There's More to Life than Death by Anne Forrest

 

How we came to publish this one

Anne has written several stories for CaféLit. We also have a connection with her through North Wales.

The title

This comes from the title of one of the stories. This is a reasonably common practice.  

Some notes about the process

The book went thought the usual three stages of editing though several of the stories have been published before. We're finding more and more that we still want to edit.   

The cover

The cover illustrates the story after which the collection was named. Terry Mart, the cover artist, is a friend of Anne's.

Some notes about style

Anne definitely tends towards the literary and has also included extracts form her novel, Quinn. These excerpts do work as standalone stories.

Who we think the reader is

These stories are for the thoughtful reader. They are also a good length - long enough to have some complexity but short enough for people who only have odd moments to read.  

What else

Anne has several more publications with connections to North Wales. .   

Review copies

It’s always great if you can buy the book and give us a review. Just click on the link to be taken to our bookshop. If you would like to review and you are strapped for cash, just get in touch for a free PDF or e-book file. 

Find your copy here   

Do you have a list of booksellers we can contact directly?

We distribute through Ingram’s. We occasionally work with individual bookshops BUT this is work intensive for us especially as indie bookshops are notoriously bad at paying. The vast majority of our sales are handled by our distributor with some coming through our web site and from authors directly.  

 

However there are lists of booksellers available – Google is your friend.

 

Indie bookshops vary in their enthusiasm though many will support local authors especially if they know you. Cultivate their friendship.  They will often facilitate a book event for you.

 

Some will take books on consignment -  i.e. we supply you with the books, they sell them through their till and we or you invoice them for 65% of the RRP. You scoop up the remainder and use them for the next event.

 

A useful pattern is for you to arrange events ten days apart and top up your supply after each event.

 

To help you with this we can let you have twenty books up front. We call this the author kit.           

Invite to a book launch - Amelie at the Window by Penny Rogers

 

In wartime it is not only the soldiers on the front line that suffer. The families and communities left behind must try to make sense of the conflict imposed on them.

This story is set in a fictional town in France in 1914 and again in 1924. We meet Amelie, a teenage girl confined to her room by polio and her dysfunctional parents. Amelie dreams of release from the restrictions of her life in a room above a hat shop. Through her eyes we meet the townsfolk struggling through conflicts and coping with the fundamental changes that war brings.

We also meet the people that Amelie watches going about their business as the reality of war impacts upon their small town. The aspirations and fears of young and old, poor and prosperous, hard-working and indolent, are noticed by an itinerant photographer who returns in 1924 to record what has changed and what, if anything, remains of the old way of life. He sees possibilities for some and catastrophe for others; no one is the same after the war.

Penny Rogers captures the essence of small town life and the profound effects of war. We see compassion and judgment, humour and tragedy, generosity and selfishness; along with redemption in some unexpected quarters.

RRP 

Paperback £7.00 

Kindle £2.25

Find your copy here  

 

 

 

 

 

Why is my book showing as 'out of stock'?

 

Technically our books should never be in stock so an 'out of stock' notice shouldn't  really be cause for concern.

 

We quite proudly use print on demand which means that usually books aren’t printed until they’re sold, our customers get brand new copies, your book need never go out of print, we keep in the black financially and we're looking after the environment..

 

However, some of the big retailers will often buy five or more in one go and then when they've sold the last one will put up the 'out of stock' notice. It seems to imply there may be some difficulty with getting the text. If Amazon does this, I use the 'report an issue' to remind them that our printer does big print runs several times a week and the title should only take two to five working days to get into their hands. So they get the book to Prime customers within three to six working days.

 

We can also provide books but bizarrely it sometimes takes a little longer for our orders to be processed. Plus we have to charge shipping on up to four books. Once a customer orders five or more the per unit shipping plummets and we can waive it.  

 

We can never dictate to retailers what to do. Annoyingly Waterstones often says it will take several weeks to get the book. But it doesn't. The printer does huge print runs for Waterstones – this may include a couple of ours and a couple from hundreds more small presses.

 

We've even had Gardner's (the biggest UK book wholesaler) apologise for giving misleading information.

 

If you’re finding availability problems, they shouldn’t exist. Keep calm and notify us. We'll put whoever it is right. Great if you have a go as well.

Do you distribute the media kit to any booksellers?

 

We don't distribute what we call the 'media kit' to booksellers. The 'media kit' is really for authors. It comprises four different versions of the cover, a PDF, a Kindle file for those books that are also published as an e-book for Kindle, an order form with author discount and the latest version of our marketing plan.  

 

Booksellers find out about our books in several ways. The most important is through Ingram's, our distributor who alert all major retailers about the book. Our books all carry ISBNs and are registered with Nielsen's which means any retailer can find out how to obtain the book.

 

Very occasionally we work directly with bookshops. Often these are local to a particular writer who may have popped in to chat to them or indeed sent them information about the book. Sometimes our writers work directly with a bookshop.           

 

Launch of And So I Took Their Eye

 

Help us to Help You

 

 

There are several ways you can do this.

Buy a book

This is perhaps the rather obvious one. Just think. Every time you buy one of our  books an author receives a small royalty and this also goes some way to enabling us to publish more books.

 

We’re not for a moment suggesting you should buy every book we publish but do take a look at them and buy any that appeal to you.

 

How to find our books?

 

We mention every new publication in our newsletter. Not receiving this? Sign up here.

 

Every week we send out an email that either mentions our latest publication or tells you of offers on some of our books. Occasionally we pick three random books and make an offer on those. Everybody who has signed up to the list gets news of the new publication and the random offers. Other weeks we have target offers- for example. young adult books, little square flash collections or single author collections. You only get these if you have opted into them. If you would like to sign up for this list you can do so here.

 

The same material is also published on Scribblers Book  and here you can find additional offers.

 

Browse or search our book shop now and then. You’ll certainly find some good choices for birthday and Christmas gifts there.  

 

Also, I’ll often offer a free book on bank holidays. Look out for these.

 

Strapped for cash? Contact us for a review copy – as long as that title hasn’t already  got its 50+ reviews on Amazon.   

 

Write a review

We really try to get those fifty or more reviews on Amazon and we’re always willing to offer a PDF or a file for Kindle of any of our books that haven’t managed that yet – even if you aren’t allowed to review on Amazon – where you have to have either bought the book from them or spent enough with them in other ways.

 

Again we don’t expect you to review every book we mention. I actually review every book I read. After all, why should I expect people to review my books if I don’t review others? There is always the worry that you really won’t like a book and you want to be honest. Two points here: even two and one star reviews tickle the algorithm. I did read a certain very popular novel and gave it a one star review. But it really wasn’t my type of book. I’m fussy about what I read. Hence, I end up giving mainly four and five stars and very occasionally a three star. 

 

Reviews don’t need to be long. Who has time to read long ones? A couple of paragraphs is enough. Say what you liked about the book and say what you didn’t like  Justify the star rating. Can you give a reason either way per star?

 

We suggest that your review on Amazon (if you’re allowed), Good Reads where they’ll let everyone review and on Story Graph, which has a few nice additional features. And send us a copy of your review. We may put it on our online bookshop if we don’t already have three good ones. Or we might put it out on our Facebook page. And of course you can use it on your own sites and social media.  

 

Part of our marketing routine is to send out requests for reviews. If you would like to be on the list, sign up here.We notify you of all new publications that need reviews and only tell you about the back list that needs extra reviews in the genres that you sign up for.   

 

Buy via the Amazon Affiliate link

You will notice on our online bookshop that we have Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you buy from Amazon via that link we get a few pence as well. If you then go on to buy toilet paper, new underwear or confectionary, we’ll get a few more pence.

 

You might also like to look out for affiliate links on authors’ web sites. Okay so this time we don’t get the revenue but you’re still helping that author to sell titles and that may include one of ours. 

 

Follow our authors on Amazon

If you follow authors on Amazon they become more visible. The Amazon algorithms  get to work if an author has followers. Even if one of our authors writes completely different material from you, you at least you have in common that you are published by us. How to find their page? Find their book in our online bookshop. Follow the link to Amazon. Click on their name.

 

You might like to create an author page on Amazon even if you’ve only had one book published, Even if that’s only one story in an anthology. It all helps.  

 

31 Day Book Tweak List

A new version of this is publish every month on https://apublishersperspective.blogspot.com/p/31-day-book-tweak.html. We adjust to reflect what we’ve deemed to be successful the month before. You could this list for all of your books. Do one action a day: work through your list, starting wit the one that’s sold the least.

 

Some of the action require a payment and if you don’t want ot pay or can’t pay, perhaps think of an equivalent that doesn’t cost. Instead of doing an Amazon ad for example could you flag up a book on social media page?    

 

Some actions might be only suitable for a publisher to do but could you think of an equivalent one you could do?    

 

Blog tours

Sometimes writers pay quite a lot to go on a blog tour. Yet we already have an easy way to connect to other writers. Our newsletter goes out over 600 authors. If you join the Scribblers Group, you have immediate access to a smaller group of proactive writers.

 

How to make this work? If you see a writer you’d like on your blog in our Publication or Writers’ News slots and you don’t have their contact details, contact me and I’ll put you in touch.

 

Not in Scribblers but would like to join? To be in the Scribblers Face Book group you must be published by us or work for us. ‘Published’ can be as little as one story on the CaféLit e-zine or as much as several single author titles with us. ‘Work’ can be as little as having proof-read one book or helped with a book launch.

 

You need to be invited to join. If you’d like an invite, then contact me. Then there are three questions to answer:

 

1. What do you have published with us?
2. What do you hope to gain from the group?
3. What can you bring to the group?     

 

Then, all you need to do to see if someone will have you on their blog, is put a general notice in the group.     

 

Kofi and Tip Jar

Several of our sites have a ‘Kofi’ button on. It invites you to shout us a coffee i.e. pay a small amount towards what we’re doing. Also as you know you can pay us a tip when you submit via Duosuma. Many of you have bene very generous with this and thank you for that. We’d never suggest for a moment that you pay something every time you visit one of our sites or every time you submit but if you can occasionally, that’s great.

 

Half of what we get that way goes to CaféLit writers and half goes to general expenses: web site space, set-up for books, ISBNs, copies to the British Library and the Legal Deposit Libraries – what’s flagged up in the Overheads spreadsheet , updates each month in Dropbox.

 

One peculiar expense

As you probably are aware, you get the rights back to your work three years after the release date in your contract. Individual short stories on CaféLit or in our annual anthologies are yours again as soon as they are published. We do reserve the right to republish your CaféLit story in The Best of CaféLit.

 

However, we don’t take your book out of print unless you specifically ask us to. But it does cost us £8.40 a year to keep it in print. This is actually incredibly good value for the service that’s provided BUT we need to sell sixteen copies of the book to cover the expense.

 

Donations are always gratefully received.

 

 

 

        

Style Guides

 

We use a style guide. Most publishers do. We use the Chicago Manual of Style. This is used extensively in the US and also by quite a few European publishers. Also common for UK publishers is the New Oxford Style Manual.

 

Many publishers refine these rules further to produce their own particular house style.

We like Chicago a lot. Although it is made for the US it concedes that UK usage is different and also describes that.

 

It’s good to remember as well that no one has laid down hard and fast rules for English. The beauty of this is that it has been allowed to develop to be useful and accurate. The style manuals and Fowler’s Modern English Usage just tell us what people usually do.        

 

With everything it is a matter of consistency.

 

The sort of things we’re most concerned about are:

• When you write numbers as words
• The use and position of the M-dash
• Whether to use the Oxford comma or not (we prefer not to and only use it’s when it’s necessary for clarity – but arguably if we’re using it for clarity it isn’t then really the Oxford comma because the non-Oxford comma can be used for clarity.)
• Double or single quotes: we’ve all learned to handwrite double quotes at school. However, Oxford recommends single and most books published in the UK do have single quotes. The Chicago Manual of Style concedes this
• CMoS also supports to my horror ‘different to’.  It was drummed into us in school that it’s ‘different from’ not ‘different to’ and Heaven forbid ‘different than’. CMoS only approves ‘different than’ in certain circumstances.
• Where you put the comma that goes with a quotation other than in reported speech.

Our own particular quirks

• If a story is set in the US or written by an American writer we allow American spelling but still insist on opening paragraphs being ‘full out’.
• We don’t like symbols in between section breaks – it messes up on e-readers. A section break should be marked by an extra line between paragraphs and the opening line being ‘full out’. Some writers though have levels of section break.  
• We use single or double quotes according to imprint not whether the text is UK or American English.
• We like numbers up to one hundred in words but there are exceptions: dates, times.    
• We hyphenate whenever we can.    

What is the media kit?

 

We send our authors a media kit once we have released the book.

This includes:

·         Four different copies of the book cover:

o   A small one suitable for emails and social media posts

o   A medium one which looks good on all sorts of web sites

o   A large one, suitable for printing

o   A 3D one that can have a lot of impact in all sorts of post on line

·         A PDF that you might pass on to people so that they can read your book and review it

·         An e-pub file, suitable on all e-readers. Again you can pass this on to friends, family, fans and followers.      

·         An order form for your book, though you can put orders for other of our books on this form.  

·         Our updated marketing plan for authors.  (This is a work in progress and we often update it with new ideas.)

We send this out when we have released the book on Kindle and approved the hard copy. We usually release with a preorder facility, but you can order books as soon as you get the order form. We are now in what we call the ‘soft launch’ phase and you can use your media kit to shout about your book.  

Don’t forget to remind family, friends, fans and followers when release day comes along so that they can post their reviews on such places as Amazon, Good Reads and Story Graph.