Authors Electric

I was recently persuaded, by my daughter, to get myself a ticket, jump on a train, and leave next morning to visit her in Cornwall, which, to my own amazement, I did (travel-wise, I am usually not that spontaneous,  but the weather was lovely). That evening, she complained about her nasturtium invasion which happened when she was away in Edinburgh for a month, with a play in the Fringe. She'd planted herbs and a few vegetables earlier in the year, plus a few  nasturtiums, and expected to see them all thriving. Instead, she'd come home to this... That's her workshop in the background, to which there should be a path. She now has to navigate through the nasturtium jungle. Somewhere, down deep, are other plants struggling, and probably failing, to survive. We all know someone should get out there and hack, but she can't bear to, and neither could we, because, in October sunlight, the colours are stunning - the reds, golds and oranges splashed among those flat, waterlily...

One of the advantages of being an independent author or micro-publisher is you get to choose and control your sales channels. One of the disadvantages of being an independent author or micro-publisher is you get to choose and control your sales channels. If you have an e-book to sell then the obvious place to go and tout your wares is Amazon. Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing has an easy upload platform, good opportunities for testing the product before finally clicking Publish, global storefronts and facilities for tweaking the book page via Amazon Author Central. Happy days. Amazon even offers a couple of promotional schemes if you give them 90 days exclusivity and join KDP Select. Up to 5 days of Free Book Promotion (would you want to do that? Debate is never-ending on the subject) or the Kindle Countdown which gives a time-based promotional discount for your title. Why does Amazon offer these benefits in return for exclusivity? Because other channels do sell e-books. If yo...

Me under the floorboards There’s a typescript of a novel under the floorboards of my house. Some months after we moved into the place, we mustered the willpower to rip out the hideous brown carpet downstairs and put down laminate flooring, as befits every stiflingly middle-class existence. When I say ‘rip out’ I mean of course ‘pick up the phone and call the flooring people’, and when I say ‘put down’ I mean put down the phone. But I was very much in the house. I saw it happen. Because I was there, on the front line so to speak, I was able to see the ‘real’ floor of the living room when the carpet came up. Almost in the threshold of the living room (this is important, treasure-seekers) were a few loose boards. I defy anyone confronted with a few loose floorboards not to prise them up and peer down into the void. (Aside: I’ve also noticed that, whenever you strip wallpaper from a wall, there is always writing underneath, graffiti, drawings, bizarre demonic messages, etc. Alway...

Katherine Mansfield by Kathleen Jones I'm writing this in New Zealand, which is a big country with a small population and it's a long way from anywhere by ship or plane.  That makes books expensive - particularly imported books.  There are quite a few small publishers here, and there are off-shoots of big publishers - like Penguin and Random House, but the print-runs are short and the costs high.   When Penguin NZ published my Katherine Mansfield biography , I was horrified to find out how much it cost to buy (about £50).  The consequence of the economic downturn is that publishers have been struggling here (Penguin have been taken over by Random House) just as they have elsewhere - and book shops have fared badly too.  There are wonderful small independent bookshops, but the big chains, like Whitcoulls, have been in deep financial trouble.  New Zealand is the kind of place that is perfect for the e-reader - no distribution costs and access to the fr...

As fellow members of Authors Electric will know, I have a sometime tricky relationship with technology: it doesn’t always do what I expect it to, although pressing the wrong button might reasonably be regarded as just plain dim. Since technology and business systems have played a greater part of my working life in 2012 than in any other year of my career, I thought I would review the trials. THE KOBO ISSUE KOBO, bless ‘em. Are they really geared up for self-publishing authors? Their website is pretty, in a twee kind of way, but their customer care people don’t seem to have a clue what’s happening when you have a problem. In November, I uploaded the first of my Sprite Sister books. On the basis that it all went through okay, I uploaded the other five titles – except they didn’t upload. They got stuck somewhere. I had filled in and ticked all the boxes: have uploaded and re-uploaded my e-titles numerous times on Amazon, so it’s not unfamiliar. Then nothing. You ...

A first time, young, independently published, UK novelist who makes it to the top of the Amazon best-seller lists has to be pretty special.  One of the E-book phenomenons of the past 12 months has been Sophie Nicholls ’ novel The Dress,   and, as I'm just about to produce my own first novel on Kindle, I was fascinated by her success and wondered what I could learn from her approach. Sophie is a poet with a collection ‘ Refugee ’ recently out from Salt publishing, and she has previously published a novella ‘Ruby Slippers’ , but The Dress is her first novel.  I read and reviewed it for the IEBR site and was very impressed by the quality of the writing and the story.  It seemed to me (and she has 75 reviews on Amazon to prove it) that it was equally as good as many of the big commercial names stacked up in Waterstones and WH Smith;  Kate Morton, Victoria Hislop, Adele Geras, Joanne Harris - Sophie’s novel stands up well against them. Yet Sophie didn’t both...

          I don't know about you but I strictly adhere to 'sell by dates' on food - or anything else for that matter. If the label tells me that the bag of potatoes has to be used by 20 April then in the bin they go on the 21 April.  My partner keeps telling me that 'sell by dates' are only a guide and I should use my common sense. If the food looks and smells okay then I can still eat it but I don't like to take the risk so throw it out.           I think publishing can be a bit like this. Someone decides that a book is old-fashioned, out-dated and that people won't be interested in reading it anymore. It's too 'gentle', set too long ago, isn't pacey enough. So the book gets remaindered. Or no more are printed once stocks run out. It doesn't matter that the book is very popular, that people still ask for it. It's past its 'sell by date' so in the bin it goes - metaphorically speaking. No matte...

Herbert Allingham was born in 1867, the year of the Second Reform Bill. Not everyone was happy about this modest extension to the franchise. “The only thing we can do is as far as possible to remedy the evil by the most universal means of education that can be devised. I believe it will be absolutely necessary that you should prevail upon our future masters to learn their letters,” said Robert Lowe MP. The Education Act of 1870 was the vital first step towards compulsory education for all. For the remainder of the nineteenth century young people were more likely to be able to read than older people and males more likely than females. Most of the new readers who wished to continue reading after they had left school wanted fiction. They bought weekly newspapers or magazines, nothing costing more than a penny or, preferably, a halfpenny. These were Allingham’s customers from 1886 when he was 19 years old and his first serial story was published in a penny weekly paper for boys. Over the ...

Cover Design by Rob Tysall   Fear. Fear. A fanatical devotion to the.... no, fear again. I'm not a complete e-publishing newbie. Last November, the Coventry Writers' group, to which I belong, ventured into e-publishing with our Coventry Tales . It was a rewarding and educational experience and the sales, while not amazing, have not been bad. Nor am I a stranger to conventional publishing (or whatever it's OK to call it now... I can never remember). I've had two books for adults and one for YA published that way and I have another series commissioned, this time for younger readers. So I'm not a complete beginner, though I'm relatively inexperienced in comparison with many of  my esteemed co-contributors on this blog (I'm learning lots from them). And I now have a book ready for e-release. Well, almost ready. It's been revised to within a jot and tittle of its life. It's been edited and proofed. I've hired a professional designer and pho...