Time to be honest, cos God hates a coward, right? OK. My publishing career has not been a success.
I'm of a generation which doesn't have an instinctive grasp of the internet. I didn't grow up with it. When I were a lad (thanks Monty Python) the cutting edge of the home PC was the ZX Spectrum, or the Commodore 64. Games came on cassette tapes which screeched for ages and then crashed, so you had to load them again. I was very good at playing Froggit but I'm not great online today.
The result is that I don't know how to market. I miss changes in how indie writing works, the changes come too fast and too quietly. It's like trying to nail smoke to a wall. As soon as I get hold of an idea (which is unusual) it morphs into something else. I think I have a good product. certainly the reviews of my work, few as they are, have been very good. But I haven't been able to translate that into a significant number of sales.
I'm going to try something different.
I'm going to publish chapter by chapter, through an author website. Readers can pay 50 cents, or 10, whatever they want, depending on how much they enjoyed the chapter. Some of that will go to my marketing guru, Josh, who used to run a company doing exactly this. He'll organise the whole commercial side of things, leaving me to write like a bastard.
This means I can rapid release, which is a key facet of indie publishing these days. But I won't have to produce a novel every four or five weeks, as some writers do. I can't help thinking, however talented they are, that such speed must reduce the quality of their work. (See my blog post "You'd have to be Hemingway".) Doing it chapter by chapter gets around the problem. I can release say two chapters a week, working out at a novel every five months or so, and then have a four week break for advertising before the next one makes its debut. Or three chapters a week, if I prefer; it's all good. See what works best.
I like this idea. Josh knows his onions and I know mine. It's very much worth a try.
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel. Show all posts
Wednesday, 6 February 2019
Friday, 31 August 2018
Onwards and Upwards
Self-publishing has changed.
When I published my first book, back in 2013, people mostly put their books out and talked about them a lot - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The aim was to try to create awareness. To some extent it worked, and I sold a couple of hundred copies. I thought that was OK for a debut. Onwards and upwards, things will build from there.
They haven't - in fact, my sales have fallen away. My latest book, Fanged Fish, is the worst seller I've had so far. That's because online self-publishing is different now. It's not enough to talk a lot on social media, you have to advertise on Facebook and Amazon, buy slots on book promotion sites like Bookbub (good luck with that), and generally spend money. Ironically, I could have done that easily in 2013, but now I've got kids I don't have the money to spare.
So what to do? I've used GoFundMe and similar sites before, to not much benefit. No help there. My family is a) fractured and b) poor, so that's another dry well. It's frustrating. I've learned a lot about publishing, and improved my writing too I think, and I can't make any serious impact because I don't have money to spend.
I begin to think that online self-publishing has become as hard to break into as traditional publishing, only the gatekeepers are advertising companies instead of editors.
To add to the problems, I can't write a novel in a month, as many online authors seem to do. They bang out a book every two or three months - sometimes even less. That seems to work for them, especially in YA. But my work takes too much research, an I want to rewrite and edit too many times, so it doesn't work for me.
I need to think about what I'm doing, and how to make it productive, because right now I'm not sure I know.
When I published my first book, back in 2013, people mostly put their books out and talked about them a lot - blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. The aim was to try to create awareness. To some extent it worked, and I sold a couple of hundred copies. I thought that was OK for a debut. Onwards and upwards, things will build from there.
They haven't - in fact, my sales have fallen away. My latest book, Fanged Fish, is the worst seller I've had so far. That's because online self-publishing is different now. It's not enough to talk a lot on social media, you have to advertise on Facebook and Amazon, buy slots on book promotion sites like Bookbub (good luck with that), and generally spend money. Ironically, I could have done that easily in 2013, but now I've got kids I don't have the money to spare.
So what to do? I've used GoFundMe and similar sites before, to not much benefit. No help there. My family is a) fractured and b) poor, so that's another dry well. It's frustrating. I've learned a lot about publishing, and improved my writing too I think, and I can't make any serious impact because I don't have money to spend.
I begin to think that online self-publishing has become as hard to break into as traditional publishing, only the gatekeepers are advertising companies instead of editors.
To add to the problems, I can't write a novel in a month, as many online authors seem to do. They bang out a book every two or three months - sometimes even less. That seems to work for them, especially in YA. But my work takes too much research, an I want to rewrite and edit too many times, so it doesn't work for me.
I need to think about what I'm doing, and how to make it productive, because right now I'm not sure I know.
Friday, 12 January 2018
How The Stars Shine
Hi all. Hope the New Year has started with promise for you.
I'm getting right into the new novel, 22,000 words done now. I've renamed it How The Stars Shine, from a quote by Bertrand Russell about how he yearns to know so many things. Part of the story (before, it was called Eternity) deals with a scholar called Mani, whose job is to talk with the Sea-Goats who live in the lagoon and glean information from them. He's a man of learning in a culture where almost everyone works in farming or the military, who takes one simple step and finds that it throws him into the heart of events sweeping across the cities.
Trouble is, from there the story has grown into something so ambitious that it scares me. There's a non-human species, the Sea-Goats, who are a bit like mermen but have a distinct culture and keep secrets all the time. There's a mad warlord who wants to live forever, and an almost equally insane High Priestess who thinks she can ride his coat-tails to power. There are betrayals and revelations galore. All this makes the story difficult to write in a structural sense, because there's so much going on and I have to keep it all tight and sleek so it isn't confusing.
At the heart of it all is the longing for power, and the things people do to achieve it. We're driven by pride and ambition, even if we don't know what we'll actually do with power once we've got it. A bit like Donald Trump, who seemed to want the Presidency so he could boast to foreign leaders about how big his button was (metaphorically, hehe). The warlord in Stars is like that. He wants to live forever not so he can achieve good things for his people, not so he can understand mysteries, but just so he doesn't die. A little man holding great power is dangerous.
Then there's Mani, who wants to understand all the mysteries, know all the answers to questions he hasn't even thought of yet. That's foolish too, because if we know everything we have nothing left to learn, or achieve. The Arabs have a proverb; "May all your dreams come true but one." Having one thing left to dream of means we remain dreamers, and isn't that good?
I'm as guilty as anyone, by the way. I'm a bit like Mani, wanting to know all the answers, even though I know it's a fool's longing. But I do know there are limitations on what we can do. I've typed this blog with one hand while cradling a sleepy-struggly baby in the other, and boy, that teaches you the limits of what you can do.
Is writing How The Stars Shine beyond my limits? Maybe. But if the project doesn't scare you it's not big enough, and as I've said before, God hates a coward. I think I can manage the story. Finding out is deliciously scary.
Pip pip.
I'm getting right into the new novel, 22,000 words done now. I've renamed it How The Stars Shine, from a quote by Bertrand Russell about how he yearns to know so many things. Part of the story (before, it was called Eternity) deals with a scholar called Mani, whose job is to talk with the Sea-Goats who live in the lagoon and glean information from them. He's a man of learning in a culture where almost everyone works in farming or the military, who takes one simple step and finds that it throws him into the heart of events sweeping across the cities.
Trouble is, from there the story has grown into something so ambitious that it scares me. There's a non-human species, the Sea-Goats, who are a bit like mermen but have a distinct culture and keep secrets all the time. There's a mad warlord who wants to live forever, and an almost equally insane High Priestess who thinks she can ride his coat-tails to power. There are betrayals and revelations galore. All this makes the story difficult to write in a structural sense, because there's so much going on and I have to keep it all tight and sleek so it isn't confusing.
At the heart of it all is the longing for power, and the things people do to achieve it. We're driven by pride and ambition, even if we don't know what we'll actually do with power once we've got it. A bit like Donald Trump, who seemed to want the Presidency so he could boast to foreign leaders about how big his button was (metaphorically, hehe). The warlord in Stars is like that. He wants to live forever not so he can achieve good things for his people, not so he can understand mysteries, but just so he doesn't die. A little man holding great power is dangerous.
Then there's Mani, who wants to understand all the mysteries, know all the answers to questions he hasn't even thought of yet. That's foolish too, because if we know everything we have nothing left to learn, or achieve. The Arabs have a proverb; "May all your dreams come true but one." Having one thing left to dream of means we remain dreamers, and isn't that good?
I'm as guilty as anyone, by the way. I'm a bit like Mani, wanting to know all the answers, even though I know it's a fool's longing. But I do know there are limitations on what we can do. I've typed this blog with one hand while cradling a sleepy-struggly baby in the other, and boy, that teaches you the limits of what you can do.
Is writing How The Stars Shine beyond my limits? Maybe. But if the project doesn't scare you it's not big enough, and as I've said before, God hates a coward. I think I can manage the story. Finding out is deliciously scary.
Pip pip.
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