Apropos ‘The Myth of the Bestseller’ by Joe Konrath
20 Jan 2012 11 Comments
I just read a brilliant post by Joe Konrath on his blog ‘A Newbie’s Guide to Self Publishing’, where he says, so rightly, that being a bestselling author is not what the e-book revolution is all about for the self-published author, but selling steadily and in enough numbers to create extra income and above all, the satisfaction of being read by many. Never before have so many authors been able to sell their self-published work, or been recognised, respected and appreciated the way they are now. And never before have authors been able to get paid for their hard work and not have to share their royalties with publishers and agents, often getting the smallest cut of the profit. THAT is the real miracle and we all have a share in it, readers and writers alike.
As a reader, I have an infinite number of good books to chose from for a reasonable price. As a writer, I have no deadlines or publicity schedules in the form of book talks, signings or interviews with the local press and radio stations. I can sit at home, in my nightie, and write, publish and market as much or as little as I choose. Less stress and more freedom to create work without having a publisher or agent tell me ‘this won’t sell’ are, to me, the more positive things about my new life as a self-published author. Naturally, there are many people out there who sneer at self-published books, saying that ‘anyone can upload rubbish now’. Of course they can, but it’s up to the discerning reader to sniff out the good from the bad. And that is part of the fun.
I found Konrath’s post so inspirational and encouraging because my story is just that; selling all my books steadily and getting what I would consider an income, without making headlines or being mentioned as ‘the most successful’ or ‘selling by the million’. I did flirt with the bestseller list briefly last summer, when my winter romance, Fresh Powder, started to sell like crazy, with 10000 sold by the end of august. But then sales began to slow down and it is now selling in what I would call normal amounts, as are all my 9 e-books. Not exciting but very satisfying.
In the two years since I uploaded my first e-book, I have, in no particular order, sold a considerable amount of books (around 20000), managed to get noticed in the vast ocean of indie authors, gained a number of wonderful writer friends, some of whom I consider real gems, and been in close contact with my readers all over the world. Not to mention all I have learned about formatting and cover design, which have been fun and stimulating (if a little frustrating at times). None of which happened when I was a traditionally published author.
In addition, I have to say that I am very grateful to Joe Konrath and other bloggers, who have raised the profile of self-publishing and given so many of us writers the courage to believe in ourselves. The generosity of many successful authors who have shared their experiences and given tips and written ‘how-to’ material in blogs and books is truly impressive. My heartfelt thanks go to them and to readers who, with their enthusiasm and encouragement, keep us authors inspired to write our stories.
Coming Out Of the Dark. Or How a Fractured Pelvis Can Change Your Look on Life
09 Dec 2011 5 Comments
I’m back! Not that anyone would have missed me as I have been quite active and verbal on my Facebook page, even during the time I was laid up after a serious injury. In fact, during that time, Facebook was my lifeline, the only way I could get away from my then, horrible, reality. So many of my friends there were so supportive and for that I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. Chatting on Facebook helped me through pain and misery, through the times when I wasn’t too sure if I would ever be whole again. My Facebook friends lifted me up and carried me through the horrors of being bed bound and immobile, with their gentle jokes and caring comments.
What happened, you might ask. Well, here is the is the story (avert your eyes, it’s a little violent): On the 9th of August, I was foolish enough to ride a very young, newly broken horse that I was supposed to school. The owner said that he was ‘very quiet’ and ‘wouldn’t hurt a fly’. But I am not a fly…
I had just settled into the saddle. I bent forward and put my hand under the girth to check if it was tight enough. It obviously was, because the horse started to buck and kept going11 times (someone counted). I stayed on for about 10 bucks (not dollars) and then flew off, landing hard on the ground. I knew immediately that I was seriously hurt, even though I managed to get up on my knees and then to standing ( another foolish act) but then found I was in quite a lot of pain ( <– serious understatement) and could move no further. An ambulance was called and I was brought to the county hospital, where, after an x-ray, it was found that I had fractured my pelvis so badly that they had to send me on in a second ambulance, lying on a special inflatable mattress, to the bigger hospital inWaterford. In fact the x-ray was so ‘interesting’ that medical students were told to study it, as they would probably not see the like of it for a long time (my 15 minutes of fame).
When I arrived inWaterford, I was x-rayed again and a consultant orthopaedic surgeon was put on the case. He decided to insert what is called an ‘external fixation’, a kind of metal frame attached to my hip bones just below my waist. I won’t go into details, but I’ll just say that the following nine weeks were not the most enjoyable time in my life. This is where my Facebook friends proved the best support. Lying in bed, with my little travel computer, I could log in and chat away, forgetting, for a few moments every day, my injury and the long time it would take to get back to near normal life again.
Time passed slowly but surely and after the nine weeks, I had the ‘device’ removed and went on to physiotherapy. This was also quite hard, as my muscles had become atrophied during this long period of immobility. It’s still a bit of struggle and I’m stiff and sore and have to pace myself but, now, four months after the accident, I am finally back to ’myself’ again. I also got back my mental energy and have rediscovered the joy of writing, which I completely lost during my recovery.
‘You’ll have plenty of time to write now,’ a lot of people said to me. Time, yes. But not the creative energy or the drive or even the enjoyment I had before. I thought I had lost it. I also thought I had lost my zest for living and that intense pleasure I had in simply being outdoors, or watching a sunset, or reading a good book and many more of the things I had liked but taken for granted. Before. Before that accident, before, in a split second, everything came crashing down. It could have been worse, I was told, I was lucky… Lying in that hospital bed with a metal frame screwed into my hips, in deep pain, I felt a lot of things but ‘lucky’ wasn’t one of them. But now I do. I feel more than lucky. I feel blessed.
When something like that happens to you and you come out of the dark, you cherish every little thing in life. Things you might never even have thought about before. Like being able to lie on your side in bed, instead of on your back, causing pain. Walking down to the bottom of the garden unaided. Cooking dinner and being able to do something for that person (my husband) who has been looking after you for so long with such love and patience. Driving. Christmas shopping. There are so many things, too numerous to mention but maybe most of all to feel whole and not broken anymore. All this has given me such a feeling of joy and I wake up every morning looking forward to the day ahead. I feel life has a new meaning now. I hope the feeling will last.
If
26 Aug 2011 2 Comments
Did hospitals…
I had to spend a week in an Irish hospital recently, having suffered damage to my pelvis after a riding accident,which gave me plenty of ideas about how health care could be improved.
While I have no complaints about the speed and excellence of the A&E department (in fact, I was both surprised and impressed), it was the week in an orthopaedic ward that opened my eyes to the cutbacks in the health service. Two Nurses had to cope with 32 patients, all of whom were bed bound and needed constant attention.. Not the nurses fault at all, of course, they were all doing their very best and always came to my aid when I rang the bell, even if that could take up to half an hour.
But in my daydreams, I was imagining what would happen if Carlsberg did hospitals…
The day would look something like this:
8 am. Wake up call by classical music from the ward stereo system. (Instead of snapping on the fluorescent light at 6am)
8.30am Breakfast of your choice. Mine would be freshly pressed orange juice, muesli, Ceylon tea and freshly baked croissant.
9 am. Morning toilette. You or own personal nurse would wash you all over, apply body lotion, do your hair and make up (looking good is essential for a speedy recovery).
10 am. Doctors’ round. The medics in question would look like George Clooney, Brad Pitt and Jude Law and they would have excellent bedside manners, spending at least 20 minutes with each patient asking them how they felt and if there was anything they were worried about.
11. am-lunchtime. Resting after a hectic morning and looking forward to
1pm. Lunch. A light meal, consisting of freshly made salad or soup, followed by fresh fruit salad (instead of sausages and mash served with something brown called ‘gravy’ from a plastic jug), sparkling spring water, espresso and some Belgian chocolate.
After lunch, siesta, with the curtains pulled the lights dimmed and more soothing music.
After an all over massage, the patients would now be ready for the visiting hour, which is just that, one hour. (That seemed to me to be the amount of time I wanted to look at any visitor.)
Dinner would be cooked by Jamie Oliver who would do grilled fish, vegetables from the hospital gardens or a vegetarian choice for those who don’t eat meat or fish. Small glass of wine for those who are allowed.
After dinner, the patients would watch a programme of their choice on their individual flat screen TV.
Then the ‘good night hour’: patients are being helped into to fresh (and attractive) nightwear, given hot milk and a cookie and the drugs of their choice, before drifting off to sleep listening to a Mozart sonata.
The walls of the ward would be painted a soft cream and decorated with lovely paintings. The bedlinen and towels would be of the highest quality in tasteful colours. The toilet paper would be … soft, soft soft.
Carlsberg don’t do hospitals. But wouldn’t it be heaven if they did?
A Place Called ‘the Zone’.
27 Jul 2011 2 Comments
Most authors will know what I mean when I say ‘I’m in the zone’. It’s not a physical place or even some website out there in cyberspace- it’s a state of mind.
Writing is time consuming, frustrating and bloody hard work most of the time. It can also destroy your self confidence, as you sit there trying your best and only trite comes out. You can write 2000 words and then maybe only one hundred of those words are fairly good. In fact if that happens, you’re lucky. I have often deleted a whole chapter after re reading what I wrote the day before and then discovered that it was all complete drivel. You can be halfway through a novel and read back, only to discover that the whole idea is without substance or any worth at all. It can make you feel truly miserable.
Then why do we do it? Because of ‘the zone’. When you do get there, it’s like hitting cruising speed, or the sweet spot of the tennis racket and the story unfolds right in front of you. You are, at that moment freewheeling and a true winner and it’s a wonderful feeling.
For me, when I hit the zone, it’s as if my computer screen becomes a magic mirror that I step through and I’m in the world of my story and inside the skin of my character- in fact I am the character and I know exactly how he or she feels at that moment. It happens without warning and you don’t realise it until you have written for a while and then you go- ‘hey, I’m in the zone’.
It happened to me this morning. I am, at the moment writing the sequel to my historical novel, A Woman’s Place and the story takes place in New York in the 1930’s. I was having a hard time getting myself in the frame of mind of the heroine, Sonja, and I have been struggling with a certain chapter all week, getting quite sick of it. But I made myself read through the earlier chapters and then I started writing the current one. I thought, as this is the first draft, I’d just move the story forward, filling in the emotions and improving dialogue later, during draft 2. So I plodded along, describing a rather dreary November day when… Wheee! I was there! Suddenly, Sonja spoke to me and I could feel her pulling her cardigan tighter around her thin body, braving the cold weather. Then I was her, thinking her thoughts, feeling her emotions and smelling the air in her apartment (she had burnt the toast) on the Upper East Side of New York in 1937. I even made her change her shoes for her walk in Central Park, as my feet suddenly felt cold.
My ‘zone moment’ lasted for over an hour and I wrote like a mad woman, completing nearly 2000 words. Great words. Absolutely perfect words for that particular chapter. Then I had to stop for mundane things like breakfast, a shower and getting dressed. But the afterglow lasted nearly all day. It’s a kind of high that hits you at random. If you could bottle it and sell it, you’d make millions.
When will I get back into the zone? I have no idea. Could happen very soon or in a week’s time or a month. But I do know the only way back there, is to keep writing.
No, I’m not insane. I’m a writer.
How I really feel about BAD reviews!!!!!
22 Jun 2011 15 Comments
I’m supposed to be all aloof and stuff. I’m supposed to walk away and move on… But when I get a review that is hostile and nasty by someone who has never posted any review of any kind ever before, I go through several stages:
Stage one:
stage two
Stage three:
Stage four;
Finally, stage five, writing again in the ‘I’ll show the bastards’-mode:
Thank goodness for the writing addiction.
Are my Roots Showing?
20 May 2011 2 Comments
This is not about hairdressing. It’s about my other roots, the ones that are supposed to anchor me into the earth of the place I live. Where I feel I belong. Where my people came from and where I want to be buried. Strange thoughts, perhaps but not for someone who has been adrift in the world all her adult life.
I was born in Stockholm and grew up there, went to the same school from age 5 to 18 and most of my friends lived nearby. Our parents knew each other because they had invariably also grown up there and gone to the same schools, as had their grandparents. We had an apartment in the city and a summer house in the archipelago, like everybody else. It was a pleasant life in a very close-knit community and you were supposed to marry someone from the same background. Incestuous you might say and maybe it was.
On the other hand, the school I went to was very international and we were encouraged to learn foreign languages, travel, meet and befriend young people from all nationalities, races and religions. We had to read the English, American, French, German and Russian classics and were sent abroad at quite an early age to further our language skills. This was supposed to make us tolerant, sophisticated and well educated. I spent my teenage summers in France and one memorable summer term at Aberystwyth university to polish up my English, when I threatened to make French my major foreign language (and fall in love with highly unsuitable French boys).
Ironically, I didn’t realise it at the time and neither did my parents, but all this was the perfect preparation for a life as the wife of a diplomat. I had no such plans, however, as this was not what was supposed to happen. You were meant to use all these language skills in your chosen career and marry into that close-knit community, that was the unwritten blueprint and I was programmed to follow it. I knew this and had no objections. Until, at the age of 19, I met a young Irishman at a party in Stockholm. He had just arrived to take up a post at the Irish embassy. I had just come back from that summer term in Wales and my English was excellent. I thought I’d try it out on him. The rest is- well, my history.
What followed was a fascinating and adventurous life, living in many countries, learning languages, meeting people from all over the world and all sorts of backgrounds. When I was first married, I was in my early twenties and picking up my bags and my babies and going to yet another country soon became second nature. I can’t say I thought much about my own country then, life was so full of impressions and new experiences.
It was only when I started writing that I came to realise that I wasn’t anchored in any one place and that this would be a handicap for me as a writer. Not so much in my writing but in selling my work to publishers. They argued that my stories were not set in any one place and that their readers liked to read about their own environment. UK readers like to read about the UK, US readers about the US and so on (they said). It would also be difficult to market me as I was not a ‘local’. I did eventually manage to get four of my novels published but it was a struggle. When I sent out ‘Swedish for Beginners’, I came to a wall of rejections, despite the efforts of my agent.
I was quite puzzled by this because as an avid reader, I love to go to different and exotic places when I read. I like learning about towns and countries I might have dreamed of visiting but never been to, about life and conditions somewhere else but where I live. I also like to travel in time while reading historical novels and maybe also in social class. Part of my difficulty with publishers was also that I am Swedish and (since my husband left the diplomatic service) living inIreland and not ‘attached’ to any one country, as I oscillate between Ireland and Sweden, feeling at home in both.
It wasn’t until I started publishing my books myself on the e-book market that I realised that the publishers were partly wrong. There are a huge number of readers out there who love escaping to strange and foreign lands. I do understand publishing houses though. They can’t afford to take the risk on something new and different these days. They have to be at least 30% sure that the books they buy will sell. A Swedish author, writing in English about France, Australia, Ireland and other places they have never heard of would not fit into their pattern. I’m a square peg which will never fit into any other shape and I could never try.
I like my rootless existence though, I like being able to speak three languages fluently and faking it in about five others. I like (thanks to low cost airlines) visiting my friends in Paris, Rome, New York, London and Stockholm, and living in Ireland and Sweden at the same time. It might make my writing a little different and hard to grasp but it makes my life much more interesting and colourful.
Danny Gillan tackles Internet forums the Glaswegian way.
20 Apr 2011 12 Comments
Today, my guest blogger is Danny Gillan, author of the brilliant new novel Scratch, which I have just finished reading and can highly recommend. Read his unique (to say the least) take on e-book publishing, his own style of marketing and how he tackles the ‘profanity clause’ on the Amazon forums by inventing some new words.
Kindling an Interest
Many thanks to Susanne for inviting me here to have a moan and a grumble, I mean write a balanced and objective blog post.
Yep, I’ve jumped on the Kindle bandwagon. Enticed by tales of thousands of sales and generous royalty rates, I recently stuck up my second novel, Scratch, and sat back, waiting for the cheques to roll in.
I did it for various reasons. Or at least I could pretend I did. My experience with ‘traditional’ publishing didn’t go too well with my first novel, Will You Love Me Tomorrow, so I could say that’s what put me off this route and made me go out on my own. I could also say that my writing is far too unique and experimental to find a place on celeb hungry trad publishers’ lists. I could even say that I’m joining the band of hardy pioneers blazing a trail into the ‘new’ publishing model because I’m all cool and stuff. I could say all of that, but it would be bollocks (especially the ‘unique and experimental’ thing).
I put Scratch on Kindle for two reasons and two reasons only. I’m lazy, and I’m skint. I want some easy money, and I want it on a monthly basis – a modest second income to supplement my extremely modest first income. Not too much to ask, surely? So, to achieve this, do I spend months (or years) sending samples out and failing to get an agent, or do I put the book on Kindle for relatively little expense or effort? Guess which one I chose.
So, what now? The book is there, it’s got a good cover, it’s a reasonable price, it’s not the worst book ever written. When does the cash arrive? Seriously, when?
That’s when the ‘lazy’ bit started falling apart. I quickly learned from other writers that, to get any kind of buzz going about the book, I would have to dive headlong into the world of self-promotion and, more specifically, the Amazon Kindle Forums. ‘Get your name known’. ‘Take part in discussions’. ‘Look for threads with people who’d like your writing style and genre’. All sounds fair enough. ‘But, whatever you do, don’t push the book too obviously’. Huh?
I quickly learned there is a highly vocal and significantly large number of Kindle Forum contributors who actively, and sometimes viciously, dislike authors who use the forums to promote their book(s). This seemed a bit odd to me, but again, fair enough. Apparently the best strategy is to simply become a regular forum user and hope that sales will be achieved through some sort of osmosis. A bit like Bruce Lee’s technique of ‘fighting without fighting’ (wee Scratch reference, there), we must master the art of ‘promoting without promoting’. I’ve barely mastered the art of feeding myself, so this was a daunting prospect.
But, needs must. So, armed with a bottle of red wine and a willingness to make friends with complete strangers for entirely selfish purposes, I found what seemed like a relatively ‘author friendly’ thread on the Amazon US forum and said hello. I even got away with mentioning Scratch a few times. It was all going very well and I was pleased with these early efforts. A few people even said they’d download a sample of the book. Excellent! This was going to be easy. There were a few users who seemed to be a bit cheeky about each other for no reason I could fathom, but that happens everywhere.
I had some fun making up new swear words to get round Amazon’s ‘decency’ policies (I am Glaswegian). I joked I could become the thread ‘bouncer’ to fend off trolls. It was all very jolly. Then I noticed that the ‘cheeky’ stuff was getting a bit personal between some users. Hmm, I thought. Why are they ripping into each other like that? I did a little digging and discovered that I had inadvertently landed myself smack in the middle of one of the fabled ‘flame wars’ of which legends tell, between two competing factions from different threads who had seemingly been involved in a prolonged and bloody battle for months. Oops. I then had a wee look at the other camp’s ‘home’ thread to discover I had apparently been added to numerous people’s ‘do not buy’ lists because of the made up swearing and the fact they thought I was taking sides. Again, oops. I did what all decent, honourable people would do is such circumstances and ran away, never to return.
So, not the best start, after all. I learned a valuable lesson on that strange, corpse-strewn night, though – people take this shit awful seriously. For me, the internet has always been about trying out jokes and taking the piss out of my online mates as they do the same back to me. Not on Amazon, it seems. Oh no. I’ve since been far more reticent to jump in, all ‘farktwits’ blazing. I just respond to anyone who asks me a question and try to mention Scratch when I think I can pretend it’s relevant to the discussion. Then go back to Facebook to have a swear, take the piss and try out jokes.
It’s not so easy, this self-promotion thing. The slightly baffling factor, though, is that I sold more copies in theUS that night than on any since. Maybe I should have kept calling people ‘bastiging iceholes’ and making enemies, after all. Dunno.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand. When does the cash arrive?
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Meet Danny on hos own amazing blog.
He is also the deputy editor of Words With Jam, an informative online magazine for readers and writers.
You can download ‘Scratch’ both at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.
How to profit from crime without being arrested, explained by Ruby Barnes
17 Apr 2011 5 Comments
In order to jazz up my blog, I decided to invite some fellow writers to share their journeys to publication. Today’s guest blogger is new and exciting crime writer Ruby Barnes, author of Peril, a crime novel with a very unusual hero, set in Dublin. This is his take on writing crime:
Crime pays
A truism, whatever way you look at it.
Real crime pays. If there’s financial gain. Getting caught is the problem. That’s the hair in the ointment. Plus the old dilemma of social conscience.
Fictional crime, on the other hand, is another matter. Writing a crime novel, a good crime novel, can pay – if the work is worthy, if the author has a following and can gain exposure, if the author’s slice of the profit is healthy enough. A lot of ‘ifs’. But here are the facts: crime and romance are the two dominant fiction genres in Amazon’s kindle charts, US and UK. That’s not why I chose to write crime, however. If people buy and enjoy my work then of course it makes a little birdhouse in my soul, but the choice of genre isn’t commercially driven. It evolved. Honest.
When I started writing novels, the process of writing delighted me. The novelist, like the entrepreneur, had been buried deep within me for forty years and I had looked for a catalyst to liberate that author from my compound being. A day job had dragged me around the globe, from one factory to another, all cast from the same mould, an exercise in globalisation that MacDonald’s would have been proud of. What I brought back with me wasn’t that a widget inMalaysia was built the same as one in Brazil or Norway. My souvenirs were observations. The roll-mop herring of Scandinavia, the Churasco meat grill of South America, the exotic sea food of the Far East. Okay, I like my food. But there were other things. People, places, events, theories, poverty, disease, crime, death, music, relationships. Beer.
Liam at tea break in theWaterford factory said ‘All them stories! You should write a book, so you should. Like yer man over there on the production line. Wrote one about Exeter City Football Club. Lovely, ‘tis.’
This, and other comments were perhaps the catalyst, the final push, that got me started. After three years of carbon negative jet set life I took my tea break muse at face value. And I found I couldn’t stop. The result was a novel like no other, an action adventure extravaganza of international blockbusting intrigue. Innovative energy technology, European Union corruption, African AIDS conspiracy and US evangelical apocalypse. Tom Clancy and Leon Uris eat your hearts out. Apart from a plot that contained enough material for a trilogy, and the likely target market consisting mostly of male electrical engineers, I had it sussed. Literary agents across the UK and Ireland endured my first fifty pages, enclosed in folders with pictures of puppies and kittens, covering letters fragranced with Fahrenheit by Christian Dior (a delicate hint of summer cucumber). How could they resist? They did.
Unperturbed by rejection letters, I threw myself into the sequel and migrated the European populace into a newly fertile African continent as they fled an encroaching ice age. It was highly derivative in parts, but I experienced the full emotions of each scene, shedding tears of anguish, happiness, sadness. A lot of tears.
I knew that these two novels were an exorcism. Well, I didn’t know that at the start but towards the end of the first it became clear. Both books would have pride of place in that under-the-bed archive. I threw myself at book number three with a conscious decision to pull plot, characters and settings into something more manageable. More focused. It would be around a central character, an anti-hero.
A perfect premise for the novel presented itself. I’d just started a new job in Dublin, commuting daily from Kilkenny. The crowds, sights and smells were alien and evocative. I came across a crippled beggar on Heuston bridge, and his twin. Women in Eastern European garb making the sign of the cross at car windows for small change. Criminal gangs and an addict beggar found beaten to death in the city. It all came together. I still had no idea what narrative voice was, how to write natural dialogue, that the senses must be titillated and in all these things a modern stylistic minimalism and far, far, fewer commas, were en vogue. Half way through what had become a crime novel, my wife spotted a college course run by the National University of Ireland Maynooth, Kilkenny Campus, and I took my middle-aged- married twice- ragtime blues- guitar playing-masters in business- ass down to Hogwarts.
This penchant for crime has an organic origin. My family have always had a problem with authority. Team player is a phrase that I use at job interviews with fingers crossed behind my back. I’m a loner who breaks whatever rules he dares to on a sliding scale of seriousness and dreams of being an outcast. First the written felony through misuse of commas, colons, semicolons and sentence structure in general. Then the righteous beating of offenders who hang toilet paper with the dangly bit towards the wall (should be away from it). Defending the honour of ladies by extracting lethal vengeance against insults (fisticuffs with gypsies). Waging poison vendettas against perceived slights. Burying troublesome in-laws under the patio. Delivering a coup de grace to end the suffering of perpetrators and victims alike. This is my natural mode of thought. Writing PERIL provided the first avenue of real release. It was a painful road. I had to drop the Dickensian delivery, bring it up to the present in tone and tense, and draw in the reader with an alternating first person narrative. The result is Marmite, love it or hate it, but undeniably savoury. It’s quirky. I’ve committed a quirky crime.
What next? THE BAPTIST. More crime, of course. This time even more claustrophobic. First person but an unreliable narrator. Mentally ill, committing a lifetime of extreme crime against society. Cleansing the world of evil in preparation for the One. Pursued by the same detective that brought about the downfall in PERIL. There’s still a place for humour but it’s that of the gallows.
If I crawl under the bed and resurrect those early works from the dust and spiders then it will be to address the huge crimes committed by nations and allies. But crime on that scale is too large for me, it belongs to those who would preach. I want a smaller sphere within which individuals break rules and pay the price. If caught. I need to sense the victims’ despair, recoil from the sweat of a perpetrator trying to avoid capture, see the destruction of relationships betrayed by ill deeds and feel the touch of justice, the rod of retribution.
The future is clear for Ruby Barnes. There’s a world of misbehaviour to be committed. Taboos, laws of man and nature. Society must be rendered, its constituent parts ripped by a catalyst. The sinister chemistry of crime.
Meet Ruby Barnes on his highly entertaining blog and look him up on his Facebook page
Never mind the sales figures, read my books!
01 Apr 2011 2 Comments
Reading Irish author Catherine Ryan Howard’s recent blogpost about her e-book sales, I saw that she has sold in all, over one year 3,969 copies of her book Mousetrapped ( an amusing tale of her year working at Disney World in Orlando). Catherine has, since the start of her e-book venture, shared her experiences on her blog, which was the whole idea from the start; self publishing and then blogging every step of the way of her journey, good or bad. I have heard a lot about Catherine, often billed as Ireland’s answer to Joe Konrath and have been observing her self-publishing success. My own sales are maybe three times that of Catherine’s but there is a reason for that.
Before I go on, I should perhaps explain that Catherine Ryan Howard is selling only one book in the non-fiction genre. I have e-published seven books to date, all fiction in four different genres: Chick-lit, Contemporary women’s fiction, historical/literary and crime, which explains the big difference in our sales.
I think Konrath is safe – for the moment – from both of us. Catherine’s book is very good and she deserves to sell ten times what she has sold already. Her fame shows, though, that clever use of social networking and word of mouth rumours are very powerful tools.
I have not been as diligent. While I have been happily chatting online, announcing good sales figures and generally thinking I was being quite shamelss in my promotions, I realise this has been a mere whisper compared to Catherine’s marketing campaign.
I began e-publishing a year or so ago, starting with my self-published novel Swedish for Beginners. When that novel took off straight away, with 198 copies sold the first month, I decided to also e-publish three of my previously published novels, and then, later on in the year, a historical novel and a romantic comedy that had never been published but was sitting in my computer, ready to go. I published my co-written detective story, Virtual Strangers in the beginning of March and it is already selling well with some excellent reveiws. To date, I have published seven e-books (all my e-books can be found here).
It’s difficult to assess any book’s sales, as its place in the charts change hourly. A sale or three will immediatly get the book up the charts, only to sink again if there are no sales for a couple of days or even hours. But if a book is constantly in the top 200-300 or so you can take it that it’s selling really well. This is the case with my romantic comedy, Fresh Powder’, which has been selling at a steady rate on Amazon.co.uk for over four months now. The figures show that this book alone has sold 574 copies in March. Incidentally, I have no idea why this particular book is doing so well, as I have done next to no promotions for it.
All authors have to do some marketing and the amount you do will impact on sales. Where and how you do it is something you have to figure out and also how much time you want to spend using social networks, blogs and forums. The writer becomes his or her own publicist and can find that the marketing eats up time that should be spent writing. I am a writer first and a publicist second. Ideally, I would just like to sit in my little room and write, which is what I used to do before the Internet explosion happened. It’s easy to get hooked on checking sales figures and looking up forums for possible promotions, which will lure you away from the daily slog of writing and editing. It’s also hard not to look at other author’s sales and feel envious of some who have managed to get ahead in the charts.
The publishing world has gone through a metamorphosis in the past few years and the self-published, or ‘indie’, author is now gaining ground. The e-book market is growing rapidly and right now, there is a window of opportunity for the enterprising indie author. E-books have no shelf life and if you manage to make that all important platform, you have a chance to elbow yourself into an increasingly crowded market.
Hard work? Yes. I only wish I could sit in my little room and write.
Adventures on the Internet – How I Met Trolls and got into Flame Wars.
26 Mar 2011 9 Comments
Virtual attack
My recently co-written detective story Virtual Strangers (find it on my e-book page), describes how participating on Internet forums can kill. This is fiction but in real life, being active on the internet, blogging and chatting with people you have never met can be both frightening and enlightening.
The novel came about after a long stint on a website for writers, where I met my now partner in crime, Ola Zaltin. I think we were both forum novices then and soon got sucked into the addictive and seductive habit of Internet chatting. To me, it was wonderful to find friends always ‘there’, during long winter evenings of working on my novels. Writing is a lonely business and being able to communicate with fellow authors makes a welcome break from staring at your own text for hours.
It was not always so nice, however and it didn’t take long before the trolls started to appear. I was introduced to the concept of ‘flame wars’ during an attack on me that came out of nowhere. It appears that there are people out there in cyberspace, whose only entertainment is verbally abusing perfectly nice people and the fun is of course intensified if you try to fight back. As a novice, I was dreadfully upset and imagined that these people could find out where I live and then come and knock on my door. Silly notion, of course, but as a beginner, I actually thought they were after me and didn’t understand that it wasn’t ‘me’ they were after but anyone who showed any signs of weakness or upset. I soon realised that the only thing to do is not to respond and just leave whatever forum the attack took place.
When I was first attacked, I reported the abuse to the forum moderators, thinking they’d ban the attackers and then all would be well. But nothing much happened. I slowly realised that cyber bullies or ‘troll’s are very common on the Internet and part and parcel of participating in forums. You just have to shrug the attacks off and try not to get upset. There are far more really nice people than trolls in any case, and if you let a few bad apples ruin the pie, they will have won.
Easier said than done, though. As a self published e-book author, it is necessary to promote your books on forums where you will find lots of readers. I have been participating in such forums for over a year now and have been attacked over and over again by these cyberbullies. Some of it has been partly my own fault, as I am a very chatty person and love to take part in all sorts of threads. I have also actively (a little too actively, perhaps) promoted my books and mostly gained readers and friends, some of whom I am in touch with on a daily basis.
But the trolls are always there, ready to pounce. Those who know me in real life, might be surprised to learn that I am ‘an abusive liar’ who has a ‘cabal’. I am a more used to these attacks now and I know most people who are active on the Internet occasionlly get attacked in the same way. Especially self published authors, or ‘indies’ as we are called.
That’s the way it is and there is nothing I, or anyone else can do about it. ‘If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen’ they say. Which is true. If cyberbullying gets to you, stay away from the Internet. So I try to take it on the chin, even if some of the more insane behavior gets to me at times. It’s creepy and scary.
But I can’t stay away. Recent events have given me fantastic material for the next ‘Virtual’ novel.
It’s going to be even more frightening than the first.
Incidentally, ‘Virtual Strangers’ got the thumbs up from the famous book blogger Big Al (of ‘The Greek Seaman’ fame)
