Needing a novel approach

A couple of weeks ago I travelled via Waterloo to the South Bank for the sessions at SPS Live, which discusses writing, self-publishing and aspects of commerce. A longer train ride but so convenient for my  hotel close to the Queen Elizabeth Hall, where the sessions took place.

It's the third time I've visited and I always get new ideas and inspiration. 

The size of the sales by the various speakers seems to rise each time too. 

First time I was impressed by 800k sales, from single genre crime writing. 

Then the second time by over 2.8 million, from a couple of sisters who co-write The Zodiac Academy, originally from a shed at the bottom of the garden with sales via Tik-Tok. 

This time we had EL James and Lucy Score. 

EL James (Erika Mitchell) wrote that 50 Shades series and has sold 150 million copies worldwide. She jokes about having three houses. 

Lucy Score has sold many, but her Booktok chart is revelatory, having sold over 600k print copies.

I originally got into the whole writing thing via NaNoWriMo, but I guess it could be a useful side-line ('side hustle' to be down with the lingo nowadays) if I actually did some serious marketing. I've just about 15,000 books out there, but mainly e-books at the moment and my mailing list is about 3,000. 

Now I need to decide on ways I could raise interest and make it more obvious that some of my 35-ish books are in a sequence.

Watch this space as I take a spell away from the typewriter***

***I actually use a Mac Studio and MacBook Air to write.

Table needs a paint job

 Trip to B&Q required. And to get some JD. And some Devon Red. Jacket Potatoes finishing off.

2h10

Not a bad run Exeter to Paddington nowadays. 2 hours and 10 minutes, stopping at Tiverton, Taunton and Reading. Then cross town on the Elizabeth line. Easy.

Hook-Intrigue-Conflict-Stakes-Call to Action

What's this got to do with book marketing? A blue Ford Sierra? 

It was my commuter car when I started at the American firm. I worked out I could drive it for a few months and then it would have paid for itself. It wasn't new when I got it from one of those Trade Centre places.

I only had one cassette of music for my commute - Sheryl Crow. I used to know how I was doing on the route by the songs being played.

"No one said it would be easy
But no one said it'd be this hard
No one said it would be easy
But no one thought we'd come this far"

Sheryl Crow

Of course, that song got swamped by the lyrical copy from Coldplay.

"Nobody said it was easy
Oh, it's such a shame for us to part
Nobody said it was easy
No one ever said it would be so hard
I'm going back to the start"

Chris Martin - The Scientist

And I suppose I am going back to the start with the refurbishment/re-invention of my Ed Adams web-site and book blurb.

return of the adults

Some sensible people in this room.

And what happened to the ghastly blue Press Briefing Room that cost £2.6 million? 

pony-tailed font hater

The gangplank walker won.

Boo hiss. Instead of Jenny Leck, which will run and run, I'll talk about Avatar 2.

Mainly the font choices, as described in these two clips.

The setup:

   

The resolution:

 

excreble gangplank walker

I decided on my gangplank candidate. 

It's the execrable Tory candidate for my newly re-arranged constituency. I wanted to give each candidate chance - to check their spiel and so on. This person was unbelievable. Their case is spread over more individual Conservative leaflets than I have received in the preceding few years. It begins with a cheap shot at the Labour Party using a dumbed down punk poster campaign. Personally I think it should have been ruled out on the ground of misrepresentation, using slogans about Starmer and Reform with a sheepish nod to the conservatives in the second side small print. I don't have a copy, because I'm in London at the moment.

Then there is the main write-up, which continually refers to the electorate as 'People like you' a hark-back to the herd language of the COVID-era.

Oh yes and don't get me started on the bad use of grammar and spelling in his section about literacy.

A resounding 'no' from me as well as a complaint to be filed. The candidate last stood in an entirely different part of the country; defeated.

Thoughts for another post...The fact vacuum is full of lies.

Who for the gangplank?

I realise I'd omitted the speedboat from  the last post.  It's the pointy one in the picture above. 

Here's a movie of the gangplank. Cue Duran Duran.

Music videos were different in those days. Pink, with much custard and a saxaphone solo.

Out of it

We've been out of it for the last couple of weeks. Missing the 'section lies and that football thing. The configuration is room, balcony, pool, bar, beach, sea. 

And repeat. Although 36 Celsius makes it too tempting to simply stop at 'pool'.

unused secret cover

This was the one that got away. Spot the difference.

Layers, eh?

Click to view in Amazon!

Covered It

Now I'm also creating a few collections from my novels. I've always done this, but it;s never as simple as just binding three books together. The main issue is that the 'gutter' in the middle of the book needs to be larger when there are more pages. 

The thing I usually forget? To ensure that the page size I'm using is the same in Word, Photoshop and In Design. Otherwise it's almost impossible to get things to align.

Mysteriously this doesn't seem to happen on smaller novels of say 250-300 pages.

The other factor is the choice of cover art. If I open it to mr ARC-readers, they will inevitably pick two different covers. It happened with Artificial, one of the Christina Nott books and now with Secrets. I've rationalised it by having an International cover and a U.S. specific one. 

As if.

I've decided to re-vamp some of my novels. New cover art and so-on. It will be good to see whether it has any effect on sales. I've decided to do this process piecemeal and so the first few that I've completed are the latest of my novels. Occasionally I stumble into an older one, like the above political thriller, which seems to feature an incompetent government. As if.