I hope you’re all keeping well and raring to go. I hope some of the news we offer here will
inspire you.
Coming soon
More editors and readers
Later this week the editorial team is meeting and we’ll be
looking at slightly different way of working which may lead to a faster
turnaround on submissions. We could do
with more editors and readers and if anyone is interested, do contact me but
leave it until Thursday or later since we’ll have then had our meeting.
Of course, books must clear financially before we can offer
a new contract. As soon as one book clears its set up costs we offer a new
contract. This is where marketing comes
in. See below.
Social media course
As an extension to the marketing course we delivered
recently I’m offering in September a course on using social media. It will be
limited to twenty-five people but will be recorded so can be made available for
those who can’t attend. I’ll be calling
on certain “experts” to present about Facebook
groups, Facebook pages, Twitter, blogs, Instagram and slightly off topic, reader magnets .
31-day plan of marketing tweaks
I was recently in correspondence with a newly published
writer who was anxious to complete some marketing activities. Many of us dread
having to do these. I advocate anyway only doing what you feel comfortable with
though you should stretch yourself a little.
Then I read a book that proposed telling you how to market in just seven
minutes a day. It’s was slightly deceptive as many of the activities would take
much longer than seven minutes and they were all pretty much what we do
anyway. But it set me thinking. Perhaps I could make a list of actions that you
take, one a day.
In fact I created a list that I worked with myself, partly
based on the advice in this book and partly from my own ideas. I used it for
the “Red not Black list and for one of my own books and I’ve monitored which
were the most effective actions and relisted them. I intend to provide an amended list for you
to work with each month.
Don’t feel you have to and it’s also perfectly fine to use
this list for one of your other books instead. Up to you. But it might be useful
if you look at the Red not Black list and target the book that’s most in the
red form the ones you’re involved with .
Work through the list on that one. If you
can be bothered you could also let me know which actions you’ve used on which
book so I can further fine-tune the list for next time.
The beauty of it is you just take one action a day and know
that you are doing something.
Most of the activities I’m suggesting will only take a few
minutes and even if you go to town on them they won’t take more than an hour.
As one writer once said to me “If something doesn’t work, you
just need to try something else.” She had a point, don’t you think?
A new way of working
I’ve been most impressed with some of the on-line activities
on offer. This one is particularly interesting:
https://www.islaybookfestival.co.uk/ Here attendees are not charged but they do
pay the writers.
Attendees may
donate.
Maybe this is a good way forward for us all?
Writers’ news
Madeleine McDonald
Madeleine McDonald's story Tickety Boo, recently broadcast on BBC Radio Leeds, is now
available on BBC Sounds:
Well worth a listen!
News from Bridge House
Mulling It Over
We’re pleased to announce that the full list that will be
included in the Bridge House anthology, Mulling
It Over, due out on 15 November 2020:
1.
According to Apes Dianne Stadhams
2.
An Angel at Our Table S. Nadja Zajdman
3.
Double Dilemma Linda Payne
4.
Family History Jim Bates
5.
Her Time Sally Angell
6.
Into the Shade L F Roth
7.
It is Time Allison Symes
8.
Lines of Gold Margaret Bulleyment
9.
Making a Decision Dawn De Braal
10.
Malak al Mawt Steve Wade
11.
Marry in Blue Candida Spillard
12.
Me and the Bird Penny Rogers
13.
Perfect Justice Paula R C Readman
14.
Shadow Dancers Cathy Leonard
15.
Taming Fate Dawn Knox
16.
The Holiday Jeanne Davies
17.
The Little Statue Maeve Murphy
18.
The Perfect Haven Janet Howson
19.
The Sound of Love Stuart Larner
20.
The Tangle of Isles Elizabeth Cox
21.
There’s Rosemary, That’s for Remembrance Linda Flynn
22.
Those Nice Suits Hannah Retallick
23.
Twelve Christopher Bowles
24. Waiting for the
pigeons Tony Oswick
New publications
You will find in this collection a mixture of themes and
genres. There are brushes with the supernatural, an exploration of human
emotions, history, love and loss, and also a firm sense of time and place.
Jeanne Davies thinks up her stories writes whilst walking for miles in the
countryside with her Labrador companion at her side. Wandering along the
seashore with the serenity and chaos of the ocean inspires and gives her peace.
As ever, reviews are most welcome.
Email catalogue of our books
I’m simplifying how this works. Every week now there will be the
option of buying three of the books listed in hard copy for either £15.00 or
£20.00 depending the size of the books and there will be a link to the books on
Amazon. Where possible an Amazon count
down deal will be included.
You can still, of course, order physical copies of any of our
books at author discount price and we’re still offering physical bundles of
books via the Friday email. These are all dispatched directly from our
printer.
I advertise via Twitter and Facebook and have started to build up
an email list.
I’m keen as well to do a few more featured authors. Here we offer
deals on all of the books you’re in and also advertise books you have with
other publishers. You may offer a giveaway as well. Contact me if you’re
interested.
The impact on sales is tiny at the moment but certainly the
featured books are getting more hits.
I’m circling through: red hot
offers ( the books whose monthly sales figures suggest they need a bit of a
boost), little square flash fiction collections, single author collections, charity special
books, illustrated books, YA books, books for young people, charity books, The
Bets of CafeLit collections, annual
anthologies and then circling through offers on these of e-book bundles ,
physical book bundles, and Amazon countdown deals.
New author discount scheme
We’ve simplified things. You get 25% author discount on all
books. If you order five or more we do
not charge shipping costs. On your first order for five or more of a title
you’ve contributed to you get one free book.
If you order 51 or more books you get a 35% discount. You still get royalties on these books.
The Magnet Book
This is now up and running and the number of subscribers to
the email catalogue list, Books, Books,
Books has more than doubled. It is a
fine book and really shows what a great bunch of writers we have. As I gave it its final proof I really
appreciated it. Hopefully it is also pointing readers to more of our works.
We could still do with more readers on our mailing list.
Invite all of your friends and family to download the book. See what we’ve done
here:
Please feel free to create your own call to action from
this. The link for the letter sign-up and which then takes your contacts to the
download is:
http://eepurl.com/gbpdVz
Save the date
It seems more and more unlikely that we’ll be able to hold a
physical event for our annual celebrations and the launch of the Waterloo
Competition’s paperback – 5 December 2020.
In any case, we won’t be able to use St Johns or St Andrews this year as
massive renovations are going on. . Two things are certain, however: an event
will happen on 5 December and there will be a physical event sometime
somewhere. So still, save the date.
Useful links
Both worth a look at.
Book
Performance
You can now pick up book performance at:
Those books that are more in the “red” are on the whole the ones
where we’ve bought in services. It
makes no difference to royalties. But remember: when a book gets out of the red
we can afford to start work on a new one.
We’ll be able to offer one more contract this month.
Open calls
Prompts 2021
Do send prompts in for the 2021 book. It will be a gift to
you again at the end of the year.
Aftermath
I still need a few more items for Aftermath. What happens after Covid19. This offers the chance for speculative
fiction but other sorts of writing are also welcome and in any genre. I don’t want to be too specific about word
count; some people may wish to submit a piece of flash fiction. Others may offer
a 5,000 word story. This is a semi-private
call – open to those who read this newsletter and their trusted friends. I’ll
close the call once we have 50 submissions and I’m aiming at a book of about
50,000 words but I’ll make two or more volumes if necessary. Send
submissions to me as Word attachments and Aftermath
in the subject line. Reprints are
welcome if you have cleared this with the original publisher.
And a reminder of our other open calls:
The Opportunities
List
Please remember our waiting list is long. Even with six
editors it takes a while for your work to get to the top of the list and one
book has to recover financially before we can go on to the next. So, it may be
worth looking at this list in detail whilst you’re waiting.
I often add several items a day. I look for fairness. Competitions
must not be too expensive to enter.
Everything must lead to fair payment, decent publication, fantastic
exposure or just be good fun.
Note, I am gradually moving this over to Fair Submissions . It’s
wise to check both sites at the moment. There are reminders on both. On Fair
Submissions to find what you’re looking for, click on Labels on the left hand side.
You’ll see a lot of dates to start with.
Then click Show More and
you’ll see a list of genres and categories.
Or simply type your search term into search filed. When I send out the
list to those of you who have opted to receive it I’ll feature the latest three
posts.
I’ve had to give in and include some who charge submission fees
but I’m still only including those who charge a reasonable fee – no more than
£3.00 which is perhaps the equivalent of old-fashioned postage, return postage,
paper and ink. We currently have no intention to charge. I understand totally
that those who charge are doing it mainly because that’s what Submittable
software costs.
Note, though, we expect and approve of a reasonable charge for competitions which may be slightly higher
than this – they have to pay the judges at least expenses and create a prize
fund.
You always have to remember however that only a handful of people
will be named in a competition or win.
But if you do get shortlisted or even longlisted it’s a great line on
your CV.
You can sign up to have the list drop in your in-box every time it
is tidied up i.e. every three to four weeks.
Sign up here: http://eepurl.com/doFkD . “Tidied
up “means removing the out of date entries i.e. when it is past the call for
submission date. I don’t have the time to actually monitor whether the web sites
mentioned are active or whether a publisher has gone out of business. So, if you come across anything like that, do
let me know.
CafeLit
CaféLit site
Published in July were:
Elaine Barnard, Jim Bates, Mason Bushell, Maxine Chruchman, Alexina
Dalgetty, Clive Aaron Gill, David Gower, Jerry Guarino,
Janet Howson, Gill James , Sheila
Kinsella, Dawn Knox, John Lane, Henry
Lewi, Rosie McGarth, Roger Noons, Jenny Palmer, Randall Van
Nostrand, Penny Rogers, Allison Symes, Robin Wrigley, Sally Zigmond,
Top performing posts in the last thirty days:
The Best of CafeLit 10
Yes, I’m starting votes for this and also doing this
retrospectively. If you are published in a particular month, I’m asking you to
vote for one story that you think is the best that month. You mustn’t vote for
your own. However, if you have two stories published in a particular month, you
may vote for two stories, three votes for three stories etc. Just email me your
choices and say which month(s) they’re for.
Final votes for December 2020 should come in by January
2021.
I think this makes it a little more manageable.
Creative cafés
Added this month are:
·
The Bad
Moon Café - its main Creative Café
activity is board games.
It is situated
in London, SE1.
·
The
Jazz Café – as the name suggests it is into live music.
This one is found in Camden, north
London.
Keep sending suggestions and review cafés
if you can.
Cafés might further support the
project in the following ways.
Do you have any further suggestions?
Remember you can now buy merchandise
for the Creative Café project. The profit on anything you buy here goes to the
Creative Café Project. Check this out here.
We’re always looking for new
cafés. If you visit one of the cafés in the
project and would like to write a review of
between 250 and 350 words – nice, too, to have a couple of pictures – send it
to me here. Do the same if you find a new café.
Dreamteam
Find out more about all of our members here.
This is a personal recommendation. I use my Dream Team a lot myself
but gradually I’m adding in people that friends and friends of friends have
recommended.
What happens?
You sign up to a mailing list and every time a request comes in we
mail it out to you or the enquirer contacts you directly via my web site. The conversation
then carries on between you and the person making the request. You may also
have a page set up on my blog and you may update that once a year.
Interested? You may sign up for more than one category.
Beta readers sign up here.
Illustrators sign up here.
Proof-readers sing up here.
DO REMEMBER THAT AT ANY TIME YOU’RE
APPROACHED AND YOU’RE BUSY IT’S PERFECTLY FINE TO SAY NO.
And of course, you could be using
these people yourself.
School Visits: Free listing for our
writers
If you would like to offer school
visits, please contact me. I'm offering a free listing on the imprint pages.
State: age groups you are prepared to
work with, a definition of your work, distances you are prepared to travel.
Appropriate links. Please provide an image.
School visits are tricky at the moment
but you can meet up via Zoom, Google Hangouts or Skype and you might consider
offering a few free materials for “home schools” at the moment. Perhaps even a
video of you reading out some of your work.
Calling all writers
If you would like to be on my blog just answer the questions below
and send them with appropriate images to gill dot james at btinternet dot com.
Please feel free to pick and choose which of these to answer.
1.
What do you write? Why this in
particular?
2.
What got you started on writing in the first
place?
3.
Do you have a particular routine?
4.
Do you have a dedicated working space?
5.
When did you decide you could call yourself a
writer? Do you do that in fact?
6.
How supportive are your friends and family? Do
they understand what you're doing?
7.
What are you most proud of in your writing?
8.
How do you get on with editing and research?
9.
Do you have any goals for the future?
10.
Which writers have inspired you?
Please write as much or as little as you like for each section and
supply as many pictures as you like. Also let me know your latest publication
and supply me with a link if it's not on Amazon.
I'm also happy to offer you a post whenever you have a new book
come out, even if I'm not your publisher. In this case answer the following
questions:
- Tell me about your book.
- Tell us about your research for this book.
- What inspired you to write this?
- What's next?
- How can we get a copy of the book?
- Do you have any events planned?
Again write as much or as little as you please. Alter and add to
the questions if you wish. Provide as many pictures as you wish.
Send to: gill dot james at btinternet dot com
Work Flow
Please note the new site for checking work in progress on
editing, designing and post-production.
Note also the new Submissions awaiting assessment section
and new pages for Allison, Alyson, Amanda, Linda and Madeleine.
There is now a separate page for progress on assessing
submissions:
Some notes about my newsletters, blogs and Facebook groups and pages.
They do overlap a little but here is a summary of what they all
do.
1940s Group
Just a reminder: this is a Facebook
group for all people who write about the 1940s. Fiction and non-fiction,
for young and old. Topics might then be: the Holocaust, World War II, Civilian
Experience (all sides) and the battle front. We can exchange ideas about
research and marketing. We may promote books and stories, as often as you like
and especially on launch / release day.
Of course, with my Schellberg Cycle
I'm constantly in that world.
Bridge
House Authors For all those published by Bridge House,
CafeLit, Chapletown or The Red Telephone or interested in being published by
us. General news about the imprint. News for writers. Link to book performance.
Sign up here.
Chapeltown
Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up here.
The
Creative Café Project News about
the project and CaféLit – for the consumer rather than for the producer. Sign up here.
Fair
Submissions Remember I keep a full list of vetted
opportunities on this blog. See them here. New ones
are added several times a day. Roughly once a month I go through it and take
out all of the out of date ones. At that point I send it out to a list. If you
would like to be on that list, sign up here.
Gill’s
News: News about my writing, The Schellberg Project, School Visits and
Events. Find it here.
Pushing
Boundaries, Flying Higher News about conferences and workshops
to do with the young adult novel. (infrequent postings) Sign up here.
Red
Telephone Books News about our books and our authors. Sign up
here.
A
Publisher’s Perspective Here I blog as a publisher. Access this here.
The
Creative Café Project Listings and reviews of creative cafés. See
them here.
CaféLit
Stories Find these here
Gill
James Writer All about writing and about my books. View
this here.
Gill’s
Recommended Reads Find information here about books that have taken me out of
my editor’s head.
Gill’s
Sample Fiction Read some of my fiction here.
The
House on Schellberg Street All about my Schellberg project. Read
it here.
Writing
Teacher All about teaching creative writing. Some creative writing exercises. Access this here.
Books
Books Books Weekly offers on our books and news of new
books. Find them here.
The
Young Person’s Library This is where I review books for children and young
adults. My reviews are factual and
neutral, offering information about the books for concerned adults: teachers,
librarian, parents, guardians and scholars.
Find it here.
Scribblers Sans Frontières This is a private group is for
writers published by one of our imprints: Bridge House, CafeLit, Chapeltown,
The Red Telephone. Here you can:
• Discuss all technical issues re our books
• Exchange marketing ideas
• Advertise and report on your events
• Promote any of your titles or successes
• Share good practice and ideas
• Get help with writing problems
• Anything else appropriate
I also tend to let you know news that appears here earlier
and in a little more detail. It’s a sort
of inner sanctum, if you like. You need an invite to join this: contact me for
an invite.
Gill James Writer You will find this page
here. This
informs you in brief about what I alter put in my newsletter. It is slightly
more immediate.
It also alerts you when
I’ve posted on one of my blogs.
Happy reading and writing.
