
Tuesday, 31 December 2013
Never Judge a Book by its Cover - Guest Post by Gareth Baker

Monday, 30 December 2013
About Time - Guest Post by Tim Stevens
Sunday, 29 December 2013
AUTHORS ELECTRIC HOW TO DAY - ISBNs: What they are and how to apply for them by Chris Longmuir
Saturday, 28 December 2013
SERIAL KILLERS and CELEBRITIES
My first murder happened in Cornwall - in my book for 9-12 year olds, "TWICE TIMES DANGER".I'm making no confession, because anything I say might be used in evidence against me, and would anyway be a spoiler.
Curiously, my second murder takes place in Cornwall too (what is it about Cornwall that incites such violence?) This one takes place in my Young Adult novel, "SIRIUS RISING", which no one has yet had the courage to take on, so I may do it myself in the New Year. If I do, it will be my first purely self-published novel as opposed to re-issuing my currently out of print work as ebooks, but I first have to find the courage and expertise to do it, both of which are sadly lacking since I lost my fantastic husband, David, back in March.
And my third murder? Ah, the third. It's going to happen in France, and the victim won't even suspect anything's happened until... This one's an adult novel, called, "THE RECURRENCE OF RED", and I need a brilliant cover image for it (any reasonably priced recommendations would be gratefully received). It's been one of those 'nearly made it but not quite right for our list' manuscripts, and has been evolving for a long time, edited, re-written... if you write, you'll almost certainly have been there and done that. Maybe I should give up on it, but I can't quite let it go, so maybe, one day, it will find life as an ebook. First, though, I need to confer with my private group of expert assassins in order to polish the details of my perfect homicide.
As for the 'celebrities' in this post? In recent months, and for obvious reasons, I've become a bit obsessed with permanence and impermanence. Life itself isn't permanent - true, of course, but hard to accept. Very soon, I'll be donating David's beloved telescope to a designated 'Space School', which, if you didn't already know (and I didn't) is a state school offering A-level courses in Astronomy. Recently I confirmed his entry into the Book of Remembrance at the crematorium. I've done these two things because I want his name to live on, but why should it matter to be remembered and celebrated? One of my favourite Medieval painters is nameless.
So why are so many of us obsessed with celebrity? Why do people post so-called 'reviews', frequently semi-literate and misinformed, of our books on Amazon? Because it means that what they've written is 'out there', whether it's meaningful or not. And why does the publishing industry rely so heavily at present on the front of 'celebrity' names? Why would anyone want to read a book written by a ghost writer, but purporting to be by a well-known footballer, performer, or - in the case of Katie Price, so-called children's author - simply the owner of surgically enhanced breasts?
If you're a footballer, I want to watch you score goals. I don't expect you to be a professional writer, and in your own field, I admire what you do (and when ghosts are involved in collaborative biographies of talented people in other fields, of course, it's totally different.) But I want to buy books written by real authors I enjoy for their writing - I don't want to invest time or money on fakes. Many years ago, I encountered, in a publisher's office, the first top secret editions of a children's book called: THE LITTLE HELICOPTER. Under normal circumstances, this submission would have bounced back to its author rather quickly, but as the author was a sub-royal... "Is it any good?" I asked. Replies were (shall we say?) muted.
Which leads me by circuitous route to Christmas, which will be over by the time this blog comes out. I hope you've all had a wonderful one, or at least a not too awful one. I will be spending mine in Cornwall, so if you hear of yet another lurid Cornish murder...
Friday, 27 December 2013
Machiavelli, Metadata & Other Matters - Andrew Crofts
Digital publishing has called our bluff on the first two because we can now publish and promote our own stuff, so we have no one to blame but ourselves if things don’t go as well as they did in our dreams.
Now a young author called Daisy White has gone one step further and is running pop-up bookshops, not just to sell her own books but also those of other participating authors. Any author who thought they could do better than Waterstones now has a chance to put their money where their mouth is and back Daisy White’s “Booktique”.
Currently Daisy can be found in Tunsgate Square Shopping Centre in Guildford, nestling up amongst blue-chip names like Barbour and Heals. She will be there until January 12th.
During this period she made my “Secrets of the Italian Gardener” one of her books of the week and this, coupled with a 99p promotion on Amazon as part of the “White Glove Deal” done with my agent, made the book Kindle’s number one political title – ahead of names as various as Grisham and Machiavelli, which is great, but pretty weird.
Reaching number one in any of their categories apparently earns you a flag against your book and this, my agent informs me, means that the “metadata” will improve in your favour. I have no idea what she is talking about on that one, but she has proved to be consistently right about everything else, so I am currently feeling confident about my metadata.
So, if authors can be their own agents and their own publishers and their own booksellers we will never be able to complain about anything ever again – apart from the readers of course, and no author ever complains about their readers, only the lack of them.
Thursday, 26 December 2013
Author, You’ve Got it Wrong Again!
Oh, and I changed my author name from Ruby Barnes to R.A. Barnes, but that’s another story for another day, to do with gender and genre confusion.
Wednesday, 25 December 2013
The Authors Electric Christmas Sale!
We hope you've enjoyed following our e-publishing journey and wish you all the best for 2014. Cheers!
![]() Adult thriller Amazon UK: £1.99 Amazon US: $2.99 | ![]() Humour/Satire Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c |
![]() Crime thriller Amazon UK: £2.49 Amazon US: $3.99 | ![]() Short stories Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: $1.53 | ![]() Amazon UK: £2.89 Amazon US: $4.30 |
![]() Mystery thriller Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Mystery thriller Amazon UK: £1.83 Amazon US: $2.99 | ![]() Children's stories Amazon UK: FREE Amazon US: FREE |
![]() Historical fiction Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Crime thriller Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Horror Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c |
![]() Short stories Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Crime thriller Amazon UK: 99p Amazon US: 99c | ![]() Thriller/love story Amazon UK: £2.99 Amazon US: $2.99 |