After the launch...

An interesting if quiet day at the signing, including a few interesting chats about crime novellas, short stories on Kindle and e-publishing, and small bookshops.


I'd like to thank Annette at Farthing Books (again!) for hosting us, and putting up with me for the day. She got something out of it, since another author asked about doing their book launch there.

I am still very tired so I'll settle for putting some photos up, snapped before it opened. The books were on a table here - it's right by the counter so it was a good location.

What people were really interested in:


While there is a lot of advice leading up to book launchs, most guides tend to miss the work needed afterwards. Helping put the shop back in order was fair, after everything had been moved around to accomodate the launch (and food). Today, the remaining books need to go to Waterstones or be returned to the publisher, any receipts and figures need to be sent in, and I need to recover, update websites and PR and pull down advertising.

I also need to get writing. NaNoWrimMo has five days to go, I have a lot of notes, but nothing typed up, and I need to get 50,000 words done.

50,000 words? 5 Days? Time to get typing.

Give an indie book a chance?

If you pick an indie author's book up, what are the chances it will be good?

A few weeks back I took part in an experiment on the Kindleboards. D.A. Boulter volunteered to purchase up to 20 books with only one criteria: that the title hadn't sold anything on Amazon that month. I volunteered The Docks. The results are now in (full results here).

In total he picked up 15 books, and has read the first seven. In summary all were enjoyable reads, and only one was marked down for proofing and editing issues. He comments that

"‘Mountains of dreck’ may exist out there but, within this small sample of non-selling books, I didn’t find it."

It is a good point. I've heard people refer to self-publishing as "putting the slushpile online" but I have also encountered raw unedited slush. There are significant differences e.g. a surprising number of slushpile manuscripts are submitted with typos or gramatical errors (probably about 10% going by this post) because new authors assume - and sometimes state outright - that it is the job of the agent or editor to correct these errors. Most self-published authors I've encountered either self-edit or get a freelancer in to edit or proofread and acknowledge it is their responsibility. Authors who submit handwritten manuscripts to the slushpile are unlikely to e-publish.

Also, as these are ebooks, authors can withdraw and republish them if there is a major issue. This "second chance" could be seen as a trade-off for the lack of the initial editing and support of a traditional publishing house.

Now, the sample is slightly skewed: it drew from the authors on Kindleboards who are serious about their writing and presumably want to develop it enough that they have looked up a community and started discussing technique and writing with other authors. Second it asked the authors to submit their books. This narrows it down to authors who are prepared to admit to low sales, but are still confident that their book is good. On the other hand, by only taking books which had no sales that month, it was selecting against the bestsellers or higher ranked books which would be expected to be higher quality.

It may not be a purely scientific study, but it does show that there are some gems out there and that the odds of getting a decent read from a fairly random sampling are quite high (six in seven so far). User reviews are another guide: of the seven books that had reviews none had an average lower than four at the time of writing. Given that readers can view samples online it should be fairly easy to eliminate books that don't appeal.

So is it worth taking a chance on an indie book? So far it seems this would indicate yes.

I will end this by admitting my own bias here: he liked The Docks.

Local Author Adventures - Part Two (booksellers)

While "self-published" might strike fear into reviewers' hearts, it seems the phrase "Local author" does the same to booksellers.

I just had a very depressing discussion with a local independent bookshop. I went in at the arranged time and went up to the lady behind the counter.

"Hi, I'm X, I made an appointment to discuss my book." I was surprised when her face fell, and then set into an apologetic expression.

"We don't stock POD books." I blinked slightly.

"That's fine. It's sale or return. Usual trade discount." She looked rather sceptical.

"Well, that's good but you'll need to arrange a distributor."

"It's with Central Books. You can order through Nielsen." I was absolutely stunned by the smile I got, as she headed behind the counter and asked for the ISBN. I handed my book across (having brought the copy all that way I wasn't wasting it) received a sunny grin in return and was shortly afterwards standing outstide bewildered with my media kit untouched and several books ordered. It was surprisingly painless.

The depressing converstaion followed that one, when I asked, during a quiet spot why booksellers react like that to local authors, and got the bookseller's side of it. Not just books without ISBNs, but stories of ring-bound home-printed manuscripts complete with coffee stains, the proud mother who wanted the bookshop to let her daughter personally sign her name in crayon in each of their books ("because she'll be famous one day!"), or the person who thought that 1% (one percent) was enough of a margin for a bookshop to buy his book outright with no returns. Then there was the person who wanted the bookshop to take part in their latest money making scheme - printing out e-books they had downloaded which they wanted the shop to sell for them. Unfortunately they hadn't written the books in question...I didn't have the nerve to ask what she'd said to that individual - her expression said quite enough.

Apparently "author" has a very flexible definition. It's certainly given booksellers a range of horror stories.

Please, be kind to your local bookshop. There aren't enough of them left.

Local Author Adventures - Part One

I've run a few unexpected events into since I took on the dread label "Local Author" and started promoting my book. The pseudonym preserves a lot of privacy, but even so there have been quite a few surprises. I might write a few more in this series - depending on how much is worthy of blogging.

I hadn't actually considered that being a local author means forging a business relationship with stores you've been frequenting for years. Suddenly you are a supplier as well as a customer, but also a customer at the same time, which can lead to some very odd encounters.

Walking into your local bookshop as a known author for the first time after they've ordered your book, the staff seem strangely on edge as you walk towards the counter. The thoughts are on their faces: are you going to ask about your book, the display, whether it will get an end cap etc. They must get that a lot - the stories of authors turning books face out, putting them on end caps and even reverse-shoplifting their books into the store are legion.

"Hello," I said "Do you have [biography of sportsman]?"

There was a interesting moment of confusion and relief and then a broad smile and directions.

I may write, but it doesn't mean I gave up reading.

(It also doesn't mean that when my book comes in I won't go and buy a copy - just so I can add the receipt to my scrapbook.)