Long time, no blog

It's been quite a while since I last posted here. Things have been busy at work and home and blogging just ends up at the bottom of the pile along with lots of other things that shouldn't be at the bottom.

Part of the busy-ness is that I've been working on some very interesting projects with authors who want to self-publish - or even those who have self-published already. 

Caitlin's Wish is a storybook written for children with a disabled or unwell parent, family member or friend. It aims to help children in this situation see that they are not alone, and that their lives do not have to be overshadowed by the illness but that even though a relationship might have changed, it can still be a happy one. An extremely worthy book and one that people should be aware of. The first edition has done well but the cover price was high and there were other areas that could be improved too in order to bring the book to as wide an audience as possible. 

By looking at a different way to self-publish, the second edition of the book will be cheaper with a better distribution set up and a lovely new cover (above). The lower cost of publishing means that the author can set a lower cover price and donate a significant chunk to the charities she supports while being happy that the new price will make the book more accessible to all. 

It's a book that certainly needs to be out there and the author, Victoria Taylor is a human dynamo. She drives the project with such determination and enthusiasm (the book was inspired by her family's story) that I am sure the second edition will achieve all that she hopes for it. 

For more information on the book please click here. 

Self-Publishing Contracts: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Mainly the Ugly.

I often advise on self-publishing contracts and was recently contacted by someone who had won a competition to be self-published. He was worried about the contract he was being asked to sign - primarily because of the low royalty rate being offered. Quite apart from the fact that the rate was desperately low at 10% of net receipts, this represented a figure that was a third of what was on offer for non-competition winners - i.e. those who were paying the full rate to be self-published by this company. The whole deal didn't smell good and the author asked if I would take a look.

The contract was really a collection of all the areas of concern in a typical self-publishing contract and I thought I would post about some here and ask you to please, please check your contract carefully - before signing it!

My main worry with many of these contracts (and therefore the businesses behind them) is the overall lack of transparency. Many of the contracts I have seen are extremely vague when referring to what the author should expect to receive. Worse, they are deliberately misleading. For example, in this particular contract (and on the company website) there is continual reference to printing the book. What is not made clear is that it is a print-on-demand set-up. While POD can be a useful way to get copies of book at a lower cost than bulk printing them, it does have certain disadvantages, including being more difficult to get them in to high street shops as they are non-returnable and the higher cover price which makes them more difficult to sell.

What was also not made clear but was implicit in the wording is that the author would have to pay full price for copies of their book - and with only one copy being given to the author at publication, this could end up quite costly for them - which is where the self-publisher can top up his profit.

Talking of which, the royalty rate that flagged up the initial concern with the author is, indeed, way too low. You can expect to see rates around this mark in a traditional publishing deal (although this is likely to be on cover price rather than net receipts) where the publisher bears all costs and (in theory at least) has a solid sales and marketing plan along with significant scale of distribution. In a self-publishing set-up where the self-publisher is providing the minimum of service and you are providing everything else, the royalty should be significantly higher.

And finally, for now at least, my favourite bugbear: self-publishing companies proudly stating that they will make your book available on every Internet retail site and make it easily accessible to '3500 wholesalers, booksellers and libraries worldwide'. One, 'make available' is very different from 'sell ' and two, the simple act of allocating an ISBN is all it takes to do the above. That's it. It is a fully automated process but one that, with a bit of creative wording, can look like a specialist task that can only be offered by a publisher. It's simply not the case.

So please, please, please read your contract. And if you don't like what you see, don't sign it. And if you are in any doubt, send it to me. For more details go to The Self-Publishing Advice Service.

Brighton Book Festival

The first ever Brighton Book Festival ran between 9-12 June and we were pretty pleased with how it went. There was a nice piece in the local paper the week before and a good review of one of the events I had helped to put in place to round off the festival.

It was a small scale festival, with events ranging from a few people in a pub discussing Molesworth to a crowded ghost story evening in the Grand Hotel. The events I ran went well, with a lively talk on conspiracies by Ian Shircore, author of the forthcoming Conspiracy! book, an atmospheric poetry reading from Nicola Wood and finally a wonderful tribute to Brian Barritt from John Higgs, friend of Brian and author of I Have America Surrounded. The latter was held in the packed out Iambic Arts Theatre and went down really well. It was funny, revealing and occasionally a little rude. As John said afterwards 'Who knew I could get away with doing stuff like that?' 

That should become the Bookstock mantra.

Missing Dogs

My friends have lost their dogs and are desperate to get them home. Please help us find them.

Lost at Stoke Down, the south western end of Kingley Vale National Nature Reserve Near Chichester on 25^TH May at 11am

Please phone Tim on 07740795708

Soundart Stories

An author friend is having his short story broadcast on Soundart Radio tonight. I hadn't heard of them so looked into it and it is an interesting idea. You submit your short story (250 to 3000 words) and, if selected, that story will be read out. It's broadcast in the Totnes and Dartington area (102.5) so a small immediate audience, but the broadcast is available anywhere in the world via MixCloud.

I will be listening in to James Stevenson's story to see exactly how it works. It seems a good way to get your words out there as presumably you will be able to link to a permanent audio clip in order to help promote your work. Would be very interested to hear from anyone who has already submitted successfully.

Listen to Soundart short stories here
Read the Soundart blog here

Mysteries of the Spine

In the talks I give on self-publishing, I cover a list of common and not-so-common errors made when publishing your own book. One that I always mention is to make sure that the title on your spine reads correctly. In the UK we print the spine so that it reads top to bottom. Elsewhere in Europe it is printed so that it reads bottom to top. This means that we tilt our head to the right when we are browsing a bookshelf while the French (for example) tilt to the left.

I hadn't thought much about this really, assuming that it was just one of those things that we English like to do differently - like driving on the left and apologising when someone runs us over intentionally with a lawn-mower.

But then I was looking at a few of the older books I have on my shelf - specifically A Pin to See the Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse and I noticed that this edition (Penguin Books, 1952) has the title on the spine reading from bottom to top:

Why? WHY?! I realise this will probably only hold any real interest for the type of person who reads the copyright page before pretty much anything else in any book they get (yes, OK that is me) but I really want to know when this changed and why. Can anyone help?

And incidentally - what a beautiful book:

How to Sell 7000 Books

I met an interesting author last week. Of course all authors are interesting to me but this one was particularly so. He has self-published a children's book, in hardback, priced at £14.99. Every publishing fibre in me was telling me that was a crazy price point and crazy format for this kind of book but the facts speak for themselves.

He has sold over 7000 copies. That's a lot of books. And a fair amount of cash too. If he's not careful he might actually become that ultra-rare species of author who actually (shh) makes a living from writing.

So how does he do it? And could you do it too?

Well unsurprisingly it requires a lot of hard work, and persistence, and, I suspect a rather thick skin. Alan Gilliland is a one-man marketing machine, arranging in-store events up and down the country for (at first) his children's book The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion (and Us!) and now his second book (a young adult ghost story) called The Flight of Birds too.


He told me that he is booked up pretty much every weekend of the year - the organisation and planning alone must take a fair chunk of time - and he spends a full day at each bookshop, chatting to readers, talking them through his books, enthusing them about his stories and illustrations and finally selling and signing copies. The effort to achieve sales therefore is considerable and it not only takes a certain type of person to maintain this level of effort, but it also requires the author to be extremely confident in promoting his own work. This is unfortunately where many writers fall down - many (most?) feel uncomfortable standing up to say how good their own book is - in fact it is far more common to hear an author downplaying their writing. Which is a shame.


This, then is the hurdle to success that many self-published authors face whatever the price, format or genre of their book. Without the pr machine of a big publisher clanking into action on their behalf, a self-published author is left with the task of standing up and shouting about how great their book is - and many, quite simply just don't want to do that.