You May Be Surprised by What You Find

David Robinson shares his thoughts on why we should look deep within to find possibilities.

I read this week that writer Talli Roland has hit 20,000 sales of her e-titles over the last year. Great going, Talli, more power to your elbow.

Then I look at my sales. Nowhere near. Not even a dot on the horizon in comparison to Talli’s and when compared to the likes of John Locke or Amanda Hocking, I’m not even a loose atom floating around the universe.

When I analyse why, it comes down to just one thing: visibility. There’s nothing wrong with my work (according to my readers) the plots are solid, I leave no gaps in them, my covers have improved, and even if I do write in three different genres, crime, sci-fi and paranormal horror, I’m not the only one. My price falls within the generally accepted guidelines, 99ȼ - $2.99 and I plug work in the right places. I guest on other blogs such as this one, I turn out adequate slideshow trailers, and I podcast readings from my work.

In other words, I follow all the rules. But I don’t enjoy the visibility Talli, John Locke, Amanda Hocking and the big hitters do.

How do you achieve that “front”? To coin an English-ism, I have more bottle than the co-op dairy, and I’ve never been shy about putting myself forward, so it’s not that I’m reluctant to do it. I simply don’t know what I’m doing… or where I should be doing it.

There’s a fine line between publicity and spam, and I refuse to stoop to the level of bombarding every forum I can find with my links. According to my reading, it’s not the most productive route anyway.

Twitter and Facebook have their limitations. There’s only so many time you can tweet “buy my book” before people start switching off. Goodreads could be promising, but I can’t even get my books listed on there because of some problem with my identity clashing with my author name.

I need to find other routes.

It’s a problem that’s bugged me for months now. Then on November 22nd I caught a programme on BBC TV, a documentary about hairdressing legend Vidal Sassoon. I’ve never needed his services. I haven’t had enough hair for our local barber to tackle since 1980. Towards the end of the program, Sassoon said something like this:

“Look deep inside yourself. You may be surprised by what you find there.”

It’s something I’ve known for years without actually being aware of knowing it.

Now I look, and what do I find? Not answers, but possibilities.

My tweets will be less “buy, buy, buy” centred. My characters will tweet for me. There will be interviews with Joe Murray, Sceptre Rand, Pete Brennan and so on. I’ve even lined up an interview with Fishwick, the ghostly butler of the Spookies series (how’s that for an exclusive?) and another with Bazill Beatel, who won’t be born until the year 3050.

I’ll put up more free reads, and a few crazy polls. There’s one on my site right now, under the heading What Would You Do. It’s still running if you want to cast your vote.

And there will be giveaways. I’m a Yorkshireman. We keep our wallets closer than we keep our wives, and we don’t part with money easily, but I’m forcing myself. You can read all about it on the prize draw page of my site, but basically all you have to do is review one of my titles and then send me an email with the url for the review.

Beyond all that, I will carry on turning out the titles, and I’m open to suggestions from anyone.

In the meantime, this is likely to be my last guest post on Lorraine’s blog for 2011 so I’d like to thank her for allowing me this space, and to Lorraine and all her readers, let me be the first to wish you every success for 2012.

The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Critique Service for Writers
Flash 500 Flash Fiction Competition
Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

Learn to Earn from your Writing

Making money from writing is not as difficult as it might seem, providing you target your work to fit the market. The Writer’s ABC Checklist Workshops, held on Saturday 19th May 2012, will help you to do exactly that, with a non-fiction session in the morning and a flash fiction session in the afternoon.

Cracking the County Magazine Market covers: analysing your market, finding unique ideas to fit your county, interviewing subjects, quotes and how to use them, the value of photographs, creating an arresting outline and writing a winning query letter.

That Elusive Flash of Success covers: the art of condensing a complete story into 500 words, tantalising titles, attention grabbing opening paragraphs, effective use of dialogue, characters to believe in, tiny touches to bring settings to life, satisfying endings and originality — old themes given a unique slant.

Places on the course are limited. The cost is £135 per person, which includes both workshops, hotel accommodation, lunch and a barbeque on Saturday, plus a full English breakfast on Sunday. Knowing how tight money is at this time of year, we have arranged an option to spread the cost over five months.

For more information, visit the website: http://writersabcworkshops.lorrainemace.com/

The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Critique Service for Writers
Flash 500 Flash Fiction Competition
Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

Foreign Flavours: A New Anthology from Writers Abroad

Online writing group Writers Abroad have asked me to announce the publication of a new anthology of short stories and non-fiction articles, entitled Foreign Flavours.

The anthology takes as its theme food, drink and recipes from around the world. It is a tantalizing collection of fiction and non-fiction, full of spice and flavour and sprinkled with mouth-watering recipes. The wide-ranging, sometimes bittersweet contributions show how adaptable an ex-pat has to be to leave familiar dishes behind and venture into the culinary unknown.

This is the second anthology published by Writers Abroad. All the contributors are, or have been, ex-pats living in places around the globe. Alexander McCall Smith, acclaimed author of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency Series who himself was born abroad, has written the foreword.

Following a call for submissions, 64 contributions were selected for the anthology. Since Writers Abroad is a virtual writers’ group, all the work to produce Foreign Flavours was done online.

All proceeds from the sale of this book will go to The Book Bus, a charity whose aim is to bring literacy and the joy of reading to children in the developing world.

Foreign Flavours is available from Lulu at this link: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/foreign-flavours/18192264 from Monday 24th October, price £9.60 (€10.99)

To find out more, please go to the Writers Abroad website, http://www.writersabroad.com/.

Writers Abroad is an online writing group, founded in 2009. It provides a forum for ex-pat writers to exchange ideas, views and news on writing and to offer support and constructive feedback on each other’s work. Membership numbers are limited but ex-pat writers can apply to join if they are able to support the group’s initiatives and aims. http://www.writersabroad.com/.

Alexander McCall Smith is one of the world’s most popular and prolific authors. He was born in the former Rhodesia and was a Professor of Medical Law for many years. His No 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency series has sold over 20 million copies. His various bestselling series of books are available in more than 40 languages. He has received numerous awards for his writing and now lives in Edinburgh. http://www.alexandermccallsmith.co.uk/.

Foreign Flavours contains 64 contributions. Thirty-four are non-fiction articles and 30 are short stories. The anthology also includes 33 delicious and appetising recipes. Writers Abroad members supplied 24 of the contributions; the remaining 40 were selected from 96 external contributions.

Contributors live in and have written about the following places: Albania, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Corsica, Cyprus, England, Fiji, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Malawi, Mallorca, Morocco, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, USA and Wales.

The Book Bus is a registered charity that aims to improve child literacy rates in Africa and South America by providing children with books and the inspiration to read them. Find out more on their website, http://thebookbus.org/

The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Critique Service for Writers
Flash 500 Flash Fiction Competition
Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

Six Useful Articles for Writers

Today I have some links to articles I’ve had published in E-zee Writer, the e-zine for Writers Bureau students. Although the articles are aimed at beginner writers, the content is useful for more experienced writers as well.

Months Ahead of the Game

Do you know how to find out what editors from hundreds of publications will want throughout the year? Think of the forward planning you could do. Just imagine targeting several magazines, knowing the subject matter is exactly what each editor has in mind for a particular month. That information is available in an editorial calendar.

Finding an Expert

Why would you want to find an expert? Well, when it comes to articles, editors love pieces with expert quotes. If offered two articles of similar quality, the one containing references from an acknowledged authority on the subject will always be chosen over one without.

How Do You Do How-to?

How-to articles open up a wide range of freelance opportunities. Trade, craft, cooking, children’s, gardening, arts and many other markets are crying out for well-written articles which teach their readers new skills, or fresh ways to make use of existing ones.

Expert Advice

This article covers a range of online reference sites, all of which are useful for those of us who have limited access to English language libraries and museums.

Submitting a Non-fiction Proposal

We hear so much about what to include and how to submit novels to agents and publishers, that it’s almost a case of information overload. However, for writers of non-fiction books the information on what to include and when to submit it is much harder to find.

Say it Really Loud on the Radio

Anyone with a book to promote, especially if self-published, is constantly on the lookout for new ways to get the message across to the widest possible audience. So what do you do when you’ve sent review copies to everyone you can think of, attended book fairs, set up author signings and promotions anywhere some kind soul would give you an inch of space, joined websites, commented on the blogs of others and generally covered every aspect of self-promotion?

The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Critique Service for Writers
Flash 500 Flash Fiction Competition
Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

How Much Are You Worth?

Another guest post from David Robinson - and one which all freelance writers should read and absorb to make sure they don't undersell their talents.

A couple of weeks back Lorraine advised a chap on a site that asked him to undergo a “writer’s test” after which they would keep and perhaps use the piece without paying him. He was dealing with a “content farm” and it reminded me of an incident just a few months ago.

To give you an idea where I’m coming from, I sold my first piece (500-600 words) to a newspaper almost 30 years ago for the princely sum of $15. I’ve sold a good many since then for varying amounts. I now concentrate on self-publishing book-length work. I don’t make a fortune and like any other writer I’m always keen to make a few pounds where I can. So I, too, looked at content farms.

The rates on offer were disgraceful. I found one site offering as little as $1-2 per 1,000 words. Even back in 1985, the newspaper rate was $25 per 1,000 words. Not only that but as this chap complained to Lo, you first have to submit a test piece, which they do not pay for but which they can use at their discretion.

Another writer, a friend of mine, working on a site paying by page views, admitted to me that he’d taken to clicking his own works on a particular site in order to improve his rankings in the hope that surfers would click on them, too (the site didn’t pay him for his own clicks, obviously). He spent four hours a day clicking all his pieces and his reward? $1 per day.

I pointed out to him that I make more than that when I sell a single book on the Kindle and although I’m nowhere near the bestseller charts, I average more than one book per day.

Crossing the content providers off my list, I next checked out the bid sites. Once again, let me give you some history to put matters into perspective.

In 1996 I pitched a 5-hour serial to the commissioning editors of a British TV production house. The director and I had jumped through all the early hoops and this was a face-to-face meeting. My fees as a TV newcomer were $6,500 PER HOUR of drama. That serial was worth almost $35,000 to me as the writer. Over and above that, there were the rights to consider since it was an adaptation of one of my novels. All up, it was worth about $50,000.

All right, we didn’t get the commission. We gave it our best shot, but it floundered on production costs. Reality TV was beginning to make its mark and five hours of drama would cost half a million to produce.

That’s the background.

Surfing the bid sites, I came across someone who required a 90-minute TV script. He would provide the story line, the writer had to produce the script. Budget? $250. I can write a 90-minute draft in three days. To bring it up to production standards would take no less than 6 months, and ideally, I would prefer a year. For $250? I’d earn $10,000 a year stocking shelves in supermarket.

Neither the content farms nor the bid sites are interested in quality. They’re concerned only with price. To prove my point, I wrote an article for the same pay-per-click site my friend was so keen on. It was a blatant plug for one of my books, 1,000 words long, it took less than an hour to write, correct and upload. It was trite, hackneyed dross which I wouldn’t even put up as a Flatcap blog post.

It was accepted without question, categorised incorrectly, and the last I heard, it had earned me the princely sum of 13¢.

I’m not in the business of advising other writers. I write from the seat of my pants and what I know about the process could fit on the back of a post-it note and still leave room for Hamlet’s soliloquy. But I reserve one piece of advice for writers when it comes to content farms and bid sites. Avoid them. They devalue the written word. Far better to invest your time and energy in one of the many fine writing communities on the Web, where others will help you along. Far better to put your money into a course like the Writer’s Bureau where they, too, will nurture your talent and help you hone it (and no, I am not on commission.)

And the pay-per-click piece I put up? I am notoriously outspoken and I told them exactly where they could stick the 13¢… penny by penny.

David Robinson is a freelance writer, novelist and humorist, who self-publishes his book-length titles on the Kindle and Smashwords. You can find him at http://www.dwrob.com while his alter-ego, Flatcap, grumbles insanely at http://flatcapfritters.wordpress.com/

The Writer’s ABC Checklist
Critique Service for Writers
Flash 500 Flash Fiction Competition
Flash 500 Humour Verse Competition

Pressing for publicity

Geoff from Carlisle says: I have self-published a novel and want to arrange some publicity. I got in touch with the local paper and the editor said to send in a press release. This is great, but I have no idea how to go about it.

A press release is an extremely effective way of garnering some free publicity. The main function of a press release from the newspaper’s point of view is slightly different to yours. You want it to promote your book; the newspaper is looking for newsworthy, interesting and pertinent information of benefit to its readers. So your press release won’t find favour if it comes across as a straightforward blatant advertisement for your book.

With a bit of luck, the editor will use your press release as the basis for a longer or shorter feature of their own. However, you need to bear in mind that it might get run it as it is – word for word. Because of this, you have to write your story as you would like to see it published. This means keeping it concise, pithy, but, above all, error-free.

Write in the third person, present it in double line spacing, use an acceptable font, such as Times New Roman or Arial and keep it to one page, if at all possible.

Write PRESS RELEASE in capitals and centre it at the top of the page. Below this, indicate when the release can be used. This will be the date when your book is available; if that is straight away, write ‘for immediate use’.

Under this comes the all-important headline which should describe the content of the press release in a nutshell. Sharp, concise, and amusing headlines are the most attention-grabbing. Type it in bold and centre it on the page.

The first paragraph contains a brief summary of what the press release is about and this is followed by more detail in consecutive paragraphs. Explain the book’s theme in a few words, what inspired you to write it, and your interests and experience in the field. Enliven the release by including a piece of information as a direct quote.

At the bottom of the page, write your contact details including a phone number and/or email address, so that you can be contacted immediately if the editor needs further information.

Include a picture of the book cover and a head and shoulders shot of yourself. Write a caption for each, and submit with the editorial.

It’s important to consider the timing of your press release. Magazines may not have space to include your editorial for several weeks, or longer, if it’s a monthly publication. Local press, on the other hand, might be persuaded to run the story to coincide with a book signing, an appearance on local radio, or a talk or demonstration held locally.

The Writer’s ABC Checklist