Basilwade – a new experience

click on image to see on Amazon

We’re very pleased that The Basilwade Chronicles covered its costs within a few weeks of being published. We were helped by the fact that the author provided the cover herself. We’ve used Amazon’s own print-on-demand service for the paperback and they charge no set up costs. So the only charge incurred so far is:

IPG contribution £3.09 (this is the payment we make to be member of a the Impendent  Publishers’ Guild divided by the number of books we’ve published).

There’s bit of a cheat here as well in that we’ve not yet sent the copies to the British Library and the Agents for The Legal Deposit Libraries. Those fees will come out of 2020 performance but I think they’ll clear fairly quickly.

The Basilwwade Chronicles first appeared in serial form on CafeLit.   The episodes  were such a good read that I suggested we turn them into a book.

We now have three other authors serialising stories in CafeLit. Because of the success of Basilwade I shall also offer to turn their posts into a book if the authors are willing.

We have copies of Basilwade now and I’ll be forwarding them on to the British Library and ALDL shortly. We’re satisfied with the quality.

Using Amazon’s own service has the advantage that Amazon will fulfil orders quickly. A disadvantage is that we can’t easily get them into bookshops. But we think we’ll use this for The Best of CafeLit in the future. This means we can still keep these volumes at a reasonable price. We can still order at “cost” from Amazon – they have their own in-built profit on printing prices – and send on to customers.

A satisfying experience to date.              

A New Collection

Thank you to Allison, my next editing work is her wonderful story collection. I will be starting the first edit tomorrow and knowing her quirky, interesting style I am really looking forward to it. On a writing note I have started using the prompts from Gill’s new book for this year and my first two flash fiction pieces have been created from Allison’s starting lines.

Locally in Okehampton I run a writing group which meet on the third Monday of the month with Kate from Dogberry and Finch Books so our next session will soon be here. We had an interesting theme selection to write on!

Working on A Place to Be by Jesse Falzoi

We first published Jesse in one of our early collections and she’s followed our progress ever since. I was delighted when she approached us to consider her collection of short stories.

I generally take the view that if we’ve published one or more stories by an author we’ve already established that their work is fundamentally good and that we can work with them. I wasn’t disappointed.

Jesse’s collection here is superb. There is a very strong voice in each piece and indeed an equally strong sense of place – and time as well. I was certainly transported to Germany - a place I know well as I used to teach German and I’ve spent quite a bit of time there. But I haven’t been there for some time. It was good to be reminded.

Jesse’s English is very good indeed but nevertheless there were one or two oddities here and there. The upside of this is that sometimes these brought a freshness to the language.

This is something I’ve noted in my work on creative writing in other languages. If you have a reasonable command of another language writing in it can be a liberation You write with more restriction and become more creative. What is a cliché in your own language can be very effective in your second language. You tend to write more simply anyway. Less becomes more.    

Not that Jesse was conducting any sort of experiment here. There are many other reasons why someone who is not English might want to write in English.

We did debate whether to use UK English or American English. What should a Euorpean use? In the end we settled for a modified American English. It worked.

A Place to Be is one of our more literary titles.

It has been a pleasure working on this collection.

Post-Publication Check-list

Image by kalhh from Pixabay

This is where the publisher and the writer cross over a little.  There are certain routine things that need to be done after a book is published. They are not exactly heavy marketing tools but they nevertheless improve the book’s visibility and make author and publisher look professional.

PLR

Public Lending Right

Register your book for PLR.  Even if you’ve only written a chapter in a book, you can get some PLR. Don’t forget to register for Irish PLR at the same time. The amount varies from year to year. But it means that you get about 6p every time your book is borrowed from the library, up to a maximum amount of about £6,000 per author. They use sample libraries to monitor this and then apply the same findings to similar libraries throughout the country. Soon technology should be able to monitor every single book individually.       

ALCS

Author’s Licensing and Collecting Agency Register here. This can be very lucrative as well for any articles or academic papers you have had published. There is a pot of money that is divided between all authors registered and you are also given specific amounts according to how many times your work has been recorded or photocopied. It also gathers PLR from other countries on your behalf. It uses a similar monitoring system to PLR (see above). Not long ago the university where I worked was monitored. Every time we photocopied from a published book we had to photocopy the title page and write on it how many copies we’d made and pop the page into a box.

“I hope my MA supervisor appreciates this,” I said to a colleague. I’d just made twenty copies of a couple of pages of his book.

“You should copy some of your own,” said my colleague.

Now That sounds like cheating. However, I do often use my own work with students, so why not?            

Other web sites

Are you a member of a professional organisation such as the Society of Authors or the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Are you attached to a university and might they consider this research? They encourage you to list your publications.  

CV and Publication list

Update this every time as you get out get new publications. It’s not a bad idea to keep your CV on Linked-in. Download a copy every time you update. 

Your own web site

Not got one yet? There are arguments that say you can have one before you’re published. Certainly as soon as you’re published you should have one. Weebly, one-com, Blogger and WordPress offer cheap / free solutions. You really want one that you can author yourself, though it’s a good idea to get advice form an expert when you set up the template. And do get a proper domain name.  

Set up a Facebook page

You might consider having one for you as an author and then a separate one for each book. Keep it going forever. Have a call to action button on the landing page i.e. a link to where visitors can buy the book.

Facebook reminds you if you haven’t been to your page for a while. 

Blog

Consider writing a blog if you don’t already. It might be about writing or it might be about your book. You might keep a blog for posting excerpts of your work. You might keep separate blogs for separate items – I do. You can also share posts with other bloggers and go on blog tours.           

Video

Make a book trailer for each publication. This is so easy with Vimeo.  Post it on You Tube,  Take care not to use copyright material. Free pictures are available at Free Pics    and free music at Free Music Archive. 

Book Bub

Another place to advertise your books. It's also good to join as a reader. You can  sign up for deals to get your book on to lists that are emailed out.  

Author Central

Register with Arthur Central. This is on Amazon and allows Amazon readers to find you. Add each publication as it comes out and you’ll soon have real evidence that you are a writer. If you have a chapter in a book or a story in an anthology you may have to prove this to Amazon. However, this is quite straight forward. You can mention where you are listed as an author in the book or if they’re still not convinced can ask your publisher to write to them. We always list our authors in such a way in our books that Amazon often finds them anyway.      

Good Reads

You can create an author profile on Good Reads. You can link this to your blog so that people who find and follow you on Good Reads. Don’t forget to be a reader here as well. It learns your reading preferences and recommends texts you might like. It’s a good place for getting and posting reviews. Be generous with your reviews if you want people to be generous with you.       

 

Amazon Associates

This is where you can earn a little every time someone clicks on a link from your book. You can paste just the cover of your book – small medium or large – on to your blog or web site. Or you can use an image plus text or just text. You can also of course advertise other people’s books if you wish. I’m intrigued that with my own account people frequently buy such items as dog food or lawn sprinklers. They buy books as well, thank goodness, and on those books I also get a royalty from the publisher.  

Find Amazon Associates here.          

Postcards

Make postcards. Book covers look so good on a post card. Vista Print is a good option. They’re also good for business cards. If you run out of business cards have the next set made with the cover of your latest book and a link to where you can buy it on one side of the card.    

 

Linked in

You can and should list your publications on Linked in. Why not also write a post about each new text?  

 

Twitter List

Mention your book from time to time on Twitter. Remember the 20/80% rule, So every time you mention your book you should post four other tweets about something else.  

As a publisher and an editor I go through a shortened version of this list:

Blog   

Linked in publisher site   

Twitter List   

Facebook page   

Good Reads, where I post a review even though I’m the publisher. Good Reads doesn’t mind. Unfortunately you can’t do this for Amazon; they don’t like “connections”.

For my own short stories I also use a shortened list:    

Twittter list 

CV

Publication list

Website GillJames Writer

Facebook page

Linked- in

Blogger

It’s routine stuff really and can be a bit tedious. But why not play some good music as you do it and just remember it’s making you more visible and helping you to come across as professional.

         

Girl in a Smart Uniform The cost of publishing processes

I thought you might be interested in seeing a break-down publishing costs. This is what we have for this book:

Distribution 2019		8.4
IPG 2019		2.22
Set up		71
Cover		250
Edit		175
ALDL		24.75
British Library		9.67
		541.04

This has been a slightly more expensive book to produce that most of our titles. This  is because we have bought in more services as this is a book I have written.

So here is an explanation of what the terms on the chart mean.

Distribution 2019

We pay £8.40 a year per title to have our books hooked up to major distributors, wholesalers and retailers. This is an absolute bargain. It would take hours and hours of our efforts to get this done and not all would accept us. Because we do this through Ingrams / Lightning Source we have access to their visibility and good will within the industry. The figure includes VAT. But it is £8.40 we need to cover each year per title.  

IPG  

We are members of the Independent Publishers Guild which is a source of advice, information and opportunities. We divide our annual fee by all the titles that are currently in print. This figure goes down each time we add a new book.  

Set up

This is the same price for all print paperbacks and includes VAT. It costs £25 to upload the inside of the book and £25.00 to upload the cover. We pay £21.00 for a proof copy. There is an option to accept an electronic proof but we prefer to see the actual physical book. A particular point is how the colour blue translates from the screen to print. For full colour books an escalating rate is paid. Oddly though, our two full colour books, Magical Christmas and Who Will Be My Friend? both cost less to set up than the standard paperback.

Cover

We commissioned a cover here as this is one of a cycle of six books with similar covers. We pay £250 to artists and photographers if we use them but more often than not we design the cover in-house, using copyright-free images form Pixabay.      

Edit

Normally this is done in-house and we don’t pay ourselves but take a share of the profit. We’ve started using a few other editors, and have started paying them £180 for three stages of editing, as an advance, then once that is earned back awarding them part of the publisher’s profit share. In this case a professional freelance editor gave us mates’ rates.

ALDL

We have to deposit five hard copies of each book with the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries.

British Library

We have to deposit one hard copy of each book with the British Library.

We have applied to be allowed to deposit electronically both to the British Library and the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries. We are still awaiting a decision.

We’re shortly going to start paying our in-house editors, designers and marketers an advance. This will create greater set-up costs. This won’t affect the share of net sales that goes to authors but it will mean that a new book will only be taken on once a book has recouped its set-up costs.