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.

A Taste of Triskele

Ah, the lazy days of summer. It’s hot, or not. You’ve set up the lounger/hammock/comfy chair. You’ve prepared a cocktail/opened a beer/brewed a cuppa. The next decision is what to read.

If only there were a sample platter: short, digestible and appetising stories with plenty more where that came from...

Ta da!
Triskele Books invite you to come adventuring through time and place.

We’ve picked eight of our most evocative tales to transport you otherwhere. But that’s not all. To truly experience the destination, each story is accompanied by a local recipe.

Our motto? A little of what you fancy does you good.

A Taste of Triskele
A tale, a place, a time, a taste.
Eight delectable short stories, each set in a distinctive location, accompanied by a local dish.
Fall in love with honey, bite into bitterness, sweeten the secrets, indulge your excesses, tickle your palette and free your imagination.
Whether you’re on a beach or in your own back garden, escape into extraordinary worlds.
Bon voyage. And bon appétit.

Available at Amazon

Available at Smashwords

Narrator Paul Hodgson talks ACX and Audiobooks

In the second part of our series looking into audiobook options now available for authors via ACX, we talk to narrator, Paul Hodgson, who has recently done a superb job narrating the first of JD Smith's epic historical fiction novels - The Rise of Zenobia.

Hi, welcome to Triskele Books blog. I’d like to ask first a little about your background and how you became a professional narrator?

I trained as an actor at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama – not that I’m Welsh, they were the only ones who’d have me – and worked professionally in theatre, TV and radio in London for a while before moving on to a writing career. On moving to the US (I married an American in the meantime) I returned to acting and founded a professional company, the Everyman Repertory Theatre, in Camden, on the coast of Maine in the far North East of the country, at the same time as holding down a full-time writing position. When I got fired from that – who needs journalists any more – the consequent drop in income precipitated me into doing what people have been telling me I should be doing for a long time – reading audiobooks. I started with a mammoth 22 hour commission of Alec Waugh’s The Balliols – a much better book than anything Evelyn ever wrote, and just continued from there.

What do you enjoy about narrating novels?

I love the preparation, research and character work. I’ve always spent a lot of time mastering accents – the Maine accent is a tough one and I’d only ever do it among friends or out of the state – and voices, especially when reading to my kids when they were growing up that it is that piece I enjoy the most. It’s like any performance, acting isn’t about pretending, it’s about making it real. Finding the emotion inside you that already exists and using it for the narration.

Obviously, with the creation of ACX there’s now more focus and opportunity for indie-authors to get involved in audiobooks, how do you see this change in the process affecting the market?

It seems to me that any change that opens up the market is a good change. The “mainstream” publishing business is a tough one, but people still really enjoy reading and listening to books so the demand is much wider than the mainstream business recognises.

When you’re searching for a new project, or considering author approaches, do you look at whether they are indie or traditionally published and would this affect your decision?

I’m just looking for a great story with cracking dialect.

What do you look for in a book to narrate?

 See above!

Do you think audiobooks will become more popular, and so more profitable with easier access to services like ACX?

I do. ACX is a great system for marrying authors with narrators. Most of my books so far have been direct commissions from Audible, but that’s a one-time fee, however successful the book is. I’d far rather share in the book’s success. That way I care more about how it’s doing.

What do you think makes a successful relationship between author and narrator?

Communication, communication, communication. Of course, if the author loves everything you’re doing, the communication piece is less important, but if there are issues then it is essential.

As an author, I’ve found the whole experience of working with yourself via ACX stress-free and enjoyable. How have you found working within the new service via ACX?

Without my studio and my proof/editor it would have been incredibly stressful, but fortunately they know what they are doing and I can just sit and read. Working with you has been a breeze and a pleasure. Don’t forget I’m an actor, a little praise goes a long way. As Laurence Olivier said in answer to Dustin Hoffman when he asked him why actors did what they did: “Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me…!”

OK, we’re not that bad.


The Rise of Zenobia is available via Audible

Interview with Susie Day

JW Hicks talks to Susie Day, author of The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones.


Did you always mean to write for young people?

Since I was seven. Then I forgot all about it. It wasn’t until Harry Potter hit (and sent me back to reread lots of beloved books) that I remembered, and binned all my overwrought undergraduate Works Of Fine Literature in favour of much more important stuff.

Which are the unforgettable books you read as a child?

The Twits by Roald Dahl, because it was the first book I ever chose for myself from a bookshop. The Wolves of Willoughby Chase by Joan Aiken, because it was the first book I didn’t finish; being ‘a good reader’ was important to my self-perception, and it was a big step to accept that I could choose not to slog through something I didn’t like. Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, because I refused to read it for years (urgh, ballet, how girly) and then discovered Petrova felt exactly the same.

I must confess that the final pages of Twice-Lived Summer made my eyes prickle. How were you affected when you wrote them?

Sorry! (Well. A bit.) It was a hard book to write, for a number of reasons. I actually wrote 50,000 words of a different take on the ‘living one year twice’ idea before realising it didn’t work, and starting over. Hooray for understanding editors. And during that time someone I worked and lived with died unexpectedly, leaving young children, which made me shrink away from following through with the darker side of the story. It felt both inappropriate and exhausting to make fiction about tragedy in that environment. But that’s life, I think. It rolls on regardless. Books need to acknowledge that too.

Are your stories tightly structured, or loosely formed, developing as the work progresses?
I’m not a planner, alas. I’ve tried! But if I write a beautiful chapter plan, I deviate from it so much by chapter 2 that it’s wasted work. Before I start a new book I need a sense of the shape and size of it, of character, a few pivotal scenes, and to know the ending (what it will mean or feel, if not clear detail). It makes editing harder and longer, but it seems to be what suits me.

Bluebell’s book is all Wales, isn’t it? How strongly does growing up in Wales influence your writing?

I grew up with the sea at the end of my road (murky pebbly Penarth beach from the top of a cliff, mind, so don’t get too misty-eyed). Going down Barry Island as a kid was my best thing ever. It wasn’t till I watched Gavin & Stacey in England, with English people, that I really clocked that there was stuff for me so distinct and familiar there that they found quirky and alien.

I have a complex relationship with my own Welshness - I’ve lost all my lovely SWelsh vowels (not on purpose, just osmosis from the voices around me), and being from Penarth in the first place doesn’t endear you to some - but I am Welsh. I will always be that person correcting friends who say ‘England’ to mean ‘the UK’. When I was young, I always found it frustrating that children’s books always seemed to be set in London; if there was ever something in Wales it was fantasy, drawing on some legend. Writing Bluebell let me nudge against that, and also draw on my own teenage memories of seaside towns, massive seagulls, funfairs, chips and hope.

Your writing style is so very readable, what’s the secret of its appeal to young readers, and how important is it that you have disabled and LGBT characters in your stories?

Thank you! Readability isn’t something I consciously think about - I’m just trying to tell the story that fits these characters - but I suppose I try to fuse the memory of what I loved in books as a kid with the children I know and work with now. I think that fusion is probably also what motivates me to make my work inclusive. I grew up on classics, wonderful books, Narnia and Swamazons and Malory Towers and I still love and recommend those stories - but they don’t reflect the world I live in, and not only because talking lions don’t exist here. Representation matters. To all of us.

Some authors’ work comes over as patronising, does working with teenagers save you from this heinous crime? If not what does? And have you any tips on how not to talk down to your readers?

Sometimes you wind up talking down to your audience in ways you never intended. My first novel for young adults, Big Woo, was about social media and internet relationships, as well as being a funny story of ordinary mortifying teenage shenanigans. I set out to write something even-handed about online life, that acknowledged that we might need to be mindful about what we share while emphasising the vast joy and value that friendships formed by keystrokes can have. Looking back, I didn’t get the balance right. The book gets used in US schools as a scary warning: ‘if you aren’t careful online, look what can happen.’ I can’t think of anything I’d find more patronising as a young adult.

I think starting from a position of ‘I’m trying to figure this Life thing out too’ not ‘I’m old, I’ve done this, I have all the answers’ is probably a good beginning. I work in a boarding school with teenagers (boys aged 16-19), and the best conversations I have with them are the ones where I acknowledge at the start that I don’t have an instant fix or a magic remedy to whatever’s up; that my job is to listen to them. It’s got to be a team effort. Reading should probably feel the same.

Your novel has a cast of fabulous characters, Bluebell’s unflappable, not easily embarrassed parents, her wonderfully drawn sister Tigerlily, and her motley collection of friends. Do these characters come to you fully formed, or do they grow as you write?

Blue, Tiger, and her mum and dad were set in stone pretty quickly; I usually begin with characters and build from there. I knew I wanted a nervy girl with a spectacular big sister (I’m the youngest of four so I know what that’s like x3). I knew I wanted them to stay in a caravan park a little bit like the one at St Mary’s Well Bay in Sully. Then I saw a rockabilly band that had a splendid woman drummer, and the family set-up was sorted. The friends were a mix of people my big sister hung out with when she was a teenager, and people I imagined I’d hope to be mates with if I were Blue, starting over in a new town and trying to redefine myself.

Read JW Hicks's review of The Twice-Lived Summer of Bluebell Jones here.

Marketing Benefits of Writing What and Where You Know

Guest post by Girl Cop author, Sandy Osborne

They say ‘write about what you know,’ so as serving officer, it seemed natural for me to use this resource and set my romantic comedy novels against the backdrop of a police station. Girl Cop the life and loves of an officer on the beat and Girl Cop in Trouble are loosely based on my experiences as a probationary officer and as I joined in the early ’90s I also wanted to set the story in that era.

Of course back in those days we didn’t have mobile phones or email which make it so easy for relationships to take off quickly today. Back in the 1990s love had to wait for fate to take its natural course which was sometimes a long and frustrating road. My first novel reflects my heroine, Sally’s heartache as she experiences this frustration with her courtship of Alex. It was sometimes tricky to keep within the correct era as texting and the general ease of contacting people is something we take for granted these days.

My novels are set in the historic city of Bath with real places and landmarks being included in the storyline. This in itself has proved an invaluable marketing resource. Even those readers who don’t know the places personally, recognise the locations - and Bathonians and those who have visited the City have provided really positive feedback. The anecdote relating the Bennetts Lane challenge has attracted a lot of great comments – some people have even gone out of their way to visit the road!

The Bath Tourist Board gift shop asked to stock the books and the independent bookshops display them on their ‘local interest’ stands. My most impressive scoop though was as the result of including a scene at the plush Bath Priory Hotel and Spa. I contacted the manager of the hotel and asked for permission to describe a romantic dinner in their Michelin starred restaurant. Not only did they say ‘yes’ but they also offered a meal for two as the prize for a draw at the launch of my book. The support didn’t stop there – they followed this up by offering a mini break alongside a review of the first book in My Weekly magazine (I approached the magazine myself and it has an impressive readership of over 300,000.) I have kept both relationships going and My Weekly are running the offer again with a review of Girl Cop in Trouble next month!

The first My Weekly review described Girl Cop as ‘Bridget Jones in Uniform’ which I take as a great compliment as I am a massive fan of Helen Fielding’s Bridget Jones trilogy and the tag line describes my books in an instant. I am now able to quote this in press releases and best of all I have been able to use it as an endorsement on the cover of Girl Cop in Trouble. Setting my novel within the Police and in the city of Bath has undoubtedly provided a boost up that all important marketing ladder in the self publishing world.



BIO

Sandy Osborne is a serving Police Officer who has self published her two novels with SilverWood Books. Sandy’s writing started after an unflattering picture of her running a charity half marathon was printed in her local paper and she felt compelled to respond with an amusing account of her training programme. She now shares her knowledge and tips for self publishing success with a diary of speaker events at Literature Festivals and with writing groups. A percentage from the sales from Girl Cop the life and loves of an officer on the beat and Girl Cop in Trouble is donated to The Police Dependants’ Trust and St Peter’s Hospice.


LINKS


Girl Cop the life and loves of an officer on the beat Amazon

Girl Cop in Trouble Amazon

Author Website

Twitter @Girlcopnovel

CreateSpace Vs Ingram for Print-on-Demand Distribution

Guest post by Karen Myers, from her original post on Hollowlands.

Note: The following observations reflect Karen's personal understanding of the differences between the two services, based on her own and others’ observations. They do not include private information received from any of the vendors involved.

INGRAM
The largest worldwide distributor of print books. When a bookstore orders a book, it probably comes from Ingram (perhaps through an intermediary).


Ingram offers two services for publishers: Lightning Source International (LSI) and IngramSpark. The former is for “real” publishers and was all they offered until a couple of years ago. Its contracts are daunting, its interface is a bit clumsy, and its communications are a bit slow and sometimes cryptic (especially to indie publishers who aren’t familiar with publishing industry terms). Indie publishers and others lamented, and Ingram offered a new service, Spark, with a friendlier front end and slightly more restricted discounting terms. They stopped letting most indies into LSI once Spark was launched (I got into LSI just in time). Both systems, I understand, use the same back ends and services — the only difference seems to be that there are fewer discount terms on Spark, and the front end/customer service is easier for the newbie. Ingram will charge you for returns, an area that terrorizes new indie publishers because they don’t know what to expect. (These days, it seems to be pretty harmless, now that bookstores have adopted just-in-time ordering practices instead of ordering in bulk and returning leftovers.)

CREATESPACE

CreateSpace (CS) is owned by Amazon and intended for indie publishers. It’s very user friendly, with good customer service. It had a fee per book, just like Ingram, but then dropped that altogether. It lets you use a CS ISBN if you don’t have one of your own. (Ingram requires you to have your own ISBNs, like a “real” publisher). In fact, it requires a CS ISBN for the Library portion of its expanded distribution service, presumably due to its relationship with Baker & Taylor.

There are two basic levels of CS distribution: Amazon-related, and expanded. The Amazon-related is closely tied to the KDP program, so linking your ebook and your CS POD book is very easy. CS also offers a webstore, for what that’s worth (I’ve never sold a book there).



The first Expanded service compares directly to Ingram.

Buying a print book from Amazon

Here’s how it works under the covers, as far as I and others can tell…

When Amazon receives an order for your POD book, and finds you only available via Ingram, the buyer can receive a “there will be a delay” message from Amazon. I believe this reflects Amazon’s unwillingness to preorder from Ingram and store in its own warehouses. I’m not sure if this is because Amazon considers Ingram to be competition to CreateSpace (which it owns) or because Ingram sees Amazon as competition or just because there is currently no contractual arrangement between Amazon and Ingram allowing it to stockpile titles.

When Amazon receives an order for your POD book, and finds you available via CreateSpace, the service is immediate. I believe Amazon automatically preorders stock from CS so that it will be available for sale, invisibly to you, and you are not charged if it sits there forever or is returned.

So why not only use CreateSpace – free ISBN, no charge for books, ease of ordering at Amazon? Because there’s a whole wide world out there that isn’t Amazon.

Buying a print book anywhere else

CS is NOT a worldwide distributor (other than for Amazon). When you use the CS expanded services, what happens is that CS uses Ingram to distribute the print book (like many other small vendors). It registers your book in the Ingram database, as “Publisher=CreateSpace” (EVEN IF YOU USE YOUR OWN ISBN, NOT ONE PROVIDED BY CS). This means when a bookstore (including online bookstores) looks for your print book, they search the Ingram database, find it under “Publisher=CreateSpace”, and if they are sensitive about Amazon as a competitor they may refuse to carry it. For example, at Barnes&Noble, where my ebooks are sold, my print books appeared as “available from third parties” (when I only used CS). Some bookstores think of Amazon as competition, and others associate CS with “indies” and scorn indies as presumed low quality.

If you use Ingram directly, you will pay an annual fee for the book, and it’s not as friendly as CreateSpace, and you will need an ISBN. But your books appear to bookstores as “Publisher=YourPublisherName” and no one can tell that you’re an indie publisher (there are thousands of publisher imprints). That means that your print books now appear at online retailers, matching your ebooks, and bookstores are willing to carry them.

Except for the ISBN, the Ingram costs are trivial. Here’s my thinking on why you need your own ISBNs anyway, though lots of indies just go for the short-term savings instead.

The current best practice recommendation is to use CreateSpace for Amazon (not the expanded services) and Ingram (LSI or Spark) for everywhere else.

Distributing via Ingram if you are already distributing via CreateSpace

If you are already on CS and want to go to Ingram, you must FIRST remove your book from CS expanded services (so that it is removed from the Ingram database). This will take a week or two and won’t disturb any of your Amazon customers (and you probably don’t have many other customers for your “Publisher=CreateSpace” entry). You will need to check that it’s been removed by going to Ingram and trying to enter your book with that ISBN – you’ll get an “already there” error if it hasn’t been removed yet. You may have to nag CS customer service until that’s done. The update cycles between the vendors take a while. Be persistent.

Do NOT load your book to Ingram with a different ISBN to avoid this process – having the same edition of your book with different ISBNs will cause problems for you. If you used a CS ISBN, consider it to be retired after the book is removed from the Ingram database – you can only use your own ISBN there. This means you should recreate your Amazon CS edition with your own ISBN, too, after this is done, so that your book has the same ISBN regardless of the retailer.

You can use the same PDF book interior file at both CreateSpace and Ingram, but you will probably need to adjust the PDF cover file because the paper stock used is not identical, and thus the paper thickness is not identical, making the width of the spine different for each service.

POD Quality

The level of quality for the two services’ POD products seems to be very similar, now that CS offers matte as well as glossy covers. Ingram offers more formats (for LSI, maybe not Spark) than CS, but since you will want the same formats for both services, that doesn’t matter. Both POD vendors are of reasonable quality these days, but not quite as good as bulk printing, and errors can happen (tilted covers, defects). There is anecdotal discussion of third party services doing the actual printing for CS that sometimes have quality control issues, but in my experience the problem rate is very low.

You can tell the difference between POD books printed by Ingram and CS if you look closely (paper thickness, color) – therefore I recommend that you put all the books in a series in both places, rather than have some in one place, and some in another. A customer who orders them all will tend to do so via the same retail channel and should therefore get perfectly matched sets. If you are going to be delayed placing all of your books with both POD vendors, do them series by series.
 



BIO

Karen Myers is the author of the best-selling novel To Carry the Horn, the first entry in the series The Hounds of Annwn, a contemporary Wild Hunt fantasy set in a fae otherworld version of the Virginia Piedmont. She is currently working on two new fantasy series: The Affinities of Magic, following a young wizard who launches an industrial revolution of magic, and The Chained Adept, following the adventures of a wizard with a mysterious past and an unremovable chain around her neck. More information is available at Perkunas Press.

Her stories have been published in Strange Horizons, Virginia Living, Virginia Sportsman, and Foxhunting Life.

A graduate of Yale University from Kansas City, Karen has lived with her husband, David Zincavage, in Connecticut, New York, Chicago, California, and more recently in the lovely foxhunting country of Virginia where they followed the activities of the Blue Ridge Hunt, the Old Dominion Hounds, the Ashland Bassets, the Wolver Beagles, and many other fine hunts.

Karen’s professional hunt country photography can be found at KLM Images. She writes, photographs, and fiddles from her log cabin in the Allegheny mountains of central Pennsylvania and can be contacted at KarenMyers@HollowLands.com.

Email: Karen L Myers
Twitter: @HollowLandsBook

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.