Category Archives: Writing

Luck, Marketing, Self-Publishing, Writing

Luck & the Writer

10/06/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Some of you may have seen author and blogger J.A. Konrath’s recent blog post about self-publishing called Your Marketing Plan Won’t Work.

http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/2019/06/your-marketing-plan-wont-work.html

It caught my eye, as in 2019 I’ve forsaken writing the sixth story in my Cornish Detective series in favour of marketing the first five titles—there’s not much point in baking another cake when the rest are going stale on the shelves!

I like Konrath’s grumpy, unfiltered and confrontational style of commenting on the publishing industry, and recognised much of what he says in his assessment of what worked to sell his own books. He sums up by saying:

BE CONSISTENT

My career has been all over the place, and I’ve tried so many new and different things. I’ve learned from my many failures, and if I had to do it all over, I’d tell my younger self:

“One brand, one genre, stop experimenting, stop being a perfectionist, and just write five good books a year in the same series. Make sure they are professionally edited and formatted, have great covers and descriptions, keep length under 75k words, and make sure they have updated, clickable bibliographies in the back matter, pre-order pages for the next release, and newsletter sign-up forms.”

That’s it. That’s the sum total of my years of knowledge and experience.

[read the comments below the article]

Broadly, he agrees with the oft-quoted William Goldman:

(from Adventures in the Screen Trade)

Like Konrath and crime writer James Oswald my self-marketing is relying on blogging and having a website devoted to my crime series, with a view to building a mailing list of potential readers to send a newsletter to; my social media presence will be minimal. I intend to follow Oswald’s tactic of making the first book free, self-publishing the sequel at the same time at an attractive price—hoping to get the ball rolling.

Who knows if it will work?

As Konrath says:

It still comes down to luck.

Stop worrying. This is all out of your control.

Stop trying to find the answer. There is no answer. No answer, no logic, no reason, not even any scientific cause and effect.

It’s all luck.

I’ve long had a stoical approach to life, which has come in useful over the last six years since I returned to creative writing. Editing and querying require infinite levels of perseverance.

As for luck, I don’t know, for it’s an elusive sprite that lands on some people while avoiding my own arm!

I’ll keep on keeping on, even though I miss writing, for I reckon that building an author platform online will be more of a help than a hindrance. As champion golfer, Gary Player is reputed to have said: The harder I practice, the luckier I get.

How much do you think that luck counts in your writing career?

bibliophile, book collecting, hoarding, Writing

Piles of Books—Tsundoku

05/06/2019 Paul Leave a comment

There’s a word to describe everything. Sometimes the foreign version is more stylish than English—for instance, the French word ennui literally sounds sadder and more boring than listless or dissatisfied.

A few foreign expressions have crept into English in recent years, such as hygge—the Danish word for the feeling of genial comfort felt when sitting comfortably by the fire in the company of friends in winter. Hiraeth is a Welsh word for longing for your homeland or a romanticised past that only exists as a memory.

Collecting an abundance of books is termed bibliomania in English, but the Japanese expression tsundoku sounds less mad! A while ago, I wrote about how books can be friends and it’s hard to turn your back on a friend…even if you haven’t interacted with them for ages. As for newcomers picked up on a whim because of the attractive cover design or because you’ve been meaning to read that author, and you’ll get around to it one day, well, that’s how books start to pile up as all the shelf space is taken.

I’ve reached hoarding status with reading matter a few times in my life—moving home is a great way to reduce clutter—moving countries even better! When I emigrated to the USA in 2000, I gave away 500 books and about 2,000 magazines on classic cars and motorcycles, dating back to the 1970s. It was chastening to realise that had I saved the purchase price of them instead, I’d have been able to afford a decent Jaguar Mark 2.

Since then, I’ve kept an eye on how many books I hang on to. I give some away to friends or the charity shop, but the charity shop has had a special offer of 4 items for one pound this year, allowing a mix of CDs, paperbacks and DVDs. Inevitably, I’ve wound up with a pile of 50 books on my bedside table—they include recently published crime novels with uncracked spines from never being read—and what looks like a possibly dead reader’s favourite with yellowing pages and dedications when the book was given as a present thirty years ago.

Better that I read them (one day, honest) than they be pulped!

Do you take comfort from the presence of an excess of books?

Probably best not to say that “I’ve got huge piles….”

A. Edward Newton, a writer and book collector summed it up well.

Book Covers, Publishing, Writing

Fairytale Book Covers

04/06/2019 Paul Leave a comment

As part of building an online author platform this year, I’ve been coming up with different designs for the covers of my five Cornish Detective novels, as well as monkeying around with Celtic style fonts and producing banners to go across the top of significant pages.

I favour IrfanView to create images, as Gimp confuses me with its complexity.

I’ve been keeping an eye on trends in book cover design, mainly via the excellent The Book Designer website—site owner Joel Friedlander tackles more than just book design—his newsletter is worth subscribing to.

In the last year, there have been lots of covers with the title of the book in big capitals in separate blocks down the cover. It may just be a fad that passes, but it affected my design for the last novel I wrote. It opens with a murdered painter’s body being found encapsulated in a concrete statue in an underwater dive park. The statue resembles the Venus de Milo.

Trawling through copyright-free image libraries, I chanced upon a photograph that resembles the famous statue, so I used it as a basis for a cover. It needs finessing, as the face is obscured and I’ll try changing fonts and colours.

Researching book covers this morning, I stumbled upon a Latvian artist called Aniko Kolesnikova who produces book covers that are dazzlingly beautiful…collectible in their own right.

Fairytale Book Covers By Latvian Artist Aniko Kolesnikova
(click through Continue Reading to see all three pages)

Right! That’s put me in my place!

I favour IrfanView to create images, as Gimp confuses me with its complexity.

I’ve been keeping an eye on trends in book cover design, mainly via the excellent The Book Designer website—site owner Joel Friedlander tackles more than just book design—his newsletter is worth subscribing to.

In the last year, there have been lots of covers with the title of the book in big capitals in separate blocks down the cover. It may just be a fad that passes, but it affected my design for the last novel I wrote. It opens with a murdered painter’s body being found encapsulated in a concrete statue in an underwater dive park. The statue resembles the Venus de Milo.

Trawling through copyright-free image libraries, I chanced upon a photograph that resembled the famous statue, so I used it as a basis for a cover. It needs finessing, as the face is obscured and I’ll try changing fonts and colours.

Researching book covers this morning, I stumbled upon a Latvian artist called Aniko Kolesnikova who produces book covers that are dazzlingly beautiful…collectible in their own right.

Fairytale Book Covers By Latvian Artist Aniko Kolesnikova

(click through Continue Reading to see all three pages)

Inspiration, Writing

Leaving Scenes Unfinished

03/06/2019 Paul Leave a comment

In 1934, a 22–year–old aspiring writer called Arnold Samuelson hitchhiked to Key West, Florida to seek advice from his hero Ernest Hemingway.

He recorded Hemingway’s thoughts on writing, storing the manuscript in a drawer, where it was found by his daughter after his death in 1981. She arranged for it to be published as With Hemingway: A Year In Key West and Cuba

While mentoring Samuelson, Hemingway offered an abundance of advice, including this tip:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day when you are writing a novel you will never be stuck. That is the most valuable thing I can tell you so try to remember it.

Hemingway was effectively cautioning writers not to worry about a reaching a daily word count which could become a drudge of a task, ruining their creativity.

Finishing a writing session mid-paragraph aware of where the story is going next helps momentum the next day. One’s brain works on the scene, while awake and asleep, which spurs on new ideas.

It’s a technique I’ve used many times, for after all, it’s far better to stop when things are going well than to wait until I’m stuck! I always follow Thomas Edison’s advice as part of the technique:

It’s surprising how many times sleeping on things produces great ideas.

It turns out that Hemingway’s suggestion is based on a psychological phenomenon known as the Zeigarnik Effect. Named after Bluma Wulfovna Zeigarnik, a Russian psychiatrist and psychologist, who extrapolated from an observation her professor made about waiters—that they hold a diner’s order in their minds until the food is served.

It turns out we all remember unfinished tasks better than completed goals, which provides great motivation to complete it.

https://curiosity.com/topics/you-can-sharpen-your-memory-with-the-zeigarnik-effect-curiosity

This year, as I build an online author platform in preparation to launch my Cornish Detective novels as a self-published series, I’ve been working in fits and starts on a novella as therapy, but it’s rather backfired on me. Each time, I’ve stopped writing at interesting plot incidents, sometimes not returning to the story for a couple of weeks, which has turned it into a spiky Rubik’s Cube in my mind!

It’s a great sensation when you’re on a roll while writing, in the creative groove, firing on all cylinders and adding to your masterpiece, but that might be the time to pause for a few hours…

What do you think?

Literary Agents, Publishing, Querying, Writing

How bestsellers are born

02/06/2019 Paul Leave a comment

An article in today’s Independent newspaper gives a good idea what’s involved in going from the slush pile to the book shelf:

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/how-to-get-a-book-published-novel-publishing-industry-literary-agents-ny-a8938486.html

Profile of interviewed literary agent Stephen Barbara:

http://www.literaryrambles.com/2009/04/agent-spotlight-stephen-barbara.html

As a veteran of querying—I sent off my 701st submission on Friday—I’m glad that I’m returning to self-publishing. I’m preparing to launch my Cornish Detective novels this summer, which means building an author platform. Getting two blogs together and deciding how to post on social media doesn’t feel much like being a writer, but at least I’m getting a prompt reaction. Querying feels like throwing a message in a bottle into the sea, hoping to be immediately rescued.

Morale, Writing

Feeling inadequate? Here’s why….

24/05/2019 Paul Leave a comment

Of all the things I’ve ever done, that required learning new skills, I think that writing is the most neurotic. Whatever you do, it’s not good enough, but if you just read this article or attend this course or pay this editor to knock your manuscript into shape, then you’ll be a better writer.

As examples of what I mean, here are the titles of emails on writing sent to me today:

*Authors You Need To Follow On Social Media

*What’s the point of Blogging?

*Secrets to help your Content go Viral

*Ten Reasons You Book Is Not Ready To Publish

*Beginners Guide: 26 Most Common WordPress Mistakes To Avoid

The stance of the writers of these helpful articles is that I’m making mistakes that need rectifying, that they know things I don’t. Of course, some of these experts are selling their services in direct ways, while others earn funds through the ads on their websites and blogs. That’s fair enough, and they’re doing nothing different to what anyone advertising a product or service does—trading on buyer’s insecurities—they’ll be better people if they only buy this.

It’s worth remembering, that the stores selling food and equipment to gold rush prospectors made more loot that the miners digging for gold.

The thing is, creativity is dependent on free thought, the spark of originality that attracts the interest of the writer first of all and then the reader. Literary agents say things like: “We are always on the lookout for new writing talent who see things in a different way, producing great stories to share with the world.” What they don’t say is: “We’re looking for adequate authors who produce stories we know will sell, because they’re the sort of humdrum thing that’s sold before.”

I sometimes wonder about the worth of following advice designed to make me feel inadequate. Certainly, there are useful tips and tricks to learn to create an appealing manuscript which seduces the reader, but following advice too closely may produce cookie-cutter writing that is technically correct, but which reads just like everything else churned out by authors who subscribed to that course.

It’s hard enough to get noticed from writing the mountain that is a book, but if you’re following the same route to the summit, you’re joining a queue, as shown by this tragic story about the deaths of mountaineers attempting to scale Mount Everest:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/congestion-mount-everest-backlog-climbers-death-zone

Writing a book should be hard work, but it should be enjoyable, a journey of discovery in which you’re surprised. If that happens to you, it may well happen to the reader.

Remember Sturgeon’s Law which advises that 90% of anything is crap—and that includes advice about how to write.

I think I need to unsubscribe from many of my newsletters. It’s not that I think I know it all, but I do know enough to get through without having so-called experts tell me I’m going the wrong way. It makes for a lousy start to the day.

What drives you mad about writing gurus?

Have you ever paid for training or editing which was beneficial…or, which was a waste of money?

(Happy Birthday, Bob, who is 78 today)

Crime Writing, Marketing, Publishing, Writing

Book Pricing—Perceived Value

21/05/2019 Paul Leave a comment

This article is worth a look, especially if you’re considering self-publishing your book:

https://indiereader.com/2019/05/how-book-pricing-is-a-powerful-strategy-to-sell-more-books/

You might well think, that the less you ask for your ebook, the more copies you’ll sell, but that isn’t necessarily so. Shoppers for all types of goods, from books to wine to cars, have pre-determined limits on what they want to spend. They equate the price with the quality of the product—they want to spend £7.99 on a paperback, which is a big saving on the £15.99 asking price of the hardback—and they’re not going to demean themselves by looking in the charity shop, where the best-selling title they’re after is available for £1.00.

Wine lovers are price-driven, however much of an expert they claim to be. I’ve known many car and motorcycle dealers who were amazed at how few buyers haggle over the price of the vehicle. They’ve saved £10,000 and that’s what they want to spend, or that’s what they’ve calculated they can afford in repayments if they’re buying on a finance plan.

I’ve attended two business start-up courses, set ten years apart, where the tutors both told the story of a baker who made a disastrous price change to his sausage rolls. His were an inch longer than his only competitor in town but priced at 25p more, so he dropped the asking price to one penny less that his rival, thinking to boost sales, in a more for less way. Sales plummeted, as customers liked paying that bit more for what they saw as a luxury product…they were treating themselves. I don’t know if this baker ever really existed, but he lives on in business studies.

I’m intending to launch my Cornish Detective series of crime novels this summer, so have been pondering pricing, while scurrying around trying to understand blogging and social media posting to create my author platform. I’ve praised James Oswald several times on this blog for his success story with crime writing. Oswald went from not selling many copies of his fantasy fiction, to writing detective stories set in Edinburgh, which he sold online, shifting 150,000 downloads in nine months. This led to Penguin offering him a six-figure advance. He’s been a best-selling author ever since.

When he started publishing online, James Oswald copied a trick from an Australian science fiction author called Simon Haynes who made the first book in the series free. James Oswald said:

The idea was that they could try it, and if they liked it they could pay me money for the rest of them.

A lot of people have asked me for information about how I did this, as they want to do it themselves. I always ask them how many books they’ve written, and it’s almost invariably just the one.

There is no point giving away your first book in a series if the next one isn’t immediately available (and ideally a few more as well).

If people like your work, they will want more, and they will want it now. By the time you’ve written and published the next book in the series, they’ll have forgotten you and moved on to the next thing.

I’m going to copy James Oswald copying of Simon Haynes, by offering my first novel Who Kills A Nudist? for free—accompanied by promotion of the rest of the series (four more books already written and ready to go) + links to my online presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest and my blog.

Quite how attractive crime fans will find this offer, I’ve no way of predicting. I feel like a one-man band at the moment, making up tunes as I go along, about to fall off my unicycle!

Pricing books makes me think of how drug dealers and casinos get their customers hooked—give them a freebie, then jack the price up! Will anyone get addicted to my books?

How do you decide on what to charge for your books?

Have you found a sweet spot where the asking price generates more sales?

Do you use special offers?

Health, Morale, Writing

How Gritty are You?

17/05/2019 Paul Leave a comment

To succeed at writing, you need patience and perseverance. As James Baldwin said:

If you don’t dig in to pursue your long-term writing goal, then your manuscript will become another dust gatherer.

Angela Duckworth is a psychologist, academic and popular science author who’s studied grit—which she defines as “passion and perseverance for long-term goals.“

She’s devised a test to measure your grit:

http://angeladuckworth.com/grit-scale/

Click on MORE ABOUT GRIT for information about what this means.

I scored 4.59 out of 5—“higher than about 95% of American adults in a recent study“—proving what my mother used to say about me, that I‘m mule-headed!

How did you do?

Inspiration, Morale, Writing

Writing for Myself

14/05/2019 Paul Leave a comment

If a writer wants to keep their sanity, it’s best to enjoy the process of creating stories, at the very least. How you cope with editing and querying literary agents is another matter.

At the moment, I’m preparing to enter the fray of social media posting and will be running two blogs—one on writing and publishing, the other more of a static website for my Cornish Detective series of novels. The first quarter of the year was eaten up with querying and editing posts I’ve made on The Colony in the last four years, which I’ll use as a basis for this Paul Pens blog.

It was repetitive work, but to provide some thrills, I began a short story that’s ballooned into a novella. I did little preparation for where the plot would go, simply starting with the premise of a widow observing an unknown male stranger dancing naked in a field on a summer day. I’m more of a pantser than a plotter, but I’ve never begun a story before without any structure at all. I feel a bit like a bird returning to its nest, from time to time, as I add some more chapters. I may be travelling hopefully, with no destination in mind, but I love the journey.

Controlling the fates of characters is thrilling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ana%C3%AFs_Nin

As Anita Brookner admitted: You never know what you will learn ’til you start writing. Then you discover truths you never knew existed.

That’s what I’m finding, as I add to my novella, that is branching out in unexpected directions. While preoccupied with learning about themes, plug-ins, categories, posts and pages on my WordPress blog, I’m delighted that the creative part of my brain is quietly working away, gently nudging me with suggestions for my neglected tale of a hedge witch meeting a paranoid man with arcane knowledge that he won’t admit to.

Stories can be lifebuoys in the maelstrom of life—both in the reading and writing of them.

Recently, I read Leonard Cohen’s Stranger Music, which compiles many of his published poems and song lyrics. I liked this poem about the creative process, which gels with how I feel about why I’m writing:

The Only Poem

This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me

Leonard Cohen

If you’re not writing for yourself it won’t ring true.

We’re writer and reader combined.

Aren’t we?

Health, Morale, Writing

Neurotic Writing

14/05/2019 Paul Leave a comment

A while ago, I posted on Turning Suffering Into Writing, but everyday neuroticism is a tool authors can use to good effect. Try to think of a writer or any creative artist who stimulates you, that sees things in what would be deemed a conventional way. It’s often a skewed viewpoint that captivates.

Neurosis is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as:

‘A mental illness resulting in high levels of anxiety, unreasonable fears and behaviour and, often, a need to repeat actions for no reason’

It’s easy to see how such symptoms afflict writers. After all, much of what we do is speculative, flights of fancy that our family and friends may view as delusional.

‘The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone’s neurosis, and we’d have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads.’

William Styron

Styron’s Darkness Visible: A Memoir Of Madness is a moving chronicle of his own descent into depression and his triumphant recovery.

While writing a story, then editing it and creating a synopsis, followed by querying agents with a view to selling, it’s likely that an author will ask themselves many times, “Why am I doing this?”

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I’m neurotic as hell. I’ll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
Sylvia Plath, from The Bell Jar.

I’ve often contemplated my manuscripts, after reading them in as detached a way as possible, wondering if my theme worked, does the story arc ring true within this story and across the series and what would a reader take away from the story?

That way madness lies! Trying to guess what readers will notice is a form of fortune-telling. My beta-readers pointed out things to me which they liked, that I hadn’t considered.

Telling someone that you’re a writer produces mixed reactions, I think. Some people will admire you, while others will be intimidated. You may be thought of as wealthy, in a J.K. Rowling way, or as a total loser who can’t write well, as you’re not a household name. Most people will give you leeway to be just a bit weird!

Research has shown, that highly creative people are often neurotic:

https://www.livescience.com/52051-why-creative-geniuses-are-neurotic.html

To throw a reinterpretation on Robert A. Heinlein’s book title Stranger In A Strange Land, authors are among the strangest folk in society, telling tales to entertain, inform and which reveal truths.

Have you embraced your neuroticism?

Jerome Lawrence

Real Write, Real Edit, Real Publish