Mark Stay's Blog, page 48

How To Market Your Book On YouTube — Episode 6

Are you a debut author or seasoned writer needing to know HOW to market your book? Or HOW to promote your book on YouTube?

In this in deep-dive, they talk candidly about WHICH video marketing strategies have worked, and which have not been as successful. WILL they hit their 1000 target for pre-sales before Feb 2021? WHICH digital marketing techniques will they enlist? WHICH book marketing strategy will be put to the test next on their ambitious (some may say foolhardy) quest?

In Episode 6 you will learn:

The definition of a blurb and how a few words on your book cover can make all the difference.

How to run a blog tour (or get someone to organise it for you).

Why categorisation is important, but ultimately it’s the reader who decides.

The kind of pre-publication publicity that a publisher can organise for you, including features in trade magazines like The Bookseller, and interviews in store magazines like Booktime.

Why an author should be a “squeaky wheel”!

And we take a look at other AuthorTubers and why they are so successful.

Do please enjoy…

I’ve Been Tweaking My Blurb

Blurbs are hard and I’ve been tweaking mine (ooh, Matron!)…

Transcript:

Hello folks, Mark Stay here. I’m sure you’ll be delighted to learn, I’ve been tweaking my blurb. Ooh, Matron. What does that mean? Well, the blurb is the book description. It’s that three paragraphs that you see on the back of the paperback or on the online retailers’ book description. And it’s one of the most powerful selling tools you have, because it’s usually the first thing that people see, and it helps them make up their mind if they actually want to read on and buy the book, and what have you. So, I got some feedback from Simon and Schuster’s sales department. They felt the blurb was reading a little bit too young… skewing a little bit too young. Let me just read it out to you to give you an idea. So here’s the blurb as was, and then I’ll talk about how I’ve tweaked it and how it’s changed.

So here’s the original blurb: As Spitfires roar overhead, and a dark figure stalks the village of Woodville, a young woman will discover her destiny. Faye bright always felt a little bit different. And today she’s found out why. She’s just stumbled across her late mother’s diary, which includes not only a spiffing recipe for jam roly poly, but spells incantations, runes and recitations… a witch’s notebook and Faye has inherited her mother’s abilities. Just in time too… the Crow Folk are coming. Led by the charismatic Pumpkinhead, their strange magic threatens Faye and the villagers. Armed with little more than her mum’s words, her trusty bicycle, the grudging help of two bickering, old ladies and some aggressive church bell ringing, Faye will find herself on the front lines of a war nobody expected. Now, the things that jump out there are references to jam roly, poly, which is in the book, and the word spiffing.

I felt they may be felt a little bit too Famous Five. This all sort of begs the question: who is this book for? You know: do you want it read by a YA market or middle grade market? And let’s define what they are: middle grade is kind of up to about… Sort of from about eight to about 12 years old. YA is anywhere from mid teens, right up to mid thirties. Actually that older, mid thirties market I think would really, really enjoy this, but you don’t want to put off a whole corner of the market that might read that and think, Oh, that’s a bit young for me. It’s a bit childish, perhaps. I mean, this book doesn’t have any swearing, because of the period really, uh, there’s, there’s no violence. Certainly not as violent as my previous books.

There’s no sex. So it could genuinely be read by anyone from the age of 10 upwards. But, it does deal with the second world war. There are demonic forces at work here. So, you know, you don’t want to put people off, but you want to sort of capture the tone of the book. So I went back and forth with my publisher on this. We removed those words like spiffing, words, like jam roly poly, and tried to make it just a little bit darker. We went a bit too far with some of our efforts, but then we dialed it back a bit. So, here’s what we got. So, uh, this is the new blurb: War rages in Europe, but in a quiet village in rural Kent, there is another battle to be won. Faye Bright has always known she was different, but when she discovers her late mother’s diary, she realizes why. It’s full of spells incantation, runes, and recitations.

It is a witch’s notebook and Faye has inherited her mother’s abilities. Just in time too. The Crow folk are coming. And they want that book. Led by the charismatic pumpkinhead, their strange magic threatens Faye and the villagers. Armed with little more than her mum’s words, the grudging help of two bickering witches, and some aggressive church bellringing, Faye will find herself on the front lines of a war with demonic forces. So you see, there are slight differences. You know, we got rid of jam roly poly, spiffing. We’ve got demonic forces in there, so it’s darker, but not too dark. And hopefully this will have that kind of crossover appeal. What’s really helped in the last week or so is I’ve started getting quotes from other authors, which is just amazing. So we’ve got a quote from Rowan Coleman. Thank you, Rowan.

This is amazing. She says it’s full of magic and delight, and we’ve put that on the front cover. And Julie Wassmer, has said it’s warm, witty, witchy, wartime fun, which again adds the fun element to it. So we don’t have to put that in the blurb. So you’ve got those two things working together. You’ve got the kind of the darkness of the blurb, but reassuring voices, other authors saying: you know what, it’s fun as well. So, yeah, we’ve also put a little shout line on the cover as well, which is: June, 1940 rationing blackouts, witchcraft. Which again, you know, combines all the, all those elements of the story. Blurbs are hard. They’re really, really hard. I mean, we’ve, uh, we’ve gone back and forth on this for months and they’re never kind of set in stone either. They’re things that evolve over time. Certainly my robot overlords blurb, has been updated recently with references to quarantine… Rather than being stuck inside. You know, you are in quarantine, lockdown, they’re using words that are very topical. That just happened. I didn’t have anything to do with that, but I think it’s very smart on the part of Gollancz to do that. So yes, blurbs: ever-evolving, ever-changing. I hope you’ve enjoyed this, hope you find it useful and, uh, speak to you again soon. Bye.

How To Market Your Book On YouTube – Episode 5

Are you a debut author or seasoned writer needing to know HOW to market your book? Or HOW to promote your book on YouTube?

In this 5th episode author Mark Stay and video marketer Jeremy Mason reveal more book marketing strategies and tips for authors.

WHICH of their video marketing strategies have worked so far? WILL they hit their 1000 target for pre-sales before Feb 2021? WHICH digital marketing techniques will they enlist? WHICH book marketing strategy will be put to the test next on their ambitious (some may say foolhardy) quest?

In Episode 5 you will learn: Lots of book marketing strategies, finding the route to market for your book, insider hints and tips that will help you with marketing your book. We talk about: Tweetdeck, Canva, Goodreads, BookFunnel, Groovepages, book events, pre-orders, book signings, pitching yourself for publicity and more…

A Recipe for Jam Roly Poly

As you may know, at the start of my forthcoming book The Crow Folk our young heroine Faye Bright finds a book left to her by her late mother. In this book are spells, recipes, incantations… and a recipe for Jam Roly Poly (translation for non-British folk: Jam Roly Poly is a much-loved pudding that has the same density as a sock stuffed with pastry, but filled with jam and tastes lovely with custard).

I am delighted to announce that the recipe featuring rationed ingredients from 1940 is finally available for lovely subscribers to my newsletter. It was compiled by Miss Burgess, a baker of some repute in the village. 

You’re NOT a subscriber to my newsletter?? Then sign up now and grab your free recipe and a sample of the first few chapters of the book here.

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And you can watch the delectable Miss Burgess try both the 1940 and modern recipes here…

YumTube!

People are saying Lovely Things about The Crow Folk

People are starting to say lovely things about THE CROW FOLK!

It’s available to pre-order in paperback, eBook and audio. It’s on NetGalley now, or you can have an exclusive peek at the opening here: https://witchesofwoodville.com/#library

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How To Market Your Book On YouTube – Episode 4

Ever wondered HOW to market your book? Or HOW to promote your book on YouTube? Join the 4th outing of author & screenwriter Mark Stay and video creator & marketer Jeremy Mason, as they implement a video book marketing plan for Mark’s upcoming release.

One month in – have ANY of their video marketing strategies worked? WILL they hit their 1000 target for pre-sales before Feb 2021? Time is marching on. WHICH video marketing techniques will they enlist? WHICH YouTube book marketing strategy will be put to the test next on their ambitious (some may say foolhardy) quest? In Episode 4 you will learn about YouTube Channel Optimisation, VidIQ, Tube Buddy, Captions, rev.com and Subly.

You can watch us waffle here…

Get a FREE excerpt from The Crow Folk

Today I am launching The Woodville Parish Council website…

[image error] Welcome to Woodville Village

What the blinking flip is the Woodville Parish Council you might ask (not unreasonably)? Woodville Village is the setting for my new Witches of Woodville books, and not a completely made up place, no siree. It is here that you will find everything you need to know (or at least everything we’re allowed to tell you) about the strange goings on in the village of Woodville.

On the Notice Board you’ll find all the latest blogs from me.

Sign-up and join the Village Library for free eBooks.

Pop into the Village Bookshop to buy any of my books.

And drop me a line via Writers’ Notes.

The website was created by the wonderful Simon Appleby at Bookswarm and it was a joy to see it come to life.

I have a little exclusive treat for you. Sign up to the Woodville Parish Council Newsletter for all the latest news and a to get a sneak peek at the first three chapters of The Crow Folk (along with a special introduction from village librarian Araminta Cranberry). This is only available to subscribers to the Woodville newsletter, and comes in Kindle, ePub and PDF formats, so sign up now. 

[image error] Artwork by Harry Goldhawk

And that’s not all! In the coming months there will be more short stories (and a recipe for jam roly poly as featured in the novel) including one story that will give a unique perspective on the events chronicled in The Crow Folk, and a quartet of stories that will reveal the truth about Miss Charlotte’s murky past. Sign up to the newsletter and get your free eBook here.

Where To Start With Terry Pratchett…

New to Terry Pratchett? Which book should you read first? I’ve been reading Terry’s books for over 30 years and will give you a quick guided tour of the best places to start with Terry and the Discworld. I also acknowledge the influence of Terry’s writing on my own work and my new book The Crow Folk.

Transcript:

Hello, folks
Mark Stay here
In the description of my new book, The Crow Folk, the publisher has written “For fans of Lev Grossman and Terry Pratchett,” and a bit further down there’s lovely quote from the author Ian Sainsbury, who says “Pratchett fans will love this book,” which is a comparison that both thrills and terrifies me.
I’ve been reading Terry’s books since I was 14, 15 years old, which is over 30 years.
It’s safe to say that no writer has come close to capturing my imagination in the way that he did.
I’ve not got everything he’s written, but I’m fairly close. And like any fan of Terry’s work, my first reaction when someone says, “This this is just like Terry Pratchett!” is,
“Yeah, yeah, right.”
So what I want to talk about today is the debt that I owe to to Terry Pratchett, and how I’ve come to terms with that comparison.
But I’m also aware there are people out there who won’t have read any Terry Pratchett, and they will look at all the backlist and… It’s a bit bewildering and thinking, Well, where do I start? It’s probably one the most common questions from any new reader. So let’s have a look at some entry points for new readers to the Discworld and Terry Pratchett.
The Discworld, as its name suggests, is a flat disc of a world on the back of four elephants on the back of a giant flying turtle floating through space. And it’s a wonderful precinct for every kind of story. Terry’s stories combine magic with wry humour,
and a humanity that I think you don’t see a lot in fantasy. At least, you didn’t until Terry came along. And as the series have evolved, various story threads have evolved, various kind of distinct series within series and fans have their favourites, and it started with The Colour of Magic and The Light Fantastic, pretty much you know, the first book and a sequel. These two really do tie in, and it covers the story of a cowardly
Wizard called Rincewind. These are fun. It’s not Discworld at its best. It’s still something of a parody, at this point, of regular fantasy, and it’s interesting… you compare them to the later books how far the books have evolved over time, so… These are great. I wouldn’t say start with these.
Some of the most beloved books are the stories of The Watch. The City Watch. There’s a city,Ankh Morpork, and there’s a city watch led by Captain Vimes. They all started with this book Guards, Guards, which is written in tribute to… in any other fantasy story, the poor guards who run into the room and are slaughtered by the hero straight away. These are terrific fun, really, really good fun. There is a TV show coming which doesn’t… it shares some of the DNA of the books, but frankly… It’s one of those things… Good Omens aside — we’ll come to that in a minute — I’m not sure you can adapt Terry’s books for TV and film, because the things I love about Terry’s books the most is the writing itself,
the prose and the characters. The stories are good fun, but I don’t think they lend themselves to TV adaptation in the way that other books do. This is just magic.
This is a great one to start with. The other ones are the books that feature Death.
I mean Death features in every single one of Terry’s books. He’s the one recurring character that crops up all the way through. This was actually the first book I ever read in the Terry Pratchett canon: Mort, which I absolutely adore. Death takes on a young apprentice, and it’s just brilliant, very moving in places as well. Death was such a hit in this one, it’s probably the first time he really came to the forefront in any of the
stories, he started getting his own novels, and this again, is a huge favourite. Reaper Man, where death essentially takes a holiday. Definitely worth recommending, but start with Mort if that’s your kind of thing.
There are all kinds of stand-alones as well, within the series. Books like Soul Music,
which is about rock and roll, Moving Pictures, which is about movies. Pyramids, which is set in a kind of Discworld version of Egypt. They’re all good fun. Probably don’t start with those. They’re kind of atypical. They’re the ones that you discover once you love the series. Of course, the one stand alone, probably even if you’ve never read Terry, you probably do know, is Good Omens, which he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman, back in 1990
Signed!
Which, again… Just one of my absolute favourites.
It’s about the apocalypse, on the face of it, it feels like a parody of The Omen and that kind of genre. But again, there’s so much more to it. So much more fun to it.
But the books I love the most, and this is where I do owe Terry a debt, are the witches series which feature three witches… it evolves over time, in a kingdom called Lancre,
which is this kind of, it’s, like, cliffs tumbling across farms, and it’s it’s a wonderful, magical place.
Ostensibly, it starts with this one, Equal Rights, but in the same way that The Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic aren’t quite fully evolved Discworld. Granny Weatherwax, the lead witch, she first appears in this. But it’s not quite the Granny Weatherwax that that we come to love. It’s a lovely book. It’s a really, really lovely book, but it’s not quite… It’s not where I’d recommend you start. For that, I’ll send you the Wyrd Sisters, which is essentially Macbeth, but from the witches’ point of view. And then you get our trio of witches: Granny Weatherwax, the hilarious Nanny Ogg, and Magrat, who is kind of their their drippy apprentice. This is huge fun and my favourites of all of Terry’s books,
probably are the Witches ones.
And there have been a number of them, where they go off on various adventures.
I’ve got a soft spot for this one, because I remember reading this in hospital when I had kidney stones, so this was a bit of a lifesaver. And there are all sorts here, which are just wonderful, magical stuff.
He then did something very clever. He introduced a new witch, in a book called The Wee Free Men, called Tiffany Aching, who has gone on to have her own series.
They started, as you see, slightly smaller hardcovers. They started as children’s books and then folded into the mainstream of the Discworld canon essentially, and it’s rather fitting that Terry’s last book featured Tiffany Aching: The Shepherd’s Crown. I know a lot of people who can’t bring themselves to read this book I completely understand why, and it’s… it is a difficult read I did get very choked up… I’m getting choked up.
just thinking about it. It is a tough read, but it is wonderful.
One of his best books, actually…
I’ve learned so much from reading Terry’s work: the importance of
character over plot, that use of language and vernacular language.
But most of all, the importance of being yourself as a writer.
The comparisons, “This is like Terry Pratchett,” it’s only ever meant as a guide.
So am I trying to write like Terry? Bloody hell, no, no, I could never do that.
But has he inspired me? More than he could possibly know.
And he continues to do so.
And if you’re new to him, hopefully he will inspire you, too

How To Market Your Book On YouTube – Episode 3

Ever wondered how to market your book? Or how to promote your book on YouTube? Join author and screenwriter Mark Stay and video creator and marketer Jeremy Mason as they create (and implement) a video book marketing plan for Mark’s upcoming release.

Will their book marketing strategies work? Will their efforts garner the all-important pre-orders they need, before the book launch in Feb 2021? Join them each week as they dive headlong into video marketing, putting YouTube book marketing strategies to the test.

In this latest instalment, myself and Mr Mason look at keywords, how Google can be your friend, profiling your reader and much, much more…

Here’s a fun drinking game: Every time Jeremy says “That’s great!” then points out everything I’ve done wrong, take a shot… You’ll be legless in five minutes…

Here’s part one if you want to start from the beginning.

In Episode 3 you’ll learn:

In-depth YouTube book marketing strategies using video marketing

A detailed real-time YouTube channel review

Creating engaging YouTube Video titles & YouTube video descriptions

YouTube channel engagement hints & tips

Facebook video tips

WHY video thumbnails are important

Profiling your audience

Fleshing out the book’s audience & WHY it’s important

Keywords & keyword research

HOW it allows you to understand MORE about your book

HOW to mine Google for content ideas

Brainstorming book marketing video content ideas

WHY you MUST get your videos transcribed

How can we deal with ‘haters’ and online rejection?

WHY YouTube Channel keywords & video tags are SO important

WHY relevant video tags are CRITICAL

Reading Page Proofs

What are page proofs? And what should an author do with them? In this quick and easy video, I’ll show what I did with mine when they arrived last week. You’ll learn what they’re for, why I read them out loud, and why I back them up to a master document.

TRANSCRIPT: Hello folks. I’m Mark Stay. I’m an author and a screenwriter. And in the run up to the publication of my new book, The Crow Folk, which is coming February 2021, I’m gonna be posting regular updates here. There’s stuff about the book and the story, but also behind the scenes stuff about the process of publication and particularly all the fun stuff that happens in the run up to the big publication day.

And just recently, I got my page proofs from my publisher. So I’m going to talk about what I do with those and how I review them for my publisher. We’re a little over three months away from the publication of The Crow Folk and the proof pages were sent to me as a PDF. This is how the printed book will look on the page. They used to come as a big wodge of paper, but now, for various reasons – economical, environmental – they’re sent as a PDF. I did look into getting them printed locally, but for a 352 page document, it would’ve cost about 35 to 50 quid, depending if I wanted it one-sided or or two-sided.

Now the proof pages are an author’s last opportunity to really spot any errors and make any changes. Not big changes, either. This is not an edit. The edit is done. This is not the time to decide to move that pivotal scene in Act two into Act One No, no, no… What you’re looking for are typos, formatting errors, clunky sentences. And that’s about it. I read them out loud. Why? Well, when I was at Orion — I worked for the Orion Publishing Group for many, many years — the audio director, Pandora White, said she wished all authors would read their proof pages out loud. And the reason is that by the time they came round to recording the audio book, the proof pages had been done and sent off to the printers. So if they ever spotted any errors — and they often did — it was too late to do anything about it. So y’know, that’s why I read it out loud. I know authors who use speech software to have their computer read it back to them, which is a good way to spot typos and clunky sentences, but you miss homonyms. So y’know there are at least two I can recall from this book: draft and draught, and hole and whole. You miss fomatting errors. You can’t hear when the formatting is wrong, y’know. So I had a question mark slip off the end of the line and end up at the beginning of the next line on this ones, so I was able to pick that, so to catch that. So I read out loud. I make the words as big as possible on the screen, because I’m one of those people who tends to speed, read and skip ahead, and that’s how you miss stuff.That’s how you miss the little tiny details, and you can’t make that mistake when the words are so huge. When I read, I do so in a soft voice and try not to make it too dynamic or dramatic. You know this process can take as long as a week, and I need to save my voice. There’s a fine line between a soft voice and monosyllabic.

I mark-up the pdf as I go. I read for about an hour a time, and then I usually take a break, do a little bit of housework or something just to get the circulation going again. I generally find I can only read in the mornings. I’m just too drowsy in the afternoon and I miss stuff.

At the end of each session, I go back to my original document, which is a Scrivener document. You may use Word or similar, and I go and make those changes. All those mark-ups that I’ve made. I go and make them in my original document. And I did that for the edit, and the copy edit: any changes go back into a master document so that I have a master doc with all the updated changes. You’d be amazed how few authors do this and that’s not unreasonable. Why should I do this? The publisher is making those changes and putting it out there. But at some point in the future, you may need that document. You may part company with your publisher, you know, authors get the rights back to their books, and I may want to self publish it in 20/30 years’ time or whatever. And the last thing I want to do is have to go through this process all over again. And also, you know, you can’t just ask the publisher for those files. They’ll charge you for them. They spent money creating them, and they will charge you. Sometimes it’s hundreds of pounds, and if you got a whole series that can really, really add up so, you know, create an archive, back it up, get into the habit of creating an archive. So that’s it. That’s reading page proofs.