Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

The front cover is finalized, with paperback and hardback layouts to come. The formatting corrections are in process.

I have been brave and put The Killer and The Dead up for review on BookSirens. This is part of my time to embrace new aspects of book business, and getting ARCs is part of it. Doing a dry run with TKATD before going in with The Gardener and The Goddess seemed a good idea. It is early days.

If you want to get a code to be invited to do a review via BookSirens email me and I’ll send it to you.

I will say that I’ve talked tough about having a thick skin when it comes to reviews, and my hide is far tougher than once it was, but still I’m sure having to review the reviews on BookSirens (with an unfortunate acronymic shortening I shall forbear to use), will be difficult, and that on a book I have a great deal of distance from. Getting reviews on my new baby will be much harder to deal with. Hey ho: a writer’s life for me! This is the territory, you have to live in it as a published writer.

I’m still considering NetGalley, but feel that one experiment at a time is enough, and also the Netgalley exposure period is much shorter if you go through a co-op to save money. So there is a trade off. I’m still considering it.

Should I have done this stuff sooner? Yes, probably, but I always meant to leave book marketing and branding until I had three books out, really until after, so in a sense I’m jumping the gun on my original plan. But it was a passive plan, and well, in today’s market you can’t be too passive.

I have also reached out to a marketing company, and will be in further discussions as TGATG materials get closer to completion. I think, given the expense of editing, formatting and cover art that the relative expense of ARC campaigns and launch promotion on a couple of social media platforms is small. And I’m willing to give these things a try and see what impact they make.

Can’t do too many new things, though. Too many variables and you won’t be able to pin down what makes the difference if a significant boost is delivered. So we shall remain modest in our experiments, with the option to do more in the future, having learned from this foray.

This past weekend I chatted with a writer working on their first novel, answering questions about self-publishing versus traditional, the editing process, beta readers, money expectations, the lot. I spent a lot of time advising him not to do as I have done, but to be more proactive on the business side early, to be a better business person from the get go. He’s also writing a trilogy. I told him if he can restrain himself he may be better off writing all three before releasing any, so he can have a co-ordinated campaign and release schedule for all three books and avoid Rothfussing the public with a trilogy unfinished. Many are the people now who will not read an incomplete series, and that is a shame for new writers.

I had a funny dilemma on that front with BookSirens. When asked if TKATD was part of a series I said no, because it is a stand-alone and I did not want to give the impression it was a ‘book two’ of any kind of continuous series. But at the same time it is listed on Amazon as part of a related series of books – but the series description makes it clear they are stand-alones! Do I weave a tangled web of deceit? I think not, though this third book will have most satisfying elements for those who have read my earlier tales, still it stands on its own merits entirely and requires no knowledge of the other two. In fact I think it would read very differently without any other exposure to the World Belt. Not better, but very interesting perspectives will be available to readers who go to TGATG first of my three books. It is fascinating to consider.

So that was the week that was, one day late. I decided to watch a weird Harry Connick Jr. rom-com instead of blog, as you do. I’m on a rom-com roll after watching Anyone But You, and muttering more and more often “this is totally based on a Shakespeare play, the sets of pairs and parallels are too much for it not to be”, then I realized Bea was for Beatrice and it all fell into place. (I missed the start and watched from about 8-10 minutes in) I had fun with it, enjoyed the movie, it’s worth the old free on streaming watch.  

Okay, bed calls. Until next week my friends, keep adding new variables, and see what works.