Kris Pearson's Blog, page 11

Series - and a constant author profile

Authors talk. Mostly by email, so sometimes we’re half a world away from each other. It’s really easy to share ideas, ask for opinions, show off new covers and so on.

I’ve recently been in contact with an old friend about his covers. He’s a good writer but his covers aren’t doing his books justice. I’m no graphic artist, but after twenty books (four of them translations) you get a feel for what works.

I think it’s really important to have a constant ‘personality’ for your books.  My friend Serenity has just updated all her ‘Treats’ covers to show a relaxed beachy atmosphere.  And she’s decided to brand her next ‘Between’ series the same, so one runs seamlessly into the next. Check out her website HERE.

Diana Fraser keeps her name constant, but has covers reflecting her stories. Here are two of hers – one from her MacKenzie Brothers series, and one from her Desert Kings sheikhs series. Because the stories in each are so different, so are the covers, but that elegant ‘Diana Fraser’ brands them as her work. See her website HERE.

 

Friends with real benefits

A quick blog today to tell you what four of my friends have been up to: providing me with some great new reading that you might enjoy too.

First – Catherine Robertson – whose novel ‘The Hiding Places’ has just knocked Eleanor Catton’s ‘The Luminaries’ off the top spot in New Zealand’s fiction sales this week.

I’ve loved all of Catherine’s books, and can’t wait to read this one. Here’s the Amazon.com link. http://amzn.com/B00U1Y5VXG

 

Second – Tracey Alvarez yesterday launched the first in her Far North series. It’s called ‘Hide Your Heart’.

From the few pages I managed to read last night I’m already hooked. Tracey and her husband have a holiday house in the far north of New Zealand’s North Island, and she admits she set ‘Hide Your Heart’ right there. Go to http://amzn.com/B00VW0OLKM

 

Third – Bronwen Evans recently published  ‘A Touch of Passion’ – a Rouge Regency.

Busy beyond belief

I’m writing this on Good Friday. We live opposite a café, and because the café is closed on Good Friday, I’ve whipped out and done some chopping back of vegetation on the front bank. (Wellington is a hilly city, and we live on a slope.) Yay – no spectators for once. Now all the agapanthus are leaking sticky sap and it looks like fairyland shining in the sun.

I’m also finally back to my second sheikh novel. I love the characters and I’m enjoying spending time with them. Can’t wait to write the rest and publish.

But this has been put on the back burner for a while because I’ve been experimenting to find the best way for an author to benefit from Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited. This is the subscription service where readers can borrow a set number of books free each month. Great for readers. Not so good for authors though – because Amazon pays a much LOWER fee for a borrow than a buy. Hmmm.

Delete! Delete!

Can you tell I’m angry? I bought a book last night – something from an author I hadn’t read before – and I was so disgusted at the end that I immediately deleted it from my Kindle. The author broke the reader’s trust by not finishing the story. Indeed, she threw in a few lines on the last page that entirely changed the course of things and made me feel I’d been given a rude finger gesture, a big smirk, and ‘Ha Ha – you’ll have to pay more money now if you want to know what happens.’

Never again, baby. Never, ever again with you. The book was described as Book One in the series, not as a serial. I’ve no problems with serials. You know what you’re getting… something deliberately written in parts and released progressively so you can follow along at your own rate, or wait until all the parts are available to read sequentially.

So – one less-than-flattering review coming up.

I think it’s really important for authors to keep faith with their readers. If a book is billed as a romance, you need to finish with either a Happily Ever After or a Happily For Now – depending on the plot. Book descriptions shouldn’t indicate exciting thrillers when they’re cosy mysteries. Or be touted as medical dramas when they’re tepid drawing room things with maybe one character who’s a doctor.

Books not selling?

Well, they are of course, and probably better than ever, but many authors are getting a smaller and smaller slice of the pie. There’s a lot of moaning going on, and about a million and a half more books available since 2013.

A number of publishers have gone out of business, and others have combined to try and stay afloat. Many well-known staff at big publishing houses are out of jobs and for hire on a freelance basis. One editor who was a revered guest at a Romance Writers of New Zealand’s conference several years back (and had her nose a long way in the air) is now touting for trade. Shall I give her my trade?  No—perhaps not….

Three years ago indie authors like me were doing quite well. Some still are of course (exceptionally well in many cases) but lots of authors further down the line are finding things really hard. Recently one of the iBooks managers asked me if I thought Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited scheme was to blame for many of these lost sales. I told him I thought there were several other equally compelling reasons.

The mouse, the rat, and my fast-fingered superhero

It’s been hot here in Wellington – the best summer for ages. We’ve left the big back doors open a lot, so I suppose it was no huge surprise to find a mouse had moseyed in from the garden to see if there was anything worth eating. My husband spotted its small nose poking out from under the refrigerator, gave me the good news that we’d been invaded, and went to find our mousetrap. This took a while because we haven’t had a mouse in years. Trap was duly set – with a dab of peanut butter - apparently the preferred bait to cheese these days.

Within minutes there was a SNAP and mousie was caught – but only by an ear. He must have been a fast mover! So we had a live mouse to dispose of. Being a pair of softies we decided to put him in the compost bin a long way from the house and let him take his chances with the two cats next door. Husband set him free – and later confessed he’d added the peanut butter to the compost bin as consolation for the sore ear… Awww….

Farewelling Friends

Facebook is an amazing invention. I joined up years ago to follow friends’ progress around England. Every couple of days I’d check in and find Shirley in front of cathedrals and castles and Les admiring exhibitions of interesting stuff. Wow – more fun than looking through a packet of photos once they got home!

And from that, my Facebook snowballed. Right out of control. If anyone wanted to be friends I had a quick look at their profile. As long as they were wearing clothes and weren’t holding a gun l always added them. It was nice having lots of friends – even if I never heard from most of them again. The odd one became annoying – or suggestive – and they got the chop in a hurry. But by and large it was great getting news and jokes from friends and strangers alike.

In return I never felt I had a lot to give. Progress on the current book I was writing. Pretty things in the garden. Funny things that had happened in my life. To be honest I was never quite sure where my comments would turn up – on my page or theirs? If I attempted to ‘share’ something I quite possibly shared it only with myself…

Then I started getting my books translated into Spanish. All hell broke loose.

Spanish people wanted to be my friends from the link on my website. Quite a lot of them. How thrilling! Of course I accepted.

Judge a book by its cover?

Well, do you? I think for sure you can tell the really bad ones. If the cover looks totally home-made by someone with no sense of design or colour, horrible fonts and amateur photos (or worse, a painting or drawing with little artistic merit) the book is probably going to be about that good too. Anyone who has written a halfway decent story won’t fling it onto the market with a cover that repels prospective readers.

Successful indie authors are rigorous quality controllers.  It’s their book, their baby, and everything must be RIGHT. You wouldn’t believe the effort that goes in behind the scenes.  My particular passion is finding the right people for the cover. I can spend literally days, and far too many dollars, on the commercial photo sites – preferably in the early stages of creating a book – so I can then write about exactly those people.  I’ve traditionally published friends who’ve had to accept (at pretty short notice sometimes) covers with blondes instead or brunettes, historical garments from the wrong era, models they really don’t like and can’t picture in their story…

Less than six cents per copy

That’s not a great return on something you’ve spent weeks of your spare time on, is it? Unfortunately it’s reality for many authors these days.

Over the past month I’ve had the very great pleasure of writing a novella for one of Annie Seaton’s anthologies. In my case it was the beginning of a love affair because my novella spans only one day. However, it has led me on to the promise of a full novel and then a series for later next year. All good!

Annie first put these out as trios of stories, but has now combined them into a boxed set of six for Christmas. That’s more than 400 pages of good reading for 99 cents. This is absurd really, but readers are certainly onto a winner.

        

 

If you’re a writer you’ll know that Amazon pays a royalty of 35% on books priced at 99 cents, so that’s 35 cents in round figures. Split between the six of us that’s less than six cents each. And then we’ll pay tax.

Real life sneaking in

Are my novels total invention? Well, yes and no. Something has to get a story going, and I find little bits of fact sometimes lead to my fiction.

Take this novella I’ve just completed for Annie Seaton’s next Christmas anthology: it launches December 10th, and features me, Annie, and Carla Caruso. Three very different writers, three totally different stories, held together by a beach holiday theme.

                       

Do you believe in co-incidence? I decided my big rangy builder would be six feet four. Years ago I worked with a man who was that height. He was a bit younger than me, and I already had a husband I was exceedingly fond of, but we got on easily, could talk about anything, and he never quite escaped from my brain.

Okay, hero would be six feet four. The day after this was on my screen, who should turn up on my Facebook page but my man from the past – also a writer as it turns out - and it must be at least thirty years since I spoke to him. Now that was spooky…

I decided my new hero was called Jason because of a real-life builder I know by that name. I even stole his very good legs! However, the real-life Jason is nothing like ‘my’ Jason Jones.