Likeable heroes and heroines

Before she began Emma, Jane Austen wrote, "I am going to take a heroine whom no one but myself will much like." I think she was wrong; certainly these days most readers like Emma. The heroine we don't like is Fanny Price, so outwardly meek while inwardly censorious about everyone else. It's the strength of a good book that we can have an opinion of the characters not necessarily the same as the author's.

I'm getting towards the end of the first draft of Unofficial Girl - 73,000 words out of an estimated 80,000 - and I've started wondering whether readers will like Nick Cavanagh, a spec op and one of the three main characters. He elbowed his way into a major role, ousting the disabled Marine who was to have been a key player in the story. Beth becomes romantically involved with him, believing he is there to protect her; in fact, he's hunting her replica. He's unscrupulous on occasion, an opportunist, ruthless and fairly selfish. But I like him. (I think the daughter does too, since she was disappointed when it turned out he is 5'10". She prefers taller men.)

I'm just writing the scene where the two Beths, the original and her identical copy, get together for the first time. Nick has tried and failed to get Beth One on her own and give her an edited version of events which will show him in a better light, and Beth Two is about to tell all.

Beth Two took the stool next to Beth and began to eat, apparently in no hurry to enlighten her. Her demeanour was relaxed and blithe, as if she might whistle were she not eating. Nick made himself a coffee while helplessly waiting for the truth to emerge like a rat from a toilet.

The Afrika Reich - Guy Saville's book launch

Last night the daughter and I went to the launch party of Guy Saville's alternative history thriller, The Africa Reich, in Waterstones Piccadilly.

I've never been to a launch before, so didn't know quite what to expect. The first surprise was that there is a large and busy bar on the fifth floor of Waterstones, an ideal rendezvous spot for book-lovers. Guy's do was around a smaller bar at one end of the vast space, with sofas, wine and piles of The Afrika Reich, which noticeably dwindled by the end of the evening.

The bar was crowded. I met some internet friends and acquaintances - lovely to put a face to the personalities I know from writers' websites. Katherine Robb, Justine Windsor (who has just got herself an agent), Carlie Lee, Katherine Webb, author of the bestselling Legacy, and Fraser Grace, playwright. Guy gave a brief and apposite speech, then sat in a corner to sign copies of his book. You had to take a copy to the fourth floor to pay (there was a queue) and return for a signature (another, longer queue, as Guy wrote appropriate messages for each person, not just his name).

It's a beautifully-produced hardback, with a map in the front and Germanic dropped caps, and Guy is a terrific writer. I'm really looking forward to reading it.

Trying to be a Time Lord

I'm 65,000 words into the current novel, which I think may be 80,000 words long when finished (it's difficult to judge) and I'm having a worse than usual battle with Time.

You'd think it wouldn't be hard for an author; after all, I'm in total control of the world I created - except when the characters get above themselves - and I'm telling the story in chronological order. I've printed out a calendar of the weeks I'm using, and have noted what happens on which day. Simple, huh?

Actually, no, and I think it's because of the structure of Unofficial Girl. At the start, Beth Chandler is duplicated in a flawed experiment, and alternating chapters tell the stories of Beth One and Beth Two, in third and first person narratives. This is harder to write than Remix, because just as I get on a roll, I have to switch to another character/group of characters. I also have to stop one Beth getting ahead in time when not much is happening to her, and there is lots of action in the life of the other.

I've tried novel writing software, but you have to learn how to use it to benefit, and I'm not convinced enough of its worth to expend the time. I can only admire and envy Gary Corby, who does spreadsheets to fine-tune his plotting. Darned if I could.

I'll just have to muddle on, grim and determined. I'll get there in the end. Watch this space.

My very own Kindle

I wanted a Kindle - such a neat and clever device, but I'm not reading a great deal right now, since I'm finishing my fourth novel, and have no time. I don't do holidays, and thank goodness, I'm no longer hanging around for hours in the fracture clinic at the Royal London Hospital (what a godsend it would have been last year) so it was hard to justify the expense.

But Wednesday an unexpected parcel arrived; an early birthday present from my insanely generous sister, and there it was; my own Kindle 3G!

It's a nifty bit of design. I like the graphite colour, so classy, and its lightness in the hand; the instructions are right there on the machine, clearly written, and I can imagine I will quickly get used to reading on screen so the Kindle disappears. It's a one-trick pony, and the better for it; a dedicated e-reader.

I can now see for myself why people are so enthusiastic about their Kindles, and get so fond of them. I believe they will, sooner than we think, take over from paperbacks.

Interview with famous author Lexi Revellian :o)

You can find out all about me and my writing at Sandra Patterson's blog today.

Discover how I went from rejection by all the best literary agents in the UK to becoming an indie author who has sold more than 12,000 ebooks in less than six months.

(And note I don't use the expression 'roller-coaster ride' once in the whole interview.)

The cartoon is by my daughter.

THE AFRIKA REICH rolls off the presses

The very first copies of Guy Saville's soon-to-be-released hardback, The Africa Reich emerge from their production line. I think this is one of the most exciting clips I've ever seen, and it's not even my book!

It will be available to buy on February 17th 2011 - or you could get your order in now ahead of the crowd.

10,000 e sales of Remix

Forgive my boasting - it's just such a landmark.

When I published Remix on Amazon in August 2010, I had no idea that my sales for the Kindle would take off the way they did. In the first six weeks, I didn't sell many; eleven on Amazon, and seven on Smashwords (never have equalled those first Smashwords sales!)

Then I lowered the price to 86p hoping to persuade readers to try an author they'd never heard of, and the book started selling - 81 in the last ten days of September. In October I sold 669 copies, in November 1,559, and in December 4,281. So far this month, I've sold 3,398. Remix has spent 97 days in the UK Kindle top 100.

One of the best things has been connecting with readers, and knowing that people were willingly spending hours reading a novel I wrote - and enjoying it. Some have emailed me, asking about my next book, which gives me a real kick. Without the Kindle, I wouldn't have been able to prove there was a market for Remix. (The paperback has had modest sales, because it's not possible to compete on price with POD, or get into the bookshops.)

After a year of fruitlessly submitting Remix to literary agents, it's great to feel vindicated; to suspect that had an agent and a publisher taken the book on, they'd have made a tidy profit.

N.B. 1) Alan, you were right.

N.B. 2) Victoria Strauss, if you don't believe these figures, email me for proof :o)

Why wouldn't you epublish?

So you've finished writing your novel; you've gone over it dozens, if not hundreds of times, till it is as polished as you can make it; you've sent it out to beta readers, and used some of their suggestions. If you need it (and it's a myth that every author does) you've paid a professional proofreader.

Now what?

If you buy lottery tickets each week in the hope you will win - after all, someone has to - and enjoy banging your head against a brick wall, your course is clear: submit your novel to literary agents. The publishing industry moves at the speed of a sloth with a hangover, so while you are waiting, as well as writing the next novel, why not publish for the Kindle on Amazon? Because:

• You will get some experience of marketing, always useful.

• You will find out what the paying public thinks about your book; on Amazon, you can expect slightly less than one review per hundred books sold.

• You will start to make money immediately.

• If your book sells well, this may impress the literary agent of your dreams; in fact, at some point agents are going to wake up to where the good non-contracted authors hang out these days, near the top of the Kindle chart, and start prospecting there.

Is there a downside? I think not. Some say you should not give away your first publishing rights, as publishers will not touch your book if you have. Frankly, if a publisher believes he can make money from your book, he won't give a damn about that. Suppose your ebook doesn't sell? If you've made every effort to promote it, and your price is right, you may have to face the fact that it's not as good as you'd hoped; or that it's a minority taste.

And you still have the agent lottery to try.

How to publish for Kindle on Amazon

NOTE: since KF8, I no longer use this method. See THIS POST for my latest.

To anyone who hasn't done it, publishing for the Kindle on Amazon can seem a formidable task, so this post is to share my tips on how I published Remix. There are other ways - and you can always pay someone else to do it. JA Konrath recommends the person he uses. Allow about a day to do it my way.

• Prepare your book as a Word document. Remove page numbers and headers. Make a title page; I'd advise condensing the usual front matter to one page. Put the indents to three characters, and start each chapter on a new page using Ctl and Enter. I used a tilde (~) between scenes, as the conversion process can remove line spaces on Kindle for PC. [Update: to add a space between paragraphs use Shift-Return at the  end of a paragraph. Unlike Return on its own, all the Kindles respect these - except the Kindle Fire if the blank lines follow a page break.] N-dashes with a space either side allow the text to flow better than M-dashes. Consider if you should put a bit about another of your books with a link, or a link to your website, at the end.

• Download Mobipocket Creator (free) and from the home page, import your Word document.

• Click on Metadata to the left of the page you are now on, and fill in your book's details and cover. You will need to use Ctl and V to paste. You no longer need to include your cover image at the front of the text - Amazon's KDP now has a box you tick and your cover will be added as the first page of your ebook.

• Click File and Save As, and the document will be saved in HTML form where you choose on your computer.

• Go to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing. Register, go to your Bookshelf and click Add a New Title. Follow the instructions carefully.

• Once your HTML file is loaded, you get to the most important part of the process, Preview. Preview gives you an approximation of what your text will look like on a Kindle (don't worry that the page has no margins - it will on the Kindle). At this stage, go through every single page looking for formatting flaws which have popped up, such as passages in bold or italic or incorrect indents. Put these right on the HTML document as you find them. You don't need any knowledge of HTML to do this; it's easy to work out which bit of code is wrong, and replace it with a sound bit of code from a correct passage. Remember to change the code at the end as well as the beginning of a paragraph. Warning: this painstaking process may take hours, depending how much extraneous concealed formatting your original Word document had. But it's essential.

• Reload the improved text, and check again.

• Repeat until your book looks the way you intended.

• Fill in the rest of the details.

• Publish! If you have a Kindle, download a copy to check; if you don't, download Kindle for PC and check on that.

• Sell lots of copies.

For tips on print books' typography, see my post Typography and the self published novel.

REMIX in today's Times newspaper!

Paul J told me Remix was on page 31 of today's Times; I rushed out and bought a copy, and here it is. The article is about sales of romance titles booming, because if you read on a Kindle, no one can tell whether your taste runs to Tolstoy or Katie Price.

Mark you, their definition of a romantic novel is pretty loose, as is Amazon's. I wouldn't call Remix a romance as such, and it's been near the top of the Romance chart for months. Jane Austen's collected novels are there, and she said,

"I could no more write a romance than an epic poem. I could not sit seriously down to write a serious romance under any other motive than to save my life; and if it were indispensable for me to keep it up and never relax into laughing at myself or other people, I am sure I should be hung before I had finished the first chapter."

I'm dubious about the romance status of one or two others; Erotic Tales? Surely not. But it still gives me a buzz to see the cover of my novel in the Times.

REMIX stats on UK Amazon

• At some time today, Kindle sales of Remix went over the 5,000 mark, and are currently ticking up like a taxi meter in a traffic jam.
  
• On Christmas eve, I received my very first cheque from Amazon, for £194.22 (buns for tea!)
  
• My royalties in the UK for the seven days up to Christmas were £256.62.
  
• Remix has spent 74 days in the UK Kindle top 100 so far.
  
• It has 50 reviews on UK Amazon, 41 five star, 8 four star and 1 three star.
  
• I am amazed and delighted.
  

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all my bloggie friends

Future Me

There is a website called FutureMe, where you can write an email to be sent to yourself at a date chosen by you in the future.

I've got one in their system awaiting its moment, though I can't now remember what my concerns were at the time of writing or when it will arrive. It's interesting, because it gives you a way to juggle time.

On FutureMe's site, you can read a selection of anonymous emails, and they make poignant reading, like this one:

stop it

Lyss,

Stop thinking about him.

-Lyss

written Apr 11th, 2005, sent 1 year into the future, to Apr 13th, 2006

Did she manage to stop thinking about him? Or perhaps they got back together...

Writers are no more bound by chronology than God; we can nip back in the novel's time and change things just like a Time Lord (how handy that would be in real life). So much power confuses me, particularly with the current book, where alternating chapters deal with each heroine. It's hard to ensure one of them doesn't get to Thursday while her alter ego hasn't moved beyond Wednesday morning.

Amazon

Amazon is my new best friend.

We haven't always seen eye to eye - I remember getting a bit huffy with it a couple of years ago, though I don't suppose it noticed and I've now forgotten why. And ABNA (Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award) is in my opinion a waste of time, a view coloured by my entry, Trav Zander, being kicked out in the very first cull.

But Amazon has done for me what YouWriteOn, Authonomy and two years of submissions to literary agents didn't succeed in doing; it's allowed me to offer my writing via Kindle to the paying public and see whether readers like it.

And the good news is that a lot of them do. As I write, I've sold 3,166 e-copies of Remix since publishing in August, mostly in the last two months. Virtually all those are Kindle sales. I couldn't have done this with the paperback, even if I'd spent every waking hour selling it, because publishers have a monopoly on the paper book trade it's impossible to crack. Even Eragon , often quoted as an indie success story, was a flop when it was self-published; this is a quote from Wikipedia:

Paolini and his family toured across the United States to promote the book. Over 135 talks were given at bookshops, libraries, and schools, many with Paolini dressed up in a medieval costume; but the book did not receive much attention. Paolini said he "would stand behind a table in my costume talking all day without a break – and would sell maybe forty books in eight hours if I did really well. It was a very stressful experience. I couldn't have gone on for very much longer."

I feel incredibly lucky that the launch of the Kindle in the UK coincided with the decision to self-publish my third novel.

Amazon, I couldn't have done it without you. Thank you.

Novels need readers

A novel only half exists until someone reads it. The reader completes the process the author began, which is why it's so very unsatisfactory to be an unpublished writer.

I hadn't fully realized this until I self-published Remix. I'd got intimations from members of YouWriteOn and Authonomy who read and reviewed the first few thousand words, but until members of the public choose to pay for your book and spend hours of their time reading it right the way through, you don't know how important this is. These people have a different approach to fiction from writers, agents and publishers. They don't care if you have POV switches, or if your novel doesn't neatly fit into a genre; and no one has told them that books about rock stars never sell. All they care about is whether it's a good read; whether it holds their attention and entertains them for a few hours. Their priorities are so different, I've concluded it's only the stranglehold the publishing industry has on the bookshops that has kept them in business this long.

When I was writing my first novel, Torbrek...and the Dragon Variation, I had the naive idea that if you wrote a reasonably coherent book, you could get it published, and once in the bookshops, the Public Would Decide. How wrong I was. But with the rise of independent authors, who self-publish after rejection by the mainstream, and the advent of the Kindle, we are heading for the situation I imagined, where readers get to choose.

Which is no bad thing.

Revision and editing

I came across the manuscript of the first page of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, and it's awesome. This is not just because of the changes he made, all of which add to the powerful effect of the novel's opening - any competent writer knows from his own experience how different the final draft is from the first. You think of a better way of getting the information across, or a neater way of putting it; you add dialogue, or as Orwell did in his first page, take it out. (For the two versions, go here.)

No, it made me realize just how fortunate writers are today to have the magic of Word at their fingertips. I'd hate anyone to watch me writing on a bad day, or a tricky part of the book. I type in a rough version that's all wrong; add bits, change it, move it around, generally tweak it till it's better. Later I have further goes at it. At some time I read it aloud, and run it through Autocrit to pick up word echoes. If I'm considering larger changes, I copy the passage into a new Word document and let myself loose without inhibitions, knowing it's only a copy. I almost invariably keep this new version and splice it back into the text. Whatever I do, Word keeps the typescript neat and legible.

All George Orwell had to compose his masterpiece was a manual typewriter and a fountain pen. How on earth did he manage?

The cost of selling to bookshops

I made a couple of visits to local Waterstones, hoping to interest them in selling Remix. The manager at the London Wall branch ordered six copies. Telling my daughter about this modest triumph, I said, "Of course, they could all come back again a bit the worse for wear in a couple of months." She asked what I meant, and I explained the system for selling books to bookshops.

The publisher sets a cover price, in my case £9.99, and a trade discount; I went for the full discount, 55%. So the bookshop pays £4.50 per copy. The print cost to me is £3.48, so I make £1.02 per sale. The bookshop decides what to charge for my book, and I certainly hope it's less than the full £9.99 (must go and check) because it's crazy for them to make five times what I do, and anyway, no one will buy it at that price.

But bookshops also require returnability. If my books don't sell, because the price is too high, or nobody notices them tucked away spine out on a low shelf, Waterstones will return them to me and get their money back. I still have to pay the printer, so I will be £20.88 worse off, unless I can re-sell these books second-hand.

"But that's retarded," said my daughter.

She's right.

My first author interview

I fear I'm boasting again.

Simon Royle, author of soon-to-be-published futuristic thriller Tag, interviewed me for his blog, and I realized I've never been interviewed before in my capacity as a writer. Simon read Remix, too, and said he enjoyed it and it made him laugh out loud.

To see my moment of fame, go here.

News round-up

This is going to be a bitty blog post about this and that.

First, I was tickled pink to read this fabulous review of Remix in The Romance Reviews, written by Michelle R. Her one reservation was that she would have liked more 'deets between the sheets'. I have to admit I favour letting the reader do most of the work in this area. I reckon if I've made the characters live on the page, readers will know how they make love. But I might attempt a little more in the current book. My daughter will tell me if it doesn't work, kindly but firmly the way she does.

Remix has now been in the UK Kindle top 100 for twenty-seven days; highest position 14. It has seventeen reviews, fifteen 5-star, two 4-star. I've sold over a thousand ecopies on Amazon. I'm rather pleased.

I'm pressing ahead with the WIP, An Unofficial Girl. It's currently at 30,500 words, and the plot is thickening nicely. Beth has found a derelict flat to move into. The real flats I explored in March 0n which hers is based have been sold, properly fenced off, and now have builders busy completing them.

Publishers price fixing for ebooks

Yesterday a group of big publishers started to put into practice what they call 'Agency pricing' of ebooks. This means that retailers are no longer allowed to discount the price they decide to charge. Amazon has reacted by adding the tag This price was set by the publisher below agency prices - though it's also easy to identify these books by their higher price usually ending in 99p.

When this happened in America, sales of those books fell. The same will happen here. Publishers are okay with this, as they think that if the dead tree book is cheaper, readers will buy that, which suits them just fine. They are comfortable with the status quo. They'd really, in their heart of hearts, prefer ebooks to go away.

However, what they are leaving out of the equation is piracy - the illegal downloading of ebooks free from the internet. Right now, you have to search to find the book you want, but as more Kindles sell in this country, it will become as easy as downloading a film or music is today. (Not sure how to do it? Ask any teenager.) Kindle owners don't want to buy the paperback, they want the Kindle version. And they get annoyed if they feel they are being ripped off, particularly when they have paid £149 for the Kindle in the first place.

Caroline P said on the Kindle forum: I can't believe I'm saying this... because I have never ever downloaded files illegally. Not even once. And now I'm considering it. Because if publishers want to rip ME off, maybe it's not so wrong to rip them off?

I have to say I'm watching the publishing industry shoot itself in the foot with some enjoyment. Their loss is my gain, and the gain of any independent with a realistically-priced ebook to sell.

*See also the Bookseller's article.

Ongoing Authonomy saga...

This morning, the revamped Authonomy is up and running (if rather slowly). So what are the big changes they have put in place?

Well, my two gold stars on Torbrek and Remix are now medals. This is to clear the way for a brand new star system, where you can rate books with one to six stars.

Here's how it's described:

6 stars – Excellent: Publish it. I’d buy it myself and recommend it to everyone!

5 stars – Very good: Should be on the bookstore shelves already!
4 stars – Good: Shows real promise.
3 stars – Average: Readable, but still needs work.
2 stars – Poor: Unlikely to attract readers in its current form.
1 star – Awful: Pulping is too good for it!

I think this is a bad idea; when I joined a beta Authonomy in 2008 from YouWriteOn, one of the things I liked was that it was not possible for people with a grudge or rivals to mark down my book. The worst they could do was not back it. This system is open to abuse - the revenge review was a known phenomenon on YWO.

Harper Collins say multiple accounts (sock puppets) will no longer be tolerated. But a quick look round shows that many of them are still there. They'll need to work on this, if they mean it.

The ranking system has changed. This can only be good, as it was not working big time before; some writers are already grumbling that their books which they have laboured (!) to get high in the charts have dropped overnight. I notice there's a book written entirely in Bulgarian at number 31 in the chart - interesting. Time will tell whether the new system works.

My feeling is that, so low had Authonomy sunk from its bright beginnings, that any change has to be for the better. But it hasn't so far done enough to make me want to return.