Don't judge a book by its cover - or a man by his clothing.

I’m afraid I couldn’t resist the temptation this morning to go along to the State Library Book Sale being held in town. Until now, it has been held in a stuffy little room with no air conditioning. Getting around the books was a frustrating obstacle course, constantly bumping into people and almost dropping what you've picked up. This year it’s in the new Recreation Centre – air conditioned, spacious and easy to manoeuvre.

I was good. I got books for Sausage and Dynamo before I started looking for me and then I only got two. There wasn’t a lot there that I thought I might want to keep. These days, I tend to look at novels and think, “I can get that on Kindle”, and most non-fiction, I can get from the library anyway. There was one book I thought I’d like to have on my shelf though: “The Dummies Guide to Body Language.” When I’m writing, I need something to tell me how my character might be looking or standing or sitting with a particular emotion.

There it was, sitting on the table. But before I could grab it, a huge hand reached out and picked it up. I looked at the man who had ‘pinched’ it from me. His hand was only a part of his hugeness; six-foot-five at least, I’d say. He had a stubbly beard and wore overalls with reflective patches like mechanics or firemen wear. I waited, thinking to myself, he’s not the sort to want a book like that. (Terrible of me to stereotype, I know.)  Wrong. He flicked through it, gave a nod of satisfaction and added it to the pile under his arm. Long arms like that must come in very useful at book sales.

I spent the rest of my time wandering around the sale thinking about character creation. I went to a course about it over the weekend, so it has been on my mind anyway. Here we had a man who appeared to be a workman.  I probably wouldn’t have given him a second glance in the street. You’d imagine him getting home from work, and wanting nothing more than to put the day behind him with a beer, a bit of TV or a good adventure novel. In picking up that particular book, though, he became a mystery. Maybe he’s trying to understand his wife. Or maybe he’s another writer. Or a mature age student intent on getting another job. Maybe he just enjoys reading psychology. Picking up that book he became three-dimensional – a very big three-dimensional! It just goes to show that what the course presenter over the weekend said is very true. Add irony to a character and they become real and interesting. 

New Book Cover for a Lynda Wilcox Novel.

Since finishing NaNoWriMo, I've been working on a cover for Lynda Wilcox's upcoming novel, 'Organized Murder'. Yes, my British and Australian readers, I know that's not how we spell organised, but Lynda is trying to sell to a world-wide audience, so 'organized' it is.

Some of you may remember Lynda. I interviewed her here when her first adult novel was published. She also writes for children and has two children's fantasy novels on Amazon. I'm really looking forward to reading this one as the first one was a great read - funny and well-written, with a very likeable main character.

I actually did a cover before NaNo, but I was in a hurry to finish it and really wasn't satisfied. So I've redone it and I like this one much better - and so does Lynda, thankfully.

I hope she rewards me by getting her new book out very soon!

Self-publishing is easy. Isn't it? Part 2.

You’ve uploaded your pride and joy, checked the preview, dotted the ‘i’s and crossed the ‘t’s , added the price and pressed the button. Within twenty-four hours, there it is – your book, smiling at you from its brand new Amazon page. Enjoy that moment, because if you think you’ve worked hard on your book, you ain’t seen nothing yet!

There will, of course, be sales at the beginning. Sympathetic family and friends will, if you’re lucky, pick up a few copies to help you along. Maybe even your workmates will buy a few, if the price isn’t too high. Without a lot of effort on your part, though, your book will sit, sinking deeper and deeper into the ever-growing swamp of self-published e-books.

Who are you? What do you have to sell? That’s what people need to know. Unless you’re already famous, your name and your book are not known to most people on the internet. You need to get noticed. I can’t claim to have super high sales, but these are some of the things I’d advise for the new author:

1. Make your book’s Amazon/Smashwords page as accessible as possible.

a. Tags. Halfway down the page, you’ll see a section for ‘tags’. Before you do anything else, tag your book with any word you think someone might use to find your book – subjects, genres, names. Get anyone who has read your book to add their vote to these tags and add tags of their own. These will move your book up in Amazon’s search engines.

b. Author page. Amazon and Smashwords both give you the opportunity to add information about yourself as an author. Use it. Add a photo, link to your website, twitter account, blog. It all adds to your visibility.

2. Get a website. This is probably something you should have done earlier so that you could add a link in your book, but it’s never too late. It doesn’t have to be expensive. There are plenty of free templates available which give plenty of scope for individuality and are easy to update. Make sure your book is visible and link it directly to the sale point.

3. Get a blog and update it regularly. This is difficult, of course. With all the other work on marketing you have to do (see below), you’ve little time for updating blogs, but readers will look and if they find a vibrant, interesting blog, they will be more likely to look at your book. Again, link to your book, but don’t go over the top with marketing here. Your blog doesn’t even need to be about writing – just interesting.

4. Get a Facebook Author Page. This is one thing authors disagree on – whether or not a facebook page has any effect. It does give you a central point to advertise new reviews, news about what you’re working on, and to generally interact with your readers. As your list of ‘followers’ builds, so does the number of times people see your name and the names of your books around Facebook. If nothing else, it allows you to keep the ‘writer you’ separate from the ‘private you’.

5. Get a Twitter account. Again, this is contentious. Twitter can appear to be hundreds or thousands of people all talking over the top of each other. How can you possibly be noticed amongst that? However, one tweet retweeted by three other people, has the possibility of being noticed by a lot of people. Be warned though, constantly tweeting about your book will have a negative effect. Many will ‘unfollow’ those who only ever spam their books. Interaction with others is the key. If you make friends and only occasionally mention your book, you will do far better. One successful author, Victorine Lieske, claims to keep to a two-in-ten plan: two advertising tweets for every eight conversational tweets. That seems like a great balance to me.

6 Join forums and discussion groups. When I first set out, I joined umpteen discussion groups on Facebook. Most of them were filled with writers in exactly the same boat I was in, trying desperately to make people notice their books. While these groups were invaluable for support and ideas on what to try next, spamming was rife and they did nothing for actual sales. The key is to find readers and get to know them. Again, it’s important to follow the rules. An author running into a forum shouting ‘buy my book’ will be given short shrift. On the other hand, there are very friendly forums such as UK KindleUsers Forum and groups on Goodreads such as the UK Amazon Kindle Forum who welcome writers willing to join in the general discussions. It’s a matter of being yourself and just letting your name get out there.

7. Do guest blogs. Tired as your own blog followers may be of your writing, other people have never heard of you and might still be interested. So find people willing to let you do a guest post. It doesn’t have to be about your book; anything of interest will do. Be guided by the blog. Make sure though, that there is a link to your book/blog/website for those interested to follow. Invite others to guest post on your blog, too. It works both ways.

8. Don’t be afraid to give books away. It may seem unlikely, but I think the single most successful thing I’ve done to increase sales was to join KDP Select on Amazon and give away thousands of books. Of course, many of those books will never be read, but even if only ten percent do read them and then tell a few of their friends, that is going to spread the word about the book. Word-of-mouth is the best advertising you can get and it’s free.

9. You may notice I haven’t mentioned paid advertising. That’s because I’m on a strict budget. I have bought only one small advert and I can’t say whether or not it was worth it. There are places, such as Pixel of Ink and Kindle Nation Daily where advertising is generally considered to be highly useful, but they are expensive and getting onto them takes a very long time. Instead I have taken advantage of every free offer of advertising I could find. That is another good reason to belong to writer forums; it is here that offers of free advertising will be made. The more your book is seen, the better. One glance will rarely draw a sale, but someone seeing your book three or four times in quick succession may be tempted to look further.

10. Get reviews. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. The last thing you want is for all your friends and family to write glowing five-star reviews. These are usually very obvious and a sure-fire way to put readers off. There are blogs around who offer reviews. Write to as many as you can. Some won’t answer, some will take a very long time, but it’s important to get those first reviews to give the reader something by which to judge the book. Free books will draw a few reviews, too, if you’re lucky.

11. Write another book This is where I start to laugh hysterically. You're doing all this and expected to write a book at the same time? Well, yes, because that's what you are - a writer - and if people like your first book, they'll soon lose interest if there's nothing else to look at. 

Original cover - liked by
those who'd read the
book but not by new
readers

New cover

12. If all else fails, change the book cover, change the blurb, pull the whole thing down and rethink it. That is the advantage of e-publishing. Mistakes can be fixed. Even the loveliest cover may not work to attract the audience you want, the catchiest blurb may not draw them in. Get feedback. Try again. If a reader contacts you to point out a mistake, thank them and fix it.

Here comes the unscientific part:

Lucky 13. Be nice to other writers. I have no proof of this, but it seems to me that the nicer I am to others writers, the better things are for me. That’s not to say I do things in a cynical effort to get sales.  I have been helped along the way by so many other writers that it seems the natural thing to do to pay it forward. I don’t know how it works. Maybe it’s just that I feel better about myself when I’m not constantly focused on my own work. Self-confidence goes a long way in a marketing situation. The thing to remember is that this is not a competition, one author against another. There are some really great people to meet on the journey and keeping your head down, trying to race your way into the market will mean missing out on some great friendships. Your book will sell if it’s good enough. You may as well enjoy the view and the company as you run the marathon.

E-book Cover Design

Original cover idea -rejected

Breaking news: I have a new book coming out on Kindle. That’s the cover for it there, underneath my other books. I finished writing it last year and have toyed with the idea of trying to get it published the traditional way, but if truth be told, I’ve lost all confidence in traditional publishers. Penguin’s recent move to e-publish unaccepted authors at an exorbitant cost confirmed to me that traditional publishing is on its way out and being able to do it yourself is the best option. How long that will last before the Big Six take over the e-shelves, I don’t know. But for now, I’ll publish my own.

Anyway, I spent a lovely two days designing the cover. I’d come up with something a few weeks ago, but when I put it up on my favourite Goodreads group for opinions, it was met with a lukewarm response. So I started again. My first idea was to go with a simple dragon’s eye. But I decided that it really didn’t say much about the story and had probably been done before.

So I went back to the original and started playing about. The girl, it seemed, was seen as ‘sneering’. I didn’t see her that way, but if that was the response, she had to go. But I liked the castle (or prison as it is in the story) so I kept that. Then I had an old leatherbound account book that my mother had given me a long time ago.  The main character’s father is an academic who has spent his life filling books with sketches and research, so it seemed relevant. I had sketches of a hawk and a chameleon (which I warped into a dragon-like creature) for the pages of the book. Add in a locket given to me by a teacher long ago and a dragon in the sky, colour it in vibrant colours and voila! I’m pretty pleased with the result and glad I asked the group's opinion before I published.

A discarded idea.

Another discarded idea

It’s quite an art, getting an ebook cover right. Not only do you have to have a design and colours that draw the eye, the title and author have to be legible in quite tiny versions of the jpeg.  It’s definitely not a matter of slapping a picture and title onto a page. It’s something I absolutely love doing, though. It distracts me from writing, yes, but once I have that cover done, I’m so keen to get the book out that my enthusiasm for writing is revived. I think I could quite happily become a full-time author and cover designer.

If wishes were fishes…

New Cover for Treespeaker

A few days ago, I put Treespeaker on Victorine Lieske's blog Why is My Book Not Selling to find out why it wasn't selling (well, obviously). The general consensus was that it might do to have a new cover and a tighter blurb. So I've just spent a couple of days messing about on Photoshop (such a hardship - you know how I hate messing about on Photoshop) and this is what I've come up with -

I was rather fond of the old cover, but those who hadn't read the book seemed perturbed by the 'blue thing' and the busy background, so we'll give this one a try and see if it makes a difference. I like this one too, really. Well, I must, mustn't I? Otherwise I wouldn't be using it. Actually, I like it a lot, but it's always hard to let your first-born go! However, there's no point in asking for advice (and Victorine is very generous with her help) if you're not going to take it. So...

I still have to work on the blurb, but I'll get to work on that tomorrow. Meanwhile Smashwords is now regrinding the whole book. I hope it makes it through for a second time!