Some nitty-gritty matters for making your book visible

If you are published or self-published there are a few other things you should do as a matter of course.

PLR

Public Lending Right - https://www.bl.uk/plr/

Register your book for this. 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. This means that every time some-one borrows your book from a library, you get a small payment or a proportion of one. It varies from year to year and is about 6p with an upper cap of about £6000. On contracts for our anthologies we tell you which % to claim.

This is well worth doing. Several of my books that have been out for many years earn more in PLR than they do in royalties.

ALCS

Authors' Licensing and Collecting Agency Register at https://www.alcs.co.uk/. This can be very lucrative as well for any articles you have had published. Register with them everything you have published.  

They collect money from photocopied and broadcast works. They also collect foreign PLR.

We can't dictate which proportion of the book you can claim – ALCS works that out. They award a generous 30% to editors. 

They charge a modest one-off fee for registering but you don't have to pay this up front. They set it against your earnings.

If you are a member, the Society of Authors pays this fee anyway.

You'll earn at least enough each year to cover your Society of Authors membership fee.

Author Central

This is run by Amazon and can be found here: https://authorcentral.amazon.co.uk/. You can list all of your books here and keep track of sales rankings. How about giving a tweak to each week's lowest ranking book?

Perhaps more importantly it allows readers to find your other books easily.

Occasionally if you are in an anthology Amazon will at first not allow you to list the book. Then you are invited to write to them. They usually respond quickly and positively. We design our books so that it is easy for them to see that you are a contributor.

You can also add multi-media, blog feeds and events to your author page.

Amazon Associates

This allows you to earn money from advertising on your sites. I'm not advocating that you cover your sites with advertising and Facebook won't let you do this anyway. However, you can link to your books and even embed attractive pictures of them into your sites. When someone clicks on that and then buys the book, you earn a small percentage. If they then go on and buy more form Amazon, you earn a small percentage of those sales as well.

I once earned quite a lot when someone bought a copy of one of my books and then went on to purchase several boxed sets of popular TV programmes.

Good Reads Author Programme

Do join this. You have to be approved but it is well worth it. Again you get information about how many people are engaging with your books. It increases your visibility as an author.

If you have a blog you can also link so that it gets uploaded to Good Reads every time you post. 

Join here: https://www.goodreads.com/

You will also get a lot of information about what to read.

They do organise giveaways and you always lose money on this. However when I ran one recently I noticed that in the week after it had finished the sales rank on that book on Amazon went right up. The extra sales more than covered the cost of the books I'd given away. 

Want more tips like this? See below.  

Finding your niche

Sometimes your book isn't going to find most of its sales in the places that other books do. This may be more obvious for non-fiction but even for fiction think of all the research you've done.

Can you think of ten other places who might be interested in your book?

Even if they aren't willing to sell them they may be interested in a talk or an article.

Here's my list for the Schellberg Cycle books:

1.      The Holocaust Centre Laxton

2.      The Imperial War Museum North

3.      The Wiener Museum London

4.       The Jewish Museum Manchester

5.      The Anne Frank Institute

6.      Secondary schools in my area currently studying the Holocaust

7.      Jewish schools in my area

8.      The Goethe Institute

9.      1940s festivals

10.  The Kindertransport Association

Write to them. The worst that can happen is that they will say "No, thank you."

As a result of approaching the above, I've run several Schellberg Cycles in schools and that has led to book sales. I've had some of my research exhibited. I've been invited to write a few articles that may have led to more book sales.  When you've exhausted your list, start a new one.  

Want more tips like this? 

Fans, not friends and family

This is something I've also come across with my choir. We put on a grand concert for friends and family in a beautiful old Tudor hall in the town where we rehearse. There was some lovely music, gorgeous home-made cakes and glasses of wine. It was very well attended and the applause was warm.

We repeated it a few months later. This time the concert was quite well attended but the applause was a little less enthusiastic. When we offered a third one, hardly anyone came. Apparently they'd heard our repertoire. Choral music wasn't really their thing. There was a limit to how many times they could support us. On the other hand there's that couple who will travel 120 mile to hear us who don't mind at all that they have to listen to some firm favourites…

One writing friend of mine sold over 150 copies of one of our books in the first six weeks. When the second was launched, many of the same friends attended the launch but didn't buy the book. "We bought a copy of the last one," they said.  Yes they'd been proud that she'd been published but actually they weren't really bookish people.

So, the trick is to find those people like the couple who adore choral music. Find those, who love your work, then make sure they're on your mailing list and that it's easy for them to find and buy your books.

When you think of it that way, too, isn't it also about writing something really special that speaks of your own particular brand?        

Find this tip useful? Read more here. 
 

That all important mailing list

One of the most effective strategies for connecting with your readers is to build up a mailing-list of all the people who are interested in your books. These may also be people who will in the future act as beta-readers and reviewers.  

You can create this list using your group facility in your normal email client. However, some of these limit the number of emails you can send at a time.

You can also use a company such as Mailchimp. https://mailchimp.com. Mailchimp is free until you have over 2000 subscribers or sending more emails per month than you'd actually be able to send. With Mailchimp you can:

·         Make your email look very attractive – perhaps including your branding images

·         Keep multiple lists – perhaps different ones for different types of books

·         Combine lists when need be

·         Segment lists when you need to – e.g. only send a follow up email to those who haven't responded to the first one

·         Embed sign-up forms into your website, blog, Facebook page, and end pages of your book   

·         Set up autoresponders so that you can send a series of welcome emails to new subscribers. I've included an example below.

·         Add people to the list yourself. Take a little care with this. You must have their permission to do this.

My auto responders

This is what I sent out to my School Visits list. You can also set the interval at which you send out the letters. I programme the first one to go out one day after sign up and the rest at one week after the previous one.

See some examples here:

School Visits Automations

Welcome

Here you'll read all about the workshops in schools that I offer and I'll send you reports about the ones I've conducted.  I also post them on my blog that you can see here.

Enjoy.

Letter 2

I thought I'd just give you a head's up about how often you might expect to hear from me.

I'll send out the big newsletter once a month, usually shortly after the end of the month.

In the middle of the month, I'll give a short update on any progress, if appropriate, on any of the matters I've mentioned in the main newsletter. 

Occasionally if anything very exciting and time sensitive happens, I'll send out a Stop Press- type message.

I'll often post on Twitter. Find me @gilljames   

   

 

Letter 3

I hope you're continuing to find my newsletter interesting. If you're looking for work on the Holocaust you may find The House on Schellberg Street useful. You may find the Books and Other Resources particularly interesting. I'm continuously adding to this. Each book / resource description gives an indication of age-group suitability. Take a look here.  

Enjoy exploring.

Letter 4

If you're looking for a few creative writing ideas for yourself or your students, take a look here. There are also links on the site to where you can download a handy PDF. Alternatively, of course, you can copy and paste into a Word Document and thereby make a document that you can customize.  

Letter 5 

Are you looking for more reading material for yourselves and your students? Try my Recommended Reads.  Yes, many of these books are aimed at adults but I also include several children's and young adult books. My Recommended Reads includes only those books that take me out of my editor's head. 

I post slightly shortened versions of these reviews on Goodreads and Amazon.  You will find extra reviews on those two sights also. I can also recommend Armadillo Magazine and IBBY  that offer slightly more unusual books.

So, three ways of finding something a little bit different.

Letter 6

I maintain a blog about writing. You may find this of general interest. Take a look here.   If your students are reading my books, you may find some of the following materials useful: Questions for Schools. I am gradually adding to these resources and certainly updates on these will feature in notifications I send to this list.  

Letter 7

Would you like to try before you buy?

If you are interested in one of my workshops based on The House on Schellberg Street, creative writing, creative writing in other languages, or on a workshop on any of my titles, I’m offering you a copy of any one of my books. If you go on to book a workshop, or you purchase ten or more of my books, you may keep the book free of charge. Otherwise, you may return the book or if you decide to keep it but not book a workshop or buy any more books, I’ll invoice you for the book.

Just email me to order an inspection copy.  

    

Letter 8

With this letter, I am offering you a 20% discount on any workshop, quote code AL8CW20%, when you contact me by email.    

 

Workshops offered:

Creative writing

I work with your students on producing some good quality writing. We invent, write, edit and perform. Suitable for years 5 – 13.

Creative writing in other languages 

Years 5 - 13, any level of French, German or Spanish. Get your students writing in their foreign language, even if they've only been learning for a term. 

Build a Book 

Actually write, design, publish and market a book that can be used to support your favourite charity, your school library or even cover the cost of my visit. Suitable for years 5-13.

 

Cost

The cost is normally £400 (£200 for half day) plus travel expenses. This fee covers all materials but not student stationery.

I also offer to tailor workshops to what you feel you can afford. Please email me about this. 

 

A free visit

Note, however, I do ask you to cover travel expenses. This will focus on one of my books or perhaps a group of them. It will include an introductory talk, some readings from the book, a Q & A session, one short creative writing session and a book-signing session.

Length: up to two hours. 

I expect to be able to sell books but all that teachers will need to do is distribute the information about them to students and parents. I handle everything else including the money and advance order copies. 

 

My credentials

I am very used to the secondary school classroom. I taught modern languages for 23 years in various schools and have continued to make school visits, to both primary and secondary schools, as a writer of fiction for children and young adults. I have been a university lecturer in Creative Writing since 2005. 

Remember, you may also like an inspection copy of any of my titles. Request that from gill dot james at btinternet dot com.      

 

 

Letter 9

If you are thinking about the Schellberg Cycle Workshop you might consider going it alone and setting up the workshop yourself.

Or you might prefer to run your own workshop. Preview the teacher's notes here.

 You can purchase your kit here for £50.00.

(here I include a PayPal button)

Letter 10

If you are thinking of running a Build a Book Workshop, you may be interested in my guide that tells you how to do this. You can find this here. There is a companion book of photocopiable resources available here.        

     

What to include in your news letter

My Gill's News newsletter includes:

·         General news about my writing

·         Books

·         Bridge House

·         CafeLit

·         Creative Café Project

·         Red Telephone

·         Past events

·         Future events

·         School Visits

·         Dreamteam

·         A reading recommendation

·         A giveaway

This is rather a lot and yours probably wouldn't include all of that. However I also work as an editor and a publisher. In addition I send out several other lists, very often recycling the same material. Sign up here if you're interested in seeing this in action:

 http://eepurl.com/dfWRE

There is a useful facility on Mailchimp to replicate an email and send it to another list. You can edit it before you send it out again.

You should also send out snippets of what I call "stop-press" news:

·         your book is out

·         your invite to your launch

Motivating people to sign up

Get that sign-up form everywhere you can. It should certainly be on your blog and your website. Can you link it to a giveaway?

You can store your link to your giveaway in Dropbox https://www.dropbox.com/ or Google Docs

 https://www.google.com/docs/about/ for free.

 You include a link to the document in your welcome email.

Giveaway ideas

Here are a few ideas for your monthly or sign-up giveaway.

·         A backlist novel (as en e-book)

·         An extract from your work in progress

·         An unpublished or out-of-print short story

·         A creative writing exercise

·         A lesson plan for a creative writing teacher

·         A critique of another writer's work

·         A discount on a school visit