Authors Electric

What did we do before that Chap NGT (Not Got Talent*) entered the room and answered our every question? I suppose there was Google… just how many times do we say… “Let’s Google that!” It’s common parlance, usually when watching something on TV. “What’s he been in?” “How old is Joan Collins now?” No body knows, or you are on your own, and Google becomes your best friend with every answer at your fingertips! Oh, how I pity the people of yesteryear before the internet was even thought of. Then again, maybe they didn’t need the answer to the question                 “Was he in an episode of Casualty? The one with the train crash.”** In the good old day you would reach for a trusted book. Printed matter cannot be questioned, it can be relied upon to provide good advice. Especially when said tome is called Everybody’s Best Friend. Edited by Harold Wheeler Hon.D,Litt, F.R.Hist.S (The man has so many le...

Here's Aunty Debbie trying out her mother-of-the-bride headwear! What’s new on the internet Problem Pages? Aunty Debbie’s been seeing a lot of posts recently about the great God Amazon blocking or pulling books and terminating accounts. It seems the bots are on the rise and the use of AI isn’t helping.  So why would Amazon want to terminate your account? After all, when you sell books, you make money. And when you make money, Amazon makes money. Not much on each transaction – a commission on the sale, maybe a delivery charge for the ebook, a profit on the cost of printing and shipping physical books – but if you multiple that for every one of your sales and then every account on KDP, and it all adds up to a significant amount of money in Amazon’s coffers.  So there is no reason for Amazon to rain on your parade, is there?  Is there?  Well yes. You see when you set up your Amazon account, there are pages and pages of those pesky little terms & conditions . You kno...

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...

Sixth instalment, eh? Who knew this advice lark could get so exciting? My first agony column (and yes, it really is agony most of the time) was waaay back in 2013. Bad writing has of course been around for much longer than that, but I like to think I've helped so many people better themselves over the years. So what shall we talk about today? I like to focus on the moment, on the themes I'm seeing online and the questions that are really, truly asked on social media -- albeit spiced up just a teeny, tiny bit for added value and then condensed into the pure essence of ... I want to publish a book. I watched a YouTube video by someone who said I could sell thousands a day and get rich really quickly. Tell me how I do it, as I can't be bothered to look online myself and do some research. My time is really important to me. Well, what kind of book do you want to write? I don't want to write a book. I just want to publish a book. Lots of books. Hundreds of books, so I can get...

So it's a new year. A time to reflect on your failures of the past and to look forward to your new failures ahead. It's a time to think about the poor decisions that led you to whatever sorry state you found yourself in at 11:59 PM December 31, as you knelt on hands and knees releasing all the alcohol you had earlier ingested into a cold and frozen street gutter as you anxiously await the dropping of whatever shamanic object your local civic administrators have deemed symbolic of your community. Yes, my local little hamlet has decided the possum is our most perfect metaphor  It is a time to consider what different actions you may take in the following year to prevent these same mistakes and usher in all new and interesting ones. It is, in short, time for the litany of new year's resolutions. I'm not generally one to make new year's resolutions. I know myself well-enough to know that trouble and disappointment will find me regardless of whatever ill-con...

So the questions have been pouring in to my Agony Aunt mailbox since my last post . People just can’t get enough of my helpful advice, can they? So in the spirit of spreading the love and knowledge, here are some more tidbits for your delectation. Dear Aunty Debbie: Why are some ebooks so expensive? So many people give them away for free, so why doesn’t everybody? Why should I pay for something that isn’t even physical? It’s not like there’s a printing cost, is it? A Broke Reader Dear Broke Reader: You and me both. Broke, that is. But we both have to eat and pay our bills, don’t we? I’m assuming you have some kind of a job to pay yours? And as a writer, my job is – well – writing! So I need to be able to pay my bills too, and it takes an awful lot of book sales at FREE to pay any bills at all, if you get my drift? And while an ebook may incur no print or storage charges, it still requires the same bum-on-seat writing time, the same editing costs and the same design costs. So...

If you've been following my monthly ramblings on here (I've been around since the start of Authors Electric, so I'm part of the furniture - probably that creaky old wardrobe in the corner of the attic with the door that doesn't shut properly ...), you'll know that I write the occasional mostly-tongue-in-cheek advice column. It may be written with an irreverent approach, but much of the advice therein is worth looking at, if only to discard or laugh at! So now I want to talk about how advice can do more than get you off to a bad start - it can land you with huge bills and/or get you into serious trouble with the authorities! The trouble is, advice is one of those things that is often asked for but never actually wanted once you've got it. And everybody has an opinion. On everything . I should know - I'm one of those annoying people who happily delivers unasked-for opinions in clothes shop changing-rooms. But telling somebody they look lovely in a dress i...

Carrying on my sporadic and probably utterly useless advice column from previous posts , because I'm sure you all are just desperate to know what pearls of wisdom I can dispense, aren't you? I'm a published writer , for God's sake. I must know what I am talking about... Dear Aunty Debbie: I want to be published. I don't care who with, but I don't want to do it myself, because that just means I'm rubbish, doesn't it? An Impatient Writer. Dear Impatient Writer: Not really. I mean you may be rubbish, yes. I can't possibly comment on that. But what's wrong with doing it yourself? Seriously, these days, independent publishing has lost a lot of the stigma it once had. It's not vanity publishing - you're not paying to be published; you are just buying in the services that you need. Think about it - what is small press Joe Bloggs Publishing going to do for you that you can't do yourself? If they edit for you, who will be doing the work? ...

Where we'd all like to see our books, eventually ... Image c/o Wikimedia Commons One piece of advice that is frequently aimed at today's self-publishers is that we ought to write, and publish, at a pretty high velocity. Conventional wisdom (insofar as conventional wisdom can be said to exist in a movement that’s still in its infancy) suggests that momentum is everything. A single book is worth little; two or three books represent just a fraction of what has to be done. We need, in short, to have a vast personal bookshelf, stuffed full of multiple titles. I can see the logic of this viewpoint, too. After all, if a reader has read and enjoyed one of your books, then they’ll be altogether more inclined to pick up another. However, I’d add a small caveat: this is only likely to work if the books in question are any good. Over the past few years I've read a lot of self-published books. Many of them, of course, have been wonderful: well-thought-out, well-written, amb...

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...

The bird that almost didn't fly. You can't get editorial help from a committee or, worse, a multitude. Well - you can - but it stands a good chance of turning your work into a camel. (I know, I know, camels are pretty efficient beasts in their way - but only in certain circumstances.) Some years ago, when I was despairing of finding a publisher for my next undoubtedly mid-list and cross-genre novel, I decided that I would blog it, a chapter at a time. If you want to read it, it's called Bird of Passage and you can find the whole novel, properly published on Amazon Kindle, here if you're in the UK and here if you're in the USA. But definitely not on any blog.          Even then, I was an experienced and well published/produced writer with a good track record. And although I'm always very happy indeed to talk about my writing, what inspires it, how I feel about it, how I work, and so on, I made it clear that I didn't want detailed editorial f...