Travelling Hopefully

I would like to start this post by saying thanks to all the bloggers who have been stopping by and giving my posts a ‘like’ – I really do appreciate it and I will definitely be making  reciprocal visits in the next few days.

I feel like there should be some sort of drum roll at this point. I am happy to say that What We Didn’t Say is now available to buy via CompletelyNovel.com - it will be a few days before I have the website up and signed print copies available and I am told potentially a few weeks before it appears on Amazon.  I hope to have the eBook versions ready soon.  If you would like a taster, I have put the first story on the books streamer for people to read online.  I do hope you enjoy it.

As I mentioned in a comment on the last post, I’m probably a little behind where I should be with the online promotion of this book and it is at this point I find myself in a bit of a quandary.  It is very hard indeed to know where the dividing line is between furthering the cause of your work and gaining a readership and driving everybody away by constantly banging on about your progeny, regrettably the sort of stuff you see all over Twitter. I’m not convinced that’s the way to do it. I would really love to have been able to get to this year’s Verulam Writers’ Circle  Annual Conference not least because they have a line-up of speakers to blow your socks off but especially to take Jon Pinnock’s workshop on standing out from the crowd and his tips for the most effective use of social media for writers. Maybe next year time will permit. In the meantime, I wish them a brilliant conference.

As an independent author (and I’m not going to get into the debate about Indie Authors, others have been far more eloquent than I about this topic), I have both limited time and resources available. My promotion will be slower and probably far less widespread than those who are traditionally published, I accepted that when I took the decision to take this collection down the independent route but I have worked hard to make it the best it can be.  I have learned a great deal in the process of getting this book ready and am really glad I left these stories to sit for a much longer time than I had originally planned, they are I hope, better for a more objective editorial eye and a busier red pen.  

If I take this route with the novel, the one thing I would definitely do differently is engage a professional proof reader.  I have gone through 3 full proof copies and it has been an exhausting process, not least that reading the full book three times has taken up a whole chunk of time I didn’t have, but equally after a while you start to hear the story on your head, not see it on the page.  Having said that it is a huge benefit to see the book form because it highlights so much I would have missed in just reading the screen or A4 print version – font size, line spacing, flow, page breaks etc. but in other ways it’s something which could tip the scales on insanity very, very quickly.  My publisher allows three manuscript revisions, I used them all and I am certainly teetering on the brink of that threatened insanity this afternoon after discovering a rogue numeral too late . It will appear in all the print versions which is beyond irritating but I have only myself to blame.   A degree of head hitting desk resulted from that, I can tell you.  I may eventually do another edition to eradicate it because I know it is going to bug the life out of me.

At each stage of this process, I’ve reached a certain milestone and considered that the real hard work would come in the next phase. I think that’s never been more true than it is now. 

Well it’s back to website building for me, in the meantime I would also like to wish Ether Books a perfectly brilliant London Book Fair!