How to write a novel: 8 Published!

Once The Syndrome Diaries was uploaded to Amazon, it was live within hours. There was a huge temptation to carry on fine-tuning the content and to hold back on publicity: one of the hardest things about publishing is letting go of your baby, knowing that it could still be better. Everything can be better, but there’s a danger of editing and editing and never letting the novel leave home. So I emailed,  tweeted and facebooked.

One sale. Just one person wanted to read my book.

At first, I was downhearted. Then I was confused: I knew at least three people had bought it. They’d told me. Then I realised: the reports analyse by territory. The default report is for .com, but there are separate figures for .co.uk. It was a huge relief to find the drop-down menu and see 7 more sales.

The toughest aspect of publishing has been the marketing. I get annoyed by repeated tweets so didn’t want to make that mistake, but I’ve probably been too cautious. So far, I’ve tweeted once for the ebook launch, once when I got the paperback proof and once when it received its first review (five stars!). I think I can probably get away with a little more than that. I generated some interest at a local reading event, though I spent more on other people’s books than I made on mine. Still, is that really so bad? I like reading as well as writing.

I’d love to share my sales figures, but my Amazon contract forbids me from doing so and I’d rather not get on the wrong side of my main sales channel. The rumoured ‘whoosh’ of sales hasn’t materialised, but the word is spreading, and the feedback has been positive. One frequent comment has been that the person doesn’t have a Kindle, so I’ve been blowing the trumpet for the free Kindle smartphone app. Originally, I was only going to publish an ebook, but a few people encouraged me to try Lulu.com’s print-on-demand service. I’ve had to price the paperback at £7.95 to cover costs, which is  a little high to generate impulse purchases (the ebook, at under £2, is more likely to do that) but it’s out there if anyone wants it! It was easy to take the Word document I’d prepared for the ebook and tweak it for Lulu, and I was lucky that the cover art I’d designed for the ebook doesn’t require a high resolution and actually looks pretty good as a hard copy. Other than my proof copy (about £8 including postage), I’ve not paid anything to make it available.

Self-publishing has to be considered a long-term project, with gradual awareness-raising alongside more novel-writing. And that’s fine. I’ve had loads of fun writing and publishing this first novel and I’ve no intention of stopping.

So that, in 8 blogs, is the story of a novel’s 2-year journey from NaNoWriMo 2010 to Amazon 2012.  If there’s anything I haven’t covered, or that you’d like more info on, please add your comment and I’ll do my best to help.

How to write a novel: 6 The beta readers

Having completed my novel rewrites and edits to the best of my abilities, it was time to let other people read it for the first time. By this stage, getting feedback on extracts was becoming less useful because they depended on familiarity with other parts of the novel. Did it make sense as a complete story?

The perfect beta reader is someone you trust to give you objective feedback on your book. My beta readers included a writer friend who’d given some fantastic feedback during the editing (I’ve since returned the favour by beta-reading for her), a keen reader who I’d met through a running forum and my parents (who are not inclined towards undeserved praise!).

Before my beta readers read The Syndrome Diaries (links to Amazon are on my homepage), we agreed what they were going to feed back on. I wanted to know whether the book hung together, and whether the characters and their actions made sense and were consistent. My Dad, for whom ambiguities and grammar slip-ups jump off the page, was also asked to note technical mistakes in the writing.

The feedback I received was just what I wanted. Overall, my beta readers were positive about the book while all finding issues that needed further work. Without giving spoilers, my post-beta edit included some character enhancement, adjusting some of the timings of events to make them more believable and sprinkling some extra clues through the text so that one of the later revelations wasn’t quite such a surprise. This is where the beta readers were particularly helpful: I thought the clues were there, but I’d been too subtle.

So, with the final changes made, the novel was almost ready for release. I’ll discuss the final stages of the process and the uploading to Amazon in another blog very soon.

In the meantime, I promised to keep you updated with Syndrome’s progress. The sales are still a trickle rather than a whoosh, but I’m thrilled that it’s selling. As yet, there are no reviews, but it’s still early days and I know of several people who are currently in the process of reading the novel. I haven’t done the marketing activity that I ought to have done, largely due to biting off way more than I could chew over the last couple of weeks and throwing a few personal issues into the mix. My head was permanently sticking over the parapet, and, at the risk of sounding self-indulgent, I needed a little bit of space to be nice to myself. Normal service is now restored.

I know that I need to switch my focus towards producing more books rather than worrying too much about what’s already out there (easier said than done), so I’m currently preparing to produce another draft novel in November with Nanowrimo. In December, I’m going to start editing a draft I already have. Although I wrote it 3 years ago, one of its themes ties in with the recently-published Bad Pharma which I’m just about to start reading. I’m looking forward to spending some time with Ed and Em, my main characters, who are rather less self-absorbed than Becky, Ben and India from The Syndrome Diaries.

And last of all, but by no means least, I must thank Pat for nominating me for Most Helpful Blogger award. This is the first time anything like this has happened, so it was a huge surprise, and fantastic to get positive feedback from someone whose blog I’m very fond of.

Hopefully today’s blog is helpful: please post if there are other things you think I should be covering or if you have any questions.

How to write a novel: 5 Writers’ Groups

There comes a point where, if you’re serious about getting your writing out into the world, you have to let other people see it. The first time I did this, about 10 years ago, was on a writing course. I wasn’t ready for it. I’d written very little, wanted to learn more, but felt compelled to perform. The class format was to write something in maybe 10 or 20 minutes, read it out, and have it critiqued. After a day at work, an evening of word-churning and being bashed back down wasn’t really for me. And so began an avoidance of writing groups.

At the beginning of this year, I knew that had to change. I was well into the editing process with The Syndrome Diaries, and it was time to see what others made of my writing. I made it my New Year’s resolution to join a group.

My first reading was nerve-wracking. I remember getting to the end of the passage, and being met with silence. I thought that I must have written a pile of rubbish and everyone was wondering how to tell me. But then the comments began: helpful, constructive and largely positive. I went home feeling that my writing was OK, and, more importantly, that I could make it better.

Since then, I found a group much closer to home, so I’ve been able to go more regularly than I was able to with the first group. Over time, I’ve come to recognise different styles of feedback and, when comments conflict, I can select which is most useful (which is not necessarily the most flattering!). That in itself is a writing skill.

You can’t please everyone all the time and that can manifest itself rather energetically in a group; this is another lesson I’ve had to learn. One week, Ben’s behaviour in The Syndrome Diaries sparked a particularly heated debate. I wasn’t expecting it and worried that I’d upset others in the group, and that my plot was ‘wrong.’ This is one of the disadvantages of a group: you read extracts, and without the whole, it can be disorientating or appear that someone’s behaviour lacks motives. That’s where your beta readers come in, and that’s the subject of the next instalment of the ‘How to write a novel’ blogs.

But let’s not forget: while a writing group might be your critics, they’re also your champions. Last night, a group member told me she was part way through The Syndrome Diaries, and that she couldn’t put it down. That was the moment when I first realised that the effort I’d put into my writing was now bringing enjoyment to a reader. It’s a moment I’ll always remember, and it’s a moment that I wouldn’t have had without the writers’ group.

Have you joined a writers’ group? Has it helped your writing?

Trying to keep my promises

Earlier this year, I promised I was going to be open about the performance of The Syndrome Diaries once it was published. However, the contract expressly forbids me sharing the content of Amazon sales reports, and I have to respect that if I don’t want to end up in deep legal do-do. I can tell you that I’m about at the point where, when the royalties arrive, I could buy myself a decent lunch here (my favourite café) and probably just about pay for a friend too. The worries I had – no sales at all, or a flurry of derogatory reviews – haven’t materialised.

The book has been available almost a week. People who expressed an interest while I was writing know the book is now available, although I haven’t exactly blitzed the marketing. Word of mouth is a key part of a book’s success, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that somebody out there will like it enough to put some little stars next to it on Amazon to help it on its way.

Reading the experiences of successful self-publishers, my current figures are pretty normal for this stage of the process, so I’m happy. The key to increasing the sales? More books! More writing! So that’s what I’m planning to do.

How to write a novel: 4 The first major rewrite

I promised this blog would be about rewriting, and it is, but first…

…I’ve published! The Syndrome Diaries has been available on Amazon for a couple of days now, and later blogs will describe the various hurdles jumped and glitches overcome to make that happen. In the meantime, if you want to have a nose at the finished product (or peruse the free sample), it’s here if you’re a UK reader and here if you’re in the US or most of the rest of the world. It’s also on the French site (click here ) and the German site (click here ): all versions are in English.

So. Rewriting.

I mentioned in my last blog that my first drafts tend to be full of plot without much description. Although the first rewriting stage should probably be the major changes – adding scenes, removing scenes, switching them around – my initial rewrite also made a lot of changes at the level below that. By the end of this process, my word count had almost doubled from the original 50,000 to just under 100,000.

I’ve included some before-and-after dialogue below to demonstrate the kinds of changes made: the dialogue has been fleshed out to try and tell the story in a more interesting way and to add more character to the people I’m writing about. This means I have to think hard about the individual personalities and motivations, and this might impact on the scenes if it becomes clear that someone is behaving out of character. They may need a new scene to explain some behaviour.

Here’s an extract from the original version. This is a few pages into the book, when my narrator, Becky, who’s a journalist, has just had a phone call from her editor asking her to do an interview with India Irving, a successful rock musician with whom she was once good friends. The two of them fell out at University and haven’t spoken for twenty years. Becky’s at home with her partner, Hugh, discussing the phone call:

“India wants me to interview her.”

“India?”

“Mm. I wonder what’s going on?”

“Maybe she wants to build some bridges.”

“Maybe. Wonder why?”

“Well, you can ask her, can’t you?” He was never interested in speculation, only empirical evidence.

It’s rather sparse, isn’t it? Those few lines were expanded and touches of detail added so that in the final version, the conversation is as follows:

‘India wants to do an interview.’

He looked up, puzzled, and nudged his glasses up his nose. ‘India who?’

‘Irving, of course.’ How many Indias were there?

‘I thought she wasn’t speaking to you.’

‘So did I. What do you think’s going on?’

‘Maybe she’s grown up.’

‘She’s got a new solo record coming out.’  I stood up to move my laptop away from the table before it got splattered with gravy.

He ran a hand through sandy-coloured hair, stopping to scratch the top of his head. ‘Well, that’s why she wants to talk to you, isn’t it? High profile journo, widely read by her target market.’

‘But why now?’

‘Dunno. You can ask her, can’t you?’ He was a scientist and speculation never got far with him. He needed empirical evidence, gold-plated with analyses of variance and linear regressions.

The conversation now provides an opportunity to describe Hugh a little more. The relationship between the two of them is tired, and the scene as a whole is peppered with suggestions of irritation and lack of engagement with each other. Hugh began as a catalogue of ‘boring bloke’ clichés but, as the editing progressed, these were cut back to enable him to emerge as a character with whom it was easier to sympathise. I won’t give away what happens with Hugh towards the end of the book, but hopefully what he does makes sense.  On a technical note, the switch from double quotation marks to single ones came right at the final editing stage, and is to keep the style consistent with British conventions outlined in the Oxford Manual of Style.

Much of the rewriting involved this colouring and pacing of scenes, although there were also bigger changes and new scenes. Many of these came about when I began reading out my work at writers’ groups, and that will be the subject of my next blog on how to write a novel. I’ll also be posting on how The Syndrome Diaries is performing.

What are your thoughts on editing? Do you follow some kind of plan? Or is it a more ad hoc process?

How to write a novel: 3 The first draft

I’ve found that the best way for me to write a first draft is to join in with NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month. During November, Nanoers set themselves the task of writing a 50,000 word novel. The finished item is rough but somewhere in the scramble of words thrown at each day’s target might be the seeds of something special.

When I wrote the first draft of The Syndrome Diaries, it was as a Nanoer during November 2010. I’ve got a pretty good idea of how it went because I joined an online forum and can still access my posts.

On day 1, I was already over my target, and on day 2 even more so, something I attributed to the novel being ‘utter tripe’. I admitted I’d read back what I’d written, despite that being a Nano no-no: reviewing and revising is supposed to come later.

On day 3, I posted this extract:

“I admit I was a little bit in awe. I might have been a bit scared. No, not scared: anxious. I was anxious because there was obviously some reason for her wanting to talk to me, and I didn’t know what it was, and I didn’t like turning up to an interview feeling like that. With most people, their agenda would be pretty obvious: sell more copies of their book or record, improve their image in the hope of getting more work, get more bums on seats for their play or film. If they had something unexpected they wanted to get on the record, then I could choose to listen to them, or to try and swing things round to something more word-worthy. I knew this would be different: how can things not be, with that much baggage? But I was not going to be pliable.” 

If you find that a bit clumsy, then you’ll be relieved to know that almost nothing of that passage remains. But the rewrite preserved its intention: to convey my narrator Becky’s worries over a meeting with another main character, India (Becky’s a journalist, India’s a rock musician: they were once best friends but haven’t seen each other since an argument 20 years before). There are sections of the first draft that have survived intact to the final version, but most of it was edited beyond recognition. If you want to read the section where Becky and India meet up, you can do so here.

By the end of day 4 , I’d written nearly 8000 words.

On day 6, I recommended cola to the forum as an ideal toilet cleaner because of its limescale-shifting qualities. I stand by that assertion: why I was discussing it there, I have no idea. It’s certainly not mentioned in the final version of the novel.

On day 7, those on the forum shared their working titles: mine was the same as the final title. This doesn’t usually happen. My next novel will probably be The Illness (working title) or The One Night Stand (working title), and neither has what it takes to go on a book cover. But The Syndrome Diaries has always seemed to generate interest.

By the end of day 9, I was making good progress, although I assessed my efforts as ‘turgid crap.’ Nevertheless, there were hints that the novel-writing magic was starting to happen. I wrote about the characters worming their way into my brain when I should be thinking about other things. And once you start being sucked into the world of your characters, a wonderful sense of flow begins and the novel seems to write itself.

By day 12, the characters were taking on a life of their own and rebelling against my neat plan of what was supposed to happen. And that’s as it should have been.

On day 15, I read through what I’d got. Yes, I know that was against the rules, but my comments are interesting. My draft was heavily plot-biased without any pacing or description. I described it as hurtling down a motorway, rather than meandering through country lanes and enjoying the view. That’s how I draft: the colour and subtlety all comes later.

And on the 21^st November, 2010, the first draft – at 50,165 words – was completed. I’ve never finished another NaNoWriMo so far ahead of schedule. Of course, it wasn’t remotely ready for publication (the final version is about 95,000 words). My last post for the year was on December 1^st where I reported that I’d started rewriting – and that’s my subject for the next blog.

Do you write drafts fast or slowly? Have you taken part in Nanowrimo? Share your thoughts here!

Question Time

I’m currently reading The Best of Catherine, Caffeinated: Caffeine-Infused Self-Publishing Advice by Catherine Ryan Howard, which is a fascinating insight into Catherine’s experiences of self-publishing Mousetrapped, a book she wrote about her experiences working at Walt Disney World. She describes the process she went through to upload her book, the different e-book channels she used, the sales she made and her income, along with what went wrong. I can thoroughly recommend it if you want some insight from someone normal rather than a “You can make a gazillion megabucks tomorrow” type of guide.

I’m hoping to do something similar to Catherine’s book with this blog although my experiences will differ from hers in that my book is fiction. I thought now would be a good opportunity to ask if there was anything people particularly wanted to know. Obviously sales figures and income generate the most curiosity, and I’m quite happy to dish out details. I’m also going to blog about the publishing process along with any steps I take to spread the word.

My timetable is:

August/September: work on the final edits. I’ve had feedback from 3 beta readers, and notes on half the book from the 4th and final beta reader (she’s still reading it). It’s generally been positive, so the editing I’ve yet to do will be polishing rather than any major rewrites.

September: formatting, pricing, uploading to Amazon. I’ve got some idea of what this involves, but I’m not sure exactly how long it will take. I’m hoping another of Catherine’s books, Self-Printed: The Sane Person’s Guide to Self-Publishing will help me out here. No, she’s not paying me to put these links up – I just like her books.

October: The launch!

Is there anything particular you’d like to see me blog about during this period? And what do you want to see post-publication? Let me know, and I’ll do my best to post the information you’d like.

Positioning, Polarising and Publishing

Positioning is all about creating an identity for what you’re offering people. It ties in with branding, and also combines lots of other aspects of the marketing mix that I’ve been covering over the last few blogs. Covers and pricing, for example, are central to positioning.

Since I wrote my last blog entry, there have been some major challenges for me regarding the positioning of The Syndrome Diaries.

I read out an extract at my writing group, expecting the usual suggestions of developing some dialogue, making a character’s motives a little clearer, and so on. But half an hour after I’d finished reading, the room was still engaged in a heated debate regarding the behaviour of one of my main characters. This is perfectly justified: what he’s doing is very polarising and different people are bound to respond to it in different ways. But I wasn’t expecting such a strong reaction, and I was worried that I’d upset people by what I’d written (which is something I have to learn to deal with, as a lot of my writing involves controversial subjects).

Although going to writing groups has improved my writing, the difficulty is that I’m only reading out relatively short extracts, so the way that the whole plot hangs together can’t be immediately clear. Some of the feedback was quite tough to deal with because if I were to implement it, the whole novel would fall apart. I was left wondering whether I’d written something that, ultimately, wasn’t worth putting out there without a complete rewrite.

But after a chat with a couple of the group’s members, the issue is more to do with positioning. While another group had labelled the novel as women’s fiction, it isn’t. It’s too edgy. Much as I love Maeve Binchy’s wonderful story-telling, I’m not writing Maeve Binchy feel-good, happy-ending fiction. The character causing the problem is entitled to do just that (and I don’t think there’s any stopping him), but the book cannot be put in a pink, fluffy category. And I don’t think it ever really was; I was quite surprised that the first group thought that was where it fitted, and so much feedback since then has suggested that it doesn’t.

My parents have now read the completed beta version of the novel: this is the version which is as polished as I can make it without other people reading the entire manuscript. They came up with some ideas for improvements which I agree with, but I was quite surprised at how much they thought should stay as it is – including the ending, which I was considering changing. Although they’re my parents and one might expect a bit of daughter-directed bias, my Dad in particular can be very critical although he’s constructive with it. The beta version is going to another two readers who are acquaintances rather than close friends/family; I trust them to come back with quality feedback, and it’ll be interesting to see whether they think the ending is convincing.

The blogs I’ll be writing over the next couple of months will be about the beta feedback and revisions, and then it’s time to self-publish. I’ll also be documenting the steps to get the book on Amazon, as it’ll be the first time I’ve gone through the process. And then I’ll be covering what happens next (i.e. real sales figures, not those headline-generating, exception-to-the-rule numbers).

If you’d like to follow the novel’s progress you can:

• sign up to receive alerts when I publish a blog here (there’s a button in the column to the right)
• join my emailing list
• see more information on my website

It’s a bit early for speeches, but…

While slaving away over Scrivener may seem an isolated affair, getting my novel to publication stage certainly isn’t something I’m doing on my own. The research grant may not stretch to employing editors and cover designers, but I’m hoping the proceeds from novel sales will stretch to a few beers/curries for the people who’ve had some input. The sixth ‘P’ of the marketing mix is people. These are mine:

Dad: proof-reader extraordinaire. Now and again, I get a phone call which begins in a tone of voice that makes me anticipate news of a tragic death. “Rae,” it says. “That blog you’ve just posted? There’s a typo on the fifth line.”

Nivette: encouraging friend. I told my friend Nivette about my work-in-progress about a year ago. “That sounds amazing,” she said. “You are amazing.” I heart Nivette.

Writers Connect Manchester: writers’ group. I was pretty apprehensive about joining a group, but this lot are great, providing constructive criticism not only on what I’ve written but sharing their ideas about its potential market. I haven’t managed to get there for a while (it’s a bit of a trek, and tends to clash with running activities), but they are lovely.

Renegade Writers, Stoke-on-Trent/Newcastle-under-Lyme: writers’ group. Fortunately, this is only a couple of miles down the road, so most Wednesday evenings you’ll find me in The Red Lion with my fellow Renegades. The writers here are generally more experienced and have more publications under their collective belts than the people I’ve met at Manchester, but they’ve never been anything other than encouraging, and have given some fantastic feedback on my writing which I think has improved it considerably.

My Beta Readers: I have several people lined up to read through the almost-ready Beta version of the novel. I know they’re busy people, and I also know they’ll give me some excellent advice for the final polishing before the book gets uploaded. This is going to be the most scary bit of the process. I’ve been working on the novel for nearly two years, but I’m the only one at the moment who knows the whole plot and the way it fits together. I’m just hoping it makes sense.

Someone who will remain anonymous: I’m not going to spill the beans on who this was. I was in a bookshop with this person, flicking through books on the art of novelling, wondering out loud whether to make a purchase. “I don’t know why you’d want that,” said Anon. “You’re never going to finish that novel anyway.” The determination to prove Anon wrong has helped drive the novelling since then!

Who inspires your writing? And does Anon deserve beer and curry in return for providing motivation?

This is the seventh Blog from a series on marketing. The eighth, and final instalment – on positioning – will follow soon!

Judging a Book by its Cover

We’re onto the fifth P of marketing: packaging. For a book, this of course means the cover. In a previous blog on pricing, my sales forecast made it clear that the costs of a professional cover designer would not be recouped. So, it’s up to me.

The important points to remember with my cover design are:

• What works in a bookshop doesn’t necessarily work online, and I have to design with Amazon in mind
• The cover that comes up on someone’s screen when browsing Amazon might be tiny
• If the potential reader is on their Kindle, the photo will be black and white
• My name is not important because few people have heard of me, and this is my first novel
• The style I choose will give some indication of genre

When I worked in music publishing, we distributed a self-published book of songs for children by a very popular composer of music for junior schools. The songs were suitable for older junior school children, but the cover art was the composer’s pre-schooler daughter’s work, giving the impression that the content was aimed at very young children. Teachers of older children would ignore it, while teachers of younger children would open it up only to find it was unsuitable for their needs. This shows how important the cover of a book is to convey its content.

Here are some examples of other authors’ covers:

It’s clearly going to be a romcom. This cover also stands out from the other books in a similar genre. It would probably have more appeal to women than men (it’s rather pink), but avoids the teeny-skinny-people-cartoon-and-curly-writing cliché that is the badge of chicklit. I’ve just started reading this: it’s very, very funny, though explicit. The cover has a hint of saucy British postcard about it, and that’s perhaps a clue to what’s inside.

This screams chicklit: pink, girly silhouette. It’s a fabulous book, tackling serious issues in the context of a love story, and it’s both funny and very sad. The cover, to me, makes it look more frivolous than it is. Online, it doesn’t work well: there’s not enough contrast between some of the text and the background, so when I went on Amazon, all I could read was ‘Before’ and the author’s name. My Dad loved it too and thought it was extremely well-written, but he read it because I mentioned it in an earlier blog. I doubt the cover would have caught his attention.

Almost perfect for the web, although some of the text is too small (‘Twenty years, two people’ in particular). This has strong images and has been mentioned by quite a few commentators for its step away from traditional design. I bought this in bookshop quite soon after it was published, having not heard of it. The cover attracted me to the book, and inside the concept and opening scene (University in the 80s, which I caught the back end of) hooked me in. Online, the cover would have grabbed my attention and the sample would have led to me buying the book.

Well, it’s chicklit, I presume. It has a cartoon girl on the front and lots of pink. But I can’t read the title. This is a HarperCollins book – a publisher who can surely afford a decent graphic designer.

Again, a cover marred by illegible text, and it doesn’t appear to be available other than as a download, so the cover needs to be particularly web-friendly. All that catches my eye is the huge bunch of roses. To me, that indicates Englishness, a female protagonist and there’s something melancholic abut the photo, suggesting tragedy. It actually states on the cover that it’s a love story, set in the US, but I couldn’t read that until I went into the product details on Amazon. The tiny writing at the bottom is in an illegible curly font – it’s actually quoting a review, and covers will normally use a very clear font for quotes.

So there are some examples of what works for me and what doesn’t. Translating that into my own cover is a little more challenging; I can see what’s good and not so good in other peoples’ designs, but pulling something together that attracts the kind of readers who would enjoy my book has proved difficult.

I wanted to produce something early on to go on my website and started off with this:

The main problem is the title font. It’s not clear. I wanted it to have a hand-written feel and tried to make it clearer by highlighting it, but it just looks messy. I’m not entirely sure about the photo. I suspect the story has more appeal to women than men; that’s what one of the writers’ groups I took it to thought too. In the other writers’ group, the men seem to be getting into it perhaps more than the women. I’m not sure how much appeal the cover has to women. My husband says he’d pick the book up because as a hot-blooded male he’d be drawn towards an image of the female form, but inside it’s not really his kind of thing (which would be Tom Clancy).

The story hinges around a successful female rock musician (Syndrome is the name of her band) who’s written some diaries, and the cover depicts her. There are some quite dark themes in the book, although there’s also a romance central to the story. It’s written in the style of mainstream fiction – not frivolous, but not heavy-going either. I wanted a female image with a guitar; it’s actually a bass. I found the original image on clipart, and cropped it quite a lot (partly to get rid of the four tuning pegs as a regular guitar would have six). So with a cover budget of zero, there is some compromise!

I’ve subsequently redone the cover, with clearer text.

I’m not entirely convinced by the red, as it looks a bit ‘thriller,’ but having tried different colours, this is what stands out without going monochrome (although I think my name might work better in black and white, as in the previous version). The ‘Kindle image’ is below, and small: the text isn’t as clear as I’d like.

There’s still some time to play with the cover. The best-I-can-make-it version will shortly be going to my beta readers, freeing me up to work on other aspects of the book.

• What covers have you seen that you thought were particularly good (or bad!)?
• How would you improve my cover?

This is the 6th blog in a series on marketing.