people who are into books and publishing and this wonderful place where we live. I’ve even bought a dress, and may, possibly, have the confidence to wear it. Maybe that will cheer me up.
by admin | May 29, 2014 | character, Cumbria, historical fiction, promotion, readers, self-publishing, selling, trilogy
I searched on the bookshop shelf in a nearby market town but my books were not there. I asked at the counter. ‘Oh, they’re in the ‘local’ section,’ I was told, ‘in the back room’. What could I say? True, my books are set in a recogniseable area, and local people who read them are pleased to find places that they know. But all the fictional characters are exactly that, fictional, and these characters and their stories are actually more important that the ‘localness’. So why are the books ‘condemned’ to the ‘local’ shelves, alongside histories of hematite and Herdwicks?
This could be another example of the tyranny of genre. We are obliged to allocate a genre, that is a label, to our books so that the booksellers know where to put them on the shelf. And as a consequence of being labelled as ‘local’ – by others, not by me – I find myself explaining to someone in Ambleside that the books may be set on the west coast of Cumbria, about an hour away from Ambleside by road, but they can be – and are- read with pleasure by people on the other side of the Atlantic, not the other side of the county. One of the beauties of historical fiction is that – compared with contemporary fiction – it doesn’t date. There may not be a sell-by date, but there appears to be a ‘sell-within’ limitation, and I’m wondering how to get around it. I would so love to see my novels on a bookshop shelf in Leeds, or Newcastle, or even London, but the chances of that appear to be slim to none.
If I were a commercial publisher, I would find editors of the national media book sections who would commission a review, but as a self-published author the review route seems to be blocked. Do nationally recognised reviewers ever get to see, never mind read, self-published fiction, or do they, like the publishers, restrict themselves to reading that which has been already ‘filtered’ by other colleagues in the book trade? Is it worth sending off expensive parcels of books in the hope of a response? There may be a ‘slush pile’ for reviewers as well as for publishers, and I have no particular desire to end up on it. Is there anyone out there, I wonder, who would be willing to take a chance on reading a trilogy by a self-published author with pretty good sales, about an independent woman struggling to survive and maintain her integrity and independence against serious challenges in the early twentieth century?
Let’s say the trilogy is set in ‘The North’, that foreign land known only to pioneers who venture as far as the M6 and keep going past Birmingham or even Manchester. Is there such a genre as ‘northern fiction’? I’d be OK with that: there is something about this half of the country that feels and looks different than the more manicured south. But when ‘local fiction’ comes to mean ‘readable only by those within a thirty mile radius of where I live’ I get a bit fed up.
That’s the end of today’s moan. I resolve to be more positive in future.
by admin | May 25, 2014 | A Good Liar, Authenticity, cover, Cumbria, fact-based fiction, Fallout, Forgiven, Lake District, promotion, readers, Windscale fire
A couple of years ago, when my first novel was in production, my ‘book designer’ asked me to go to a bookshop and look at covers. ‘See what you like,’ he said, ‘and what will make people want to buy your book. Then we can give Kevin the cover designer some direction and criteria.’ So I looked, and felt that most of them were anodyne and boring. Nothing about many of the covers made me want to take the book off the shelf, never mind hand over any money for it. I wanted to be struck by the cover image, engaged, intrigued – some reaction. It wasn’t about liking or not liking, more about curiosity.
The first book ‘A Good Liar’ played safe: it combined three images, all of them aesthetically attractive, which collectively gave the reader a sense of what lay within. The second book ‘Forgiven’, looking back on it now, played even safer. It was a beautiful image of a green valley and distant a distant snow-capped ridge, and in the foreground a gorgeous granite stone wall which epitomises the area where the books are set. We had tried to create a cover image using photos of pit wheels and women with children, but it was too fussy and nothing was working. The running theme of the book was ‘forgiveness’, and in the end I felt that the distant peek of light in the sky symbolised that feeling, but it was a bit of a stretch. Basically it was just a beautiful image.
Now we’ve had to make a decision about the cover of book three, ‘Fallout’, which is set against the calamitous event of the world’s first nuclear reactor fire, in Cumberland in 1957. It’s a tough time for my heroine Jessie Whelan too – no more details! – and I wanted a sense of anxiety in the cover, nothing too soft or bland. A beach scene this time, I decided, to complement the view of fells (that’s a Norse word meaning ‘hills’ that’s commonly used in Cumbria): one of the wonderful west-facing beaches that we enjoy in this region. But it had to be a special beach scene, and we found one, with a red sky, beautiful but threatening too. Still I wanted more: among the photographs I’d found of the reactor fire was one of a group of workers in their anti-contamination suits and helmets, looking like spacemen. The clever cover designer imposed this image on the beach below the red sky and the cover of ‘Fallout’ stared out at me. I loved it: as intriguing as I had hoped for and authentic too.
I made a poster and took it round the local bookshops to alert them to the forthcoming publication. One buyer at a local attraction flinched and literally stepped away from the image. ‘We can’t sell that here,’ she said. ‘It’s too frightening. Not the kind of thing for this shop.’ It’s not a proper bookshop, granted, but other crime fiction books on the shelf have quite graphic images. I was surprised by her reaction and I should have asked her to explain it, but I didn’t. Later she confirmed to the books’ distributor that she wouldn’t be carrying copies, even though the first two books in the trilogy sell well there. Nothing I can do about it, I suppose. It was never my intention to upset anyone, but then the line between curiosity and aversion is notoriously thin. I wanted the ‘Fallout’ cover to convey the danger that threatened my heroine and her community, and clearly it does that effectively. But I think there’s more to it: most people’s impression of the Lake District and Cumbria is green hills, sparkling lakes and Beatrix Potter. For those of us who love the wild west coast, that image needs a challenge, and I think – I hope – that my three novels portray real life here, not some romanticised idyll. If people’s reaction to the ‘Fallout’ cover starts some conversation about this dichotomy, that’s a good thing. It may cost me some sales, but maybe not. I’ll have to wait and see.
By the way, you can see all the covers on the books page of my website www.ruthsutton.co.uk. Have a look and see what you think.
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