Adam Croft's Blog, page 36

The queen of crime

There is no doubt about it: Agatha Christie has got to be one of the top crime writers of all time. She’s still held up as a great example for aspiring writers to aspire to, and her books are still as popular as they ever were. For anyone who is a fan of Ms Christie, or for anyone who simply has an interest in crime fiction, this article is definitely a must-read.

It’s an essay by Agatha Christie herself, in which she looks at issues such as why crime fiction is so popular. Her reasons are ones that I’m sure we can all recognise: it’s a chance for people to escape from everyday life; it involves concentration; it can develop a person’s reasoning powers; the stories usually have a sound ethical background.

The essay also looks at some of the detective writers that Agatha Christie herself admired – Arthur Conan Doyle, Margery Allingham and Dorothy Sayers, for instance; authors that have stood the test of time and that many people still read today.  It also looks at how the author went about writing her own detective stories; the need for a tight plot and a blueprint, as well as how her methods changed over time.

It’s definitely an interesting read, and offers some intriguing insights into why so much detective fiction has managed to stand the test of time – and why we all still love it so much today.

3 challenge-opportunities of independent publishers

I have looked before on this blog at some of the difficulties that authors can face when they get into independent publishing; it’s an important topic to look at as we should always be aware of the difficulties we might face in a new endeavour, but we should also never forget that those things that we might find challenging could also be fantastic opportunities. Here are some of the best reasons why.

Running your own business

Being an independent publisher effectively means that you have to run your own business. Naturally, this comes with certain challenges, not least of which is learning to navigate the self-assessment tax form. There’s also the need to develop business plans, keep good accounts, develop organisation so you can fit everything in and so on. You might have to fit things around an existing job.

Many of these things, however, can also be fantastic opportunities. Running your own business affairs as an independent publisher could give you a taste of the self-employed lifestyle, for instance. It might inspire you to branch out on your own in other areas of your life, and even if it doesn’t, it’s still a brilliant talking point on your CV and in job interviews.

The impact on your social life

We’ve looked before at how one of the biggest costs of being an independent publisher is time. The time it takes to write a book, the time it takes to get it ready for publication, the time it takes to market it, the time it takes to start to sell and be successful, the time it takes you away from other things… We can’t deny that this can be challenging, and it can impact on your social life when you start spending all your free time working on your writing.

But it can also make you evaluate your life in positive ways. It gives you the opportunity to look and see where you could trim the fat in your life – where you tend to waste your time and what you could cut out without losing anything. Plus, writing can develop your social life in new ways; you get to meet new, interesting people, do different things and really appreciate the free time you do have. It might not seem like it when you’re knee-deep in draft 3 of 33, but it is a good opportunity.

Overcoming knowledge gaps

We all have knowledge gaps when we start out in independent publishing. Most of us are coming to it from entirely different jobs, united only by the fact that we all want to be writers and quite fancy doing things entirely our own way. The gaps in our knowledge can be immense. After all, it is a rare person who straight away has all the skills they need to edit, proofread, design covers, format text, publish a book, arrange print runs, sort out pricing and financial issues, market successfully and still find time for a calming cup of tea from time to time.

Yet we learn. There are almost countless learning opportunities to be had from independent publishing, and plenty of people out there who can help you. It’s an opportunity to expand your professional skills and your network. You can learn skills you can use in other areas of your life. You can meet people who offer you that special something that takes your book to the next level.

There will always be challenges associated with independent publishing, and some of them can be daunting. However, if we remember to look at those challenges and see what we could gain from overcoming them, it helps to remind us that they offer opportunities too – and we all have to start somewhere.

What do you think are the biggest challenge/opportunities in independent publishing?

Has the e-reader war already been won?

For anyone who has even a passing interest in e-books and the e-reader market, this article on the BBC News website is definitely worth a read. It discusses some of the new e-readers on the UK market, such as the new offerings from the Barnes and Noble Nook range, which is hoping to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

The article also looks at the idea that the e-reader war has already been won; even though plenty of people still have yet to buy and e-reader and so, in theory, could be won over by new products on the market, the winners have already been defined by the early adopters of the technology.  In particular, this would mean that Amazon has already won the competition to dominate the e-reader market with its Kindle, with Apple and Google offering it some competition in the wider tablet market.

It’s an interesting idea, particularly when consumers are faced with an increasing choice in the e-reader market; they need to make a decision based on something, but when they might not have expert knowledge into all the different devices, it can be much easier to make the decision according to which e-reader is already the most popular. There’s also the issue that Barnes and Noble is not as well known on this side of the pond as Amazon, Google or Apple.

Still, only time will tell. The number of new e-readers set to launch over the coming months suggests these companies think there is still a good market out there to compete over, which could hopefully be good news for those of us working in the independent publishing sector looking to grow our e-readership.

What do you think? Has Amazon won the e-reader battle, or do you think it’s too early to tell?

The e-book lending review

You might have read in the news over the past few days that the UK government is set to have a review into the lending of e-books. The aim of the review is to look at all of the issues associated with lending e-books in libraries, from the benefits that can be drawn from it, the demand that exists for it and how it might impact publishers, among others.

At the moment, only relatively few libraries offer e-lending services, but as more of them start to make the leap and demand for e-books continues to rise, this is an issue that will merit further consideration. One of the big issues often cited in relation to e-book lending is that, while authors whose physical books are borrowed from the library receive a payment under the PLR system, no such system yet exists for e-books.

This means that people could end up borrowing e-books rather than buying them, and authors would not be compensated for their work. It seems that most people involved in the industry agree that e-book lending has the potential to be a good thing, but there are still quite a few technicalities and other issues that need to be worked out.

It will definitely be interesting to see the results of the e-book lending review when it reports back. In the meantime, you can read more about the issue here.

What do you think of the e-book lending debate?

Investing in marketing

As an independent publisher, it is likely that you will spend quite a bit of your time marketing your work. One question that always comes up when writers are just getting involved with promoting their own work is: how much does it cost?

It’s an important question, not least because most of us don’t have much, if anything, to spend on marketing – at least not when we’re just starting out and have an operating budget of £0.

Luckily, marketing is something that doesn’t necessarily have to cost anything, but it is something that we should invest in. This doesn’t mean investing money in it, but it does mean investing your time in it. Whether or not you choose to spend any money on your marketing, you’re going to end up putting the hours in anyway, so it’s definitely worth getting what you can out of all of those wonderful free promotion options before thinking about spending any money.

For example, social media is a marketing tool beloved by many a writer, and the great thing is that it’s free to use. The investment you need to make is your own time, to build up your readership and generate interesting content that they want to read, as well as working out the best ways to use the medium to promote your book.

The same goes for your writing blog: you can get one for free and promote it for free through social media, but you still need to invest your time in it to give it the best possible chance of success. For instance, daily blogging for a sustained period can be a good way to build up your readership, and it might not cost you any money to do, but it will cost you time. The calculation you need to make is whether that investment of time is worth it or whether you might be better focusing your resources elsewhere.

Like any other investment, there is an element of risk involved. You could spend months blogging every day, or tweeting to five thousand followers, and still not see a resultant increase in book sales. The only difference is that it is your time that you will have lost, not your money. However, if you have written a good book, there is a good chance that your investment will pay off. Sometimes, the satisfaction of a single positive review for your book can make the whole thing worth it.

However you choose to market your book and however much time (and money) you put into it, it’s an important element of independent publishing. None of us would get very far at all without it, so it definitely makes sense to sit down and work out how much of your time you’re able to invest in it.

What do you think?

The importance of location in crime fiction

Any writer or reader of crime fiction will tell you that location is important. It has a huge impact on story, on character, and on the overall tone of a novel. It helps to shape the crimes and the subsequent investigation that takes place, and it can also help authors to create their own niche or writing identity.

For example, when we think of Ian Rankin’s detective Rebus, we think of Edinburgh. When we think of Morse, we think of Oxford. Places become caught up in crime fiction, and they end up becoming characters in their own right, adding another layer of depth and intrigue to proceedings.

Location also acts as an interesting backdrop to crime novels. Scandinavian crime thrillers are a good example of this, with writers such as Camilla Lackberg making use of the landscape to add to the story (interestingly, since Camilla Lackberg started writing her crime series set in the small Swedish town of Fjallbacka, it has apparently become something of a tourist attraction, showing the power that decisions on location can have).

Where an author chooses to set a novel, and how they describe that setting, also has a big impact on how a reader relates to the novel. Even if a reader has never been to a place described in a book, they need to be able to believe in it. They need to be able to picture it and imagine the action taking place there. A mis-step on the part of the author, either in selecting the location in the first place or in selling it through their prose, could lead to a novel falling flat and failing to chime with readers.

Setting is also a great chance to create some atmosphere and tension, such as Agatha Christie’s train in Murder on the Orient Express. It doesn’t just have a bearing on where the story takes place, but also how it unfolds and how the characters interact with one another as a result – and how they react.

Overall, the choice of location is a vital one in crime fiction, and it has an impact on every other element of the story. Get it wrong and the novel won’t work. Get it right and it can help the novel come to life.

What are your favourite settings or locations used in crime fiction?

What does your blog do for you?

In theory, blogging as a writer is pretty easy. You set up a blog. You give it a catchy title. You write some posts. You publish them, and publicise them through social media and any other means you can think of. You get excited every time someone leaves a comment or likes one of your posts. On the face of it, it isn’t really that difficult.

Yet it is widely known that running a successful, useful blog doesn’t usually come easily. It takes a lot of time and effort and dedication, and when we have so many other things to be focusing on, it runs the risk of slipping down our list of priorities. This is why it can be so useful to ask yourself the question: what does your blog do for you?

As a writer, what value does your blog offer to you and your work? What does it bring to the table? For example, in my case, my blog is not only a useful tool for promoting my books, but also for promoting independent publishing, passing on tips and building a bigger readership. Your own blog might have a similar purpose, or it might be to share details of your works in progress, to publish short works or to engage in debate with your readers.

Whatever your blog does, it’s important that you are able to identify its purpose and its benefits. If you’re struggling to list the benefits it brings you, or to clarify exactly what it does, it might be time for a rethink.

There are a few reasons for this. One is that a blog can’t do everything. It needs to have a focus, and it needs to fit clearly into your writing goals. Another reason – an important one – is that time is precious. There are only so many hours in the day, and only so many hours each day that we can dedicate to our writing careers. We need to make those hours count, and so our writing blogs also need to count.

Of course, if your blog is just for fun and you’re happy with that, great. Fun and creativity are great purposes in themselves – but if you’re hoping for more from your blog, some sort of structure or plan for how you’ll achieve what you want from it are important. You can’t afford to waste the potential.

So with this in mind, what does your blog do for you? Where does it fit into your writing, and where do you hope to take it in the future?

Why proofreading matters

Proofreading. It’s one of the final things you are likely to do before declaring your book/short story/poem/article done. It’s one of the last hurdles to a finished piece of work. By the time you get round to it, you can sometimes be in a mind-set of simply wanting to finish your piece of writing once and for all – and quickly.

The desire to get something finished can lead to a rushed proofreading job that leaves your work not quite as good as it could be, and that’s a shame. Proofreading matters. OK, it can often seem a little bit like nit-picking, especially when you find yourself spending twenty minutes having a mental debate with yourself trying to decide whether it’s proofreading, proof-reading or proof reading (NB: I did not just do this. Much). But that nit-picking is important, as a single comma in the wrong place could change the meaning of a whole sentence – possibly a sentence that your story turns on, that it relies on to move forward.

Proofreading is also one of your last opportunities to catch any glaring errors in your work before declaring it finished. With any luck, any major clangers will have been caught early on in your editing and re-writing process, but there is always the chance of something slipping through the net. Sometimes it takes the close line edit of a thorough proofread to pick up on issues that you haven’t noticed until now.

Plus, the art of proofreading is all in the detail. It’s about making sure you’ve put apostrophes in the right places and used your semi-colons and commas correctly, and that your formatting of dialogue is consistent throughout. These might seem like relatively small issues in the grand scheme of writing and publishing a book, but we’ve all read things in the past that have been that little bit less enjoyable because of silly typos or mistakes that really should have been picked up before the work found its way to a paying reader. Make sure your own work doesn’t fall into the same trap.

What do you think?

7 ways to become a better editor

Whether you are an independent publisher looking to edit your own work prior to hitting the ‘publish’ button or simply a writer looking to make your work better, editing is one of the most vital, useful skills you can have. It’s something that all writers need to do to some extent, and very often editing is the process that takes our work from something that’s OK to something that’s genuinely good.

It’s always worth trying to get better at editing, not least because without it, our writing would end up a bit of a mess. With this in mind, here are seven ideas of ways you could become a better editor.

Reflect on what you read

Sometimes, it’s easier to be critical of other people’s work rather than your own, so the next time you read a book, do so with the eye of an editor. If you were asked to give the book an edit, what would you do? What would you cut, if anything? What works and what doesn’t? Of course, the vast majority of published books out there have already been well edited (hopefully), so you might not find much to quibble with, but it’s still a useful exercise.

Practice on others

Related to the above point is the idea of practising on other people’s unpublished work. Many writers are in writing groups that are there to offer advice and support to fellow scribes, and they can be a great way to hone your constructive editing skills before taking the plunge on your own work.

Also, if other people in your group are going over your work, it can also act as an opportunity for you to see what others think of your writing and where you tend to go wrong – information that could be very useful for your future editing endeavours.

Be one step removed

Removing yourself from your work can be hard, especially when you may well have just spent months slaving over a draft of a novel – but it’s necessary. You can’t edit your writing properly if you are seeing it through rose tinted glasses. Try and develop a critical stance, and be ruthless.

Remember – deleting your favourite scene from one piece of work because it’s not doing what you hoped it would doesn’t mean you can’t ever use it again. Sometimes you have to lose sections that you love in order to improve the whole.

Don’t just dive straight in

Editing can also be improved by waiting a while before you dive in; the distance of time and space to think can make it easier to spot the flaws in your work and read it as though from the point of view of a reader.

Read things aloud

This is particularly true of dialogue: if it doesn’t sound good when you read it out loud, it probably needs some work to get it just right. Passages of prose can also benefit from being read out loud while you’re editing; look for details such as commas in the right places, emphasis on the right words, and the general flow of the text, all of which you can often get a better feel of through speech than you might be able to through reading silently.

Put in the hours

Like anything else to do with writing, editing is a skill that takes time to hone. Practice it, and take your time over it. A rushed editing job could do more harm than good, so make sure you give yourself plenty of space to do it properly.

Know when you need help

Finally, one of the biggest skills of an editor – particularly when you are editing your own writing – is to know when you need another pair of eyes. If you’ve simply spent too long going over your writing or can see the problems but are having trouble coming up with solutions, a second editor to go over the work can be just what you need.

What are your tips for becoming a better editor?

The e-book pricing debate

You may have read in the news lately that some e-book retailers, including Sony and Amazon, have been selling some e-books for as little as 20p. This works out as a 97 per cent discount on some top titles, including books by authors such as James Herbert and Jeffrey Archer.

At the moment, the authors have been receiving the full royalties on their books even though they have been sold as part of summer-long 20p promotions, but there is a worry from some that once the public get used to paying so little for books, authors’ profits will eventually fall as a result.

The Society of Authors is worried that the downward pressure on prices means that authors will find it harder to make a living from their writing, even as digital sales have soared in the first half of this year.

It is certainly an interesting debate: on the one hand, measures to entice people to buy more e-books could be a good thing for authors’ sales figures, but on the other, it could have a long term impact on their ability to earn from their writing.

You can read more about the issue here and here, but what do you think about it?