Chatter

With lockdowns everywhere, many are feeling trapped and depressed. I think that we could all do with an activity that takes us somewhere beautiful, where we vicariously participate in a heart-pumping adventure, perhaps across shark infested waters and deep into critter-ridden bushland.

If you’d like to come with me on this journey, I suggest picking up a copy of Nonsense in the North.

This is the last book in the Northern Rivers series and I had such fun writing it. Charlotte and Scott have quite a few hurdles to overcome.

‘So what kinda trouble did Charlotte get into this time?’ you ask. Well, Ms Wyatt is 100% doing the rescuing in this instalment and needs to draw on all the knowledge, contacts and tenacity she’s developed since she left Australian shores to collect that bottle with a message inside.

The story starts in Port Vila, Vanuatu and quickly moves to beautiful Queensland, Australia.

A too-good-to-be-true sailing trip results in Scott’s disappearance from waters near Hamilton Island. Now considered by police to be an integral part of an international drug smuggling operation, Charlotte relies on a sympathetic police officer and an aboriginal tracker named ‘Nonsense’ to travel deep into Cape Conway, to disrupt a drug exchange and to find her Scott, improving their chances of a happily-ever-after. All the while helping plan her best friend Miranda’s wedding to Mason.

Pick up your serve of escapism here. It’s a feel good story, with a distinctive Crocodile Dundee flavour.

July 4 is celebrated as Independence Day in North America. Because of the significance of the break from a controlling power, I chose this day to release the fourth book in the Northern River series, Missing in Myanmar. The book was live written as the Generals took over on 1 February 2021. I observed what was happening from Australia with alarm. I drew on wonderful memories of a cycling tour in southern Myanmar in early 2020 to craft the story. Here’s an overview.

Charlotte Wyatt wasn’t sure what she was letting herself in for when she agreed to be available for occasional information gathering activities for the Australian Securities Intelligence Organisation. Her first assignment comes at the end of a holiday in Thailand. Having just said goodbye to her boyfriend, who has taken a job sailing from Port Vila in Vanuatu to Bundaberg in Australia, Charlotte Wyatt is intrigued by the opportunity to go to Myanmar to gather information about a missing person.

With the help of a mysterious librarian, she finds the information she was sent to retrieve, and then, just as she’s making plans to return, the lights go out in Myanmar and the military takes over. With a reluctant passenger, Charlotte runs checkpoints and dodges bullets, in a race to the border.

It’s a fast-paced read. Perfect reading for the independence day long weekend.

Your copy here.

COVID19 killed my Sicilian scouting trip.  I’d been so looking forward to sailing from Naples to Sicily as a part of the research process for writing and investigating vineyards and cafes which would feature in my book, Roman Roulette.

Small details make stories richer and Over Byron Bay and Substitute Child benefited from my detailed local knowledge of the locations where all the action happened 

If you’ve read Substitute Child, you’d know that it concluded with Charlotte Wyatt stuck in Rome, and like her, I was stuck in Australia. Unable to fulfil the next stage of my plans, I turned to Google,as one does, to identify the places where my lead characters would argue, plot, fight, dance and escape from.

In Substitute Child, we watched Charlotte struggle with her identity and what she wanted for her life. When a curious opportunity puts her on a world stage and in grave danger, she acted boldly. You’ll need to read the book to see what she did and what happened as a result.

In Roman Roulette, she needs this new found courage and higher order planning skills as she looks for a friend who’s gone missing. Inadvertently caught up in the international slavery trade and forced to choose between several unbearable options, Charlotte embarks on a bold plan to save the women captured by The Monk, and in doing so, to save herself.  I particularly loved writing the scenes at the old theatre in Taormina and look forward to going there, once we are out of lock-down, and gazing at Mt Etna and out across the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Roman Roulette goes-live on Amazon on June 15 2021.  You can pick up your copy here

Delighted to report that in response to feedback from readers, I’ve written a prequel to Over Byron Bay titled, the ‘Boy from Bangalow‘.

It’s a short story providing insight into Melissa and Andrew’s relationship from their early days at university. Here’s the cover.

The centrepiece of the story is a debate held during orientation. The topic is that The pen is mightier than the paintbrush. Andrew is arguing for the affirmative and does a masterful job. But don’t underestimate Melissa!

Who wins you ask? You’ll need to read the book which you can pick up for free when you join my newsletter list.

I was chuffed to sit down with Book Marketing expert Katie Sadler, to chat about about how she helps romance writers to find and engage with their readers through social media. Katie has great experience in this area having worked for HarperCollins, Quercus and Ebury Publishing, I started by asking her …

What sort of social media campaigns have you been involved with?

A couple that stand out to me were working on the launch of HarperImpulse, which was a romance digital only list I worked on when I was at HarperCollins. We did the entire thing online, and had almost no budget to do so. We launched authors then who are now selling hundreds of thousands of ebooks and whose physical books are in big supermarkets here in the UK. It’s really exciting to think that that all started off the back of us building the authors and the brand up via social media. 

Another that stands out is the recent launch for Peter May’s Lockdown, which is a crime novel he wrote 15 years ago and which he couldn’t get published because the idea of London completely closing was too unbelievable. We launched this entirely online because due to the pandemic, there weren’t a lot of other options! And it has been a huge success. From the minute we announced it, it went into the Amazon bestseller chart, and it was on the Sunday Times bestseller list here in the UK for weeks.

There have been loads of others, as a lot of what I do working with authors in-house at Quercus, as well as with the authors I work with directly, is to do with social media marketing and how people can use content to connect with and grow their audience, and then sell to them without feeling gross!

What were the characteristics of the most successful campaigns?

There are a few things that stand out for me about these two campaigns I mentioned, which I think could be applied to campaigns at every level.

Firstly, there is the idea of community. So, one of the things that made HarperImpulse successful was that we focused in on community at the absolute core of what we were doing. The authors were all connected to one another in a private Facebook group, and were encouraged to support the titles that were being published. This DID have downsides, mostly to do with boundaries – people messaging you on Facebook late at night asking about promotions, people comparing their activity with others’ etc, but on the whole, it was a really great way for them to get to know one another and to use their collective platforms to raise one another up.

We also had a community of book bloggers who we would send images and assets to regularly, who were first in line to download new books as they were published. We built really strong relationships with those bloggers, as did the authors, and it meant that whenever we shared anything online, we knew that there was going to be a group of people who were going to amplify that for us and spread the word further.

For Lockdown, we had an author with a very significant following already, so that always helps, but this was SUCH a contentious book and we had very little time to prepare the ground. We launched it the week that everyone was sent home from work, and I think the week after that, Boris Johnson was sent into hospital. So, it was very topical, sometimes it felt like it was too close to home.

But it kind of goes back to the community thing again – this book came out of a suggestion from one of the people in his community. ‘You should write a book that’s set during the pandemic’ – someone suggested. And he remembered that actually, he already had! 

For an individual author, I cannot stress enough that building relationships with your community is so, so key. Support them, get to know them – treat them like people, not just faceless ‘followers’ – engage with them.  

And those that failed – what did you learn from that?

I think sometimes there are books where getting the messaging right can be hard. So – what is the thing that people actually want to get when they read this book? What would make them intrigued enough to actually click through to read more? What is going to make them hit buy?

For some books, like with Lockdown, that messaging, once you get it clear, really hits the mark and you’re golden. But for others, you’ll try one thing, nothing. So you try another thing, nothing. It just means that you need to keep experimenting and trying different angles, but sometimes you kind of run out of steam, especially if you’re in house and you’ve got eight other titles that you’re working on that month! 

OR, sometimes, you see something absolutely flying on social media, then they get to the Amazon page and literally no one is buying the book! That shows me that there’s something that needs changing on the Amazon page in terms of the cover or the description or getting more reviews, but it’s harder to pinpoint exactly what needs changing, so can take longer to get right.

What’s key to engaging with readers?

Engaging with them. As in – a lot of people expect people to engage with their content because they are sharing great content. But it’s when you start going out and engaging with what they are putting out into the world AND sharing that great content that you can start to see shifts in how much engagement you get.

How much attention do traditional publishing houses pay to marketing through social media channels?

A lot. Most of the campaigns I work on, particularly now when other routes are not actually even available to us, are supported by Facebook advertising. So that’s paid-for stuff. 

But getting authors who are able to talk about their writing in a natural way is a gift. It’s not just about saying ‘my book is out now, buy it’, it’s about taking people on a journey to get to know you, discover how you write, what you write about, what inspires you, what blocks you have around writing – it’s letting people in a bit, and making them feel invested in what you do. Having an author who is able to do that makes a huge difference to the results.

And publishing’s own social channels are so important, more important now than ever. Building up direct relationships with bloggers and Instagrammers and booksellers are all SO important these days, and social media is where they (and you!) are able to do that best.

So Katie if there were three things you wanted authors to take away today – what would they be?

1. Seek out your readers. Go out and actively seek your readers, and get to know them. Start interacting with your local bookshop manager. Build a relationship with bookstagrammers who like your kind of book. Don’t spam them with your content, but engage with them about what they are sharing. This a) makes social media a much nicer place to be and also b) really helps you when you DO come to have a book to launch, be able to reach out and say ‘just wanted to let you know my new book is coming out next week, I would love it if I could send you a copy to review on your Instagram page or feature in your shop’ or whatever it might be
2. Please set up a mailing list! Social media is wonderful for building up relationships, but the number one way to drive actual sales online remains email. You don’t need to send out essays every week, but figure out a schedule that works for you and give people a reason to sign up, and you’re good to go.
3. Promote yourself. Most authors I have ever worked with, apart from non-fiction business book type people, but sometimes them too, hate promoting themselves. But by not promoting what you do, you are doing a disservice to yourself, and also to your potential readers. Think of the good things they will get from your book and how it will help them. These are heavy, heavy times right now – romance books feel to me like they are a public service! We NEED escapism. We can’t travel anywhere physically – we NEED to travel in our minds. Focus on your readers’ needs rather than your fears, and hopefully that will make things a little bit easier.

Thanks Katie. I received so many insights from our conversation.

I wish other writers of romance the best with their efforts to increase their discoverability and engagement with readers.

Want to know more about book marketing? You can find Katie at https://katiemorwenna.co.uk/ 

It’s tough. We all know how challenging it is to find readers and to entice them to pay a few $ for hours of learning and enjoyment. Reading is one of the best investments people can make of their time and money. We know this. How can we pass the word along?

As authors and business people, we all share objectives for encouraging more people to read and buy books. How do we do this?

Here are a few thoughts.

We don’t communicate the value of books enough

Let’s start with non- fiction. We should let our readers know more clearly what they will learn and experience from our books. If I want to learn how to do something, I can buy a book and benefit from an expert’s condensed knowledge, often obtained from many years of experience, and I can read the material in my own space and time frame, providing maximum flexibility. This knowledge can provide a new skill, hobby or even a career change. Paying someone to share this knowledge with me, or even participating in a training course would be a much higher cost (sometimes ten to a hundred times more), and far less convenient.

For fiction, the value can be measured by the escape potential of the story, how it gives us insights and helps us to build empathy, and by the inspirational impact of a protagonist who overcomes insurmountable difficulties to get the girl, climb the mountain or win the prize. Often uplifting and inspiring – even when it’s sad.

Comparatitus

We need to harp on a bit about the comparative cost of a book. With the arrival of e-books and the absence of delivery charges, books have never been cheaper or more accessible. I’m the first person to advocate for a yummy cappuccino made by a skilled barista. This delicious ten- minute experience typically costs me the same as a great piece of fiction – which delivers four hours rather than ten minutes of pleasure. We need to remind everyone that a great book costs the same as one cappuccino, two avocados, three bananas, four iced-vo vos … You get the picture. Books are sooo cheap as chips.

Everyone is time poor

In a busy-busy world I know that some readers have little discretionary time each day. The great thing about books is that they are portable and can be absorbed in small increments of time, say during the 30-minute morning commute on the train, the boring 20 minutes in the dentist’s waiting room or in those fifteen minutes before we finally fall asleep at night. So easy and a great way to wind down after a full day.

Happiness comes from experiences and not things

Many of us live in a culture where happiness is perceived to come from what we can buy. So wrong. The pleasure from some big house, nice car and fancy clothes can be fleeting – and many of these experiences can be accessed much more cheaply by renting them. Yep – even the fancy clothes. Research shows us that happiness is more likely to come from experiences. Books deliver fabulous experiences by the boat-load. You get to travel to places beyond your local area, and vicariously live another person’s life. Our own little mini-holodeck – in Star Trek speak.

The pleasure doesn’t stop at the last page 

Once we finish a book we can keep it and reread it at a future date. Or we can share the pleasure by passing the book along. Happiness comes from giving to others – and books are a perfect gift. I love discovering bus tickets in second-hand books and wondering about this book’s journey. (If you like tracking book journeys, release a few books into the wild and track their journey via Book Crossing. This is another way to encourage reading).

Authors as Superheroes.

While we, with ‘we’ being many authors, may be introverted and spend hours out of sight writing like Clarke Kent, we have the power to change the world, like superman. I get irritated by the high regard and near superhero status given to some sporting figures. For many of these celebrities they are just playing a sport and making a lot of money. They are not engaging in an activity that has broader learning benefits. It would be good if the media sprinkled some of the super hero fairy dust on more authors who are changing the world through their writing. Who are your writing super heroes? What can you do to lift them up?

Leverage our support team

We have millions of supporters out there like librarians, teachers, journalists and traditional book store owners. We should develop partnerships with these allies to encourage higher levels of reading. When was the last time you went to a library or a school to read your story out loud or to share your motivation for writing the book in the first place? Talk to others and inspire them to read.

While I recognize my cynicism in outing sporting stars as false prophets, I recognize that all kinds of people at the movies and on Instagram are social influencers. They are more accessible now than in the past through twitter and the like and we should ask them to talk about books that changed their opinion, their lives and or delivered laughs.

Just a few thoughts from me.

What are your ideas on how we can increase readership and books purchases?

My two cents worth

• Remind people of how much time it takes to acquire this knowledge through channels other than books.
• Highlight how cheap books are compared to everyday expenses.
• Show people how they can squeeze in reading time even when they are busy.
• Communicate the value of experiences over things.
• Talk about authors who influenced you.
• Give book vouchers as gifts.
• Go to schools, libraries and book stores and read out loud.
• Lend or give books to others and talk about why you loved them.
• Release books into the community through sites like Book Crossing.
• Ask influencers which books changed their lives. (If they can’t identify any – suggest a few).

So, spread the happiness and pass this article along.

References

Forbes Article on how experiences brings you happiness

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Twitter: @janeellyson1

Image in middle from Unsplash photos by @KimberlyFarmer