Authors Electric

Recycling a blog post from way back (because life is really just running away with me right now), I thought I'd revisit my hugely popular advice column and see if the pearls of wisdom from 2013 are still relevant today ... Girls of a certain age – hands up who remembers  Cathy & Claire?  These were the agony aunts of every 70s girl’s favourite teen magazine,  Jackie . Would you believe you can pay nearly thirty pounds now for original back copies of this magazine that told us what to wear on a date and how to tell if a boy liked you? So in the spirit of our lovely 70s aunties, I’m going to use this month’s blog to offer some advice to independent authors. These are things I’ve learned in the two years I’ve been self-publishing on Amazon and elsewhere. Maybe some will resonate with you, maybe not. Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old woman this month... You probably won’t agree with me anyway. Dear Aunty Debbie: I’ve published a book on Amazon and some people don’t like i...

Girls of a certain age – hands up who remembers Cathy & Claire? These were the agony aunts of every 70s girl’s favourite teen magazine, Jackie . Would you believe you can pay nearly thirty pounds now for original back copies of this magazine that told us what to wear on a date and how to tell if a boy liked you? So in the spirit of our lovely 70s aunties, I’m going to use this month’s blog to offer some advice to independent authors. These are things I’ve learned in the two years I’ve been self-publishing on Amazon and elsewhere. Maybe some will resonate with you, maybe not. Maybe I'm just being a grumpy old woman this month... You probably won’t agree with me anyway. Dear Aunty Debbie: I’ve published a book on Amazon and some people don’t like it. Should I tell them they’re wrong, or get all my mates to vote down their reviews? A Sad Author Dear Sad Author: Reviewers are our friends. What they write in a review is entirely their own business and you have no rig...

I am by nature a hoarder, only the fact that I’ve moved house quite a few times in my life and was once two days away from moving to Spain has made me have a clear out. And now I'm moving again so once again am making decisions about what I keep and what I take.  Like all authors, I keep manuscripts of published work. I also have some work that has never seen the world of print and probably never will. Some of it I have shredded during various moves - a lot of stuff got destroyed before the almost-move to Spain - others I have hung onto because I’ve liked the idea or plot and want to tweak it when I have time. There is one manuscript I will always hang onto and that is the first children’s book I ever wrote which never got published and deservedly so but will always have a place in my heart. Much of our early work is part of the learning process and it’s good to read old manuscripts and realise how far you’ve come. The world of children’s fiction has moved on though and manu...