Archive for the 'Books & Authors' Category

I’m not reading books anymore - I’m trying to “go shelfless”. With the technology available these days, it seemed to us likely that you could abandon all shelving with the consequential enlargement of your living space. That’s an attractive idea, especially if, like me, your home is already jam-packed with books, CDS and papers that have taken up all the shelving space available already - what do you do as you buy new items?

One friend is very efficient at monetizing her acquisitions - once she’s finished reading her books, she sells them off again on Ebay. She used to rip the music of CDS and then sell the discs on Ebay too. She also gets rid of old clothes and other items the same way.

I’ve been wondering if one could minimise the clutter at an earlier point ie at the acquisition point - by going virtual or electronic.

A few weeks ago, I blogged about taking virtual notes using Evernote, which has so far been a great way to cut back on the bits of paper and physical notebooks that I would normally use. I “write” notes on my mobile phone-PDA using the letter recognizer function so it feels just like scribbling in a physical notebook or on the back of an envelope and zap it across to my online account.

I’ve recently discovered audiobooks via Audible.co.uk, which is a subsidiary of the US-based company Audible.com. So I’m not reading books but I’m listening to them. With Audible, you pay for each book you download just like you might if you bought a physical book from Amazon. But you can also sign up an account and pay a monthly fee of around £8 - each month you can download one title. The latter option is good value as you can download a book that otherwise costs more at that £8 price. Once you’ve downloaded it, the audiobook is yours forever and you can stream it from the online site or download it as many times as you like. The only limitation is that you can only play it on up to 4 computers/ devices that you register with your account - this is to stop you sending an e-version to all your friends and doing Audible out of business.

I’m really enjoying my first two audiobooks. I can listen to them while gardening or sitting on the bus. It’s so much more time efficient being able to listen to a book and do something else at the same time. And activities that used to be boring and painful to do are now quite pleasurable. Also, lying in the garden staring up at the blue sky while someone reads to me in my ears is just delightful - I don’t have to strain my arms lifting the book to read it as I lie down or crick my neck to get the reading angle right. And the books don’t take up any physical space - although you can burn CD versions of them if you want to.

My only complaint about Audible UK is that they have only 18,000 titles compared to the US company which has 40,000 titles. Many of the UK titles are older titles and / or of the WH Smith variety ie non-intellectual easy reading (though there are a few exceptions). I tend to prefer Waterstones or Blackwells which have more academic selections - or Amazon where you can get the most obscure books so long as they are in print. I was very excited when I first discovered Audible.com, the US site, as it had loads of books I wanted. For example, the US company has Naomi Klein’s latest book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Stephen Pinker’s The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature and Sudhir Venkatesh’s Gang Leader for a Day: A Rogue Sociologist Takes to the Streets. My excitement fizzled out when I came to the UK site - where none of these books are available. The UK site has lots on Churchill, how to make a million, chick lit and the latest popular non-fiction, which is fine if your tastes are limited to those topics.

So why don’t I just sign up for the US site? The frustrating thing is that if you try that from the UK, it refuses to allow you to do that and shoots you over to the UK site. Their support team explained to me, “The availability of certain book titles is linked the geographic digital download rights set by the publishers. A title can have different publishers in different countries and the rights are set on a country by country basis. Where possible, we try and secure rights on a world wide basis (for our US, UK, French and German sites) but there are times when this is either not possible or discussions are currently ongoing to secure the rights.” So I have to keep checking back to the UK site in the hope that the UK publishers will at some point issue the UK version of the audiobook.

Still, I have found a few books on the UK site that will keep me going for the next few months - hopefully as time passes more of the kinds of books that interest me will find their way onto the UK site and I won’t have to terminate my experiment with virtual books anytime soon.

Illustration: thanks to Drylcon from Flickr.com (CCL)

I got a new mobile phone a few months ago and I’ve been slowly exploring all its functions - and in the process, I’m discovering a whole new mobilesphere (I have no idea if there is such a word but it seems an apt way to describe the world of mobile media in the way that blogosphere describes the world of blogs!). My new phone is also a mobile computer, running Windows Mobile and 80% of its front face is given over to the screen - the phone part of it has a virtual keypad for me to touch-type the phone number. It runs a mobile version of Word, Excel, Outlook and Internet Explorer. It has WiFi so so I can surf the internet as well as send and receive emails if there’s a WiFi service available - but I also splashed out and signed up for a monthly data plan so I could be connected wherever I am. With unlimited texting and a huge number of talk minutes on top of all that, the way I relate to my mobile phone has completely changed.

I used my old mobile phone solely for voice calls - and I did not use it a great deal as I don’t like shouting out my part of the conversation in public while I’m on the bus or in the street. I hated texting as I am not very nimble on using the telephone number keys to type out words. My new phone has a Qwerty keyboard (ie like a PC keyboard) as well as letter recognition on a touch-sensitive screen. Now I can email or SMS to my heart’s content in public - an excellent way to pass the time on the bus or wherever I am in transit!

Being a writer with this new writing tool to play with, naturally, I was curious when I came across an article about mobile phone novels. These are apparently huge in Japan. According to Wired magazine: “A mobile phone novel typically contains between 200 and 500 pages, with each page containing about 500 Japanese characters. The novels are read on a cell phone screen page by page, the way one would surf the web, and are downloadable for around $10 each.” The novelists tend to be young twenty-somethings or even teenagers who type their novels via their own cellphones. According to the writer interviewed by Wired, she can type faster on her phone than on a standard keyboard. There’s even a first mobile phone novel award - sponsored by the premier site that hosts these novels Magic iLand: might you call it the MoBooker?

There has been one author in the West who has written a novel on his mobile phone. According to a news report, “Italian writer Robert Bernocco took advantage of his idle time while commuting to and from work by train, writing his 384-page science fiction novel, Compagni di Viaggo (Fellow Travelers is the English translation), on his Nokia 6630 phone, using the phone’s T9 typing system.” The book has been published in traditional book form by Lulu.com.

I have to say, I admire the abilities of these two writers to master the mobile phone keypad. Even with the mini Qwerty keyboard and letter-recognition function of my new phone, I do not have the patience to write more than a few short text messages or emails on the fiddly thing!

It seems to me, in the West, there has not been any novel specially written for the mobile phone, as far as I know. I don’t think that the reason is necessarily the difficulty of writing on a mobile phone keypad - presumably, one could write it on a PC, blog-style, and then post it to whatever mobile phone novel site there is around. I wonder if Wester writers shouldn’t try this potential new genre. It would be a great way for a new writer starting out to write 500 words at a time. It’s great for readers as most of us have our mobile phones with us at all times - it’s a handy way to read short bite-sized chunks. Writing short, gripping prose is pretty hard, to be sure, and reading a lot of text on a tiny screen can be hard on the eyes. But I think these are excellent challenges for a writer to evolve a writing style exactly suited to this new medium - rather like writing poetry to the constraints of the sonnet form rather than just sticking a few lines together in the modern free-form style.

Would you read a novel on your mobile phone? Do you know of any writers in English who have a written mobile phone novel? Would you, as a writer, be tempted to try writing one? Add a comment or email me and share your views.

Photo: thanks to europe.htc.com

Carol Major and Hilda Tam Hio Man are co-authoring a historical novel set in Hong Kong, inspired by a true love story in Carol’s family. Carol’s husband’s grandfather, a white Australian, secretly married a Chinese woman in the 1960s - but her existence did not come to light until after he died, although she had lived in his flat since the late 1960s. She must have been in her late teens or early twenties when they married. The grandfather would have been over 65. Following her discovery she disappeared.

Carol has been haunted by this story ever since - Who was this woman? Why did she agree to be hidden from the family for all of those years? And what became of her?

To answer these questions she turned to fiction, although a fiction that would be based on historical facts. She wanted to imagine the sorts of situations that would lead to such choices. Carol asked Hilda if she could assist from a Chinese point of view.

When Carol told me about this story, I wondered if the readers of Fusion View may be able to help her. I know that many of you love books and stories and have connections with the Hong Kong, China, Malaysia and Singapore. So I suggested to Carol that we might put a call for help up here on Fusion View and maybe some of you could help with this great project.

The authors need your help with the texture and detail of life in Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s to help them flesh out the historical details of their novel, inspired by this haunting love story.

Carol writes:

The story is about two little girls, Chloe and Yun, who emigrate from the mainland to Hong Kong in 1950. Chloe is an orphaned Eurasian. She is taken in by a British couple in Hong Kong and attends an Anglican school. Yun is Chinese. Her family had hoped to have a better life in Hong Kong but end up depending on the Triads for their livelihood.

Chloe hopes to make a successful life through hard work. Yun sees no way out of her situation but to marry a westerner who will take her overseas. Events come to a climax when a British official who has been involved in corruption becomes an embarrassment for both the Triads and the British administration. He is banished to Australia with a minder to ensure that he does not tell his story. The minder is Yun.

The women continue to correspond with one another as they try to make sense of where fortune has taken them.

What help we need

We are looking for texture and detail. Did any of our readers live on the Peak in the late 1950s, early 1960s? Did their parents? What would be the response to a little Eurasian girl attending an Anglican school? How would she be treated by the other girls?

We will create a fictional school but need historical details to colour it. Can our readers describe the layout of classrooms, the daily routine, the food in the cafeteria, clique behaviour, summer vacations and so on?

Most of the dwellings that existed on the Peak during that time have been torn down and replaced by high rises. Does anyone have photos of the smaller bungalows? What were the interiors like and so on?

How did people travel up and down to the city in those days? I took the peak tram and also walked up using the escalator. Might Chloe have taken the same route to visit Yun?

Does anyone know what the border at Shenzhen looked like in the 1950s, and the entry process? It has been completely done over now.

Are their any stories or thoughts that run parallel with the plotline that might inform it and add colour? We would love to hear them.

Research so far

We have read much history from general sources and spent time in the Museum of History in Hong Kong gathering information about the time period in question. Articles appearing in the Royal Asiatic Society Journals have also helped. We have also read Elsie Tu’s books about Colonial Hong Kong. A contact who worked with an intelligence service is providing de-identified material on the operations of the Triads and the British Administration. Another contact whose father was involved with the Colonial Office is providing additional detail.

We have found that it is the personal experiences of real people that make the difference. Hilda has asked students to collect stories from their parents and grandparents. It would be fantastic to have more stories about those who came from the mainland in the 1950s—their dreams and what they left behind.

If you can help, please contact Carol (carol.major[at]advancednarrative.com) or Hilda (da_tam[at]yahoo.com). Please also mention Fusion View in your email to them.

More about the Authors

Carol Major was born in Scotland, immigrated to Canada as a girl and settled in Australia in her late twenties. She has been a professional writer for over twenty years with numerous articles published in the health care and social policy field. She is a principal of Advanced Narrative www.advancednarrative.com, a company that specialises in using story telling techniques. She completed both a Master and Doctorate of Arts Degree (Creative Writing) at the University of Technology in Sydney, Australia, during which time she completed two novels. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Canada and Australia, and on the performance website 1001 Nights Cast.

Hilda Tam Hio Man lives in Macau. Her first novel Ah Xun¡’s 5 Destinies was published by Association of Stories in Macao (ASM) in 2006. Hilda’s poetry and translations have recently appeared in Jacket, Segue, Cipher Journal, Poesia Sino-Occidental and The Drunken Boat. A collaborative volume of translations of the Tang poet Meng Jiao was published by ASM last year. Hilda is now working on the translations of classical poems by women poets of the Song dynasty and writing a novel with Carol. She holds a Master of Arts in English Studies from the University of Macau.

Cheryl Snell left a comment on one of my posts, mentioning her cross-cultural Canadian and Hindu experiences. I was intrigued so I followed the link to her blog and website and found that she had written a novel about a Westerner’s experience of marrying into a Hindu family. Naturally, I had to find out more! So I invited Cheryl to write a guest piece of Fusion View.

By way of background, Cheryl Snell is a Washington DC writer, and the author of four books, including the poetry collections Flower Half Blown (Finishing Line Press, 02), Epithalamion (Little Poem Press, 04) and Samsara (Pudding House Publications, 07). She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times, and is the book reviews editor for Alsop Review. She can be reached at cherylsnell3 [at] gmail.com.

Cheryl keeps two blogs, one devoted to poetry and her sister’s art at http://www.snellsisters.blogspot.com; the other an author’s blog built around her debut novel at http://www.shivasarms.blogspot.com . The novel, Shiva’s Arms (The Writer’s Lair Books) explores the relationship between an American woman and her Hindu Brahmin in-laws.

She writes:

When I first met my new family, this passage from Wonderland’s Alice popped into my head– “What if I should fall right through the center of the earth…oh, and come out the other side, where people walk upside down?” I knew the basics—don’t touch the men, no shoes in the house, have a fry pan uncontaminated by meat handy. But there were an overwhelming number of ambiguities to sift through, from the comic head-shaking that looked like No but meant Yes, to the serious conflict between freedom and family.

I had been pulled into samsara, the important householder stage. The word conjured up images of drowning in the domestic sea, and I had read many novels by Indians—Narayan, Desai, Mukerjee—who touched on its complications. I began to imagine my own project, a new novel built on the swirl of relationships around me. Always drawn to the stories with characters belonging to two cultures, I wanted to know which part of a divided self goes and which part stays.

To pit a fictional family with the weight of ancient traditions behind them against the quintessential unsuitable bride would help me to delve into an immigrant’s liminal state, from both points of view. Thresholds are so alive, with the way dualities merge, overlap and intrude on one another, I knew the intersection of cultures would afford me ample imagery. As a poet, I appreciated that.

Writing poetry transcends the personal, for me, whereas fiction relies on empathy. For both forms, I start with an image, a phrase, or an idea. Both forms distill language and meaning–in a poem every word counts, sound and syllable. In fiction, the sentences must advance plot or reveal character. With a novel, revisions are more rigorous, more of a juggle. With so much to take into consideration—characters, scenes, and points of view—it seems counter-intuitive that a novel is more forgiving. But I find that its sprawl makes it more tolerant . “In the novel or short story you get the journey. In a poem you get the arrival,” May Sarton once wrote.

That’s not to say that it’s an orderly progression. When characters run amok, and suddenly have their own plans, it’s hard to force them back into the author’s. Mary Lee Settle advised that empathy without identity is one way to keep control of a character, but it’s difficult to maintain that distance. Transformation, the way the characters change, what conclusion the narrator comes to, are born out of writing one’s way into the piece again and again, trying on different plots, tone, voice. I feel my way.

Sometimes, when all is said and done, a character has more to say. My new novel follows Nela from Shiva’s Arms, back to India. The woman who has spent her life resisting samsara finds meaning by rescuing a little girl from child marriage, at great personal cost to herself. I imagine I can hear them talking together in my poem “Veranda.”

Above sounds of a sunset world
whoops of children rise. We lean
against verdigris, watch the streetlight evolve
like some star buzzing blue to white,
then a steady nostalgic amber.

lamplighters lit my village gaslights with a hook;
old men rocking on verandas nodded off

The widow in white climbs our hill, secrets
folded in her apron. She naps here
like your auntie, one eye open to the world,
sandals dangling off her toes.

The man next door pedals his bicycle so slow,
we worry for his balance. He waves to us
like laundry on a line, half-hearted surrender.

the veranda became a sleeping-porch on hot nights;
a place for cricket games during monsoon

Houses tuck themselves in. Lamps flicker on,
rising story by story. Silence blooms, holding
its breath. I sweep the pots of flag-striped flowers
from our porch, crockery from the table.

You need more room in this place.
I will make room for you.

Photo: of Cheryl and her husband Krisha - thanks to Cheryl Snell

.

A while back, translator Nicky Harman wrote a guest blog piece for Fusion View about the book she was translating from Chinese to English, Striking Root. She was looking for a publisher at that time and we put a plea out via Fusion View to anyone who might be able to help her.

A little later, I received an email from an editor asking to contact to Nicky and naturally, I forwarded the email on. Nicky also reported that she had made contact with a literary agent who had checked out her credentials online and the Fusion View article had been helpful in adding to Nicky’s credentials in that context.

Recently, I received this email from Nicky:

Dear Yang-May

I thought you’d like to know that I have finally found a publisher for Striking Root! University of Hawaii Press have accepted it, and so it will come out in the US before here. I am delighted ….. now I get on with what I’m best at - translating.

Thanks very much for your encouragement, and I do hope all is well with you

best wishes

Nicky

Wow! I am thrilled for Nicky and equally thrilled that Fusion View played a small part in her path to publishing success!

Congratulations, Nicky!

This is a cross-post from my social media blog ZenGuide

I set up my International Public Relations bookproject wiki a few weeks back but I’ve been hesitating about announcing it on my blogs. I finally blogged about it a few days ago and invited comments and input - and I hope very much that you will help me with my research by getting involved in this project. But the reason I hesitated is that having set up the wiki online, I found that I have a strong streak of “command and control” in my character.

I wrote my two novels all by myself and did not show them to anyone until I had finished typing “The End” on the last page. I did invite input from experts on some of the background information that I needed to create a real world for my characters to inhabit and I did occasionally discuss motivation and plot points with my writer friends. But I kept the bulk of the story and text to myself during the 18 months or so that each book took to write. And I felt very much in control as the author and creator.

So while the “social media”, open and transparent part of me is all for having a go with writing a book via a wiki online, the old-fashioned author in me has been feeling somewhat uncomfortable about this new way of doing things. Will people nick my ideas/ thesis? Will people give me unsupportive criticism? Will I feel pushed and pulled by others’ input? Will I no longer feel like the author of the work?

My worries took me by surprise as I had always considered myself an open and trusting sort of person. (Though perhaps my years of training as a lawyer has overlayed that with an armoury of suspicion…?) Friends and colleagues gave me differing views. Some advised, no way should I put it up online as people might steal my work. Others were more of the attitude: well, try it and see. The advantage is that I can invite the help of others who may have more expertise of a particular issue than I have and I always liked the saying, “two (or more) heads are better than one”. And since I may be approaching experts with whom I have no personal connection, I can refer them to the work online for them to get a sense of what the book is about and whether they feel comfortable contributing to it. Also, as I would like to include a strong cross-cultural focus, having an online presence accessible from all over the world can only be a good thing.

A number of much more well-known authors than me have shared their books online while they’ve been work in progress. Chris Anderson blogged his book The Long Tail and developed it with readers’ input. Marc Wright over at simply-communicate.com is also using a wiki for his book Handbook for Internal Communication, due for publication in March 2008. So I reckon, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

So far, I’ve put out a few feelers to a number of experts and I hope to have spoken to an Italian writer this week and also a Korean social media / tech CEO based in Japan.

Do go and check out the bookproject wiki - and let me know if you have any thoughts on any of the issues I’m researching. Drop me an email via the Contact form above or add a comment.

Photo: thanks to smackfu from flickr.com (CCL)

Earlier this summer, I had dinner with Malaysian author Tan Twan Eng and blogger Kak Teh in a restaurant near Queensway. We had first met in February this year when he came along to the LitBloggers Event I was speaking at in Kuala Lumpur. This time, Twan was over in the UK for a book tour promoting his first novel The Gift of Rain. We chatted about the state of Malaysian literature and compared notes on our experiences of having to do the circuit promoting our respective books. He confessed to being disappointed by the level of publicity he had been getting in the UK - although I tried to reassure him that being featured on Radio 3 is pretty prestigious.

Twan’s novel has recently been long-listed for the Booker, which is fantastic news. I’m thrilled for him personally and also, it’s great to see a Malaysian author recognised for this prestigious prize. From a publicity point of view, I don’t think Twan will have any problems in the future!

This is part of my series on Enterprising Writers, where self-published or other entrepreneurial writers can share their stories and tips.

Caro Fraser is the bestselling author of the Caper Court series, who guestblogged here on Fusion View last year about her novel A World Apart. She has since been writing her new novel, A Breath of Corruption, which she will be self-publishing later this year. She writes here for the first time about why she has chosen to go down the self-publishing route after a successful career along the traditional publishing path.

Caro writes:

As an established author with twelve novels under my belt, I never thought I’d find myself going down the self-publishing road. But two years ago I had a bad experience with a major publisher, involving distribution problems and a resulting fall in sales, and it was proving hard to find a publisher for my new novel, Breath Of Corruption the seventh in the Caper Court series of legal novels. The previous books had all sold well, and since I knew from the huge number of contacts from my website that there was a market for it, self-publishing seemed like the logical route to take. On looking into it, I discovered that at the more expensive end of the self-publishing market, the bulk of the work is done for you, while the cheaper options tend to be more time-consuming. I needed something which left me free to write, so, on a recommendation, I opted for Troubadour Publishing.

For a set fee in the region of £2,500, Troubadour offer a full publishing service, covering typesetting, cover design, author proofs, ISBN registration, and inclusion on Amazon and W H Smith Internet Bookshop. The rate varies depending on the number of copies you decide to have printed, but I worked out that unless I went for the top print-run of 2,000 copies, I would hardly break even. Besides, I’m not looking at selling all those copies straight away. As for storage of all those books, Troubadour charge a monthly fee of £20 for bulk storage of over 500 copies.

On top of that, Troubadour offer a marketing package (£350) which covers an initial marketing campaign, sending out review copies, arranging media coverage and distribution via agents. They’ve also given me my own web page to publicise the book, which links to my website.

Because the novel is part of a series, I wanted to maintain a certain image, so I commissioned a designer, Helen Chapman, who had worked on previous jackets in the series to design the cover. That cost £800 – money well spent, as far as I was concerned, as her work is wonderful, and gives just the right tone and feel to the book.

The overall cost may seem like a lot (I saved £260 reading my own proofs!) but as an author with a track record, it’s important that my end product should be of a high quality. I need to get the book into bookshops, after all, so it has to be of a standard consistent with my previously published novels produced by the big publishing houses.

So far, the corrected proofs are with Troubadour, as is the finished artwork for the jacket, and publication is set for some time this autumn.

I’d like to think there’s a chance that sales will take off, and that I can show the world it can be done without the backing of a big publishing house but, as I said, the chances are that I may not break even on this venture. So why am I doing it? Well, because the book is there, and because there’s a market for it, and whatever else we writers are in this game for, it’s to be read. The feedback I get from my readers when they know there’s a new Caper Court novel in the offing makes it doubly worthwhile.

It’s also been an interesting and productive experience so far. Being with a big publishing house, one is cushioned against the hard realities of actually publicising and selling one’s work. I used to complete a novel, send it off to my agent, who then sent it off to my editor, and I’d more or less forget about it till publication. Self-publishing means having to do a lot more work – getting out there, speaking to bookshops to persuade them to stock the book, and generally self-promoting myself in a way I’d never have dreamed of five years ago. I think that’s a healthy thing. I’m even starting my own blog on my website in a few weeks, as a way of keeping in contact with my readership, letting them know about my new work and other ventures. So for me, self-publishing has extended the creative process, brought me closer to the realities of marketing my work, and it also means I’m engaging with my readership in a closer and much more satisfying way. What it means in terms of sales and maintaining my profile, I’ve yet to discover.

I you want to follow my fortunes, and find out how it all goes once the book is published this autumn, you can go to my website www.caro-fraser.com . Once the blog is up and running in two or three weeks’ time, I’d welcome feedback from readers and other writers.

This is part of my series on Enterprising Writers, where self-published or other entrepreneurial writers can share their stories and tips.   

Lydia Teh is Malaysia’s bestselling author whose latest book Honk! If You’re Malaysian hit the top ten book charts, largely due to her dynamic marketing campaign. She is published by Malaysian publishers but although she is not a self-published author, I think a lot of her tips can benefit a whole range of writers looking to create a buzz around their book.

~~~~

Lydia writes:

Like a first baby, first books are special. I cherished high hopes for Congratulations! You have won. When my publisher asked me how many copies I hope to sell, I quoted an astronomical number. So far it has sold only a fraction of that figure. Castles built in the air vanished like soap bubbles.

When my second book, Life’s Like That - Scenes from Malaysian Life was published, my aspiration was tethered closer to the ground. I waited with bated breath for more than a year before my publisher could tell me how many copies were sold. Fortunately it chalked up a respectable four-digit figure which was considered a best seller (in the local context, anything above 1,000 copies is best-selling.) Personally I felt that the book’s performance was less than stellar, and it never made the top ten charts in our bookstores.

In Malaysia there is no national best seller list like the New York Times’. Here bookstore chains compile their own lists. Within the same chain itself, different outlets chart their own top ten.

Having played the role of a starving author for two titles, I was eager for my third book to jump from the warehouse into the best seller lists. And it did. From the week after its release up to now, seven months later, Honk! If You’re Malaysian has hit the top ten lists of most of the bookstores in Malaysia including MPH, Popular, Borders and Kinokuniya. Initially, it only aced the local chart but later it gave the foreign titles a run for their money too. To-date 9,000 copies of Honk! are in print.

Obviously I have done some things right this time which included these PR strategies :

1. Blog Buzz

After submitting my manuscript to the publisher, I ran a contest on my blog to search for a book title. I’m not good with coining spiffy titles and I figured that the contest would create a buzz for the upcoming book. Within a week, 241 titles were suggested by bloggers. One of it was the catchy Honk! If You’re Malaysian which described my book succinctly. It was love at first sight.

When the book was released, I organized another contest for bloggers to write a review of Honk! or provide a link back to their blogs. My aim was to spread the word about the book in the blogosphere.

A blog is truly a godsend for stingy or poor authors. It enables us to establish a web presence without having to fork out huge amounts for the design and maintenance of a website. It is also an effective and interactive tool for communicating with readers. I use it to post announcements on book signings and media appearances.

2. Press Buzz

If you want to sell lots of books, courting the media is part of the deal. If nobody knows about your book, nobody will buy it. You’ve got to shout to the world, “Hey! My book is out. Buy it!” And nothing spreads the word faster than extensive media coverage.

My stint as an encyclopaedia sales rep has thickened my hide a little. Since becoming an author, my skin has tripled in thickness (but it still has room for expansion.) I made cold calls to the media, asking them to interview me and write about my book. An author can’t afford to be bashful if she wants her book to sell like hot buns.

Since the publication of Honk!, I have been interviewed and featured more than two dozen times on radio, TV, the print media and the internet. Honk! has also appeared in the Singapore press and the World Journal published in USA.

3. Store Buzz

Publishers and book stores organize book talks as part of their marketing support for authors. Usually I’m apprehensive about conducting such events as I believe that only foreign authors, celebrities or well known public figures can draw a good crowd.

Still, an author has to do what she’s got to do to promote her books. I didn’t like to badger friends and family to attend my talks, but I did rope in my children, nephews and nieces to help out as ‘honkers.’

Armed with home-made sandwich boards and roti (bread) horns, the type used by hawkers to summon customers to their mobile stall, the kids traipsed through the mall to announce the book talks. Only one mall allowed us to do that, the others turned us down as they didn’t want their customers to suffer undue disturbances. The bookstores did let us blow the horn inside the store though.

Despite this innovative technique, attendance at my talks was poor. Some friends, writing buddies and bloggers turned up but I couldn’t always depend on them for support. I must get Joe Public to come. Two of the book talks were held close to Chinese New Year. On each occasion, I bought a box of mandarin oranges as prizes to award members of the audience who responded to my question of “name a Malaysian trait.” At another event held during a Bookfest on a weekday afternoon, the crowd was sparse. Fortunately I had bought some postal stamps to give away as tokens for a quiz I had prepared. That helped to pull in a decent crowd.

Though I didn’t sell lots of books during the talk itself, I would still do the rounds for the sake of store publicity. Bookstores promote the event on their flyers and website, they put up posters in the shops, they order a larger quantity of books and most importantly, they give the books a prominent display. Good visibility at the store helps to increase sales, and for that I must thank my publisher, MPH Publishing, for making five standees to attract customers’ attention.

So if you have a book to sell, go on and buzz your book to success.

~~~

Photo: of Lydia’s team of “honkers”, thanks to Lydia Teh.

You can check out Lydia’s blog at http://lydiateh.wordpress.com/. Her media gallery showcases all her media and press activities and she has also blogged about her personal appearances and book event. Following the great success of her marketing campaign, Lydia is currently taking a breather from blogging to concentrate on other matters.

Following on from my series last week on The Writer as Entrepreneur, in conjunction with Mslexia magazine, I received this email from self-published children’s book author Chrissie Gittins.

If you are an Enterprising Writer, check out my invitation to share your enterprising story and get in touch to showcase your story on Fusion View.

~~~~~~

Dear Yang-May,

I was very interested to read your article on self publishing in Mslexia
today. I self published my two children’s poetry collections as
mainstream publishers are reluctatnt to take on newish children’s poets -
though they use my poems in their anthologies. Both my collections were
shortlisted for the only prize for a children’s poetry book - the CLPE
Poetry Award, and the second was also a Poetry Book Society Choice for the
Children’s Poetry Bookshelf. ’I Don’t Want an Avocado’ has sold
5,800 copies so far since October, and I’m about to reprint ’Now You
See Me, Now You …’.

I thought you might like to hear about this little-known world of
children’s poetry. I’m also booked to talk about self-publishing at the
Lancaster Literature Festival in November - I shall go armed with your
article!

There are more details about my books, should you be interested, on my
website - www.chrissiegittins.co.uk

Best of wishes and thanks for a great read,
Chrissie

~~~~~~

Chrissie’s website lists a great number of her other books and activities and if you’re in the UK, you can catch her at one of her many events around the country. She’s certainly very dynamic and energetic in managing her career as a writer beyond the written word - through radio, personal appearances, involvement in the Arvon Foundation and running poetry workshops.