My book, One Man Drowning, is now available to buy!
Please go to my page One Man Drowning – the book to purchase and get a free sneak preview read!
Update: 20 November 2009.
Of the 2 independent bookshops I visited in Bath, one looks like it will stock my book and the other would if I could guarantee some publicity (local radio or newspapers) to help shift it off the shelves. I learned that for the small independent bookshop space is a premium and also they usually can only buy in small quantities. Both of these were keen to promote local writers and weren’t put off by it being a POD, in fact it may have gone in my favour as one manager pointed out they can only carry one copy of a book at a time quite often, due to space on shelves.
What is an advantage is they will often give a new face a crack at the whip, and one explained to me that he tries to do this, and offer more specialist or unusual books as competing with the monopolies such as Waterstones, W H Smith etc is pretty much impossible. They can afford to buy in large quantities, sell cheaper, and so obviously get the customers in looking for the best-sellers and known authors. Small booksellers have to find their own niche. Great though that they both have a local writers section, I thought.
Update: 14 November 2009.
Well, this is certainly an eye opening experience and both daunting and exhilarating.
Daunting because it involves so much – getting the blog and website listed on search engines, ensuring the online bookshops have the correct info for the page, getting my ‘face’ known on as many internet groups and societies as possible. And that’s without the physical stuff of plodding round the bookshops pestering managers to stock the thing.
I’ve focussed on the two genre the books best fits I think, the gay and historical book. Some of the review sites for historical have been a bit sniffy and promised they ‘might’ read it and give it a mention. One replied that “based on the opening paragraphs, it seems to be far more skillfully written than the typical self-published historical novel” and they’d be happy to consider it “for a brief critique or, if it holds my interest throughout, a full review.”
I could almost hear the pedantic mutterings from the ’sticklers to historical detail’ brigade. Historical detail is fine but sometimes when it comes to stuff like dialogue a bit of artistic license is needed, I feel. 18th century English is a world apart from what we speak today, though when I did look into it some surprising words we use now were currently in use then.
Approaching gay genre websites and communities was far more supportive and I had some really helpful feedback and insights into the publishing industry in general from established author, Mel Keegan. Mel runs the online GBLT community (http://bookworld.editme.com/Home) - see the ‘insights into publishing’ page here.
So far, getting reviews has been a bit of a mixed bag and I’m wondering what sort of reception local newspapers and radio will have when I approach them. The Catch 22 often seems to be that unless a book is either by an already established author or is being promoted by an agent/publisher, forget it for mainstream UK press. While I understand there is a certain dismissive and snobbish attitude towards anything self published for the good reason that there is a lot of dross out there by people that really can’t write (am I deluding myself here that I’m not one of them?!), there is good work by writers who had no choice but to go it alone, as getting an established publishing house to consider them, as a ‘newbie’ author, was an uphill battle. Especially if their storyline wasn’t of the current fashionable mould or was a little more ‘experimental’ in style so possibly might not be a potential big earner for the publisher. And that’s often the sticking point – PROFIT and RISK. More on this on the ‘insights’ page.
