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Attention to detail

7/18/2017

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PictureMonmouthshire hills, 6am.
One of the most common questions to get asked as an author is, “Where do you get your ideas?”.
The fact is, for me at least, it’s difficult not to get ideas. Snippets of conversations, something about the way a person acts or walks, asking ‘what if’, juxtaposing two or more facts or phrases or concepts, a line from a song or movie or book, a photo, a painting, a dream.... inspiration can come from anywhere. Because I’m always thinking about writing.
Put it this way. I’m currently working on a final re-edit of Swarm, which is set for an Autumn release. I have a WIP I’ve just started, a horror mystery jointly set in modern-day Gloucestershire and a children’s home in the early 2000s. I’m plotting a character-driven slasher horror with a twist, and a body-swap horror, both of which are likely to be novellas rather than novels. I keep each novel/novella idea in separate notebooks; then there are the two notebooks dedicated to short stories. Notebooks, notebooks, notebooks. My writing area is a swamp of them, each filled with ideas and observations and potential scenes and characters.
Being a writer is a matter of focus. I’m not talking about the craft of writing, but the practice. I frame everything in terms of story. I don’t believe this is because of any special gift; it’s because writing is my passion. When I’m not writing a draft I’m scribbling ideas. When I’m not making notes I’m editing something I’ve written.  When I’m not doing either of those things I’m thinking about scenes and plot holes.
Think about this. Imagine you rise each morning soon after the sun. It’s summer. Your bedroom has French doors opening on to a balcony. You open them, step into the warmth. The balcony overlooks rolling farmland leading to distant hills. Two farmers are already up, working in fields under the sunrise and birdsong. Several fields away a third person loiters near a gate, out of sight of the first two. A musician might listen to that birdsong, spin an entire melody from a few of those notes. A photographer might look at the scene and think in terms of framing, composition and colour. One painter might focus on a few key details, whilst another may be happy to leave you with the impression of a serene country morning. How best to relate a vivid image full of life?
Me? I’d do my best to capture the moment through describing the sound of the morning, the sensation of the sun on my face and the cool balcony rough under my feet. The still crisp air with an undercurrent of the heat to come. I’d also wonder who the two farmers were. Are they brothers? Do they co-own the farm, or is there a rivalry over who will inherit it? Is one happy to work as he always has, whilst the other wants to introduce new ways of doing things? And what about that third guy? Is he an employee? Relative? Is there something in that first field he doesn’t want the brothers to find?
Being a writer means to look at things in a certain way, to live in a certain frame of mind. Once you’ve decided to do so, it’s difficult to stop.
Being a good writer, however... that means applying a particular skillset to that frame of mind. And that’s a different thing altogether.
​You can check out my bookstore here, and follow me on Twitter here.

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Why I'm writing less (and you should too)

7/10/2017

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 The last few months have seen me rethink my approach to being an author. My books may not be paying all my bills yet, but I feel that the standard of my writing alone qualifies me for that title, not to mention the amount of time I spend working on my craft. My new series’ of short stories (‘Sci-Fi Bytes’ and ‘Horror Bites’) will require me to write a publishable short story each month; I aim to alternate between the two. Swarm is getting a further rewrite, and I’m also drawing together my ideas for my next novel. That’s a heavy workload by itself, never mind the full-time job, the NVQ5 I’m doing and spending time with my family. My new found solution to meeting my (self-imposed) deadlines?
 
Write less.
 
That’s right. Every waking moment that’s not dedicated to my family or to the day job I tend to spend writing or editing. But I’m an author, not a writer. This isn’t a hobby. Which means I want to make money from my efforts.
 
Which means learning to market effectively.
 
Which means learning new skills.
 
I see lots of people, particularly on Facebook, asking advice on how to sell more books. More often than not they want a cheap, quick solution that delivers instant results. Wish in one hand…
 
Marketing is a skill. As is copywriting for adverts, as is copyriting the blurb on the back of the book. As is writing a compelling email subject line, a compelling email itself… I could go on. Not only do these skills take time to learn, they take time to implement.
 
I’ve subscribed to a few marketing blogs, a few video tutorials and made time to read some books I’ve bought on the subjects. I don’t think of it as a loss of writing time, even though I would much rather be at the keyboard. How many businesses do you know to have flourished with a bit of investment? How many have failed due to a lack of it? If you want to be an author, carry on writing for yourself and maybe a small circle of friends and family. There's nothing wrong with that. If you want to be a successful author, learn the skills of selling your book. There's no point in writing the next 1984 or American Psycho or Grapes of Wrath if nobody knows about it.
 
From now on I’m dedicating every Monday to training and marketing. It’s when I watch and make notes on my videos and books, when I write my blurbs and my blog posts and draft my emails.
 
Authors, what are your plans for making a living from your work? Please share any tips or resources you have.
 
 
My ebooks can be found at my Pronoun store, including my upcoming release Nurse Krahe. I’m on Twitter and Facebook. And don’t forget to download your free copy of The Cauldron.

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Three rules for self-publishing success

6/29/2017

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​Those who follow my blog and my Facebook page will have noticed I have, over the last weeks, completed something of a U-turn.
For a long time, I thought that one of the best ways to get the word out about my writing was through legwork. Get to the conventions, meet readers, talk about writing and horror and books. Maybe make some connections, maybe get some review copies to the right people.
There were several reasons for this. Firstly, I knew very little about marketing. Secondly, all the advice I’d read about book marketing appeared to be recycled advice from authors I’d never heard of. Bloggers posing as experts, churning out received wisdom they’d not put into practice themselves. None of it filled me with confidence, for those reasons. Also, frankly, I was nervous about trying something new, gambling money and time I thought I could better spend elsewhere. Like on writing, for example.
The problem is, whilst my writing has improved dramatically since I put out Reformed, my marketing hasn’t. As a consequence, sales of my fiction over the past few years have been depressingly steady. In contrast, and as a testament to simple word-of-mouth marketing, I have done no promotion of my non-fiction books. Sales of these continue to grow, albeit very slowly. However, those books are written for a specific, niche market that is not well served by the publishing industry. The horror market, however, is very well served. Lesson number one: know your market.
Lesson number two: know your experts. The self-publishing industry has few giants, but those who do exist are well known: but what do they have in common? Well, they’ve all done pretty well out of the self-publishing market. But “knowing your experts” means knowing not just their achievements, but their backgrounds. Looking a little closer, and you’ll see a pattern. You’ll see ex-city lawyers advocating unrealistic expenditure on advertising. You’ll see former trad-published authors and people who’ve spent years working and making connections in the mainstream publishing industry. Ex advertising executives, successful freelance writers, people whose partners are lawyers or judges or... you get the picture. People with money to spend on pro editors, pro book cover designers, pro formatters, and also on advertising.
All pretty daunting.
I’m not saying their advice is bad. Hell, I’m following the techniques they advise for building a mailing list. But it is increasingly clear to me that the once level playing field of self-publishing is tilting further in favour of those with the largest financial head start. Which leads me to...
Lesson number three: know your costs and your budget. All of those things mentioned above are achievable. But for those of us with ‘normal’ day jobs, the key things are to prioritise and budget accordingly. Treat your writing like a business or it will forever be a hobby. I used the word ‘cost’ but each of those things I mentioned should be seen as investments.
At the moment my books aren’t making as much money as I’d like. To save money, I found an art students who designed the background for Reformed. For The Tor series I asked an artist friend to paint the cover; as with all my ebook covers, I used Canva.com to add the text. I later returned the favour by editing a script for her. The cover of The Soul Bazaar was designed by an artist I found on Facebook. My Facebook adverts are delivered on the smallest budget the platform allows, until I’ve worked out what’s most effective.
You get the picture. As an indie author you are a business. To grow, you need to look at where your business’ weaknesses are and find the most cost-effective method of addressing them. On an unspectacular wage from the day job, and with all the responsibilities of a young family, I can’t yet justify spending the amounts on Facebook adverts that other individuals might, no matter how they compare to me as an author. But I can start small and grow. I can trade my time and skills with others. I can use free software such as Canva, NaturalReader and Grammarly. I don’t even pay for Word. WPS is free, and just as powerful.
My current goal is to grow my business to the point where it is self-sustaining. I want my sales to pay for the advertising, the cover designs, the website, the materials  (I still draft much of my work using pen and paper), an editor (I currently self-edit everything, which is incredibly time consuming), the lot, before I even think of making a profit from my business.
Being wealthy gives self-published authors a real advantage over the rest of us. Not being wealthy makes the journey longer, and means a lot more work. How long it will be before the scales tip so far that it becomes an insurmountable disadvantage, I don’t know. But it damn well won’t stop me, and it shouldn’t stop you.
What about you? Do you think a limited budget is a significant barrier to success? What thrift tips do you have for other authors?
 
My ebooks can be found at my Pronoun store. I’m on Twitter and Facebook. And don’t forget to download your free copy of The Cauldron.

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Midnight Movie: A Review

6/11/2017

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I bought this out of curiosity – an impulse buy, after seeing it reduced in Forbidden Planet in Cardiff. I saw the name Tobe Hooper and decided to go for it.
The book is written in a semi-documentary style, recounting the occurrence and aftermath of a zombie outbreak. The source of the outbreak was the screening of Tobe Hooper’s long forgotten (fictional) debut feature, Destiny Express, at the Texas SXSW festival. Everyone who sat through the film become a sex-obsessed undead psychopath. And from there on in things got weird.
This fast-paced comedy horror (think Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2) is written from multiple first-person perspectives by characters retelling their story to an interviewer who remains unnamed until the very end. Blogs, tweets, personal papers and news reports give us further information. It’s over the top, irreverent, and reads in parts like a cheesy 80s horror flick that probably went straight to video. The writing style is breezy and casual and often very funny. If you’ve read John Dies At The End you’ll have a good idea of what to expect.
You’ll also be just a little bit disappointed.
It is quite funny, but not laugh-out-loud hilarious. It is gory, but cartoonishly so. The characters are scared, but never terrified- and neither are we. Worse, large parts of it make absolutely no sense. It simply isn’t inventive enough to get away with skirting around huge plot holes such as never explaining the 9:33 thing, which has no connection to anything else in the story; or how the virus/whatever was spread via the film; or why remaking the film should undo the virus; or why and how the cure reached those who didn’t watch the reworked film... I could go on.
I enjoyed the format in which Hooper chose to tell his story. But, having reached the end, it feels now more like a collection of ideas he thought might have been cool to throw on the page, rather than a fully-formed novel. It strikes me that the editor should have had a stronger hand in the book’s production, but I guess the lure of having a big-name horror brand like Tobe Hooper was too much. I can’t imagine an unknown author being allowed to get away with releasing such a half-formed novel.
The two pounds I paid for this was a fair price. It killed some time, but now it’s going to the charity shop.

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A review of Mark Dawson's 'Phoenix'

6/9/2017

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​This is the first of Mark Dawson’s books that I’ve purchased. I’ve been following his useful videos on book promotion via www.selfpublishingformula.com, and decided to try some of his work out of curiosity. Also, this was a novella (not too much commitment) and raises money to help a friend of his battle cancer. You can purchase a copy here.
I’ll start by saying don’t generally like thrillers. I find them formulaic potboilers and often not well written. But they are easy to read, and I can see why there’s such a huge market for them.
This particular book was fast-paced, as thrillers need to be, and featured solid characters. Those who follow Mark’s other works will be familiar with John Milton and Beatrix Rose. I found them both to be archetypes of the genre; believable, but nothing that would redefine tropes.
Mark’s writing style, too, is honed to suit the genre in which he writes. The no-nonsense prose focuses on action, with characterisation coming a close second. Sentences are to the point, with little in the way of flowery adornment. He tells you what you need to know and leaves the rest to your imagination; no purple prose here. One thing I did find annoying was his frequent use of the passive voice. The other was the setting. Dawson set the bulk of the novel in South America. The location has no impact on the action at all -it really could have been set anywhere) yet seems at great pains to tell us how vivid his scene-setting is. This eagerness, manifest in a list of local areas that Rose wanders around whilst checking for tails, is more intrusive than anything. Contrast this with Fleming’s scene-setting for Bond, which is always in the background and feels so much more natural and less contrived. However, this could be a symptom of Dawson compressing this information into the confines of a novella rather than 
Overall this is a solid example of genre writing that fits well with what I’ve read of the likes of Jack Reacher and his ilk. As I’m not a fan of the genre I probably won’t buy any more books, but I have no doubt this story will satisfy those who are. So overall then, a well-written example of a thriller; just not for me.
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Swansea Horror Con 2017

5/28/2017

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Evening all.
No blog entry as such tonight, just an update. If you follow me on Facebook you might have already seen this.
I received an email the day before yesterday from the Swansea horror con organisers to say the event has been cancelled. This is a disappointment, as it was going to be my first horror convention as an author. However, I will be attending another event. The organisers have been good enough to offer traders the choice of a table at another event, or a refund on their tables. I've some diary sorting to do before I decide which alternative event I'll be at.
Unfortunately for me I had already printed twenty limited-edition advance copies of my upcoming novel Swarm. I am now giving you the opportunity to buy them at the reduced price of only £4.00 each, plus postage. Each will be signed and individually numbered. I will sell them on a first-come, first-served basis. Please message me to buy my copy via my Facebook page.

I look forward to meeting you all at a future horror con!
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The New Gatekeepers?

5/21/2017

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​Every author wants two things: to put out quality content, and to have that content sell. Not to suggest we’re all cynically chasing trends. One of the beauties of the new publishing landscape is the ability to write and release whatever we wish, without kowtowing to trends or projected markets. But I’m sure we’d all like to sell more. After all, if you don’t want your content to sell why release it?
As I’ve said in previous posts, the advent of ebooks and print-on-demand services has disrupted the book industry to the point where it is barely recognisable from the industry of ten years ago. The gatekeepers of old -the network of agents, editors, and the big four publishers- have seen their control over publishing decimated. No longer do writers have to jump through endless hoops and wait months and months to see their work in print, to receive a paltry ten percent commission six months in lieu. Now you write, rewrite, edit, and release.
Self-publishing is easy. Which is why I’m writing this in my Porsche.
Sorry. Did I say Porsche? I meant Peugeot.
Publishing is one thing; selling another.
In the past week I’ve seen a video from Derek Murphy on maximising your use of Kindle Unlimited; watched a webinar from Mark Dawson on optimising your Amazon ads; read an article on using Amazon’s ‘readers also bought’ section; and listened to podcasts on leveraging your email list to boost your Amazon ranking on your launch date, and another on using the Kindle’s Whispersync function as a sales tool (by bundling the audiobook with the ebook). Notice a pattern?
The new publishing market is still evolving. Not as rapidly as when it first arrived, but we are still in a state of flux. And as much as I like Amazon’s ecosystem I do worry that its market dominance means that we risk exchanging one set of gatekeepers for another. I for one favour platforms such as Pronoun to release my ebooks since they supply all ebook markets. None of my books are on Kindle Unlimited. And, when it comes to sales of physical books, I like to rely on meeting people face to face at book fairs and conventions, as well as on Facebook ads.
Amazon and Createspace are responsible for the bulk of my sales. But I worry about finding myself beholden to the murky machinations of their algorithms. I don’t want myself or others to spend as much time working out Amazon as we once would have working out the traditional market. I want to work for myself, not Jeff Bezos. And that is why I intend to diversify my sales routes as much as possible.
What about you? Do you worry that Amazon is too dominant in the indie book scene? Or are you comfortable with the current market?
Let me know in the comments.
All my ebooks can be found on Pronoun.
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Is genre still important?

5/12/2017

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I spend my time in the car listening to podcasts on my phone. I find driving to be a great time to both learn new things and also to come up with ideas and solutions. It’s by no means a scientific term, but when my ‘front brain’ is busy on active tasks such as driving, my ‘back brain’ is happy to work on plot points and scenes. In amongst all of this, I listen to podcasts.  The Writing Excuses podcast is a favourite, but I also listen to a lot of business and marketing.
Anyway, a few days after writing my last blog entry I heard an interesting discussion about the relevance of ‘genre’ in the current publishing environment. The presenter was of the opinion that the market has changed so much in recent years that it is far less important than it used to be. In part, this is due to the death of many bookshops and their segmented, ordered shelves. Now you can write a scifi-cyberpunk-western-vampire-romance (y’know, if you wanted) and not have to worry about a bookshop accidentally filing it under scifi-cyberpunk-western-werewolf-romance. Because somewhere on the Internet  I guarantee there is a chat room dedicated to the scifi-cyberpunk-western-vampire-romance scene. I haven’t checked, but I guarantee it nonetheless. If your book is well written, there is a market for it; you just have to find it.
And that was as far as the discussion went. An interesting and valid point. But incomplete. Because one thing they missed was the point I made in that previous blog post ('The Herd Mentality') about people following authors rather than genres (ah, if only they’d invited me as a guest!). This is something the Internet facilitates well via blogs, email lists, Facebook, Twitter, etc etc. You can communicate with your readers, and vice versa. Even when this communication doesn’t happen readers often follow writers rather than consuming a genre. Case in point: I am working through the DI Rebus books by Ian Rankin. I picked one up ages ago and was taken with his writing. Other than Rankin’s books, police procedurals bore the life out of me.
So because of the Internet genre is dead, yes?
Far from it.
You see, despite all of the above genre is very much alive. Yes, there are those books that defy conventional categorisation. Yes, there are those books that cross genres, mash up genres, turn genre conventions on their heads. But genre is still the yardstick by which we measure such anomalies.
Not only that,  but genre is still an important marketing tool. I may not stick rigidly to tropes, I may use many sub-genres in my writing, but in terms of broad-strokes marketing, my novels are horror novels.  It’s far more straightforward to speak to people who are horror fans about my novels than to seek out fans of each sub-genre and mashed-up element I’ve thrown in to my novels.
Take Swarm for example. It’s a horror novel. It’s a lost-in-the-woods horror novel. It’s a lost-in-the-woods horror novel with a twist on expected genre conventions. It’s a lost-in-the-woods horror novel with a twist on expected genre conventions, paced like a thriller.
It’s also definitely me. Some of the elements in the book will be familiar to those who have read my other offerings, particularly my disdain for rampant capitalism and the mysterious code ‘5304’. So if you enjoyed The Tor, Reformed, or The Soul Bazaar you will enjoy this. But so far my readership is relatively small, and in terms of marketing I am going to see a much bigger ROI if I sell it as a fast-paced horror novel rather than ‘the next Anthony Morgan-Clark novel’. As I build my readership my marketing focus will change accordingly. I write across many styles, of which horror is just one, and I hope in the future to have built a following loyal enough that they will read my books because they are fans of my writing as much as they are fans of horror.
So no, genre isn’t dead. But for me, it is a step up to bigger things.

All my books are available in e-formats from my pronoun page. My paperbacks are available on Amazon.

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Another victimless crime?

5/7/2017

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​I heard on the radio today that Stephen Fry may be charged with blasphemy. Yes, in the 21st century.
This is absurd. If God is all-knowing and all powerful isn’t it a little presumptuous to intervene on his behalf, suggesting he’s incapable of doing so? Why waste the police’s time when a lightning bolt to the QI studio takes care of the matter? If everything plays out according to god’s intricate plan, isn’t it a little blasphemous itself to say “well, god, we don’t agree with what you’ve done here so we’re going to deal with it ourselves”?  Not to mention that one should prove beyond reasonable doubt that god exists before one can be accused of having committed a crime against him. Her. It. Whatever. The whole issue is ridiculous, self-contradictory, and a waste of everyone’s time.
Or is it?
Ireland is not that far from us in many senses. We are not a fully secular society despite the precipitous fall in church attendees over the last decades. We also still have a church that is not above interfering in politics when it suits their agenda, and that still has a say in how far too many schools are run - church of England schools, but also the new shambolic ‘free schools’ initiative the Tories are intent on keeping on life support until a decent government shuts the whole idea down. Religious schools. Another oxymoron. Whilst one broadens horizons, the other narrows minds.
Add to this Theresa Mayhem’s snooper’s charter and her propensity for kowtowing to the extreme right in this country who want to dictate to us what we can do, when and with whom (UKIP didn’t collapse in the local election. Their voters simply returned to a Tory part that has moved further and further to the right to catch up with them), and all of a sudden the future looks very uncertain for writers who have the audacity to not follow the diktats of an extreme-right authoritarian.
In my internet history are searches for the best way to bury a body (concrete or cement? Is there a difference?); queries regarding child abduction; searches to find out if one can send firearms by UPS in the US and whether they deliver on Sundays (yes, if you’re crafty about how you package it and what you declare; no, which was very inconvenient for the assassin in A Gift of Opal); efficient ways to commit arson (have you seen the price of unleaded nowadays?); animal rights protests and direct action; the list goes on. On a personal level there is enough socialist/anti-fracking/pro-green material to define me as an extremist under the Terrorism Act (this is not a joke. Many green protesters and sympathisers come under this category. You don’t even have to take part in a peaceful protest for them to notice you). Many people are now very wary of what they use the internet for. In other words, their human rights to free expression and to self-education are being eroded.
Nowadays the internet is as important a tool for writers as the laptop itself.  If we continue down this path of both keeping everything under surveillance and criminalising free thought, what will happen to writing? What will happen to writers? What will happen to the artists, to the rational thinkers? We can look to the events in Ireland and to the state of science and art in the US for an idea.
Reformed was the first novel I wrote. It’s got some really good reviews on Amazon. Please don’t buy it. It’s not my best writing, and anyway, you can read it for free on Wattpad - most of it, at least. I am in the process of uploading chapters. If you’ve not read it, it deals with the terrible consequences of living in a state that thinks nothing of supervising every aspect of an individual’s existence. It’s a sort of Matrix-meets-1984, amongst many other things. And looking at it now makes me think. Would 1984 have been released nowadays? Island? Brave New World?
Probably. But I worry that the window for such brilliant, subversive, free-thinking novels may be edging shut.

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The herd mentality...

4/20/2017

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... of bored commuters and frustrated day trippers in small service station in the South West of England.
​​Marketing. I hate it. I’m no salesman,  and even when face to face with potential readers, I struggle with it. Online stuff is even more difficult. There’s the time involved, for one thing, not to mention the mountain of advice both good and bad to sift through. I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for the “sign up to our newsletter for a free marketing PDF” malarkey.
I spent this morning decluttering my Gmail. I must have unsubscribed from eight of those lists just today. I dare say a few more will slip through the net over the next week or so. One thing I’ve noticed is how similar a lot of the guidance is.  And I mean a LOT. As in, I’m very suspicious as to how many are recycling others’ received wisdom without having tried or lived it themselves. As in, if it was that easy we’d all be doing it. As in, how can everybody get ahead by following the same advice and doing the same thing? It reminds me of the idiot Gove’s announcement that every pupil in Britain should be able to reach the average attainment – a statement that sums up the state of Britain and its politics, when the Education Secretary, an over-educated meatsack of a man with little life experience and no classroom experience, publicly demonstrates that he doesn’t understand what how averages work. But that’s a whole other rant...
I travel around quite a bit. Not a Richard Branson “which continent shall I take my private jet to” kind of travel. Not an Iron Maiden “we’ve a world tour itinerary for the next six months” kind of travel either. More a “Christ, am I sick of looking at the bloody M5” kind of travel.
Anyway, I’d stopped at Exeter services. Though it could have been anywhere; they really do all look the same. It was packed. Streams of people entered and left. After queuing for Starbucks (I don’t normally support amoral tax dodging corporations, but I’d begun caffeine cold turkey at this point. My options were limited to ‘drink’ or ‘kill’. As ever when there’s a crowd involved, it was a close call), queuing for a pasty (one mystery-meat with extra gristle please!), and queuing to pee (I can only assume the ‘wellies only beyond this point’ sign had corroded to nothing in the ammonia infused air), I was seconds from going postal.
To get in and out you have to pass through two sets of doors. Whether this is to create a homely porch effect, to keep out the worst of the South West’s drizzle, or just to toy with the easily baffled, I don’t know. Some of the people were quite polite, holding the door for others and shuffling awkwardly into the Zombie horde tramping towards them. This created a traffic jam in both directions, particularly in the pointless porch-cum-people trap. Step by tiny step I made my way to the doors, mustering all my willpower to not turn and scream at whoever kept stepping on my heels. Then I eased out into the car park. No holdup in the porch for me. Why?
I opened the other door.
That’s right. The external and internal doors causing the jam were double doors. Yet everybody was content to take turns edging and apologising their way through one half. Because nobody in front had opened the left door, each subsequent person thought it must be locked, and didn’t bother to try it.
Build an email list. Have a Facebook page. Work Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat. Blog. Engage in forums. Etc, etc, etc. Countless experts offering the same advice which gets passed on and on down the chain, without anyone asking why. Like people waiting at closed doors without even trying the adjacent entrance.
I’m not saying these things can’t work. I’m saying they can’t work for everyone. At some point, social media as a sales tool will suffer from over saturation. We can’t all reach the average. I’m not sure how many people follow me or how many I follow (I’ve recently deleted a load), but I do see a hell of a lot of authors trying to sell their books through Twitter. Have you ever sold a book through Twitter? Or bought a book because of it?
So I’m going to take a different approach. I’ll still use social media and I’ll still blog. I enjoy doing those things. And I’ll continue to maintain my website. I get a lot of traffic, and again I enjoy it. All three can also be useful ways to build awareness of who I am and what I do.
But they won’t be my main tools to build a following. I know, that word sounds like I’m starting a cult rather than writing books. What was it L Ron Hubbard said? “Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man really wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start his own religion.” But anyway, that’s another tangent.
The point is, I’m starting to think beyond mailing lists and the like. I’m not here to sell horror. I’m interested in cultivating relationships with those who are interested in my style of writing, curious readers able to follow me across flash fiction, short stories, novellas and novels. People who will follow me across genres because they’re interested in what I have to say and how I choose to say it, not because they’re following a particular genre and I happen to have written a book in that genre. It’s about talking to people and finding common ground, not simply flogging a product. Follow me, not my books.
There are authors who’ve eschewed all forms of electronic promotion and focus exclusively on book fairs and workshops. Not many, but they’re there.
I’m not saying either approach should be used to the exclusion of the other. The Kindle has disrupted the publishing market beyond recognition. The Internet itself continues to do so, albeit now by degrees. I’m in the process of rethinking how I use media to promote what I do. I’ll not be looking to mimic the well-worn processes sold by others. I’ve got a few ideas for my YouTube channel, and a few offline ideas I want to try.
So what about you? How have you found the advice from online experts? What out-of-the-box ideas have you tried?

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