The Joy of Editing

By Gillian Hamer

Editing is very much a marmite topic. Some writers love it. Others loathe it with a passion. Me, typically I am in the middle. The first round of editing, when I’m still on a buzz from finishing the first draft, is always a thrill. But by the time I’ve worked my way through feedback from a handful of beta readers and an over-zealous proofreader, I’m no longer quite so enthralled by the whole process!

 

But as I’m always interested how other writers tackle the whole nuts-and-bolts process of writing a novel, I thought it might be interesting to pass on how I handle the editing process. After five published novels, and a sixth on its way, I’ve learned quite a lot about quality control.

1. Story Sweep

This is what I call my first initial read through upon completion. Lots of things can change throughout the novel. Characters that started the book with red hair may end up blonde. A twist that happened in Chapter 20, may affect a declaration made in your opening paragraph. So, I like to sit down and with the ending now forefront in my mind, read through the novel carefully – watching out for any bloopers that would spoil the whole integrity of your work.

2. Chapter Listings
Once I’m sure I have the story in the right order, the beginning, middle and the end sorted, I make a list of individual chapters. I list the main protagonist for each, against content summary and word count. Doing this is also handy if I need to make changes as I’m editing, - it’s a quick reference guide to where I need to go back to.

3. Rooting Out the Fillers

I have a set list of words I use the Find/Replace feature on Word to thin out to a bare minimum. On my list are just, had, that, felt, but … and and. Not all can be removed of course, but I’d put odds on a good 90% of them being redundant.

4. Repetition

As well as fillers I also do a Find/Replace for words I have an awful habit of repeating. On this list I have shuddered, swallowed, gazed, nodded. Again, I would say at least half can go or be replaced with something less tiresome and more original!

5. Adverbs & Adjectives

Not something you can rely on any grammar check to find, but I always take time to search and destroy as many unneeded adverbs as I can. My pet hates are those used after dialogue tags - eg. he said loudly (so he shouted, right?) I use the rule - if you need an adverb, there's a chance you chose the wrong verb. Adjectives too, whilst great if used to a bare minimum, can clog up descriptions and prose. Be ruthless and take your shears to both.

6. Continuity

This can be a killer, in any genre I imagine, but particularly in crime fiction. Even more so if you’ve made lots of changes in the book.
If Betty was sixty four and grey-haired in chapter one, make sure she’s not 46 and auburn in chapter twelve. If Billy is a vegan to begin with, make sure he doesn’t order lamb bhuna later. I think if you have a niggling feeling about anything in terms of continuity, it’s always worth a full investigation. There’s no easier way as an author to lose credibility than if the reader can pick holes in your writing. And talking of holes …

7. Plot Holes

This is another minefield, again crime fiction is a killer. Make yourself a list of questions that you used early on in the work to hook the reader, and content yourself that by the ending of the book all have been satisfactorily answered. Make sure Red Herrings work and aren’t too obvious. Ensure the ‘believability factor’ isn’t stretched past breaking point in any of your twists and reveals. Tie up loose ends and fill in gaping holes, and use this editorial process to ensure your story is tight.

8. Cliché Check

My own rule of thumb is that it’s okay for the character to use them if it’s needed to show character. But it’s not okay for the author to rely on them. So, do a run through and ensure originality.

9. Spell Check

Quite obvious, but something that takes a fair amount of time and patience, especially when local dialect or dialogue play a large part of the book. Take your time, make sure you don’t miss anything obvious.

10. Typos

There are some things you can’t rely on technology to sort out – typos are one of them. My biggest faux-pas is our/out. No one other than your own eagle eyes (or someone else’s) is going to sort this editing nightmare. So read each word, don’t skim, and see what should actually be there.

11. Read Aloud

This is crucial for me, especially in areas of dialogue, so I have a real feel for the interaction and rhythm. My rule of thumb when reading aloud is that if I stumble over a particular line more than twice, it has to go. Any line that creates a frown needs work. Perfect lines just flow in time with the beat of your writing, so try and make every line perfect.

12. Word Count

At this stage, I go over each chapter again and do a second word count, hopefully you’ll be amazed how many words you’ve shaved off your work. I try to keep my chapter lengths quite constant, within 1000 words of each other, so at this stage if chapter four is 3000 and chapter five is 8000 words, you may have some rejigging to do.

13. Chapter Headings

It’s always worth at this stage, having a final run through of chapter numbers and headings. With all the changes, it’s quite common for me to find I have two chapter twenty sevens, and no twenty eight.

14. Final Read & Polish

I think it’s always a good idea to reread the story again at this stage. Clear your head of all of the hours of agony that have come before, and read this time as a reader, not a writer. Hopefully, you will actually forget you’ve written it and enjoy the story, or find yourself smiling with pride at your talent.

And now you’re ready to set your baby free, send it out into the big, wide world, so new eyes can read it for the very first time. At this stage, don’t be tempted to fiddle or faff – walk away and leave it alone. If you use beta readers or proofreaders, you know they are going to find you more work, and that’s when your job is to give the book one final super-polish, so it enters the world of publication as perfect and polished as a diamond.

One you can be very proud of indeed.

For more helpful tips and advice, check out The Triskele Trail.

Absolute Beginners Guide to WattPad

by Catriona Troth

Practically the only thing I knew about WattPad before I decided to dip my toe in its waters was that the redoubtable Margaret Atwood – my Canadian literary hero – was a member and a strong exponent. The fact that she championed it was enough to make me want to explore further.

WattPad, like GoodReads, is a social media site where readers can interact with writers. The big advantage of WattPad is that it has a big membership of young readers, all hungry to find something else to read. And while Goodreads allows readers to review published books, WattPad allows readers to participate in the creative process.

In many ways, WattPad recreates for a digital age the old idea of a novel serialised – as many of Dickens’ were – in a newspaper. Author members of WattPad post extracts of their work on the site and encourage readers to follow along with them, commenting as they go, and even perhaps changing the outcome the story through their input.

Authors can in theory post in just about any genre, but given the demographic of the readers, by far the most popular genre, and therefore those most likely to attract a big following, are SciFi, Fantasy and Young Adult.

So how do you go about taking your first steps on WattPad?

Start by setting up an account (user name, email and password). Then you can add an avatar and background image, and write a bit about yourself in your profile.

As with any social media site, it is only polite to ‘give’ as well as ‘take’, so your next step should be to look around for people to follow. Find some authors working in genres you are interested in and follow them. Look for a some who have a big following to see how they operate, but also pick a few new to the site with a smaller following who will appreciate the support.

Once you have explored a little, read a few things on offer, made some comments, it’s time to start posting things of your own.

The recommended approach is to post a chapter at a time (<2k words preferred), and to do so regularly, at the same time each week (say midday on Friday). So it is ideal if you have one or more books with good drafts complete, but on which you would still welcome feedback. Or if you are part-way through something that is really flowing well and you can be fairly sure of being able to keep up the pace.

Posting is dead easy. You just drop text into the box available.

One of the best things about WattPad is that there is no competition and no ‘scoring’ of books. If readers find you, they will read and comment, and you are encouraged to interact with them.

You are at liberty, and even encouraged, to add links to where people can buy completed books. And the word is that some at least will buy the book if they have loved your writing. But it is in essence somewhere people can read for free. So if you are after building up a readership, and you have the right sort of books to offer, this could be the place for you.

Parallax, Congruence and the Unmarked State – how to write from a perspective other than your own

by Catriona Troth

What a dull place the literary world would be if we could only create characters just like ourselves!

Yet many authors are scared off creating characters with a different ethnicity, say, or a different sexual orientation, than their own, for fear of getting it wrong – offensively wrong.

Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward started running their Writing the Other workshops to help writers address those fears and to give them a shot at getting it right. Fortunately for those of us not able to attend one of the workshops, their wisdom has now been distilled into a small ebook.

The book is full of great exercises you can try, pitfalls to avoid and examples of good practice. It also goes into the psychology of our human tendency to simplify and generalise, to make things in our own image. If you are interested, I hope you’ll go ahead and download the book.

What I’ll try and do here is to summarise a few of the key concepts.

(Note that the differences that Shawl and Ward focus on are race, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, age, religion and sex. They discount class as being of lesser importance in most of North America, but British writers, in particular, might want to include that too.)

The Unmarked State:

A figure crossed the park and sat down on the bench.

What is your first mental image of that person? Before you stop and think about it? Before your writer’s brain starts getting creative?

There is a fair bet that, for many readers, that image will begin something like ‘male, white, young, able-bodied...’

It’s when you start to deviate from that unmarked state that things start to get interesting.

Parallax

Parallax is a way of describing the shift in viewpoint that is needed when you step into someone else’s head.

A couple walk down the street holding hands.

If that couple are a white man and a white woman, then in most places in the Western world, that walk down the street is an unremarkable act. But what if that couple were a white man and a black woman? Or two men? Depending on the location, their experience of walking down that street could be completely different from the first couple’s.

Even if all three couples pass along the street unmolested, the way they perceive their surrounding will not be the same. What does each couple think as they approach a group of teenagers drinking lager outside a pub? A policeman talking on his radio?

Allow your characters their own biases, grounded in their experiences of the world.

(Here's a great real life example of parallax from a recent edition of the Guardian.)

Congruence

It’s important to take into account those changes of viewpoint when you create a character. But it’s also important to remember that race, sexual orientation etc are not the be-all and end-all of someone’s personality, even if those things are central to your story.

If parallax is about the difference in viewpoint between your character and the reader or writer, congruence is about finding points of similarity or empathy.

In my novella, Gift of the Raven, Terry is mixed race child who has been abused, and those things profoundly affect the way he looks at the world. Yet, like just about any other Canadian boy his age, he is also crazy about ice hockey.

In Tamim Sadikali’s Dear Infidel, the moment when the four cousins wax nostalgic over a Carry On film makes this Asian family celebrating Eid seem suddenly like any other British family.

Going more than skin deep

Those are the principles, but how do you go about making those shifts in perspective?

Here are a few of Shawl and Ward’s tips:

· READ – but make sure you are reading primary sources, not something filtered through someone else’s perspective.

· TAKE A WALK ON THE WILD SIDE – go places you wouldn’t normally go; feel what it’s like lose the invisibility of just being one of the crowd

· TALK TO PEOPLE – interview someone from your character’s background (but be open about why you’re doing it)

· RECOGNISE THE LIMITATIONS OF YOUR UNDERSTANDING - Shawl talks about writers who are either invaders, tourists or guests. Invaders barge in unannounced, snatch what they want and destroy what seems valueless to them. Tourists are expected. They may be ignorant, but they listen and are willing to be educated. Guests are invited and the relationships they build are long-term and reciprocal.

Most writers attempting to create characters very different for themselves should probably assume they are tourists. Be respectful, listen carefully, learn as much as you can, but acknowledge that your perspective remains that of an outsider.

In my novel, Ghost Town, for example, Baz grew up with no knowledge of his father’s culture and is only learning about it now, as an adult. That gave me wriggle room to explain the gaps in his knowledge.

So go ahead create diverse characters who are nothing like you. Just follow the advice of Joseph Bruchac in a recent Twitter chat on diversity. Remember four words to live and write by: 

Honesty, Empathy, Knowledge, Respect

You'll be able to read two interviews with passionate campaigners for diversity in literature in the AUGUST 2015 edition of Words with Jam.

And a personal reflection on my creation of the character Terry in Gift of the Raven on my own blog.

Toolbox for Author Collaboration: Part 3

Introduction

There is no doubt that there is power in authors working together – whether it is through big organisations like the Alliance of Independent Authors, or small collectives like Triskele Books. Working together can reap huge benefits but – a bit like a marriage - it not something that can be undertaken ‘unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly’.

Every collaboration is unique, dependent on the personalities involved and what they want to achieve, but each one must ask itself similar questions and overcome many of the same challenges.

Our new series of short articles aims to provide some of the tools you need to plan your own cooperative ventures, be they long-term collaborations or one-off projects.

Series 1: Setting up a Collective

1. Deciding on your objectives / Choosing your travelling companions
2. Sharing the work / Making a plan / Making it watertight
3. Spreading the word / Building communities / Keeping it fresh

Series 2: Harnessing the Power of the Group

Maybe you have now set up your author collective, or perhaps you are still thinking about what kind of collaborative project you could undertake. In part two of our short series of articles we will explore ideas for harnessing the power of the group – and provide some case studies of those who have tried it already.

PART THREE:

SPREADING THE WORD

Triskele partners with Words with Jam, June 2013

One of the biggest reasons for working collaboratively with other authors is that you can make a bigger splash working together than you can as an individual author. So how can you spread the word about your new venture?

1. Who do you most need to reach? How are you going to engage with them? 
2. What is your window on the world? Will the group have its own website / Facebook page / Twitter feed (etc)? How will they be used? 
3. Pool your contacts. Who do you each know (book bloggers, reviewers, booksellers, journalists, fellow writers in similar genres ... ) who could help champion your project? 
4. What sort of environment (virtual or real) do you each operate in most effectively? Perhaps one of you has a big Twitter following. Another may be great on Facebook. Someone else prefers dealing with readers face to face, in book groups or writing festivals. Another has great contacts in local bookshops. How can you harness all that?* 
5. What is there in the ‘story’ of your collective or project that might capture media or press interest? It may be difficult to break down barriers in the national press, but what about local or special interest media 
6. What are your priorities? Do you want to focus on making a big impact around a particular event or launch? Or do you want to find ways of keeping yourselves in the public eye over a longer period? How can you make best use of your shared resources to achieve those aims? 
7. Once again, it’s important to make a plan.

A View from Chichester Indie Authors (CHINDI): 

http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk/

The best decision we made was to build some really strong relationships with our local media, particularly the local paper, The Chichester Observer, and local radio station, Spirit FM. In our case this was of vital importance as we wanted a geographical tight group that could support each other with library talks, book launches, editing workshops etc. I know your group in particular is international but for the Xmas Market, for example, it was easy to spread the cost of hiring a stall for 4 days (approx £400), spread the workload of manning it in the middle of winter, and the logistics of who could collect the books at the end of each day, who had a spare power extension or a money belt. We set the geographic spread relatively wide to 30 miles and that has meant we were able to grow to 17 authors and 2 authors-in-waiting after a year. We sold £650 worth of books by the way.

BUILDING COMMUNITIES

Reader Engagement at our first Indie Author Fair
[photo by Ruth Jenkinson]

Indie authors are some of the most generous, supporting people we have ever had the pleasure of working with. As Triskele we have learnt that everything we do to build links with author authors and to create author communities is repaid to us many times over. The connections you make with other writers will stand you in good stead all of your writing life.

As part of an author collaboration, you have already built an author community. But you are also well-place to reach out to other authors. Here are a few ideas of how you might do that:

1. Interviewing other authors (or hosting their posts) on your blog. (Do you have an angle that makes your blog special and keeps people coming back?) 
2. Reviewing books. Do you make a point of reading books by other indie authors and sharing recommendations of those you genuinely loved? Can you encourage others to share their recommendations? 
3. Sharing information about indie authorship. It’s amazing when you look back to realise how much you have learnt just from the process of publishing one or two books. At the same time, there is always more to learn. Join the Alliance of Independent Authors and take part in their online forum and other activities. Share what you have learnt on your own blog. 
4. Indie authors are often starved of opportunities to sell their books directly to readers. As a collective, you may have the clout to secure a space at a local lit fest, set up your own Indie Author Fair, and invite other authors to join you. (Read about Triskele’s first experience creating an Indie Author Fair here.) 
5. Can your group help guide upcoming indie authors on the path to publication?

A View from Triskele:

From time to time, we have taken on associates, people whose writing we love and whom we all want to work with. Our associates receive editorial support and a guiding hand through the process of self publishing for the first time, and their books are marketed alongside Triskele’s other titles. In return, associates are expected to play a full part in Triskele’s general marketing duties, and to help drive new ideas and initiatives. One of the greatest compliments we ever received was to be described as the Wu-Tang Clan of Indie Authors!

KEEPING IT FRESH

Monitoring, Reviewing Revising

Even if your project is relatively short term, you will want to review what you are doing from time to time, so assess what is working well and what hasn’t been so effective, and to see what you could do better.

If your collaboration is longer term, you’re going to need to find ways of keeping it fresh and exciting.

Early on, in our first article, we suggested that, before you even set out, you should ask yourselves, “How will you know if you have achieved your goals? What is your measure of success?”

1. So now your project has been running for a while, it’s time to look back at what you said then and take stock. 
2. Have you achieved your goals? Wholly? Partially? 
3. Can you pinpoint anything that has been particularly successful? 
4. What hasn’t worked so well? 
5. What obstacles have there been that you didn’t anticipate? 
6. If your project is still on-going, what can you do to build on your successes? What can you do to turn round what has been less successful? 
7. Has the group reached its optimal size, or do you want to consider expanding? (If so, you may want to look again at the ‘choosing your travelling companions’ post.) 
8. If your project has now come to an end, make notes of what went well and what didn’t, and keep a record for next time. 
9. Make sure you get everyone’s opinion, because everyone will see things slightly differently. 
10. Try and get a perspective from outside the group too, if you can.

If this is a long-term collaboration, then every once in a while (perhaps once or twice a year) you will need to take a step back and see what new projects you could engage in that will:

• Keep you in the public eye 

• Keep the group looking innovative and exciting

Over the next few months, we will be bringing you some case studies of projects that different author collectives have engaged in, which we hope will fire your imagination.

A View from Running Fox Books:

It’s said that necessity is the mother of invention. But for us at Running Fox Books, necessity became the mother of re-invention—a new look at our brand from the perspective of readers. 

In December 2014, it became necessary for us to migrate our website to a new home, something that forced us to take a fresh look at how we presented ourselved.

What followed was an intensive couple of months in which we rethought the entire Running Fox concept. From the perspective of the author members, we knew the benefits of a collective; in fact, I’d written an article on collectives for the IBPA Independent. But what about readers? They don’t care how books are published. They just want a place to find good books—in our case, good Alaska-inspired books. Close to two million people visit Alaska each year. Big Five publishers don’t get that market. But we authors do.

As we thought about what we could offer readers that they couldn’t get elsewhere, we landed on the concept of an author-curated bookshop with features that strengthen the author-reader connection, among them a passage picker; a book-your-trip (literally) feature; a matchmaker tool, author confessions, and author insights.

The first phase of our new and improved collective is the website, newly launched. The next phase will involve growing our stable of authors to include those who’ve published traditionally and are looking for ways to extend the shelf-life of their titles. The third phase will involve partnering with groups that have good reach with the Alaska visitor market.

Our focus as a collective has always been to aggregate our marketing efforts. With the help of Cindy’s creative approach to the user-experience web design, we’re now poised to do that in bigger and better ways.

Toolbox for Author Collaboration: Part 2

Introduction

There is no doubt that there is power in authors working together – whether it is through big organisations like the Alliance of Independent Authors, or small collectives like Triskele Books. Working together can reap huge benefits but – a bit like a marriage - it not something that can be undertaken ‘unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly’.

Every collaboration is unique, dependent on the personalities involved and what they want to achieve, but each one must ask itself similar questions and overcome many of the same challenges.

Our new series of short articles aims to provide some of the tools you need to plan your own cooperative ventures, be they long-term collaborations or one-off projects.

Series 1: Setting up a Collective

1. Deciding on your objectives / Choosing your travelling companions
2. Sharing the work / Making a plan / Making it watertight
3. Spreading the word / Building communities / Keeping it fresh

Series 2: Harnessing the Power of the Group

Maybe you have now set up your author collective, or perhaps you are still thinking about what kind of collaborative project you could undertake. In part two of our short series of articles we will explore ideas for harnessing the power of the group – and provide some case studies of those who have tried it already.

PART TWO:

SHARING THE WORK / MAKING A PLAN

Sharing out tasks -
not always what you might expect

So now you have thought through what you what your collaboration is about. You and your fellow travellers have chosen your destination. Your next task is work out how you are going to work together as a team.

1. Are you clear what work needs to be done, when and by whom?

2. How will you make decisions – by majority vote? unanimity? or will one person (or a small subgroup) have the final say?

3. Do you need to assign someone as project manager – either temporarily for a specific project, or longer term?

4. What work do you have the resources to do ‘in house’ and what skills do you need to buy in?

5. If you are buying in services, is this something each author does individually, or are you doing it collectively?

6. If one of the group is providing a service to another, are they to be paid for their time, or is this on the basis of a quid pro quo?

7. Is it practical to assume that each of you will contribute equally in terms of the workload, or is it inevitable (because of their skill set, available time etc) that some will do more than others?

8. If so, are you all content with that, or do you need to do something to redress the balance, financially or otherwise?

Hopefully you have now answered many of the questions in the previous posts, and you have a sense of where you want to go together. So now is the time to MAKE A PLAN.

If you have a specific collaborative project in mind, then you can break that down into specific tasks and decide who is responsible for each task and when it needs to be done by.

If you are planning something longer term, then ask yourselves:

•  What do you want to achieve in the next year? The next six months? The next month? 

• If you’re going to succeed, what do you need to do in the next week? The next month? The next three months? 

DON'T just write a plan and then bury it in a bottom drawer. Make sure that you revisit in regularly and keep it fresh. (More on that later.)

MAKING IT WATERTIGHT

Finance & Legal

Since we are all in the business of publishing and selling books, and therefore to a greater or lesser extent, investing and making money, even the most informal collaborations will at some point need to consider a few financial and legal questions.

Are you planning on setting up a company or legal partnership, or do you intend to operate a looser form of agreement?

Setting up a company can be a massive undertaking, especially if – as may well be the case, given the global nature of indie author publishing – you are operating across national borders.

But working without that legal protection puts even more emphasis on the need for clarity and trust.

• Will you have any shared funds? 
• Do those come from contributions, or from a shared income stream? 
• How do you use those funds? Who authorises expenditure? 
• Who is responsible for holding/managing/reporting on them?

What does each author pay for individually, and what costs do you share?

If you are publishing a number of books under a collective brand, does each author retain the income from sales of their own books?

If you are publishing a book or box set together, how do you set the price, and how do you share the resulting sales income?

Equally, who retains the rights for individual books?

Who holds the rights for any collaborative publications? Who holds the copyright? (This could be particularly important if, say, you publish a book together, and then some time downstream, one partner wants to sell the audio or film rights.)

You may be more than happy operating on trust, but if you have asked each other some of these hard questions up front, you can avoid being taken completely unawares.

A View from Outside the Box, who published the box set  Women Writing Women

I think we get to pat ourselves on the back for a number of good decisions: the theme of unusual/incorrigible women characters instead of limiting to a single genre, the time limit that allowed us to learn, grow and move on, and the moment early on where Jessica Bell said, boom, here's the plan, no more back and forth about every little thing. To be totally honest, I think the very best decision and the very worst decision are one in the same: the price. It kept us from hitting the lists like some of the 99C genre boxes, but it held us to our principles, raised the bar in the public eye and hopefully set an example for authors who feel constantly pressured to sell their work for pennies. The only way to elevate the marketplace is to value our work.

Toolkit for Author Collaboration: Part 1

Introduction

There is no doubt that there is power in authors working together – whether it is through big organisations like the Alliance of Independent Authors, or small collectives like Triskele Books. Working together can reap huge benefits but – a bit like a marriage - it not something that can be undertaken ‘unadvisedly, lightly, or wantonly’.

Every collaboration is unique, dependent on the personalities involved and what they want to achieve, but each one must ask itself similar questions and overcome many of the same challenges.

Our new series of short articles aims to provide some of the tools you need to plan your own cooperative ventures, be they long-term collaborations or one-off projects.

Series 1: Setting up a Collective

1. Deciding on your objectives / Choosing your travelling companions
2. Sharing the work / Making a plan / Making it watertight
3. Spreading the word / Building communities / Keeping it fresh

Series 2: Harnessing the Power of the Group

Maybe you have now set up your author collective, or perhaps you are still thinking about what kind of collaborative project you could undertake. In part two of our short series of articles we will explore ideas for harnessing the power of the group – and provide some case studies of those who have tried it already.

PART ONE:

Deciding your objectives

Author collaborations come in many sizes and shapes.

If you are not to run into difficulties and misunderstandings further down the line, it’s important to decide and agree on clear objectives right from the start. Of course, deciding your objectives will to some extent go hand in hand with choosing your travelling companions – which is the subject of the second part of this post.

We’ll get into questions of workload, finance and legalities later, but for now, here are some questions you should ask yourselves up front:

1. Why are you getting together? What do you want to achieve?

2. Is this to be long-term, wide ranging collaboration, like the Triskele Books author collective, or a single, one-off project, e.g. working together on a box-set?

3. What is it that is bringing you together? How would you define your common identity? Do you share a genre (like Notting Hill Press), a location (like Running Fox) or something more nebulous (like Triskele’s A Time and A Place? The clearer you are about this, the easier it will be to market yourselves.

4. If it is to be a long-term collaboration, you still need to set clear, achievable early goals. What do you want to achieve in the first six months? The first year?

5. If it’s a one-off project, is it open ended, or time-limited? Have you set a clear end-point/ break-point?

6. What is the optimal size for the group? (Points to consider here are having enough effort and energy between you for the work you are taking on; being small enough to still know each other well, and having a decision-making process that does not become overly cumbersome.)

7. How will you know if you have achieved your goals? What is your measure of success?

8. How and when will you review what you have achieved?

A view from Five Directions Press:

www.fivedirectionspress.com

As often happens, our best and worst decisions are intertwined. The best was our decision to publish together in 2012. We’ve learned a lot in the last three years—about book production, of course, but also about cooperation and our own strengths and limitations. Above all, we recognize that we need to think much more about the business aspects of publishing, especially marketing, than we did at first. That was our worst decision: to put our books out into the world before we knew how to promote them.

But realizing our mistake led to other good decisions: to extend our reach by connecting with coops like Triskele, to raise our profile on social media and the Web, and to team up with a friend who has extensive business experience. Since January, we have defined our mission statement, updated our website, held discussions with local libraries and bookstores, expanded our list of authors, and developed a basic business plan. We still have much to learn, but we’re excited about moving forward as a group.

Choosing your travelling companions

When you a working together with other authors, everything you do and say reflects to some extent on everyone in the group. And whether you stand or fall depends on everyone playing their part. So whether you are getting together for a one-off project or a long-term collaboration, it’s important to choose your travelling companions with care.

Here are some questions you should ask yourselves when deciding who you want to work with:

1. Do you know and enjoy one another’s work? Would you be proud to see your work on the shelf next to theirs?

2. Can you describe, clearly and succinctly, what brings you together – your common identity?

3. Do you all understand and share the objectives for your project, be-it long-term or a one-off?

4. Do you understand what each of you brings to the table in terms of skills, available workload etc? Does it match expectations?

5. Do you share common standards when it comes to design, editing etc?*

There are inevitably going to be tough times ahead. So here are some really tough questions:

6. Do you trust one another?

7. Do you know that you can each accept criticism without taking it personally?

8. Do you have confidence that each person can deliver what is expected of them on-time and to a good standard, and that they will give timely warnings of any unavoidable problems?

A View from Chichester Indie Authors (CHINDI): 

http://www.chindi-authors.co.uk/

The worst decision we made was not to put in place a vetting process to check standards at the beginning. We weren't going to throw anyone out who hyphenated a compound adjective when it should not have been but we did want to ensure that the CHINDI brand as it developed had some level of quality. We now ask all new members to submit three copies of their book for a basic review of punctuation, layout and cover design. Most of us use different fonts and I controversially left-justify my text as I write kid's books and wanted to copy other authors' books I admired. So there is no one CHINDI way of doing things. One potential member presented a book with 27 errors in the first chapter and said, 'the book would live or die on its merits'. She did not join the group, and her book is now buried near a Siamese cat in Chichester Cemetery.

Look out for the next post in this series: Sharing the work / Making a plan / Making it watertight

Selling direct? The EU VAT laws lowdown

Guest post by Julie Relf of Applause Accountancy Services

Do you sell ebooks direct to consumers or non VAT registered entities?

Are any of these consumers outside the UK but within Europe?

If you answer Yes to the above, you need to be aware of changes in EU VAT legislation coming into effect on 1 January 2015.

To help guide you through the changes we have compiled a list of commonly asked questions we have been receiving:

What is changing?

Legislation comes into force which changes the “place of supply” of these services. Currently this is listed where the selling business is situated (so if you are a business in the UK the place of supply for all your sales is the UK), however from 1 January 2015 for digital services to consumers this changes to where the consumer is based. This means that the VAT applied to these services will be determined by which country the customer is based in.

For example

A non VAT registered individual in Spain downloads an eBook from your website. From 1 January 2015 you will need to charge this customer VAT at the rate applicable in Spain, report this on a Spanish VAT return and pay the VAT across to the Spanish authorities.

What types of service are included?

A full definition of the services included can be found here

But I’m only a small business and below the UK VAT threshold, will this affect me?

Unfortunately yes it will, there is no minimum threshold for these EU VAT requirements, every sale no matter how small needs to be charged the correct amount of VAT and reported in the correct country. Your first sale to a European country after 1 January 2015 will trigger the start of your reporting requirements for EU VAT. This legislation covers the whole of Europe and some countries do not have a VAT registration threshold so limits have been set to nil to comply across the board.

What information do I need to collect?

You will need to review your system to ensure you are collecting the following information:

1. Customer location

You will need to identify the location of each customer and maintain a record of this information. To do this you need to collect two of the following (and ensure they both confirm the same location):
customer address
bank details
IP address
SIM card country code
any other appropriate information confirming address

2. EU VAT registration number

For all EU customers, you will need to identify if they are VAT registered in their country by obtaining their VAT registration number. Any EU VAT registered customers are outside the scope of these requirements and will not need EU VAT adding or reporting. UK VAT registered customers would continue to report these on their EC sales lists.

If you cannot obtain a EU VAT number then the sale will need VAT adding at the rate applicable in the customer’s country and the sale will need reporting and VAT paying to the local authorities in that country.

Do I need to supply these customers with VAT receipts and if so what information do I need to include?

Reporting requirements differ between countries but it is expected that a “simplified” VAT invoice, showing the VAT charged and your VAT registration number will be required. This is not currently confirmed.

I offer training over webinar/Skype, is this included?

No, if the service is live with a presenter it is treated as a supply of training/education and so excluded from these rules.

However if the training is recorded or automated with no live presenter then it would be classed as a digital service under these EU VAT rules.

I sell apps via an app store, will I be affected?

VAT is due by reference to who your customer is, so in this case you will need to review the terms of the contract with each platform you use to check if you are selling to the app store or the end consumer.

If it is the case that you sell your app to the app store, who in turn sells the app onto the consumer, your part of the sale would be business to business, you would need to collect their VAT registration number and the transaction would be outside of these requirements. In this situation it would be the app store who would be required to report the EU VAT on sales to consumers.

A lot of the app stores are moving along these lines, Apple trade this way and Google Play have updated their terms inline as shown here

However some platforms act as agents taking a commission from the app sales, in this situation you would need to account for the VAT to the EU customers.

I sell eBooks via Amazon will I be affected?

The present situation is that Amazon deals with the end customers and deals with the VAT reporting.
[Triskele edit: Here you can find the detail of how the changes will be implemented at Amazon, the conversion of prices from VAT-exclusive to VAT-inclusive, the effect of pricing and royalty calculations, and how to check these changes to ensure your royalty rates.]

If you use other platforms you will need to refer to your agreements and the guidance from the platform provider.

How and where do I report?

You need to account for VAT in the country the customer is located, using the VAT rates applicable to that country. A list of these rates can be found here

This can be reported in two ways:

1. Registering for VAT in each applicable country and filing VAT returns in line with their legislation;
or

2. UK VAT registered businesses have the option to file returns via HMRC using the “Mini One Stop Shop” – MOSS

The MOSS service will allow you to enter the sales per country, calculate the applicable VAT due, send the reports to the required authorities and collect the payment from you for distribution.

Agent will be able to file EU VAT returns on your behalf using the MOSS system, however the registration for MOSS needs to be done by you. You need to register separately for MOSS: it is not included in your UK VAT registration.

The return are due for the quarters ended March, June, September and December.

Returns and payments are due 20 days after the end of a quarter.

To use MOSS you need to be registered for VAT in the UK and so will need to charge VAT on all UK sales. If you are not registered at present you will need to assess whether this will be beneficial for your business, an accountant will be able to talk you through the pros and cons. Update on this! HMRC have indicated that businesses may be able to “split” their sales separating out the EU digital services for the purposes of this VAT registration. The details are still being outlined but it would mean that the registration would apply to only the EU set of sales and UK sales would be remain outside of UK VAT. This would allow small businesses to use MOSS and only require them to register the business for UK VAT when the UK VAT threshold is met. When firm guidance is available we will update this matter.
 
How long will I need to maintain all the information?

You will need to keep the records for 10 years to comply with EU regulation. This is taken as 10 years from 31 December of the year during which the transaction took place.

This all sounds very complicated and costly for the amount of EU sales I have, can I avoid it?

The only way to remove yourself from these requirements is to stop all digital service sales to EU customers. You will need to assess whether the amount of sales (or potential sales) is worth the additional reporting requirements.

How do you do this? Well I’m not a tech expert by any means but Paypal and developers for Plugins for sites such as WordPress are coming up with solutions. It may be the case that EU digital baskets can be rejected at checkouts (and potentially offered a postal service). But it is a case of keeping your eyes out for a wave of solutions on the market.

So I’m definitely going to be inside these requirements, where do I start?

To get yourself prepared for the 1 January 2015 start date you need to review your systems and make the necessary changes to ensure:

1 You are recording the location of each customer;

2. You are recording (where applicable) customers’ EU VAT numbers;

3. You have made a list of the applicable countries and their VAT rates;

4. You have either a) registered for VAT in each applicable country and made a note of the reporting deadlines or b) you have registered with HMRC for MOSS (this can be done here);

5. If you are using an agent(s) to file EU or MOSS VAT returns on your behalf you have the appropriate engagements in place in advance of filing deadlines.

Full guidance on the changes and EU requirements can be found here and results from a HMRC Q&A session can be found here

Professional bodies across the UK have been appealing for the simplification of these requirements for small businesses for some time, however it looks increasingly unlikely that this is going to happen before 1 January 2015. It adds an increasing amount of administration on small businesses, going against the tax simplification policy the UK authorities have been striving to achieve. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and if the requirements do change we will be reporting back.

If you have any questions on the above or any other areas of accounting or tax, or would like assistance in this area please contact us at hello@applauseaccountancy.co.uk

Applause Accountancy Services Limited takes every care in preparing material to ensure that the content is accurate and up to date. However, no responsibility for loss for anyone acting from or refraining from acting as a result of this information can be accepted by Applause Accountancy Services Limited. http://www.applauseaccountancy.co.uk/