Joined GoodReads website today (not sure what it is yet)

 The application form tickled me:

Interests — favorite subjects, or really anything you know a lot about.

The three I’s:Illustration, Idleness and Me.

What kind of books do you like to read?

The three F’s:Fantasy, Fiction and Philosophy.

About me — my own personal canvas to express myself.

Imagine a portrait of a young man of lean build, with dark brown shoulder-length hair, dark penetrating eyes, fine nose, sensitive lips with moustache and goatee beard, smooth limbed and easily tanned, often mistaken for those portraits of Jesus. You get the picture?

Scroll on forty years and you’re there!

In the peripatetic journey between, this young man has been a steel-tube cutter, news photographer, cartoonist, graphics editor of The Daily Telegraph (an English newspaper), illustrator of fact and fiction for publishers and publisher.

He has raised a five-a-side boys’ football (soccer) team and girl referee with his long-suffering wife who has finally relegated him to a shed at the bottom of the garden in which to play out his remaining fantasies which he logs in detail on his blog: http://alangilliland.blogspot.com while his more transient ejaculations appear on his twitter thing, OnundTreefoot.

Nice blog article about me (or someone like me)

Monday, 23 May 2011

How to Sell 7000 Books

I met an interesting author last week. Of course all authors are interesting to me but this one was particularly so. He has self-published a children's book, in hardback, priced at £14.99. Every publishing fibre in me was telling me that was a crazy price point and crazy format for this kind of book but the facts speak for themselves.

He has sold over 7000 copies. That's a lot of books. And a fair amount of cash too. If he's not careful he might actually become that ultra-rare species of author who actually (shh) makes a living from writing.

So how does he do it? And could you do it too?

Well unsurprisingly it requires a lot of hard work, and persistence, and, I suspect a rather thick skin. Alan Gilliland is a one-man marketing machine, arranging in-store events up and down the country for (at first) his children's book The Amazing Adventures of Curd the Lion (and Us!) and now his second book (a young adult ghost story) called The Flight of Birds too.


He told me that he is booked up pretty much every weekend of the year - the organisation and planning alone must take a fair chunk of time - and he spends a full day at each bookshop, chatting to readers, talking them through his books, enthusing them about his stories and illustrations and finally selling and signing copies. The effort to achieve sales therefore is considerable and it not only takes a certain type of person to maintain this level of effort, but it also requires the author to be extremely confident in promoting his own work. This is unfortunately where many writers fall down - many (most?) feel uncomfortable standing up to say how good their own book is - in fact it is far more common to hear an author downplaying their writing. Which is a shame.


This, then is the hurdle to success that many self-published authors face whatever the price, format or genre of their book. Without the pr machine of a big publisher clanking into action on their behalf, a self-published author is left with the task of standing up and shouting about how great their book is - and many, quite simply just don't want to do that.

Posted by Clare Christian at 05:44

http://mybookhub.blogspot.com/2011/05/how-to-sell-7000-books.html

The Flight of Birds – new Amazon Review

Here’s that new review alluded to in my last post:

5.0 out of 5 stars An almost perfect book, 8 May 2011

By 

Bookstrel - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Flight of Birds (Paperback)

The Flight of Birds

A book that's sounds frankly weird. A girl goes back in time, whilst remaining in her current time and follows her families history back 400 years. This sounds all nonsense but in reality is one of the best books that I have ever read. For readers of medieval whodunit novels (CJ Sansom lovers) they will love this book. The writing is crisp and it flows. The story is in fact 4 or 5 stories all threaded together.
I am struggling to criticize at all this excellent book and look forward to the next two stories in the trilogy. If I was to then I would say this. The first chapter is the weakest ( too many unnecessary complicated words maybe) and if had been re-written at the end of the book would have added more (Same comment about all Stieg Larsson’s novels, all weak first chapters), and second moan is that we do not really get inside the head of the main character, Kate Pegler, whereas we do for Black Martin, White Whiskey John et al.
Do read this book as this is an author that has great ideas and is way beyond many other authors. The author also could easily write separate books about many of the characters in this book. Including, dare I say, its sequel...............

And the headline to the previous review:

5.0 out of 5 stars Worlds within worlds! Warms your heart then twists your soul with a haunting melody that long lingers., 11 Nov 2010

By 

Miss Mirabilis

Meanwhile, back in the factory, the slaves are busy churning out weapons’ cutaways and suchlike.

Flight of Birds new reviews, etc..

Two responses in last few days – both very complementary: thanks.

Catherine Hodgson, Blog review April 27, 2011

                                   http://www.talkcomplainlaugh.blogspot.com/

“I started reading it, and I thought, okay, this isn't that good, maybe it will get better. And it did. I really, really enjoyed it. Okay, maybe it was a little bit gory in places (maybe a lot), but I thought that it was really clever and a really good read. 

I FRICKIN' LOVED IT.

It is just the sort of thing that I'm constantly looking for - a mystery, stuff from the past, betrayal, horrid stuff like that; but that's just the sort of thing that is really very exciting. I'm just glad that I said yes, he could tell me about it, because otherwise, I wouldn't have picked it off the shelf, and I certainly wouldn't have bought it.

But, this book is full of suspense and excitement. There is as much interest in the chapters set in the present day as there is in the tales from the past; I love it I love it I love it.

Thaaaank you, Mr. Alan Howard!”

And this, today:

Chris Bushe, on The Flight of Birds (May 2):

“Have just read The Flight of Birds, in short one of the best books I have ever read. Am trying to buy the other two in the trilogy. Let me know what’s possible.”

Previously,

Chris Bushe, on Curd the Lion (Feb 11):

“My daughter Sarah Haynes (an author) gave my own daughter Elena this book for xmas. Signed copy by Alan. Incredible book. Here is how it went. " Daddy will you read it to me… Daddy you are not reading with intonation… give it to me… I will read it to you" So we had 2 weeks of about a chapter a night. I loved it never mind her. Agree with the comparison with Alice. Just hurry up and write a sequel please.”

 

World Book Night: ‘Genre Fiction’ to go…

The Stephen Hunt inspired mass protest by authors of the ‘Horror, Fantasy and Sci-Fi’ genre against the imbalance of the Beeb’s World Book Night coverage struck a chord.
So I thought I would add my two-penny worth in support of the opinion that the wilful ignorance of genre fiction by the media, including national newspaper reviewers, does indeed filter down to inform the attitudes of their eager acolytes in the bookshops of Britain.

Gently interrupted by authors in their ‘perusal’ of titles authoritatively recommended as suitable to be seen with, their looks, ranging from pity to disdain for these creatures proposing they look at works of fantasy or horror, are intended to convey emphatically to the audience around them that a severe misjudgement has been made in taking them for readers of genre-fiction.

With reactions ranging from a polite “I’m sure it’s very good but I don’t read that sort of thing” to a silent turning away from or the more physical ‘swatting aside’ of these impudent interlopers, they return to their study of those titles guaranteed to ensure their credibility as literary types.

[As an author of fantasy, nonsense and horror, for children and adults, I encounter this reaction almost every week at signings (I have sold over 5,000 books at signings over the last two years or so) among those seriously poring over the latest batch of approved novels.]

Narrow interests are not the exclusive preserve of the well-heeled reader: there are as many trapped in genre-ghettos unable to unable to see over the walls of categorisation. (hard G, short E for Genree – “Biogs is my Genree” – not least among these)

Then there are those who exclude ‘fiction’ altogether – i.e., I only read history – as if every recounting of history or interpretation of the world were not a fiction of sorts…

“What genre is it?” The question one comes to accept with sorry resignation as emanating from one trapped in small-brained servitude to parochial boundaries, unable to regard new work as worthy of regard except through categorical filters defining for each his limited spectrum of acceptability.
“A tale of the Imagination,” I answer, hoping to side-step the issue, at least until I have discovered what he categorically will not read.
The instinct for tribalism is all-pervasive and does not dissipate with scientific and cultural ‘advancement’ – it is just the spheres within which tribalism manifests that change.

“What age-range is it aimed at?” The inane alternative posed by those eager to narrow-down their options to avoid looking for themselves.
“Free-range,” I put on the jacket, hoping to side-step the issue, at least until I have persuaded them to look at the book or allow me to ‘talk them into the story’ enough to think that, perhaps, they too might enjoy trying something new.

I guess it’s all about finding reasons to justify NOT stepping outside the comfort zone of habituation.