Monday, 11 January 2010
'Futtage': being in a mess or tangle.
Lately I’ve been getting in a complete ‘futtage’ (a word of my own invention) with all my project files: Foalsong is a complex and wide spanning narrative, and keeping track of character biogs, scene summaries …let alone the actual chapters has become a nightmare. Enter Y Writer…I’ve been toying for some time with using some kind of writing software to organise things and this program has been developed by an author for other authors so it should be practical…It’s also free so big plus point! I will let you all know how I get on.
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Web site work
I’ve just finished a major re-vamp of my web site…hours of tedious code bashing and design work. I’m a one man band creatively: I write the books, layout the interiors, design the covers, do the artwork, code the website…and ultimately carry the can if I foul up! That’s the lot of a self published author. I’m trying to find time to fit in promotional work, earning a living and writing my next novel Foalsong all in my allotted 24hrs per day. I have bags of new ideas for my work that’s on the back burner, like my horror novel The Pier and my Sci fi romp Monk - The Spaces Between. The problem is I have absolutely no time to write them down…I need a holiday so I can do some work!
Friday, 11 December 2009
Book signing on track....due to lovely neighbours!
Well the first signing is tomorrow and I'm nervous as heck. This state of high anxiety was made worse by the printers taking over two weeks to deliver my latest batch of books. In fact they arrived with less than twenty four hours to go until zero hour! The parcel was taken in by our lovely neighbours who saved me having to chase the damn thing down to the depot! Hooray for them....now it is just up to me to sell sell sell tomorrow.
Friday, 27 November 2009
Friday, 13 November 2009
Argggggggh it's frustrating. SKs selling quite well considering hardly anybody knows about it yet. However the high P&P costs that go with POD publishing means that unless I buy in truck loads at a hit, I only break even or actually make a loss when supplying local shops. They want to sell my book in direct competition with those from the big name publishers....but they can get seventy per cent or more discounted from their wholesalers...It leaves me for dead. They can sell a four hundred page paperback for £10.99.....I can't even buy an individual copy of Shadowknight for that with P&P, and I wrote it! This - and the massive promo machinery behind the mainstream novel - is why it's so hard for a self published author to 'break through'. We have to do everything, from mailing out books and designing stationery and cold calling potential retailers of our masterpieces.
Still, what we do have as self published authors is complete creative control...so warts and all, Shadowknight’s all my own....I designed the cover, designed and laid out the contents, wrote the blurb, designed and coded the website....oh yeah, and I wrote the damn book too, but that seems such a little part of the bigger picture now!
Wednesday, 11 November 2009
Give me time!
I have a real problem with finding time to write at the moment. Those of us authors who can’t afford to go professional and spend all day punishing a keyboard have to fit our writing around work and the rest of our lives! My gainful employment is a right royal pain in the harris at the moment, and the extra time with the horses that coping with winter mud and short days entails means often I’m not meeting my weekly word count targets with Foalsong. Okay so it’s getting written, and I’m already quite happy with the way it’s shaping up…..but please, lord….I need a thirty hour day!
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