Archive for the 'Books & Authors' Category

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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.

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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.

Are you a writer who has self-published your book? What was your experience of trying to market it? Dealing with the printers? Trying to get it taken by bookshop? What tales from the trenches do you have to tell?

Or are you a writer who has been published the traditional way and taken an active part in marketing your book - even beyond the call of duty? What stories do you have to tell about what it takes to sell, sell, sell your book?

This week on my blog, to coincide with the publication of my article about The Writer as Entrepreneur in the July edition of Mslexia, the journal for women writers, I’m posting up my interviews with three self-published writers and a publishing industry insider.

As part of this innovative magazine/ blog initiative, I’d like to open up the discussion to you. If you have a story about your publishing or self-publishing experiences that is related to the business, marketing or entrepreneurial side of the being a writer, I’d love to hear it. Please email me your story and if it’s suitable, I’ll publish it on Fusion View.

This invitation is for enterprising writers who’ve achieved their success through their own hard work and dedication on the business side of publishing their book. I want to celebrate the power of the individual!

And in particular, I’d be very interested to hear from you if you’ve used social media like blogging, podcasting, online video, Facebook, MySpace etc as part of your marketing campaign.

Fusion View has a global readership and is read by 8,000 unique visitors a month, totalling over 13,000 monthly hits. It has recently been featured on BBC Radio and is read by writers, poets, film-makers, photographers, other creatives and publishing industry insiders - as well as many book lovers and avid readers. If you’re an enterprising writer, I don’t need to tell you that this is a great opportunity to raise your profile as part of the Fusion View community!

The closing date for submissions is the 31st July 2007. Please read my Guestblogger Submission Guidelines.

Additional inspiration

Success Stories

Movie Trailers for Books

Photo: of stock trading frenzy thanks to theonion.com

Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe won the Man Booker international prize earlier this month and in The Guardian article prompted by this award, the writer refers to him as “a relatively obscure but richly merited choice.” She then pauses and asks the question: “Obscure for whom?” and goes on to say, “I was struck anew by how towering figures in world literature can fall beneath the radar in the west, or slip from memory.”

It reminded me again how West-o-centric our sense of culture, art and literature tends to be. Even our sense of civilization, innovation, invention and discovery. Part of it is to due to the West’s love of the arts and a belief in the arts power to illuminate, uplift and educate - as well as in its use to entertain, communicate and persuade. We see all over the world stories in fiction, film, theatre and art created and disseminated by Western creatives. There is a power in these stories that reaches out across cultures to move the human heart - whether to anger, laughter, compassion or tears. That’s down to the skill of great story-telling. But inevitably those stories place the Westerner and Western values at their core. Why? Because we all like to hear stories about ourselves so of course the West will tell stories about themselves and gravitate towards stories about themselves.

In the same way that Malaysians or Nigerians or Indians and so on like to hear stories about themselves.

So, it was that West-o-centric view that created the great discoverers of olden days. Off Columbus went to “discover” America. Off Raffles went to “discover” Singapore. One might equally ask, “Discover for whom?” Thanks very much but for the Native Americans, they already knew that America was there. As did the Malays and Chinese with Singapore.

I remember an old Punch magazine cartoon which showed Sir Edmund Hillary arriving at the top of Mount Everest full of self-satisfied, over-excited bug-eyed joy at his great achievement for mankind. In the background is a family of Indians, the ladies in saris, having a picnic - all turning to gaze bemused at this mad Englishman. (The cartoon I am sure was drawn by an Englishman!)

I have many questions: is this so-called “cultural imperialism” to do with there not being enough great writers / artists in non-Western cultures? Or is it to do with a bias towards stories about “us” by people like “us”? Is it to do with different levels of education, literacy and appreciation of the value of art in different cultures? Or is it something more banal like the economic power of Western nations to create and distribute more widely their artistic products?

Photo: of Columbus and the people he “discovered” thanks to umich.edu

Do you remember those early music videos they used to play on Top of the Pops? You know, the one of Bohemian Rhapsody with the kaleidoscopic special effects of the band singing “Mama mia, mama mia, let me gooooo” while top lit by a harsh spotlight against a black background? And the one of ABBA sitting round a fake campfire strumming and humming along to “Can you hear the drums, Fernando?”

We laugh at their tackiness today but they were ground-breaking for their time, evolving into Michael Jackson’s super scary super limber Thriller video not long after.

Well, for all you shy retiring writers out there, this may be the time for your moment in the video limelight. Yahoo! News reports:

Once a novelty, book videos are increasingly common and, publishers say, essential. Hyperion Books, HarperCollins and Penguin Group (USA) are among those using them. Powell’s Books, a leading independent store based in Portland, Ore., plans its own series of films, starting with a video for Ian McEwan’s new novel, “On Chesil Beach.”

“I don’t know if we’re reaching people we wouldn’t otherwise be reaching, but we are reaching people who are not necessarily reading book review sections, or always watching a TV show,” says Sue Fleming, Simon & Schuster’s vice president and executive director for online and consumer marketing.

No one makes definitive claims that videos increase sales, but publishers and booksellers agree they can help, especially if they catch on at YouTube and elsewhere on the Internet. Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Worldwide, noticed the recent attention given to a video for the best seller “The Dangerous Book for Boys.”

Here’s the video for The Dangerous Book for Boys from YouTube:

This could be a great opportunity for enterprising writers who are self-publishing or whose book may not be as well-publicised by their publisher as they would like. Get out there with your video cameras and shoot your own book video, put it on YouTube, blog about, Twitter about it - use all viral marketing means possible - and you may start reeling in a whole new audience….

Headline, part of the same group as my publisher Hodder & Stoughton, is publishing a crime thriller Contract by Simon Spurrier online for free in six weekly installments, according to booktrade.info, the online book trade website.

Interestingly, Simon contacted me via the Ning.com social network site for crime writers Crimespace a few weeks before this announcement and we are now “friends” on that network. On Simon Spurrier’s Crimespace page, he describes himself as “Sarcastic. Odd. Paranoid obsession with aggressive Yaks. Hoping to get rich - in the spiritual karmic sense. Or at least break even.”

You can read the online version of the novel from tomorrow 24 May at http://www.itsallaboutthemoney.co.uk/. Or you can wait till 4 June to buy it in hardback at £19.99.