How to Get Your Book Displayed on Ebook Reader Websites During Giveaways

There’s a huge and growing number of avid readers, hungry for ebooks, as Kindles and other devices have helped people discover or rediscover reading addiction. That love of books, the feeling of getting lost in a book, the desire to read book after book -  it all seems to fit well with an ereader that lets you carry a number of books around in your pocket, and people find themselves reading more than ever before.

This hunger for books has led to a growth in the number of reader websites, selecting and offering ebooks. For an author or publisher it helps to get books listed on these sites. During the latest Ward Wood giveaway of V.G. Lee’s classic comedy novel, Diary of a Provincial Lesbian, I tried out all of the listing sites I could find to see which were most helpful and which would list books for free. As always, I found the pros and cons and offer tips to those of you wanting to submit your own books to these sites.

There are a few important considerations if you’re thinking of releasing a book with a giveaway promotion. The first is that some of the best sites get thousands of books submitted every day, so they make their selection process easier by asking for a number of reviews on your book’s Amazon page, and a minimum average star rating of 4. One site (Digital BookToday) asks for a minimum of 18 reviews. It’s a good idea to build a number of reviews and a good star rating for your book before running the promotion. Easier said than done, I know.

The second thing to remember is that some of these reader sites like to be informed up to a month in advance (including Pixel of Ink, which is one of the best known so very useful). Others like to be informed at least two weeks in advance (including Kindle Book Promos and The Kindle BookReview). So you need to plan in advance and set yourself a schedule of tasks. These tasks become more time consuming as the giveaway approaches so it’s a good idea to allocate tasks to a few people in order to make the most of the opportunity.

In order to submit your book to these sites you will need the ASIN as they all ask for it. This only gets allocated by Amazon when a book goes live on Kindle, so if you want to submit to the sites mentioned above you’ll need to publish the ebook at least a month in advance of the promotion. If you’re planning a promotion on a book you already have available there’s no problem.

We were launching Diary of a Provincial Lesbian with a giveaway, so we didn’t want to have it available too long before the first day of the giveaway. This made it difficult for us to submit to some of the reader sites, but we did try just in case. The results have been so helpful that I’ll definitely submit to all possible sites for all of our promotions.

Give yourself plenty of time to submit to the reader sites because there are more than 50 that I have seen so far. I was especially grateful to a site called eBookBooster which gives a listing of these sites with links. This made a very repetitive and time consuming task much easier. I might have given up without it and certainly wouldn’t have found the sites. I’d recommend going to eBookBooster to guide you through your submissions with all the links in the side panel. There are also some more sites that collect links to good reader sites, including Author Marketing Club. I found good reader sites myself but eBookBooster and Author Marketing Club will give you a great start.

Most of the sites have online forms for you to fill in, and they ask for the same information, so it helps to have it prepared so you can copy and paste. If you’re lucky enough to have an assistant or long-suffering friend or partner you could ask them to help. You need a photo of the book cover, plus the title, author name, brief and catchy book description, the ASIN, link to the book on Amazon (usually in the US or UK or both), and perhaps an author bio and the category/genre. Some may ask you for something unique about the book to let them know why they should choose yours rather than somebody else’s.

Many of the sites ask for ‘no erotica’, so you’ll need to point out that your book is not in that category if it has a title or cover suggests that it is. There are genre specific sites (like Erotica Every Day) that might be better for you write in this category. Again, the excellent eBookBooster website gives links to genre specific sites for erotica, sci-fi and young adult. Some of the sites cover all genres and organise them neatly for readers to find their favourite type of book.

The next step, after submitting to the sites that ask for the book details well in advance, is to separate the sites that want submissions on the day of the giveaway from those that want information just before the giveaway. The eBookBooster website divides these, and I was curious to see which websites would display our book even though we were submitting at the last moment.

I was also curious to see if they really would display our book, as they tend to say they consider all books but ‘for guaranteed inclusion on the site’ you can pay. This is often a small amount, just $5 in many cases, but it would add up. We did get included although we didn’t put budget into this part of the promotion.

I've seen stories on the Kindle Boards forums about authors and publishers who have paid about $50 to advertise on some high traffic reader sites, and they sometimes get a very high number of downloads during a giveaway (20,000-30,000 but it's not guaranteed and many don't achieve this with advertising). Although we don't do this, some of you might be considering it.

For those of you who are new to giveaway promotions - if you're asking yourselves why someone would pay to advertise a giveaway, it's because a giveaway promotion that gets thousands of downloads leads to sales. In my experience, each 1,000 books given away lead to 100 books being sold in the first few weeks after the promotion ends. Sales then continue at a less intense level. The author's name is also more widely known in the international market, and other books by them also sell, including print books.

The websites that included us at short notice were:  FreebieBooks, ebooklister, My Book and My Coffee, Free Books for Kindle (efreebooks), Snicks List, Centsless Books (which picks up the highly ranked ebooks) and the beautifully named Free Book Dude. Addicted to Ebooks listed us later, and it's worth looking at this and all the other sites to see if they will also consider listing your book if it isn't a giveaway (quite a few people are asking me about that).

We also had the book listed on HotUKDeals which has really helped with two of our giveaways – the fact that most posts aren’t for books on HotUKDeals means that the books stick out from the crowd.

Some sites let you enter your own giveaway, including SuperE-books, which felt a bit complicated as it involved registering to use the Wordpress site yourself. I’m used to working with Wordpress, so did find my way around it and got our book included. Being able to list your own information is a bonus as it can be done even if you’re having to do it at short notice.

With some sites there’s a questionnaire to be used for an ‘author interview’ so you’ll need to ask the author to do this if you’re the publisher. These were Free Ebooks Daily and Rainy’s Book Realm. With Rainy’s Book Realm, the website links to a group on Goodreads, so you can actually list your own book in the Goodreads group forum under giveaways.

One final way you can get your ebook listed on websites is to find the Facebook group for the site. If they let you list your Kindle book on their Facebook wall, this often has a feed to the website and it can show up on the main page.

Once again, thanks and credit to the people who put together the information at eBookBooster and Author Marketing Club, as most of the sites mentioned here can be found with links neatly arranged on their websites.

Sponsorship: Why We Sometimes Have to Turn it Down

When Alice Oswald withdrew from the T S Eliot prize this week she attracted attention to what I feel will be a growing dilemma in publishing. I believe that sponsorship is an important way to move forward for those in the arts who have lost their funding, or who are starting new ventures with little chance of funding. But when we accept sponsorship we need to be very careful about who we are prepared to take finance from.

For Oswald, the sponsorship of an investment company involved in hedge funds was unacceptable. Soon after she stepped down from her place on the shortlist she was joined by John Kinsella, who left for the same reason. Perhaps by the time you read this more of the poets will have stepped aside. The shortlist is getting ever shorter, and I wonder if any poets have ever withdrawn from the T S Eliot prize before – it has long been considered one of the most prestigious awards in the poetry world.

I feel that sponsorship can work and we do invite this kind of funding at Ward Wood Publishing. However, I’ve talked to my publishing partner Mike Fortune-Wood and we both understand that we can’t take funding from just anybody. We don’t have adverts for all and sundry on our website, but we do talk to sponsors we would be happy to have associated with our name, and with our authors’ names. Reputation is so important in publishing and writing: it takes a lifetime to build and a moment to lose.

The Americans I’ve been involved with for years because of my nonprofit writing projects have shown me how they manage by attracting sponsorship, and I know it can work for small and large projects in publishing and the arts in the UK. This doesn’t have to be a large investment from one big sponsor – often they accumulate the finance they need from a number of smaller investors, including individuals just chipping in a little. I often chip in myself if the project is a good one.

The larger the amount sponsored, the more rewards the sponsor gets – usually including the publicity of having their name displayed as a generous patron of the arts. Smaller investors get other incentives – from the good feeling associated with making an arts project possible, to having some free tickets, or even greater benefits. I think all of this works well and is a good way to go. There are even websites dedicated to helping you raise funding in this way. If you know of any, please do post the links in a comment.

I do always want to reserve the right to turn sponsors down if I don’t want to be associated with their type of activity, or if I feel they’re offering me money because they want an exchange of favours I’m not prepared to take part in. Sometimes you don’t know what the exchange of favours will be, and sometimes you just have to be aware that the investor is giving you the feeling that they will one day ask for something in return. This can also be the case when people offer voluntary assistance with the workload. I’ve sometimes learnt the hard way over the years and it’s vital to make it clear from the outset that there is no exchange of favours. Sometimes I have to avoid some offers of voluntary help, much as it’s needed.

The Poetry Book Society seems to have made an error of judgement by accepting this sponsorship. On their site they have a message saying how gratified they have been to receive it for the next three years, and they have stuck to the decision by saying other arts projects also receive funding from similar businesses.

But if two out of ten poets on the shortlist have left because of this, then it’s clear that authors want ethics to be taken into consideration when sponsorship is arranged. Citing other festivals, literary prizes and projects that accept similar funding only draws our attention to the fact that we should probably be looking more closely at them too.

It’s a pity this has happened after a year in which we jumped quickly to help the Poetry Book Society when they lost their Arts Council funding. It puts the other poets on the shortlist on the spot, and it puts publishers like me on the spot too. It makes us realise we have to question the sponsorship behind projects we’re involved with.

It also makes all of the shortlisted poets, and us, think about whether or not we can continue our association with this award. Should we put our poets forward for the seasonal selections at the Poetry Book Society, seeing as any chosen will be considered for the T S Eliot prize? With two walkouts this year so far, we would really need to check with poets to see if they want their books to be submitted. Perhaps we shouldn’t make this decision as publishers, but let individual authors decide what to do.

The discussion among poets on social networks has divided opinion, although there’s a strong reaction against having sponsorship from a business involved with hedge funds. Some say that the loss of Arts Council funding means the T S Eliot Prize is at risk of closure if poets turn their backs on it in this way. But the prize is supplied by the T S Eliot estate, and the funding is for managing the award. Surely an ethical investor could be found, or a number of sponsors each providing some of the finance needed.

I do feel at times like this that I’d like more transparency and to see exactly how much money is spent and how. I don’t see how else I can decide whether or not an important literary prize is at risk of closure. I find it very hard to believe that it is. Arts Council funding may have been lost, but Arts Council funding is a privilege rather than a right and projects should always plan ways to manage without it.

There are so many people who work in poetry for little or no income, or finance publishing companies and other ventures because they believe in the importance of this artistic form. It’s hard to convince the poetry world that accepting sponsorship from sources they feel to be unethical is necessary just because the sums need to add up. It depends how much money you decide you need in a budget for each project, and if ethical sources aren’t available to pay the amount you want this means that the budget and the working methods have to change.

Mutual Support for Publishers and Authors: Bring and Buy Tables at All Events

There’s a serious crisis in bookselling. We do all know this but I wonder sometimes if people realise quite how serious it is.

As authors we’re artists, of course, and many independent publishers are also authors who are in this to keep outlets open for writers – I was told many years ago that you can’t make a business out of poetry and it’s true. As authors and publishers we have one product – books – and if they don’t sell then there’s no way to finance print runs. It’s as simple as that.

You might think this doesn’t matter, and that ebooks are the way to go. You may dislike the words ‘business’ and ‘finance’ used when talking about artistic creation. But if we want to keep printed books going we do need to look at ways to get enough sales to pay for the print runs.

Even if publishers choose to use print-on-demand, books do need to be printed in quantity because most authors and publishers tell me that 90% of poetry books sell at events. So you do need to have a stock, and print-on-demand can actually work out more expensive.

One way of increasing sales and keeping print runs going is by providing mutual support at events. Publishers and authors can work together, and not in competition, to try to get those essential sales to keep trickling along. This isn’t unusual in small press publishing, but we can find more ways to do it.

The first Poetry Book Fair in London this year showed how well this can work. Charles Boyle of CB Editions had the idea and was surprised by how many independent publishers wanted to book a table and a reading slot at the event. Even though it wasn’t an easy venue to get to, the fair was packed from morning to evening and people were buying books.

It was also great fun and wonderful to get together with such a great bunch of publishers, poets and book buyers. We don’t have many chances to see each other all in the same room for a day.

The only downside was that we really need this to be happening more regularly. I’m going to be drawing more attention to the ‘bring and buy’ book table at the Friday Night Writers events I organise in London, so that more audience members realise they can bring along any books they have published (or magazines). These can be displayed alongside the books brought by the main performers at each event.

So, events can be like a small market. It’s possible to set out a couple of books at a time, with more in your bag to replenish the stock if and when your books sell. Audience members can also make announcements about other relevant news items such as competitions they’re organising, or their own events. They can display flyers on the table.

Although I set up Ward Wood Publishing with Mike Fortune-Wood in summer 2010, I’ve been working on writing projects for much longer than that, and the events I hold are to support a variety of publishers and authors rather than just our own company – this has always been my approach on other ventures. Most of the authors who have been booked to read at Friday Night Writers in Swiss Cottage Library have come from other publishing companies.

It’s expensive for publishers and authors to find a venue or to get booked in London, so I’m hoping this helps. I would love to hear about more similar projects all around the UK and Ireland – and our authors do travel, particularly to the US, so do let me know about any venues there. The Twisted Pepper and the Irish Writers’ Centre in Dublin are two particularly good venues which have been approachable for new authors.

I don’t have any funding for the events, so can’t cover travel costs or pay a fee, but authors have found it a useful venue when they’re passing through London, and with two events a month I’ve managed to fit them in on convenient dates. This has the added advantage of bringing together authors from various regions – it’s surprising how regional we can become at times, especially in the poetry world.

I don’t believe the saying ‘Poetry is a small world and everybody knows everybody’. It’s easy to become part of a clique and not see the poets who are just off our radar. Making events open to authors from different publishers, and from different regions – even if they aren’t people who can normally support the event – can put a larger number of authors on to our radar. We can never know all the good poets who are out there.

I keep mentioning poetry, but the same is true of literary fiction, and it would be good to see an independent publishers’ fair that included both fiction and poetry. Many presses publish both forms, and it’s hard to help novelists get started because they lack the network of open mics and events that’s so well established and helpful to poets.

There is the opportunity to read fiction at Friday Night Writers, but I need to ask for maximum 500 words now due to the popularity of the event. With the event anthology there’s another chance to support a variety of publishers as well as aspiring writers. Authors can read from a published book at the Friday Night Writers open mic, and they can submit a published piece of writing to be considered for the annual event anthology. This would mean a credit for the published book should their submission be selected.

The next event is on Friday December 9th, with Sue Rose as the main reader, and open mic with a chance to submit to the annual anthology. As it’s our last Friday Night Writers before Christmas it’s a good chance to have a bit of a ‘bring and buy’ book market, so don’t be shy about bringing along some books to display. If you set them out a couple at a time we’ll have space for everybody. And there will be mince pies and other goodies too!

By keeping admission free, and by charging just £1 for wine (proceeds go to the library user group fund) I hope the event is accessible to everybody, and also that it’s more tempting for audience members to buy a book from the table – by whichever authors and publishers appeal most.

Publishing and Charities: Supportive or Exploitative?

As a publisher supporting a charity at events and also with a competition offering publication of a short collection to the winner I’m very aware of the dangers if this is handled in the wrong way. Publishing can really help a charity – the Lumen/Camden Poetry Competition attracted more than 1,000 entries in its first year and raised more than £2,000 for the homeless in two North London Cold Weather Shelters.

Sales of the short collection we published for the winner (An Apple Tree Spouts Philosophy) are still adding to that figure, and the competition also helped launch the winner Caroline Squire as a poet who deserved to have a book out and to be noticed.

I was immediately approached by agencies wanting to manage this competition and publication for us, which draws attention to the fact that there’s money to be made from such ventures. Of course I didn’t accept these offers. None of the organisers of this competition take a penny in income, so there would be no commission for an agency.

The idea for the competition came from Ruth O’Callaghan, the poet who runs the twice-monthly Lumen and Camden Poetry Series of events, combining poetry performance by published poets with open mic from the audience and the chance to submit to her annual charity anthology. These events and anthology add about £4,000 more to the total raised for the homeless.

All of this raises a high percentage of the money needed to keep the Cold Weather Shelters going – the last time I heard it was 60% and I’m sure it’s still growing. So it’s a good thing when publishers support charities, isn’t it? Or are there mistakes that can be made?

An article in The Big Issue this week reminded me of the risks, and I’m more than aware of them already. In the article readers were warned about online sellers offering Christmas cards to support charities. Even the reputable shops selling greetings cards for charities typically give only 20-25% to the cause, perhaps less. At the most, a good retailer like WH Smith, might give 70%.

This is often used purely as a way of boosting sales, and a number of the online sellers pay a minimal 1% to the charities. So, supporting a charity can be part of a marketing drive, rather than a genuine effort to help.

As publishers, authors, and book buyers we need to be aware of this, and as competition entrants too. When we see that a competition, an anthology asking for submissions, or any book is being sold in aid of a charity, we need to know how much of the income is actually going to be handed over.

As a publisher I’m very aware that I could get this wrong, and the only way I can see of doing it is if we take absolutely nothing for Ward Wood Publishing and give all proceeds to the charity. Carol Ann Duffy takes no fee for judging the competition, and Ruth O’Callaghan also works with me at organising the entries and passing them on. Taking no income from charity work does simplify matters.

I do understand why publishers sometimes take a commission for this work and I don’t blame them for it. The work involved in organising and promoting the competition was pretty heavy. I was worn out by the time the deadline arrived. If you don’t keep promoting a competition you risk getting too few entries and we wanted to raise as much as possible for the charity.

The entries had to be accepted, entrants advised that their entry had been received if they paid and submitted via the website, and all entries passed to Ruth O’Callaghan who then organised it for Carol Ann Duffy. The number of entries as the deadline approached meant I was dealing with a huge amount of email.

But I’m not sure a commission based on a percentage of fees or sales is the right way to respond to this kind of workload. Generally, when publishers produce anthologies for charities, they might charge a 30% admin fee. I’m not sure how much agencies charge to organise this for a publisher. When we were organising the competition last year people told me I should be taking this fee.

I wouldn’t have felt happy about taking £600 from the £2,000 we raised, because I don’t think people entering a charity competition would be expecting that, so I didn’t want to take the standard 30% admin fee. People want their entry fees to go to the charity. I think people would accept specific costs being taken from the entry fee, such as printing and postage. We did calculate just over £100 for this as these are unavoidable costs and we arranged as low a fee with the printer as we could.

It’s better to detail these costs and explain clearly how much is to be taken out of the proceeds. A 30% admin fee could be very little, or it could be way too much in the case of a successful competition like ours. It wouldn’t cover the hours we have to spend working on it, but I’m not comfortable taking an income from any charity project.

Of course, this means we can’t do too many. We can probably only do one or two because the work has to be completely voluntary. But, in my opinion, this is the only way to go. People may disagree with me. It might be that it’s seen to be a good idea for publishers to make income from taking a percentage from charity publications, and agencies may also be welcome.

Charity anthologies do offer all the writers submitting a chance to get into print. They can supply some income for the publisher – perhaps a reasonable amount to cover the hours spent working. And they support the charities.

All opinions would be welcome on this subject. I’ve been careful about it since my first collection was accepted in the 1980s and I wanted to support the homeless in a Kilburn soup kitchen and hostel with a percentage of the sales income. The publisher advised me not to, as he said too many people did it and it could look like a marketing ploy to increase my sales.

Occupy Books: A Naughty Suggestion

There’s a simple solution that can help us fight the way we’re going to have heavily marketed books thrust in our faces in bookshops and supermarkets all through the gift-giving season. It’s a bit naughty but could be a fun idea for the weekend. It’s the book-lover's silent but effective protest.

What you do is this. You go into the bookshop, careful not to look with distaste at the piles of books in prominent positions on the display tables. Just saunter along as you would usually and browse along a few shelves, picking out books at random and putting them back.

Then find a book you really admire and spend a little time with it. Wander along and select another. As you dilly dally along with your books, with that ‘Shall I buy?’ look on your face, choose an opportune moment and stick your favourite book on top of one of the piles on the best display table.

This works very well for novels and nonfiction. You might even want to put a cookbook with tasty recipes on top of Jamie Oliver’s barely edible inventions. Poetry is a bit more tricky.

If you can find the poetry books you like – in fact if you can find the poetry section at all (it will be very small and tucked away in a back corner or downstairs) you probably can’t get away with moving a book to the prime positions in the shop.

What you can do is take out the book you like best, read the blurb innocently, and put it back leaning against the others with its cover showing instead of spine only. It will look so nice like that. If you’re feeling very naughty you might find they have some special little stands tucked among the poetry books to display the usual suspects well and you can trump them with your selection.

Of course, you’re likely to find that the poetry collections you would most like to see displayed aren’t in the shop at all. Bookshops rarely take poetry, they dedicate a tiny set of shelves to it, and they’re unlikely even to take a good book sale or return. The shelves are crammed too tight already so they want to offload poetry whenever possible.

The only naughty answer to this is to follow the instructions in the Ann Drysdale poem ‘Between Dryden and Duffy’. Do Google it for the best methods – it’s one of the funniest comedy sonnets I’ve seen.

The poet in the poem looks along the shelf for her book, and when she doesn’t find it she clears that space between Dryden and Duffy and inserts one from her supermarket carrier bag. Of course, not all poet’s names fall into such a great position by happy accident.

So there are ways to get real books displayed. The prime display positions in the bookshops have been marked out and are all nicely prepared waiting for your choices. Something naughty to do at the weekend? I’m not going to admit if I’m already doing it.

Occupy Books. Celebrity Authors or Real Books?

OK, I know some celebrity authors can write and some of their books are good. But after yesterday’s post people complained at the way the market this season is dominated by highly publicised books that will probably never be read – not even by the ‘authors’ as so many are ghostwritten. These books are just bought as easy and lazy gifts at the last minute. I thought I’d add some statistics to this about how publishing and bookselling trends affect authors and what we can do about it.

I admit these statistics were gleaned from the One Show (a popular evening chat show on BBC One, if you’re not familiar with UK television). This made it more comical for me, because Gyles Brandreth revealed some figures about aspiring authors, rejection figures, and who gets published and paid for books. He did all of this with celebrity author Celia Imrie beside him, just about to plug her book.

Gyles answered the question many people ask me – which is ‘How many people can actually make a living out of writing books?’ I’ve always made my living out of writing as a journalist and nonfiction book author, as well as working in publishing as an editor and now a publisher. But they mean books of fiction or poetry.

He revealed that 95% of books submitted to publishers are rejected. Of the 5% that get accepted, 75% of the authors will earn less than £20,000 per year for their book (and most books only sell well in the first year). £20,000 might still sound reasonable, but really the vast majority of these authors will be doing well if they sell between 1,000-3,000 books per year. That’s the usual figure, and I’ve heard that even with a major publisher, the debut novel can be expected to sell about 500 copies.

So, about 5% of authors who submit to publishers will be accepted, and they are most likely going to sell fewer than 3,000 books. Even if they get royalties of 10% of the cover price and the book sells for £10, this would be less than £3,000 income. But most contracts with major publishers aren’t based on 10% of the cover price. All costs are taken off first and you get a percentage of the profit.

A while ago I posted about literary agents and the kind of advance they told me they go for. The agent I spoke to is very good and aims for a £25,000 advance for authors as her income comes purely from a percentage of what the author is paid by the publisher, if she succeeds in getting authors signed. This is standard – if you get an agent they manage your income by receiving it from the publisher, taking off their commission, and paying you.

But usually an advance is £5,000 or less. The book sales have to pay back the advance to the publisher before any additional income is paid, and you can see by the average sales figures that this is quite hard to achieve.

Gyles finished off by saying what happens to so many of the books that are published but don’t sell in large enough quantities. They are used in the construction of motorways and he said how many miles they were supporting, but sadly I can’t remember. Apparently they form a good, shock absorbent type of support.

I do hear people saying they think much of this is new, but I first worked as a fiction reviewer and an editor in the early 1980s and I was told even then about the massive quantities of books that were published only to be pulped. Authors are just becoming more aware of the facts nowadays, probably due to more information being available online.

At the end of his commentary, Gyles pointed out that publishers were more likely to take on authors who were already celebrities. They’re easier to sell. It was quite a comical introduction to Celia Imrie talking about her new book and her mouth was in a very uncomfortable attempt at a polite smile. I must confess, I've read some of her book and she's very good.

I’m not against celebrity authors, because publishers and bookshops say they provide enough finance for a lot of their other work. Celebrity authors could help support the publishing of less commercial books, and could also help publishers take a risk on authors.

Bookshops do have limits due to shelf space – a problem I’ve only realised to be significant over the past year. They can’t just take a risk on a book that’s good even if it’s sale or return. They always want sale or return, and they don’t have space.

The figures shouldn’t be depressing. When rejection slips come in, they need to be cast aside quickly and not be offputting. It’s hard to get published, and it’s even harder for those published books to sell in order to stay on a publisher’s list. We all keep writing anyway.

We shouldn’t see publishers as the judges of whether or not our writing is good, but we often do. We certainly shouldn’t judge by how much our book sells either, or all poets would stop writing.

All of this does mean that independent publishers and truly independent bookshops need to be supported if we want publishing outlets for debut novelists, poets, and risk-taking authors. The only way this can happen is if they’re supported by buyers.

Major publishers poach safe bet authors from each other – or so the literary agent told me – and they also poach from independent publishers. To keep opportunities open for authors I suggest looking at the good independent publishers and bookshops this season.

Sorry to repeat this bit, but I’m not saying this to promote my company or any specific company. In fact suggestions for good listings of independents and good review sites would be welcome.

Occupy Books. Do We Want Our Books on Prescription?

This week I found out that a high street bookseller who always stocks our latest books can’t take any books released by us this season. They want to stock the books and have asked me to come back after Christmas, when they will be able to stock them.

This was a bit of a shock, because of course this is one of them main times of the year when people will be looking for books as gifts. The manager liked our books – she wanted our books – but she told me that at the moment ‘It’s all prescribed’.

I looked into this and found out that major publishers pay to have their books stocked at Christmas, and the evasive word for this is that the books have been ‘prescribed’. Even publishers who normally get their books stocked will be turned at the door until this favourable time for bookselling has passed.

So, if you go into the main bookshops for your gifts, you’ll be getting them on prescription. The major publishers have paid to have certain books not only thrust in your face, but also to have other books kept out of stock until January.

We all know this happens to a certain extent all year – that the books on the best display tables have been paid for, and that the others only have their spines showing on shelves.

But I didn’t realise books that the shop managers would like to stock are turned away completely over Christmas because they haven’t been ‘prescribed’ with a hefty payment from the publisher.

This doesn’t just include books from smaller presses. It includes books in the mid-list from major publishers. The publishers decide which books we should be offered based on what they think can sell in large numbers, and they publicise those books in a number of ways to make sure people want them.

We know which books those are. Their celebrity authors have been appearing on TV chat shows recently. No doubt there will also be some good novels, but what there won’t be is a good range of choice and books stocked according to what the bookshop manager and buyers select on merit.

It’s always hard for me to get poetry books into these main bookshops, but they will support local poets so long as we have all our books in their centralised system, and we do. They do support all of our novels by stocking them, and also the Bedford Square 5 anthology. Just not while the books are stocked on prescription.

I’m not saying this in order to say ‘Buy my book’ or ‘Buy from my publishing company’ and I wouldn’t want Occupy Books to be a protest that’s exploited purely for marketing.

The only way to show how we feel about what one person called ‘corruption in publishing and bookselling’ when he explained prescription to me, is not to support the shops doing this and to look for books in a different way.

If you want to answer this post with suggestions, please don’t point to your own publishing company or book. Perhaps show good review sites about books from independent presses. Perhaps take a look on the websites of a number of independent publishing companies and buy direct from the publisher.

Or contact some of your favourite authors on Facebook and ask to buy signed copies direct from them. We can also ‘buy local’ and ‘buy direct’ for our books, if we don’t want them on prescription.

Dear Publisher: Is it worth investing in an author website?

My feeling is that a blog is more useful to authors than a website. It's also a good idea to set a day of the week when you commit to writing a blog post so that it's regular.

With a blog you can post a link on Facebook and other places, and people can interact with you. Seeing how you write on the blog also gives them an indication about whether or not they might like your writing style and empathise with your ideas.

You shouldn't be put off blogging if you don't see many people following your blog, because they might read it but not follow, and I know I have people who follow anonymously. You will also find they probably mainly answer your blog posts on Facebook when you post the link from there. So you might not get many comments on your blog, and that doesn't matter.

A website is a much more static affair. It has information and people will go for that, but you can find it's harder to get traffic to a website because it isn't updating as much as a blog. They will also only follow a link to a blog if you've written something that intrigues them, so it's not just about updating regularly.

With a website the information tends to be about the author, and there are so many authors out there trying to ask people to look at their websites and examples of their writing. So you have to tempt them in via a blog. They might then follow the link to your website.

All of these things work together - Facebook and other social networks, a blog, your website and your publisher's website. They should all be interlinked so people get interested by something you say and then follow the links.

We put a detailed author page on our Ward Wood website too, which also links to the author blogs, Facebook and Twitter pages, and websites. Plus we link to any videos and examples of work, and the book sales of course.

I'm not sure how worthwhile it is to invest in a website if you mean you intend to pay a designer. As authors we are constantly being approached by people who want to be hired for this work.

I've never had an author website myself as it has always felt like just one more place to try to attract traffic and the advice I've usually been given is to try to keep everything in one place online if it's possible. It isn't possible so I just try to narrow down the number of places people need to look for my information.

For the same reason I haven't set up book pages or a fan page on Facebook as I try to keep everything in one place - although I need a separate group page for Ward Wood and also for one of the Lumen and Camden Poetry series of events I help with (groups are needed to send invitations).

People who ask to be hired to work on author publicity tend to spend time setting up an author page on Facebook and book fan pages but I'm still to be convinced they actually help. I'm not always convinced hired publicists understand the best use of Facebook for authors.

I'm a fan of Kazuo Ishiguro on Facebook as he's too famous to be able to be on there personally, but I'm not sure fan pages for all authors serve a purpose. People want to follow us on one page - our main page I think.

Of course if you do have a website it will say as much about you as the cover design of your books. Will it be minimalist, with a pared down design that tells the world you're a literary writer? Will it be glossy and full of frills and show you're a commercial writer? Are you a bestselling author with readers who will expect an expensive looking design, or a poet whose readers really don't expect that? Or are you aspiring to be a bestselling author so it helps to look like one? Once you start getting into website design all sorts of factors have to be taken into account.

Readers don't have the same expectations about a blog - they want to see what you have to say, and if you're good at illustrating with artwork and photos then all the better. You need to ask yourself if you need a professionally designed website to reflect who you are as a writer, or is it enough to create what you need using Wordpress?

I don't think a website can hurt unless the design puts you in a category of writing you don't want to be involved in, and neither can a fan page or book page on Facebook - so long as we don't keep asking people to look at them as that just sounds like such a huge number of authors saying 'look at me and my writing' rather than 'I have this post on my blog which might be of interest to you.' It doesn't have to be about books and publishing. You may have something unique about your lifestyle and you can let us into it.

It can feel and look narcissistic to ask people just to come and look at us and our work. To have interaction with people online we have to genuinely be offering something they want and need, and we can do that with a blog. Of course, I also think we're offering something they want and need when we offer our books, but they'll decide for themselves which authors and publishers they like enough and they will buy their books.

The Birth of a Publishing Company 6: Teamwork with Google Wave

As our first book goes to press – the novel A Clash of Innocents by Sue Guiney – I can reveal that an experiment I have attempted with Google Wave has proved a definite success. Google Wave is collaborative software so I wondered if it could help Ward Wood work as a team, letting the authors take more of a role and helping us all to communicate regularly.

If you haven’t seen Google Wave and ‘collaborative software’ sounds tricky, then don’t be put off. It’s simple to register with Google Wave (I invite authors by email) and after that it’s as easy as using message boards or email for communication. The benefit of Google Wave is that you invite the people you need to communicate with on a specific subject, and all of the messages on that theme will be kept neatly together in that ‘Wave’.

For example, for Sue’s novel I invited her and my colleague Mike Fortune-Wood into a Wave. This Wave is now a string of messages containing everything we need to work on her novel. We’ve passed the Word file to each other throughout the editing stages, and all the versions of the file are there in the Wave so it’s easy to see how it progressed and which is the latest version.

We also passed photographs of the authors and ideas for the cover design. ‘All very easy to do by email’ you might say, but it’s such a nuisance hunting through emails for a bit of information you know you’ve received. Scrolling back up through a Wave of messages is much easier. As Sue, Mike or I had extra ideas we could post them on the Wave, and even if they weren’t ideas that could be acted on for weeks they were still there for later action.

Using Google Wave definitely made my work much easier. As I was editing and needing answers to questions I could put them in the Wave then carry on working. By the time I looked at the Wave again, Sue had usually answered, and if I needed to go out of the office for a few hours I could do that knowing that I could come back and find some responses on the Wave. It did make the editing process more efficient, and I’ve edited a good number of books in the past so I know how different this feels.

Apart from all of this it also keeps authors and publishers more in touch than they have been traditionally. I’ve worked as both editor and author, and I know how frustrating it can be for authors to wonder if a long silence means we’re being neglected, or if it means the publisher is busy on our book. With Google Wave the author could stay well informed and see how the book was progressing throughout the various stages.

At the same time it felt as if we were staying in touch and was more friendly than working on files exchanged by email. Other Waves were set up with information for everybody, so our first three authors were invited to participate in those discussions. One of our authors is in Finland, one is in London, and one is in Penzance, so a way of letting them ‘meet’ and share ideas on book launches and other subjects should help create a sense of getting to know each other.

We often say that writing is a solitary business, and so is editing. With Google Wave this has felt quite different, and once we were working on the cover, book design and production with Mike Fortune-Wood it did feel as close as it could to working in the same office. His final files could be posted in the Wave and viewed using Google Documents.

There are many more features to Google Wave that I haven’t had time to try out yet, but it certainly streamlines the types of communication I need in order to work well. Apart from the message-board look keeping all information on each subject neatly together and the ability to add various files, including text and pictures, it also lets you edit or delete each post in the waves to keep them concise and tidy. It’s also possible to start discussing with the others live if they come online at the same time.

Anyone who works in publishing will know that it’s not just about editing, book design and production. At the same time as all that we need to be thinking about author reading tours, book launches, arranging distribution, and communicating with the press and media. Each of these elements has to be dealt with at exactly the right time so that everything happens at the relevant moment.

Google Wave has a scheduler to help me see what I need to do in order of priority, and it has really been a help feeling that I can unload that from inside my head to let the ‘Google brain’ worry about remembering it all! Submissions waiting to be read are also stored in their own Waves and scheduled for their turn in this priority list. If this all makes me sound extremely organised, then you haven’t seen the usual disorder in my office! Many of us in publishing store much of our ‘to do’ list in our heads and it can get incredibly busy in there. With Google Wave I find I can switch off when I stop working, knowing that nothing will be forgotten.

On top of all this it’s nice to know that even in cases of computer crashes, and wherever we need to travel in the world, we can find all the files and info we need in our virtual office on anybody’s computer. This is how it feels to me on the publishing side and I’d be interested to hear from the authors if it helps them feel better informed and more involved as we go through the process with each of their books.

The Start of a New Publishing Company

In these days of social networks we’re in the habit of saying what we’re doing each day, so it feels especially hard to keep a big secret. Every day my news is that I’m working on a new publishing company due to be launched, reading the submissions, making decisions on which will be the first books to be launched and really enjoying reading the fiction, poetry, short stories and nonfiction sent to me.

But of course I can’t say who the first authors are until we sign the contracts. I shouldn’t even say the company name or who my business partner is until we’ve signed that partnership agreement. It’s all imminent and I’m on all my social networks waiting for the moment when I can reveal all. That moment shouldn’t be too long.

It may seem like an unusual time to start a publishing company, with the recession affecting the business so seriously. There are reasons why I’m doing this now with my partner (I always feel I have to add ‘professional’ to that these days as the word has been given such a different meaning). It has long been my plan to start a publishing company, so when I was approached by a partner with many years of experience and skills I particularly admire I knew it was time to move ahead and do it.

There are other reasons why I would have thought of starting a publishing company now, even if it hadn’t been a plan I’ve been formulating for years. With the recession authors are being left without outlets for poetry and short stories as well as fiction, nonfiction and other forms. Even established authors have lost their publishing companies. This can’t go on.

Authors need to find a publisher and then concentrate on working on their next book knowing that it has a home. They can’t be struggling to find a new publisher when their efforts should be going into writing. The publishers are doing a fantastic job, but we need more outlets as the companies all seem to have long waiting lists of two or even five years.

Of course this means that, as publishers, we need to be able to keep going so that we can offer a secure place. My partner is keeping me to a strict business plan and I know we can go forward and offer this outlet to authors. He also has excellent experience on the production side and his graphics are wonderful. This leaves me free to do what I do best, which includes editing and finding talented authors.

This week I’ve been reading the novel and the poetry collection which should be our first two books, both by authors who have been previously published and whose work I have long admired. I couldn’t put their books down, which is a great sign, and can’t wait to see them launched so that others can enjoy them.

This is the realisation of an important dream for me and fills me with excitement. That thrill is tempered by the need to work on this professionally, to progress with my partner at the type of work we have both done for years. This way authors will have a place for their poetry, short stories, fiction, nonfiction and plays, and readers will be able to get their hands on some excellent books. We aim to publish 10 books in the first year and submissions are mainly by invitation at the moment while we cope with the task of setting it all up.

I’ll be adding blogs about the steps we’re taking as it will be of interest to many of you to hear about the birth of a publishing company in detail.