Creating a happening

Yes. Happening. The old hippy word for an event. Yet it means a little more than just an event. It has added extra. Its success depends to a large extent on the energy that both organisers bring. It’s not just a matter of deciding a time, finding a venue and inviting folk.

Venue found

I’ve successfully found the venue for the 2016 joint Bridge House / CafeLit celebration. Or rather my daughter did. It’s a pub in north London, Primrose Hill. It has a very pleasant upstairs room, a nice selection of gins and real ales. There is even free on-street parking on a Saturday.

Next steps

So, I’ll be putting together my Eventbrite invite. I’ll initially be inviting the writers who are included in the two new anthologies. Then it will be open to other Bridge House, CafeLit and Red Telephone writers. After that it will be the general public.   That particular general public is likely to be one that has a vested interest in the imprints.

Energizing the events

So, what will go on? How will this become a happening? There’ll be books for sale, readings, speed-dating, where we all swap tips about marketing. We’ll give the latest news. There’ll be a book exchange. Most importantly we’ll get to put names to faces.

Oh. And try the real ales and gins.

           

A glimpse across a busy schedule

There are several things happening at the moment. All of them are joyous but there’s pressure as well. So what’s keeping me busy at the moment?

Bridge House’s Baubles

We’ve made our selection, we’ve got the contracts out, we’ve started editing and we’re putting together a book trailer as well as working on other marketing strategies. We’ll have to design the book, find a cover, get everything done so that we can launch on 15 November. We also need to arrange our annual celebration for 3 December. 

The Best of CaféLit 5

We’ve made the selections and we’re letting the chosen know. We don’t really need to edit here- that stage has already passed as the texts were put onto the web site. However, the reformatting here is more challenging as we’re moving form web format to print format.   

Shelagh Delaney Collection

This is pretty well ready to send out to authors for checking. We just then need to get the cover sorted and a launch date.

Single author collections Bridge House

We’re offering this to our Bridge House authors. They may recycle stories they already have published with us.

Flash Collections

This we’re offering under our Chapeltown imprint. I’ve possibly two lined up to start work on in September.

The Red Telephone  

This will open again to submissions from October for young adults novels.

Book Tour kit

We’re offering authors twenty copies up front if they organise their own book tour. The author takes the book to the shop and we invoice the shop directly for any that go through the till. We top up the books between events, so enough time needs to be allowed between events.

At the end of the tour, the author can pay at cost or may keep the books and pay later at normal author discount rate as they sell the books on. Or they can be off-set against royalties.

Events, events, events

We’re encouraging our authors to hold their regional events, perhaps gathering in small groups. That way you might manage to see to each other’s readers. If it’s local enough to us we’ll come and join in. We love events. Especially if they involve wine or cake.   

Mentoring scheme

This takes off in the autumn. We have five people on board. We’re looking forward to it.        

      

Backlist or not?

A poet friend of mine is on the editorial board of an online poetry publication. Such publications are pretty well there forever, though earlier works gradually disappear from the search engines. One poet asked if their work could be taken down. The publishers didn’t want to do this. They took the view that this was art of that poet’s work and should stay.

Arguably the same can apply to print-on-demand. The book need never go out of print.  However, that may not necessarily be an advantage. In my area of expertise we’re plagued with constantly changing technology. Books date very quickly. They could become historical fiction but they don’t date quite enough for that. One solution here is to keep the book in print for four years and then re-edit and re-title it. In fact, we’ve just launched a new imprint that does exactly that: Renascienta. 50% profit share with the author.  

Here are some other strategies we use:

• We ask for exclusive rights for one year on stories in our anthologies though are open to them being republished before that.
• We keep books in print until they stop making a profit.
• E-books never go out of print – except single author titles at the author’s request after four years.  
• We’re happy to take down online publications after one year at the author’s request.     

New titles can help to sell backlist. Backlist is part of the author and actually makes significant contribution to an author’s income though sales, PLR and ALCS payments.   

           

      

Managing events

I’ve realised recently that I enjoy creating and managing events. I find this a very creative act. Recently I’ve been involved in organising:

·         A conference about the young adult novel

·         A celebration for all of our authors

·         A re-launch of one of my books

All of these activities are quite creative and up there with writing and editing books and creating lesson plans.

I see these events as going through various stages:

• Deciding what is to be achieved.
• Finding the right venue.
• Thinking about the needs of the guests – charge a ticket price, make it free, supply food and drink, have books on sale?
• Getting out invites and general publicity. You’re usually okay, I find, slightly overbooking. There’s always someone who has to cancel at the last moment.
• Checking over the logistics – again and again and again  
• On the day just enjoying it. Be prepared for the worst case scenario and know how to deal with it, keep a vision of the best outcome and know that your event will be somewhere in between.

It is just such fun seeing the acceptances coming in. I usually use Ticket Source or Eventbrite. Both are really useful.

It’s also really important to send a follow up and get feedback.

And the next one will be: 3 December 2016, London, for Bridge House, CafeLit, Red Telephone and Shelagh Delaney writers.       

   

The mystery of marketing and publicity

All writers these days need to be involved with marketing and publicity. As well as being a publisher I happen also to be a published author and one of my publishers is this week promoting my book along with two others.

This will actually involve me in quite a bit of activity. I shall in fact:

·         Add a few posts to my web site / blog about the book.

·         Tell people about some of the research involved.

·         Post some excerpts.

·         Post some quotes from reviews.

·         Schedule some of these as technically I’m actually on holiday this week and on one of the days I’ll be travelling. (Ah! When you work for yourself you never actually stop working - good job we love what we do, but then that is why we’ve chosen this.)

So, we all do things like this. Then odd things then begin to happen. A less frequently  visited page about a work suddenly gets a lot of likes. Sales go up bizarrely. You suddenly get a lot of activity around author visits. At least you can check out the latter but the mystery remains: each of the six schools came across you another way.

A writer I know who self-publishes and who has given up the day job reckons to work seven days a week and spends 50% of his time writing and 50% on online promotion. He’s very shrewd about his search engine optimization. Is this an artistic compromise? He’s deliberately including words that he knows will attract hits.

We all need to think about these matters. In the end, the books must sell so that both author and publisher can earn a living.