Novel London - a rare opportunity for novelists

The literary scene is rich with opportunities for poets and short story writers to read or perform their work in front of a live audience. Less common is the chance to hear anyone other than major established authors read from their novels.

This was the hole that Safeena Chaudhry sought to fill when she set up Novel London, a unique opportunity for newly publishing and unpublished novelists to read their opening chapter to an intimate audience in bookshops and other venues in central London.

Readings are also videoed and uploaded on the Novel London website - a valuable tool for promotion in this social-multi-media age.

Novel London takes place on the first Friday of every month. I attended my first one at Waterstones Covent Garden last February, when the theme was Love – though not necessarily the conventional hearts and flowers love associated with Valentine’s Day.

Since then I have talked to Chaudhry about why she set up Novel London.

“I like to capture moments and create narratives through writing, photography and video. There’s something about documenting that can transport us. Sometimes, we forget what we have achieved, who we once were, and some moments in time, captured digitally, can provide us with evidence. Reading in public is an act of courage and having a record of it can remind us of a moment that I hope the novelists will treasure.

When I completed my debut novel, Companions of Clay, I was very lucky to have a book launch at Foyles on the Southbank. The staff – Emelie, Celise, Frazier and Shane – were so generous and helpful, it gifted me an extraordinary day of my life. I didn’t get a recording of the event and all I have are my memories.

I had applied to the Arts Council for funding and been unsuccessful twice (more since), but I decided to go ahead anyway: I knew novelists, I had a venue (I’d hired the Big Green Bookshop) and I had recording and editing skills. I also knew a fantastic coach, Norma Cohen from Vital Sparks, who helped me immensely when I read at Foyles and she has worked with some of the novelists before their performances.

Since then, Charlie and David from Covent Garden in Waterstones have really championed Novel London and I could not have done it without their help. What began as a book reading event in my local bookshop came right to the heart of London and their support has been amazing. Novel London also takes place in different venues, independent bookshops (such as Travelling Through and the Big Green Bookshop). I’ve also met some talented, generous and amazing people on the Indie Author scene from the London Book Fair, ALLI and Meetup, some of whom have given valuable feedback and encouragement

Novel London for me is a platform for novelists and the novels that we might not otherwise have a chance to be aware of. It’s showcased yet-to-be published, independently published and traditionally published novelists. It’s a place of discovery and diversity. I want more people to go into bookshops and buy books and I also want them to connect with novelists in person and online. I want the guests to be inspired by the writing. Some novelists have written one novel and others have written half a dozen. Either way, sometimes we need to see the results of what happens when people just.keep.going."



ALLi member and literary novelist, Jane Davis, took the plunge in May to read from her novel My Counterfeit Self. She talks here about one of the bonuses of taking part in a Novel London evening – the services of professional voice coach, Norma Cohen.

“Tackling the escalators in an underground station while carrying a laptop bag and a suitcase full of books in rush hour is not recommended under ordinary circumstance. But ordinary circumstances these were not. On one of the hottest evenings of the year to date, I left my day-job behind and wove my way through London’s city commuters, to take part in Novel London’s Contemporary Fiction evening.

When I arrived at Waterstones, Covent Garden, Norma was putting Young Adult author Fiona Linday through her paces. Fiona was clearly at ease. She explained to me later how, working with children, she knows exactly what is required to keep a tricky audience engaged. In my book, my main character Lucy, a bohemian poet activist, expresses her concerns about precisely that:

‘Lucy had only ever imagined that single misfit she wanted to reach out to. The sheaf of poems trembled in her hand as she realised she had only small things – her voice, her words – to stop the audience wandering off to the bar.’

Norma encouraged us to engage with every member of the audience – and since the audience would be sitting in a semicircle this meant moving about and making eye contact. She was very encouraging. When it came to my turn, she suggested places where I should pause to give the words time to sink in, and words where greater inflection was required. In fact, she wanted me to start the chapter with a shout!

As it progressed, the practice session became interactive. Norma had us read lines from our first chapters in turn, giving the opportunity to compare delivery techniques and making us match rather than compete with one another. Finally, before the audience arrived, she put us through some relaxation exercises – to which I added a glass of white wine, for good measure.

Whilst I didn’t remember every suggestion, I did notice a marked difference in my delivery, and focusing on the audience, I was barely aware of the camera I had been so worried about. I didn’t even notice there was a second!”


If you have completed your novel, please feel free to send in the opening chapter, biography, and blurb to novellondon@gmail.com

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.

To Tweet or Not To Tweet

by Catriona Troth: @L1bCat

It took me a long time to get into Twitter. I was resistant for all the usual reasons (what is the point of telling everyone what you had for breakfast in 140 characters or less?) but also because I couldn’t get the hang of how I could focus on people who were saying something I might be interested in.

I have to say, though, when I was finally persuaded to take it seriously, it took me about a month to go from sceptical to seriously addicted.

I didn’t tweet to begin with.  I just went looking for interesting feeds.  I started in the obvious places – the radio channels I listen to, the newspapers I read, the magazines I’d LIKE to read but somehow never have time for. I discovered that these would often alert me to articles that were absolutely fascinating, but which otherwise I would probably have missed. All I had to do was click on the link at the end of the tweet, and there they were! Magic.

Keeping half an eye on feeds like @BBCNews ensured that I could be the first to pick up on breaking news stories. A quick skim was enough to filter those stories I was interested in and the rest I could ignore. Easy, too, to pick up news from Canada, where I grew up. 

I started tentatively retweeting some of my discoveries. I even composed a tweet or two of my own, feeling desperately self-conscious. As I started exploring some of the less trodden paths of the Twittersphere, the number of people I was following exploded.  And I started to gain a few followers of my own.

At this point I should probably stop and explain a few basics for those to whom Twitter is still an alien land.  (If you are already a seasoned explorer, just skip to the end of the indented text.)

Generally speaking, if you put something out on Twitter, it is there, in public for anyone to see, whether they have a Twitter account or not. However, once you have an account of your own, you have two basic ways of looking at the Twitterverse. 

If you click on someone’s Twitter handle (a name starting with @) you will see an image, a few details about them, and then everything they have tweeted, in chronological order, starting with the most recent.  There will also be a button, next to their name, which will give you an option to Follow them.

If you now go back to your Home page, you’ll see the tweets from everyone you have chosen to follow, all mixed up together, sorted in chronological order and constantly updated.

As I discovered, it’s very easy to get carried away in those early days following all manner of people.  Suddenly your home page is updating with tweets every couple of seconds.  You can’t possibly keep track of it all and you’re missing those real-time updates that were the reason you got excited about Twitter in the first place.  DON’T PANIC.  This is where Lists come in.

Lists allow you to sort the accounts you follow into groups (and ignore those ones you followed just to be friendly and which turned out to be a little bit boring...)

For example, I am interested in writing and news about book awards.  So I have a list of people who tweet interesting things on these topics, which is quite separate from my list of current affairs feeds.  So when I want to see what is going on in the literary world, I click on that list and I see ONLY the tweets from those people I have put in that list. And when I want my 6pm news fix, I can switch to my current affairs list.

Creating a list couldn’t be easier.  Just right-click on a name of someone you follow and you will see an option to <add to / remove from lists>. Select that and you will see the names of lists you have already created, with tick boxes next to them, plus an option to ‘create new list’.

Now you are following lots of interesting people.  What about getting people to follow you?

I made a conscious decision from the start that I wasn’t going to chase the maximum number of followers.  There are apps out there that will automatically follow other accounts for you, so many per day, and weed out those that don’t follow back within a set period. They can ramp up your followers pretty quickly. But I can’t see the point of having ten thousand followers if only ten of them were actually interested in reading what I have to say.  So I focused on interacting with people who were interested in the same issues as I was.  I retweeted things they had to say that I thought were interesting, and I posted stuff I thought they would engage with. It's a slower, more organic process, but one I hope will result in more committed followers - something along the lines of what what Dan Holloway (@agnieszkasshoes) calls ‘A Thousand True Fans.’ I am still a long way from achieving that, but the goal is there.

[Note that it’s possible to use management tools like Hootsuite to schedule tweets in advance, or spread them out.  Be careful, though, about allowing management tools to auto-retweet for you.  The things they choose to retweet may not always be the things you would choose for yourself and it can be shortcut to pissing off your followers.]

Now we come to some of the more interesting, less obvious things about Twitter. We should probably start by talking about hashtags.  Unless you have had your head buried in the sand for the last five years, you will have heard people talk about hashtags.  But even people who use Twitter can sometimes be confused about what they are and how to use them.

In essence, hashtags are just a way of making it simpler to search for something. Pick a topic – say the love of reading.  You tweet something interesting about the latest book releases and at the end of the tweet you write #lovereading.  If that hashtag catches on, and lots of other people use it at the end of what they have to say about the latest books, then anyone else will be able to type #lovereading into Twitter’s search box and see a whole load of tweets about books and reading from all kinds of people, whether they follow them or not.

One of the most exciting ways of using hashtags, I think, is in association with live events.  People attending those events can be told to use a particular hashtag (e.g. #LBF13 for the London Book Fair or #ManBooker for the Booker Prize Awards night) and anyone, anywhere can get a blow by blow account of what is happening more or less in real time.  So if you wanted to be, say, the first to know who won the Costa Book Award – you could check out #CostaBookAwards.

Twitter can also be an amazing way of connecting with people you would otherwise have no easy way of contacting. 

Call me old-fashioned, but ‘friending’ someone on Facebook is quite a personal act.  It presumes some prior relationship – or suggests the desire for a future one.  ‘Liking’ a Facebook Author page, on the other hand, is quite a passive act. It places you in the role of ‘fan’.

Twitter on the other hand is both public and egalitarian.  What people say on there is consciously intended for the whole world to see. And it enables its participants to engage with one another on a level playing field.

Essentially, Twitter provides three ways to engage with other users.

As well as retweeting someone else’s tweet (which simply makes their tweet appear in your feed, visible to your followers as well as theirs) you can REPLY.  This creates a conversation thread that links tweets together.  It also sends the originator an alert that someone has responded to their tweet.

By putting their twitter name at the start of a tweet, you can send a tweet to them.  This will appear in the list of tweets in your account, but won’t be automatically shown to those who follow you (or them).

Finally you can send them a direct message (a DM) which can only be seen by you and the recipient. Personally, I am not a fan of unsolicited DMs, but they can be a useful way to follow up privately on a conversation that opened in public.

Because of what I see as the egalitarian nature of Twitter, it can be amazingly easy to connect with figures in the public eye.  Of course, those with thousands upon thousands of followers may sometimes be too busy to respond (though they often do).  But my first connection with Alex Wheatle (@BrixtonBard, author of East of Acre Lane) and Horace Panter (@horacepanterart,  bassist of the Specials), both of whom I interviewed on my blog, came via Twitter.  I didn’t jump right in and ask for an interview.  I followed them first, engaged with what they had to say, waited until they had responded to me a few times so they had some idea who I was.  But it worked! I got my interviews – and much more easily than with others with whom my only point of contact was with their agent.

Finally, people, I need hardly say, that you should not use Twitter to stand on your soap box saying, “My book’s coming out; buy my new book!” Twitter is not about being a market trader on a slow Saturday.  As Alexandra Heminsley (@hemmo) put it at Byte the Book (#bytethebook), it is about ‘creating a generous space around you.’  Be authentic.  Be interesting.  Make connections.

Facebook Author Pages - a guest blog by Linda Gillard

This week we are delighted to welcome Guest Blogger, Linda Gillard, to talk about using your Facebook Author page to connect effectively with readers.

Linda, you’re a successful indie author publishing non-genre fiction, which is notoriously hard to market. How have you used social networking?

Someone said 98% of all book marketing is a complete waste of time. The trouble is, no one knows which 2% actually works. It’s really hit and miss. I can’t claim I knew what I was doing, but looking back, I can see I’ve steered a steady course through the choppy seas of self-promotion and online marketing, just focusing on writing novels (seven since 2005) and interacting with readers.

I don’t have a personal blog and I don’t tweet. Facebook has been my main promotional tool. I rejected Twitter partly on time grounds, but mostly because I’m just not interested in reading tweets. I keep up with friends, family and readers in email and on Facebook. I thought a personal blog would take up too much time and might siphon off writing energy, so instead, I offered to guest blog whenever I had a book to promote. That was useful for reaching new readers, yet didn’t become a time-consuming chore. It also provided me with something new to share on my page.

I don’t have a huge FB following (887 currently) but many of them are very keen. They tweet for me, share my posts and talk about my books on forums. An author told me recently, “There's always chatter about you on Twitter” and that’s one of the reasons I don't tweet. A reader promoting me is far more convincing than self-promotion.


Why did you decide to set up a FB author page? 

In 2009 I’d been dropped by my publisher and I was waiting for my agent to find me a new one. Readers kept asking me about the next book and I continued to be short-listed for awards after I’d been dropped, so there was still book news to share. I got to grips with FB as a way of keeping myself in the public eye.

I kept my page lively, personal and positive. I was conscientious about responding to anyone who posted on my page. I also made sure I visited other pages and made my presence felt there, but in a genuine way.

I was just making it up as I went along really, dreaming of the day I’d hit 100 followers!


How did you create a FB page readers would want to follow?

I don’t know, but I can tell what I didn’t do. There were no puppies or kittens, no pictures of food, nor did I post pictures of half-naked men. (Though I realise hunky guys cuddling kittens would have got a lot of “likes”!) I posted mainly about book-related topics and topics related to my books: textiles, castles, island living, World War I, music, landscape, wildlife. There was plenty of variety.

I tried to make my page fun but intelligent, the sort of page I would want to visit. I kept the posts and links stimulating and informative, the sort of thing that invited engagement. I also kept it local. I live in the Highlands and most of my fiction is set there, so my page reflects that. People often find my page because of shared posts about Scotland.

I also shared my writing and marketing process. Readers were interested and keen to help. They gave me useful feedback about titles, covers, prices, blurbs. I think that gave them a sense of “ownership” of the books, which meant they were then happy to promote them.


Was there a tipping point when your page took off?

Yes, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012. I had to decide whether to go public on my page. I’d always been open about my mental health history (because I’d explored mental health issues in stigma-busting books like EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and UNTYING THE KNOT). I could see no reason why I shouldn’t go public with my cancer journey.

It was the best marketing move I ever made. Health issues on my page found me a new audience. My sometimes lengthy cancer posts were shared and people posted to say they’d bought one of my novels on the basis of how I’d written about my experience, which was honestly, but with a lot of dark humour.

I discovered readers like to feel they know you personally. They love to hear about your ups and downs. My followers have watched me go from dumped mid-list author to indie bestseller. They’ve seen both my kids get married. They’ve followed the saga of my cancer, subsequent disability and slow recovery. It's been quite a soap.


Do you think the fact you had an existing fan-base when you went indie gave you an initial 'critical mass' of FB followers from which to grow?

More importantly, I’d already had three books traditionally published. There was a body of work to post about and ready to read. Pre-Facebook, I had a small, enthusiastic fan-base – in the hundreds, not thousands. After I went indie in 2011, HOUSE OF SILENCE found me tens of thousands of new readers, but the growth on the FB page has always been slow and steady.


What advice would you give to someone starting from scratch without an existing fan base?

Be patient. It could take years to build a following.

Look at author pages with a large, active following. Observe what they do (and don’t do).

Keep self-promo to a minimum. Even when you aren’t plugging them, you’re still promoting your books. Readers think – not unreasonably – that an interesting person might write interesting books. So don’t promote your books, promote yourself, your interests and especially the issues in your books.

Remember, you get out what you put in. If you make your posts informative, witty, passionate, quirky, personal, people will come back for more. Cats in fancy dress make people smile, but they don’t sell books.


Linda Gillard lives on the Black Isle in Scotland. She’s the author of seven novels, including STAR GAZING, short-listed in 2009 for Romantic Novel of the Year and HOUSE OF SILENCE, selected by Amazon UK as one of their Top Ten "Best of 2011" in the Indie Author category.

Her latest book is CAULDSTANE, a gothic novel in the romantic suspense tradition of Daphne du Maurier and Mary Stewart.



Website: www.lindagillard.co.uk
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/LindaGillardAuthor

CAULDSTANE - http://goo.gl/L3KtQY
HOUSE OF SILENCE - http://goo.gl/7mUZjS

Make Friends With Your Independent Bookshop

by Catriona Troth

The 4^th January this year was a landmark day for me.  It was the day I was able to tweet that my two books were IN STOCK at my local independent bookshop.

It wasn’t something that happened overnight.  My connection with the bookshop began almost exactly two years ago, long before I published either of my books. At the time, the news was full of reports of independent bookshops closing down all over the country.  Chorleywood Bookshop, run by Sheryl Shurville and Morag Watson, had not long since won the southeast regional award for Independent Bookseller of the Year, and I wanted to find out how they managed to make their shop a success.

Sheryl Shurville and Morag Watson

The answer, I found, was an incredible amount of hard work and dedication, coupled with a whole range of imaginative ways of connecting with readers.  I wrote about it for the February 2012 edition of Words with Jam, and Sheryl and Morag were delighted with the coverage.

One thing stuck in my mind, though. When I asked them about stocking self-published books, they exchanged a look. “We do take books from self-published authors, on sale and return,” I was told.  “And some are very good.  But some are awful, just dreadful.  You could never promote them.  The look of some of the books… We try to be encouraging, but it’s hard.”

So when the first three Triskele books were published a few months later, I was relieved to find them take one look at J D Smith’s beautiful covers and immaculately formatted interiors and agree to take a few copies.  We had done no local promotion though, and a few weeks later, the books were returned, with only one sold. An early lesson learnt.

Come November, and I again used my connection with Words with Jam to get a press pass for the annual Chorleywood Literary Festival and write about the events. And that planted the seeds of an idea in my mind.

My first novel came out in June 2012 and was launch at Foyles, along with three other Triskele titles.  By then we knew that our set of books would be published in November and the question that kept buzzing in my mind was – could we launch them at the Chorleywood Lit Fest?

By then, I knew the format of the festival – spread out over a couple of weeks, with events on evenings and weekends.  And I knew that as well as attracted big names, they had held free events promoting new, upcoming writers.

So armed with that knowledge, I went to them with a pitch we had worked out between us – something that would combine a launch of our new titles with an interactive event aimed at those interested in self-publishing and author collectives. As it was to be a free event, and hence no ticket revenue, we offered to make a small contribution to the cost of running the events. And we would also manage the sale of our own books, so the bookshop wouldn’t have to order them or worry about any overstocks.

To my delight, Sheryl and Morag jumped at the idea and supported us every inch of the way. They went out of their way to be helpful, included us in their online and print publicity and managed the bookings for us.  In return, we followed them on Twitter, connected where we could with other authors attending, and made sure we promoted the other Lit Fest events.

Triskele titles selling well

As you can read elsewhere, our launch day was a resounding success.  We sold lots of books, made lots of friends, and generally had a brilliant time.  Importantly, the books had now been promoted locally.  So when people started asking me where they could buy the book, I made a point of directing them to the bookshop. It meant I made a little less per copy than I would selling them directly, but I knew that having Sheryl and Morag behind me promoting the book was by far the best way of reaching people I didn’t know personally.

The book sold well between the launch and Christmas. I had done what I needed, in terms of providing information to the ISBN agency, Nielsen, to ensure that the book was available through Gardners, which is the major supplier of books to independent bookshops in the UK.  But it wasn’t kept in stock by them. So by the time the shop had ordered it from Gardners and Gardners had ordered it from from my POD suppliers, Lightning Source, delivery could take a week or ten days – much slower than they were used to.

So after Christmas, they decided they were happy to hold a stock of both of my books, ordered directly from me. Hence my happy little tweet on the 4^th January.

So what is the lesson from all this? If you are an independent author, you need to build relationship with your local bookshop and library.  Don’t expect to be able to walk in as a complete stranger and ask them to stock your book.  Be a customer first.  If they organise events, attend them.  Follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook. You may not write for a magazine like Words with Jam, but you probably have a blog, or you can pitch something to your local paper.

Get to know them and let them get to know you.  And when you do approach them, be professional and business-like.

Believe me, it will pay off.

The Bookclub Niche

 By Liza Perrat

It’s no secret. Like many authors, I dislike the marketing side of writing. However, we all know that in today’s competitive marketplace, there’s no shying away from this aspect of the book business.

“Find your niche,” the marketing gurus say. “You can’t pursue them all, so choose what suits you.”

“Like Twitter?” I say.

Despite regularly dipping my toes in the vast Twitter Sea, I’m not convinced of its efficacy. “Buy my book!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”, “Read my 5-star reviews novel!” certainly turns me off quicker than mouldy fish. I am not about to do the same.

“Facebook then?”

“So, bang on and on about my novels, alienating my FB friends and family?”
And the thought of having a FB author page seems like just one more thing to keep up with, to take away my writing time.

Don't even mention any other of the myriad of marketing and networking platforms available today. I simply don’t have the inclination.

So, what other marketing and networking choices are there?

Well, there is the Bookclub. Just over a year ago, rather than discovering this myself, the ‘Bookclub Niche’ found me.

When I published my first novel in May 2012, I’d wanted to explore the possibility of speaking at bookclubs, but as I live in a rural French village, there were, for obvious reasons, no English-language bookclubs close by. Then, right before my annual pilgrimage home to Australia last Christmas, a friend who had read Spirit of Lost Angels (first in the L’Auberge des Anges trilogy) contacted me.

“All the girls in my reading group have read your book. Would you like to come to our Bookclub Christmas party and talk about it?”

“Oh yes, that would be nice,” I said, thinking, You bet I would!

Knowing only one member of this group, I was a bit nervous when I showed up and saw them all clutching copies of Spirit of Lost Angels. My fingers shook a little as I passed out copies of my carefully-prepared Question/Answer sheet, and I realised this was a serious group of demanding and unforgiving readers. But after several bottles of bubbly and some tasty food, the mood certainly lightened up and everyone, including me, was soon chattering away.



They asked questions about the writing and research process and gave me some excellent feedback on points they did and did not like about the book. I filed it all away for my next novel, when I was considering the story from the reader’s point of view.

And you know what, it was Great Fun!

An old school-friend from a different bookclub (Bulli bookclub) had also contacted me around the same time. Still serious readers, this group was entirely different, and, after a short time speaking about Spirit of Lost Angels, we spent the evening drinking Margaritas and eating pizza.

So, different groups of people, different dynamics, but again … Great Fun.

Word travels fast in the city of Wollongong, New South Wales, and this year the Keiraville bookclub asked me to come and speak about Spirit of Lost Angels.

 

 

 

An excellent lunch of fine food and wine provided the backdrop for an in-depth discussion about where story ideas come from, how I organise my writing and research schedule (what schedule?), and how long it takes to write a book. I answered their questions eagerly and we spent hours talking about novels in general – our likes and dislikes – which, as an avid reader, I found most inspiring. I signed their copies of Spirit of Lost Angels, and passed around our Triskele Books bookmarks. I also spoke about the other Triskele books, and handed out my colleagues’ bookmarks in a sly bit of team-promotion.


The other evening, the Bulli girls again invited me to join them for more Margaritas and pizza at Ryan’s Pub, to talk about my second novel in L’Auberge des Anges trilogy, Wolfsangel.

Of particular interest was the true World War 2 crime that inspired Wolfsangel.

“What’s next?” they asked.

I told them a little about Midwife Héloïse – Blood Rose Angel, the final book in L’Auberge des Anges historical trilogy.

So, if this type of marketing/networking appeals to you, you might be wondering how one finds willing bookclubs.

The most obvious place to start is with friends. An internet search will probably show up local bookclubs. Or just ask around your local area. So many people enjoy reading groups these days, and will jump at the chance to have an author speak at one of their meetings. Perhaps offer a free copy of your book to a group member, and a speaking event, if they would consider it for their club. No obligation of course!

Take along your promo material: bookmarks, postcards, whatever you have. I’m trying to convince my Triskele colleagues to get pens or mugs or something made up, to hand out at events like this. People love goodie bags.

Prepare copies of a Q/A sheet or a study guide to hand around. This post by my Triskele colleague, JJ Marsh will help you to make a study guide. Some groups will welcome this, others won’t be bothered. As I said … different groups, different dynamics.

If the event is successful, send a collective email thanking the people for inviting you, and offer to attend a future session for your next book. If possible, and appropriate, keep contact with the group afterwards.

“So, do you still hate marketing and networking?”

I enjoy meeting new people and eager readers. I get to rave on about my books without my audience yawning or playing on their mobile phone. I spread the word about my novels, and those of my colleagues, to willing listeners. I’m gaining a readership, person by person, and isn’t that what they say about marketing: it’s no sprint, but a marathon?

So, nope, I love it!

Reaching Your Readers

Lessons in Marketing from London Book Fair 2013

By Catriona Troth


I think most of us here at Triskele would agree the toughest thing we have had to take on for ourselves since going Indie is the dreaded marketing. And these days, it’s not just Indie authors that have to deal with it. Unless you are one of the tip-of-the-iceberg authors that the big publishers reserve nearly all of their marketing budget for, chances are, at some point, you are going to have to come out of your garret and do some self promotion.

Not all authors fit the stereotype of the shy, retiring type who would rather deal with characters on paper than readers in person. But even for those who relish a chance get out there and perform, it can be tough to switch from those familiar, introspective creative/editing modes into something a whole lot louder. So believe me, anything help we can get is more than welcome. And in these last couple of weeks we’ve found some diamonds.

First of all, there was the Booksellers’ webinar Metadata: Get It Right First Time.

Then, two of the highlights of the London Book Fair 2013, and the two events from which we brought home copious notes and a headful of ideas to try, were:

Joanna Penn – The Creative Penn – Advanced Online Marketing for Authors, and

Patrick Brown, Director of Community, Goodreads: Helping Readers Discover Your Books

All three of these have kindly made their presentation available on the web, and we have no intention of trying to duplicate them. But we thought we would share a few of the ideas that made us think, “we really have to do that!” And those basically split into two main areas – talking to your readers and (gulp!) metadata.


Talking to Your Readers


Let there be no misunderstanding, building the sort of author platform that has hundreds, or even thousands, of fans clamouring for your next book is a long, slow process. It’s not going to happen overnight. But you have to start somewhere, and there are ways to make the foundations for that platform more secure and longer lasting.


One of Joanna Penn’s key tips is not to let your potential readers slip from your grasp for lack of preparation. Make sure you have an email sign-up on your website / blog etc so that you have a way of contacting readers who have, say, shown an interest in your first book when you are about to release your second. (And if you write two different types of books, make sure that you keep two separate email lists, so that you are not telling the readers of your book on the banking industry all about your latest erotic novel!)


Goodreads has been – and I hope will remain, even after its controversial takeover by Amazon – one of the best ways of connecting with a community of potential readers.


One of the first things you should do is to set up an author profile page on Goodreads – and make that page as engaging as possible. Put a picture on there. Include a bio. Link to your website, Facebook and Twitter feeds. Include an RSS feed to your blog, so readers can see you latest posts.


And then get out there and talk! Talk about the books that matter to you. If star ratings make you uncomfortable, just leave a review. Engage in conversations with other readers – but not about your own books. The aim is to be the guest at a cocktail party that people want to talk to - not the double-glazing salesman that they slam the phone down on.


The right place to let people know about things like book launches, giveaways, book signings, etc, is the status update on your own page.


Goodreads Giveaways are a well-known marketing tool. Most people hope that they will lead to a spike in sales, or at least in reviews. In truth, it is probably more realistic to expect a spike in people putting your book on their ‘to read’ shelves, and to treat anything else as a bonus.


Currently, you can only give away physical books on Goodreads, not ebooks. You’ll need to decide on how many books to give away, and which territories you are prepared to ship to (so you don’t suddenly find yourself with a massive bill for postage and packing). You can, however, give away books from your backlist – say, as a way of drumming up interest for a new release – simply by leaving the publication date blank when you are setting up the giveaway.

Patrick Brown, in his talk at the London Book Fair, suggested that a month was the ideal time for a giveaway. Other indie authors have said this is much too long and that you only get people participating in the last few days, so I guess this is a matter of trial and error.

Listopia is the area of Goodreads that has ‘public’ list (as opposed to private lists set up by individual readers). Bear in mind that it’s okay to add your book to a list of ‘Historical Novels set in Revolutionary France’ – but not to a list of ‘The Fifty Best Fantasy Novels of 2013’.

And of course, you can always ‘talk’ to your readers directly. Technology these days makes it very easy to record podcasts and upload them to your website. These could be audio-samples from your book, or they could be you interviewing other writers. If this is your thing, then the potential is endless.


Metadata

Say the word ‘metadata’ and watch a roomful of people screw up their faces as if you’d asked them to make sense of the General Theory of Relativity. But really it’s something most of us make use of every day of our lives.

You may all be writers, but first you were readers. Chances are you buy, or at least search for books online. If you go into a library or a bookshop and ask for a specific book, the librarian or bookseller searches for it in a catalogue. So what ensures that you find the book you are looking for?

Metadata.

Whatever catalogue you are searching, you need the title to be accurate and the author’s name to be consistently given (not J.K. Rowling in one place, Joanna Rowling in another and Jo Rowling in yet another). And that’s if you know specifically the book you are looking for.

Suppose you have written a crime novel about a female serial killer going on the rampage through the Norfolk Broads. What you would like to happen is that your novel comes up as a suggestion when a reader searches for, say:

Crime novels with female serial killers

Crime novels set in Norfolk

And maybe also, crime novels set in rural England, or crime novels set around boats or... Well, it’s up to you, really.

So this is where two things become very important.


First of all, there is the ‘short description’ of your book. This is NOT the place to put your blurb, but rather to put all information that will allow people to categorise your book.

Secondly, there are the key words. There will be various places to put this information, depending on where you are uploading to, be it Amazon, Nielsen or wherever. The important thing is to make sure that it is

Relevant to the way that a reader might search for your book

Accurate (you’re not pretending that the book is something it’s not), and

Consistent across all the places you are entering it

There are basically two types of keywords – the ordinary sort, which are one or two words in length (e.g. novella, crime fiction, young adult etc) and long-tail keywords, which are whole phrases like the ones I used above (crime novels with a female serial killer).


Joanna Penn has some great tips for finding the most effective keywords for your book.

Her first step is simply to brainstorm all the keywords / long-tail keywords that could possibly relate to your book. Next you use those keywords in two places to find out what people have actually been searching for - Google Ads and Amazon itself. Google Ads will tell you specifically about numbers of recent searches. Amazon doesn’t – but you can deduce the highest frequency searches by what appears via the ‘automatic fill-in’ when you start typing in their search field.

Once you have done that, you compare the results from the two sources and pick the TOP FIVE long-tail key words to include in your metadata. Joanna has plenty of evidence from authors who have followed her advice that this can have a direct and immediate effect on your sales.

Okay, that was probably the easy bit. There is another side to metadata that is slightly more arcane, because here you have to stop thinking like a reader and think instead about the publishing industry and how they have been classifying books over many many years. Like any big industry, they have standards and codes that can make it sound as if they are part of a secret society. But it’s really not that difficult, and all the information is publically available.

First of all there is the BIC Basic Required Information. This is simply the list of basic information about a book that a traditional publisher would be expected to supply. If you’ve filled in the form to obtain ISBNs from Nielsen, a lot of it will look familiar. The more of this information you can supply, and the earlier you can supply it, the easier it will be for all forms of search mechanism to find your books.

Secondly, and I suspect that this is something that a lot of Indie Authors may be missing out on, there are the BIC standard subject categories. These are simple codes which computers can recognise and that will identify whether a book is say,

Crime and Mystery [FF], or Erotic Fiction [FP]

Beyond these two letter codes, there may be further subdivisions. (Under thriller and suspense [FH], for example, there are spy thrillers [FHD] and legal/political thrillers [FHP]). You can identify short stories, or fiction in translation. You can indicate if your books is of gay/lesbian interest. You can add geographical codes to show that your book is set in a particular region or country, or a code to show what time period your historical novel is set in.


None of this mandatory, but using the codes wisely and well could increase your book’s visibility, which is what this is all about. I would suggest you take a look at the User Guidelines before you plunge into anything, but for fiction in particular, it is really not that complicated.