Review of reviews

How useful are book reviews?

I’ve noticed writers in the writing community on Twitter often ask readers to submit book reviews – sometimes with a discrete nudge, sometimes with a direct request, occasionally with a blatant bribe. This has set me thinking about the usefulness, the value and indeed the ethics of reviews. It’s turned out to be a more interesting subject to consider than I expected. (I was just planning to write a quick 5-minute blog!).

     Most of the reviews I read are on commonly accessed, online sites such as Amazon and Goodreads. When it comes to writing one, every time I finish an ebook on Kindle I am asked to rate it on Amazon and a review is requested. I often as not might press the rating stars but then ignore the request for an actual review. Isn’t that what most people do? Of course it might be different if I feel very strongly about the book. If I’ve read a paper copy, bought from a bookshop or borrowed from the library, I’m more likely to rate it and maybe comment or recommend on Goodreads, rather than on Amazon.

     I realise there are many other online sites on which to post or read reviews and also a myriad of review magazines exist, ranging from ‘The London Review of Books’ to ‘Book Club Bible’ and ‘Self-publishing Review’. A review can be a literary analysis or a scholarly essay, a summary review, an opinion piece or simply a comment based on personal taste. I imagine formats used by the publishing industry might be different from those used by the average readers.

     So what makes me write a review? Sometimes it could be a favour for a writing friend, or more often I will simply be passing onto others a recommendation for a book I’ve loved reading. I’ve often had the feeling when I’ve enjoyed a particular book, that I want friends to enjoy it too - I want to be able to talk to them about it. Sometimes I feel sad, even a little lost, when I’ve finished a special book and I want to recall my own thoughts and feelings about it before I let go. Sometimes I genuinely want the writer to know how much I’ve enjoyed their work, especially if I’ve felt a special connection with their characters or subject matter. (I’ve looked at the last twenty book reviews I’ve posted on Amazon and was surprised to note that seven of the books I’ve responded to were actually written by friends).

     In terms of the ethics of book review writing, I think it is important to be honest but also kind – not every book deserves five stars and not all genres or styles are to everyone’s taste but most books have some merit that can be recognised. Good teachers always say it’s good to balance any negative comments with positives – I suggest in book reviews always look for the positives and handle negatives gently and with sensitivity. If the writing is truly awful, I would consider avoiding doing a review at all. (If it is offensive, pornographic, or downright rude, rather than reviewing it, I’d say report it). In most cases I would acknowledge that the writer has worked long and hard to create their 80,000+ word masterpiece.  They probably have battled through umpteen rejections before getting their book published, be it traditionally or independently, so most will appreciate some consideration.

     Having said all that, if any of you readers out there have read and enjoyed reading ‘Lawn House Blues’ do feel free to submit a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Please regard this as a gentle nudge, as I’m not going to bribe you. Be assured it’s quite an easy and straightforward process to write and post a brief review and you might well make a writer’s day.

Show, don't tell - you've heard it all before but what does it mean?

If you've ever been on a creative writing course, or read books on how to edit, you'll have been exhorted at some point to 'show, don't tell'.  In other words, try and make your 'scenes' come to life.

            Look at this example:

Cherie was fuming, too wound up to get on with making dinner. She paced up and down the little sitting room. How dare he! And with that slut, Marcia, who'd been round half the street. Well, she'd show him she wasn't one to be taken lightly. Wait till he got home.

            She looked wildly round her. On the sideboard was an ugly bronze statuette that her grandma had given her. She pictured it buried deep in Kenny’s skull.

            When he came through the door he was as bright and cheerful as usual. Gave her a smacking kiss and asked what they were going to eat. She told him to sit down, that it wouldn't be long. She wondered how she was going to approach it, what the bastard would say. In the end she just came out with it. Told him straight she knew what he'd been up to with Marcia. But he just laughed. Said Marcia had come on to him, that there was nothing in it.

            Enraged, she grabbed the statuette and smashed it down on the back of his head. She saw the amazement on his face, and his mouth open to protest, but her rage took over. All she could see was the infamous red mist, and she brought the ornament down on his head again and again until he lay still.

Now the above gives you all the information you need. It's not badly written and the information contained in the piece is clear. It gives us the details we need and it does it succinctly. In fact, if you read 19thC novelists such as George Eliot, Jane Austen or Henry James then you'll find huge swathes of text written just like this, (the writing will no doubt be of a better quality – it will certainly be more long-winded) and this is how fiction was written then. To be honest, I rather enjoy it. If it's done well it engages the intellect and draws the reader into the author's thoughts very effectively.

Look at this passage from George Eliot's Middlemarch.

Her thought was not veined by any solemnity or pathos about the old man on the bed: such sentiments are easier to affect than to feel about an aged creature whose life is not visibly anything but a remnant of vices. She had always seen the most disagreeable side of Mr. Featherstone: he was not proud of her and she was only useful to him. To be anxious about a soul that is always snapping at you must be left to the saints of the earth, and Mary was not one of them.'

But today's readers expect a greater immediacy than that. They would expect Mary's feelings to be shown, rather just be told about them. In fact on the whole, today's readers want to be much more emotionally engaged. This is true of all fiction, novels and short stories included, but it is particularly true if you want to write genre fiction, such as crime, romantic fiction, spy thrillers or historical romances.

Have a look at the first extract rewritten to show, rather than tell, what happened between Cherie and Kenny. (I'm not going to try and rewrite George Eliot!)

Cherie fumed. Her breath came in short gasps and she could hear her heart beating.

            'That cheating bastard!' she said to herself. 'And with that slut, Marcia. How could he? What the hell has she got that I haven't?'

            She tried to steady her breathing, which was coming in short, sharp pants. She debated with herself how she was going to bring it up, shove it in his face. With one eye she took in the bronze statuette on the sideboard.

            'Right,' she said. 'Let's see what you've got to say for yourself. Let's see how you feel with that buried in your skull.'

            She heard his footsteps in the hall before he opened the door.

            'Hiya darlin',' he said. 'Good day?'

            'Oh, not bad, not bad.'

            'Dinner ready?'

            'Not yet. Won't be long.'

            He looked at her. 'Something wrong? Your face looks a bit blotchy. You sickening for something?'

            He stood up and put his hands on her shoulders. 'Keep still for a minute, will you. Stop pacing up and down. What the hell's got into you?'

            She looked back at him, her eyes like coals. 'Just one word. Marcia.'

            He stared, and his grip on her shoulder tightened.

            'What the hell are you…?' he began, but then started to laugh. He let go her shoulders and threw himself down into the chair.

            'So you heard. So what interfering old biddy let you in on that?'

            'Doesn't matter. What matters is, why?'

            'Why d'you think?'

            'How could you?'

            'Oh, give over. She was all over me like a rash. She wanted it. I just obliged. Didn't mean anything.'

            He looked up at her, offered his hand. 'Come on, Cher. It's not like you haven't been round the block yourself.'

            She reached out her hand to him as if in forgiveness, but with her other hand she grabbed the statuette and swung it down hard. Blood sprang to his forehead from the gash she'd made.

'For God's sake, Cher,' he managed. 'Be careful.'

            As she swung the ornament again and again she said between gritted teeth: 'And don't call me Cher.'

This time the writer has explored the action and dramatised the incident so that it appears like a scene in a play, showing events as they are actually happening, thus carrying the reader along. The first two extracts are simply recorded events (the first one) or recorded thoughts (the second).

Of course there are times when 'telling' is actually the best vehicle for getting something across. The reader would be exhausted if every page contained drama and conflict, and the writer needs to work at varying the pace as well as trying to put events across dramatically.  But there are other mechanisms, which when done sparingly, can also ensure we are shown rather than told. In fact here is another passage from Middlemarch that uses another technique, that of the internal monologue.

Lydgate, in fact, was already conscious of being fascinated by a woman strikingly different from Miss Brooke; he did not in the least suppose that he had lost his balance, but he had said of that woman, 'she is grace itself; she is perfectly lovely and accomplished.' Plain women he regarded as he did the other severe facts of life, to be faced with philosophy and investigated by science.

In my own novel, Hangman's Wood, I use this technique to reveal both the fate of one of the abductees and the state of mind of one of the perpetrators without taking the reader through the incident.

He enjoyed the pleading most, he decided.  That's when you really felt their terror, when you got up close. She'd begged and cried so much he'd actually got bored. Eventually he'd had to stop her babbling, stop her with a good hard slap to her fat, white face. That had put some colour in her cheek. He had hated her whiteness, thought she looked like undercooked pastry.

It had been easy, he chuckled to himself, getting her into her car and then driving it out of the car-park. He'd checked out where the CCTV cameras were the day before and seen they didn't cover the whole of the site. And it was such a murky, drizzly afternoon, dark already by four o'clock, that no-one was going to pay much attention. Just wanted to get in their cars out of the weather. The security guy wasn't doing much, either. Keeping himself dry, Graham supposed. So it had been a matter of minutes for two nice young men to offer to help her put her heavy shopping in the boot of her car, then bundle her into the back.

The reason I chose this method was because at that point I needed to do a couple of things. I’d already described one abduction in dramatic detail, and another through various conversations after the event, so I needed to find another technique to describe this event. I also needed to think hard about the pace of the story, and in fact at this stage I wanted to slow things down a little.

So despite the instruction to ‘show, don’t tell’, it’s also important to vary the method of showing. And sometimes a bit of ‘telling’ enables the writer to vary the pace and give the reader a bit of breathing space. And pace is something I'll look at in another article.

This article was written by Pauline Rendall (Paula K. Randall), and is a version of an article previously published in Ezine magazine.

Achieving authenticity

All writers need to do research. We're often told to 'only write what you know', but clearly there will be times when this is impossible. For instance, did Hilary Mantel ever actually meet Thomas Cromwell? Did Thomas Harris ever commit cannibalism? Did Tolkein live in Middle Earth and commune with elves, wizards and hobbits? I think not!

And therefore the committed and conscientious writer must undertake a great deal of research, a lot of which will never reach the pages of the novel, but will ensure that we don't make ridiculously inaccurate statements. Because, funnily enough, it's not being right that matters. It's not being wrong!

So I asked crime writer, probation officer and all round knowledgeable guy, Michael Craven, to give us the low-down on some aspects of research that may well help you not to seem an idiot. It's already given me some food for thought for my work-in-progress Washed in the Blood, which deals with this very thing.

Bodies Found In Water

by Mike Craven

This short article is designed to give crime writers a few facts about bodies found in water. Of course, some of these may not fit in with your plot or theme and that’s fine. Some writers want every fact to be correct but most of us simply want to get it right when there is nothing to be gained by getting wrong.

So here are a few facts that are useful to know about a corpse being found in water when it comes to plotting your novel or short story. In no particular order they are:

•                Bodies found floating in water will ALWAYS be lying face down with the head hanging. There are often post-mortem injuries to the head because of this as the body is buffeted against things in the water. Normally, pathologists can easily distinguish between ante and post-mortem injuries due to the presence or lack of blood. However, as the head hangs down in the water, blood congests there and post-mortem injuries will also bleed.

•                Typical signs found when a body has been immersed in water include anserina cutis (goose bumps), where skin has swelled and wrinkled, and adipocere which is the transformation of the fatty layer in the skin to a soap-like substance. Depending on the water temperature this last process can take months.

•                A body in water will normally sink as the specific gravity (SG) of the body is similar to water. Having sunk to the bottom, putrefaction commences and this will eventually lower the SG, causing the body to rise. Attached weight (heavy clothing, weights etc) may delay the body rising but will not normally be enough to stop it altogether. In cold water, putrefaction is delayed so the body will not rise as quickly as it would in warmer water. In water that remains very cold all year round the body may never rise.

•                Medically, a pathologist will not be able to prove the cause of death was drowning. There are some pathological changes that are characteristic of drowning but they also occur in other deaths (heart failure, drug overdoses, and for crime writers, head injuries). A diagnosis of drowning is largely done by excluding other deaths.

•                There are suggestive indicators which can help with diagnosing whether the body was alive or dead when it entered the water.

1.   Large quantities of water in the stomach indicate the body was alive when it entered the water. If water is not present or present but in small quantities it suggests that death occurred before the body entered the water.

2.   Hands gripping foreign materials. Struggling victims may clutch at anything they can. Evidence may be found during examination (fingernails etc). Occasionally something happens called cadaveric spasm, essentially the body goes into rigor mortis instantly. Anything the hand was holding at the time could well still be held there. This would suggest that the victim was alive when they entered the water.

•                For writers wanting some technical details that may emerge from a post-mortem when the cause of death was drowning, the following would be typical:

3.   A fine white foam may be seen coming out of the airways (mouth and nostrils). If it is wiped off, pressure from the lungs will force it to reappear. This indicates that the body was alive when it entered the water. Unfortunately, this foam also occurs in cardiac victims, drug overdoses and head trauma.

4.   Damage to the middle ear, typically a blue/purple discolouration of the bone of the mastoid air cells. However, this also occurs in electrocution, head injuries and some forms of suffocation.

5.   Shoulder girdle bruises. People struggling against drowning often rupture muscles in the shoulder girdle, chest and neck. This may only occur in 10% of drownings and is not conclusive.

•                For crime writers, it is very rare for a murderer to kill his victim by drowning. This would normally require the murderer to be substantially stronger than the victim or for the victim to be incapacitated somehow (i.e. drunk or unconscious). Far more common is a body being disposed of in water and a drowning to be staged.

To summarise, pathologists and the police have certain reliable pointers that suggest whether the victim was alive or dead when they entered the water. It is difficult to stage the pathological changes that occur during drowning and it is unlikely anyone could successfully kill someone and then fake their drowning. However, the difficulty for fiction writers is that drowning cannot be definitively proved during post-mortem. There are indicators but they also occur in other deaths, making it very difficult to differentiate whether someone drowned or died from other causes, a heart attack for example. 

The author of this guest post is Michael Craven. Michael was short-listed for 2013 Debut Dagger. You can follow his very useful blog at www.criminaljusticewriters.com.

Getting in the Press!

This article was in the Colchester Gazette. Do I really look like this? Oh well, it's good publicity!

Promoting your work

Promoting your printed book.

If you're going to self-publish, then you're going to have to think about your own marketing and distribution. If you've self published a hard copy, perhaps as print on demand, then you're going to have to consider issues such as storage (even on print on demand you still need to be able to provide inspection copies), who you're going to get to stock it, and how you're going to reach them. If you have an obliging local independent bookseller you may be given a launch, and this will enable you to get your name out there and make some sales. But quite how you reach further than that is simply down to how much time and effort you're prepared to put into travelling and approaching other booksellers. Don't expect Waterstones or WH Smith's to bite your hand off and pile them up in their doorway. Publishers pay booksellers a lot of money to push their books under the noses of potential buyers, and you're not going to be in that game.

Using Social Media

If you've published an e-book, then you'll probably have heard or read about the power of social marketing, such as Twitter and Facebook. Well, as far as I know, I've sold one book through Twitter. And if you're a Twitter user, you'll probably already be aware of the amount of publicity that some writers try and generate to publicise their books, banging out tweet after tweet, bombarding you with endless tales of how wonderful and exciting their book is. Well, it might be. But have you read it? No. So what makes you think anyone is going to read yours? The same goes for Facebook. This is because blatant advertising is just annoying.


So just how do you make social media work for you? Well, the first answer is, with difficulty. The second is, with a lot of effort. And the time to start making that effort is actually before you publish your book.


Now, to be honest, I'm not really very good at this myself. However, I thought I'd share with you some things that have worked for me, and some things that could work if I put more into it.


The first thing you need to do is start chatting. Join a number of forums (or fora, I should probably say). These can be forums of writers (though to be honest, these are less likely to get you readers, because everyone there is on the same mission). Do you have any other interests? Photography? Knitting? Car maintenance? The forum that got me the most readers initially is one I've been chatting on for years, so I have a relationship of sorts with the other people on it. That gave me a couple of hundred potential readers. Not enough, but a good start. And that forum is nothing at all to do with writing, though I did discover that there are a couple of other writers on there. But the thing is, you have to give before you get. And on that site I've both given and received advice on all sorts of things, from what sort of towels to put in a holiday let, to how to optimise your website visibility. Even the copy I sold through Twitter happened because I began a conversation with someone because I noticed he lived in a very attractive place. I wasn't initially looking to sell him my book.


And that's the next thing, get a blog, a website, an author page on Facebook, on Google+. It doesn't matter if you haven't got all of them, but you need a web presence of some sort. When I was developing my website to advertise my holiday property I got myself on to all sorts of lists. And you can do the same for your book. At the end of this post I'll list some of the sites you can look at that will give you some coverage. One of the things I've done is write articles for an e-magazine called e-zine articles. At the end of the articles you can add your 'signature', which will include reference to your published work. Two of my articles have then been syndicated across a wide range of e-magazines. I don't know how much good it's done me – unfortunately there's no way of measuring – but it keeps putting my name in front of people.


Get your book reviewed. This is probably one of the most useful things you can do. There are a number of review sites (I haven't actually done this yet) who will review your book. The downside is, of course, that they may give you a bad review. The other downside is that they get an enormous number of requests for reviews so it can be months before they get round to you. Some sites will do it more quickly for payment. Others will do it for an exchange review. Either way it's worth pursuing some of these sites.


Something else you can do is get on other people's blogs. Begin by writing comments. Then offer to do a blog post. But it has to be something useful that you're offering. For instance, you could offer to do a review, either of the blog owner's book or of a book that's recently been published. Or offer to write on a subject related to the main theme of the blog. If you have a blog or a website, invite others to do a guest spot. Even if they don't host you in return they'll tell their readers about their guest spot on your blog, and some of them will then find out about you.


Join Goodreads. This works in a rather complex way, and I'm still feeling my way round it. It's really a site for readers, not writers, but by definition a writer needs readers! You need to do a lot of reviewing of published work before your own book starts to get noticed, but a lot of people have done very well from it. If nothing else you'll read some good recommendations for your own reading pleasure. At the bottom I give a couple of links to information that should help you understand how to use it as a writer.


Give stuff away. Don't expect the rewards to be always immediate or direct. For instance, I gave away a short story for an anthology of crime stories relating to the publishing industry. As a result, not only will my name be before readers of that anthology, with links to my novel on Amazon, but an unexpected return was that I was then interviewed for a blog with a very wide readership. See the link here: http://maggiethom.wordpress.com/the-write-to-read/


Enter competitions. Even if you don't win, some competitions publish all entries, and they'll allow you to provide a link to either your blog, your Facebook page, or even directly to the means of purchasing your book.


The main message I'm giving here is that your marketing has to be subtle, but unrelenting and you need to use a range of techniques. Simply telling people that you've written this fantastic book won't get you very far. You also need to give something away first, and take the time to develop a relationship with your potential readers. Unless you have thousands of friends who're all just champing at the bit to read your work. Or you're already famous for something else. If your name's Jamie Oliver or Kirstie Allsopp, you have a blueprint to sell loads of copies, but otherwise……


Something I haven't got round to trying yet, but I intend to, is to read some extracts of your book to You Tube. You could even serialise it that way if you wanted. Or just read some short stories. Don't forget to include a link to any published work.


Printed or other conventional forms of marketing.

Don't forget more traditional forms of promoting your work. A review in the local paper can sometimes be the start of something bigger. If your local paper has a book review section, send a hard copy (if you have one) to the editor of that page. If you don't have a hard copy, will one of your friends write a review for you? Editors are busy people, and sometimes they're grateful for a press release to fill up an empty slot. Sometimes they don't want it themselves but will pass it on. As a result of one press release that didn't get published I was recently interviewed by the features editor of another paper with a much wider circulation, because the first recipient passed it on.


What about local radio? My local radio runs a series on local women of interest, and I was not only interviewed for that section, but invited to read extracts from the novel as well.



Whatever you decide, you will need to find the time and effort to really work at it. I wish you the very best of luck.


List of useful promotional sites:

www.goodreads.com
And two sites to introduce you to using Goodreads:
http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/09/03/goodreads-for-authors-patrick-brown/ http://www.amazon.com/Goodreads-Authors-Promote-Your-Books-ebook/dp/B00BKE039I/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid= (I've just bought this)

If you're interested in writing articles:
http://ezinearticles.com/ (and here are links to a couple of my articles on there to give you an idea how it works. http://ezinearticles.com/?Editing-Your-Novel-Part-2---Character&id=7826799 and http://ezinearticles.com/?Editing-Your-Novel-Part-3:-How-to-Show,-Rather-Than-Tell&id=7929107)

A site where writers help promote other writers: http://worldliterarycafe.com/content/readers-get-connected

And a list of free sites to promote your work: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/free-ebook-promotion_b52130

Going round in circles

Are you a writer? Is there any particular way in which you like to kick-start your novels (or short stories)? I'm not sure if I always start the same way. Sometimes it's with an incident that then grows into a longer story. Sometimes it's with the victim, and sometimes I start by thinking of the perpetrator first. Certainly that's what I'm doing in my second novel, Washed in the Blood.

But I asked established crime writer, Margot Kinberg, to talk to us about her methods. Here's what she said.

Will it Go Round in Circles?*

Thanks so much for inviting me to guest-post – I’m honoured. One of the challenges writers face is taking all of those creative ideas that always seem to pop up at either 2 am, or in the middle of a traffic jam, and putting them into some kind of coherent story.  Every writer handles this differently, so I can only share the way I go about it. But here’s how the process works for me.

I write crime fiction, so in my stories, there’s invariably at least one murder, and at least one murder victim. And that’s where I always start. Who’s the victim? What is that person like?  I’ve gotten inspiration from many places for the kind of person who would make a good victim. There really is no set pattern there, at least for me. But once I decide on who the victim is, then I get to work on setting up the story.

One way to look at the way I do things is a set of circles. First, of course, there’s the smallest circle around the victim. What is her or his personality? What is that person’s background?  What about that person might drive someone to murder?  Once I know the victim a little, it’s time for the next circle: the victim’s close friends, family and so on.

In that second circle is where you often find the suspects in a murder mystery, so that’s where I start adding in people who may have something to gain by killing the victim. In one of my stories, for instance, my victim has something valuable that one suspect wants. Another suspect feels threatened by something the victim knows. Another is obsessed with the victim. Well, you get the idea. This is also the place where one can add in another circle for the people the victim comes into occasional contact with – sort of an ‘outer circle’ of people. Those are people who can give an interesting perspective on the victim and certainly could be suspects.

Then I add another circle, separate from the victim’s – the sleuth’s circle. After all, it’s hard to do a crime novel if nobody tries to solve the crime. My sleuth is Joel Williams, a former cop, now a university professor of criminal justice. He has his own circle, including his wife, his contacts at the police department, his university colleagues, his students, and so on. Those circles are important (at least to me) because my sleuth is not a cop or PI. So he doesn’t have any official reason to be investigating anything. And nobody is required to tell him anything. That means that one of his circles has to overlap with one of the victim’s circles.

Let me give an example. In one of my stories, my sleuth is working on a research project with two colleagues. In the process of that research they uncover a ‘cold case’ that leads to a not-so-cold murder. In this case, that research circle overlaps with one of the first victim’s circles. That step, as I say, is perhaps less of a critical issue for police procedurals or PI novels, where the sleuth is supposed to investigate. That’s what cops and PIs are paid to do.

Once I have my circles set up, I outline the action in the story. I add in things such as where things happen, how exactly Joel Williams gets involved, and who has critical information for the case. With that rough structure in place, it’s time for the details.

One thing I like about this approach is that it allows for flexibility. It lets the writer put in as many or as few characters as needed. The story can take place at any time, in any place, and feature just about any kind of victim. So there’s a lot of ‘wiggle room.’

I also like the way the circles encourage me to add character development and sub-plots. As I look at each circle I see opportunities to sketch in things such as people’s home lives, minor characters and the other details that make a story (hopefully!) more interesting.

Circles don’t work for everyone of course. More than anything else I believe that each writer has to find her or his own way to frame ideas and get those ideas written. But as for me? Yeah, I go around in circles. ;-)

Many thanks again for hosting me!! Please feel free to get in contact with me (margotkinberg(at)gmail(dot)com) if you want to connect.

*NOTE: The title of this post is the title of a Billy Preston song, co-written with Bruce Fisher.

Margot Kinberg is the author of the Joel Williams mystery series. She blogs at http://margotkinberg.wordpress.com

Thinking of self publishing?

So you've decided to go it alone. The next question is, print book or e-book? Well, Philippa has talked about her experiences of using print-on-demand services. And this may well be the way you want to go (there's no reason why you can't do both). But I chose to take the route of self-publishing on line.

The first thing you will need is a cover. It's important that this cover is one that will still look good reduced to a thumbprint, one that will stand out and mark your novel as professional. And I'm afraid that, for that, you will have to pay. The company I used was called 2h Design Consultancy www.nedof2h.net and the guy I dealt with was Ned Hoste. It was pricey, but the service was excellent. It didn't take more than a few days before six options were winging their way to me. The one I chose wasn't exactly one of the ones he sent, but had elements from several incorporated into the final result. I recommend them.

           
Now I'm no technophobe, and I guess I thought I would find the next part easy. I'd spent quite a bit of time on-line, investigating sites which gave you information on how to do it yourself, sites which offered to do it for you (for a fee) and sites which promoted themselves as e-publishers, and had gathered a considerable amount of information. Well it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be. For a start I was a bit bewildered by the information on the type of formatting that was required. It seemed that different e-book sellers required different formats, and so just reading the instructions put out by Amazon for Kindle would only go so far. And I didn't want to limit my market to just one seller. So in the end I chose the company that seemed to have the strongest reputation, which was Bookbaby.

Were they helpful? Well, yes and no. They claim that you can just send them a Word document and they will do the rest. So I sent them a Word document, along with the fee (which isn't extortionate). Not so fast. Apparently, I discovered, although this was indeed a Word doc., it had the wrong formatting. Well, I had thought (and to be honest, I still do think) that putting in the correct formatting was what I was paying them to do. Now I was lost. It wasn't that I couldn't understand what was needed. It was that I couldn't work out how to take out all the formatting I'd put in.

So, and I totally advise this to anyone who is struggling with technology, I went to a geek forum, and I asked the question. As it happened I'd been chatting on this forum for a while, ever since I developed my own website, and so I wasn't just a newbie asking for favours. That can get right up people's noses. And there I found a Good Samaritan who DID IT FOR ME! She even reformatted the book correctly and said it only took her about twenty minutes.(Of course I now needed to learn to do it myself, and when I've mastered it I'll post the details).

Once it was in the correct format, the new, smart cover attached, I re-sent it to Bookbaby and soon it was on all the e-book retailers' lists.

Wow! Now everybody's flocking to buy it, yes? Well, er, no, actually. Because here's the rub. Whether you choose to self-publish through print on demand, or through e-sellers, the marketing and publicity is all down to you. It can feel really heady initially, when friends and acquaintances are reading it, they're recommending it to their friends, you're getting some fab reviews on Amazon. Philippa even got her book taken up by a reading group. But once that's over, you need to be thinking of how to get your book out there, and noticed (and bought and read, obviously). So how?

Well, the standard response is: Social Media. Of which there are many forms. I'll have a look at them, and what's worked for me, in the next post, but let me tell you this much: it's a long, slow haul.

Guest Spot: What an editor can offer, by E.V. Seymour

Congratulations! You’ve written your novel. In the process you’ve expended blood, sweat and tears and enough energy to power the Grid for a month. Your other half has read it and so have your friends. They all declare it a brilliant creation, so much so that you think you should simply send it out to a few chosen agents, sit back and wait for the phone to ring. What could possibly go wrong? Answer: quite a lot.

The problem is one of objectivity. Naturally, those who care about you and want you to succeed are going to pull their punches. (They’ve seen you sweat for the past year or so, remember.) For example, are they honestly going to point out that your main character is a weed; your story has the pace of a sick snail; your police procedure/research is, ahem, ‘unresearched,’ or your climactic scene lacks conflict and tension? Of course not! The more discerning of your mates may say something like: ‘I really loved that scene in the nightclub/in the empty house/in the burning building.’ They might even be bold enough to say: ‘I’m not sure I got why X did Y.’ Even if they pinpoint a problem, they are unlikely to be able to help you fix it. This is where people like me come in.

It’s extremely rare for a novel to tick all the boxes without a little intervention. The mundane truth is that editors encounter the same flaws time and time again. Simply put, my job involves identifying weak areas, flagging these up and offering suggestions for improvement. Weak areas can range from poor spelling and grammar, and repetition of the same word in a paragraph – I’ve twice suggested literacy courses – poor plot structure where the narrative is skimmed and scenes aren’t fully dramatised – a series of company meetings doesn’t constitute a story – to main protagonists who couldn’t cross the road without help, let alone sort out a bad guy. My pet hate is split point of view. I once encountered four different viewpoints in a single paragraph. It was the literary equivalent of watching a doubles match of ping-pong.

My skills don’t simply lie in picking up on these little idiosyncrasies. Somehow, I have to get the message across in the kindest manner possible. I find humour helps and I really endeavour to tailor the report to the individual. Psychology plays an important role. I want to inspire not crush and it’s sometimes hard to tell a writer, who has rightly set such store by his or her work, that certain elements are not working as well as they might. Occasionally, I’ll receive a piece of work and quickly realise that crime fiction isn’t really the genre that best showcases a writer’s talent. Suggesting to a wannabe crime author that their strengths lie in writing historical fiction can be a delicate business. I’ve noticed recently that constructive criticism is especially difficult to get across to clients who have had sparkling careers in other fields. Once or twice, I’ve been on the business end of a writer’s wrath, which is unpleasant for me, but a disaster for him or her. Believe it or not, and in common with a good agent, editors are batting for the writer. As a published writer myself, I know only too well what it’s like to receive rejection. I understand how damaging it can be to one’s self-esteem, how it eats away, if you let it. With this in mind, how can I not be on your side?

Crime fiction is one of the most competitive genres. With the seismic changes in the publishing industry over the past ten years, it’s harder than ever to break in. Cutting to the chase, it can cost in terms of time, mental stamina, occasionally relationships, and money. And here’s the rub.

In times of recession it may seem madness to spend your hard earned cash on professional advice. The alternative is to risk rejection from a dozen or more agents and have your confidence shattered; or self-publish, receive poor sales and rubbish reviews from armchair critics and, erm… have your confidence shattered! Too often writers seek help after the proverbial horse has careered out onto the road and hit a bus. Why put yourself through the misery when, with a little tweaking, rewriting and polishing, you can produce a piece of work of which you can be justly proud?

One final point: there are a lot of rookie outfits offering ‘professional expertise’. It pays to check these out and discover exactly what you are going to get for your money. Find out whether an editorial consultancy has a close relationship with agents. Will that editorial consultancy scout and recommend? In the past two years, I’ve seen three of my ‘babies’ obtain representation. As someone who once used the services of an editorial consultancy a decade ago, I can say, hand on heart, that it was the best decision I ever made. Soon afterwards, I obtained an agent.

E.V. Seymour is the author of five published novels. Under a closely guarded pseudonym, her sixth novel is published in August 2013 with Cutting Edge Press.
Find her novels at:
E.V. Seymour