Monday, 21 October 2019

A Book Launch in the Museum...

Usually when I'm in Leicester, it's on a Friday for a Belmont Belles RNA Chapter meeting, so going to the city on a Saturday was unusual, especially when there was a big football match and memorial parade at the football stadium.

This time I was there for a book launch at the New Walk Museum, for Rosemary J Kind's new release, Unequal by Birth.
Cover design...

The museum was busy and popular with families. Just inside the entrance there was a large Lego figure displayed- think it was an Astronaut.

I will definitely visit another time as there was so much to see, including the art gallery that I passed through to get to the book launch in the Lord Mayor's room.

There were refreshments provided in the area outside the meeting room before the launch began, which gave me time to say hello to Rosemary in person- we've been friends online for many years but never met because of distance and no opportunity to be in the same county.

Rosemary's books for sale at the launch...
Rosemary read the opening chapter, that carries on the story of her characters from the earlier book New York Orphan.

There is another book in production...

Rosemary talked about the research she'd undertaken and the part the Orphan Train Movement in late 19th century America, featured in the first novel.

The Q&A followed, then there was the opportunity to buy a Rosemary's book (or books) and get them signed.

It was a lovely afternoon and I'm sure Rosemary's latest book will do well- she told her guests that on Saturday morning it was in the kindle charts ahead of Hilary Mantel and just behind Ken Follett- there's a screen shot on her Twitter account...

Sadly, I couldn't stay longer as I needed to get my train before the football match finished and lots of people headed for their trains home.
Fortunately, the station was only a five-minute walk away, barring getting across the road via a series of new pelican crossing points!

New Walk Museum
Leicester...
It was good to get away from my desk for an afternoon...

Have you been to a book launch in a place that wasn't a bookshop?




Sunday, 20 October 2019

A Week of Learning...

It's been a busy week so you'll be getting two posts today and tomorrow, otherwise it would be a very long post to read.

I was scrolling through my Twitter feed earlier last week and saw a link for the Romance Writers Summit. There was a free sign up to see the sessions released each day for five days- though this was a time zone in America.

After signing up I watched a few of the six sessions and they were interesting and useful. There was an email waiting the next morning in my inbox with the link to sign-in and go to page for playing each session.

It was like the online conference that the Alliance of Independent Authors do twice a year; you can access the content for a limited time but after that you need to buy an access pass, but with this summit that would give access to additional content and downloads related to some sessions.

Having been struggling with the beats in Act 2 of the Three Act structure- I'd been reading up on it and was still not clear around the middle mark, but then it all fell into place with NYT Bestseller, author Marilyn Brant. Her session 'Breaking Down Pride & Prejudice by the Beats' finally made sense of the troublesome middle.

Now I need to apply what I've learnt to my own novels!



Back to offline life, Friday was a workshop session held by the Nottingham Story Weavers, my local RNA Chapter, on Social Media & the Savvy Author with author Talia Hibbert.

She is brilliant and a lovely person too...

Talia has a book coming out early November with Avon, 'Get a Life, Chloe Brown'. So we received some insights on her social media use around the new book, and on using several social media platforms.

We all see writers with great social media posts, photos and images with the accompanying text. I've wondered how to do these correctly. Well, now I know and it's not complicated. 

There were examples of specific tools that make the process user-friendly. I will definitely try them out.

There were three things (among many others) that Talia emphasised as important: a website and a mailing list for your newsletter, and your author brand. 

For the couple of hours we had, there was a lot of practical and helpful content with the visual displays- and the handout with the website links we needed.

By the end we were all buzzing with a renewed energy.

If you'd like to find out more about Talia and her books, then pop over to her website.


Join me tomorrow to read the second post about my day in Leicester...



image:pixabay.com



Monday, 14 October 2019

When Amazon's KDP Met East Midlands Writers...

East Midlands writers heard from Darren Hardy, manager of the KDP UK (kindle direct publishing) at an event organised via the Society of Authors last Thursday evening.

They held the event at The Nottingham Mechanics- the regular venue for Nottingham Writers' Club meetings, so this was a local and a great opportunity to attend.

This was only the second time KDP had run this session so they're still refining the event and learning from each one.

Though I'm not sure Mr Hardy was quite prepared for the RNA members attending.

Basically, it was KDP promoting and showing how easy it was to self publish with them and generate up to 70% in digital and up to 60% in print on demand royalties.

They provided a helpful A4 handout with relevant details and URLs and examples of royalty calculations.

For those who had not used KDP there was a run-through of the process, though the images on the screen were not large enough to read the text from a distance, it was explained and key aspects highlighted.

Apparently the help button on the dashboard connects to a tech team whose only job is to sort out the technical issues or queries writers may have during the process. There are also webinars, which if you can't watch at the time they're running, you can access later via the video library.

Questions were raised during part one and more again with the part two content.

There were insights into Author Central and how the writer could use their profile. Their suggestion that authors should link all their social media accounts to their Amazon author profile was met with scepticism by some audience members; I raised the question of algorithms and writers losing reviews, or being banned from leaving reviews.

Mr H said this was only when there was a financial connection, a gift card or cash had been paid for a review. He said that if an author contacted them about disappearing reviews, they would look at it. A human would look at it...

Sadly, he did not appear to believe that authors were losing reviews when they'd done nothing wrong, but as they would not tell the writer the actual reason for review removal, and consequently not reinstate them (some are); it was not a satisfactory answer.

But the audience were also told to contact the Society of Authors with the details of when and what had been removed, so the Society could feed that back to KDP. He admitted that there had been a glitch last year, and they had reinstated those reviews but was unaware of any recently.

There were complaints of cover colour inconsistency from the print on demand service, but again there was no explanation, just let the Society of Authors know as well to feed it back.

Four RNA members I know of had received damaged books in the last few months because of poor packaging, including one sent back by the carrier, before it got to the author, because of the state it was in. It appeared Mr H was unaware of these type of complaints.

Another attendee asked about the get 50 reviews and visibility improves. That isn't right, we were told. It's the metadata, so using the best categorisation and effective keywords in relation to the book is the important thing.

There are some promotions that authors can be invited to take part in, but, unlike those occasions when Amazon reduces the price but the author still gets their set royalty rate, the invited promotions will be at a reduced royalty rate...

KDP encourage writers to set up their author central profile on each of the Amazon sites, but they have to be done individually, so sign in, apparently using your normal Amazon log-in details, and complete your profile for each one. Cut and paste is the only shortcut for this.

Print & e-book...
There's more but hopefully you'll get the opportunity to attend their future events in other parts of the country, so sign up to the Society of Authors non-members newsletter- if you haven't done so, as this was how I heard the news of this free event and booked.
While I learnt a few useful things, I went away disappointed.

The KDP manager was not as well briefed as he could have been, so when he couldn't really answer the negative issues writers raised, it showed and suggested, right or wrong, that KDP thought everything was rosy.

Hopefully, he'll take back those negatives and get them resolved.

The good news is that one RNA writer who had received damaged books a couple of months ago, received her latest author copies in good condition and better packing. So maybe there's hope for solutions.

If KDP do more of this event, hopefully, they'll be able to answer any difficult questions writers raise.

All that said, any opportunity to hear from KDP direct is to be welcomed...





image:Pixabay.com





Monday, 7 October 2019

Pressing the Pause Button...



I've been taking a break from writing to catch-up on reading for enjoyment and learning, but most of all not putting pressure on myself...

Trying to get my head around character arcs was giving me a headache until we discussed the topic on #writingchat on Twitter last Wednesday.

On the recommendation of several writers, I bought Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody.

I'm working my way through it and it's helping put some sense of proportion on the novel's current state.

Though I've been a little down the last few days, I've assorted writing events coming up this week and next. It's good to go out and meet other writers.

I'm especially looking forward to attending a book launch in Leicester in a fortnight, for Rosemary J Kind's latest novel, Unequal by Birth. Having known her online for many years we've never met- she lives in North Yorkshire, so it will be wonderful to say hello in person and support her launch.

Do you remember me mentioning the #SelfPubCon2019 sessions put together by ALLi
Vine Leaves Press
Notebook...
(Alliance of Independent Authors) last month?

Well, the Vine Leaves Press session about Video Marketing to Sell Your Books, ran a giveaway for their notebooks.

A few weeks ago was delighted to receive an email telling me I was one of the winners and asking which of the three notebook designs I wanted to receive and my address for delivery.

This is the one I chose (on the right) in the paperback form - they have a hardback version of each design too...

I received it at the weekend. Lovely isn't it?

Now I just need to decide what to write in it...





Notebook image via Amazon