by admin | May 14, 2014 | Cumbria, readers, selling
I got a phone call: ‘Do you know someone is charging £50 for one of your novels on Amazon?’ I didn’t know whether to be flattered or horrified, so I settled for being confused. I checked on my Mac, and the information was what I expected: the Kindle versions of my books were there, front and centre, but the paperback version took another few clicks to access. I also noted that Hoad Press – that’s my own imprint – was only one of a list of sellers, some of whom were charging very odd prices. I guess that’s just Amazon punishing us small sellers for not giving them the fulfillment role which makes them lots more money than hosting other sellers.
But then I went onto the Amazon books site using my ipad and completely different windows came up. A friend who tried on her ipad got different information again. ‘Try ABEBooks’, she said. ‘They’re owned by Amazon, so they should carry your books too.’ No such luck. Hoad Press don’t exist according to them, and an odd collection of my education books appeared, some of them seriously dated. As we talked and checked these anomalies, I realised that I could spend all my time trying to sort it all out. I also understood why the number of Amazon paperback orders which was only ever a trickle has recently dried up completely. Not for the first time I reflected on the fact that I can sell ten books in ten minutes at a book group or library talk, of which I do quite a few in the Cumbria area, and make as much money as I would earn through Amazon ‘real book’ sales in several months. With my time precious, how would I rather spend it, sending off plaintive emails to Amazon and receiving stock responses back, or meeting the people who want to hand over their money to the author herself? No contest, which probably demonstrates only what an amateur I am.
When the big breakthrough comes, when Richard and Judy are singing my praises, when agents are beating a path to my door and the film rights are up for grabs, maybe then I’ll trust Amazon with ‘fulfillment’ and not even think about it. But for now, I’ll keep plugging away at selling through my website and Paypal, and doing what I enjoy – writing, talking about writing and selling to my readers direct whenever I can.
by admin | May 7, 2014 | Fallout, promotion, self-publishing, selling, structure
The lady in the local bookshop was impressed. ‘You wrote this?’ she said, as I showed her a poster about my new book. ‘So, you’re an author,’ she continued. ‘I know lots of sheep farmers, but I’ve never met an author. Except you.’ She turned to another customer who was waiting to be served. ‘This lady’s an author,’ she said. I felt as if I had two heads, but I smiled and agreed that I should sign all the books of mine that she had on the shelf.
People certainly seem to like to have a book signed by the author, which is why booksellers are keen for you to do so. Without the signature a book can feel like an artefact, produced far away by someone you can’t envisage. It may have a function and even bring pleasure in an impersonal disembodied way. Perhaps the signature makes the author seem more like a real person.
I’ve been writing for as long as I can remember, first at school when I was taught to make marks on paper, then copy words and finally to think of the words in my own head before I wrote them down. Then for the next fifty years or so my writing was about my work, dictated by experience and reality, but all that time what I really wanted to do was write fiction – stories, dialogue, descriptions of people and places and events that I made up. It took all that time to carve out the time and energy and stop worrying about not making any money out of it. Non-fiction writing was part of the job, but fiction would be part of me.
It was much harder than I anticipated. You don’t just write sentences, then paragraphs, then a scene or a chapter. You have to have an idea of where you’re going, and why. It took me a long time to figure that out, which is why the first novel took four years and was frequently dropped – or hurled – into the ‘too hard’ basket. Once I found out what I needed to do, then it became a process to follow, with countless hours spent tapping away, staring at the screen, thinking, changing things that seemed false or unnecessary. At some point the changes begin to feel like sliding back down the hill you’ve just climbed, and then it’s time to stop.
Being an author doesn’t feel like a mystical process, worthy of the awe of the lady in the bookshop. I couldn’t call writing a job for me, more of a hobby, like growing sweet peas or knitting. And when you self-publish as I do, writing is the easy part. After the writing is done the book has to be produced, and people persuaded to part with their money in exchange for it, which is much harder. But still they want you to sign on the author page, and when the new book comes out in a couple of weeks I’ll sign away until my hand aches, because it’s the scribbled name that makes the author seem like a real person.
(If you buy a book via my website, by the way, I’ll try to sign it before it’s sent out, if that’s OK with you.)
by admin | Mar 23, 2014 | crime fiction, formula, genre, research, selling
There’s a book I brought with me on this trip. A real book, not the virtual ones I loaded onto my ipad before I left to save the weight. This real book I want for reference, not for reading: I want to scribble on it, turn pages down, use a leaky highlighter, do all the damaging things we do with real books that makes us possess them and feel part of them. Trouble is I haven’t opened this book yet even though I’ve been away for nearly three weeks and have had plenty of opportunity. I could be reading this book now instead of sitting here writing about why I’m not doing so. Something about this book is putting me off.
The book is about writing crime fiction. I bought it because I want to try this genre and my academic upbringing says that you should do research before you start a new project. So I bought the book, to find out how to do it. What am I afraid of? Part of it is that I have an exaggerated aversion to doing as I’m told. If someone says that this is the way to do something I instantly want to do something else. Part of it also is that I read too much crime fiction and recognise the formulas, which I don’t want to replicate. I don’t want to create a middle-aged protagonist with a dysfunctional family and a destructive personality, even though these create fruitful dramas to spice up the narrative and give it ‘depth’. I don’t want to hide ‘clues’ for earnest readers to find, or to divert the same earnest readers from a final chapter revelation. I don’t want to wrap everything up neatly at the end, tied with a ribbon or a rope, a prison cell or a gun.
And there’s something else I want to avoid. I don’t want to write about graphic violence, and I would love to avoid any violence against women altogether. Oh, and did I say I would like my crime fiction to win prizes and sell big?
If I could stop wittering and read the book on writing crime fiction all these immature assumptions about the genre might be exposed as immature assumptions, and I would be so relieved and inspired that I would start plotting and planning immediately. Or not. Maybe, seriously, I should think first and then read how it’s supposed to be. Reading the book might be easier, but I think I need to let this ‘cognitive dissonance’ fester for a little longer. That’s what I think right now. By next week I may have changed my mind. That’s what comes of being perverse.
Highsmith: of course. I need to read Highsmith. Any other genre-busting suggestions?
by admin | Feb 19, 2014 | A Good Liar, Cumbria, Fallout, Forgiven, historical fiction, readers, Rohinton Mistry, selling, structure, trilogy, writing
Of all Rohinton Mistry’s poignant and ‘pain-full’ stories the ones I love most are in his ‘Tales from the Firozsha Baag’, about an apartment building in Bombay (as was), told through the eyes of a boy who lives there and knows all the quirky tenants and the connections between them. The eleven stories are linked by the boy and a place, and we follow the complex trail of friendships, quarrels and animosities which leads from one episode to the next.
A trilogy, three stories in a sequence, can have similar delights, and present similar challenges. I didn’t make a conscious decision to write a trilogy until I found my main character Jessie Whelan, months after starting to write ‘A Good Liar’, and quickly discovered that she was too complicated and interesting – to me at least – to be lost after just one book. So I left the ending of ‘A Good Liar’ ambivalent and unresolved, to encourage the reader to want more, jumped ahead ten years, and carried on.
It was only when planning the next part ‘Forgiven’ that I realised that for some readers this would be the first book, not the second. I needed to build on the prior knowledge of some readers without repeating too much and boring them, while at the same time enabling new readers to have sufficient backstory to develop the internal tension I was striving for.
Flashbacks weren’t going to work: there was too much detail that could seriously interrupt the forward movement of the plot. So I had to reveal necessary backstories through reminiscent conversation, or questions from ‘new’ characters requesting and receiving information that new readers might also find useful. All that couldn’t be within the first few pages, but if the new reader was kept waiting too long they might give up. Not all that the new reader might find interesting is needed at one time: little morsels can be dropped in from time to time, just to add flavour to what’s currently happening.
It all needs to be planned of course, and I’m getting better at that from a very cold start. My early assumption that I could start to write and all the necessary plot details would fall neatly into place was the main reason why my first effort ‘A Good Liar’ took four years to complete, compared with a tight year or less for each of the following books.
Once the first draft is readable, it then needs to be looked at both by ‘experienced’ readers, who’ve read the previous parts of the trilogy and ‘newbies’ who have not. Their needs are different and both have to be reasonably happy with what’s presented to them. In commercial terms, it’s helpful if, wherever the reader starts, she is keen to read either the previous parts of the trilogy or the following ones, or both.
Selling more books was not a major consideration when I decided to write a trilogy, but it’s been noticeable that when the second part appeared it boosted sales of the first one. I’m hoping of course that the publication of Part 3 of the trilogy ‘Fallout’ will similarly bootstrap the sales of the previous two. For a self-published author of fiction, finding a readership will always be a challenge. A single book might have novelty value but then sink without trace when the first flurry of attention – if you’re lucky – is past. Producing three books in a series in successive years is a writing challenge, but should help sales, if the books are worth reading. If the first one is a reeker, then it could work the other way. Until the author’s name on the cover is so well-known that anything you write will sell, you’re only as good as your last book.
Despite the complications, I’m glad I decided to write three linked books, each set in the same area with overlapping characters and ten years on from the previous one. The story encompasses the first half of the twentieth century in West Cumberland, and I enjoyed the long view as well as the microcosmic details of each episode. It’s a West Cumbrian saga as well as a family saga, and I’m happy about that.
Now that the third part is virtually complete, I’m casting about for the theme, place and time of the next book. I may even try a different genre, crime fiction this time, but set in the past like ‘Life on Mars’. I won’t be making a definite decision about that until ‘Fallout’ is ready for the printers in about three months’ time.
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!
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