Jane Rawson's Blog, page 2

Talking to Tom Keneally

A couple of weeks ago I went to Sydney, partly to do a talk about From the Wreck at the Thomas Keneally Centre. The Centre, at the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, is a wonderful little retreat from the lunacy of the Sydney CBD, and they’re perfectly happy for you to pop in and browse Tom’s library, or just hang out quietly on the couches. They also host regular lunchtime talks with authors. If the line for a slice of Black Star strawberry watermelon cake is just too long at Kinokuniya Books, maybe go hang out at the TKC instead?

Tom was in residence on the day I visited. He’s so great! If you run into him at an event or the shops or whatever, have a chat with him. He’s a really good bloke. His daughter and fellow-novelist Meg was also there, and she’s great too! She teaches SCUBA and she has seen lots of octopuses and we talked a lot about octopuses.

Anyway, their volunteer video bloke, Phil, thought it would be a good idea if Tom interviewed me on camera for a few minutes after my talk. He asked me the best questions. Here it is:

August & September appearances

I’m doing a few appearances in NSW and the NSW-enclave of Canberra, as well as in Melbourne, over the next month or so.

Canberra Writers Festival – Saturday 26 August You’ll never guess who I’m appearing with at Canberra Writers Festival… James Bradley and I will be talking with Dr Martha Sear, Head Curator at the National Museum, about writing in the age of humans. “Human beings are changing our environment on a global scale. How can writing help us imagine, and influence, our impact on the future?” Book tickets here.
Melbourne Writers Festival – Saturday 2 September Sally Abbott and I will be chatting about awful imaginary Australia, in this session on dystopian fiction. It’s free, and there’s more info here.

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Tom Keneally Centre, Sydney – Tuesday 26 September I’ll be doing a lunchtime session about From the Wreck, “an engaging talk about writing family history, and why speculative fiction might be the best way to tell a factual story”. It’s free, but they would like you to book.
Newtown Library – Tuesday 26 September Newtown Library, the City of Sydney and Better Read than Dead bookshop are running a series of panels on current issues called ‘Speak your mind’. I’ll be chairing this panel on climate change, featuring shadow Minister for Climate Change Mark Butler, and novellists Harriet McKnight and Daniel Findlay. Tickets are free and you can get one here.

From the Wreck giveaway

This Sunday is the anniversary of the 1859 wreck of the Admella, the event on which From the Wreck is based. I’d like to give away a copy of From the Wreck to mark the day.

From the Wreck is about seeking refuge, and it’s about human disregard for other species. So here’s the plan. If you’d like to win the novel, make a small donation (the amount is up to you) to either Wildlife Victoria or the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre. Send the receipt to my email and I’ll choose one winner at random on Sunday. Because there’s only one copy of the book, chances are you’ll make a donation and you won’t get a book in return. But you’ll still have done something pretty good.

A short story, Melbourne Writers Festival & Varuna

[image error]I have a new story in Review of Australian Fiction. It’s called Amy’s twin and it’s a kind of prequel to my novella, Formaldehyde. Review of Australian Fiction publishes two stories every two weeks in e-book form. My story is paired with Wayne Marshall’s The Magicians, which is a strange and funny book. These two stories are Volume 1 of an experimental-themed series that Review of Australian Fiction is running in partnership with a writers collective I’m part of, Kanganoulipo. Writer Ryan O’Neill and I have curated 12 stories and they’ll be coming out over the next six weeks – we have stories from Patrick Allington, Elizabeth Tan, Nic Low, Julie Koh and all kinds of exciting writers.

Also, if you’d like to come see me at Melbourne Writer’s Festival, I’m doing a session on dystopian fiction on Saturday 2 September. It’s free.

And I’ve just spent a week at Varuna working on a new novel. Varuna is a writer’s retreat in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. It’s a beautiful big old house right by the Blue Mountains National Park. You get a bedroom and an office and all your food, including a delicious dinner cooked for you every night. You can write all day if you want or, if you’re me, you can write some of the day and then go for a walk in the National Park and a drink at the Station Bar (good craft beer) or the Carrington Hotel (luxury and cocktails). Despite my lack of application, I got 11,000 words written and I feel like I might be on to something. Applications are open for next year’s Varuna fellowships program, so apply.

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What to expect when you’re expecting a book: #7 social media

This is our last post for ‘What to expect when you’re expecting a book’, and we thought we’d finish up with an ode to the thing that brought Annabel and me together: social media. Thanks for having us, and look out for a new series Annabel is going to run about how to make money as an author.

 

Jane

Does an author need to be on social media? I’m an author, and I’m all over social media, but my answer is emphatically ‘no’.

Let me rephrase that. Your publisher might have told you you need to be on social media because it’s your responsibility to use Facebook, twitter, Instagram, Pinterest to market your book. Do you need to be on social media to sell books? No. If you’re on social media will it help you sell books? Mostly, no. Like, 98% no.

I love social media. I particularly love twitter. I’m going to focus on twitter because it’s what I know most about (I don’t use my Facebook for writer stuff except to publicise events to people who are my friends anyway; I never use my Instagram for writer stuff; I’ve stopped using Goodreads, if that counts as social media).

Twitter has massive pros and massive cons for writers, and getting it to be more-good-than-bad is a constant struggle.

The cons

[image error]It is a phenomenal time suck. It is a huge distraction. It is built for procrastination. If you follow more than 1000 people that feed will keep giving new hits of info every few seconds for the rest of your life. It is incredibly hard to resist.

It is infuriating. If you let yourself, you will be outraged by one thing or another every single day. You’ll feel huge waves of righteous fury and you’ll likely do nothing about any of them that makes any difference at all.

It is also (this is not scientific) bad for the author brain. I should say this with a caveat – it’s bad for the kind of brain that writes the kind of books I do. When I write I need to go deep into my mind, I have to be brave, I have to be OK with being unlikeable. My twitter persona is the exact opposite of that – shallow and approval-seeking. Switching from one mode to the other is very hard (though I have found that a nap, a bout of meditation, or half an hour spent knitting can all help reset the twittering mind a little).

Without twitter, I think I would write longer, deeper books and I would write them sooner and more frequently.

The pros

Twitter is the best place for book chat and chat with book people. There are so many authors wasting time on twitter that you can always find someone to waste time with. You can talk about craft problems, about emotional problems, about whatever ridiculous celebrity you have a crush on, about whether literary fiction is a genre or the default novel. You can make the kinds of connections that, let’s face it, can help to inch your tiny little career forward just a little bit further. You can make friendships that last half an hour or years. If there are no other writers in your real-world life, writers on twitter can make all the difference for your happiness. These connections might be the thing that keep you writing.

I met Annabel on the internet. Annabel used social media platform Goodreads to give my first novel a one-star rating. Normally I don’t care much if people don’t like my books, but Annabel seemed like someone who _should_ like my books. So I made friends with her on twitter because I was curious. Turns out Annabel hates all kinds of books and that one-star rating was actually pretty generous. Annabel and I live on opposite sides of the country and we have met each other only once, but thanks to twitter I reckon she is one of my best writer friends. And she is one of many – some who I know in real life, most who I don’t – who’ve helped me through tricky times, given me a laugh, let me talk about Middlemarch or cricket or bitch about that Booker prize winning book I hated.

The sales

To that 2%. If you go onto twitter trying to sell a book, it makes sense you won’t sell that book. You don’t go up to people on the street and say ‘hello I am here to sell my book will you buy it’. But sometimes all those friends you make while wasting time over years and years add up to book sales. They like you – they think they might like your book too. Or they feel obliged to buy it. Or they tell their friends that oh they know you and maybe they should read your book! Or they don’t. They might not. They probably won’t. But it’s still pretty great you made all those friends, right?

Jane is on twitter at @frippet

 

Annabel

If I read a book and love it, the very first thing I do is Google the author. If you do this too, it answers the question of why authors should be on social media – because being on social media gives you a modicum of control over what people see when they Google you. Having a website, in particular, enables you to direct an interested reader to what you want them to see next: something about your writing process, perhaps, that might add value to the experience of someone who has just read your book, or an introduction to other things you’ve written, or a really insightful interview someone did with you.

Or perhaps someone wants to get in touch with you to tell you how much they loved your book. Yes! This actually happens! (People also get in touch to tell you why they didn’t love your book, but haters gonna hate, and they would find a way to do this anyway, even if you weren’t on social media).

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If a writer can’t be found anywhere on social media, I find it slightly frustrating. I WANT MORE. At the same time, I respect why people choose not to go on social media (especially Facebook for whom privacy is something to chew up and spit all over your face) because it takes time away from writing and living, and is, in the overall scheme of things, fairly meaningless.

However, as Jane said, it can be enormous fun. I’ve met the best people on Twitter, in particular, and some of those relationships have turned into real life relationships which have enriched both my life and my writing life. For example, I have exchanged novel drafts for feedback with Jane, and with Ryan O’Neill; Jane and I have collaborated on this series. Neither of those things would have happened if it weren’t for Twitter.

Social media is not an all or nothing proposition. You don’t have to be on all the platforms, all the time. It is better to be dynamite on one platform than to be mediocre on five. Start with one, and when you’ve got the hang of it, add another if you want to. No one platform is BEST for all writers – they all have pros and cons, so have a play and find the ones that work for you. If you like to waffle on, like me, blogging is fun; if you prefer to keep it short and sweet, Twitter is brilliant and has led, for me, to opportunities including being asked to speak on panels or deliver workshops, and being commissioned to write articles. If you’re a visual person, you might like Instagram. Goodreads is all about books and a great place to record what you read, but if you’re an idiot like me, you might make the mistake of a) taking their ratings system seriously, (where 1 = ‘I didn’t like it’ regardless of whether that means fine but not my bag, or worst trash on the planet), and b) thinking no one ever reads your reviews anyway so you can just go for it, and therefore potentially mortifying someone who might have turned out to be a fantastic pal and writing compadre (see above).

Does social media sell books? In a roundabout way, maybe.

It is nice to think the process goes like this: You post about your book = someone buys it.

But the reality is more like this: You post about someone else’s book + you get into a conversation with a 2nd person about that book + a 3rd person who follows the 2nd person joins the conversation + you & the 3rd person follow etc other & have many conversations over time + the 3rd person eventually sees your book at the library & reads it & likes it & writes a post about it + a 4th person who follows the 3rd person buys your book.

Social media: perhaps the least effective, but most enjoyable form of marketing ever invented.

Annabel is on twitter at @AnnabelSmithAUS

 

Tales from other authors

Neither Annabel nor I has the vaguest idea how to go about using Pinterest, but it turns out quite a few other authors use it with a great deal of success (I do know some who just use it to make ‘mood boards’ for the thing they’re working on, which seems like a pretty good idea to me). Natasha Lester is an ace Pinterester, so we asked her how she uses it and why.

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I mainly use Pinterest to get more traffic to my blog posts. I was skeptical when someone told me Pinterest could drive eyeballs to a website but it actually works! The most important thing is to have good content in your blog post obviously, but then to design a quick and easy graphic to go with your posts in something like Canva. I have no graphic design skills whatsoever but Canva’s templates make it easy for even someone like me to make a reasonable enough graphic. This graphic is what I pin to Pinterest, and it goes up with a link to the blog post.

Because Pinterest is also a really big search engine, people are there looking for things to read as well as images. So anyone who is attracted by perhaps the headline in my graphic can then click through to read the blog pst and will hopefully spend some time on my website. It’s just another way to reach people who may not be on Facebook or Twitter and it actually drives more traffic to my website than Twitter does.

My blog is kind of the heart and soul of my website so anything I can do to get people to read it is a good thing! Each fortnight I send out a newsletter which will have links to my blog posts for the last 2 weeks. The newsletter also has info about courses I’m teaching, events, links to other interesting articles on the web, info about what I’m working on etc but it’s those blog posts that I work the hardest on and are what’s most important to me (and hopefully my readers!). I’m a writer, so I figure I might as well use those skills by writing things other than novels that people might be interested in reading and which can help keep them engaged with me on a more regular basis than a once a year book launch!

One author who has sold a bunch of books and won more than a few prizes is Charlotte Wood. Charlotte has also been addicted to social media, entirely sworn off social media, and an occasional user of social media. We asked her which way of living is best.

I used to be absolutely in love with social media. For a time it was really essential to me. In about 2009 (I think) I joined Twitter and fell head over heels in love with it. I loved the wit, the companionship, the clever, nice people I met there, and the fact that whenever I felt lonely or bored, there was always someone to play with. Twitter seemed to me to be the perfect thing for introverted word-nerds. Wordplay, cleverness with language, a sense of community with like-minded people – I loved it all.

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The first time I ‘left’ Twitter in 2014 was because I felt I needed my quiet, private writing brain back. And the growing tide of a) hostility and b) salesmanship just started depressing me. I never got much direct aggression but I saw a huge amount of it, especially toward women who were in any way politically active, and I found it extremely upsetting. But almost as draining was the endless spruiking. I was absolutely as guilty as anyone else in this, but it began just feeling fake and depressing.

As soon as I left, a feeling of great peace and privacy came swooping in. Then when my book was done, I was ready to play again, and if I’m honest, I also was afraid nobody would hear about my new book if I wasn’t back on social media – but the love had pretty much gone out of it. I now just found it incredibly boring. I also realised I had begun to despise my ‘public’ social media self – my need to please or to impress or be witty or likeable, my impulse to say something at every turn about every horrible world event or Q&A insult. I slowly understood I was taking part in a disturbing kind of clubbiness on Twitter, where I found myself vocalizing support or criticism of whoever the current outrage target was, as a way of signalling (and maintaining) my membership of the club.

I realised that almost nobody I hung out with and respected in my professional life had ever been on Twitter. The contemporary writers and independent thinkers I most admired and wished to emulate were almost completely absent from any social media at all. For writers, who like to see ourselves as such independent thinkers, there is a hell of a lot of groupthink going on in social media.

For me now, it all comes back to the writing, and the privacy and energy I need to do it. Once I realised how much my social media use was sucking my time and writing energy, and even worse, beginning to infect how I thought about my work as I was making it – second-guessing whether this or that idea/character/plotline might offend the arbiters of what was acceptable, I just knew I had to get out altogether. My life is just far more serene and I am a much saner person without the obsessive level of social media use I once had, as well as having a lot more time on my hands.

I think it’s pretty clear that the idea that being on social media is necessary to sell books as a literary novelist is absolute bullshit. Even if a publisher tells you it’s true, I don’t believe it is. It’s really, really easy for a publisher or marketing director to suggest you must be on social media – there’s absolutely no cost to them, so why would they care how much of your time and energy and emotional well-being it takes? There is simply no way of really telling what sells books other than one reader urging another to read it.

For me, after writing seven books and editing two anthologies, I honestly feel that my next book will either sell itself or it won’t. I would really, really love to think that my last novel sold well because it was a better book than the others. Because that is the only damn thing any of us has control over: how well we write. To me this is an incredibly liberating thought: that all my energy should go into writing the best book I can, and the gods (not social media) will decide whether or not anyone wants to read it.

Previously in ‘What To Expect’…

Issue #1: Getting a blurb

Issue #2: Book Launches

Issue #3: Publicity

Issue #4: Prizes

Issue #5: Festivals

Issue #6: Feelings

Jane: Recently my fourth book – a novel – was published. I’m with a small independent publisher, and they’ve previously published another novel of mine, and a non-fiction book about climate change that I co-authored with an environment journalist. My other book, a novella, was published by a different, even smaller independent publisher. None of my books has been published outside Australia, and I’m not represented by an agent.

Annabel: I published my first two novels with small independent publishers. My second novel was sold by my West Australian publisher to a small(ish) independent publisher in the US, where it has gone on to sell more than 60,000 copies. My third book, an interactive digital novel/app was self-published. I am currently in talks with a North American agent in relation to my fourth novel, the first in a trilogy.

EOFY reading report

[image error]EOFY. What a ridiculous acronym. I reckon I saw it around for at least two years before I figured out what it actually stood for. Anyway, happy new year financial planners and accountants: let’s tell the story of my reading so far this year IN NUMBERS!

Books started: 55
Books finished: 47
Books given up on: 3
Books I still intend to finish: 5
Female authors: 24
Male authors: 31 (I usually read a lot more women than men – not sure what’s going on this year)
Authors of colour: 12
Books came from: secondhand bookshop 4; gifts 10 (thank you Facebook book pyramid scheme); library 11; Amazon & Booktopia 9 (including 4 Kindle); indie bookshops and publishers 15; borrowed from friends 3
Authors were from: Latin America 4; Eastern Europe 2; Middle East 1; Australia 20; US & Canada 14; Britain 6; Ireland 5; East Asia 4; South Asia 2; New Zealand 2. (Can anyone recommend any authors from Ethiopia, Somalia or Sudan?)
22 books were published in 2017; 15 were published in 2016; 6 were published in 2015; 9 between 2000 & 2014; 2 in the 1990s and 1 in 1953.
I loved 19 books.
I liked 23.
I didn’t like 7 (I’m looking at you, ‘A little life’.)
Six books were translated; two were books of short stories; five were novellas; nine were non-fiction and one was poetry.

My favourite books so far this year have been La Rose by Louise Erdrich, Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders (what a surprise), Universal Harvester by John Darnielle, Psynode by Marlee Jane Ward, Rubik by Elizabeth Tan and Carrion Colony by Richard King.

 

 

 

What expect when you’re expecting a book: #6 Feelings

Annabel Smith and I are writing a series on what to expect when your first book comes out – all those questions you’re too embarrassed to ask your publisher, answered here!

Part 6 is about feelings. Of course you’re going to be happy about your book getting published, but did you know you might also be terrified, sickened, confused and envious? Great news, right!

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Writing, perhaps more than most other careers, is characterised by a maelstrom of feelings. There is frustration that you can’t get an agent or publisher; disappointment that your book didn’t sell as well as you had hoped, or wasn’t listed for any awards; envy of other writers who seem to get much more attention than you and DON’T EVEN DESERVE IT!; rage about an unfair review or a one star rating on Goodreads. Such feelings are interspersed with moments of giddy delight: you finished the bloody thing! You got a book deal! You held your book in your hands for the first time! People came to your launch and said nice things about you! Between those extremes of joy and pain there are more quotidian feelings: the self-doubt that is always lurking, boredom, a desire to be doing something-anything!- else. But also the satisfaction of writing a sentence that captures perfectly the feeling you wanted to evoke. Know that all writers feel these things, and most writers feel shame about feeling them. But they are normal. You are normal.

Read on for more, including how editors and agents help authors deal with difficult feelings, on Annabel Smith’s blog 

Or you can read the whole series.

Talking ‘From the Wreck’ in Melbourne & Sydney

I’m doing a few appearances over the next couple of months. Here are the details:

I’m chairing a panel on emerging when old, at Willy Lit Fest (Williamstown) on Saturday 17 June. The blurb says, “It’s never too late to debut. While many people think ‘young writer’ when they hear ’emerging writer’, Jenny Ackland, Christy Collins and Paul Dalgarno each had their first book published after 35. In this event, Jenny, Christy and Paul talk to Jane Rawson (43 years old when her first novel A Wrong Turn at the Office of Unmade Lists was finally published) about how to hang in there and not lose heart.” Book tickets here.
Along with Kate Mildenhall and Anna Westbrook, I’ll be discussing historical fiction at the Emerging Writers Festival’s National Writers Conference on Sunday 18 June. Find out more and book tickets here.
On Sunday June 25 I’ll be at Braybrook Library talking with impressive interlocutor Imbi Neeme all about From the Wreck. Mostly we’ll likely talk about octopuses and cats. The Facebook event is here.
Sydneysiders! James Bradley and I will talk about his new book, The Silent Invasion, and my book, From the Wreck, and why the world is so freaking weird and how on earth fiction is supposed to capture it. We’ll do that on email, in bars and – for your convenience – at Better Read than Dead bookshop in Newtown on Thursday 20 July in the evening. Book a spot here.
Another Sydney event! But it is secret. In July. I’ll tell you later.

[image error]Last time James Bradley and I had a conversation in public, Tim Flannery was openly sceptical.

 

What to expect when you’re expecting a book: #5 Festivals

There are dozens of writers festivals around Australia. In addition to the major festivals in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane, there are smaller regional festivals all over the place, as well as specialist festivals such as Emerging Writers Festival, Digital Writers festival and so on. In all likelihood, your publisher will pitch you to the major city festivals and the regional festivals in your state. It’s a good idea to check with them that they are doing this and what you can do to help.

Keep in mind that getting onto a festival program is, like most things in the writing game, incredibly competitive. The reasoning behind who gets on where is also very convoluted – if you don’t fit into the bigger programming plan you can miss out, even though your book is great and you’re inordinately talented.

If you’re invited to a couple of regional festivals that’s a great start. Cracking an invite to the ‘big three’ definitely involves sleeping with someone; unfortunately we haven’t worked out who it is yet.

 

Jane

Some of my favourite festivals I’ve been to are Bendigo Writers Festival and Write Around the Murray in Albury – other writers speak very highly of Perth Writers Festival, the National Young Writers Festival in Newcastle and Noted in Canberra. Horror writer Jason Nahrung, author of the Vampires in the Sunburnt Country series, keeps a very handy online calendar of every writing event in Australia.

Whether or not you get scheduled onto a festival involves so many variables that there’s no way you should feel bad if you don’t. Ask your publisher which festivals they’re pitching you too, ask if they’d like you to do your own pitch as well, and ask if they mind if you pitch yourself to other festivals they’re not considering.

[image error]You meet the nicest people at festivals (in this case,  Jane is at Willy Lit Fest with Harry Saddler, Claire Dunn and Michael Green, talking environment writing).

If you want to pitch yourself to festivals, it’s good to have a little writer CV that talks about what you’ve published, any other expertise you have (maybe your job is really interesting, or you did a PhD in entomology that you’ve never used, or your uncle was Gough Whitlam) and any themes you’d be good at speaking about (I usually say things like ‘environmental issues, small publishers, speculative fiction’) so they can find a good slot for you. Also mention any other speaking experience you’ve had, to reassure them you’re (slightly) comfortable in front of an audience.

All of this, of course, is if you want to do public appearances. Lots of writers really don’t. If it’s a horrific experience for you then I reckon you shouldn’t do it. I always get terrible anxiety beforehand, have a thrilling time while I’m on, then feel hideous remorse for days afterwards about all the stupid things I said. It’s exhausting. But I’m getting better at it, partly because I went to see a sports psychologist for a while and got some awesome tips on handling terror and fear of failure.

If you can bear to do it, I’d really recommend it – for the reasons Annabel lists below. Some of my dearest writing friends are people I’ve met at festivals, and it’s just good fun getting to hang out with other writers for a few hours or a few days. The writing life can be lonely and isolating and a lot of the time you feel like no one cares, but when you go to an out-of-town festival and they put you up in a hotel, you feel a bit like a celebrity. Also you often get a pass to a party where there’s free booze.

 

Annabel

Once you have a book published, you might expect to take part in festivals. The thought of this can be exciting and/or frightening. Because I am a giant show-off, whose early life-ambition was to be an actress, I like nothing better than being on a stage talking about myself. However, I know I am in the minority here, as many writers are not comfortable with public speaking. But before you face the terror of speaking at a festival, the first challenge is getting an invitation.

My first festival was Perth Writers Festival. Having attended for many years as an audience member, I was absolutely thrilled to get an invitation to take part in three panel sessions to talk about my novel. When I arrived in the Green Room (where you go before your sessions to meet your chair & fellow-panellists) I sat down on a couch and got into a great discussion about writing with a dude who turned out to be Philip Adams. Then I chatted with a lovely lady who turned out to be children’s writer extraordinaire Alison Lester. Everyone I met was super-friendly and they were all happy to talk about writing. I felt like I had come HOME.

[image error]Here’s Annabel at Perth Writers Fest with Emma Chapman, Madeleine Thien & Angela Meyer – her first session ever, in the beautiful Tropical Garden.

It was a wonderful experience. My chairs were well-prepared and put me at ease, my fellow-panellists were delightful and I didn’t even get any messed-up questions from the audience. I loved it! It was hard to believe someone was paying me for it—I was having so much fun I would have paid them (don’t tell them that though, #paythewriters, of course!).

I have since taken part in some regional festivals, which are incredibly intimate and enthusiastically attended, and Melbourne Writers festival, which was not as cosy-feeling but was brilliant in other ways.

I think the most awkward part of festivals is having to sign books after your session. Andy Griffiths has a line that goes outside and wraps around the building a couple of times but I’ve never signed more than a handful of books. Once you know what to expect it is less mortifying. You usually chat with the equally little-known writers who were in the session with you, or even with the punters who are lining up to have their books signed by the much-more famous-than-you author.

We asked Jane Fraser, the CEO at Fremantle Press, if festivals and other appearances sell books and she told us:

We do know that sales do happen in response to author promotion  but it does vary widely – according to event, venue (library is small, festivals are bigger), audience, timing, location and so on. Class sets are even harder to track because an author appearance at a school in, say February, might prompt a teacher to order class sets, but not until the next round which might be July or the following year. I think this example is the most important because it’s the subsequent, later sale and word of mouth that really gets a book out there. And this is why it’s critical that authors keep working with publishers to promote their books months and years after it is first released. Particularly with kids books — we do know that sales tend to pick up months and years after release, which does indicate that teachers respond well, but can’t order until much later.

But whether you sell books or not, festivals are super fun! You get to be in a room full of people who understand what you do and every conversation you have is about books and writing and you get to meet other people whose books you have read and admired. If you’re published by a non-indie publisher you might get taken out to a fancy dinner and if not you can have drinks in the hotel bar with other indie authors who didn’t get taken out to dinner which is still a pretty bloody fantastic way to spend an evening if you ask me.

[image error]This could be your signing line

One guy chased me practically into the toilet to tell me how much he loved my book. Another guy asked if he could have a selfie with me when he got his book signed and he came to the festival a year later and gave me a copy of the photo (he clearly hadn’t heard of the internet). But how sweet is that?

I formed my writers group as a result of the Perth Writers festival. I made contacts I have stayed in touch with and written guest posts for and been interviewed by when my next book came out, and I have done the same on my blog with their books. Whether you sell books or not (and you probably won’t) and even if being on stage is the most terrifying thing that’s happened to you, the friends you make tend to make going to festivals very worthwhile.

 

How do you get on a festival? We asked Perth’s programmer, Katherine Dorrington

There are many factors in play when a festival director curates a program – generally speaking I choose work based on excellence, relevance (either to a theme or to issues being explored within the program), interest to the audience, uniqueness and the undefinable x-factor!

There are so many books published each year that we are overwhelmed with choice. I try to balance my program so that there is a strong mix of debuts, mid list and high profile writers.

I’m looking for authors who are versatile and can contribute widely across the program, who are confident and have experience speaking publicly. I would suggest putting together a few topics that you would be happy to talk about and pitch them either direct to the Festival or via your publisher. Be creative with the themes that relate to your book – they don’t have to be literal. For example if you write historical fiction what is it about your book that makes it unique – is there a link to current political or societal issues that could be discussed in a panel, do you have a really interesting path to publication, is there a great backstory to your work, did you uncover something during research that will be fascinating to audiences? Do you also write a blog that might be interesting? Can you give a writing workshop or could you confidently chair a session as well? Try and make yourself stand out from the other debut works that are being pitched to the Festival.

If you want to attend a Festival in a different state see if you can access any grants that will assist with your travel expenses and then let the Festival know. Unfortunately the budget we have to work with is generally very limited and any additional support through travel grants etc is really helpful.

 

Tales from other authors

Not every author is as excited about being on stage as Annabel is. We talked to Lia Weston, bike mechanic and author of Those Pleasant Girls and The fortunes of Ruby White, about stage fright. Here’s what she told us:

[image error]Lia at the wonderful Salisbury writers festival

I applied online to be part of the Emerging Writers’ Festival 5 Minutes of Fame panel several years ago. I arrived super-duper early, and then proceeded to get eaten alive by nerves though I’d done debating and theatre and never had an issue before.

It was a pretty small audience and I was the last person to be interviewed. The guy who spoke before me was on Neighbours a million years ago; when he left, he took most of the audience with him.

Once onstage, I was nonplussed to be asked questions such as, “You have a few animals in your book. Why?” It was a complete disaster; my answers went to pieces, and I couldn’t connect to either the audience or the interviewer.

But! The best part was that the interviewer concluded with, “… and Lia’s book is on sale at the stand over there if you’d like to get a copy” and we both looked over to see the stand being packed up. I then had to chase the organiser for four months to get my unsold books back.

It seriously shook my confidence for public speaking, which took me a long time to get over. However, I have, since, managed to hold a workshop and host a couple of talks without throwing up in fear.

 

We asked Graeme Simsion if a world-famous author of bestsellers like The Rosie Project and The best of Adam Sharp thinks festivals are worth it. And by worth it, we meant, ‘do you sell any books?’. (There are, of course, other definitions of ‘worth it’.) Here’s what he said:

The first thing to understand is that festivals – especially big festivals – have a large number of authors and attendees can only afford / carry so many books.

In Australia, there are three sorts of people who sell books at festivals. Category 1 is famous overseas authors (cultural cringe in full cry here – or maybe it’s just that the punters think they won’t get another chance). At my first festival (Perth, 2013) I sat next to Margaret Atwood. Her line was out the door, and mine…wasn’t. But I was busy taking in the fact that my life had led me there that I didn’t need a line.

[image error]Sometimes you end up going overseas for a writers festival: here’s Graeme in Bhutan.

Category 2 is celebrities – i.e. celebrities who are celebrities for a reason other than being writers. I skipped Julia Gillard’s session so I could be first in line in Adelaide, and the minder still moved me on – no dedications, just signatures, Graeme.

Category 3 is Andy Griffiths.

Now that your expectations (unless you’re Andy or a celebrity) are set suitably low, the best thing (in my experience) you can do is a reading (people want to know what they’re getting). Find one that doesn’t require a lot of setup and ends on something of a cliffhanger – or at least leaves them curious. No more than a couple of minutes.

But festivals are not about selling books, at least not directly on the day. Publicity around them probably does more. And the more people hear about you and your book, the more likely the pressure to buy will accumulate!

We’d love to hear your experiences of festivals, bad or good, strange or hilarious – leave them in the comments below. Or feel free to ask us a question.

Coming next: #6 Making money as an author

Read the rest of the series, What to expect when you’re expecting a book

Visit Annabel Smith’s site

What to expect when you’re expecting a book: #4 Prizes

Annabel Smith and I are writing a series on what to expect when your first book comes out – all those questions you’re too embarrassed to ask your publisher, answered here!

Part 4 is about entering prizes. Is it even possible for a debut novel to win a prize? How do you know which prizes to enter? Do you do it, or does your publisher? Should you bring a speech? (Actually, we don’t answer that question… Maybe we should have…)[image error]

The fourth issue on our series for expectant writers is all about literary awards: how to get your book nominated, and how being longlisted, shortlisted or winning a literary prize will affect your career. Will you be rich? Will you be famous? Will you sell a squillion? Will you date celebrities? We share our own experiences (spoiler: we’re not rich, famous or dating celebrities) as well as the (slightly better) experiences of AS Patric and Pamela Freeman.

Right now it is awards season in the Australian literary world. Every couple of weeks a new longlist/shortlist gets announced and down the track we’ll find out who the winners are. If you have a book coming out you may be hoping that next year, your book might appear on one (or more) of those lists, that it might even win one. So how do books come to be considered for literary prizes? And how does winning or even being long/shortlisted affect a writer’s career?

Read the rest of the guide to your prize-winning novel on Annabel Smith’s blog 

Or you can read the whole series.