Tony Salter's Blog, page 2

Book Covers – How important are they?

Every article on publishing I’ve read stresses one fact – book covers are critical to the success of a novel.

They tend to qualify this with the suggestion that the prose, plot and characters in the novel itself might also have a role to play, but the cover is key.

The cover must stand out, be clear and strong in small online formats and tell the reader in 1-2 seconds exactly what genre of book they are looking at.

I tend to agree with them – I definitely judge books by their covers – but it is a very long way from agreeing with the theory to getting it right – matching all of the criteria without ending up with something dull and/or generic is hard. This is probably why most genre fiction covers are, funnily enough, dull and generic.

I’ve just changed the cover for Best Eaten Cold following advice and having asked a big, diverse group of people which option they preferred. I liked what I had before, but we all need to be open to advice. So far, it hasn’t made any difference (certainly not positive) and I’m not holding my breath.

For my next novel, I’m going in a different direction and have commissioned an independent designer to do something bespoke (I won’t mention her name in case I don’t like the results:-)). At least it will be original.

There is no doubt that covers are important, but my gut feel is still that, if you’re publishing your own novels, it’s word of mouth that’s key. That really depends on whether people enjoy your book, but for Best Eaten Cold, that doesn’t seem to be a problem.

If everyone who read and enjoyed Best Eaten Cold recommended it to five others, my sales would mushroom.

But people are busy and many of us don’t spend much time recommending books. My next task is to figure out a good way to encourage my readers to share the love even more.

New cover for Best Eaten Cold

I’m coming to the end of the first phase of marketing for Best Eaten Cold and results couldn’t be better. Reviews continue to be suberb, sales are steady and I have been give some fabulous feedback.

I now need to ramp things up a bit and have been working with Stephanie Hale to help me with the marketing.

The first step is to  improve the cover design. It needs to communicate pacy, dark, psychological thriller.

I have come up with a short list which you can see above.

Which one of these do you think works best — and why?

Writing female characters. (If you’re a man)

Since I started writing, I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to understand the craft. I was a late starter and needed to catch up. I’ve talked to other writers as well as reading dozens of books on writing and hundreds of author’s blogs; it quickly became clear that there weren’t any fixed rules. That is, I suspect, one of the things which attracted me to writing in the first place.

There are a few reasonably consistent guidelines however, and among the most quoted is ‘write what you know’. But how does that work if you’re a man and your character decides to be a woman?

I know a lot of women, but that doesn’t translate into knowing how women think or feel. Anyone who has seen me and my wife enjoying lively ‘differences of opinion’ would testify to the fact that I haven’t cracked that timeless problem.

Writing a woman character seems to be something a little different and, while I am sure that I often get it wrong, many  women who’ve read my books have been kind enough to tell me that my female protagonists come across as real characters who they can identify with, and care about.

So how does that work? I don’t ‘know’ women any more than any other man, but I seem to be able to write as one?

My theory starts with a bit of healthy cynicism about advice. Perhaps ‘write what you know’ is just a glib, simplistic maxim made by a lazy person who wanted to appear wise?

Unfortunately it’s attributed to Mark Twain, so that doesn’t sound right, but maybe it was simply that he was having a bad day?

On the other hand, Toni Morrison said; ‘People say to write about what you know. I’m here to tell you, no one wants to read that, cos you don’t know anything. So write about something you don’t know. And don’t be scared, ever.’

I think I prefer Toni’s version!

Going back to how (and why) I write a lot of female characters, I see two possibilities: either I have a surprisingly well-developed female side to my character or I have read a lot of books by women authors with girls and women as protagonists.

The first theory is unfortunately (or fortunately) rather far-fetched, but I do think that I’ve always been fairly open-minded about the books I’ve read, and I suspect that has had a much greater impact than I would have imagined.

In conclusion, the right piece of advice may not be ‘write what you know’, but rather ‘write what you read.’

Who knows?

 

Are you who you say you are?

Technology is becoming cleverer and cleverer. Especially smartphone technology.

As more and more people hand over their lives to their mobile devices, hardware developers are searching for simple, secure ways to help you to identify yourselves. People don’t want to type in codes each time they use their phones (hundreds of times a day for most of us), so more and more phones use fingerprint scanners, facial recognition or iris scanners.

The manufacturers are helping to keep us safe.

To a point, but it could be seen as a flimsy sticking plaster when compared to how much they, and the associated ‘Apposphere’ are encouraging you to share more and more personal information with more and more companies.

Personally I don’t bother to check any more what permissions I am giving away when I download a new app. It’s too depressing. I just say ‘yes’.

Biometric technology is good and getting better but it isn’t totally secure. Iris scanners have been hacked, fingerprint scanners have been hacked and it seems that facial recognition is a bit of a joke.

Not easy for just anybody to do, but the frightening thing to remember is that you can’t change your physical characteristics. If, for any reason, your biometric data is compromised (and published online?), you can’t just change your fingerprints like a password. What happens then?

If you want to understand better why you might want be worried, read my new novel, Best Eaten Cold.

It really could be you!

Cyberhack, cyber attack, ransomware. Happy Monday!

It wasn’t only the NHS, although that’s what has grabbed all of the headlines today. (Anything to do with a General Election?). Clearly the way in which this virus has brought our health system to its knees is shocking and possibly tragic, but it is only the tip of the iceberg.

The cyber attack driven by the WannaCry virus has already struck an estimated 60 million computers in 100 countries across the world. These computers are now locked unless they pay $300 each.

Some experts are saying that another 100 million computers could be affected over the coming days. That’s a lot of people who will stop thinking that “all of this fuss about digital security” is “not my problem.”

Did you remember to make secure back-up on Friday? If not, you may have lost all your files.

Let’s face it, the few people who actually did make a recent back-up would also have kept their software up-to-date and wouldn’t have been affected by the cyber attack anyway. But what about the normal people, the ones who went out for a drink, watched TV or played with their kids instead?

Apparently, it is – sort of – possible to de-bug your computer after this attack, but you do need a degree in computer science to do it.

Again. What about ordinary people?

Paying the money (in BitCoin) doesn’t guarantee that the problem will be resolved and it isn’t clear that the hackers will be traced. For most of  us, losing the contents of our computers will cost a huge amount of wasted time at best and losing important documents may have more serious consequences as is happening for the businesses which have been affected.

Digital security software firms are laughing all of the way to the bank. Even more depressing is the fact that  Microsoft (whose Windows software is the weak link) won’t be held responsible for this – they will also have a massive sales spike as businesses and individuals frantically try to update older versions of the software and renew maintenance licenses.

My new novel, Best Eaten Cold, is a psychological thriller which reminds us how digital security issues can affect the lives ordinary people. It is somewhat depressing to see how much it is proving to be a novel for our times.

What would we do without online banking?

A stupid question.

Surely?

After all, online banking is only a few years old. The banks have invested so much in security systems and, in any case, they’ve closed down most of their local branches.

And almost all of our other transaction are now online – stock trading, online retail, passport applications, the list goes on and on.

The world couldn’t go back to how it was before. It’ll never happen. That would break everything.

Amazon Prime OneClick – Guaranteed One Day Delivery (after we’ve processed your cheque)
Transfer money between accounts – please come into the nearest branch (only twenty miles away)

It wasn’t so long ago, but it does seem so far, far away.

There is one common factor which underpins the systems which hold up our world. The cement which holds together this structure of hidden, and misunderstood foundation blocks is a set of protocols which securely identify all of the players in the system. Whether you are an individual or a business it is essential that you can prove that you are who you say you are. Without that, everything breaks.

I have discussed some of the issues around privacy and passwords in other blogs and most people would (reasonably) assume that the legitimate forces of good would continue to outsmart the criminal forces of evil by developing more sophisticated security at every turn. People can be forced to use more complex passwords, fingerprint or iris readers; it would be inconvenient, but there are many options.

But the future isn’t certain, and developments in quantum computing and nanotechnology may mean that all of these security systems can be easily and cheaply hacked.

How many emptied bank accounts would it take before the banks had to call time on internet banking? How many fraudulent, malicious or frivolous orders would it take to break the online retail business model?

And how rich would someone be if they came up with the only solution to prevent this happening?

 

… and then it’s out there!

The fear and excitement of taking the initial step – sharing your writing with friends, family, editors and agents – is huge, but once taken, it seems as though the worst is over. That’s it. You’ve exposed your soft underbelly like a nervous puppy meeting bigger dogs for the first time.

That complacency is, of course, misplaced; it is a delusion created by wishful thinking like so many things in life. The point when you actually release your first novel onto the world-at-large is much, much worse.

Is it good enough? Should I have read through it again just one last time? If it isn’t good enough, will I have the resilience to keep on trying to write? If it is good enough, will I be able to market it and build awareness?

Well, there comes a point when it’s too late and you press the red button, throw caution to the wind and leap off the cliff edge; the book is published and it is time for the fates to decide what happens next. The moment of first holding the paperback version between your fingers is a wonderful, fleeting thrill, but then the real journey begins.

You start by telling everyone you know about it, many reply quickly saying that they will buy it and, of course, give it a review. From others, there is silence.

Does that mean that they are waiting to read it before they reply? Did the email go into their spam folder? Will the ones who replied actually read it?

At moments like these, time often has a special and unique viscosity. At one point, I found myself frustrated that I hadn’t yet had any feedback until I realised that it was only two days since I had told people the book was available. I needed to get a grip on reality, but it was impossible.

After two weeks, I have now reduced the number of times I check all available reports for sales and reviews to twenty or thirty times a day (much less than before), the feedback and reviews have started to come in – all very positive so far – and I have started to allow myself to believe that the book might be good enough. That I might be able to do this writing thing.

Dangerous thoughts.

Passwords

Everybody loves online passwords.

The sheer, unadulterated pleasure of trying to remember which one you used  eleven months ago when you last thought about your car insurance, is only outweighed by the delight you experience when you’ve been through the two or three versions you use most and are told that you’ve been locked out and need to reset your password

How can that be? You were 99% sure that you used the one that you always use. At least you can now reset the password to that one and make your life a little simpler.

But no! It appears that you did use the one that you always use; it’s just that your fat fingers mis-typed it and now the machine won’t let you use it again.

Aaaaargh!

And, to add insult to injury, now your old favourites don’t work any more because the password needs to contain uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols and a random selection of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Is it worth it? Can’t they simply leave us alone?

The answer is that it almost certainly is worth it, but that doesn’t stop it from being unbelievably boring and, if you end up being forced to write everything down and keep it in your wallet or purse (or digital version thereof), it seems to defeat the object.

In Best Eaten Cold, I quote some quite chilling statistics on poor password use. A January 2017 survey would imply that, for many people, it’s even worse. They analysed 10 million compromised passwords and found the following were the most popular

123456
123456789
qwerty
12345678
111111
123456780
1234567
password
123123
987654321

Now the firm that produced this analysis is trying to sell password management software, the data set is based on compromised passwords so they may be using data which suits them. But 10 million is a big number and 17% of them used 123456 as a password. That’s a lot.

If you’re like me, this is a subject that drives a sequence of thoughts and emotions: guilt – irritation – determination – boredom – resistance  – anger – denial – dismissal – contentment.

I’m not quite ready to change my ways and, I suspect, neither are most of you.

We are, however, all wrong.

 

Passwords

Everybody loves online passwords.

The sheer, unadulterated pleasure of trying to remember which one you used  eleven months ago when you last thought about your car insurance, is only outweighed by the delight you experience when you’ve been through the two or three versions you use most and are told that you’ve been locked out and need to reset your password.

How can that be? You were 99% sure that you used the one that you always use. At least you can now reset the password to that one and make your life a little simpler.

But no! It appears that you did use the one that you always use; it’s just that your fat fingers mis-typed it and now the machine won’t let you use it again.

Aaaaargh!

And, to add insult to injury, now your old favourites don’t work any more because the password needs to contain uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols and a random selection of Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Is it worth it? Can’t they simply leave us alone?

The answer is that it almost certainly is worth it, but that doesn’t stop it from being unbelievably boring and, if you end up being forced to write everything down and keep it in your wallet or purse (or digital version thereof), it seems to defeat the object.

In Best Eaten Cold, I quote some quite chilling statistics on poor password use. A January 2017 survey would imply that, for many people, it’s even worse. They analysed 10 million compromised passwords and found the following were the most popular

123456
123456789
qwerty
12345678
111111
123456780
1234567
password
123123
987654321

Now the firm that produced this analysis is trying to sell password management software, the data set is based on compromised passwords so they may be using data which suits them. But 10 million is a big number and 17% of them used 123456 as a password. That’s a lot.

If you’re like me, this is a subject that drives a sequence of thoughts and emotions: guilt – irritation – determination – boredom – resistance  – anger – denial – dismissal – contentment.

I’m not quite ready to change my ways and, I suspect, neither are most of you.

We are, however, all wrong.

 

Best Eaten Cold

[image error] My new novel, Best Eaten Cold, is now available for purchase as a paperback or ebook. A chilling psychological thriller, It tells the story of a new mother, Fabiola, and the slow, inexorable unravelling of her life.

*

Imagine that somebody wants to do you harm. Someone you once knew but have almost forgotten. Now imagine that they are clever, patient and will not stop. They are not interested in causing you physical pain – nothing so clumsy.

They will get inside your head, they will make you doubt yourself, they will make you question who you are, and they will ensure that everyone you care for starts to doubt you as well.

Each perfectly-orchestrated doubt will combine with its brothers and sisters – slowly, steadily building to a crescendo and destroying you from within.

Now imagine that this is real and it’s happening to you.

*

Best Eaten Cold is not a story of global conspiracies or nuclear Armageddon. It isn’t a tale of massive fraud or national scandal.

It’s a reminder of the delicate balance of our ordinary, daily lives. A balance that can be catastrophically upset by a small number of seemingly trivial incidents.

Above all, it is a reminder of how quickly – and how blindly – we have learnt to trust in the online world, despite the somewhat ironic fact that none of us really understand it at all.

*

Fabiola has just given birth to a son, Sam. She lives an idyllic life in Oxford – beautiful house, adoring husband, happy healthy baby – the coming years will be filled with joy and laughter.

But she has a past. A past which she thought she’d left behind her. When tiny cracks start to appear in the perfect glass bubble of Fabiola’s life, that rosy future becomes blurred and uncertain. Is the past catching up with her, or was it always too good to be true?

Love, obsession, loss and revenge; Best Eaten Cold is both a compelling psychological thriller, and a cautionary tale for our times.

Best Eaten Cold: Love and Obsession in a Digital World

by Tony Salter


  Learn more