Free Cake Book Idea

I know, none better, that there's a million miles between an idea and a finished book, but still, a good high concept can be worth a lot - so here it is and if you write the book, let me know and I'll buy one.

I love to bake, and I have lots of cake books, but one problem with them all is that every recipe seems to need a different sized tin. Thanks to TK Max, I am building up a good collection, but it's costing me a fortune, and there's the storage problem. (There's an overflow in a box on top of the wardrobe!)

Here's the idea: why not produce a recipe book that featured different cakes that can all be baked in the same tin?

The 8-inch Round-tin Cake Cook. (Or 20CM as I suppose one should say these days). It could be a series: The 8-inch Square Cake Book. The 10-inch square...the bunt... the 9 x 5 loaf tin... well, you get the idea.

Every time you bought a new book, you'd buy a new tin to go with it. You could even bundle the tin with the book.

With a book themed around the cake tin,  the reader would be saved the frustration of flicking through a recipe book and going, 'Ooh, that looks nice! Dang! No 11-inch square cake tin. How about that one? Arrgh, you need a 1.5-litre bunt tin and I've got a one litre and a two litre but not the 1.5."

Like I said, I'd buy it.

Literary Joke

I think I'm going to be a summer holiday writer - half term is now over, and I still have marking and prep to finish, lesson plans to prepare and not one but two inspections to prepare for. Ofsted and the exam board are due.
Well, it could be worse: I might not get any time at all. And if I get myself organised, one book a year every summer could work pretty well.

I needed cheering up after reading too much about real death on the internet (I became fascinated by the number of people, the HIGH number of people killed or disabled by their own pets), so I hunted for jokes to lift my mood and here's what came up:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go on a camping trip. After a good dinner and a bottle of wine, they retire for the night, and go to sleep.

Some hours later, Holmes wakes up and nudges his faithful friend. “Watson, look up at the sky and tell me what you see.”

“I see millions and millions of stars, Holmes” replies Watson.

“And what do you deduce from that?”

Watson ponders for a minute. “Well,

	Astronomically, it tells me that there are millions of galaxies and potentially billions of planets.
	Astrologically, I observe that Saturn is in Leo.
	Horologically, I deduce that the time is approximately a quarter past three.
	Meteorologically, I suspect that we will have a beautiful day tomorrow.
	Theologically, I can see that God is all powerful, and that we are a small and insignificant part of the universe.

But what does it tell you, Holmes?”

Holmes is silent for a moment.

“Watson, you idiot!” he says. “Someone has stolen our tent!”

Independent versus Professional Publishing

For once, dilly-dallying, or having no time, has paid off. Robert Hale are an independent publishers based in London (UK) who publish Black Horse Westerns. I wrote one when I was on holiday in Egypt, and they published it. For the sake of completeness, and because I really like it, I wrote to them a few months ago to check it was OK for me to publish it in e-format (I'd lost the contract - how organised is that?) and they replied saying, 'Go ahead.' I got as far as making the cover, but not any further, which is a good thing, because they wrote this week saying that Faber were going to publish it with all the other Black Horse Westerns, if I would give permission.

IF!!! IF??? Of course I want Faber to publish it! I won't have to go through the grind of turning it into an e-book. I won't have to force my poor dyslexic brain to proof read it. I won't have to find someone to draw me the half a dozen Chinese characters that are used as a part of the story. I won't have to scan the characters and find out how to publish a book with images in it. I won't have to try to market it. I won't have to make a cover...oh! I made a cover! Mind you, I'm sure theirs will be better. However, I've pasted my cover up here a second time, seeing as I had made it.

The secret to a good cover for an e-book (when you don't know what you are doing!) is to find a photograph that does all the work. This one does it all. I'm quite sorry about not getting to use it, but delighted about everything else.

My eyes have recovered. As soon as I've prepared a good few lessons ahead (all new syllabus this year - WHY do people change so often?) then I'll go back to proofing.

Opportunity Cost

I was browsing the Internet looking for wise words on book marketing when I came across a blog by an agent and book publicist which seemed very good. He used the phrase 'opportunity cost' and pointed out that whatever you spend time doing, you are not doing something else. It seems obvious, but clearly lots of writers spend a frightening amount of their time networking on the Kindle boards, Linked-in author's groups and similar activity. Why not, suggested this agent, spend that time writing a new book? There's a kind of anxiety when you see other people doing something, especially when they all swear they are making money (buy their e-book to find out how) and yet I was coming to the conclusion that a good deal of so-called networking actually goes around in circles. I was pleased to find someone in the business who agreed. So, that let's me off the hook! I can go back to being a grumpy old anti-social writer who writes books.

The other reason that the phrase 'opportunity cost' is resonating with me this week is that I am in the middle of proof-reading all my published books. It didn't seem right to leave them them up for sale when I knew there was a problem, but after doing seven in a row (and not writing any new books) my poor eyes gave out. Physically the muscles around them are so tired they are simply refusing to scan any more lines, so I'll have to wait until they recover. I had three days off, and did one more chapter today, so they are slowly coming good. I keep reminding myself that this is a once only task, once the old titles are up they will never need doing again.

I also had another good idea that will have to wait. Public Bookshelf emailed to say that the response from their readers had been positive about Kingfisher Days, and did I have any other titles I wanted to publish free?  Like many authors, I do have a couple of unsold novels. Looking for Griffin being one of them. I made the cover before I decided that it wouldn't be worth rewriting. It's a shame to waste all that work - I found my notes for it and might do another post discussing them, because I worked so HARD on that book! So, I thought, well, I could post it for free with a note at the front saying that my editor hadn't liked it, and asking readers for their feedback. I could put a few chapters from a better book at the end so that they could see if they thought I'd improved!

And of course, term has started so I'm teaching again. By great good fortune nearly all of my hours are for the same course - that means one lot of prep and then delivering the same material over and over. I love that idea! I was a bit sorry at first not to have a group doing the new A-level this year, because I love teaching literature, but it takes even longer to deliver an A-level than it does to study for one, so now I feel that someone has taken a burden off my shoulders! It's that opportunity cost again. Instead of preparing lessons on other people's books, I'll be writing my own.

It is worth thinking about though, because there are so many things I could be doing with my time right now. The blog is definitely worth it, because it helps clear my mind. I'm going to give my eyes a break and do a bit of cooking now.

Preparing British e-books EVEN MORE THOROUGHLY for the American Market

 Mea Culpa!!  Forgive me, readers, for I have been blind and lazy. Oh, dear. I am thoroughly ashamed of myself! Yesterday I got another review complaining about mistakes. It suddenly occurred to me to do a check of the book I've just finished typing up in the Kindle previewer, so that I saw what readers saw. And you know what I saw - typos!! They jumped out at me. Lots of typos. Humbling, shaming, misery-making typos! So that means there probably ARE mistakes in the other books. And me a teacher! Me who writes to want-to be writers kindly pointing out that their manuscripts should be error free before submission. Me who puts red ink all over her student's essays.

DOH!!

All I can say is writers heed this: there is a good reason why copy-editing costs money. It is a skilled art and I wish I could afford to have it done. It requires the kind of brain I don't have. The kind of brain that can do spreadsheets and use logic. Why is it, though, that I can look at a page of my own manuscript and happily read, 'the government were' with no flicker of an idea that it should be singular? Possibly because I'm thinking of the people in the government taking the action? But when I  look at the same line in a Kindle viewer, I think, ah, that should be the government was. It's a mystery.

Ah well. As it happens I haven't got around to putting my notice about British English in front of the books that are already out there - I was too busy and happy working on my new Regency, but now it can't be avoided any longer. I'm going to take them all down, add that notice and check them page by page in the Kindle viewer.

So the moral of the story is check, check, and check again!!

So, if you are one of those people who wrote a review, THANK YOU!! I'm proof reading them all again. If you'd like a coupon for a free book, or if you'd like a signed paper copy, get in touch (with the name you used on the review) and I'll be happy to send a free book - you deserve it and thank you again.

Preparing British e-books for the American Market

Nothing is ever simple!! Last week someone posted a review on one of my sweet romances saying that it was full of spelling mistakes and typos. I thought, 'I'm sure it isn't!' and left it at that. Yesterday, someone else posted a review of the same book saying that they could tell I'd self-published it because of all the mistakes. ????

Now, I'm rubbish at spelling and proof reading, I'll freely admit - I'm dyslexic and have a kind of scrambled word blindness that means I simply don't see errors (on the plus side, it means I can enjoy a book in a couple of hours), but that book has been through not one but TWO professional copy editors, once when it was first published, once when it was published again in a large print edition. And I checked it again before I published it.

I dug out the file and checked it very slowly and carefully with a ruler. No mistakes. And then it dawned on me - the people reading my books are American! There are a number of small differences between British and American English, in spelling, in syntax, in vocabulary and even in punctuation. To readers from the USA, my British manuscript doesn't look right. I can't spell colour, I say aubergine for eggplant, I put my full stops inside the quotation marks and so on.

So, what to do? I'd probably make a horrible mess of it if I bought the Chicago Style Manual or similar and did it myself because I think in British and find copy editing hard. I cannot afford at this stage to have my books copy edited for the American market - and what about one's other international readers? I'm pretty sure Canadians use British English, and so do Australians. Amazon have different sites, but Smashwords and All Romance do not. It would be complicated and difficult to have two or more editions, anyway. Yet I can understand that readers don't want to think they are spending money on a rubbish book that is full of mistakes.

So, for now, I'm going to try the simple answer to the problem of American readers thinking British English is full of mistakes -  on Tuesday, I'm going to take all my books down, one by one, from all the places I spent so long posting them to in the first place (growl) and put a notice at the beginning of each book explaining that they are English books by an English writer and have been copy edited in the UK and so feature British spelling. 

I hope this will help many readers understand the situation. If you know any other ways to solve this problem, please let me know! 

A BIG PS: Since writing this it occurred to me to check the book again in a Kindle viewer - and you know what I found? Mistakes - swarms of pesky typos. So, if you are one of those people who wrote a review, THANK YOU!! I'm proof reading them all again. If you'd like a coupon for a free book, or if you'd like a signed paper copy, get in touch (with the name you used on the review) and I'll be happy to send a free book - you deserve it and thank you again.

E-Book Review Management Plan

Browsing through the Internet the other day, mainly looking for marketing ideas, I began to realise that many companies now have reveiw management plans. Well, there's an interesting concept.  I love reviews - I like reading them, and when I feel like it I write them. But what does it feel like to be on the other end of them?

I can understand a company responding to reviews - if somebody has a complaint, then why not resolve it? Much better value for money than advertising, I'm sure, so it makes good sense for a company member to monitor the reviews and take steps to put any bad ones right.

It's different for an author, however. I honestly think the best response is a dignified silence. But I do read mine, I have to admit it. I learn from them - it's like getting red ink scribbled on your essay. Until somebody points out the B** obvious, it isn't obvious at all. So, I'll never respond to an individual, but here's a few things I have learnt from reviews:

1. Nobody Knows Nothing! William Goldman was right. I wrote a couple of books for Black Lace. The editor loved the first one, she honestly loved it. We did a TV show together and mine was one of the books she took along. My second book she hated. She made it clear she only took it because I was under contract. So, the only reviews on these books? You guessed it. Exactly the other way around. The second book sold a lot better as well. See, nobody knows anything.
2. Reviews can make you bonkers. I lose confidence easily - if I get 5 stars I'm delighted. But if somebody dislikes something I worry about it for days. Sometimes I learn something valuable, but mostly I just worry.
3. You can learn from them, if you can stand the pain. One person complained that I gave too much away too early - that it was too obvious that the couple were going to end up together. My first instinct (I hate criticism!) was to think well, Duh! Hello? Has there ever been a category romance where the couple DON'T end up together? Of course not!! That's what romance is all about. But then I finished the book I was reading, which was Persuasion. And right to the last few pages Jane Austen had Edward first secretly engaged to Lucy and then, so we all thought, married to her. If it's good enough for Jane it's good enough for me. Point taken. I will work harder on my plotting - the external reasons that keep the couple apart must not be skimped.

It is hard taking criticism on board. At least it's all at a discreet distance. I don't get readers in front of me saying that they love or hate or couldn't care less about my books. How do people stand being on reality TV? imagine having one's shortcomings pointed out in front of the nation?

On the whole, I think I should just leave my reviews alone and stop worrying about them! I once read that it's not a writer's job to think about what other people are going to make of their book. It's a writer's job to get on with writing, and there's a lot of truth in that.

Unless I'm insane to ignore valuable feedback that is marketing gold?

 I'll guess I'll carry on reading them.