Adventures in book publishing.

It's been an interesting, if hectic few weeks. Most of my time has been absorbed in the task of promoting 'Bringing home the stars' and getting it noticed by the important people to get it noticed by (i.e: book retailers). For a long time I've described this as a thankless task, and it can often feel that way when no response seems to be generated by contacting nearly a hundred retailers across the country.

Now that we get within spitting distance of the launch (2nd of October) all that work is paying off. Whilst the book buyer at Waterstones decided against a general stocking of it, under the explanation that it would just get lost under the big-name promotions leading up to Christmas, that wasn't a big setback that it may have first appeared. It wasn't Waterstones saying "Don't darken our door" but simply that a new book from a new author and a new publisher is a big risk in a time when there is a frenzy from the big hitters to get paper on the shelves for the Christmas present buying time. Waterstones stores are free to order it if local managers see a demand for it. The door is still ajar for the book buyer to reconsider at a later date, dependant on sales.

Those sales are coming. Already there have been three weeks' worth of pre-orders - a lot of them from Waterstones stores. Today has turned up yet more fruit of hard labour. Namely that bookings have started to come in for book readings/signings at Waterstones stores.

Waterstones has promotions managers for all of its stores, and it seems that a lot of them are quite keen for personal appearances by authors. Provisionally we have been booked today for Waterstones Manchester Deansgate (9th of December) and Waterstones Darlington (23rd of October). That's not bad follow up for contact made two days ago. Hopefully there will be more bookings over the next few days, and that is excellent news!

On top of that the promotions department at All Mouse Media (the publisher) is working hard to secure newspaper features about me and my work. They say that it doesn't matter how good a product is if no-one knows about it to buy it. The last week has shown that hard work can be rewarded in publishing to get a great product noticed.

There are still plenty of stocks in the warehouse, but they are moving. Nielson orders come through once a week on a Thursday usually for All Mouse Media so I'm interested (and a little nervous it has to be said) about what this Thursday brings after this week's push. Tomorrow is another hard at work day, with some more stores to contact to try and put together a 'grand tour' for me as an author. This looks like - all going well - it will cover Manchester, the North West, and up through County Durham. For those in the south it's more awkward because of travelling costs, but if they come in I'm prepared to do them. Why? Because any author would be stupid to neglect important exposure, especially when down here near the bottom of the ladder.

Publishers (and agents) like authors who are prepared to put the work in to promote their work and help it in every way to get out there and sell. I think it is safe to say that no agent or publisher could look at me and say "She doesn't do enough to promote her work." Judging by the last few weeks, I've certainly done as much as anyone else, if not more.

Here's to the next few weeks and hopefully finding out just how much the buying public feel about 'Bringing home the stars'. If the support I've received so far is anything to go by, it looks like we're onto the winner that Zoë predicted when she read the manuscript nearly a year ago!

shunting on 'Grove Street yard' 2

A second video from the weekend. The layout is the one featured in 'Model Rail' issue 143.

Shunting on 'Grove Street Yard'

From this weekend just gone, when I took my train porn little layout out on tour for the first time.

One great day.

Got one bookstore to enthusiastically stock it. Have three other chains interested pending approval of various people. Got home to more preorders from both Waterstones and Amazon. I think the phrase is "Excellent!" said in the most Mr Burns possible way.

Creepy adverts.

In the strangest of strange stalking ways I seem to be followed around on the internet by adverts for lingerie at John Lewis'. I suspect it has a lot to do with cookies, and the fact that a couple of days ago I was buying a present for some-one through their wedding list at John Lewis and happened to go browsing around. One of the items that I looked at was a pretty basque set.

Now no matter where I go, the adverts that would appear on those sites are for that damn basque! It's the same picture too. I suppose it says a lot about the way that internet browsers work and the way in which they store details that the average person isn't aware of. I know it is possible to get add-blocking software. But here's the dilemma: adverts pay for a lot of stuff on the internet. Life isn't free, and you appear to get some things for free on the internet because of the adverts that adorn the sites. Webcomics, and the two I contribute to in particular, fall into this category. When people roam in with add-blocking software, they don't see the adverts and we don't get any revenue. We aren't a charity, but some people do seem to think they can take all the time without paying.

Some sites really are in your face with adverts, so I can sympathise with why some people feel obliged to use blocking software. I really hate those sites where hovering adverts float around when you scroll and get in your way. It's sites like these that give the rest of us a bad name, and make it harder for people to make a living from online sites that provide content for free.

Just a thought. Now will that pretty basque STOP FOLLOWING ME AROUND PLEASE! It's a good job that I don't browse adult stuff - who knows what adverts would follow me around like some ruthless S&M stalker on the internet.

All over the house » Archive » Fancy dress

One of my favourite strips so far. Talk like a pirate? "You want copied DVD?"

All over the house » Archive » Fancy dress

Talking like a pirate in a comic.

Today is international talk like a pirate day. I don't think it is an officially sanctioned event though. Nonetheless, today I shall mostly be talking like Captain L. Jackson: "Yaaaarg motherf****r! Get in the motherf***ing boat! What are these snakes doing on ma damn boat!" It has, however, led to much debate over the years at Jenny towers as to how modern pirates might talk. Actual concensus seems to be that a modern day pirate might be dressed somewhat differently and say something along the lines of "you want a copied DVD? Nice price!" Monday's 'All Over the house' comic strip explores this a little; it's an idea we've had floating around for a while.

We've been doing a lot of comics of late because 'All over the house went five days a week from three a few weeks ago. It has seen the viewing figures nearly quadruple, which is good. The golden rule - so I'm told - of setting a comic scedule is make sure that you don't miss any updates. We had a buffer, but Zoë's assignment earlier this week used that up. It wasn't a big buffer after all. So today she will be drawing all five of next week's comics.

State of the Jenny today.

I got a telephone call this afternoon to let me know that more pre orders have arrived. I'm keeping a tally now though it is still daunting how many are still to go to the target of 1,000 sales. Every little helps. I also hope that these aren't orders that will come back making use of the sale-or-return facility. It's still a very nervous time for an author, and for the people who've put up the money to get this behemoth on the road.

I've been distracting myself when I can by doing a new draft of an old book. I always liked the story that was in 'The Atlantic collection'; in some ways it is my favourite book. The only trouble is that I felt a little embaressed about the standards of the writing given how much I've moved on over the last couple of years. So I'm doing a new edition. Not because anyone's asked me to, but because I want to. Some parts aren't needing much, but others are getting rewritten.

This week's other distraction has been Bosun #3 out in the back garden. When I set out to buy one of these I tried my hardest to get one with a sound transom, as a rotton core is the Achilles heel of this type of boat. Unfortunately, what I got was a boat that had had transom rot bodged and hurriedly hidden. It isn't a disaster, but I've slowly been putting what I've found right. I took the opertunity to strip the horrible household emulsion off the transom and sand and repait with proper yachting enamel after effecting a few repairs. One of the first things I noticed when the paint was coming off were some red letters on the original fibreglass surface. On closer examination they spelt out: "The New BOSUN" in stencilled red letters. This confirms what I already knew that this had been a demonstrator for the builders (along with around fifteen other boats) and was used to secure a contract for several thousand of the craft over the years with the Royal Navy and other organisation.

Right now I'm listening to the song 'Happiness' by Goldfrapp. I'm hoping that the Karma is justified after learning of the pre orders. Fingers crossed for the future (and buy my book!)

The banking aftermath.

Some may have remembered the calamity that occured when a chas machine in North Wales ate my debit card without warning. Just for a little closure, HSBC got back to me apologising for the way I was treated, and placed an amount of cash into my account as a way of saying sorry. Apology accepted, and it makes me feel that I bank with a bank that isn't just a faceless hard-ass entity.

RBS, on the other hand, wrote to say that I had been given duff information by their telephone operative, but refused to apologise. They also claimed that their cash machine could not have crashed in the manner described, and the only way it would retain my card was if HSBC had requested it to. All-in-all the biggest sack of BS you can imagine.

Needless to say, I'm happy with my bank, but have simply been reappraised of all the reasons and then some that I closed my RBS account in 1999. I'm so glad I don't have to deal with them on a daily basis.

The book comes ever closer to the shelves.

I've spent the last few days helping to mail out Advance Information sheets to branches of Foyles and Waterstones. It's hard work, not least because I've had to transcribe address from an excell spreadsheet into letters one at a time, print, then combine with the Advance sheets and hand address every envelope. There's over 300 branches of Waterstones alone, so that gives you an idea at how longwinded the process actually is. I've also submitted searchable listing information to Amazon and requested that they consider a Kindle edition of the book too.

It is mentally exhausting work. Meanwhile, discounting deals are still in the negotiating stage, so watch this space (or, more importantly, watch Waterstones and Amazon's spaces for discount deals to appear). More importantly, the first advance orders are trickling in. It's all good, even if it feels like a thankless task at this stage. Roll on the 2nd of October and the offial release!

Jenny and Zoë at the Weekend: 4 - Music and Manners

Meanwhile, back on the radio....

Jenny and Zoë at the Weekend: 4 - Music and Manners: "This week, Jenny and Zoë talk about manners, drunk people, employment and why the minimum wage is necessary, before doing a handbrake turn ..."

I got mugged in memory lane.

Last night I decided to sit in the lounge and have a listen to some of the 12" single section of my record collection. It's a big section, and a lot of it is stuff I used to use when mixing dance music. It's been a while, and it is probably quite telling that most of the 12" singles are from the period 1996-2000. What can I say - I was big on dance music at the time. Actually everyone knows that dance music attained perfection in the Autumn of 1999. Everything since has pretty much been a pale immitation, rehash or outright rip-off of something that went before.

Maybe it is just a sign of getting old? Wah! I don't want to be old!

There were quite a few white label promos from my time DJing and radio presenting. Positiva is a label that came up again and again. I found some of the singles that I used to use in my set when playing gigs, and it's strange to hear them unmixed after so many years. I have a recording on CD of one of the last events I played, and it is the mixed version of my set over an hour. The Gods of the turntables were shining that night, and I did very well even by my standards. Is it blowing my own trumpet too much to admit that I have occasionally listened to that mix CD over the last nine years?

The unmixed tunes sound, well, odd to say the least. On the set there was one mix that comprised crossfading between three records over the space of several minutes so that at no time were less than two records playing at the same time. To listen to those records unmixed makes them sound strangely empty when you are used to hearing the mix.

I don't think I could still beatmix. I wasn't that great at it even back in the day, but I got by. For the last five years my two turntables have lived in seperate rooms plugged to a standard stereo amplifier for the purpose of listening to music rather than mixing it. I used to like complex mixing of two tunes, making the most of synthy bits to create more layers to an existing track. Some of the mixes I experimented with were quite different - the James Bond theme from "From Russia with love" mixed into Radio 7 by David Holmes so that the two play over each other for several minutes was one I can remember. I used to love experimenting with old LPs bought secondhand to add samples and vocals to underground dance classics. A part of me wonders if I should dust off my old sound mixer, move the two turntables back together and spin some tunes for the old times. Another part of me warns that I am unlikely to sound as good as I remember sounding.

Does dance music still come on 12" vinyl these days? Probably not as I haven't seen any on this format for a few years. In case there's any youngsters reading: I used to have to beatmix all my records the old-fashioned analogue way by fading between two records, matching the beats using only an adjustment of the speed the turntables were spinning at and my own ear. I used to use computers only to record the line out from sound systems. Even then, there wasn't much an old K6 300Mhz could do except record a *.wav file and later spend hours chopping it to tracks and burning it out at the lightning speed of 2x write to a CDr.


I work for a living these days. Actually, scrub that - I work for myself from home. Living the dream.

Listing at SF Site

SF Site now lists 'Bringing home the stars' as forthcoming. Hopefully they are considering revuing it (they don't revue every book that they get sent). It's a good start though as there aren't actually that many new SF+F books released every month.

Find it about half way down in the right side column

How hard can getting people to pay you less for your product actually be?

It's amazing how the busier I am the less time I have for blogging. Actually, scrub that: it isn't amazing at all when you think about it.

Most of my energies have been directed towards marketing, getting revues and negotiating deals for 'Bringing home the stars'. It's a never-ending treadmill that seems at this stage to have no rewards and no obvious affect on sales. There is a question that I keep asking myself, and it is: "when will the advance orders actually start to trickle through and be fulfilled?". I've been asking this for a while now, and in all honesty I just don't know. As a new publisher, All Mouse Media is treading this ground for the first time, having diversified away from online media. The truth is that no-one here knows exactly; it's a major learning curve for all concerned.

Revues and favourable quotes are trickling in. I alwasy thought that these would be a hard part, but careful work and networking (and downright cheek at times) has paid off. Now I'm left thinking that this may be, along with writing, editing and getting into print a book, the easy part. Selling the damn things is hard! The launch is less than a month away now; it soon comes around fast. We still have events to try and book at branches of Waterstones, but the bumf for these is somewhere between the printers and All Mouse Media Ltd's HQ. Until that arrives, it's a case of finger twiddling and trying not to drink too much tea and coffee. Sort of. Actually, there's still plenty of thankless tasks to do and they are getting done - slowly.

The two cartons of books for promotional purposes are slowly going down. The first one actually is almost empty and I can see the bottom. whether that is a good sign, I don't know. Lots of people seem to want free copies, but whether what they can offer in return will translate to sales I really do not know. We have had a few sales, but they aren't the landslide that would have cleaned out all the stock in the first week. We never expected that to happen though for a new company, unless we were incredibly lucky.

Personally, I want to see the book in Waterstones' 3 for 2 offer. Whether that can be negotiated is something that I'll find out over the next few days. An Amazon discount too is something I'd like to see, but as of today the price for pre-order there stubbornly remains at the full RRP. It is a minefield trying to track down the people who we need to talk to and actually talking to them, but we're getting there. It is not helped by the fact that a lot of companies in this area don't seem to like to let you know contact details for who you need to talk to. As a start, you just try and find the 0207 (London) number for Amazon listed on their website. I actually found it via a third party contact - is that really how companies like it? It does feel like bookselling is surrounded by some kind of cult of secrecy.

I think it was BR in the 1980s who used the slogan "We're getting there". Well, we are. Slowly.