Authors Electric

Someone asked me recently about collaborating on a book with another author. I’ve done quite a few and so far they’ve all been a joy to do and I’ve always learned a lot during the process. The best advice I could offer though, was to only write with people you like, respect and get along with: it’s a policy I’ve always followed and has allowed us to thrash out disagreements over content in an amicable way, to have a happy time doing the book and to remain friends afterwards. Creating an anthology should be a piece of cake in comparison, but it requires a different sort of collaboration: it’s more to do with organisation than actual creative input. First of all there is the tossing up in the air of the idea of doing one in the first place – to be honest I can’t understand why we haven’t produced one before, as we all write fiction …  Sue Price: I can't, either, Karen. I mean, we all write fiction - what better way to introduce our work to a new audience than an anthology ...

As I packed for the move to Seattle this fall, I made decent progress on all but one front: a, mountain of personal papers. Imagine 3000-5000 pages--everything from old love letters to leases, poems, resumes, professional correspondence, contracts, published articles, ancient receipts...Okay, now imagine all of that thrown into a barrel with 600 rejection letters dating back 20 years--picture all of this shaken wildly, then removed in handfuls and tossed pell-mell into boxes. I faced something like that. And I suppose I could blame it on a half-dozen cross-country moves...or on a crushing divorce. But I think the truer answer may lie in the staggering number of rejections received over the course of two decades (after I'd published four novels preceded by twenty more years of rejection. Or to put that another way: twenty plus twenty years of failure with five years of success in between). I believe I numbed myself in ways I never knew. As I started to sift through the wreckag...

A Himalayan, not a hybrid rose: my Paul's Himalayan Musk.  Hybrid is, apparently, the new buzz term. 'You're going to be hearing about hybrid writers a lot soon,' remarked a colleague gleefully. Actually, the term was first invented (I believe) by the excellent Bob Mayer , some time ago but my colleague was absolutely right, and I already had been reading about it here, there and everywhere. I noticed it because I rather like the idea. It's one I'm comfortable with for various reasons and not just because I love roses, hybrid or not! Now I know that a percentage of new authors self publish in the hope of being noticed by traditional publishing, big or small. Nothing wrong with that either if that's what you've decided you want. The slush pile has all but disappeared, having an agent no longer guarantees publication - nor has it for some time - and stories of traditional publishers trawling Amazon for successful novels are legion. Although if you...

When I started to write professionally I wrote solely for craft magazines. After a year or so I  decided to see if I could get a craft book published. To my amazement I found a publisher willing to give me a chance and my first craft title was published. This book was based on the many hand-outs I'd written for the craft classes I was teaching.  After a few years I'd had several adult craft books published so I decided to try something new. So I changed focus slightly and started to write activity books for children. After this I moved my focus to picture books. Over a 14-year period I had 21books traditionally published. Then along came the revolution of the eBook. This opened up a brand new world and I was able to turn a project I'd been working on for years into an eBook. This book is a collection of short stories featuring the trickster character Anansi ( Anansi The Trickster Spider ). Sales were better than I expected, so I created a second collec...

Back in October (2012) I started to think about two picture book stories I hadn't got around to converting into eBooks. I had tried to get the books traditionally published but had found publishers were either cutting back or had completely stopped publishing seasonal books. Most were telling me that books that only sold over certain periods of the year didn't make them enough money. What was annoying was many had given positive feedback on Where It's Always Winter ( Amazon UK - Amazon US ) and The Perfect Christmas Tree ( Amazon UK - Amazon US ). So during November I converted both titles and placed them onto Amazon. Due to the typical Christmas madness and work commitments I was unable to undertake my normal marketing campaign for either title. However I've found both  titles have sold well. So well in fact that one title reached number 42 in the top Amazon short stories paid for section and is still in the top 100. I've had top ten titles on Amazon befo...

As a small indie publisher trying to sell eBooks via Amazon I'm always open to new ideas on how to increase sales. So when a writing friend suggested I read ' Make A Killing on Kindle ' by Michael Alvear I decided to download it. This is the first book I've read that does not advocate using social media to sell books. Instead the author suggests using the tools available to the writer on Amazon. Realising the only thing I would lose would be the 18 hours he states it takes to implement his steps I decided to give it a go. So I picked one of my books I felt was under achieving and started to follow his suggested steps. I updated my author profile, tweaked my book, changed the title slightly and redesigned the front cover. I also spent time researching terms I could use in my book's search engine profile. I know SEO is important in ensuring your book shows up in searches but I hadn't realised that such small changes could make such huge dif...

On the 4th and 5th of this month I decided to give away my eBook: Anansi - The Trickster Spider ( UK link - US link ). Although numbers downloaded were not huge my book did appear inside the top 50 Amazon books for a period, which I consider a result.   Now I've been asked why do authors give away books?  The answer is simple - marketing. In order to gain loyal followers we need to encourage people to read our books. One of the issues with ePublishing is many believe eBooks are badly written, poorly edited etc. etc. The only way to overcome this preconceived idea is to prove (by giving away books) our books are the best we can create and as good (if not better in some cases) than traditionally published books. By giving away one of my Anansi books I'm hoping I prove my stories are worth paying for and readers will pay for and download my second title Anansi - Trickier Than Ever ( UK link - US link ). However I'm not just relying on giving away entire collect...

Last month I posted a few activity sheets to this blog that compliment my first ebook featuring the fun and naughty character Anansi - The Trickster Spider ( UK Amazon link - US Amazon link ). If you missed them they can be found by clicking here .    In the midst of the mayhem of helping organise our hugely successful ebook giveaway on the 23rd and 24th April I also managed, with a lot of help from my partner Jon to publish a follow on title Anansi - Trickier Than Ever ( UK Amazon link - US Amazon link ). This title includes 8 new fun stories aimed at adults who love to share humorous stories with the children in their lives. The stories featured are: How Anansi missed four parties in one night Anansi invites Turtle to tea How Anansi, Fly and Ant won the sun Anansi and the talking melon Anansi and the moss covered rock Why Anansi has thin, long legs Anansi and the field of corn Anansi and the tug of war This month I wanted to give a few new activity sheet...

The Amber Heart: eBook version .           Most writers who have been published in the conventional way will have stories about good and bad editors. My worst experience was with an editor who rewrote substantial sections of my novel without using any kind of track changes software. It was only when I read through the manuscript that I thought, 'I didn't write that... or that ... or that.'           Because this was a novel which had started life as a series of plays, and was set on a remote Scottish island, I had a very precise idea of how my characters would speak, and what would work. This wasn't incomprehensible dialect. It was more to do with the rhythm and musicality of speech which is such a feature of the area. She had ironed out these differences. When, at a key point in the novel, my Hebridean hero says to the heroine, 'I think I will just have to keep you!', she twice chan...