Snowed Out

I'm snowed out of the little office that I have in the garden. Shame I brough my laptop into the house the day before it snowed or I would have an excuse for not getting on with my work!

Catching Up

I spent a few days in the New Forest over half term which is why I haven't blogged for a little while. The week before was busy too so now I am back at my desk I can catch up with the various things on my to do list.

First on that list is Without Alice.

Without Alice is the debut novel from the very lovely DJ Kirkby whose Portsmouth book launch I went along to a couple of weeks ago. Published in October, Without Alice is an affecting tale of tangled lives, secrets and lies which pulls you through just about every possible emotion. The quote from Peter May (author of Virtually Dead) on the Punked Books site sums it up well: 'D.J. Kirkby takes us on a dramatic journey from birth to death, through love, betrayal and tragedy, to an unexpected redemption.'

There are two more opportunities coming up to meet DJ Kirkby and have your copy of the book signed. 
Saturday, November 6th 2010 at Waterstone’s (Portsmouth) 11 am – 4 pm

Saturday, March 12th 2011 at Waterstone’s (Liverpool ONE) 12 pm  – 5 pm

You can buy Without Alice direct from the publisher or via the usual channels.

You Think It's All Over?

In the talk I gave last week I listed a few of the common errors made by people who were self-publishing their book. The errors ranged from covers to quote marks to spines and the last one was:

Thinking that the finished book is the end of the process. It's not - it's just the beginning!

Making a book is the easy bit. It's just processes. Whether you outsource those processes to someone else or handle them all yourself there is a checklist of things that need to be done. You may do them well, you may do them poorly, but at the end of it you will have a book. And that's great if you have made the book to give to family and friends - easy - you know where they live (presumably). But the majority of people self-publishing their book want to get it to a wider audience - and ideally, sell it to them.

This is where it gets tricky. How do you reach that audience? Even traditional publishers with their publicity departments and  (supposedly) huge budgets make a hash of this sometimes so what chance do you have?

Well if you've written a book on Victorian Railways and you're the editor of Victorian Railway Monthly Magazine and you run a railway enthusiasts' website with an extensive mailing list, then of course you have a considerable advantage. You have direct access to pretty much your entire market and you can reach them cheaply and easily. If this is you then good luck with your book, you don't need to read on.

However, if your book has a less defined audience, you need to be creative in your approach to getting your book out there.  It's hard work and you need thick skin and persistence but here are a few things you can try:

* Get online. If you're reading this then you are already so make the Internet work for you. Start a blog and start building your audience. Comment on blogs written by other writers in your genre and use their blogrolls to discover more.

* Twitter away. Whether you love it or hate it Twitter is a great way to reach a wide audience. Follow and be followed and post regular updates on your writing tales. The writing community is (on the whole) friendly and supportive and before too long you will have built up a good following.

* An online book tour – once you have a bit of network built up you could ask some friendly bloggers if they would mind reviewing your book. Remember to return the favour.

* Send out a press release. If your book covers a topical issue send it out nationally – even internationally – in these days of email attachments it doesn’t cost any more to send it to the New York Times than to the Portsmouth Evening News. Don’t spam editors with totally irrelevant releases though.

* Even if it is a general book try to put a local spin on it to generate interest from the local press. Contact radio stations too and offer them books to give away as prizes. It might not get on air but you could get on the website – another audience again.

* Identify the organisers of regional literary festivals and email them to ask if you can participate. These are difficult to get into so rather than simply ask if they’d like you to do anything, suggest something to them, ‘I’ve just self-published my book on XYZ and I think I could host a lively session on the pros and cons’.

* Hold a launch at a local bookseller (independent if possible, they’re having a hard time of it). Round up your friends and family and your new blog and twitter followers and have a get together. You’ve published your book – now celebrate!

It is worth highlighting that although this post is aimed at people self-publishing their book, more and more authors published by traditional houses are being expected to play a very proactive role in the promotion of their book. The big budgets I mentioned at the beginning are tied up in the publishers' key titles and you would be surprised (or perhaps not) how little of that budget filters down to new authors and their books. Nowadays it is not enough to be author. It's not even enough to be author and publisher if you are self-publishing. An author must be author, publisher, marketer and salesperson all rolled into one.

Not easy.

Talking Covers

Last night I headed down to Portsmouth to give a talk on self-publishing. Held at the New Theatre Royal I was quite looking forward to a bit of theatrical glamour but alas, the talk was in a slightly less impressive room at the top of the theatre. However the good news was that my talk had a fairly impressive score with the music from the auditions that were being held booming in the background!
The talk was organised by New Writing South and went well I think. I enjoyed it anyway and I hope it was useful. I handed out some brief notes at the end of the session  and thought I would post extracts from them here on the blog. Here's a note on covers.

Should you Judge a Book by its Cover?
Hell, yes!

The cover is the first thing your friend, family or customer will see so you really want to dress to impress. Please, please, please pay someone to design your cover. Do not get a friend of a friend who did technical drawing at college to do it. Commercial publishers engage specialists to do this – so should you. I can’t emphasise this enough.

When you engage a designer, don’t expect them to read your book (although some might). You should provide a cover brief which gives them a taste of the book and ideally give them an idea of other books that your book is similar to. Some people criticise the publisher habit of creating very similar covers for similar books but if your book is the next da Vinci Code why not make it look like it. It will sell more copies.

There's another talk in Brighton on 10 November. Do come along!

Vanity Press or Self-Publisher - What is the Difference?

Just a few years ago the distinction between self-publishing and vanity publishing was fairly clear. You pay someone to publish your book, that’s vanity, right? You set up your own company to publish your book yourself – that’s self-publishing. Easy. Now though I think the distinction is becoming blurred.

So what’s changed? Well the advances in print-on-demand technology coupled with the development of simple template-based solutions to creating a book file (by that I mean a print-ready version of your book) have opened up the book publishing arena to anyone with a computer and internet connection. 

It has enabled companies to quickly move to provide complete book publishing services to authors keen to get into print and it has enabled authors to take control of the publication of their own book. This can only be a good thing, surely? Well yes and no.

  The reason vanity presses ended up with such a bad reputation is because by and large they exploited an author’s desire to have their book published, often conning them into thinking that their book was actually being published by a commercial press – even though they were paying for it. Well it’s no surprise to know that those companies still exist and are still exploiting authors but the good news is there are many more who are offering a good and valuable service to help authors publish their book.

But how do you know who is who?

Just because a company asks you to pay to have your book published, it doesn’t mean they are a vanity press. Historically it doesn’t mean they are a self-publisher either, but something in between. And why shouldn’t there be something in between? There is no need to squeeze the industry into preconceived pigeonholes and if a company can create and publish your book, making it available through certain retail channels and that is what you want then why shouldn’t you pay for it? Why is that vanity? When a business pays to advertise its product or service we don’t accuse them of vanity – it’s business and whether you are hoping to carve out a career in writing, attract a publisher or agent or simply bind a few copies of your life story for your kids then why not?

Whatever the semantics of the debate, the fact is that the publishing landscape has changed and is changing, making it easier than ever to take the publishing of your book into your own hands. What matters is that you, as author are aware of the options available to you if you are thinking of publishing your own book and that you are clear about how each option works, what is expected from you and what you can expect to achieve at the end of it.

A good self-publishing service will make those options clear to you, a bad one won’t. This, then is the difference that matters now.

The Self-Publishing Advice Service - Why?

Well, a short while ago I was participating in a panel debate attended largely by writers. The debate changed as it always does from whatever the original discussion was to ‘how do I get published?’. 

The usual questions, answers and objections were put forward (‘Publishers won’t even look at me without an agent’, ‘Agents never reply when I submit’, ‘How can Jordan have published X,Y,Z for a gazillion pounds when I can’t even publish one? And I can spell!’.) 

But one comment really stood out. It was from a man who had self-published his book, sold a reasonable number of copies but *still* couldn’t find a commercial publisher. The problem he said was that when a self-published book arrived on a publisher’s desk, the assumption was that it was rubbish (he chose slightly stronger wording but you get the idea).

Well that got me thinking. As a ‘traditional’ publisher of quite a few years I have had my fair share of self-published books arrive on my desk and I realised that he is probably right. That is the assumption. And why is that the assumption? Because, quite often, I’m afraid they do look rubbish.

It is the fault (and loss) of a lazy publisher to discount a book on the basis of how it looks but think about how we select books in a bookshop. We pick up those that look nice. That feel nice. That smell nice (If you see someone in a bookshop breathing in the lovely smell of new book it could well be me.) We look at the back. We are teased and intrigued by clever, concise blurbs. We look at the image. We look at the finish.

If a book fails on any of these things (apart from maybe the smell), it goes back on the shelf and that’s it. Sale lost.

In the same way you have one chance to get a publisher (or agent, or bookseller) to notice your book and whether you are presenting it in manuscript form, in book form or in any other form you can think of you owe it to yourself to make it look the best you possibly can.

So there is my chief bugbear with the self-publishing industry. All too often the books that are put out there are just not acceptable quality. The formats are odd, the paper is wrong and the covers shout ‘self-published’.

And why is that? Well I think that in part it is because people who want to see their book in print are often – usually – from outside the industry. It’s hard to know the questions to ask, the companies to trust and the prices to pay when you are coming to it cold and are faced with the huge range of options available.

So that’s where the idea for the Self-Publishing Advice Service came from. A service that will help authors create the best possible book from their work. A service that looks at each individual set of requirements and makes recommendations for the most suitable and cost-effective route to publication depending on those individual requirements. A service that gives authors the information they need to be fully in control of the self-publication of their book – and enjoy it.

And of course the book itself is just one part of it. I’ll be posting a series of articles about the self-publishing process, including how to sell and market your book here, so please do check back from time to time or sign up to the mailing list using the box on the site.

Thanks for visiting!