Authors Electric

  ‘Compassionate, warm, moving and so VERY funny.’ ‘This is properly brilliant. The pages fly by and I just can’t stop smiling.’ ‘A charming, clever, debut.’ No, these aren’t mine. Not written by me, and sadly not written about my books either. I am in the process of getting people to endorse my soon to be published novel. It involves asking people very nicely to read a PDF manuscript, only partially edited, and give me their views on it. In a line or two. Words that they won’t mind being attributed to them and printed within the front cover of said book. I find the whole business uncomfortable, and positively terrifying. Especially as they are among the few people to have actually read the thing. What if they don’t like it, and cannot in all good conscience recommend it? It’s a possibility after all. Thankfully, the people I have approached have so far been generous and kind. I am already so encouraged to be in receipt of some lovely words of endorsement for The Pilgrim . Th...

Reluctantly, I am back to the marketing theme. Recently, my publisher had to close down (much to her regret) and so, with lots of help from her during the transition, I’m now a fully fledged Indie. And one of the first things I noticed when I saw all my books listed in the KDP sales charts was that one of them has regularly been selling over three times more copies than its nearest rival in the list. This could, of course, mean that it’s so brilliant that the rest are dross in comparison. But, until its nomination for the Booker proves me wrong, I know objectively that it’s no better or worse than they are. I should quickly add that I’m not talking of sales levels that would enable me to buy Mustique. But I do like the idea that some hundreds of people are actually reading my stuff. So I need to find out why that particular title is getting the attention and try to deflect some of it onto the others. And to do that I need to understand marketing strategies. But I don’t. Under...