Authors Electric

There’s nothing that gladdens this author’s heart as much as a letter from an enthusiastic reader. Authors of adult books may keep their readers for years. Genre writers, I suspect, retain loyal readers for decades. But as a children’s author, you capture your reader’s attention for a few years, if you’re lucky. There’s a small window in which your books may be cherished, then your readers are gone, grown and after new stories. But if a child likes your stories, they really like them and your characters become their world. Chris Winn's design for the new e-book My Sprite Sister stories are aimed at girl readers aged 7-11 years. Marketing with social media is difficult with this age group. My readers are too young to tweet or use Facebook (I hope), but they write to me on my website (and I ask them to get their parents’ permission). Mostly they write once or twice, often asking for information for their book project. Sometimes they write to me, on and off, over...

by Sheridan Winn It’s an up and down life, this writing business: feast and famine, highs and lows, and the constant pull between nurturing your creativity and producing what pays the bills. My rights in the Sprite Sister books have been reverted: now there is no Piccadilly Press behind me. I have to navigate my own way. Ahead are the huge, and potentially choppy, waters of digital publishing: few 7-10 year old readers – my market with Sprites – are yet buying e-books. Still, I wouldn’t swap it, this writer’s life, and the freedom of sailing one’s own little boat. My summer has been spent re-editing the first five Sprite Sister titles for publication as e-books for Kindle, along with a second edition of print-on-demand paperbacks. I have found it a relatively restful experience to focus on stories that are already written, and to further refine them. I have also reconnected with the plots – have been able to pick up the thread once again. That itself is useful wi...

BITS, BITS, IT’S ALL IN BITS … by Sheridan Winn Here’s the thing. I have a modest body of work – six children’s fantasy titles representing around 325,000 words and several years of my life. Five of these titles have sold over 200,000 hardbacks in Germany, with paperbacks and e-books now following. Fischer Schatzinsel, I love you. These five titles were first published in the UK (thank you, Piccadilly Press) and sales have been satisfactory. I get a lot of readers borrow my books from the libraries and a decent annual fee from Public Lending Right. When the Sprite Sister series launched in 2008, the jackets looked like this:- But this story, The Circle of Power, and the first in the series, has just gone out of print in the UK. Naturally I have asked Piccadilly for the rights back. As The Circle of Power disappeared off the shelves this Spring, I published the sixth title, The Boy With Hawk-like Eyes, as a print-on-demand paperback and as an e-...