I'm finally published...

Hello Kristopher,

I enjoyed reading parts of your free introduction very much. I can find lots of tiny details which are the kinds of things which irritate grammarians and linguistic experts. But, on the whole the book reads well. Well done. The Standard English is largely good. Small things which people may be irritated by are: The professor is called both Professor and Mr. in the story. Sticklers for titles, I'm sure, would prefer it if you picked one and stuck to it. You refer to the Professor (sometimes) as Mr., but you refer to Volks as Herr. Sticklers might prefer to see titles in a story, where related to characters with the same nationality, referred to in the same language. When Voks threatens the boy with a gun he is described as pulling the gun from his waistband, but pointed it at the child. It's customary to remain in the same tense throughout narrative descriptions.

I couldn't understand the quoted dedication.

I shan't go on and on pointing out tiny irritations, save but to say that they don't spoil the flow of the story exactly, because they're largely stylistic. But, regardless of how they're categorised, they're still there. If you want to remove such potential irritations you may wish to discuss the process of editing books with people.

In any case, congratulations on what could potentially prove to be a very, very fine piece of work indeed.

Footnote:
It should be noted for people who like to argue about things simply for the sake of arguing about things, that with stylistic observations they are neither right nor wrong. With stylistic observations all are opinions about personal taste.

Hey Mercs you should be pretty pleased with that, well done mate!!:)
 
I was a little surprised, but it's mostly positive! Sure admittedly it's not the head of a publishing house or trade magazine or literature section for the times, but it's a hard to please bloke saying it's not all bad...

He didn't buy a copy mind lol...

I'm going to give it a proper go and see where it takes me. I'm either going to get the ball rolling and maybe get noticed or it will die a painful death with the copies sitting away on friends and family's bookshelves/lofts....
 
I think it's worth giving a few people a free copy if it can lead to enough sales to cover the cost of the freebie if nothing else.

Mercs - have you contacted the local paper? Is your book set in your area, if not how about contacting the local press in the main area it is set? Never underestimate the power of a local connection, people will buy books just because the author is local, I have before and been glad.
 
I'm trying to get it into the independents in my area and trying to contact Waterstones to see if they will stock a few signed copies. At the moment the thing that is holding me back is the distribution package, as there's still five weeks to wait until you can get it on a site other than my own basic one!

Currently I'm just getting a few early sales under my belt, as this will give me a basis to start with. Once all friends, family and acquaintances have their copies I will branch out even more....

And I'd love to give away more free copies, but I'd have to really consider who to. It would be disasterous if I just gave them away willy-nilly so need to weigh up who will get one and when...
 
Just a quick update to add that the book has just appeared on all the international amazons (some at stupid prices sadly -I hope I have no Japanese people considering my book, as the stupid price will put them off for sure!) and a few other sites. I've got a book signing evening at a local independent, which I'm also using as a mini launch party with a lot of friends and family coming along to create a real buzz...

All I need now is to convince the Waterstone's in my area to carry them and then to start spreading out and trying to build up a bit of a base...

A lot of hard work and a long way still to go (nearly 1% to the target I set myself lol!) but enjoying the experience and actually getting out there...
 
Good job, mercs. :) And don't worry about snobs like some people here who shall remain Ya... I mean... nameless. Self-published is still published. (Or were Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Ben Franklin, and William Shakespeare only self printed? You're in better company than many might think.) Keep the dream alive. Again, well done.
 
It's good to hear you've made this step, Mercs. I wish you luck, as it will entail a lot of hard work. I tried self-publishing and wasn't up to the task, unfortunately. I've even got a couple books on Lulu now, one I've been trying to give away FREE for the past two years and still only managed to move 20 copies (despite a good review from POD People). But, as has been mentioned above, Mark Robson has shown us all that it can be done.

Can you tell us something about Lyrian?
 
Mercs: Just checking is that the one Aamzon has listed as ISBN: 1409289869
 
Sorry guys for the delay, I actually couldn't remember where I started this thread, this site is VERY hard to get around at times!

Frontierzone, if I recall Kipling, Blake, Byron, Twain and several others did it as well, although I will wait a few years and a few million copies before I class myself in that list ;)

Michael01, sorry to hear that. It's hard work on lulu, as you get zero support and good books are two a penny sadly. I don't know anyone that shops around on lulu for books, so I've given up even trying to sell copies via them -infact I just ignore any links to lulu and point people in the direction of Amazon or my own site, as it's cheaper in terms of postage, it's quicker and more reliable...

TheEndIsNigh (that's so hard to type!), not sure if I'm honest. It's the only book titled Lyrian and is by Kristopher James (my pen name). It might be the same one. Now I'm hoping you haven't seen a typo or an embarrassing novice error in the piece!

As for the book itself, I was hoping to recreate a MG fantasy along the lines of Alice in Wonderland or the Narnia chronicles. I didn't want sorcery, wizards, elves, romance, vampires or anything else that is fashionable, just a classic, golden era fantasy story of children discovering a world in its infancy...

To date I'm clocking up the odd sale, but very hard work. Waterstones just won't get back to me about stocking the book, which means no one else will give me the time of day. So all my sales are coming through browbaiting and hassling people to go on Amazon and buy the item. I can still trace every sale to who bought it -never a good sign for an author I'm sure!- but I did get a sale on the US Amazon last week that was unaccounted for, which made me so happy you wouldn't believe!

People can mock the self publishing route, and maybe it is fake and false, but I just want to write. I'll never be in a position to make millions off it, I could spend decades pressing agents to try and get signed. At least this way I will get the item recorded and there for me to hold and get a very good wake up call in the process...
 
It's not going to be easy Mercs, at the moment you have no momentum but if you keep at it and your sales grow and so will the momentum.

Have you considered selling on Ebay - there are one million punters on line at any given time. As I've mentioned before if you had your own stock you could post them out when you make a sale.

PM if you want any Ebay advice:)

Regards
 
Cheers Gary, I have considered eBay as an option, but does it work? I have an ID with 50+ sales and 100% feedback, so reputation isn't that hard, but never thought it'd be an option for a book not many people would have heard of!

It's so hard to get the ball rolling and annoyingly so! I'm hoping it will improve eventually as it's just so much hard work to move up to the top 250 books on lulu, let alone actually be in a position where I would create a bit of a following...
 
Cheers Gary, I have considered eBay as an option, but does it work? I have an ID with 50+ sales and 100% feedback, so reputation isn't that hard, but never thought it'd be an option for a book not many people would have heard of!

It's so hard to get the ball rolling and annoyingly so! I'm hoping it will improve eventually as it's just so much hard work to move up to the top 250 books on lulu, let alone actually be in a position where I would create a bit of a following...

I'm currently playing around with an idea for all the writer publishers on this forum.

I hate that word self-published by the way, it makes you sound like a second class citizen.:mad:

I think it'll not be long before being a writer publisher is the way forward for writers as well as getting a deal in the traditional way.

You're one of the new breed of writer publishers and I've been thinking that if all the writers who'd honed their work to perfection and then gone to the trouble of printing the books had a central hub dedicated to driving internet traffic through the site, it would help push their sales.

So with this in mind I've bought www.bookazon.co.uk as the writer publishers central hub. (I'm busy building the site so there is nothing there yet)

You would be afforded completely free of charge your own sub domain say www.mercs.bookazon.co.uk and on that page or pages you could host details of your book, your blog, first couple of chapters say, buy it now button for a download and one for the paper back copy of your book.

As much information as possible.

Now the more authors who come on board the better it will be for everybody, I'll put google adsense on the site and any revenue would go towards advertising the site around the net. I'll link it to my other sites which will help traffic.

Basically it will cost authors nothing, if some one buys your book the monies will go directly to your paypal account and you can despatch direct - simple isnt it?

The secret is getting visitors through the site, which is more difficult with a dedicated authors site with only one book - on the internet content is King, the more you have the more visitors you'll get.

With regard to Ebay, I cant see it working for individual authors with their own accounts. My daughter runs a very successful Ebay shop selling gifts, football souvenirs, kitchen handles and other stuff. She gets 10,000 customers through the shop every month.

She's agreed to have a book section which will work in a similar way. You receive the money, you despatch but the author will have to have a small amount of stock (Dont want any negative feedback on her shop for slow despatch)

The cost per month to you for your book listing will be 5 pence a month. If you set your own Ebay shop up it's between £20 and £50 a month and you wont get the traffic.

I know this idea will take alot of work but I reckon it'll succeed and the reason I'm doing this as I intend to become a writer publisher probably next year.

As a collective we might have more clout with Waterstones, WH Smiths etc.

I intend this to be a non profit making co-operative where everybody owns a part of it.

What do you think?
 
If you really want to market your book on your own, this is what you need:

Pages of articles about you and the book.
A website with tons of SEO keywords.
Tons of blogs with articles about the book and keywords in it.
Google Adwords; Amazon's marketing thing (IDK what its called--booksurger?)

This is why going the route yourself is harder than with a publisher, but if you have the money to throw into advertising when it is your first book then you can really get some 'momentum'.

Basically you need traffic. And people to write things about your book. There are many magazines that do reviews, you should do a search for them.
 
Well done mercs - over the first big hurdle, anyway...:)

I can't help noticing that you only mention Waterstones as a potential stockist; have you considered Borders? I believe that the British stores are now separate to the original brand, so they may be more flexible than they were.
 
pyan, the problem I have with Borders is that the manager of the Bullring branch asked me "what have waterstones said?", which took me back, and I was honest and said that it was hard to get Waterstones to commit to a new project but I am talking with two of their managers about stocking signed copies in their stores...

Gary, I love the idea and that might be what we all need. I don't know the community as well as others on here, I mean are there a lot of self published authors about? If so then we have potentially a dozen or so straight off!

With regard to Ebay, I cant see it working for individual authors with their own accounts. My daughter runs a very successful Ebay shop selling gifts, football souvenirs, kitchen handles and other stuff. She gets 10,000 customers through the shop every month.

That's quite funny that I was mentioning my 50+ positive feedbacks in the last post then! I think that's what's needed as it's hard enough to sell your regular stuff let alone stuff people don't yet know about...

As for replacing traditional publishing (that's another term that should be banned!), I think it is in terms of quantity, if not quality. The sheer numbers will soon dwarf publishing house books, but not many big sellers are there? I think it's just the way the world is going with itunes, blogging, twitter, youtube etc...
 
pyan, the problem I have with Borders is that the manager of the Bullring branch asked me "what have waterstones said?",

Ah the first lesson in selling, the answer should have been.

'I got a brilliant reception from them and they are going to order some books.'

It's unlikely they will check!

To get on in life sometimes you've got to be a blagger, lie on your CV or tell a couple of porkies. It's the only way to progress unfortunately.

Being whiter than white, whilst good for your soul doesnt put food on the table:)

I'll let you know when www.bookazon.co.uk is built.
 
'I got a brilliant reception from them and they are going to order some books.'

It's unlikely they will check!

On the off chance that they do check, you'd ruin your name, likely not permanently but at least for a while.

I do a lot of freelance marketing research work, and I just can't condone not being honest. That doesn't mean that you have to spill all the beans, but you can't outright lie. either.

In my business, as a freelancer running my own site, my good name and my list of contact references are paramount. I've never fudged my CV, I've even outright told some of the people I"ve done advertising article plans for that I didn't have experience, but here is my (perfect) marketing plan for their site/service/product.
 
I hear what your saying Dustinzgirl but there is always two sides to an opinion. When I started by business 30 years ago at the ripe old age of 21 I did bend the truth and tell a few porkies and it worked for me.

I never said anything that i knew I couldnt deliver so in my mind I was telling the truth.

How many writers have submitted to a few agents at the same time even when the agent has said in their guidelines that they want to be the only one to look at it.

There's no template in life that is the definitive one, entrepreneurs have to take risks to get on. Writing, publishing and marketing your own book is a big ask and is like running a business and you do have to be an entrepreneur.

You've got to make your own breaks at the moment Mercs isnt in Waterstones so good reputation or bad is irrelavant - they are not selling his books so it's a calculated risk.

I'd hazard a guess that Mercs is young where as Scarfy looks a bit more worn around the edges (I Love you really) so the manager wouldnt neccesarily take him seriously. I could be wrong but you've got to force yourself onto the ladder.

Thats just my opinion though:)
 
I hear what your saying Dustinzgirl but there is always two sides to an opinion. When I started by business 30 years ago at the ripe old age of 21 I did bend the truth and tell a few porkies and it worked for me.

For the four to five years I worked at Dell I was constantly in the top 10% of global sales. That means of the 100K sales people worldwide, me and my team were in the top 1000 constantly. I never lied. If anyone on our team got caught fudging the truth or lying to a customer, they were fired on the spot. I just can't get behind fudging the truth.

I have a pretty definitive template. Be nice and tell the truth and always stand your ground. Its worked out pretty well for me so far.

And I completely agree, a writer that isn't a staff writer has to wear many hats, I mainly do freelance work (not this year because of grandma I've put it all on hold its very stressful) and have had to build, develop, publish, advertise, and sell myself all over the net. I worked my arse off doing it, and I did it with integrity. I probably lost a few good paying contracts because of it, and I probably took a few good paying contracts that I shouldn't have just because of the level of work involved and the lack of English on the customer's side, but in any case I've always been honest about who I am, what I'm doing, why I'm doing it, how I'm doing it, and where I've started from and where I plan on going.

Of course agents don't want you to send something to more than one publisher. You would be very put out if your book was so amazing that you got two or three contracts at the same time, not to mention that the editor or agent who did NOT get paid for reading your material would be very put out if you had to say that you took a different contract because that would be a ginormous waste of their time. Every time I've sent all of my thousands upon thousands of rejections, I've never sent to more than one place if they requested that I not. Thats just being patient and honest and understanding.

I would not want one of my clients contracting for the same articles with another freelancer and then deciding not to pay me post-work.

It is hard, hard work being a writer. You are pretty much on your own, and the world is pretty much mean. So you do have to work ten times as hard as anyone else on the planet, and you have to have patience and constant desire for success. Being self published is even harder, because you have to have the time, the motivation, and the methods to pay for your own advertising. Which is very, very, very hard.

I'm not going to say I've never lied, but certainly not in business dealings.
 
I agree, in an organisation like Dell you've got to be an angel I would imagine but in the hard, gritty world of starting a business from scratch, with no money, no backers just little old me, it's completely different - a billion light years apart.

Ask Donald Trump, Richard Branson or Peter Jones and they'll tell you you've got to blag a little bit to get going.

I don't like the word lies, saying Waterstones have ordered is just being positive cos if you persevere they will. So your not lying your just predicting the future.

They cant lock you up for being a clarevoyant can they?:)
 

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