Children's books and rejection

Children's books and rejection

I've just received a rejection on the children's stories, which makes it a bit difficult to know what to do with them next.  They took a little while to write, so I don't really want to give up on them, but apparently there is no market for folktale-style story telling any more.

My cynical suspicion is that there won't be such a market until someone independent makes a fortune from them. That won't be me: I'm no artist, and these stories do need illustrating. I certainly don't have the funds to hire an illustrator at the moment. Ragged Angel doesn't do children's books and strictly speaking didn't do fiction book until I begged a few years ago. And the main market doesn't like my style.

I may just release them as text-only freebies on Smashwords or Draft to Digital, or possible create a wizzley article for each. At least that way, they will be read.

On a brighter note, Escape has done quite well, although I'm still tempted to write the pedant's extensively footnoted version which fills in and explains in detail everything that is going on. Sometimes an eye for detail may go a bit too far!

Read more.

Lest We Forget

Escape, first week and other stories Escape went up last week, with a whisper not a shout, and so I thought I'd mention a first week retrospective. Is it selling a lot? No.Is it selling despite me not actually advertising it anywhere?Yes.Should I advertise it somewhere?Probably.The lack of advertising is not entirely by choice. The health issues that affected me earlier this year have resurfaced, making … Read more.

Migration away from this blog will be occurring shortly, since my new blog will be integrated with the book websites, making things easier to keep track of. There's a preview of the new blog at: http://vhfolland.com/wp/ ...and the first post has a small announcement.

A Smashwords Announcement

I have just transferred all my Smashwords titles to Ragged Angel Ltd, who will now be handling most of my account on there. This isn't because I'm upset with Smashwords (on the contrary, I think they are great) but because it simplifies a lot of things at this end.

RA already handle my Amazon titles, so it puts all the royalties in one place. This obviously simplifies tax and accounting. Also, because of the obvious difficulty of trying to get an ITIN with a penname, managing tax through a company that is a legal entity and can get its own is a lot simpler.


On the admin side, they already do the formatting for me, so instead of me writing, sending the manuscript off, getting the formatted copy back and uploading, now I just send it off and they do the rest. They also own their own ISBNs, so that means my books can get into more retailers without using Smashwords ISBNs.

And finally - because I am hoping for a bit of a marketing boost from cross-promotion with other titles. Some of their free books on Smashwords are very popular, so hopefully some of those readers will cross to my titles.

End of Announcement

There are many other developments and things I should be blogging about, but I'll be trying to do one at a time for a few days until I've caught up.

I feel I should write a tribute piece, but it still feels too soon and the words don't come. I sit here staring at a blank blog and can't even find somewhere to start. At the moment my thoughts are a little in pieces, so I will have to ask readers to bear with me. Sorry.

Sad news

There is no easy way to say this: the person to whom Fire Season was dedicated has died.

The words are inadequate, but he will be sorely missed by all that knew him.

Never forgotten.

Smashwords and Tools

Less about writing, more about testing: the Smashwords Tools have moved to http://www.smashingreads.com.

The move had been planned for a while, but after Smashwords downtime due to the Slicehost failure it became obvious we needed it. The new setup has server caching that should keep the widgets visible throughout any downtime.

And there's a new widget to go with it: author minisites with convenient links to third parties. Rather than detail them, I'll just show you mine as an example:

http://www.smashingreads.com/author/vhfolland

Musings on Marketing

This is an odd post, and one that I didn't expect to write.

Before Christmas I went all out on marketing - blogs, promotions, even a book launch and signing. After Christmas I stopped. Aside from one token offered in a competition right at the start of January I have done no promotion at all for the last six weeks.

My sales figures are exactly the same.

This hard data is a telling comment on the effectiveness of my marketing efforts. It's also a good reason to stop spending any time or money on them and focus on writing.

The only things I am likely to continue with are the Project Wonderful ads (since the publisher manages those) and sending out review copies. Anything else appears to have very little effect.

Many indie authors take the line that the best marketing is the next book. I think I will be working on that principle for now on. However, any further books will be after April - between christmas and April is the busiest time for my day job an I am rushed off my feet at the moment.

And before I forget, Happy Valentines!