Confessions Of An Author

Ebooks Finally Getting The Thumbs-Up From The Intellectuals

2012-02-17T11:56:00.000Z

Alexis Madrigal, senior editor at The Atlantic, writes about The New York Review of Books' wonderful essay on the value of ebooks:

The e-book, by eliminating all variations in the appearance and weight of the material object we hold in our hand and by discouraging anything but our focus on where we are in the sequence of words (the page once read disappears, the page to come has yet to appear) would seem to bring us closer than the paper book to the essence of the literary experience. Certainly it offers a more austere, direct engagement with the words appearing before us and disappearing behind us than the traditional paper book offers, giving no fetishistic gratification as we cover our walls with famous names. It is as if one had been freed from everything extraneous and distracting surrounding the text to focus on the pleasure of the words themselves. In this sense the passage from paper to e-book is not unlike the moment when we passed from illustrated children's books to the adult version of the page that is only text. This is a medium for grown-ups.

Read Alex's full piece here. Glad to see others on the same page (sorry), ref my own post of the other day Ebooks and Creativity - Why Jonathan Franzen Is Wrong To Hate Ebooks.

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The Sh*t Agents and Editors Say

2012-02-13T10:31:00.002Z

Ebooks And Creativity: Why Jonathan Franzen is Wrong To Hate Ebooks - Conf 685

2012-02-06T10:43:00.006Z

c. Jacqui Lofthouse

In her latest post 'A Different Definition of Success', the novelist and writing coach Jacqui Lofthouse asks why so many writers eat themselves up with feelings of envy, disappointment, a sense of injustice and fear of being a failure.

"Why? When we feel this way, it may be frustration - because we haven't finished a book yet. Or because we haven't got an agent yet. Or we haven't got a publisher yet. Or we haven't sold enough copies to pay the bills. Or it's not a bestseller. Or it's a bestseller but it didn't win a literary prize. Or it won the Booker but has been slammed by the critics. Or it won the Booker but the sales were the worst ever for a Booker winner. Or we've won the Nobel Prize for Literature but still somehow, life just didn't pan out the way we'd hoped..."

Insecurity plays a big part. The sheer marathon number of hours it takes to write a novel that may never see the light of day. That may be rubbish anyway so maybe it's just as well. The tenacity that's needed to complete a full-length novel and then go back and edit it to its core, over and over is thus applied to the next stage of its life and we watch developments - and those of other books like ours published at the same time - like a hawk. As Steph Swainston points out in her piece linked to by Jacqui, the one book a year deal doesn't help at all. When your first book does come out, the shadow of having to complete another novel for publication in 12 months' time takes the sheen off a bit. That's how it is so you get on with it. For many writers deadlines are a necessary part of the process. But for just as many others more time would produce a more satisfactory end result.

Digital publishing has eased the burden and put the control back into the novelist's hands. There have been a few big pieces in the press lately by authors who fear ebooks. Yes, it's a huge shake-up of the established systems, and the currently-successful are going to feel it in reduced royalties for electronic sales. But I'm convinced digital publishing will be good for creativity in the long term. As the Monty Python team have repeatedly pointed out over the years, originality flourishes when commercial interests aren't at the heart of the commission. Publishers had become vehicles for the big PR machinery of TV stars, models - anybody who had already made a name for themselves in another field was allowed to 'write' and publish a novel and have it displayed prominently in the High Street bookstores. I don't blame the publishers for this at all, publishing's a gamble and they needed sales to stay in business. It's just how it was.

Jonathan Franzen isn't keen on ebooks. His take that words have to be anchored to a page is nonsense. It's the ideas that are conveyed by the words, the feelings and new depths of understanding that a good book instils that is permanent. I've never felt the need to own a book, once I've read it, if it's any good its resonance will remain forever, even if so deeply in the subconscious that I don't know it's there. The book will probably get 'lent' and I'll never see it again. When I moved from a house to my partner's flat a few years ago I had to get rid of nearly all of my books and it didn't really bother me (the albums were harder). The books that stayed were my friends' books, the cookery books (which I rarely look at) and the poetry books.

I feel for the independent bookshops who are having such a hard time at the moment but am convinced that, once all the fuss has settled down, print and ebooks will thrive side by side. Independent bookshops and libraries will be a major part of the new flush of originality, replacing the generic bookstores we have at the moment where every display option comes at a price. I understand the fear but feel the excitement far more. As William Boyd said at an appearance at my local library, velcro didn't replace buttons.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Hidden London: Madonna At The Supermarket...

2012-01-15T17:12:00.010Z

Film premieres aren't exactly hidden, but, living right next door to a cinema which occasionally throws them, I've stumbled across them a few times on my way out to buy the dinner. Then hung around a bit to watch the pazazz.

They can be really good fun. It's a great way to people watch - completely and utterly unashamedly STARE at people, because that's what's expected on a red carpet. Gofugyourself come to life, with a lot more going on around the edges. People trying to look cool can be funny. Anyway: I'd wandered out to the supermarket for a few bits and pieces in the afternoon to see this:

and the cinema completely fenced off with great big screens. The public area down the side of the building was already full, several people deep. I thought about taking a mini-ladder but there wasn't room to set one up. Skilled gatecrasher that I am, I went around the back and found the place where the cars would be stopping. There was nobody there at all except a few security guards. That seemed our best bet if we wanted a glimpse of her. I saw a moment in the presence of the Material Girl as a prime educational opportunity for my teen daughter so we set off for the back entrance. But on the way, as we passed the front screens, the cinema manager was shouting for all those who had stamps to come forward. Some fans had been there since early in the morning. They have a system of stamping their hands so that they can come and go to get food and go to the loo and all that. We hung around a bit and when they'd all gone in he said right, now there's room for a few more. And we got in! This is where they put us:

And the show commenced.

Dress by Cos, daughter told me. Note the ever-watchful, coat-carrying, note-taking, water-carrying PA in b/g. That was me a few years ago. Daughter found that v funny.

The leading man. The interviewer lady was lovely too. "Wetting her pants" she said at the thought of meeting Madge. The buzz in the air just kept growing and growing... and then:

We were the closest fans to the interview!

See how the lipstick exactly matches the gloves. And she Didn't Have A Manicure! Liked that.

NOT something I expected and all the more fun for that.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Harry Potter Plot Sheet

2012-01-08T11:25:00.002Z

Fascinated to see J.K. Rowling's hand-written plot spreadsheet for The Order Of The Phoenix. Courtesy of The Story Museum:

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Short Stories and Creative Writing Classes

2012-01-05T09:17:00.005Z

Finally pulled a few of my short stories together over Christmas. Hauled the old box out and scanned some in. I wrote them at a creative writing class at RAAC - Richmond Adult Community College. The main attraction was the creche for baby and the opportunity to get some of my 'baby-brain' back to function mode.

A review for Starfish from the late, great Michael Legat, publisher and short story competition judge, was the first encouragement I received outside the class. "The writing has that quality which is to be found in good poetry of stirring the reader's memories and emotions so that they get added in and increase its effect. I wonder if you can produce more work of this standard and charm - a volume perhaps rather in the manner of Laurie Lee. Outstanding." There were no outlets for short stories at the time. The rule was, if you wanted to get published you had to write a novel. The exception in the UK being Helen Simpson who publishes the best short story collections ever. Because she's so brilliant. But now ebooks have arrived short stories - shorts - have had an injection of life outside the competition circuit.

I'd recommend a beginner's creative writing class to anyone, that half-day was the highlight of my week for 3 years. Classmates became friends and the seriously ambitious amongst us set up a small critique group. It's been going for 10 years now. We've all been through highs and lows, we still critique each others' work and the book deal parties are still coming in. There's another one next week. More about that soon.

Read The Smile In The Garden With The Starfish in a free Kindle sample of the collection:

Kindle USA

Kindle UK

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Hidden London 4 - Strand on the Green

2011-12-17T12:09:00.008Z

If you fly into London airports, Heathrow or Gatwick, you'll pass Strand On The Green on your way into town.

It's well-hidden from the A4 behind office blocks, an old brewery and a few layers of streets.

There's a definite seaside feeling here.

Three of the pubs have been here since the 18th century, one since 1722. The little island on the river is called Oliver's Island, named after Oliver Cromwell who is supposed to have used it as a hideaway during the English Civil War, holding fort in the Bull's Head pub.

There's all sorts of history of course, rumours of tunnel and real old tunnels you can still walk through.

My friend Deb and I sometimes go mud-larking along the beach after a liquid lunch at one of the pubs. Pottery going right back to the Roman times has been found. There are lots of old clay pipes washed up with the tides, savoured in the pubs and then tossed into the river all those 100s of years ago.

This plaque belongs to the old alms cottages.

These cottages are unusual, most of the houses here are on the grand scale. Celeb residents include Ant and Dec, Rhyss Evans and the Upstairs Downstairs creator and actress Eileen Atkins. Strand on the Green and The City Barge pub featured in the 1965 Beatles film Help!

If you want to stop off for a leisurely pub lunch on your way in or out of town, asked to be dropped at Kew Bridge, between Chiswick and Brentford. The riverside footpath starts on the north side of the river. The nearest tube is Gunnersbury Park on the District Line.

Hidden London 3 - Oscar Wilde was arrested here, Lillie Langtry made love here

2011-12-05T13:15:00.006Z

I was at Kettners on Saturday for a lovely authors' Christmas get-together lunch complete with Secret Santa. I was hoping for Kate Harrison's YA novel Soul Beach but scored well with Sarah Duncan's Another Woman's Husband and James Roberston's And The Land Lay Still.

Kettners is a massive white building in the heart of theatreland, yet it still manages to be hidden somehow. I walked right past it at first, and I don't think many Londoners know of its remarkable history. Well, I didn't. For all I knew it was still a pizza place (it used to be Pizza Express's flagship restaurant). It's now (and probably has been for decades) (no, just looked it up, since 2009) a very pretty, friendly restaurant, reasonably priced too considering the food, service, ambience and its West End situation. There's also a very elegant champagne bar with house wine prices the same as my local pub.

The history bit is all on the menu. It was opened by Napoleon's chef in 1867 and used to host incredibly glamorous parties (as indeed it still does). People who've dined there include Bing Crosby, Agatha Christie, Lillie Langtry and Oscar Wilde used to take his rent boys there. Oh and, just remembered, the last time I was there in its pizza days, Paul Weller passed us on the stairs!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Hidden London 2 - Captain Bligh's House

2011-11-29T10:01:00.007Z

I was actually on the way to meet a friend at the Imperial War Museum caff in SE London.

She wanted to take me around the amazing full-size replica of a 1940s house. On the way I came across this stellar blue plaque house, immediately conjuring up the ship's captain stepping out of that front door to go to sea and returning here goodness knows how many years later. A quick Google reveals that William Bligh not only commandeered The Bounty but sailed with Captain Cook on his 2nd voyage 1772-4. How often must he have dreamed of this place with its twirly balconies when he was in that little rowing boat drifting for 400 miles?

Started in 1866, the blue plaques are one of the great joys of random wanders around London. You never know who from history you're going to suddenly bump into next.

Captain Bligh's house is just opposite the museum park in Kennington Road. You can go inside that 1940s house in The Children's War exhibition, on until 3rd Jan 2012. Free.

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Hidden London 1 - Two Temple Place

2011-11-25T15:43:00.017Z

Having just published Susie Kelly's wonderful book Best Foot Forward about her solo 500 mile hike through hidden France I thought I'd write here every so often about my own jaunts through hidden London.

As a full-time carer and writer/epublisher I tend to work non-stop. Weekdays, evenings and weekends don't have much differentation. I balance this by by darting out every so often to meet up with friends or by taking a random solo wander. I live in the W8 district, a very pretty part of west central. Though we're surrounded by gardens, parks and shops and are within striking distance of all the major galleries and museums I still haven't discovered the half of it.

Yesterday I met a friend at the Degas exhibition at the Royal Academy and afterwards we nipped across the road to London's most sumptuous store Fortnum & Mason, for a wander through confectionery and cakes.

Last week, thanks to a friend buying tickets many, many moons ago, I was lucky enough to go to the Leonardo exhibition at the National Gallery, take a virtual tour of the gallery here. Everybody's talking about the two The Virgin of the Rocks coming together and they were one of the many highlights. One of them is in the permanent collection and it's worth knowing that when the exhibition finishes it will take its place back in the free area of the museum. Lots of London's museums and galleries are free. Which is as well as it's such an expensive city to live in.

This morning I took a walk/run to The Round Pond in Kensington Gardens and used that little plinth to do my T'ai Chi and yoga.

The Round Pond is Bird City. Many famous writers have perambulated its circumference including J M Barrie (Peter Pan lives here too) and Virginia Woolf. The modern building is the Royal Garden Hotel, with Universal Music HQ just down the road it's the base for many visiting rock stars. It's one of the only hotels I know that uses healthy E-cloth microfibre technology to clean its rooms, so if fresh air is important to you, or you're asthmatic or suffer from allergies, that's the place to stay. The building to the far right is Kensington Palace, currently going through a revamp. It was Prince Charles and Princess Diana's home and will soon be home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, William & Kate. Kate was spotted in our local Top Shop on Kensington High Street recently. I once spotted Princess Diana at one of our favourite local restaurants Kensington Place.

Kensington has many alleyways and tiny, pretty streets full of interesting little shops:

But now for a truly hidden bit. A free gallery I discovered recently is Two Temple Place. It's a really eccentric building, inside and out - see the Mary Poppins-like ship on the roof. The house was built by Lord Astor, the interiors are extravagant but it has a very warm and friendly feel to it.

There's a fantastically off the wall caff. A brilliant place to go for tea and cake or an Ottolenghi-like salad lunch. This is my friend X in the caff, she'd literally KILL me if I put her picture up on the internet hence the um subtle disguise:

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Fiction Ebook A New Bestseller - Official! Conf 683

2011-11-23T15:05:00.000Z

Number 6!

Fiction ebook in the charts - Conf 682

2011-11-22T11:33:00.001Z

Ten Good Reasons is No. 26 today in Books On Board fiction popularity ranking. Couldn't resist a screenshot of the company it's keeping!

If you want to get your writing up on Books On Board, go to ProseQuest their new independent author publishing arm...

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A Good Ebook Cover Design Gets Me Noticed - Conf 681

2011-11-20T17:35:00.007Z

America's largest independent ebook store Books On Board has a new Indie Author Feature this week and look who's there all shiny and standy-outy in black and pink:

Books on Board have teamed up with ProseQuest to produce indie author ebooks under their imprint Travis Press. The set-up is a bit like Smashwords and Amazon Kindle, the author keeps all rights and (like Kindle sales above $2.99) 70% of sales revenue.

The ebook cover of Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age caught their eye and led to the novel's selection as one of the featured ebook titles for their big unveil this week. There's also a very pretty author promo page

And some nifty direct sales buttons (eyes to the left)...

So, big thanks to Books on Board and to cover designer Fena Lee, currently doing a rush job designing the cover for my next novel, all being well going up later this week.

Author Susie Kelly found Fena, who lives in Singapore, when she was looking for for a designer for her first blackbirdebooks cover The Valley of Heaven and Hell:

Fena is just 17 years old. See more of her book cover designs here.

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Facebook Book Launch

2011-11-08T13:00:00.019Z

We held our first blackbirdebooks book launch last week. This was to launch our latest Book of the Month, Susie Kelly's Best Foot Forward - From La Rochelle to Lake Geneva, the true story of her amazing 500 mile solo walk from one side of France to the other. In true digital style this was a virtual affair conducted via Facebook but none the less for it. In many ways definitely more!

Here are a few, as they say, of the best bits.

As the host I had quite a bit of chaperoning to do as everybody started gathering under one thread. At one point it was in danger of getting swamped by lost guests wandering around looking confused. But eventually everybody got there, the drinks flowed, music played and, at times, even the book was discussed.

It was scheduled to last an hour, but, like all good parties, it went on for quite a while longer, with one guest even breaking out into poetry:

"I went to a marvellous party
With Stephanie, Richard and Susie
It was all on Facebook
In a nice little nook
(though that Susie’s a bit of a floozy)
Dear Richard arrived wearing high heels
Which shocked us all somewhat, I’ll say
But Deborah and Frances did some crazy dances
Then suddenly Susie cried ‘watch me, ooo la la!’
And ripped off her dress and dance round in her bra
Oh! We couldn’t have liked it more….
APOLOGIES TO THE GREAT NOEL COWARD....xxx"

Johanna Wynne Symm

And the most beautiful part of hidden France?:

The best thing is, it's a party that'll never go away. It's all here for ever more. There may even be a few party bags left for the taking. The main 192 comment thread can be found just above the purple chocolate and Jacqueline's cat-molested cake.

Best Foot Forward - From La Rochelle to Lake Geneva by Susie Kelly

Out now in all ebook formats and paperback, UK and USA, a fantastic read!

How Leonard Cohen Got His Song

2011-10-26T10:07:00.000Z

Beautiful, moving speech.

The Prince of Asturias Awards are a series of annual prizes awarded in Spain by the Prince of Asturias Foundation to individuals, entities or organizations from around the world who make notable achievements in the sciences, humanities, and public affairs.

Thank you Dr H Guy for posting the video, thank you Susanna for flagging on FB.

"Only occasionally did you hear a whisper reminding us all: It’s the content, stupid."

2011-10-13T16:19:00.001Z

Excellent round-up of The Frankfurt Book Fair by Porter Anderson

Porter Anderson Writing on the Ether – Jane Friedman

Stand By Me, World

2011-10-09T15:37:00.000Z

Bob Harris' Tracks of My Years choice this week. A few years old now but still an amazing thing:

RIP. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2011-10-06T07:38:00.000Z

Self-Promotion, The Author's Nightmare - Conf 681

2011-09-27T15:53:00.020Z

It's a writing day today so have been procrastinating like mad. But at least in a fruitful way. The fridge is defrosted and I've been catching up on some splendid bloggery and suchlike.

Merry Farmer's blogpost BUY MY BOOK!!! IS SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION GOOD OR BAD? got me thinking (and even commenting) and back onto Twitter to stir up my character's page a bit. There I found a link to Liz Fenwick's Marketing - A Learning Curve. Liz is in exciting times, counting down to publication day of her first novel, and she's pulling in all sorts of advice.

I was working with a publicist recently who drummed into me over and over that shame simply HAD go RIGHT out of the window when it came to promotion. It's all right for you, I said, you're a publicist. Along with the other necessary, public speaking, it's really not at all easy for author types. I'm getting better, and learning to stay out of my 'real' friends' faces as much as possible. Mostly. Fell into awful hole recently when setting up a new Facebook Fan Page for blackbirdebooks' hard-won group (groups are gone). I obeyed the FB command to 'invite your friends!' - nooooh! Not that! I didn't think! Of my 70 or so closest nearest and dearest 11 clicked. Leaving me with that awful overstepping the mark feeling.

It's DIFFICULT. But has to be done.

I've just set up a new author one now but am too scared to ask anybody I know at all. So at the moment I have a fan of 1. Me. Which I suppose goes along with the spirit of this blog. It's, um, here..... if you so feel you can spare a click......

And if you think it's a bit presumptuous, setting up a fan page for oneself and serves me right, well, it just.......: Marketspeak gurus all say Facebook 'Likes' pages, along with a Twitter account, are the core ingredients of the new media platformery... John Locke, who wrote 'How I Sold a Million Ebooks In 5 Months' (and he did) (not that I have any delusions, with my fan of 1, but it's an engaging, inspiring read) did it mainly via the Twitter hashkey/blog combination. And they were short blogs. And not very many of them. Which is even more genius-like.

Twitter is easier. I don't have 900 friends so most are strangers. I've been on it forever anyway and, living, as I do, with Black Dog sufferer who barely speaks now, love it. I try and keep my personal feed clear 90% of the time, sneaking in the occasional irresistible brag or RT, well, maybe 80% of the time. So many other authors hate it. But you HA.......! A bit. To avoid that I have separate Twitter accounts for different books.

I've been beefing up my character's twitter feed a bit today. 10 Good Reasons' heroine Sally Lightfoot (@SallyLightfoot2) feeds in to her main interests: ageing (aging for the Americans) (always reads like like agging to Brits as we don't think, read or speak with that lovely soft aaaayyye) Leonard Cohen, men, baby boomers, Hydra, Strawberry Hill, metal music etc.... Anyway, there's this daily newspaper thing now you can get as well, so I've titled that with the name of the novel. I don't feel so bad about retweeting that as 'me' as it has that once removed newspaper feel about it:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 680 - Stepping Back

2011-09-27T08:26:00.000Z

Why haven't we seen this before? And what's that big BIG lake?

Romance Novels for the Baby Boomer Over 40s 'An Emerging Genre'

2011-09-12T09:55:00.004Z

The news is finally getting out.

As Lulu (62), Nancy Dell'Olio (50), Edwina Currie (64) and Anita Dobson (62) dust off their dancing shoes for Strictly Come Dancing, The Sunday Times' Eleanor Mills says that this summer has been awash with tales of bionic, sexually out there baby
boomers:

"Last week we had a British 65-year-old getting a boob job to perk herself up, hot on the heels of the 83-year-old American great-granny who had done the same thing. The bedroom antics of 78-year-old Joan Collins and the workout videos and (more) saucy memoirs of 73-year-old Jane Fonda received plenty of column inches...."

But, she says, this is not removing age-discrimination against women on TV by a long shot. We all love Strictly, but where are the programmes where intelligent, articulate women like Pamela Stephenson and Anne Widdicombe show off their brainpower rather than their legs?

The way TV presenters Arlene Phillips, Anna Ford, Moira Stuart, Miriam O'Reilley have all been pushed sideways when they get to a certain age is an on-going topic. More interestingly, Eleanor flags up a new "emerging literary genre" that celebrates the romantic adventures of baby boomers.

At...

Last.

One of her favourite summer reads was Thursdays In The Park (Quercus) by Hilary Boyd, currently sitting at 720 in the Kindle charts. Ulrika Jonsson's The Importance of Being Myrtle (Penguin Sept 11) is at no 800, and I've heard gossip that Anna Wintour has a novel (not sure if it's written yet) about a group of 50something women that they're all getting excited about. Hurrah for these well-connected authors (weather reporters, magazine editors whatever) who have got their ideas through the mire of publishing prejudice against over 40s romance novels. Long-time readers of this blog might remember what happened to Ten Good Reasons when it jumped the agent/editor hoops only to be ditched by a Big 6 sales & marketing team all those years ago. Hopefully these new novels might kick the genre into gear for the rest of us.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Selling Ebooks: Some Advice From The Experts - Confession 679

2011-09-09T12:50:00.000Z

I've now moved from creating ebooks and am in (apologies in advance) full-on marketing and sales mode. A full-time job if ever there was one.

I've been correcting a few things I missed, like:

Updating the front pages of my Kindle books to accommodate the new 'Look Inside' feature. I found this article 'Look Inside' For Kindle Books - 3 Tips For Authors' (scroll to 26th August 2011) on the very handy ebook blog Password Incorrect.

Having a blog on my main site. A crucial element of any website apparently. It drives readers and the constant updates keep Google happy. This is my How To Publish An Ebook - An Author's Guide Update Blog. Because everything moves so fast in the world of ebooks I am constantly updating the master text. Now I keep a note of anything I find really useful, and anything readers have emailed me about, and put them together on the blog before I update the ebook. This way anybody who buys my ebook (now in paperback as well!) (sorry) can go online to see future updates. There's also a new review I couldn't help but feature, from a happy reader who's just published his novel on Kindle and Smashwords by following my guide. It starts, "I'm 83 years old.... " !

Blog headings I now put my 'Confession' number at the end of the blog heading rather than at the beginning. This is because there are going to be tens of thousands of Google searches looking for "selling ebooks" but none at all for Confession No. 632.... SEO you have to know...

Having a Facebook 'Like' page. Across all industries now, not just ebooks, Facebook Like pages are a major cog in the social media marketing wheel. This annoyingly makes my FB "Group" useless. I have to start gathering friends and followers all over again. Tarting myself on my 'home' personal page and now here as well. But there IS a completely free ebook offer there, via the Federation of Children's Book Groups. If you'd like details of the free ebook book offer or should have a moment to click the black 'F' there and 'Like' I'd be hugely grateful. The offer is valid until Dec 1st.

There's more, but I think that's enough on ebooks. For future ebook news please see the tip page link in the sidebar.

My aim now is to split my days 50/50 between touting & tarting and writing.

Back to roots time for the writing blog.

There's an interesting series of writing events happening in Notting Hill, starting on Monday night 12th September - 5 X 15 STORIES - CROWD BOOK PUBLISHING!

No one has ever attempted this before - it's like a cross between Dragons' Den and election hustings. Here's the idea: you will be treated to an evening of riotous literary entertainment as 10 authors go head-to-head pitching ideas for books they would really like to write. Authors include the international bestselling novelist Kate Mosse, Booker shortlisted comic novelist Tibor Fischer and creator of cult 90s TV show This Life, Amy Jenkins. Robert Llewellyn (Red Dwarf, Scrapheap Challenge, Carpool) will be presenting his utopian fantasy, News from Gardenia. Graham Smith will offer up We Can Be Heroes - a lavishly illustrated insider's account of London's club scene in the early 80s. Vitali Vitaliev, the Russian Bill Bryson, presents Cattivo Recordo, a journey through italy in search of a bad meal. Read on here......

I can't make it unfortunately but hope to get to one of the later gigs.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

How to Advertise Ebooks - Conf 678

2011-09-02T17:07:00.001Z

I'm still getting the hang of forums. Am shy to comment and threads I start nearly always peter out into nothing. Have just struck gold however. My question on Kindleboards' Writer's Cafe forum:

Ebook Advertising: does it work? Any success stories?

Brought about a fascinating tutorial by total advertising whizz Jonny.

Read about ins & outs of ebook advertising here.

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#Back to Business - Conf 677

2011-08-25T14:09:00.000Z

It's been a long, long time but nearly ready.....

The story of #amwriting

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Ebook to POD Print

2011-08-20T19:04:00.000Z

Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age is now in print and on Amazon in the US and UK.

Here's a great free promo tool - the Good Reads giveaway scheme, Good Reads members just have to click to enter:

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ten Good Reasons to Lie about Your Age

by Stephanie Zia

Giveaway ends September 19, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - UPDATES from August 2011

2011-08-20T17:07:00.013Z

AS FROM 3RD SEPTEMBER 2011
UPDATES WILL BE LISTED AT BLACKBIRDEBOOKS.COM

PLEASE CLICK HERE FOR FURTHER UPDATES

Welcome to the update page for my ebook writing and formatting guide: How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide.

As the whole ebook scene moves so fast I regularly update the ebook versions of this guide. When updates have accumulated I also make new print versions, but not so often. The updates are categorised into promotion/techie etc and gathered under the date inserted. For information that isn't in your copy you only need to scroll down to the date you purchased. If you have any questions - if anything's not clear (or you spot any typos!) - please comment and I can then adjust the Master next time I'm updating.

PROMOTING YOUR EBOOK

September 3 2011

I'm still getting the hang of forums. Am shy to comment and threads I start nearly always peter out into nothing. Have just struck gold however. My question on Kindleboards' Writer's Cafe forum:

Ebook Advertising: does it work? Any success stories?

Brought about a fascinating tutorial by total advertising whizz Jonny.

Read about ins & outs of ebook advertising here.

August 25 2011

PROMOTING YOUR EBOOK

This is a really good, intelligent and informative blog for indie authors:

The Indie Book Collective http://indiebookcollective.com
They're on Twitter at @IndieBookIBC
Use the hashtag #IBC for all indie book discussions.
Kait Nolan's Selling Your Book guide
http://indiebookcollective.com/IndieBookCollective/Selling_Your_Book.html

August 4 2011

INSERTING PICTURES INTO YOUR EBOOK

ANCHORING PICTURES IN WORD

Reader Melvin has pointed out the Word picture anchoring instructions didn't work on his version of Word.
1. On very old versions of Word:
Click Layout.
Click Advanced
You'll see 2 options at the top: Picture Position/Text Wrapping
If you click on Picture Position you get the Lock Anchor option.
2. On other Word versions the procedure might be:
Click Format.
Click Position.
Click More Layout Options.
Click Lock Anchor
(thanks to Melvin)

WORKING WITH TEXT EDIT
Note that pictures cannot be placed in TextEdit. They have to be reinserted after you have cut and pasted your Plain Text words into your new Smashwords Word Master.

MAKING EBOOK COVERS

Free Simple Photo Editing Site For Editing and Resizing Photos And For Making Ebook Covers:

PIXLR

Ebook to Print - Conf 676

2011-08-20T09:51:00.003Z

Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age is now in print and on Amazon in the US and UK.

Here's a nice little promotional aid - the Good Reads giveaway scheme. Just a click to enter!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ten Good Reasons to Lie about Your Age

by Stephanie Zia

Giveaway ends September 19, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Florence & Giles by John Harding

2011-08-04T10:25:00.001Z

Nicola Morgan has just reviewed this book on her Help! I Need A Publisher blog, reminding me of what a great book it is. I meant to review at the time, well daughter was going to, but somehow we got side-tracked. Anyway - if you're looking for a special summer read there's a special 99p Kindle offer on at the moment:
99p

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Florence-and-Giles-ebook/dp/B003ATPQWK/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1312453493&sr=1-1

Florence and Giles by John Harding

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Lots of love for this book in our house. My teenage daughter also loved this so much. She cottoned on to solving the mystery at the centre of this story long before I did and actually rang me from where she was reading to talk about it! A complete classic. Why wasn't it in the Booker list?

View all my reviews

Conf 675 - Getting Away

2011-07-25T12:00:00.002Z

Spent nearly all weekend at the computer reformatting the rewritten version of How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide for kindle and paperback.

Kindle Direct Publishing have several ebook creators now but they really didn't help at all. Mobipocket doesn't work on Macs. KindleGen's download instructions are impenetrable. There are lots of complaints on the forums from Mac users, all graphic designers use Macs, baffled at the amount of geekiness of the floppy disc kind needed to get this thing working. Anyway, after too much time spent at the screen, not to mention my whole website going down due to hackers and having to be rebuilt, am now determined to get the real world back into my life again.

A good, sunny Monday Morning sort of new exercise regime start, I went for a power walk in Kensington Gardens. Took myself to the wildest part and pretended I wasn't in London.

Stopped off at the Round Pond.

& Serpentine.

Then it all went a bit London. Stumbled upon a black garden

and an amazing mirror maze made of cardboard. No photos allowed. Was all the better for the stumbling upon nature of it, rather than hearing about it somewhere first. His name's Pistoletto & he's giving a talk on 2 Sept. Going back for tickets tomorrow.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 674 - An Interview

2011-07-08T19:31:00.001Z

Very proud to be featuring today on David Wisehart's Kindle Author blog.

Sorry, have actually been out and about in this absence, sneaking off for a day at Wimbledon

& visiting universities with daughter. I'm thinking of writing a sequel to Harold & Maude about a woman who never went to university who just goes on endless Open Day visits. They're great! you get lectures, food, freebies... and loving the train rides to the North of England.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

US Tax On UK Authors Part III: What to do When You Get Your EIN (or ITIN) Number

2011-06-19T11:49:00.010Z

My ITIN number finally came through from the US last week.

This is my personal tax ID for the USA tax department (the IRS) which now has me on its books as an author earning royalties. It took about 2 months. I'll now soon be exempt from the 30% deduction on my US royalties at source made by Amazon and Smashwords.

I wrote about how to fill out the form W-7 (Get here) and jump the fiddlesome hoops to get your number back in February.

UPDATE 8 JAN 2012: You no longer need an ITIN number! An EIN number, (Employer Identity Number) is much easier to get hold of and can be obtained from the US embassy over the phone.

The next thing is to fill out another form, W-8BEN, and send it to the retailers. Kdp (Amazon Digital) request it's filled out in physical (wet ink) ink. As the letter from the US guarantor had to be signed in BLUE ink (as opposed to our officialdom black ink), to be safe I filled this one out in blue ink too. You have to write in the exact words in exactly the right places requested (eg United Kingdom, not UK) or it'll be rejected. Amazon makes this easy by linking to a sample download PDF which you can get here.

Then, for your Amazon Kindle sales, send the form to:

Amazon Digital Services
Attn: Vendor Maintenance
PO Box 80683
Seattle, WA 98108-0683

Send another original form in wet ink to Smashwords if you sell there. They have an additional instruction:

"Include your Smashwords screen name or email address on line 8 of your W8-BEN form."

Their address is:

Smashwords, Inc.
Attention Tax Compliance Dept.
15951 Los Gatos Blvd., Ste 16
Los Gatos, CA 95032

My third and final form went to CreateSpace, linked to Amazon but a separate company which needs a form:

CreateSpace Accounts Payable
8329 West Sunset Road
Suite 200  
Las Vegas,
NV 89113

In 2 or 3 weeks' time I'll email them all to see if everything's going through. Update: 1 week later and Amazon have emailed to say they've received it. Phew. Now expecting a back-tax refund on the next cheque.

Conf 673: Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age Interview

2011-06-17T09:31:00.002Z

Here's an interview about my new novel

by Patti Roberts

Patti is based in Queensland, Australia. Read all about her own novel
Paradox - The Angels Are Here
here:

Conf 672 - A beautiful white coincidence

2011-06-12T18:56:00.001Z

I found a fallen white rose on the path in the garden the other day, I brought it inside and put it in a little glass. Back in the garden in the afternoon I found this rose locket (not valuable I should add, made of tin and plastic!).

Apologies for another long absence.

Writing and editing full on at the moment, finishing an update of Done & Dusted for print, editing and promoting my two lovely blackbirdebooks' authors, breaking for good with my agent (barely scratched the emotions, that, how times have changed) and, excitement, have been dealing with the first translation rights query for all our blackbirdebooks. The best it gets away from the computer is quick escapes to the garden for short runs and stretches. I take my yoga mat. I quite like carrying my yoga mat around. It's a bit like having a dog, people talk to you. They probably think I'm a healthy bendy person when nothing could be further from the truth. I spend way too much time hunched over the screen.

But needs be, when all the books are out there in print I'm looking forward to getting back to some full on writing. Meantime I'm loving working with other writers as well. I'm editor on these two lovely paperbacks. Highly recommended:

The Valley of Heaven and Hell - Cycling in the Shadow of Marie-Antoinette

The Dream Theatre

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

A Georgian Summer's Evening in Ladak, East Sheen - Conf 672

2011-05-22T18:11:00.006Z

Private views. Love them. Early summer's evening drinks, nibbles, a bit of art, a bit of chat, old friends, new. Another glass of wine why not. Then off for dinner somewhere (fish & chips on the way home for the family in this case). In the early 80s new galleries were opening up all over the place around my W11 flat. They're long gone. Folkestone's the place now for unusual little art galleries. My sister lives there. It's great. Last week I found one closer to home. A really lovely new little gallery in Sheen, west London. Beautiful light, run by friendly, warm people and with some great art on display. The owner of the gallery is from Ladak, Nepal; the artist, Misha Shengelia, is from Georgia. He does these postcard oils:

My favourite was a painting of a little town with a statue with a big nose in the middle called 'an unimportant statue in an unimportant town' - :) I couldn't find a picture of it but there are lots of lovely ones:

Those are small, A4 kind of size and, at £180 a pop, £300 for 2, affordable art for many. There are bigger pictures too:

Wonderful.

If you're in west London the exhibition is on till 4 June Noon - 7pm. The gallery is called Ladak and it's in downtown Sheen at 192 Upper Richmond Road West, East Sheen SW14 8AN.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Tagging Tricks - How It Works - Conf 671

2011-05-17T10:34:00.002Z

The importance of Tagging

'Tagging' your ebook with relevant words/phrases makes it more 'searchable'. Having a lot of tags on your Amazon sales page is the ebook equivalent of getting your book into the big bookstores and displayed on their tables. If a UK Amazon reader is searching for 'Contemporary Fiction' for instance, they'll get a listing of 2,711 products. My novel is currently on the front page at No. 1. Like getting on the first page of Google, getting on the first page of Amazon's search means you'll get many more readers looking at your book cover and clicking on it to find out more.

The trick lies in the forum Tag for Tag threads. Each month new threads open up on the Amazon Kindle Customer Discussions Forum and at www.kindleboards.com. You tag everybody else's books and they tag yours. As these threads run into 100s of pages, the etiquette is to go back six pages from when you joined and tag everybody from thereon in and return to update whenever you can. You don't have to click every tiny Tag box on every product. Go to the book page, hit TT and the Tag box opens up. Cut and paste the list of words below the box into the box. Done.

Extract From How to Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide
PDF, Kindle, iBooks, NOOK, Smashwords for all formats. Paperback coming soon.

Getting Your Books Noticed - Conf 670

2011-05-15T14:33:00.003Z

Rare treat, lunch out. At the Wolseley no less. What a place. Thanks, I'm sure, to my starry author companions we got the top balcony table looking down over it all!

Good celeb-spot spot. Gordon Ramsay comes here for his porridge and blueberries every morning and Terence Stamp comes for tea. I didn't see anybody - apart from my esteemed companions of course. THINK I saw Alan Whicker on Piccadilly, sure I recognised the blazer and the jib of the (now very white) moustache. Anyway, to the important bit. My other half is scared of mince, he has a real, real fear of it. I don't cook it at home very much, making this a double double treat:

The Wolseley Shepherd's Pie

Being the only self-published, digital girl there it was interesting to compare notes. The Holy Mother of all the grails of getting noticed once you're published is still the supermarket buyer. If Big Supermarket Buyer decides to stock your novel, and goes through with their decision, you can start breathing again.

I've been doing ebooks a while now but have only just discovered the important digital equivalent of the supermarket shelves and the good old Waterstones tables. My sales have been growing slowly slowly. Logged on this morning to find this:

Ebooks are so new in UK it's not that hard to get in the charts but in the US it's much harder. This got there thanks to the Tagging system. If a book is tagged in Amazon it goes up their internal search list. So, if you're looking to read about selling ebooks and put Sell Ebooks into search you get:

Or if you want to see what's popular in contemporary fiction. There I am No. 1 of 2,711 products:

Now off to add this fairly crucial piece of info to my How To Publish An Ebook Ebook... text.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Morning!

2011-05-12T07:12:00.000Z

My novel is featuring on the US The Indie Books Blog today. And, um, actually I'm not that age... caught lying there, but in genuine error, and in the wrong direction...

The blackbird is getting more dog-like. This is what I see when I pull back the curtains every morning.

She waits expectantly until she gets what she wants:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Spreading The Word - Conf 669

2011-05-09T16:30:00.001Z

Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age is featuring on Patti Roberts lovely blog tomorrow 10th May 2011 (today in Australia already).

Paradox - The Angels Are Here

What would have been my mother's 99th birthday!

Thanks Patti!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon

Rules for Writers - Conf 668

2011-05-05T11:50:00.021Z

Have been in Procrastination Central all morning. It's 12.14 now, I haven't been out for my run, no yoga, no nothing because today is a writing day.

Well, it's editing, which isn't so bad. Or shouldn't be. But I've been so involved in producing books it's going to take a while to settle back. I haven't written a word so far. Actually I haven't even opened the file. And it's nearly lunchtime now. And I haven't voted yes yet (we have voting elections today on how we vote) (I think it's just that sort of a day).

The morning hasn't been completely wasted. I've updated myself at Good Reads and had a little go on the kindle boards (they rate Good Reads highly as a promotional tool). The Amazon kindle discussion forum is a procrastinator's dream. This is where all those supremely high-selling ebook authors say they started. So you have the added value of thinking you're actually doing something constructive whilst chatting at the same time. But do you have to be careful where you post. Reader threads really, really don't like authors butting in with their promo spam. I didn't realise that at all at first. I found a discussion that appeared relevant to the content of my novel and merrily joined in, with a link at the end to my novel. Mistake! There are lots of author threads though, and some are proving useful, like the tag for tag one, I'll tag you and you tag me. Then your book gets a higher visibility rate.

Over a cup of tea and a biscuit I revisited The Guardian's wonderful Rules For Writers series. I love Will Self's:

'You know that sickening feeling of inadequacy and over-exposure you feel when you look upon your own empurpled prose? Relax into the awareness that this ghastly sensation will never, ever leave you, no matter how successful and publicly lauded you become. It is intrinsic to the real business of writing and should be cherished.'

and Sarah Waters'

'Writing fiction is not "self-expression" or "therapy". Novels are for readers, and writing them means the crafty, patient, selfless construction of effects. I think of my novels as being something like fairground rides: my job is to strap the reader into their car at the start of chapter one, then trundle and whizz them through scenes and surprises, on a carefully planned route, and at a finely engineered pace.'

I half agree with the 'carefully planned route.' If you're writing mysteries with twists then it's obviously necessary to plan it out. I'm less of a planner, to start off with anyway. Endings are always a surprise for me. In the interview I saw at the London Book Fair, Boris Akunin sounded more like a pantser. He starts off with the casting. He gets his characters to a living, breathing point. Then they start interacting with each other and he takes it from there...

One more Rule For Writers from Will Self:

'Regard yourself as a small corporation of one. Take yourself off on team-building exercises (long walks). Hold a Christmas party every year at which you stand in the corner of your writing room, shouting very loudly to yourself while drinking a bottle of white wine. Then masturbate under the desk. The following day you will feel a deep and cohering sense of embarrassment.'

Ooh, lunchtime..

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Books Without Publishers - Harry Bingham Guest Post

2011-04-27T09:14:00.000Z

Further to my roundup of the London Book Fair from a digital author's perspective (The London Book Fair's For Authors Too!), I'm delighted to host a guest blog on the future of publishing by Harry Bingham of The Writer's Workshop:

Books Without Publishers

Just before Christmas, I had lunch with the CEO of one of the UK's biggest publishers. We were talking about how the world was moving from a world of limited shelf space (Waterstones, WH Smith, Tescos) to a world of unlimited shelf space, the digital world, a place where any number of books can happily co-exist.

In the first world, it's pretty obvious why you need things as they are. You need writers and readers, of course. But you need retailers (to create the shelf space). You need publishers (to sell stuff to retailers). And you need agents (to sell stuff to publishers). A cumbersome old way of doing things, but you can see the logic.

In the new world, you still need (duh!) the writer and the reader. You need some kind of interface between the two - Amazon, for example, or an Apple iBookstore - but what else? Why have an agent, if Amazon offers universal terms? Why have a publisher, if the publisher is just on-selling to Amazon? By the time we got to pudding, this Great Publishing CEO was leaning over to me and asking in all seriousness, 'Harry, do you think that publishers will even exist?'

It's a real question, and she's not the only one asking it. I'd say that pretty much every major publisher and literary agent is asking themselves that question and no one truly knows the answer.

Nevertheless, I think there are a few facts you can depend on:
    1.    Editorial quality still counts. You will never get a word of mouth bestseller unless the book itself is very good. That means getting the big things right (plot, character, prose style), but it probably also means the little things too (proper copyeditiing, no typos, commas in all the right places). The Writers' Workshop exists to offer exactly those sort of services and we've never been busier, despite the downturn in conventional publishing.
    2.    Branding still matters. You can't write a wonderful book and put a rubbish cover on it - not even a rubbish e-cover, that doesn't exist beyond a page on a computer screen. Quality cover design is still the first reader-experience of a book and you have to make sure that experience is a positive one. It needs to communicate the right kind of message (eg: "This is a crime novel") and it needs to do so memorably and beautifully.
    3.    Platform still matters. In the old day, your selling platform was a nice review in the Daily Telegraph and a 3-for-2 deal at Waterstones. Those things are becoming progressively less important ... but that doesn't mean you can afford not to replace them. So you need a major digital presence. Blogs. Websites. Forums. Twitter. Whatever is your thing. But aim high. A thousand visitors a month won't do much for you. You need to be aiming to gather an audience in the 10s of thousands - bear in mind that few of them will end up buying your book.
    4.    There will still be 'filters'. In the old-old days, publishing houses filtered out the garbage and printed the good stuff. In the old days (ie: last year) that role largely migrated to literary agents. In the new world (ie: the world of the year after next) there will be increasing opportunities to bypass agents ... but there will still be gatekeepers. Those gatekeepers might be bloggers or webmasters, but whoever they are, they'll still matter. You are going to need to impress them and the quality levels will still be challenging.

But having said all that - the new world looks like being fun. There are companies now who can take a word document and convert it into the right format for Amazon and Apple (with Digital Rights Management protection on it) for a few hundred quid. The tools of paper self-publishing will exist for the digital world - except that retailing is going to be miles easier. I don't know what the new world will hold, but it's a revolution on a scale that publishing hasn't seen in 500 years. Hold on to your hats - the ride starts here

Harry Bingham is an author and boss of The Writers' Workshop (http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk).

Nesting

2011-04-25T11:35:00.001Z

Our friendly blackbird is making herself right at home.

And she's taken up a new 'sunning' pose, a peculiar blackbird relaxation ritual where they look straight into the sun, nobody knows why they do it. She stands like this for ages, statue-still:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

The London Book Fair's For Authors Too! Conf 667

2011-04-16T15:00:00.006Z

The London Book Fair at Earls Court is just 15 minutes' walk from my flat yet I've never considered going. Ever. It's for the business end, where publishers and agents do their deals, not for authors. Besides that it costs a fortune to get in. So it never crossed my mind. But this year a friend suggested I might want to go with her and, when I discovered the early booking discount, and thought, hang on a minute, I'm a publisher as well now, I decided to go.

It's HUGE. I mean, I know Earls Court is big, I've been to trade fairs there before. But this expands to the 2nd floor (the agents' section and quite a sight - 100s and 100s of tables and a champagne bar). Then there are simultaneous seminars happening in countless rooms on the floor itself and in different conference rooms all around. Fascinating! So, so much going on, so much to see, to absorb.

My first stop was Digital Publishing in Russia (Russia was the theme this year). In a conference room miles from anywhere up lots of stairs I found Russian crime novelist superstar Boris Akunin talking to a half-empty room. The Chair was Peter Collingridge from Enhanced Editions and with them were 2 Russian publishers. Why on earth it wasn't packed out to heaving I've no idea.

Boris was so interesting. He's writing digital books now as well, using the new technology as a tool. When ePub3.0 arrives (for more about this see here) he's ready to move in deeper, integrating video clips and audio into his plots. There will be different endings. The reader will have to hunt out clues by looking, listening and guessing. New ways of writing will evolve he says. To those who throw their hands up in horror, Boris' answer is that 'every problem is a new opportunity.'

I for one was greatly inspired and am rethinking the way I restructure my half-written, put to one side, children's epic to include these multimedia enhancements.

One of the publishers then explained how piracy is a real problem in Russia. This is another reason they are keen to buy more innovative multi-media ebooks - they're difficult to copy. In Russia, he said, electronic books don't compete with paper books, they broaden the audience. The more ebooks that sell the more paper books sell. The Russian digital book market is split into 30% fiction, 30% non-fiction, 10% esoteric and the rest art(?)/science/fantasy.

The blogosphere in Russia is very very very popular and highly active on cultural, social and political levels. Boris has a popular blog. He writes there and interacts with his readers. From it he's writing a book including the most interesting comments. 'Why do authors need publishers!' he asked. 'It's all right for you,' somebody said. But he said he is working with the blog, getting subscribers, running competitions to promote his books. Publishers are slow to catch on to the importance of internet search strategy. 'This is the future, this is where new books and new authors will be discovered.' In response to Boris' question about what do authors need publishers for, Peter Collingridge listed:

Added value. Editorial. Shaping. Communicating with the reader.

The talk then moved on to agents. What will the publisher/agent/author relationship be in the future? Will agents become publishers? The Wylie Agency and Sheilland were mentioned as being on the ball.

I was then brought right down by a talk for authors where a self-publishing set-up was flogging their print on demand package to authors for £hundreds. There are plenty of free POD set-ups these days, see Lulu, CreateSpace, WordClay.

But things livened up again with another Boris session the next day (promoted this time to Author of The Day with a suitable sell-out standing room only crowd) and then the treat that was Kazuo Ishiguro.

My friend The Writing Coach blogs about the more traditional writing side of their talks and our well-earned champagne stop here.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Authors Are Doing It For Themselves - Conf 666

2011-04-06T12:10:00.014Z

Apologies again for my extended absence.

I've been completely wrapped up in my epublishing site www.blackbirdebooks.com.

If you've been with me a while you'll know that the site started off as a small platform for putting my own work out. But over the last year there's been such a prominent rise in ebooks in the US, and now here in the UK. The first ebook millionaire has emerged in the US, and over here my little site just kept growing. I eventually had to rein it in or I'd have spent all my time publishing with no time left for writing.

Gladly, I feel I've now reached a happy medium. I'm working with a couple of fantastic authors with one more in the wings. It's starting to become more fun than just hard, hard slog. Mainly due to the people and the books I'm working with.

My author-in-waiting is the publicist superwoman who helped me grow the business in the first place. Until the autumn I'll be concentrating on just two other books. The first has just come out and I'm getting all the excitement of publishing all over again. I could not have asked for a better author and book to kick off. Lookie here it is at No. 1:

We've both been in the business as writers for a while, Susie Kelly has published several bestsellers with Transworld, so we know our way around that end of the game. Susie and I 'met' on this blog. She was following Amanda Mann's sorry tale of rejection and trauma and bought and then commented kindly on my first ebook Done & Dusted.

Now I can comment kindly on her own. I've just put this review up on Good Reads.

Enchantement!

I hate travel books and TV documentaries that are more about the author/presenter than the place they're visiting. I want to know about the country, the people, the food, the sights, the quirky details. It's a difficult skill to pull off. Like all the very best travel writers (and there aren't that many) Susie Kelly pulls this off superbly. It's all so relaxed and effortlessness! There's plenty about her own feelings and reactions of course, not least to cycling 750km on a bike with a tent balanced on a baking tray at the back with her energetic husband Terry charging on ahead all the time. He also has a major role to play in the story (like Louis XVI he loves his food). That's it - the way the author merges her own journey, with all it's potentials for disaster, with Marie Antoinette's fleeing for her life and subsequent execution. It's like you're having a long, lingering dinner with the author over a lovely bottle of wine. She's telling you all about her own journey through an unknown region of France (linking you to the actual websites of favourite places on the computer!) with Marie Antoinette at her side butting in, filling in here and there with the historical facts. I learnt so much about the French Revolution and now know exactly why it's become known as The Terror. This book has a lot of feeling and a lot of heart. It's also very funny. I'd recommend it to armchair travellers everywhere.

If you're interested the sales page is here, (£2.49/$3.99/E2.88) plus it's there on Amazon, Smashwords and coming soon to B&N Nook and iBooks. It's also available as a paperback (£6.25 + p&p). If anybody does reviews and would like an ebook review copy, please mail me at mail@blackbirdebooks.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 665 - Book For Sale

2011-03-30T12:51:00.001Z

It took a while, but here it is in paperback:

Conf 664: From Ebook to Print

2011-03-26T11:02:00.008Z

Well, quite a few of my friends aren't too keen about reading online.

Plus there's an article coming out next week in Irish mag Woman's Way so I thought I'd better make it available via tree pretty quickly.

An interesting exercise that took me all day to work out how to go about it. Smashwords (who I totally trust) works in tandem with Wordclay. Like CreateSpace, they offer free POD (print on demand) to authors but the cost of the book and the postage from the USA on top just makes it all too much.

Lulu's basic free POD system gets you a bound paperback and a retail price in the realms of normal book prices. I've priced mine at £6.99 out of which I get to keep £1.86 per sale. It all goes up on site instantly and you as the author don't have to get involved in the distribution side. The buyer orders from Lulu, they print and post it and pay you via PayPal. All you have to do is provide a buy here button, um, like this one on your site:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon

Look Who's Back!

2011-03-19T10:40:00.003Z

She was waiting on the balcony 3 mornings ago. Didn't want to be too sure at first but the way she pecked (furiously) and wiped her beak on the railings afterwards looked familiar. Yesterday she flew down when I opened the balcony doors, and those 2 white marks on the back look familiar. This morning she was there waiting again. Not as confident or chatty as before but hopefully that will return...

A fortuitous return. I'm just about to publish blackbirdebooks' first author who isn't me on my epublishing site www.blackbirdebooks.com. More about that next week.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Confession 663: I Appear To Be Getting Somewhere

2011-03-16T10:02:00.005Z

When things start to go well with your book, how do you deal with it? Emailing your close friends is one thing but posting links to great reviews to the world and its neighbours isn't great Twitter & FB ettiquete.

On the other hand, authors just have to self-promote online these days. Especially self-published authors who don't have a single cog of industry machinery in the background churning away. I did do a bit of a splurge on Twitter when my novel came out, and direct-tweeted magazine editors (spamming!). Then I shut up. I've allowed myself one little tweet on what's happening now. But here, at least, after all the miserable, negative news over the years I can indulge a little:

Top right, above (above) Keith Richards:

Not sure how these came about, but bizarreness of this Google prompted a screenshot.

The music of Leonard Cohen plays an important role in the novel:

Keith Richards again:

Then this happened:

How did this all come about?

One review by Leslie Wright at www.wrighton-time.blogspot.com. She posted on the massive, influential blogcritics.org, where it was picked up by Seattle pi and off it went all the way to Huffington.

Book Review: Ten Good Reasons to Lie About Your Age by Stephanie Zia

By LESLIE WRIGHT
BLOGCRITICS.ORG

Living the dream and having a life that others only wish for is an amazing existence. Spending your life with the man you love, watching your children grow together is only what happens to other people. But what if that other person happens to be you? And what if instead of growing old together, he dies in a tragic accident?

Sally Lightfoot is now living this life. Growing up in the time of free love and music, she found the man of her dreams, a music producer who loved life and fun, as well as Sally. Bereft at his death she does the best she can, coming to terms with the changes.

Age is a factor, she is no long young and her children have grown, money too is a new issue she is has to deal with. Her only option is to sell the home that they so lovingly put together. Dissociative behavior seems to rule her life, she struggles just doing the simple things, and yet she must.

The house is barely on the market when she finds a buyer, yet she is still not sure where she will go or where she will live. As she decides to take a vacation to a remote Greek island, a chance to regroup her life and to reconnect with her children, she realizes that her life no longer has meaning. She is no longer sure who she is.

In Ten Good Reasons to Lie About Your Age, Stephanie Zia has developed a story of life and hope. Sally is a woman who buried herself in her marriage and her children. She loses her footing when her husband dies, and struggles through her new life. Interrupted in the most devastating of ways, life has changed and she is unsure of herself. Their friends slowly slip away into their own lives, but she makes friends with a neighbor who she barely tolerated before Dominic’s death. This neighbor gives her a stability she needs.

Being on her own on the island brings a new set of problems, but as each day moves into the next and as she makes her rental habitable she finds a beauty she did not expect. Even those she was most awkward with have become her friends. When she meets Loro, all bets are off. Handsome, close to her own age, he has the voice and the charisma to carry it off. Life takes on more meaning as Sally’s life takes another turn.

Stephanie Zia makes you feel the pressure and hopelessness that is Sally’s life, from the funeral right through her grieving process. As life begins to bloom again, you feel the veil lifted along with her, and when she finally makes decisions based off her own feelings, you cheer her on. Through it all, she feels as though Dom (her dead husband) continues to try to take care of her from the other side. As love and longing bloom, she finds she no longer needs that crutch and is able to get back to real living.

I would recommend this book for reading and book clubs. It is insightful and delightful, full of thoughtful dialogue and exceptional clarity. Sally feels real, like a neighbor or a friend and that makes the story take on a presence of its own. It is a story of hope and learning to love yourself, to find that inner you that sometimes is lost when we make other’s lives more important than our own.

This is a book about life and it is a romance as well, you will get lost in the story and not want to put it down until it is finished.

Click here for more information about my novel.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Free Ebooks - Download Hundreds of Free, Quality Ebooks

2011-03-11T09:03:00.001Z

Smashwords' amazing annual free ebook promotion is under way.

For a completely free, no obligation, copy of my novel Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age in any ebook format or to read on your computer, click here! Only two days left to go!

Self-publishing my novel as an ebook: feedback 1 (Conf 662)

2011-03-05T20:50:00.007Z

A new template for a new era.

Sorry for the long absence. It's been a very busy time as the novel I started at the same time as this blog all those years ago takes its first baby steps out in the world.

It's been a time of high neurosis waiting for the first verdicts. Thankfully the reviews are starting to come in now, all is well and I've started breathing again. I also had interest from a Big Publisher which really made me queasy. I so prepared myself for rejection that when it came I was genuinely relieved to be put out of my misery.

I have to say the whole process has been much more nerve wracking than having a novel published in print. There you have several layers of professionalism between you and the raw audience. You know your agent loved it, and your editor at least. With self-published ebooks you don't, you're straight out there. If the feedback is bad (or, more likely if it's not going down well, non-existent), you've only yourself to blame.

Promoting your work once it's out there is really hard work. I made an online press release and Tweeted it to magazine editors, nil result. I'm getting better at shameless self-promotion but Twitter isn't really the place. Instead I've set up an account in my character's nick-name @LadyGrnningSoul, and she's having a much better time out there. She's even got the real @LeonardCohen74 following her. (In the story Sally, a backing singer, falls in lust with a Leonard Cohen tribute artist on the Greek island of Hydra. Her quest is to get him to see her 'in that way'). She tweets, as she sings, in brackets.

I also did a good old-fashioned snailmail press release which had 2 positive responses. One from Ireland's biggest women's mag (with readers in the hundreds of thousands a week!) who I've written an article for and another big UK mag is considering reviewing at the moment. Ebooks have come a long way in such a short time. When we tried getting my first ebook in print magazines we had a great initial response but nearly all of them blew off when they found out it was 'only' an ebook.

I've also been taking my first baby steps as an epublisher. (How did THAT happen!) I've been working with 2 fantastic authors, editing, (and having my edits accepted phew), agreeing contracts, proof reading and all the rest. They're both completely new, original works by authors like me who have been published before. I didn't know either author, but had sort of 'met' them both online. I can't wait to reveal these fantastic books. One's going to be our book of the month for April, the second will be book of the month in May.

We've quietly opened submissions now as well. Here's how I'm planning for it all to work.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 661: How To Fill Out US Tax Form IRS ITIN W7

2011-02-09T18:40:00.002Z

Further to my last post on US royalty laws and overseas authors I've been to the US Embassy in London and am now on the way to getting my paperwork sorted. If you don't have a tax exemption code to give US Amazon and US-based Smashwords (who make and distribute all your ebooks for Apple iBooks in the US and UK, Barnes & Noble etc), 30% of all your royalties will be deducted at source.

Not there yet but major hurdles, like what exactly you say on the form, overcome.

The first problem was getting inside the Embassy. As closely guarded as you'd imagine. I went up to the security entrance hut and tried to walk in but was swiftly expelled. I had to find a man on the pavement (sidewalk) standing at a table. He's the pre-security security man. Very friendly but told me it was closed and to come back at 2.

After enforced shopping on Oxford Street (Selfridges or Primark? guess which won), was back at 2 but the pre-security man had disappeared complete with his table. Panic. However, was allowed inside hut this time. After Airport-like security & going to wrong Reception found the IRS office on a lower ground floor. I don't know why but had imagined this as being like a post office, with counters and really unhelpful, officious staff. And I expected to have to wait for a long time, possibly hours. I do know why. This is the impression you get when you first set eyes on the form.

However not at all. In a small, comfortable room (with no queue at all) I met with a very friendly smiley biiiig American man who couldn't have been more helpful.

Here is the form ITIN W7 for download.

Get here

You can fill it out online or print and fill in.

Now for the non-logical bits you have to fill in:

FORM REQUIREMENTS FOR UK CITIZENS

Reasons you are submitting Form tick TWO of the listed reasons:

a) Nonresident alien

AND

h) Other (see instructions) and WRITE IN: Exception 1(d) – ROYALTIES

Where it says “Additional information for a and f” in tiny letters underneath this list:

Enter treaty country: WRITE IN: UK* and treaty article number: WRITE IN: Article 12

Amendment further to Anne's comment below: *to be safe write United Kingdom

IDENTIFICATION DOCUMENTS

If you send photocopies of your passport they must be certified photocopies by a US NOTARY, so local solicitors' certified copies or JPs' stamps are not enough. 'The stamp must be American' they said. If at all possible the easiest way is to take your passport, form and hand signed Smashwords letter into the Embassy in London (open Tues – Fri), they'll photocopy your passport for no fee and check you've filled out the form correctly. If you have to send your original passport by post, send by recorded delivery and allow plenty of time, at least a month, for processing.

Under 6d Identification Documents:
Issue by: WRITE UK No: WRITE THE PASSPORT NUMBER

SIGN & DATE the form.

The good news is there's no charge for this and the Embassy staff (once you get inside!) are very helpful.

Mine wasn't processed because I didn't have a letter from the US.

The letter proving that you are paid royalties in the USA MUST include the following:

LETTERHEAD
ORIGINAL HAND-SIGNED SIGNATURE (no FAXes)
YOUR NAME
“royalties from USA paid in current tax year”
Don't complicate it by saying which tax year, just say “current tax year”. And make sure the words "from USA" are there or your form will be rejected.

As soon as you've accrued $10.00 or more royalties on Smashwords sales, Smashwords the great Mark Coker will send you an original signed letter with all the right requirements for free. They will also delay royalties until your forms are all processed.

There's another form after the ITIN W7, when I get to that will let you know.

This and much, much more information on creating and selling your own ebooks is available in my ebook:

£3.50 PDF Blackbirdebooks.com; Kindle, Amazon UK Kindle, Amazon US (see direct link below); Apple iBooks UK; Apple iBooks US; Smashwords for Barnes & Noble NOOK, Sony Reader, reading on home computers, phones & more

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 660: Ebook UK Royalties: Amazon Kindle and Smashwords Sales

2011-02-02T13:07:00.011Z

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Still have hands majorly clamped to ears. The novel is selling a little bit in the UK, no sales on Amazon US yet. It's a delicate time, much moreso than publishing via an agent and publisher as you don't have that protective barrier of thinking hmph well, they must have liked it or they'd not have taken me on.

Ebooks really are still in their infancy here. 90% of my non-fiction sales on Amazon are in the US. Ebooks have now, apparently, overtaken paperback sales there. So it's a bit of a priority to get my US tax forms sorted but it's so complicated. I've had my forms returned once already so have been updating the blog post I did last year.

I'll be going to the Embassy in the next week or so and will report back. Meantime here's the blog piece again:

Now that UK and overseas authors can sell their Kindle ebooks via Amazon.co.uk as well as Amazon.com I've been checking up on royalty payments and the US tax situation.

Previously payments were made to all overseas authors via US$ cheques. This is still the case with ebooks sold on .com. You'll have to pay a UK bank charge for paying the cheque in. RBS, for example, charges £7.50 per transaction. Amazon have recently changed their criteria on issuing royalty cheques and now no payment is made until at least $100 is owed. On request (see Smashwords FAQ link below), Smashwords will withhold payments until your US tax number comes through.

Royalties due on ebooks sold on Amazon.co.uk are paid in UK £ cheques and mailed monthly. You have to accrue at least £75 worth of royalties before a cheque is issued. Most ebook sales (at Feb 2011) are still made to the US who are 12 - 18 months ahead of Europe in adopting ebook reading.

If you haven't registered for exemption, Amazon will withhold 30% of all sales made on .com for US tax.

Update Jan 8 2012: A comment on this blog today by JTR below tells how she applied, and was given over the phone, an EIN number. EIN stands for Employer Identification Number. "I told them I was a UK based author and they said the EIN was fine, I was effectively the sole proprietor of my own business - I didn't need to go to the US embassy.." This is an excellent development which makes it all so, so much simpler. I'll keep the ITIN guidelines up but this is the way to go. Smashwords and Amazon accept EIN numbers.

To get an ITIN number is much more complicated. This is what's involved and, thank goodness, no longer necessary:

First apply for a US IRS Individual Taxpaper Identification Number (ITIN) by filling out form W-7: Get here.

Embassy instructions for UK residents are here.

When you have accrued at least $10 sales on Smashwords, you can apply for a signed covering letter from them to produce with your documents. Details here.

You need to provide proof of identity. "Either a valid passport (original or a notarized or certified copy); or at least two or more identity documents that are current. One must include a recent photograph. In addition to a passport, examples of acceptable documentation include: national identification card (showing photo, name, current address, date of birth and expiration date); civil birth certificate; foreign driver's license; or visa." A complete list of acceptable documentation can be found in Form W-7 instructions.

Post to: The United States Embassy
24/31 Grosvenor Square
London W1A 1AE
Tel 0207-894-0476

Or go along there. They're open Tues - Thursday 9 - 4.

It's complicated.

The best blog on this subject is Angela Stone's Quick Guide to the W-7 US Tax Form.

THEN when you've got your number, you fill out form W8-BEN: Certificate of Foreign Status of Beneficial Owner for United States Tax Withholding. Get here.

Smashwords has its own ebook store and offers free distribution to Barnes&Noble, Apple iBooks and more. How much income you get from each Smashwords ebook sale varies. It depends on whether the sale comes through from Smashwords' own sales site (85% of cover price), from an affiliate sale (via an e-reader, 70.5%) or from Premium Catalogue sales sites like Apple iBooks (60%) and Barnes & Noble.

For a $2.99 ebook you would earn:

$2.21 from each Smashwords sale
$1.84 from each affiliate sale
$1.27 from each Premium Catalogue sale.

The payments come through on PayPal.

For a detailed guide to publishing your own ebooks see:

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide by Stephanie Zia

Buy in the UK here

In the US here

Conf 659: Publication! (Clamps Hands To Ears, Runs Off & Hides)

2011-01-22T11:01:00.182Z

Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age - A novel by Stephanie Zia Free Sample Chapters 1 - 7

SO - here we are. After a few technical glitches and a last-minute purge of the word "shuffle" it went up on Smashwords a few nights ago and has just gone up on Kindle UK, Kindle US and my publishing site www.blackbirdebooks.com. If you do read these sample chapters and think it's something you might enjoy, mail me at mail@blackbirdebooks.com and I'll send you the link for a free preview download. In return, if you spot any obvious glitches like repetitions of the same word over and over, I'd be grateful for a flags up. If you don't think it's a pile of pants and can review it online or on Amazon, even better. Easiest way to read the sample is to select 'Book' view in bottom L corner (where it says 'scroll'), then 'full screen' from top menu.

If you haven't got an ereader, you can download free Kindle reading Apps here for PC, Mac, BlackBerry, Android, iPad, etc. Alternatively, Calibre is a great free download ebook reading & management system for your computer. It also automatically converts & transfers any docs to your ereader in its favoured format (eg Mobi for Kindle).

In the spirit of Stephen Leather's I Sold 44,334 Kindle Books In December blogpost, I thought I'd chart my self-publication ebook story from the reverse, arse, end of things as it were. By the time I went to bed, 4 people had downloaded the free sample chapters and 25 had viewed the sales page. I got quite excited. Yesterday's check showed that 55 had viewed the sales page and 13 had downloaded the free early chapters. Today's check showed no change. Hmph.

Total sales figure(s): 0

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 658: Ta Da De Raa - Preparing To Go Indie

2011-01-19T11:58:00.006Z

Exciting times as I near the end of my final edit on novel 3 in readiness for epublication. This was very nearly sold by my agent a couple of years ago but fell at the final hurdles. (2 editors wanted it but one was over-ruled by the sales team, the other by her CEO. Such is the life of an editor in jittery mainstream publishing.) Recently I took the big decision to part company with my lovely, hard-won, agent so that I could sell it myself.

I will be selling it as a PDF on my ebooks site www.blackbirdebooks.com, and on Amazon Digital, Apple iBooks, Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony and more. There will be preview chapters for you to read here very soon. Meantime, (ta da ta ra, after 5 years of blogging about getting this written and published) the very first outing for the cover and blurb:

When baby boomer rock chick Sally Lightfoot is suddenly widowed at 50 she's torn between ageing gracefully or disgracefully. Whilst interfering but caring neighbour Val turns her on to Gardener's Question Time and cosy nights in with Sudoku and the telly, Ramone, her saucy ex backing singer mate, has other ideas. Sally must get out there again and lose her wididity, her born-again virginity, before it's too late. 76,000 words PDF.

I've spent the last year or so learning about the ebook business. At first, everything was in the US and, indeed, I made sure the text of my non-fiction ebooks suited US as well as UK audiences, but now things are moving fast and I think, for once, I may have the timing right. News is now coming in of the UK/Ireland's first big fiction ebook 'indie author' success story.

His name's Stephen Leather. His vampire novel Once Bitten and The Basement, a serial killer story set in New York, are numbers 1 and 2 in the UK Kindle bestseller fiction chart respectively. Another of his novels, Private Dancer, set in the world of Bangkok dancing girl bars, has been highly praised for its authenticity (he lives between London, Dublin and Bangkok).

His Kindle sales chart, which he's just published on his blog, shows clearly that selling ebooks at 99 cents brings in a great deal more sales than 'full price' ($2.99/$3.99). Since Amazon revised their royalty payment schedule last June, however, the 99 cent option is no longer open to new indie authors. The lowest price an author can now charge is $2.99 in the US and £1.49 in the UK, for which they receive a 70% royalty. However, to get this full 70% you have to fill in all sorts of complicated US tax forms, the subject of another blogpost coming soon.

Stephen Leather's blog: How To Make A Million Dollars From Writing Ebooks (or How I Learned To Love The Kindle).

Conf 657: Howard Jacobson at Bookslam

2011-01-15T12:46:00.006Z

The Bookslam literary nightclub night was in Clapham (London South) rather than Notting Hill (London West) this month, but, as Howard Jacobson was on, thought I'd make the trek. A few friends thought it worthwhile as well and we had a great evening. I've just about finished The Finkler Question - would have finished it sooner if daughter didn't keep on comandeering the Kindle for English homework - and hearing him read extracts was a real treat.

Bookslam is always worthwhile. They not only manage to find a star author every month but there are always some really, really interesting support artists. Discovery of the night this time was Jackie Kay who read from Red Dust Road, her very funny memoir about travelling to Nigeria to meet her real father.

There are tables, proper food if you want it (Notting Hill Tabernacle big bowls of chips yes. Clapham Grand mush on paper plates no nibbles not even crisps, no) and drink and, for a top night out, it's all very affordable. If you're nowhere near London, there are always the excellent free podcasts. And now Bookslam TV - here's last month's new discovery, The Mind's Ear Orchestra, an orchestra that the audience gets to conduct themselves (with me shouting out lawnmower!) :

Bookslam.

Another new discovery was the 49 bus route. Very scenic - South Kensington, Chelsea, Battersea Bridge, Clapham:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 656 - A Public Appearance

2011-01-07T12:44:00.004Z

On Monday evening I'm going to be here at the Stoke Newington Bookshop taking part in a writers and readers evening. I'll be talking about blackbirdebooks.com and what great opportunities the rise of ebooks and ereaders has provided for authors, especially new, struggling ones.

I'm on with 3 others:

an author who'll be explaining POD (print on demand)

an author who set up her own printing press to publish her books

a publisher who runs a small publishing company which shares the costs of publication with their chosen authors.

Organised by the N16 Writers and Readers, it's at 8pm, Monday 10th January 2011 at:

The Stoke Newington Bookshop
159 Stoke Newington High St
London N16

Conf 655 - In Good Company

2011-01-06T17:22:00.003Z

Finding yourself on eBay and the likes is the pits for most authors or, at best, irrelevant. But I was made up to see my long lost novel nestling in amongst the giants.

Sorry for long absence. The publishing business has taken over.

Will be back soon, Meantime, here's some good news for struggling authors everywhere:

Five Ebook Publishing Predictions - Huffington Post

Happy new year, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 654 - Farewell to Agent 2

2010-12-09T11:36:00.011Z

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Well, I've done it. After several years of having a hard-won, top agent who happens to be a lovely person well-respected by the writers I know, I've written the farewell email.

About 2 and a half years ago she submitted my 3rd novel, the one I've written over the course of this blog, to both literary and commercial editors. 2 commercial editors loved it. There were meetings and emails but both editors were eventually over-ruled by their bosses (the editor's clout in the big publishing houses isn't what it used to be, see the editor's lot).

Then it all went quiet. An agent can only do the big submission once in a novel's life. If it fails, it fails. But she kept me on her list at least. Left with the hope that one day she'd come across an editor who was seeking out my sort of fiction, I got on with my non-fiction. As she couldn't represent those I began my experiments with ebooks. Then she offered a non-fiction commission last summer, a quick turnaround buy-out, but it happened to coincide with the only time I'd be away from London in years. So all in all it was just one of those could have but wasn't meant to be situations. Then a few weeks ago I noticed I wasn't on the agency's website any more. That was it really. A few emails followed. All friendly. But back to square one.

Not quite. The novel's mine to submit now. Or publish. And, looking over it again I'm quite loving it. Needs some tweeks and updates but it's all there. Ready to go.

I had a quick look around at some other literary agent websites. I can't believe some are still asking for 3 chapters and a synopsis by post. All agents read their material on Ereaders now don't they? American literary agents seem so much more approachable and net-savvy than UK ones. This one, Chris Parris-Lamb, sounds the business. Young, energetic and just the right mixture of old style/new style. And here's MediaBistro's GalleyCat database of the best literary agents on Twitter.

Sigh. Maybe it's time to emigrate.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Happy Launch Day, Talli!

2010-12-01T10:23:00.010Z

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Authors have always been told by their publishers that they have to be (agh horrible word alert -) pro-active in promoting their book. The days of taking an advance and sitting back whilst publishers booked media appearances and promotional tours only ever really existed in writers' wilder fantasies. Well, I do have one (non-celeb) friend this happened to. I, and all her other author friends, watched agog as she secured a Radio 4 book prog, several USA tours, limos the lot. But winning the lottery has far better odds.

In the wake of the NanoMo national novel-writing month, and the fake Amazon reader review hoo ha, Julia Stephenson wrote in the Sunday Times last weekend about her own experiences of getting her novels published ("with jealous friends, poor sales and the need to puff your work under false names, a novelists's life is to be avoided" News Review p2). However pragmatic and down to earth you are, when reality kicks in it can be quite painful. Post-publication depression has always been part of the 'becoming a writer' journey many don't survive. They either give up or worse, and it has little to do with overall success (I hold that PPD contributed to both Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf's untimely ends). The big problem in the past was that you were reliant on so many outside factors you had no control over whatsoever: the publisher's sales teams and publicists, bookshop buyers, newspaper and magazine reviewers, warehouse distributors etc etc.

But all that is changing. As ebooks become part of the establishment, new bestselling authors of the future are just as likely to debut online as in the bookshops. In the long run, more likely. No longer will they have their arms tied behind their backs waiting for their turn in front of the overworked publicist's eye. There's so much authors can do now to promote their own books and none, that I know of, is doing it with more energy, fun and creativity than Talli Roland.

For months now Talli's been building up a buzz about her novel which launches today as an ebook (ebook first, paperback later, that's the way it's going). She set up a blog, I'm not sure if she's the character in her novel or like the character in her novel. Anyway, Talli's not her real name. She then asked over 400 bloggers to help her hit the Amazon Kindle chart running by writing about her novel on this day. It's called a Web Splash!

So, without further ado, I hand you over to the lovely Talli Roland.

Help Talli Roland's debut novel THE HATING GAME hit the Kindle bestseller list at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk by spreading the word today. Even a few sales in a short period of time on Amazon helps push the book up the rankings, making it more visible to other readers.

Amazon UK Kindle Store

Amazon US Kindle Store

No Kindle? Download a free app at Amazon for Mac, iPhone, PC, Android and more.

Coming soon in paperback. Keep up with the latest at www.talliroland.com.

About THE HATING GAME:

When man-eater Mattie Johns agrees to star on a dating game show to save her ailing recruitment business, she's confident she'll sail through to the end without letting down the perma-guard she's perfected from years of her love 'em and leave 'em dating strategy. After all, what can go wrong with dating a few losers and hanging out long enough to pick up a juicy £2000,000 prize? Plenty, Mattie discovers, when it's revealed that the contestants are four of her very unhappy exes. Can Mattie confront her past to get the prize money she so desperately needs, or will her exes finally wreak their long-awaited revenge? And what about the ambitious TV producer whose career depends on stopping her from making it to the end?

I'll be on Twitter all day, keeping people up to date on Amazon rankings with the hash tag #TheHatingGame. Along with posting updates, I'll also be serving virtual champagne, chocolate, cupcakes and assorted fizzy drinks for everyone. Pop by on Twitter and say hi! Make sure to use the tag #TheHatingGame so your tweet won't be missed. I'll also be guest posting on Strictly Writing, talking about the importance of social networking (big thanks to Debs Riccio for organising that!).

All good luck, Talli. I see from Amazon UK Kindle Store Sales Ranks it's all kicking off brilliantly.

Meantime, over on my Done & Dusted blog we've just announced the winner of the first E-cloth comp and another free, easy and quick to enter, competition has just opened: click here to win a car cleaning kit!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 653: Win a Mop!

2010-11-26T16:06:00.005Z

Snuk morning tea in today at Petersham Nurseries, a garden centre, cafe and restaurant just outside London which contains just the most exquisiteness of everything. The restaurant chef is, say no more, Skye Gyngell. Booked up forever but tea and cakes affordable and available. I'm not normally one for plates but did get a bit drooly over these and the whole elaborateness but simplicity of the table design.

An unusual week of many outings. On Monday I was at the Royal Literary Society for a talk about ghost stories with Susan Hill and Sarah Waters, chaired by Philip Hensher. On Tuesday was at the scrumptuous Lutyens and Rubinstein bookshop in Notting Hill for a reading and Q&A session with Geoff Dyer. And last night saw Geoff Dyer again at bookslam. The great Diana Athill was supposed to be reading but she was sadly unwell and had to pull out at the last minute. Instead author Patrick Neate (who runs these fantastic bookslam evenings) recited a poem, Rupert Thomson also read and The Mind's Ear Orchestra performed. I say they, but it's actually the audience who supplies the creative input by conducting the 30-odd piece orchestra in any kind of style or sound they desire. Completely unique, fascinating and hilarious. Can't wait for the next bookslams, coming up in the new year are Howard Jacobson and Andrea Levy. Highly recommended.

On a more down-to-earth note a series of competitions has kicked off over on my Done & Dusted blog. The first prize may sound mundane but, I promise you, it really is worth having:

WIN A MOP!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 652: A (Short) Return to Fiction

2010-11-17T17:58:00.003Z

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I wrote a page of fiction the other day.

I've been so immersed in the non-fiction side it felt weird - but, yes, refreshing.

I then dug out my old file of 40,000 words of children's/YA (young adult) novel and read a random chapter at my writing group. I stopped writing it after my agent's children's department rejected it. I should never have sent it so early. But, as somebody said, the 'composting' has done it some good. It needs a total restructure and lots of rewriting but I'm looking forward going back in. In (ha) my spare moments.

Meantime it's all go in ebook and non-fiction land. I was interviewed for Woman's Hour the other day. Sadly I didn't make the final programme (it was a Jenni Murray day as well). Being more concerned with chemicals in the home than neat and tidyness, I wasn't quite right for the Art of Housework debate (and if they'd seen the state of this flat!). However, I was hugely flattered to have been considered and 100 brownie points to my ebook's seriously good publicist. It does go to show how the whole world of publicity and communications is what authors need to embrace. To up your chances of getting anywhere, having a pro pushing your work forward has to be a continuum rather than a short-term strategy.

I've just been on my non-fiction blog recommending some budget Christmas gift ideas. If you're a kitchen gadget person at all I'd LOVE to hear your top 3 kitchen gadgets of all time if you've got a moment. Thank you!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Armistice Day, 11.11.10 Trafalgar Square London

2010-11-11T15:41:00.004Z

Ben Barnes

The Saturdays

Conf 651: An Encouraging Story

2010-10-23T14:23:00.003Z

I've got another blog now called the UK Ebook Blog where I'm flagging up ebook news as it comes in. Or trying to, the whole phenomenon is gathering momentum so quickly. Now, hurrah, the author success stories are starting to appear thick and fast. As this blog is mainly read by writers I just had to share this one:

After the usual round of rejection after rejection, novelist Amanda Hocking decided to self-publish on Kindle. Within a few months she had sales of 20,000 and a request from a Hungarian publisher to buy her foreign rights. On the back of this she got "one of the top agents on the planet", Steven Axelrod. He started selling film and territorial rights but held back on the all-important domestic rights, preferring to keep her novel as an ebook and let the momentum grow... read the full story here.

All in the USA so far, but it's only a matter of time.

Conf 650: Getting to grips with Kindle

2010-10-14T09:30:00.004Z

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Novelist friend Kate Harrison has been keeping an interesting Kindle diary these past couple of weeks. And she's just declared: it's love.

I'm loving my Kindle too. I totally agree with Kate about it not being over-functional. It does what it's meant to. The screen is not back-lit so reading is no more strain on the eyes than print, and you can always make the text larger, or switch on the read-to-me function (admittedly in a Stephen Hawking like way so only if desperate). The note-taking and dictionary facilities are fantastic. Daughter and I still read together and look up words she doesn't understand, now we can do it in a flash. The only problem at the moment is we're fighting for bed-time reading rights. We're reading the same ebook (separately - Jed Rubenfeld) so the bookmark facility can get a bit confusing. And also totally agree with Kate that transferring and reading your own writing on it is a big boon to authors. If you make your document a PDF file you can email it to your kindle address and up it pops, looking like a real book. Don't leave it in Word or you have to pay Amazon to transfer.

After Howard Jacobson's Booker win I decided to sample The Finkler Question. (Incidentally Frances Wilson, one of the judges, has just revealed that it wasn't even entered by his publisher.) But I hit the wrong button and an alarming credit card notice came through. I could return it but now it's there, and I've started reading and enjoying (SO much more than 'C') I'll put it down to experience and be a bit more careful with my sampling. My library's just started an ebook lending service which I've yet to check out properly.

I expect daughter will enjoy the Jacobson as well. Comedy's high on her list, 'One Day' and 'Starter for Ten' David Nicholls is her favourite author. I'm thrilled she's about to start a creative writing course at her school as an extra to EngLit A levels. She casually mentioned they were being taught by a Booker author. WHOISIT WHOISIT, she couldn't remember. 'Someone beginning with H.' Gah. 'A long, foreign sounding name.' Not Howard obviously.. and not the school patrons (Alan Bennett and Simon Armitage would you believe). WHOISITTTT??

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 649: Bikes & Interviews

2010-10-11T14:06:00.003Z

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Daughter started 6th Form at the local school in September. This means I no longer have the school run drive to get me out of a morning. I've been happily doing the Joanna Hall walking method - pacing around the park most days first thing. But have increasingly been casting wistful sidelong glaces at the racks of Boris Bikes. Spurred on, I finally got my own bike out of storage from the depths of the car park cupboard at the weekend. 2 flat tyres, back brake not working, covered in spiders' webs and caked-on mud (from its last run along Kew riverside several years ago). After a few false starts (tyres not pumping up was fault of pump not bike) (have you BEEN to a bike pump shop lately? I naively was looking for a long tube-like thing with a little screwy fabricy thing you take out of the end) got myself up and cycling and am loving it. There's only a tiny bit of road before the parks begin so I'm keeping it strictly as off-road exercise rather than transport.

I was going to put some pictures in of the park passing by but blogger image downloader thing is down again.

MIND THE GAP

There was a bit of news on the ebook front at the weekend. On Saturday morning I kept getting PayPal notifications that we'd sold another copy of Done & Dusted (one of the joys of ebooks instant delivery & no p&p). Turns out the interview I did with BBC Radio Ulster was broadcast on the lovely John Toal magazine show. Here's the link, there until next Saturday 16 Oct. I'm 0.27.32 in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00v2zq2#synopsis

That then took D&D to No 1 on the UK Amazon Kindle Bestsellers in Consumer Guides. ROLL THOSE WHEELS! I've got a screenshot of that, too, before it started whizzing its way down again - shamelessly showed off on Facebook and Twitter which Blogger is denying me at the moment. Will cut and paste another time.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 648: Kindles and Rice

2010-09-24T08:00:00.003Z

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Progress on the home front. Reclusive partner had a visitor yesterday. I realised after she'd gone that I'd behaved like a 6 year-old, bringing my new birthday gifts out to show her one by one. I did try to hold back and leave them alone a bit to let him speak, but every so often I'd bounce back in again saying and look at THIS!

Got Nigella's Kitchen from the library the other day. She dismisses most gadgets but raves about rice cookers. I've never been able to cook rice properly, and Argos have one for under a tenner at the moment so I succumbed. Nigella is so right. It's one of those kitchen things (like my mini-whisk) that's completely life-changing. You just bung the rice & water in, switch it on and leave it. When the rice is fluffy and cooked the pot switches to warm and stays that way for up to 12 hours. You can also add veg and and.... and... for Big Birthday present

I got Kindle. Was a nice surprise to discover you can transfer your own documents to it: PDF, Word etc and make notes on it as you read. You can do that on a computer of course but reading your own work with that 'once removed' feel is priceless. It also made me realise, with a bit of a start, how grown-up my own ebooks are, sitting there in the Kindle Store along with all the rest.

Blackbirdebooks is all going well. We're still finding our feet and have yet to open for submissions but we have turnover. The How To Publish an Ebook book reached No 2 in the UK Kindle Writing bestseller chart the other day. Fiction will be our focus once we get going. Interestingly The Bookseller reports that the biggest category sellers in ebooks are romance and science fiction.

My first download (upload?) to Kindle was an important choice - registering right up there with first single/first album ever bought. I tried a sample of that Booker book 'C'. Didn't like it. Maybe 3 chapters isn't enough to get into it, but found myself skimming those.. Daughter's loving the Kindle of course, & looking forward to having all her textbooks on there. She found a gem: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, recommended by her psychology teacher. So that was my first purchase, now existing alongside I Want You Back (single) & T Rex by T Rex (album).

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 647: Back to Fiction

2010-09-19T09:08:00.002Z

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Up early this morning, trying to catch up with Saturday's papers before Sunday's arrives.

Really loved this Guardian Lee Rourke interview with Tom McCarthy, author of Booker shortlisted novel 'C'. It sounds fantastic, and HE sounds amazing. Way above my head much of it & the novel might be as well. But am encouraged by the most popular Amazon review which starts off: The first thing to note is that C is a very enjoyable read. The comic element comes through on nearly every page, and McCarthy's permanent style of `show' rather than `tell' means that you have that slightly smug satisfaction when you 'get' the obscure jokes. A lot of the jokes are pretty dark....

Loved this bit of the interview On Writing:

'One of the ways of thinking about art, or the novel, is that the writer is the transmitter, the originator: I have something to say about the world and I'm going to transmit it. But this isn't how I see it. I see it as exactly the inverse: the writer is a receiver and the content is already out there. The task of the writer is to filter it, to sample it and remix it - not in some random way, but conscientiously and attentively. This is what Heidegger says about poets: to be a poet is to listen before speaking: it's first and foremost a listening and not a speaking. Kafka said it as well: "I write in order to affirm and reaffirm that I have absolutely nothing to say." Writing, or art, is not about having something to say; it's about aspiring to a heightened state of hearing. It's why C is a totally acoustic novel and a receptive novel. The hero, Serge, sits there for hours trawling the aether waves, absorbing, listening to ship-to-shore transmissions, stock market prices, sports results, writing them all down. In a way if you could see Serge's transcript it would probably read like an Ezra Pound canto.'

Have downloaded first 3 chapters to Kindle.

I've been rewriting my first attempt at a novel over the summer. Retyping and updating with a view to reissuing as an ebook. Fortunately my contract included the all-important reversion of rights clause so my words are mine again to do with as I wish.

I keep coming across stupendously bad writing. No wonder, I keep on thinking as I tap away, no wonder it got that horrible review. And that fundamentalist One Star nutter on US Amazon was completely right. I'm not beating myself up too much about it. Just welcoming the opportunity to put it right. A film-maker friend thinks I shouldn't be doing it. That I should be moving on not going backwards. But it was/is still a good story, and even more relevant today than it was then. And I'm looking forward to re-packaging with a title and cover of my choosing.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 646: Two magazines two deaths

2010-09-05T15:30:00.004Z

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Didn't think the coincidental happenings on holiday were overly strange. Had all but forgotten until I woke up in the night thinking - odd?

First was at a chateau b&b in central France. Some are very grand and costly, but many as affordable as a run-of-the-mill Logis hotel & nothing better for a night than a homely, un-tarty, flaking chateau to explore. I find them here.

This was a lovely place, very warm friendly lady of the chateau, likewise her cat (dot in bottom right) which follows you everywhere. There were also dogs, horses and a moody white-blonde Dutch family we shared a table with for dinner. And a good library, which is where I ended up after dinner, on my own, looking at the family's photograph albums (I know, but the were on display. One of their ancestors was a rugby champion they're rightly proud of). Then I picked up an old Paris Match magazine from the 1950s. It was full of macabre photo-essays: holiday snaps of happy people on a boat that was about to sink, and a very 9/11-like story about the last minutes of a man's life as he waved for help from a burning building, then jumped, then CU, dead, after he'd jumped. The date of the magazine: 27 August - 3 September 1955, the year and week I was born. I made a note of his name - Warren Hayes.

Then with our friends one evening in the kitchen talking about wine, as you do in France. I mentioned a long ago lunch, wine buff guest brought a very special bottle of wine that was opened with much ceremony and left in centre of table to breathe. As I was laying table I did the unforgivable and knocked it over. Woops. Fortunately everyone was at the other end of room and I could grab it before too much was spilt. Back to France 2010, later that day I picked up an old magazine left beside the barbeque for firelighting and there was a picture of wine buff guest I'd been telling them about (a journalist writing for the mag). I showed it to my friends. Look! And there he is! When we got to Sancerre and internet connections discovered he'd just died. So, so sad. RIP Robert.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 645: La Vie Est Bonne!

2010-08-13T09:45:00.006Z

Two weeks with friends in dreamy French houses was just what was needed. One week flopping about here near Souillac, then forest house at St Cyprien:

Stopping off at Sancerre on the way home:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 644: My new favourite blog

2010-07-17T13:25:00.004Z

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My new favourite author blog:

http://stroppyauthor.blogspot.com/

has just done a good, sensible piece about new publishing (scroll down to Tues 13 July).

I haven't seen The Author doom piece about digital publishing/recession etc but I would have expected them, of all people, to see the opportunities for authors in all of this. I found their meeting on digital publishing last year all very up-beat. Yes there will be a period of adjustment, but print books aren't going away: ebooks are another place for writing to live. Especially NEW writing!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 643: Woops

2010-07-11T12:17:00.001Z

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Busy time getting the self-publishing ebook book out there. Lots of last-minute problems. As I transferred all the different versions to the website, Amazon Digital, Smashwords for iBooks, Barnes & Noble etc I kept coming a cropper. Which meant I had to go back to the guide to insert the problems and discoveries I'd come across as I went along, like:

Tables don't transfer

No colour for Smashwords and the Smashwords spacings rules

The discovery of an even quicker, simpler way of making ebook covers

So, as I'd already formatted all the different versions I had to insert the bits into each one and retransfer etc etc. then I'd find something else that needed inserting. That's it though, no more updates, any more will be included in the regular newsletters we'll be sending out from the site.

Worst of all:

I'd omitted the biggest UK ebook publisher of all: Lulu!

I hadn't put the original ebook up there all those months ago as I couldn't get the cover to download (their sizing rules are quite strict) and I eventually gave up on them as other events took over. However, all fixed now and Lulu ebooks are up and in the guide.

In the midst of all that I had a couple of paying writing jobs come in, always welcome (look out for me in August WHICH? mag), plus a fantastic offer from my agent to write a non-fiction book for DK. Would you believe it though, it cuts right through my summer holiday. Because of partner's illness here it's going to be the first holiday I've had for 3 years. Apart from one lunch on Isle of Wight collecting daughter from friend's last summer, the first time I've left London for 3 years. So there was no way I could take the job on: GAAARGH! Anyway, glad to say partner's well enough to travel now, holidays beckon and all that's important is on the right track.

Before that, though, comes our new blackbirdebooks website, launching any day now with all its beautiful original artwork and logo (by E's artist mum, can't wait to reveal) and free things to get us moving. More of that soon. Meantime read about some spectacular self-publishing ebook success stories in UK ebook blog, now transferred back to blogspot, sorry for confusion.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide. Free preview, limited time only.

2010-06-26T18:54:00.002Z

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide

CONF 642: Nearly There

2010-06-24T10:25:00.000Z

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Just making the final tweeks, your free preview copy here very soon x

CONF 641: Busy busy June

2010-06-10T15:46:00.005Z

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The new ebook is ready to go and will be here soon. Just waiting for the final touches to be put to the new logo and it'll be ready to roll. I've done a graphic cover this time, taking those old orange old Penguin covers as inspiration. The logo and artwork for covers/new website is looking really good and I can't wait to show it off.

June's always a busy month. Daughter's in the middle of her GCSEs which, for me, has meant a return to chauffeuring, I've actually got some proper writing work in from my old non-fiction editor and have been writing promo material for quite a few websites, gradually coming online now. Look at this: me on the cover here with my top ten green cleaning tips! I've also been updating, retitling and rewriting my first novel, ready to be relaunched as an ebook in September. An interesting exercise, cutting out all the linking sentences, repeats of my oft-used "just"s and "of course"s and way too many exclamation marks. ! Funny things aren't they, they immediately add a ! in your mind.

Oh, and I've moved the new ebook blog to here.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 640: EBOOK SUCCESS STORIES

2010-06-04T13:55:00.001Z

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After years of writing about successful failures it feels good to change the tune. I've started a new blog called The UK Ebook blog and have just posted about a US author who's had her ebook novel optioned for Hollywood. And my first check!

In haste, I'm just putting the finishing touches to my next non-fiction ebook. Should be ready for your preview download here in the next couple of days or so.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 639: ON WITH THE NEXT

2010-05-29T09:25:00.003Z

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Apologies for absence. Have had head down writing the next book in a concentrated way. Complete and gone now for its final proof read. It's the ebook which started here on this blog when I was getting in such a tangle with the technicalities of creating a cover and inserting stills and losing graphics and all the rest.

It's called (deep breath):

How To Publish an Ebook On A Budget. An Author's Guide to the Cheap Yet Professional Way of Getting Your Writing Up For Sale on Amazon Kindle, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble and Your Own Website.

As with Done &Dusted, there'll be a free preview copy for you here very soon.

I've also started a separate blog dedicated to ebooks called The UK Ebook Blog.

Meantime spring has turned into summer, and the balcony has turned into a bit of an aviary.

The two robins have been bringing their 2 squeaking, demanding babies. We have several blackbirds - more timid than Mrs friendly Fat from last year but one has started chancing it inside. As have the robins who flit about the place as if they own it. The gardens below back on to a big garden square so it really is a bit of a bird city. There was a piece on Radio 4 the other day analysing the bird tweets behind the Cameron/Clegg garden press conference. Turns out that town birds do actually sing louder than country birds.

And, just in the garden, a woodpecker.

There are also a lot of Jays around this year, I counted 4 on famous author next door's tree the other day: Jays in J's garden. Talking of whom, there's been some INCREDIBLY exciting news in from one of my writing group friends I'm not allowed to breathe a word about yet but can't wait to share.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 638: AN ELEPHANT PARADE & A COMPETITION

2010-05-11T16:12:00.007Z

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All of a sudden London's full of elephants.

Every way you turn there's another one.

Each one's been been painted by a local or international artist. They're all going to auction at the end of the exhibition to raise funds to help fight the extinction of the Asian elephant.

That's the Hempel Hotel. A great place to go for the free exhibition which tells you all about it if you happen to be London way. All happening here at the moment of course, or not happening. As I write we still have no government and politicians of all parties are scuttling around in the tunnels under Westminster going from one whispering meeting to the next. I quite fancied joining in on the proportional representation rally last weekend, a part of politics I actually feel quite passionate about. If nothing else this interlude will have motivated a lot of sideline slumberers like myself.

Back in ebook world, Wellbeing Magazine have published an extract from my ebook and top consumer blogger Penny Golightly has not only given it a lovely review, she's launched a Done & Dusted competition! Tomorrow afternoon I have another radio interview, this time for BBC Ulster. I've to go into the West End (yippee more elephants) to Western House, home of BBC Radio 2. I'll miss Chris Evans, or is he still away? Oh, no, Graham Norton, one of my favourite people in the whole world. Maybe I can get there early and hover.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 637: YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT PRIDE & FALLS

2010-05-06T07:35:00.004Z

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Daughter has orthodontist's this morning so it's a late start to school run. Switched computer on ready to get a good hour in on the first copy edit of the How To book to see email in from my agent.

Copyright, corporate confidentiality or whatever it is stops me from telling you exactly what it says but the first word is

Alas

Then the praise bit:

original, gently humorous

Then there's a

sharing

- means it went to the next post of editor sharing with a colleague. Then

shared her concern

and then a glimmer

like overall concept

followed by the

but

naming the 3 authors they're seeking to grow ambitiously they felt I might get slightly lost alongside.

Sigh sigh sigh.

It's been so long since I've had a rejection I'd forgotten the emotion involved. I really shouldn't feel so bad as so many good things are happening elsewhere but it really feels like a kick in the teeth. Could have been the stinging feeling when reading the names of the chosen ones, but probably moreso because it was the editor I met who was so excited about signing me, talking about a career way into the future with a 4-book deal. Scuppered that time by her previous publisher's sales team. I liked her so much and it's all come to nothing.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

And then

CONF 636: GROWTH - NUMBER 2 IN AMERICA!

2010-05-04T17:05:00.002Z

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Not writing isn't strictly true. Have been on the non-fiction on and off: column pieces for the newspaper and finishing off the new ebook, How To Publish An Ebook On a Budget - An Author's Guide (exclusive preview coming to this blog very soon now). I was writing about it all as it happened but the process got so involved it became impossible.

The first UK press coverage comes out later this week and a top consumer blogger is running a competition to win a copy of the book. I'll also be popping up on an interesting new website which launches any day now with a brand new profile, written with the help of publicist. Very helpful when you're trying to sum up your working life without sounding like a brag-all. We've been racing to keep up with events these past few weeks and I'm delighted to announce that Emma Boden-Lee is now my business partner and co-owner of www.blackbirdebooks.com. Our talents seem to dovetail really well, she's not only stylish, creative, great at publicity (the KEY to so much, I learn, 7 years on in the game) and a really good writer herself, but is a whizz at all the business negotiaty stuff. She can say No to people!

My old non-fiction editor at Hamlyn is now our Associate Editor. Sarah Tomley runs a company of freelance editors called editorsonline.org. All of them are at Commissioning, Executive or Senior Editor level. It's a real bonus to start off with a firm link to some trusted people from the publishing side. We've got 4 or 5 non-fiction books in the pipeline and I, of course (see last 5 years of this blog), have rather a large backlist of fiction to get out there.

I haven't heard from my agent, who therefore hasn't heard from the editor yet, so am keeping new novel option clear and separate for now. I think I'm going to republish my first novel first, put my OWN title on it (I always hated that phrase, the character hated it too) and get rid of that cover. It can't be all about me though or it would all be a bit sad. The search for new fiction will start soon after the new website is up and running. One of the criteria we're keen to get across is No Genre! I know there are so many great novels out there that have been loved to distraction by agents and editors but have been turned down because they 'don't fit into a genre', and don't get me started on the opinions of publishers' sales teams.

US Kindle sales have been slow, E hasn't started on America yet, but suddenly appear to be moving. This morning we were 10 in Consumer Guides, 12 in Cleaning, Caretaking and Relocating and 2 in Homeopathy!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

BANK HOLIDAY INTERVAL

2010-05-03T12:28:00.006Z

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A lovely short story by JaqH from my writing group:

Smories - The Fiercest Pirate

The Alice in Wonderland illustrations everybody in ebookworld has been raving about:

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 635: NOT WRITING

2010-04-20T11:16:00.001Z

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Have been enjoying this not writing phase a bit too much. Not being compelled to go back to the computer and the WIP at every spare moment is heaven. The flat's a lot tidier, even the laundry's up to date, ironed & put away, & I can feel a sort of space of fresh air around me. Have been working hard though, honest. But to be able to do normal time off things like lie in bed of a weekend morning with a mug of tea and a book and go into the garden with the Sunday papers and a cushion without feeling an ounce of guilt makes 9-5 an enticing idea.

Then, sprawled, guilt-free, in the garden with cushions & newspapers, I read Sadie and Melissa Jones' Relative Values in the Sunday Times mag: And 'We both know that if you're a writer, you can't do anything else. You can't stop.' Um.

One of them published a novel that 'didn't sell as well as it should have.' Do they ever? I'd say to anybody that next time they're launching a book that's probably taken years of their life and a good chunk of their emotions along with it, not to mention the obligatory file full of rejection slips: mortgage the flat, live in a tent, sell the silver, do whatever it takes and get a publicist. Yes, publishers have publicity departments, but some (she says diplomatically) aren't up to scratch, unless you've had the 6 figure advance. Even then, what else singles you out from the rest of their output? When you've got your book ready to go, try and find somebody with a genuine enthusiasm for the product to bat for you. E's passion has been the most major boost on both an emotional and practical level. There's lots of news coming up I'm not allowed to talk about yet. Nothing's done until it's done, especially in publishing, but, dare I say it, I'm feeling optimistic.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 634: SPRING!

2010-04-13T17:03:00.001Z

Not Christmas, no, but this little one comes to the balcony every morning with its mother. Wasn't sure what their relationship was for a while, until saw this:
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Last week's lull has definitely passed & back to doing 6 things at once. The press response to the ebook has been very heartening & looking forward to posting links to reviews, extracts and competitions to win soon. I've also just been making notes on the first chapter of the follow-up book, not written by me! I'm moving into editorial territory which is really interesting and fun.

No news on the novel but don't expect to hear anything for a while. Agent is away until the later this week and then will be frantically busy at The London Book Fair. It all happens in Earls Court just a ten minute walk from my home. I should go really, but then wouldn't know where to go when I got inside, so I won't...

Read this article on toyboywarehouse.com founder Julia Macmillan (last night's Evening Standard) with great interest. Her initial online dating searches ("always matched me up with guys in their mid-fifties who liked golf”) is exactly my main character's experience. Really like Julia's blog too: Don't Call Me A Cougar. My character isn't in any way a cougar, the guy she likes is the same age as her which makes the older guy/younger woman norm even more annoying. There's plenty to say on it all, plenty plenty. Maybe, just maybe it is cows coming home time (sorry) for the 50something dating novel?

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 633: KEEP CALM, CARRY ON & THANK GOD FOR EBAY

2010-04-07T10:18:00.007Z

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The shortlist for the Author Blog Awards has just been announced. I'm not on it of course, but having quickly clicked through to a few of the entrants can see the standard is incredibly high. Have just been reading Nicola Morgan's excellent Help! I Need A Publisher! & nearly slipped into snuggling down for a good read all morning. First Nicola, then her lovely friend, Sally Zigmond who has one of the most heartbreaking tales to tell about nearly but not quite getting published (scroll down Nicola's blog to her interview with Sally on Sat 3 April). At least she's there now & look forward to becoming a regular reader of Sally's blog as well.

Meantime it's all gone very quiet here. No more sales from website or Kindle, no more exciting emails from publicist and no new names on the website mailing list. Just to underline it, there's the thud of the post on the mat.

I know enough writers who've been through it to know this calm and quiet after all the fuss and activity is par. Author friends call it post publication depression. As I'm in control of this one, I know for sure all the publicity that's been set up hasn't even kicked in yet, but even so, it hasn't stopped that clammy clenching fear in the stomach.

Going to have to reactivate ebay account and think what can sell. We've just cleared the garage so there's stuff that can go. It's not as desperate as it used to be. Since moving to flat at least roof over head is as safe as it could be. Insanely, have just joined a luxury gym. Is all my doing. Daughter and I did one of those 7 day free trial things and then were given an offer impossible to refuse. It's only for a month, then can cancel, and I am getting a lot out of it. My fantasy life really, being able to write, pop out for a swim & sauna, do yoga, pilates and dance classes.

Another spot of brightness - Made in China, the short story I put up on kindle using a pseudonym to test the ebook mechanics has sold another copy. It's now at number 13 in the multicultural chart between Rip Van Winkle, 22 Goblins and Wind in the Willows!

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 632: CLASH OF TITANS - COMMERCIAL VS LITERARY

2010-04-02T09:50:00.003Z

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V much enjoyed David Sexton's Evening Standard interview with Lee Child.

I've never heard of him. Not that he'd be remotely bothered about that with sales figures of 36 million and growing. I'd noticed the thriller element replacing the commercial women's fiction on the Tesco shelves. Was a time not long ago when I could look at the chosen Tesco ones and go 'know her, know her, know him', and saunter off to fresh veg thinking that's quite amazing really. Jealous? Beyond that now, being published (in print) feels like another life away.

I've heard from my agent, though. The novel has been with the publisher for 2 months now so she's going to give her a nudge. So hope still flies. On the epublishing front I've seen the proof page for our first glossy magazine article and am very pleased. We've had more press interest and Smashwords have confirmed that Done & Dusted has made it into the Apple iPad iBookstore for its US launch today. Plus we've had our first UK customer downloading from the website. Thank you Hattie, a lovely lady I met at our Richmond writer's pub night last Monday. It was a good night with lots of talk about books and more writers I'd never heard of, The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard anyone? The short stories of Lorrie Moore? And there were fliers:

Susan, my old creative writing teacher from Richmond Adult Community College is running a Hero's Journey/Writer's Journey 5-week course starting Thurs 22 April at Parkshot, Richmond, Surrey for a very reasonable £56 (for EU students, £90 non EU). And Richmond author John Harding will be reading from and talking about his new novel Florence and Giles on Wed April 14th at Waterstones, Richmond, 7.30pm. His book is extraordinary, I've read the first 3 chapters on Kindle, & will definitely be getting down there for my signed copy.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 631: SUCCESSFUL FAILURE NO. 197 & INNOVATIVE SUCCESSES

2010-03-28T13:40:00.015Z

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Karl Stead is a respected New Zealand academic who, in 2005, had a stroke and lost the ability to write and read. His short story, Last Season's Man, published today, is the unanimous winner in the Sunday Times Short Story Competition, the competition with the biggest prize money ever offered for a short story. It's about the rivalry between two writers and the evils of envy that success and failure brings. I loved it. Not that I've, cough, ever suffered from that sort of thing.

Gah, I tried to link to the story but it's not working.

The Times will soon be charging for their internet content. Wonder if that's got anything to do with it? No, it's working now: Last Season's Man by Karl Stead.

Though talking of free links, The Guardian's editor is banking on global branding to keep Guardian Online free. The Independent meanwhile has just been sold for £1. To the same man who bought our local London paper The Evening Standard. That's handed out free now but unless you travel by tube it's really hard to get hold of, even in the central bit of London where I live.

Meantime, the iPad launches in the US next week and another much-loved independent, The Kilburn Bookshop has closed. Though I do see the e-revolution as an opportunity for authors, it is without doubt sad. But, as this article points out, publishing, with all its kowtowing to Tesco, did need a good shaking out & I'm sure proper books and bookshops will survive and thrive. Look at Lutyens & Rubenstein, a gorgeous independent bookshop that opened just recently in Notting Hill. Whilst I was in there a girl from Holland Park Daunt's turned up and introduced herself to the staff, saying she'd heard great things about it and just wanted to look around. They've obviously put a great deal of thought into the space and are diversifying with style. There's a little coffee and tea bar plus they sell jars of marmalade and unique perfumes made by a cab driver turned 'nose' with names like Mr Hulot's Holiday (seaweed, sea breeze & leathery, inside of suitcase), Russian Caravan Tea (bergamot, tins of tea and dusty bookshelves) and Library (books)... plus it's a literary agency!

Lutyens and Rubinstein Bookshop - Small Projects from The Architects' Journal on Vimeo.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 630: SPRING CLEANING AND A NEW VOICE

2010-03-26T17:45:00.006Z

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Woops. Hello, yes, it's still me.

It's that time of year. All's ready now for the big push on the ebook next week so spent this morning tidying desk, throwing away old paperwork, putting all novel files away, clearing the pin board of years of layers of photos and all that.

No news on the novel but starting to feel a bit itchy about returning to fiction. Was friend's birthday yesterday. As she's about to start writing I bought her one of the classic how-to's - Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. One I haven't actually read as it happens but have heard enough about it & hope can borrow it back one day. Birthday friend manages a singer-songwriter called Anoushka Lucas. She was playing at a bar called Zigfrid von Underbelly in Hoxton Square (the arty part of London I don't know at all but wish I did, even though I'm very old). So off I went into the night on the very annoying circle line tube. It's no longer a circle, can you believe that? They've managed to break it in the middle, so you have to change platforms and wait and it's extremely annoying. Who could have seen that coming?

Navigating dark East London streets isn't favourite thing to do when tired & annoyed with London Transport, or Transport for London as they've so imaginatively re-branded themselves. It's all so vibrant around there, like Barcelona, and the bar was great, like a cartoon: basement, jazz band, small stage surrounded with red velvet, big big armchairs, great Guinness. Then Anoushka played and I was completely blown away. She shut the whole place up within minutes of taking the stage (with a bit of shusshing from her mum). Completely original, warm and beautiful.

More last minute glitches on the ebook - making my website 'sticky' was the problem of the week. I'd put a link up on the first page, so I was directing my traffic away from the site before they'd begun looking around. And then in such a way that anybody linking out couldn't get back! Insanity. As I was correcting had a new idea for the front page. What about putting up some of the reviews that have come in from my friends, including the readers here who downloaded the free sample and were kind enough to comment? As marketing is all about word of mouth these days, what's wrong with that? As long as it's honest. Which is more that can be said for many of those celebrity endorsements you see on the covers of print books. Anyway, I didn't see the harm. Shame has to go out of the window I'm learning, so off I went, flagging your wonderful reviews. For which - thank you thank you thank you.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 629: THE FIRST 12 YEARS ARE THE WORST

2010-03-21T17:34:00.008Z

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Ten rules for writing fiction reminded me of that quote by Anne Enright, one of my favourites.

Meantime the struggle goes on. No news from agent on novel submission (7th week of waiting now). However the non-fiction is all set. The shop on my website is now open and fully functional and E the publicist is fired up and ready to go. So, let's see what happens. More Kindle excitement, currently number 4 in the homeopathy chart and number 37 in consumer guides!

A new biog written for a new SEO website described me as an author, journalist and publisher. I immediately got them to scratch out the 'publisher' bit. I'm obviously self-publishing and, though people in the know know, it still has the whiff of the not good enough about it.

There was a little exchange on Twitter about this the other day. This was agent and Curtis Brown books MD Jonny Geller & author blogger & publisher Scott Pack:

Jonny Geller said: one lit publisher told us they publish 40 titles a year; 20 fiction. Discount 15 repeat authors, so slots for only 5 new writers! Tough times.

Scott Pack replied:

Do you think we need to be more creative with how we build an author's career? If publishing and retail slots are tight, would some authors benefit from a digital debut and a plan to establish an audience before taking a print slot?

JG - Publishers need to believe again and stop listening to retailers all the time. Sales are important but passion is all..

SP: You are right but a debut published with passion but not stocked by retailers will struggle. Just thinking there are ways of building authors that may not involve print copies at all in the short term. Not for everyone but worth looking at.

...agree and there will be more authors in non trad route who will make it, but UKs USP is our talent and door needs oiling!

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CONF 628: BUSY NOT WRITING

2010-03-17T17:14:00.008Z

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I meant to keep up an account of the ins and outs of getting the ebook out but it's been so full on I've barely had time to breathe. There have been lots of little problems and not so little problems along the way but nearly nearly there. I do plan to write down the whole process from beginning to end. Like so many computery things, there's so much you just don't know unless you know it.

It hasn't only been computers. Graphics - gah. After all my work on the cover, it turned out the quality of the image wasn't good enough for magazine reproduction. Thanks to E the publicist's contacts got Daz, a great graphics guy , to reproduce it (with his own improvements) very quickly and the magazine was happy. But this image turned out to be too high a quality for the cover itself so was back to square one reproducing the reproduction. Then the first shop test crashed because all the photographs in the download were way too HIGH a quality.... I could go on. A full on learning process. There have been some excitements along the way already. We haven't started the publicity stuff yet, I'm not allowed until everything is absolutely pristine and ready to run. Testing the shop out is the ongoing glitch of the moment. To accept credit cards on Pay Pal you have to be a merchant. Which means opening a merchant a/c..... which means business address... I could go on. Excitements:

Done & Dusted got its first reader review via the free preview offer on this blog from the wonderful Merewoman at No damn blog . Could any book have wished for a better, genuinely enthusiastic kick out of the door to send it on its way? E has also secured a pre-publicity mailout review and extract via a contact at Wellbeing Magazine, which was what all the graphics panic was about. My friend The Writing Coach gave me the thumbs up in her newsletter which set my mailing list going and I've also got a profile coming up on a new website about doormats! Doormats made sexy I've been reassured. It's been great fun working with E the publicist, just fantastic to have somebody with such enthusiasm behind me. Plus the invites lunches and launches are starting to come in. Last week was the launch of Dwell furniture store in Tottenham Court Road. We both agreed the lighting was the most interesting thing there and very good value. Tomorrow we're going to some kind of fashion launch at my favourite Oxfam shop in Westbourne Grove, then a party at the amazing WOW Woman On Wheels Dancer Di, for the final show of Dancing on Wheels.

No news on the novel, 6 weeks now. But I have clarified the rights to my first novel are mine again, so am very pleased I'll be able to relaunch that with its original title - if I ever get the time.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 627: PUBLISHED!

2010-03-05T12:36:00.009Z

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I really genuinely thought this would be a blog about getting back on the bus. A short interlude in the gloomy netherworld between publishers until I was picked up and was on my way again.

How long was it?

Confession 1, February 2005.

I couldn't have imagined all the hard work and heartache that was to follow.

And I still don't have a print publisher. But do I want one? I'm completely unsure about sending my fiction agent a copy of the ebook. She knows I've done it but has a conflict of interest. If she wants to know more she'll ask me. On the other hand is it crazy not to send a copy when the London Book Fair is around the corner? But wouldn't it be more fun to keep on with the epublishing and see where it goes?

I've got the old Amazon tic back again. I'm loving this kindle thing. I don't understand it at all but, look!, today the book is number 96 in Green Housekeeping chart, number 57 in the Cleaning, Caretaking and Relocating chart and number 18 in the homeopathy chart. Meantime, Made in China, the short story I put up as a tester under a different name has been bought by somebody as well, for one dollar (the UK price includes costs & VAT), earning me 35 cents. The book is also up on Lulu ebooks and Scribd. Very useful place, Scribd. You can't sell from the UK but you can put sample chapters up, or any document at all, of any description, you want to share, publicly or privately.

Publishing on Kindle is very simple but different to writing for PDF. There's limited colour and photographs don't work. I had to transfer back from Open Office to a word document and close up all the gaps and tabs. Then you put page spacers between chapters and save it as word HTML. Then you upload it onto the browser and have a look. It's fairly primitive and getting indents and spacings perfect is nearly impossible. I checked out the competition's layouts via the free Kindle iphone App and then spent time downloading, checking again, downloading again getting mine up to at least as good as professional standard. You can get an HTML version back to correct it that way but I haven't worked out unzipping on my computer.

Hopefully now comes the fun bit. The press release has been written and goes out next week. Meantime, Smashwords is another ebook distributor am about to join. Ha ha:

Why did you create Smashwords?
Smashwords was inspired by my own unsuccessful multi-year attempt to get my novel published.....

spool down the FAQs to Smashwords' founder Mark Coker's own not getting published story.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 626: PREVIEW MY EBOOK

2010-02-21T15:22:00.025Z

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There have been so many tiny, tiny but important things to do. Have been at computer all weekend, ironing out glitches, making the secured preview copies for the mailing list, setting up the shop on the website, remembering things I've forgotten, screwing up the spacing by adding new things but think it's all there now.

No it's not. Thursday now and new things keep on cropping up. Getting the document onto Kindle was relatively straightforward but then again not. And I keep finding new 'platforms' - there's Smashwords for Sony E-Readers and Mobi Pocket for BlackBerry and apparently you can put up a book as an App on iTunes. But before that, how the heck do I attach PDF document to this blog, surely that's a simple thing?

I'm now going to click Help to see about this PDF thing.....

*several false trails later* Got it, thanks to www.scribd.com. Here are the first 3 chapters:
Done & Dusted - The Organic Home on a Budget C1-3

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CONF 625: COMING OUT

2010-02-16T10:50:00.006Z

And so, farewell Amanda and, er, hi. This is me.

Why did Amanda have to exist at all? Well, though I made no huge efforts to be totally anonymous, at the same time I didn't want to become known around the outer fringes of the business as that author who writes about being a failure. Not as cringe-making as writing a sex blog or anything but not a great image. On the other hand, what with Michael Landy's new art bin celebrating failure and all who sail in her, maybe in true Amanda style I've just got my timing spectacularly wrong again.

Nearly there now. All edits done, pictures inserted, links checked, and the book is out now for its final proof read. Your preview copies will be available by the end of the week.

My next job is to check Amazon Kindle for style & content tips. It's a free App on iPhone/iPodtouch, Kindle is now. And there's a free PC version as well. It's brilliant, you can download the first 3 chapters of any book out there & have a read. I got totally wrapped up in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma last night & just might have to make my first purchase.

Meantime, this is my ebook site: www.blackbirdebooks.com. What do you think? Any comments, criticisms, suggestions? Recognise anybody?

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

NEW SUPERSTAR ALERT!

2010-02-11T17:18:00.003Z

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My friend Diana is on BBC3 tonight at 9.00pm in a new show called

DANCING ON WHEELS!

It's truly amazing stuff. I was lucky enough to be in the studio audience and know so know so.

Her blog telling you all about it is here:

http://dianadancingonwheels.blogspot.com/2010/02/unreal-world-of-reality-television.html

CONF 624 - NUTS & BOLTS OF EBOOK PUBLISHING

2010-02-10T13:25:00.004Z

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In theory finished writing the ebook weeks ago but so much still to do.

A couple of days ago all the stills disappeared from the main document & from every earlier draft as well. Every picture replaced with squares and funny graphics signs. Open Office help is very technical. It took hours to get them back, reduced to typing HELP! into Google very loudly. Through it now. It was another geek thing that was so unbelievably simple as long as you know how - Tools/Picture/Graphics on/off. I know. A reminder, really, to get a proper web designer on board sooner rather than later. I'm thinking of offering a good percentage of every book sold, as I'm doing with the publicist. She's turning out great, doubling up as proof reader/editor plus she'll be authoring her own book in the future. E's from the world of music business PR rather than publishing, which looks like it might be a blessing. An author who's worked in both fields was telling me the other day that the publishing PRs she's worked with haven't been a patch on the music business ones.

As the first one is a domestic advice book with suggestions that certain types of (un-named) products are best avoided, I've been looking into professional indemnity insurance. The Society of Authors has recommended insurers but I haven't got the money to join them to get the list to get their discount. Also looking at registering the website publisher as a company. Tenancy agreements mean I'm not allowed to run a company from home. I won't be setting up straight away but easing in gently through Kindle and, all being well, iBooks when they're up and running. When I do, have bookmarked Companies Made Simple which looks like the business.

We've made a publication date - 24th February. As seems to be the ebook tradition, the first 3 chapters will be free to preview. As promised, I'll be putting a link here to the whole book for friends, probably a few days before that. To celebrate, E and I are going to treat ourselves to a good working lunch with the proceeds from last week's radio show.

Meanwhile the world of fiction remains quiet. I guess my agent's sent the ms to the editor now and I know it could be a long wait. Thank God for other eggs and other baskets.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

LINK TO THE SHOW

2010-02-06T22:34:00.005Z

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Insane interlude.

Sit at computer sit at computer sit at computer sit at computer sit at computer (repeat for years on end), until slinky grey merc arrives, parks in author next door's chauffeur spot except it's for me, go OUT AND SPEAK THROUGH MICROPHONE TO LOTS OF PEOPLE, sit at computer sit at computer sit at computer (repeat...

Before, imaginary scenarios were playing over and over in mind, now, afterwards, keep going through it.

If you move the pink line along to 1:30:35 that's where it starts.

Clue: I'm not Alan Carr, Hollywood actress, in Joy Division, a DIY person or (drop down gorgeous) chef.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qg1w2#p0069v4m

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CONF 623: KICKING OFF

2010-02-03T17:57:00.006Z

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Well, it's all happening. Have had head down with my lovely publicist for the past week, writing and rewriting, editing the book and fine-tuning the website. Mailing lists are really important, so managed to get that up today, AND worked out how to get thumbnails up. Like many computer things it's easy once you know how. On a Mac you press command, shift and 4 and then you can size your image how you like, let go of the keys and it does camera shutter click. Then you put a dot and a jpg sign at the end and it's ready to export.

We have a launch date - 24 Feb - and tomorrow, Thursday 4 Feb, I go on the radio, national, BBC.

I know! ME. Bit of a shock.

It's because of my newspaper column rather than the book, but they are going to mention it. I'm scared they're going to find out I'm a fraud, it's not a book book but an ebook, and ring up and say sorry, big mistake, so I'm not going to say too much yet. If I don't make a total prat of myself will post the link here when it's over.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

CONF 622: IPAD IBOOKS

2010-01-22T11:29:00.006Z

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So, Ibooks, the book version of Itunes is on its way, Stephen Fry was there and has kindly summed it all up for us.

Only available in the USA, but it has to be coming soon, Ibooks has the backing of Hachette, Penguin, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan and HarperCollins. Jobs is ready to open "the floodgates" to other publishers, wanting to "go a bit further" than Amazon.com's Kindle. So there it is, soon we'll all be able to put our books up there and watch them sink or rise.

The Amazon author tic will be replaced by the iBooks tic. Authors will know exactly how well, or not well, the digital version of their book is selling. The whole secrecy of sales figures and Nielsen's Bookscan is already starting to look archaic. It always been, and still is, so difficult for authors to know how sales are going. This is partly down to the returns system where bookshops order in so many books but return them if they don't sell. But the whole mystique is there in publishing right from the beginning. The first inkling comes with the advance. High advances mean the publisher will work on promoting the book to get their investment back. The big indicator is print run. Maybe this has changed a bit with print on demand, but that's the question authors always ask each other about their new books - if they're very good friends - how big's the first print run? But getting sales figures is impossible. Nielsen's is expensive to operate and charges accordingly. You'd think agents would be signed up and would just pass the figures on but it hasn't happened like that to anybody I know.

My eBook is nearly there. Cover done, dusted and approved. Now adding a few final stills and picking at the text. Latest teccie problem is how to make thumbnails that will then appear on the website. Are they a doc or are they a jpg? I think screenshots is the way forward but haven't quite got there yet.

Yesterday I did a final read-through and edit of the novel. Am sending that to my agent today. I think, I do really think, the climate is a little kinder now for my older woman's commercial fiction genre and keeping fingers crossed that publishers HAVE noticed how films like It's Complicated DO have an audience.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

POETRY FOR HAITI

2010-01-22T11:29:00.000Z

POETRY LIVE FOR HAITI

The Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy and Poetry Live have invited 20 of our leading poets to perform at Westminster Central Hall on Saturday January 30th 2010 at 2.30pm in a fundraising event for the people of Haiti.

Poets include Carol Ann Duffy, Roger McGough, Andrew Motion, John Agard, Dannie Abse, Brian Patten, Gillian Clarke, Imtiaz Dharker, Grace Nichols, Elaine Feinstein, Daljit Nagra, Ian Duhig, Lachlan Mackinnon, Owen Sheers, Glyn Maxwell, Jo Shapcott, Maura Dooley,
Robin Robertson, Colette Bryce, and Robert Minhinnick, along with the musicians John Sampson and Andy Roberts.

Tickets are £10. Telephone 01497 822629 or go to www.poetryliveforhaiti.org to book tickets. Tickets will be available at the door on the day for cash only.

All proceeds will go to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Haiti Earthquake Appeal.

This event has been made possible thanks to the huge generosity of the Guardian Hay Festival, Westminster Central Hall and Eclipse Sound and Light.

Conf 621: Progress

2010-01-19T11:49:00.002Z

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Isn't it the way, you get really busy going in one direction and suddenly a door opens a chink in another. Finally got the verdict on the first 3 chapters of new novel last night with apologies for the delay, she was just very behind with her reading pile. It's not a no, not a yes either but needs some reworking then she'll look at it again. So it's gone from being a tentative idea for a novel to a very possible idea for a novel. The other good news is she's going to resubmit novel 1 to the editor who's moved publishers. I'll read through it again, give it another fine edit then off it goes. No great big This is It hopes this time, I've got plenty now to keep me busy, but a good feeling to have some activity again.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 620: Deadlines

2010-01-18T11:31:00.004Z

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The e-book was supposed to be up on Amazon by Saturday but I missed it.

Had lunch with an old friend on Saturday, she's a PR pro and has agreed to work on my book for a percentage of each sale. She's also a bit of an expert on all things organic and has done an excellent 2nd proof read with suggestions. So my new deadline is Wednesday.

See you on the other side with details of free friends' review copy download.

Bye bye, thanks for visiting, come again soon.

Conf 619: Who'd Be An Editor?

2010-01-12T14:38:00.006Z

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Agent Jonny Geller just tweeted a link to this Bookbrunch article about the editor's lot in today's world of publishing.

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Conf 618: Self-Publishing and Self Publishing

2010-01-05T18:32:00.005Z

There's a big article in today's Telegraph Arts about the rise of self-publishing. It concentrates mainly on print when all everybody is talking about now is digital, but still interesting with some good links. I think the most important point raised is editing. Self-editing to a raw and then getting it edited and then proof read by an outside party to a professional standard is crucial.

I'm being a bit ambitous I know, but hoping my little mini-me publishing venture will be up and running in time to enter this:

Call for Entries - 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards

Calling all indie authors and publishers – including small and mid-size independent publishers, university presses, e-book publishers, and self-published authors. Enter the Next Generation Indie Book Awards™ now to have your book considered for cash prizes of $1,500, awards, exposure, and recognition as one of the top independently published books of the year!

The top 60 books will be reviewed by New York literary agent Marilyn Allen or her co-agents for possible representation in areas such as distribution, foreign rights, and film rights. Ms. Allen has served as Senior Vice President of Harper Collins, directed sales and marketing teams for Simon & Schuster and Penguin Books, and worked with authors such as Stephen King, Ken Follett, and Barbara Kingsolver.

Visit www.IndieBookAwards.com to enter.

Publisher's Lunch Newsletter Jan 2010

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Confessions Of An Author

Ebooks Finally Getting The Thumbs-Up From The Intellectuals

The Sh*t Agents and Editors Say

Ebooks And Creativity: Why Jonathan Franzen is Wrong To Hate Ebooks - Conf 685

Hidden London: Madonna At The Supermarket...

Harry Potter Plot Sheet

Short Stories and Creative Writing Classes

Hidden London 4 - Strand on the Green

Hidden London 3 - Oscar Wilde was arrested here, Lillie Langtry made love here

Hidden London 2 - Captain Bligh's House

Hidden London 1 - Two Temple Place

Fiction Ebook A New Bestseller - Official! Conf 683

Fiction ebook in the charts - Conf 682

A Good Ebook Cover Design Gets Me Noticed - Conf 681

Facebook Book Launch

How Leonard Cohen Got His Song

"Only occasionally did you hear a whisper reminding us all: It’s the content, stupid."

Stand By Me, World

RIP. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Self-Promotion, The Author's Nightmare - Conf 681

Conf 680 - Stepping Back

Romance Novels for the Baby Boomer Over 40s 'An Emerging Genre'

Selling Ebooks: Some Advice From The Experts - Confession 679

How to Advertise Ebooks - Conf 678

#Back to Business - Conf 677

Ebook to POD Print

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ten Good Reasons to Lie about Your Age

by Stephanie Zia

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - UPDATES from August 2011

Ebook to Print - Conf 676

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Ten Good Reasons to Lie about Your Age

by Stephanie Zia

Florence & Giles by John Harding

Conf 675 - Getting Away

Conf 674 - An Interview

US Tax On UK Authors Part III: What to do When You Get Your EIN (or ITIN) Number

Conf 673: Ten Good Reasons To Lie About Your Age Interview

Conf 672 - A beautiful white coincidence

A Georgian Summer's Evening in Ladak, East Sheen - Conf 672

Tagging Tricks - How It Works - Conf 671

Getting Your Books Noticed - Conf 670

Morning!

Spreading The Word - Conf 669

Rules for Writers - Conf 668

Books Without Publishers - Harry Bingham Guest Post

Nesting

The London Book Fair's For Authors Too! Conf 667

Authors Are Doing It For Themselves - Conf 666

Conf 665 - Book For Sale

Conf 664: From Ebook to Print

Look Who's Back!

Confession 663: I Appear To Be Getting Somewhere

Free Ebooks - Download Hundreds of Free, Quality Ebooks

Self-publishing my novel as an ebook: feedback 1 (Conf 662)

Conf 661: How To Fill Out US Tax Form IRS ITIN W7

Conf 660: Ebook UK Royalties: Amazon Kindle and Smashwords Sales

Conf 659: Publication! (*Clamps Hands To Ears, Runs Off & Hides*)

Conf 658: Ta Da De Raa - Preparing To Go Indie

Conf 657: Howard Jacobson at Bookslam

Conf 656 - A Public Appearance

Conf 655 - In Good Company

Conf 654 - Farewell to Agent 2

Happy Launch Day, Talli!

Conf 653: Win a Mop!

Conf 652: A (Short) Return to Fiction

Armistice Day, 11.11.10 Trafalgar Square London

Conf 651: An Encouraging Story

Conf 650: Getting to grips with Kindle

Conf 649: Bikes & Interviews

Conf 648: Kindles and Rice

Conf 647: Back to Fiction

Conf 646: Two magazines two deaths

Conf 645: La Vie Est Bonne!

CONF 644: My new favourite blog

CONF 643: Woops

How To Publish An Ebook On A Budget - An Author's Guide. Free preview, limited time only.

CONF 642: Nearly There

CONF 641: Busy busy June

Conf 659: Publication! (Clamps Hands To Ears, Runs Off & Hides)