Carol Hedges's Blog, page 26

Buy a 5 Star Amazon Review? No Problem!

I am posting this picture as it is evidence of a growing trend on social media. I'd noticed that my book promos were being retweeted by a Kindle tweeter I'd never heard of, so decided to investigate further. This is what I discovered (and yes, I have blocked them).

Before you go all shocked and horrified, bear in mind that like prostitutes, these people wouldn't be in business unless there was a demand for their services. Considerable numbers of writers must be using what they offer - and they are not the only company online - to boost their rankings and give the impression that their books are better written and more popular than they are.

It makes a mockery of Amazon's review feature, where any lay person can leave a review of something they have read. Enough has been written on many blogs, including mine, about the importance of reviews, especially to new or Indie writers who do not have the benefit of a marketing department behind them. To buy fake reviews not only undermines the writing process, but the reviewing one also.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the best and most effective way of selling your book comes from people interacting with you and posting stuff about you on Twitter. Here are a few examples so you can see what I mean:

       Donella @DonellaMcNulty
       @whatmeworry @carolJhedges ......Starting Carol's books soon......and just so you know I met her for real.....gorgeous lady x


Deborah Swift @swiftstory  Nice Interview with @carolJhedges about her great novel Diamonds & Dust - Dickensian, great atmosphere #recommend https://themitfordsociety.wordpress.c... …
Derek Goldsmith @londondel  ·  May 2Just read Diamonds and Dust by Carol Hedges.Excellent read,loved it. On to Honour and Obey next. Recommend highly. Try it.
and my all time favourite:
User Actions FollowingGloria Mc Breen‏@GloriaMcB#blisstime Husband massaging my feet while I finish reading Honour & Obey by Carol Hedges. @carolJhedges - I didn't see that coming!
See what I mean? On Amazon, you may come across a writer with loads of 5 star reviews. But can you believe what you read? If you haven't heard of them, and on the evidence of what I have discovered, I'm not sure you always can. Is that 5 star review genuine, or bought?
On Twitter, one tweet can reach thousand of people very fast. And it is clearly genuine. I have seen people downloading my books on the basis of a chat or a tweet from an enthusiastic reader. If unscrupulous authors are going to buy fake reviews, I wonder whether this is the new way to go?
Love to have your view... ....

Square Eyes (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)

I didn't grow up with TV. When I was Little G's age and older, we got our juvenile entertainment from the radio. Listen with Mother was followed by Children's Hour with Uncle Mac, Toytown, Jennings and Norman & Henry Bones, boy detectives.

Forward 65 years and you come to CBeebies. Although You must be mad has indicated that Little G enjoys various programmes, I've tried to keep the TV off as much as possible. There are so many other things to do and share. And I see TV fulfilling the same function as Daffy's Cordial in Victorian times: a drug to keep a child quiescent.

However, when You must be mad's train from London gets delayed, I have given in and Little G, cosily wrapped in one of her mum's jumpers, sits on my lap and we watch In The Night Garden together on CBeebies.

In The Night Garden is like Breugel the Elder meets Spike Milligan. With voiceover. It is possibly best appreciated slightly drunk, but I can't set Little G a bad example, so I watch it stone cold sober and utterly baffled. She, on the other hand, loves it - pointing at the screen and chuckling when a good bit comes on.

What amazes me is that someone writes stuff that has characters called Iggle Piggle, Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy in it. And gets paid! Probably quite a lot, as the programme has a huge following. Gentle reader of this blog, I seriously think I am in the wrong business.

An Attack of the Freebie Jeebies

As some of you know, I have views on the ''Free / 99p book and Ebook!'' promotion thing. My views are that it creates the expectation in readers that something you sweated blood over for years is worth less than a small cappuccino. Happy to retweet your promo if you insist on doing it because you are a friend, but Hell will freeze over before I voluntarily choose to join you. And from what I gather, some of the nastiest reviews on Amazon come from people who acquired your book for nothing. Go figure.
Interestingly, in one of those plot lulls that occur at about 13 thousand words, I sat down last week and actually worked out my hourly rate if I were to regard writing as a business, and pay myself a wage from what I bring in via book sales. Let us just say that there is no way I shall be awarding myself a £3 million bonus at the end of this financial year.
What I think some of the freebie purchasers fail to realise (if they are not writers themselves) is that the cover price for a book falls far short of what the writer of the book actually receives. I did a useful equation where C (cover price) is divided by T (time taken to write/edit the book) and then subtracted D (discounts applied by Amazon/monies owed to publisher etc). On this basis, I am working for peanuts. If I could afford to buy peanuts.
There seems to be this myth abroad that writers write for the sheer love of writing (we do) and that somehow, that should be sufficient reward in itself. Sadly gentle blog reader, it is not so. Food, heating, petrol and life generally impinges upon the creative impulse, bringing with it terrible thoughts of maybe throwing in the literary towel and getting a job in Asda to make ends meet
I don't ask or expect my plumber/electrician nor the lovely consultant who performed my 2 cancer operations to work for free. Nor should you, dear readers, expect writers to do so either. And I wish writers wouldn't feed your expectations. I have this dream where every writer on the planet decides they have a moral obligation to their craft NOT to run cheap-as-chips or free promos. Then and only then would our status have a bit more quo. And I'd be able to buy shares in a peanut farm.

Walk the Walk (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)

Forget Pilates, Yogalates or any other kind of lattes. If you want to stay fit over 60, the trick is to acquire a small grandchild. Little G and I walk for miles and miles. Or rather I walk (active) and Little G is walked (passive). Up hills, down hills, through the park we go. Into town and back. Then into town again because I forgot to buy something You must be mad has asked me to get.

I watch the joggers pass us by with scorn. Lightweights, I think. They should try pushing a buggy full of baby, shopping, nappy bag, snacks, toys, my handbag and the kitchen sink. Then they'd know what fitness really was. Same for the group of bendy wendies who do Tai Chi in the park in their smart hooded sweats. Get a life; get a granddaughter, I snarl (silently) as we stride past.

As for developing middle age spread or any age spread - I wish. You want to lose weight? Acquire a small grandchild. Meals are something I view in hindsight, as in: did I have any lunch? (The answer is usually no). Little G eats like a queen. I finish her crusts and leftovers. Unless we're saving them for the ducks. Round here, the ducks eat better than I do.

If only I could tell my fat diffident teenage self that one day I'd be rocking size 10 skinny jeans and have cheekbones you could abseil off. Sadly I'd also have to tell her that as I'm over 60 and pushing a buggy, in the misquoted words of Rhett Butler, ''nobody could give a damn.''


To be continued ...  ...

Suck it Up! Dealing With Bad Reviews

Last week I wrote a blog about not responding to the difficult people you will inevitably encounter on Twitter. It has proved enormously popular, though I have been amazed at the number of people who didn't realise they had quite as many options. You can reread it/read it for the first time here.

A quick recap: Twitter is a very fast moving medium. A tweet has about a four second life, before it is replaced by others. Ignoring a nasty comment means that is is gone in an instant. As soon as you engage with the remark, you and the sender and the ensuing exchanges become visible to everyone. Whether you ''win'' or not, you will be seen by thousands of people. Will it enhance your ''brand'' for this to happen?

The same could be said for one star reviews. Most readers know what sort of person writes a one star review: either they got hold of the wrong book; didn't understand the book; didn't like the book (fair enough), or are another writer with a new book out, trying to diss the book - this actually happened to me when my teen crime Spy Girl series came out. After the 5th review comparing me unfavourably to another writer in the same genre, Usborne stepped in. Ignoring the naff reviewers and their comments gives the impression that you are a bigger person with a wider vision.

Recently, I witnessed a couple of writers receiving bad reviews and dealing with them by complaining vociferously on social media sites. Ok, their choice: they were clearly upset and it was important to them to say so. But the result? Everyone instantly hopped over to Amazon to read them. Yes, maybe their good friends piled in with supportive digital shoulders, but I'm not sure this was a professional way of dealing with it. Nor is complaining to Amazon. You may disagree.

As soon as we have published a book, we become less important than the readers' experience. In fact I don't think we, the sensitive tortured artistic little souls, figure at all. Witness the friend who rang up after my cancer op to see how I was, then went on to tell me at some length that they liked books written in chapters - which I had failed to do in Diamonds & Dust and Honour & Obey.

I may well get another call as I am doing it again with Death & Dominion. And will do with Murder & Mayhem if I ever get the time to write it. (For future reference: I write in episodes, not chapters. Episodes. Got that? And I intend to continue to write in episodes too. Pretentious? Moi?)

Suck it up, people. I have reviews of all starry hues. I have friends on Twitter and in that thing called ''real life'' who listen open-mouthed and entranced when I burble on about plot holes and Victorian sexual practices. I have some who seem completely unaware that I have a dark side involving a laptop and a pile of overdue library books.

It is always tempting to think less of ourselves - after all, lives are not saved and wars are not stopped by reading our novels, and we will never achieve world-saveage. But it is also not healthy to think we are more important than we are. And as someone who is just going through the rigours of a first professional edit, I can certainly vouch for that!

The Sound of Silence (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)

Before I took charge of Little G on a regular 2-day basis, my world was filled with noise and I hated it. There was DIY from next door, the radio playing pop music from over the way, the office computer whirring, the mobile beeping. Then there was the constant sound of traffic, people talking too loudly ... you get the picture. Sound surrounded me and was the background and foreground to most of my days.

Silence was a rare treat, an absence of noise that was like a welcome oasis to be savoured and enjoyed. I'd ease into the rare moments, feeling my shoulders untense, my breathing slowing. However, now that I have Little G, silence is something I dread.

Silence means she has managed to crawl to the stairs and is sitting at base camp contemplating a solo ascent. It means she has managed to insert tiny fingers into crevices she shouldn't (and how on earth did she find them in the first place?). Silence means she has found something unsuitable and is probably about to shove it into her mouth. Silence means unauthorised snacking is taking place.

Silence means that I have failed in my duties and reinforces my theory that You must be mad should never have entrusted Little G into my dodgy and clearly inadequate care. So I want noise, lovely lovely noise. Give me the busy scribbly sound of a small baby playing with her toys. Silence is such a vastly overrated commodity.

To be continued ...   .....

To Block or Not to Block? - That is the Question.

As somebody who is quite capable of starting a fight in an empty room, I write this blog post in some trepidation but in my defence, I have been asked twice recently to intervene and advise people on Twitter who've found themselves in a difficult situation with other users. So here for what it's worth, is my 2p take on dealing with criticism, abuse and people who seem to have their own agenda.

When I joined Twitter in July 2012, I believed that I had to put up with whatever I got thrown at me. I also believed (indeed I still do) that it behoves us as writers NOT to get into flame wars on social media. I see myself as ''a brand'' and as such, I do not want to lose my good rep by tearing publically into other people.

I am also aware that I represent Crooked Cat Books and if I misbehave, it reflects badly on them and on the rest of my fellow writers. I always recall the sole occasion I ''did'' the Edinburgh Book Festival as an Usborne writer, and witnessed two well known authors laying into each other viciously in the writers' yurt. I have never read any of their books since. We are the brand ... as I said.

So, let's look at the various ways and means available on Twitter to rid oneself of the unwelcome Tweeter.

1. Ignore them. Basic practice. Whether they are following you or not. Just ignore. Eventually they will get the message. However, if they don't and you want to progress this a stage further:

2. Mute them: I use this for people who irritate me, but who are not personally insulting or aggressive. (I'm currently muting a lot of people whose politics I disagree with). They won't know you've muted them but it means their tweets do not appear in your timeline, giving you the chance to unmute them later.

3.  Unfollow them: If you are following anybody who you feel is making your life difficult (see below for definitions) you can just unfollow. Of course, they may still continue to follow you and send you Tweets, but they will have noticed (hopefully) that you have done the equivalent of turning your back on them.

4. Block them: This means they cannot tweet you directly, nor can they see your tweets and comment on them directly to you. It is the ultimate sanction. If they try to tweet you, they get: You are blocked from following @X and viewing @X'sTweets.


Reasons for shedding people:

1. They are taking up too much of your time.
2. They are constantly DMing about promos, reading their books etc.
3. They are being critical of your tweets/promos.
4. They are being over friendly too fast.
5. They are bombarding your timeline/convos with their opinions.
6. They are making inappropriate comments or suggestions.
7. You suspect they are not what they appear to be.
8. You feel uncomfortable about them for any or whatever reason.

Twitter is like life - you wouldn't hang out with people who criticise you or don't ''get'' you in real life. So do not hesitate to apply the same criteria to people on social media. There are plenty of lovely genuine supportive people in the Twittersphere. Hold on to them like gold dust. Trash the rest.
And finally, however tempted, taunted, teased, trolled or trifled with you get: DO NOT FIGHT BACK! You may win privately, but you will lose publicly.
Just trust me on this.

A Very Steep Learning Circle (Adventures of L-Plate Gran)

Since You must be mad entrusted Little G into my rickety old hands, I have learned many things. The first thing I have learned is that I know nothing. Working from this low base I have progressed to mastering a few basics. The primary one being that tops on things that are labelled 'Childsafe' are also 'OAPsafe'. The time wasted trying to open stuff is probably comparable to the time needed to read Love & Fate. (Incidentally I'm claiming that I have read it on this basis).

The same applies to clear plastic drinking cup covers. I am always handing Little G her cup with the top still on because I can't SEE it. She then tries to drink ... and hands it back. The expression of patient resignation her face is becoming hard to cope with.

There have been some minor successes, however. I can now get the purple buggy to sit, lie and stand on command, which is an advance on previous attempts. And then there are the bus timetables. Little G and I ride buses a lot. They are free and there are choices. Thus I now carry round in my head the morning, midday and early evening times of the 321 Luton to Watford bus, and the 657 St Albans bus (It used to be the 625. No, I don't know why they changed it so please do not ask me).

Given my failure to get any grade at all in O level Maths, this mastery has been rather satisfying, and has marked the zenith of my current achievements, which shows how low the bar is set. Sadly even this has now been taken away from me as last week all the local bus companies changed to their Summer timetables, so I have gone round full circle. Once again, I know nothing.

To be continued  ....   .....

The Wizard's Cauldron - Author Interview Blog: Author and blogger Carol Hedges is...around The Ca...

The Wizard's Cauldron - Author Interview Blog: Author and blogger Carol Hedges is...around The Ca...: Inhabitants of the Twitterverse, at least this little segment of it, will have noticed the effervescent wit of Carol Hedges - author and ...

The PINK SOFA meets writer Catherine Curzon

I met Catherine Curzon on Twitter in her other guise as ''Madame Gilflurt, a glorious Georgian ginbag, gossip and gadabout''. Can't think why I started following her! Catherine blogs about fascinating bits of Georgian life - she is to the 18th century what I am to the 19th. So sit back and let her take you on a journey into her present and the past.
Madame Gilflurt
''It’s a real privilege to be invited to the pink sofa to chat about blogging, writing and the crowned heads of 18th century Europe!
From my earliest memory (well, not my earliest, that was breaking my arm and refusing to take my purple anorak off), my life has been full of stories. I was born in Nottinghamshire and growing up spent many long hours and the cottage on the edge of Sherwood Forest where my grandparents lived. My granddad was a great one for telling stories and he would keep us children entranced for hours with tales of outlaws in the forest, of ghosts flitting in the shadows and highwaymen on the roads.
It was my granddad who awakened my love of stories and when my gran bought me a paper dress up doll of Marie Antoinette and some generic bewigged courtiers, that was that and I was hooked. I loved the glamour of the costume and jewels and the gruesome tragedy of her demise and for a time, possibly quite a worry time for my parents, headless queens started popping up in my childhood drawings wherever I could shoehorn them in!
I have been writing fiction for a long time, everything from teenage horror to romantic thriller and onto timeslip yet I never submitted them for publication, sure that I would probably be rejected. I kept on writing though, because I had these stories that I felt like I had to tell, even if I was the only person reading them. I seemed only natural that I write something set in the period I loved and so, about four years ago, I entered National Novel Writing Month with a story of Georgian prostitutes and murderous peers.
As soon as I started writing, I found myself wishing I had tried my hand at historical fiction long ago. I love the sense of being taken back in time, the chance to lose myself in the 18th century and once NaNoWriMo was finished, I kept on writing. That novel eventually became The Mistress of Blackstairs, which I am inching ever closer to finishing but which has, for reasons which will become clear later on, had to take a backseat for a few months.
Many people have commented that writing historical fiction must be a nightmare of research but that couldn’t be further from the truth. For me, research is still an utter joy; there is always something new to discover about this remarkable era, a little gem in a gazetteer or a nugget of gossip in the letters of an apparently respectable lady!
I’m not sure what it was that prompted me, with my terror of letting anybody read my work, to start blogging, but I took the plunge in summer 2013 and I’m so glad I did. Each day I publish a story from the 18th century and I hoped that maybe a couple of hundred people might visit but the reception has been wonderful, far more than I could have hoped! My approach to blogging has to be super disciplined because I post daily so I gather notes, inspiration and stories from everywhere. As the blog has expanded I’ve been privileged to feature guest posts from the world of literature and academia and made wonderful friends all over the world and I’ve learned so much about the era that is my passion.
Despite the new characters I’ve uncovered, my favourite figure from the Georgian world has not changed. For many years I have had a very soft spot for Henry Fielding, a character I never tire of. In so many ways, Fielding captures everything was great about the long 18th century. Scandalous, irreverent, colourful and ground-breaking, his life is one that would seem far fetched in fiction!
At the close of 2014, I was contacted by a representative from Pen and Sword Books and, to cut a long story short, I am now under contract with them to write Life in the Georgian Court, a breathless romp through tales of 18th century royal scandals, marriages, grisly deaths and more! This truly is a dream come true and I still can’t quite believe it; for someone who set up a blog with the intention of giving it a few weeks to see how it went, it feels incredibly surreal and utterly wonderful. I have so many ideas for future works both fiction and non fiction, but for now, I am totally immersed in the worlds of the Bourbons, the Hanovers and more.
I may not be drawing headless queens whenever I get the chance but I can guarantee you that Marie Antoinette will definitely be there in the book, both with her head and without it!''



Glorious Georgian ginbag, gossip and gadabout Catherine Curzon, aka Madame Gilflurt, is the author of A Covent Garden Gilflurt’s Guide to Life. When not setting quill to paper, she can usually be found gadding about the tea shops and gaming rooms of the capital or hosting intimate gatherings at her tottering abode. In addition to her blog and Facebook, Madame G is also quite the charmer on Twitter. Her first book, Life in the Georgian Court, will be published by Pen and Sword Books in 2016.