Mar 30
You may remember that a couple of months ago, my short story Potato Waffles and Syrupy Socks came third in the 5minutefiction.co.uk love story competition. It, along with 17 other short love stories from the 2012 Valentine’s Day competition, has now been published in eBook format in a collection entitled Time for Love. For more details, click here. And it currently has a bargain price of £1.54 (that’s 8.5p per short story!).
I was delighted to see from my latest royalty statement, that lifetime sales of 100 Ways For A Dog To Train Its Human now stand at 226,436 copies. So, thank you to everyone who has bought a copy, and I hope you enjoyed it!
According to The Bookseller magazine (16th March 2012), I made the ‘Most Interesting Comment’ online last week. It was in response to one of their regular columnists, Scott Pack, who was explaining why there has been an explosion in self-published content and the influence that the traditional publishers’ approach to publishing has had on this.
Most Interesting Comment - The Bookseller - 16th March 2012
It’s clear that there is much still to do in ‘sorting out’ how writers can make a living in the future from their creations. But perhaps those writing fiction need to think more about the potential market for their work and one way of demonstrating this to traditional publishers is to self-publish first. Identifying the potential readership for a non-fiction book is part and parcel of being a non-fiction writer, something I have had to do for all of my traditionally published non-fiction books.
But as I also point out in my response to Scott’s blog, it is frustrating when some publishers have acquired the electronic rights in my books and have chosen not to do anything with them. As a writer, I would be happy to get involved in the formatting process of converting my text for electronic format, to give readers the opportunity of reading my books in whichever format they choose.
To read Scott Pack’s blog posting and my response in full go to http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/let-right-one.html
Mar 16
You would have thought that Amazon’s computers would have the power to undertake the following equation:
If ‘Author Name of Book Being Recommended’ equals ‘Email Recipient Name’ then WASTE OF TIME SENDING EMAIL
Eaton-under-Heywood & Hope Bowdler WI
I would like to thank the ladies of Eaton-under-Heywood & Hope Bowdler Women’s Institute for the warm welcome they gave me last night. They were the first Women’s Institute group I have spoken to and I hope I managed to entertain them with my talk, “Sandwiched between Kate Adie and Nick Hornby.” (Now that’s got your mind churning, hasn’t it?)
I was a little concerned when I was asked to judge their monthly competition, which last night was in the category of a flower in a stem glass, because, despite being the author of a gardening book, my plant knowledge is very much a sapling, rather than a full bloom. Thankfully, I was told I simply had to choose the best three that I liked! That still wasn’t easy, because all of the specimens were worthy winners, but at least I made three ladies happy last night …
They were all very kind with their support, buying my books, and I even came away with a small doggy bag of home-made cakes!
And yes – I took this picture at the start of my talk, whilst they were still awake, and before I had bored them to sleep!
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