ARCs and POD

One of the disadvantages, I think, of being published using POD - Print on Demand - for physical copies is that it is very difficult to get ARCs - Advance Reader Copies - to the reader before publication for early reviews. (POD is also a beetle when it comes to planning a launch party, especially when you can't guarantee when the copies will arrive...but that might be the subject of another blog! There are advantages to POD of course - for example you don't have to stockpile large amounts of books in your spare room...)

As any author will tell you, it's reviews and recommendation that seem to help most in terms of creating interest in a particular title, and once you get so many reviews on something like Amazon, the book can gain a momentum it would not otherwise have had.

To try to get a few reviews in the past, I've offered giveaways on Goodreads. However, out of the seven copies of three books I've sent out on giveaways, only ONE recipient has ever bothered to post a review in return. (I only ever did the giveaways because I understood that if you were lucky enough to 'win' a copy, it was sent on the understanding that it was in exchange for an honest review. Not in my experience, unfortunately. Maybe I need to include a note in the next lot to remind the reader?)

On Amazon, the majority of reviews I've received for StarMark were only placed after I'd plucked up enough courage to ask the person who contacted me to say how much they enjoyed the book, to post one - but always stressing that if they didn't want to, that was fine! (Have to add that some of the reviews have been left by people I don't know, so they aren't all 'friend' reviews...)

With Kingstone coming out this summer, I've been thinking of how I can improve things. (Yes, I will probably do a giveaway on Goodreads - but that can only be done once I've got the physical copies to give! ie, after publication.)

I did have one idea. Remember my visit to Stamford High School last month? Where I met the Book Club? We talked about Kingstone as part of the Q&A session, and the girls sounded very keen to read the book and asked if they could get hold of it early. I said I would see what I could do.

Because of the limitations placed by POD, I plumped for sending them a pdf copy of the first-edit version of the book. I checked it with Bink first of course, to make sure I wasn't doing anything uncontractual. And the pdf was sent out on the understanding that it wasn't the final version (there are still some tweaks to be made) and with a request not to let anyone else outside of Book Club read it (don't want to affect potential sales!). In exchange, I asked for their reviews and thoughts on the story.
The first review is already in from speedy-reader Hazel, who apparently read Kingstone in one sitting. In her words:

"It's so gripping, I couldn't put it down!" 

"Hooray!" says Squidge.

So it seems like this might be a good way of getting ARCs to readers, whilst relying on POD for printed copies. But doing this has left me with more questions than answers. Like;

Will any serious book reviewers or bloggers take a pdf version rather than a kosher paperback?

Will Amazon allow advance reviews to be posted before publication? (I don't think they do, to prevent...what was the expression? Puppeteering or something like that? Where the author and their mates post only good stuff to big up a book?)

Can you post an ARC review on Goodreads before publication?

Is there anyone reading this blog who is a book blogger or reviewer or librarian and would give an honest review in exchange for an ARC copy of Kingstone?

I think there's a bit more research to do to answer all of these, but in the meantime I know I have one happy reader, at least.

(Seriously - if you are reading this and you are a book blogger or reviewer or librarian with a fondness for children's books, message me! And if you're not one of those but fancy getting your hands on Kingstone as soon as it's published, advance orders are being taken on Amazon right now...)

A bit of knitting...

If you're a regular reader of the Scribbles, you'll know I like to knit. Indeed, I have even used my prolific sock knitting as an analogy for writing, which you can read here.

I've recently gone off socks...not because I have so many (which I do; they are SO toasty, I wear almost exclusively hand knitted socks now) but because a new wool shop has opened in town.

Knotty Knits and Kreative Krafts is a lovely shop just outside of the town centre which not only has a huge range of lovely wool, they also offer gifts and crafting courses. I've been all enthused again for knitting bigger projects, although I have to be careful that knitting doesn't take over too much from the writing...

In recent weeks, I've knitted myself a sequinned shrug and almost finished a rainbow gilet. I say almost finished, because the rainbow wool I used has proven so popular, the supplier is struggling to keep up with demand...

Anyway, saw a pattern for a poncho and some beautiful self-striping wool so I've rather naughtily started a new project before finishing the old one. (That used to be how my mum got us to finish a project in the past; we could buy some of the wool for what we wanted to knit next, but we weren't allowed to start it until we'd finished the one we were working on. Certainly used to get my needles clicking even faster...)

Can't wait to get going on this...and to see what it's like to wear a poncho!

The weird thing is that this new shop brings back so many memories of The Wool Shop and Boons, the places I bought my wool from in my early years of knitting. 

Mrs Matthews ran The Wool Shop with her sister. It was a tiny place, probably only about 8' square, with a counter running round two sides of the room and a window that let hardly any light in because like every other wall, it was full of cubbyholes stuffed with wool. The counter was a glass one, with drawers, so you could see everything in them. There was a massive stack of pattern books, too, which we'd spend ages leafing through. The best moment was when you'd finally decided what you wanted and she would have to open one of the new big bags of wool to take out the however many balls of 25g you needed and wrote your name on the turned-round label to save the lot until you'd got further into your pattern. Hours, I spent in that shop, choosing the wools and patterns. I was devastated when it closed.

Boons, on the other hand, was a long, thin shop at the other end of town, with the longest counter I've ever seen. Downstairs was ladies tights and extendable bra straps and buttons and threads and stuff like that, but upstairs...wool. And knitted examples of jumpers and cardies stapled to the wall as you went up the stairs. They had a sort of landing area at the top of the stairs where all the pattern books were, and a couple of chairs so you could take your time. I didn't go there often, out of loyalty to Mrs Matthews...but I do remember going there for mohair wool for my rainbow jumper. I needed nine different colours, and it was a bit hit and miss trying to work out quantities because I was adapting a pattern that only needed a single colour...

Squidgeling J, dressed up for an 80's
themed day in said jumper! 

But even Boons shut, eventually.

I could still buy wool, of course. There are a couple of stalls on our market that sell a limited range, and one shop - although they tend to be known more for their wonderful fabrics than wool. But nowhere in the years since has ever really caught that 'wool shop' feel until now. I am so tempted every time I go into Knotty Knits, I am going to have to get a bigger wardrobe to store all my new jumpers, especially as on my visit today, I was shown a few of the summer patterns that are coming in, and the cottons that they can be knitted in... I really hope Knotty Knits are here to stay.

My fingers are itching. I'm off to knit a few rows!

Exclamationmarkitis

One hundred and eighty two.

That's how many exclamation marks I had written into a 51K novel. I know; I counted every single one.

Kingstone has been...well, not completely cured, but it certainly looks a lot healthier, thanks to Casey's brilliant editing at Bedazzled Ink. When I mailed her and said I seemed to be suffering from exclamationmarkitis, she said;

Many years ago when I worked for another publisher, the very first book I received to look at had already gone through editing and was in typeset. It was a little book and had hundreds of exclamation points. Nearly every spoken sentence ended in an exclamation point. The author was trying to emphasize bright and breezy dialogue between people on vacation... It read like everyone was constantly shouting at each other. Needless-to-say, it had to be completely re-edited.

It's tricky using exclamation points for anything other than actual shouting because once you start using it for emphasis, it's hard to keep it under control and the exclamation point loses its impact.

Believe me, after going through the edit and having to click the mouse five or six times for every exclamation mark I agreed to taking out (I did ask to leave a couple in), I think I was cured.

I also seem to have a secondary infection: semicolonitis. And a minor case of hyphenated no-ones.

Which only goes to show that an editor is worth their weight in gold for the polish they can bring to your manuscript...

But one hundred and eighty two. Sheesh.

The Kingstone edits have arrived!

Delighted to say I'm working on the edits of Kingstone, which popped into my inbox this morning...

Even more delighted to say that, after getting about a third of the way through, there aren't humungous changes to be made - unlike with StarMark. Probably because StarMark had been written and revamped so many times over the years, it needed a thorough going over to bring the whole text together. Kingstone, on the other hand, feels like the text is all together from the off.

As the Bink team noted in their cover email - it's mainly nitpicking to sort out. 

Oh - and exclamationitis. Or maybe exclamationmarkitis. I seem to have peppered the text with an awful lot of them, and they've now been rooted out. A few essential ones have been left in, of course...

Don't forget that Kingstone is available to pre-order on Amazon, due for publication around July.

When your characters talk back

This morning, I had to get up early; the cat has taken to either scratching at or pushing things off of my bedside chest of drawers in an attempt to get his breakfast served if I'm not awake and his tummy's rumbling.

It was 7am, so not too bad. Although it IS half term and I'd have preferred a bit more of a lie-in, if I'm honest...

Anyway, cat fed, cup of tea made, couldn't go back to sleep, so I left Mr Squidge snoring, went downstairs and picked up the WIP.

I'd reached a bit of a sticky point a couple of days previously; resorted to post-it notes (other brands of sticky notes ARE available!) to try to map out the sequence of some key scenes. I thought this morning, as the house was quiet and there was no one else wanting the laptop, I'd try and write the next scene in the sequence.

Two new characters appeared to do what Zanni needed them to do, which was fine. However, one of them - Tia - said something and - POW!

LIGHTBULB MOMENT! 

This minor character, in one sentence, gave me a) the reason why none of the townspeople go into the crystal forest if they can avoid it and b) why my protagonist, Anton (and his dad) hate my main character, Zanni, so much. It's going to racket up the tension no end!

The downside is that there is now a lot of rewriting to do within the 17K words I've produced so far to make what Tia's revealed feel natural and real within what I've already written, but I will tackle that at a later date. For the moment, I just need to work this new information into the story from this point onwards and see how it shapes up...

Breaking even

Granny Rainbow - although published under the name of Panda Eyes - was essentially a self-published book; I paid for everything except the ISBN number.

Which is fine.

I was willing to invest the money, see where it took me and my little book. I knew it would be a long time until I sold enough copies to break even. Assuming, of course, I could even sell enough to break even.

And then came More Granny Rainbow. Published in the same way, with my own spondoolies, but less attractive it seemed to the reader as sales of this book didn't go as well as the first. Add the two sets of costs together and it would take me even longer to break even...

The other day I was doing my 'author accounts', ready to see how much I'd earned from author talks and the like to disclose to the tax man.

And - incredibly - I discovered that I have sold enough copies of both Granny Rainbow books to cover all their costs. It's taken three years, but I have finally broken even. Hooray!

Having said that, it was never about the money...I published Granny Rainbow simply to see whether my stories would be enjoyed by young readers, and they are. Making a little bit of money on them is nice, but it wasn't why I decided to write.

Reading is important. If I can, through my books, encourage even one reluctant reader to discover the joy of burying themselves in a book - be it fiction or non-fiction - then I consider myself to be one of the richest authors alive.

So hooray! for breaking even, but hooray times ten! if my writing opened a door that would've remained closed otherwise.

Just hanging around...

Yes, it's an old song by The Stranglers... It's also the situation at Maison Squidge.

Nope, we're not waiting for something. Squidgeling T is - quite literally - hanging around.

He's taken to climbing. Indoor climbing. We have a fantastic indoor climbing centre in our town, where he goes two or three times a week. At least one of his peers is an awesome climber, on the team there and everything. T is not quite up to that standard yet, but from what he says after each session, he's not doing too badly.

Anyway, apparently one of the things you can do to build up your arm and upper body strength outside of the climbing centre is fit a fingerboard in your home. This is a device that usually is hung above a doorway (note: solid walls only or you could find yourself with a builder's bill when the door frame collapses). Squidgeling T looked up one manufacturer and baulked at the prices. But...Mr Squidge's engineering and Squidgeling T's enjoyment of tinkering in the garage came good.

They have made a fingerboard. It doesn't have all the holes (yet) because apparently if you use them early, while you're still growing, you can damage your fingers and predispose yourself to arthritis.

Mr Squidge installed it this morning.

Right outside our bathroom.

So, if you visit Maison Squidge from now on and need the loo, do check whether there's a lanky teenager hanging around outside first...