Authors Electric

I’ve been seeing a lot of stuff online lately about keeping, discarding and re-reading books. In the era of ebooks and online reading, the first two may no longer really be relevant – I have no idea how many books my kindle will hold and even if it did get full, I can store the rest in the cloud on my Amazon account. Not that I entirely trust the cloud (I’m too old. I grew up with the idea that clouds were just weather!). What happens if there’s no internet access, or worse still no computer or no power? What then? It’s a bit like online bank accounts, really; how do you prove that little nest-egg in an online account ever existed if you have nothing to show for it? Which is why I always have a passbook even for mostly-online accounts, so I have something physical with numbers on that proves the existence of my money. I expect that if the internet crashes – if one morning there is no world-wide-web, or maybe the power goes off and doesn’t come back on – that I will have more important ...

It's not looking good for your latest submission... OW. It hurts. Someone, some stupid, bigoted, illiterate, stuck-up barsteward, has rejected your writing. HOW VERY DARE THEY! Quick, get onto facebook, get some lurve from fellow-writers who will understand your agony. ‘Just had a rejection from ‘Crappy Ezine’, so upset! Doubting my entire life’s work. About to set fire to my pile of typescripts. ☹’ Friends zoom in with verbal chicken soup for your infected soul. ‘Ignore them, they are jealous of your genius!’ ‘Never heard of it!’ ‘Editor probs only publishes their mates! Sod them!’ ‘I think you’re brilliant, strong, talented, you don’t need them!’ All hoping you'll not have to say the same to them. Yeah, right.  Yes it does hurt to have the outpourings of your inner being, carefully crafted into art by hours of self-scarification, sent back, regardless of how many famous authors we are told were also rejected numerous times . In fact it’s harder to be rejected now ...

The Amber Heart on Kindle - Polish & Christmassy When I was wondering whether to do a Christmas 'special offer' on one of my books and also wondering which one to choose, I found myself trying to decide between a couple of suitable books. But really, when it came down to choices, it was a no-brainer. It had to be the Amber Heart . Even the cover seems kind of Christmassy and in my heart, when I think about this book, I think about Poland at Christmas. It is a big doorstop of a book but then it's a big story. Epic. Romantic. Heart rending. When one of my previous agents sent it out, she relayed a letter from an acquisitions editor who said that she had stayed up all night reading it and weeping. They didn't acquire it though. Poland was a non starter as a setting. Now if it had been Russia ... No point at all in telling them that Eastern European borders have been so fluid and so deadly, in consequence, that this novel, set firmly in that part of mid-ninete...

A collection of 16 short stories If you’ve read some of my previous blog posts you’ll know some time ago I decided to turn my two Anansi the Trickster Spider eBooks into a POD (print on demand) book. At last Anansi the Trickster Spider (volumes one and two) is available via Amazon plus a few other outlets. Now we (my other-half was drafted in to help) decided to create the book using Creatspace. Although it was easy to use we were totally unprepared. We naively set up an account and went in thinking we’d upload a file, choose the font style and size and off we’d go. Then came the surprise (yes I know, you don’t need to tell me, we should have realised it's not that simple) we had to answer quite a few questions. Questions such as:   Do you require page numbers? Would you like the numbering to start with the introduction or with the first story?     Have you considered an index? How about something in the page header e.g. the books title or story titl...

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...

Long tails: Cally's gorgeous but naughty Hector and Dude! It strikes me that now might be as good a time as any to summarize some of the more general conclusions I’ve reached over the past eighteen months, ever since I finally decided that the time had come to give up pursuing the impossible dream of a long term partnership with a publisher and go it alone.What follows are not writing tips. If you want those, there are courses and workshops in plenty, self help books and a million advice blogs. Just be careful that you don’t assume that everyone else knows more than you do. And while paying to be published is generally a Bad Thing, paying a demonstrably experienced editor, or paying for a dedicated course with like-minded people, especially if you’re a beginner, is often a very good idea. There’s plenty of practical advice about various forms of publishing out there as well, not least here on the Authors Electric blog. Do remember that there’s a difference between being ...

In previous posts I have talked about how I've tried to increase my eBook sales by following the steps in an eBook called How To Make A Killing On Kindle . Reading this book prompted me to look for other tools Amazon provide. I'd noticed readers could add images below a books front cover. Unfortunately because the 'look inside' button only brings up the copyright info for my picture books potential customers are unable to view any of the pages. I therefore decided it might be a good idea to use this facility. So I signed in, found The Best Rabbit  and clicked on 'share your own customer images.' Followed the simple instructions and added three images from the book. Now, when a potential buyer finds this picture eBook they see additional images under the cover. If interested they simply click on the thumbnail and a larger image comes up.    Amazon has also given the facility to allow text to be added. So when a potential buyer hovers over the...

PART ONE  - IS IT FAIR? A long time ago...    This month I reach my half century so of course I’ve been doing a lot of looking back and contexualising (making sense of it all still eludes me!)  I’ve just remembered that my crie de coeur from my earliest days was ‘it isn’t fair.’  This phrase was employed frequently, when I fell over (which I did a lot of as a young child until they gave me ‘built up’ shoes) or didn’t ‘win’ at football and most ridiculously when my big brother refused to give me the only pair of boxing gloves we had between us prior to the big ‘fight.’ I didn’t have the reach to hit him and if he hit me with gloves it was slightly less painful. He worked it out logically. I was less interested in pain and more concerned it ‘wasn’t fair.’ Of course for my family the cry got old rather quickly and was regularly met with variations on the ‘who told you life was fair?’ ‘life isn’t fair’ variety. I finally have to accept the truth of that, but...

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...

Last month I wrote about the steps I was following from an eBook recommended to me called 'Make A Killing on Kindle' by Michael Alvear. If you'd like to read my first steps click on this link . I rounded off my last post stating I would update you on my progress. Sadly I've not made a killing on Kindle. However I have learnt a lot and wanted to share some of that with you. Firstly (and no surprise really) the title and the search engine terms make a big difference. The book I decided to experiment with was not appearing on the first page when I searched for it on Amazon. Yet my other title was. So I changed the SEO terms and the title slightly. The book is now appearing on the first page. I've tracked sales for a month and discovered most sales are made at the end of the week and over the weekend. Again not a surprise as my titles are aimed at kids. So I am assuming adults download to keep the kids occupied over the weekend. I will continue to m...

Me, many moons ago, in a theatre! My first experience of theatre came complete with plush red velvet seats at the Dundee Rep when I was about 6 years old. My mum worked in the costume department and one day (presumably to stop us running rampage through the costume store, which was complete with what my older brother convinced me was a REAL polar bear, presumably a relic from a production of A Winters Tale ) I was allowed to sit in on a rehearsal for J.M.Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton. Things got heated in the rehearsal process and allegedly (?) I got upset and confused between drama and reality (not for the last time) so I was taken backstage to see the Actor playing Crichton. As I arrived he was stripped to the waist removing his ‘slap.’ It was a very vivid memory which lingers today.  Suffice it to say I was ‘hooked’ on the theatre. And that J.M.Barrie has held a special place in my heart from then on. The magic of theatre?  Fast forward to 2002. I was...