Reviews - authors would like them, but...

Of late, I've observed a noticeable drop off in reviews of my books.

Now, there could be any number of good reasons for that:

1) My reach is limited so I'm not getting new readers
2) My books don't appeal (hopefully earlier reviews will refute this?)
3) Amazon has scared off potential reviewers.
4) Most readers don't review
5) Readers aren't buying from Amazon any more
6) Amazon's new rules prohibit reviews if the reviewer hasn't bought $50-worth of product in their Amazon account, ever

It's quite possible that the third reason has some credibility. I'd recommend that if you're interested in Amazon reviews, you read Anne R. Allen's latest blog about the subject. Apart from analyzing the new Amazon review rules, there's a healthy injection of humour in there too.

And bear in mind, that reviews don't affect your book's ranking - sales do that.

Note: So far, the minimum spend relates to Amazon.Com - it would, since it quotes dollars, I guess. But watch this space...

Barter Books

During our visit to the north-east, we popped in to Barter Books, in Alnwick, one of the largest second-hand bookshops in Britain. Over the years, I’ve been there a few times. It’s a cornucopia of literature for readers and collectors.

Ten years ago, prior to moving to Spain, I deposited a number of books with them and received a credit to spend there. At the time, I naturally didn’t want more books (we already had 34 boxes to transport to Spain as it was), so I kept the credit for a later date. A few years passed and then I searched their website online and identified a number of Time-Life books in the Old West series. I ordered them and they were retained until such time as I could fly to UK and collect them.

Barter Books can be found in the old Alnwick railway station, which was built in 1887 to a high standard to impress royal visitors to Alnwick Castle. Passenger service continued until the Beeching cuts closed the station in 1968.

In 1991 Mary Manley decided to open a second-hand bookshop, based on the swap system, and called it appropriately Barter Books. Her husband Stuart suggested she open the shop in the front room of what was his manufacturing plant in the old Alnwick Station. In time, the bookshop grew and grew.

 Victorian Station - Barter Books

 

Opposite the station, there’s the 83ft-tall Tenantry Column topped by the Percy lion. The story goes that the column was erected by the Duke’s tenants in 1816 in appreciation of his having lowered their rents during the depression caused by the Napoleonic Wars. So impressed was the Duke to find his tenants were able to afford this, he promptly raised their rents…!

Tenantry Column

 

You enter the shop through the doorway under the Victorian three-bay glazed canopy which served to protect passengers alighting from horse-drawn carriages. Once inside this entrance (which formerly led into the station’s Parcels’ Room), you’ll be amazed at the number of books.

Books, books and more books

There is a self-guided historical tour of the station, relating its opening in 1850, and its replacement (designed by architect William Bell) in 1887. You’ll see the station clock, made by Potts of Leeds (at a cost of £12.50 (old money £12.10s.0d). On walls and plaques you’ll find lines of poetry that connect the book columns. The Little Train, a miniature railway system, runs on top of these poetry lines. The trains are to a scale of 1:22.5 – actually on three separate tracks – and run all day every day.

Little Train

There are three huge murals commissioned between 1999 and 2006: The Famous Writers, painted by local artist Peter Dodd, depicting over 30 life-size portraits; The Railway Mural shows the names of almost 450 railway staff who worked in Alnwick Station from its opening in 1850 until its closure in 1968; and The Tennyson Installation was inspired by the work of artist Mark Handforth – Barter Books’ version illustrates the first lines of Tennyson’s great poem, ‘Crossing the Bar’.

The Famous Writers Mural - Barter Books

 

Definitely worth a browse. Don’t expect to make a flying visit, though. Besides the vast range of books – children’s, crime, antiquarian, humour, music and dance, poetry, politics, fiction, science fiction, thrillers, military history and much more – you’ll find so much to see, including Long Playing records, CDs and DVDs. Fair prices, too.
 
www.barterbooks.co.uk

It figures, maybe

Yesterday’s blog drew some comment on the blog and on FaceBook. Again, I emphasise that the statistics are not mine, but gleaned from a newspaper’s graphic. And the argument is against the big publishers, not the independents.

In my library I have a book printed in 1980, long before e-books, and it gives a breakdown on where the money went on a hardback novel then.  It makes interesting reading, even now.

 

 

BRITAIN

Author – 10%

Text printing and paper – 5.6%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.8%
Binding and freight – 2.6%
Bookseller – 41%
Publisher’s overheads – 20.6%
Publisher’s profit – 9.2%
Composition and plate making – 8.6%
Jacket design and artwork - .6%
 
USA

Author – 10%

Text printing and paper – 3.7%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.5%
Binding and freight – 4.7%
Bookseller – 47%
Publisher’s overheads – 23.9%
Publisher’s profit – 1.3%
Composition and plate making – 6.7%
Jacket design and artwork - 1.2%

The differences are accounted for, apparently, as the example is based on a print run of 5,000. The ‘British market is smaller; a sale of 5,000 copies in Britain is above average; in the US it is close to the norm.’

- Novels and Novelists, Editor Martin Seymour-Smith, 1980.

Now, I’ll just look at the British figures, as if enlightened by the e-book arrival:

Sure, figures have probably altered over 34 years – though not in the authors’ favour. And who said publishers react quickly? As John D MacDonald said, ‘If you would be thrilled by the galloping advance of a glacier, then you’d be ecstatic watching changes in publishing.' They were late to grasp the e-book nettle and then discovered they could profit hugely...

 

Anyway, back to the chase. If we exclude all the print associated overheads (say, 39.2%), we arrive at 60.8% of the cover price. So, at a rough-and-ready estimate, the e-book cover price should be at least 39% less than the print version. I suspect that is not the case for new e-books coming from the big 5 (or however few are left after the latest amalgamation, conglomeration, takeover).

 
Author – 10%
Bookseller – 41%
Publisher’s profit – 9.2%
Jacket design and artwork - .6%
Total percentage of cover price = 60.8%

[All of the following are probably associated with a print version, not e-book]
Publisher’s overheads – 20.6%
Text printing and paper – 5.6%
Jacket printing and paper – 1.8%
Binding and freight – 2.6%
Composition and plate making – 8.6%
Total percentage in this group – 39.2%
 
Mark Twain had something to say about statistics. I’m sure he had a view on percentages, as well. Even so, it’s plain as a pikestaff, to use an out-dated cliché, that certain publishers are attempting a form of profiteering where e-books are concerned.

(The earlier mid-16^th century phrase was ‘plain as a packstaff’, which alluded to the staff on which a pedlar carried his pack, which was in plain view. Amphitryon, III, Dryden.)

Tomorrow, back to a non-controversial subject, perhaps…

Hampshire authors

Before we moved to Spain, we lived for several decades in Hampshire, England. The county is not unique in boasting of several famous authors. For example, Hertfordshire has connections with the following: Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Ken Follett, Frederick Forsyth, Victoria Glendinning, Graham Greene, John Le Carré, George Orwell and Anthony Trollope.

                                                            Jane Austen portrait 1873 - Wiki commons

 

Jane Austen was born in the village of Steventon, near Alton, in 1775. She lived much of her life in Chawton and died in 1817, being buried in Winchester Cathedral. Hampshire locales, as well as Bath, figure prominently in her novels. She was educated at home and acquired a good knowledge of English literature. Two of her brothers rose high in the Navy and she learned much about the society in which they moved. She has been described as overly respectable, calculating and puritan. Yet in her works she displays a great sense of fun, a telling appreciation of the comic in character, a precise observation of behaviour, and an ability to dissect real snobbery. She created some great comic characters, notably Mr Collins and Mr Bates.

                                                                                                              Dickens - Wikipedia commons

Charles Dickens was born, in 1812, in 393 Old Commercial Road, Portsmouth that is now a museum dedicated to him. He lived here until 1817. He lived in several other homes, uprooting family and chattels, mainly in London until his final move in 1856 to God’s Hill Place, Higham, near Rochester in Kent, where he died in 1870. He cared for justice and his pen-portraits of cruel and stupid despots, and his satire of bureaucracy, had an effect on society. Much loved, he could move the hearts and minds of those who had previously been indifferent to cruelty and stupidity. He too created memorable characters and he has lent his name to the English language – Dickensian.

 

Olivia Manning, 1930s - Wikipedia commons                                                              

Novelist and journalist Olivia Manning was born in Portsmouth (I’ve seen three dates of birth for her, 1908, 1911 and 1914 in different sources!) and she died a ferry ride away in Ryde, Isle of Wight, in 1980. She is best known for her Balkan Trilogy and The Levant Trilogy, collectively known as Fortunes of War, which were televised with Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson. These books were based on her experiences in WWII (I read and enjoyed these six books in the 1980s). A photographic portraitt of her is in the permanent collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

'Two distinct races'

Charles Lamb (1775-1834) had a few things to say about borrowing.

‘The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend.’ – The Two Races of Men

‘I mean you borrowers of books – those mutilators of collections, spoilers of the symmetry of shelves, and creators of odd volumes. – The Two Races of Men.

I believe that there are readers who buy books and readers who borrow. [We’ll ignore those people who borrow books from us but never return them…] There are plenty of reasons why readers borrow – cost and storage space being just two. I may have a collection of about 4,000 books, but in my lifetime I’ve read thousands more. Space precludes storing so many. I’ve borrowed from the public library when I couldn’t afford to buy sufficient books to read; and of course pre-Internet, I delved into the non-fiction shelves for research. Like most generalisations, I’m sure this separation into two types of book readers will fall down under close scrutiny, but I feel that it has a grain of truth in it. Until relatively recent times, authors received no payment for books borrowed from libraries.

It seems only fair that authors should benefit in some small measure from institutional borrowing of their work. Twenty-eight countries have a Public Lending Right programme. The first was implemented in Denmark in 1946; the UK’s PLR was enacted in 1979.

As a resident of the EU (UK citizen living in Spain), I am able to take advantage of the PLR system applied to libraries in the UK and Eire. It is a welcome annual event, receiving notification of the pecuniary reward (taxable) along with the number of borrowers for my registered books.

Registered authors are eligible for payment if their PLR earnings reach a minimum of £1. The rate per loan is currently 6.2 pence [and for foreign readers who may not be aware, there are 100 pence in the £]. There is an upper limit for any author, £6,600. Last month, PLR made payments totalling £6.1 million to 22,327 authors. It is funded by the Department of Culture, Media and Sport through the British Library. Writers can register online. A book has to be registered by 30 June to be eligible for assessment in the following January.

To read the rules about registration, please go to the website www.plr.uk.com

A list of the hundred most borrowed titles included James Patterson fifteen times; needless to say, he was the most borrowed fiction author (for the seventh year running); Nora Roberts dropped from fourth place last year to sixth; M.C. Beaton was seventh and tenth was David Baldacci (previously eighteenth). Lee Child had the two top most borrowed titles; J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy was the tenth most borrowed title, well beaten by Fifty Shades of Grey (third).

 

The top twenty of the 100 most-borrowed books in Scotland are all crime novels.
 
Top non-fiction author was cookery expert Mary Berry.
 
The full list can be found on the website.
 
Last year my books (penname Ross Morton) were borrowed 5,464 times from the UK libraries. That’s a great feeling, to know that that number of people have read my novels.
 
Since its publication in 2007, my first novel Death at Bethesda Falls has been borrowed 8,709 times.
 
My most-borrowed title is The $300 Man.

If you can't borrow it, please purchased post-free world-wide from here

So, I must go against the advice of Shakespeare, in Hamlet: ‘… neither a borrower, nor a lender be…’ (I know, he was talking about money, rather than books!)

Book editing

 

I’ve been editing other people’s writing for over 30 years. It has helped me self-edit my own work too. This is a very brief overview of the editing process, as I apply it. As with writers, there are no two editors who work in exactly the same manner. Yet, we all strive to help the author to improve his or her work.

There are a great many self-published books available these days and, sadly, it’s obvious that they haven’t been edited, which often means that a good story is diminished.

Authors definitely benefit by stepping back from their work and appraising it with fresh eyes; the final author edit (self-edit) is vital. The temptation is there, but I’d advise never to send off a book unless this final read-through has been done with a critical eye. I’ve seen and rejected manuscripts where it was obvious that the author hadn’t re-read his work but simply finished it and sent it off.

Still, as a book editor (as opposed to a commissioning editor), I looked at work that had been accepted.

Obviously, a book editor is there to spot the inconsistent, the illogical and the plain wrong items which the author couldn’t identify because she was too close to the work. (That important step back didn’t occur, perhaps?)

I believe that an editor can be of great help if he or she reads widely, not simply in a narrow genre; indeed reading a variety of non-fiction subjects too. It is a truism that is often ignored, but all writers should read - and analyse books. Naturally, the majority should write within the genre with which they’re familiar. True, accomplished authors are able to switch genres with ease. I need to know enough about any given subject to ask questions that a book’s potential readership might ask. Though in truth, perhaps the author should have asked these questions at the writing stage, that step back viewpoint again. Still, an editor can’t take it for granted that the author has “got it right”, so there’s a need to check that the author’s research is accurate.

The editor’s credo is “Do no harm” – harm is done by altering the author’s style or the meaning of the prose.

Unlike short story writers, there’s a tendency to be verbose where novels are concerned. Often, the same thing is said or described in more than one way. Editors should emphasise economy of words: the writer saying as much as she can with as few words as possible. (Did you notice that I said the same thing twice in the previous sentence?) That makes the editor’s – and ultimately the reader’s life easier.

Writers should always strive for clarity of understanding. And of course it is the editor’s job to ensure that this is the case. If the editor doesn’t comprehend the context, the visuals or the internal logic, then it’s highly likely the reader won’t either.

 
Good writers appreciate intelligent editing; bad writers don’t like being edited.
 
There are bad editors around, too, naturally. This is the real world, after all.
 
An editor must fight the impulse to over-edit or rewrite. There’s nothing more dispiriting for a writer to find that the prose has been ripped to shreds, apparently without due explanation. However, showing respect to a difficult author can be a problem too. Authors can be demanding or even exasperating, rejecting out of hand even the smallest proposed changes. There is no such thing as precious prose. Balance and compromise are necessary at times.
 
I tended to begin a working relationship by proposing changes – usually in red on the electronic copy: spelling, punctuation and grammar corrections. In addition:
 
Offering alternative words;

highlighting duplication of a word or phrase, sometimes due to the “echo effect”;

pointing out the generalisations (specifics are needed, not generalisations);

identifying clichés, mixed metaphors and so on.

Spotting anachronisms, anomalies and logic lapses (we’re all prone to these in some measure).

Making suggestions to improve the drama in a particular scene. 

Pointing out any excess of “tell” over “show.”

Promoting the writer’s visual sense (sketches of scenes can help here).

 
All of the above list can be tackled in large measure by the author stepping back and doing that final self-edit. Still, the book editor is the last resort, where it is hoped the stumbles are identified and corrected. (Nobody’s perfect, however, so inevitably some annoying gremlins still do get past all those critical eyes!)

As can be seen from this brief glimpse, editing is perseverance – refine, suggest and advise.

In the final analysis, the editor must appreciate that it is the author’s book.

 

***
Please note that I am not currently seeking editing work.
I would recommend my guide below (but I would, wouldn't I?)
 

Please see Chapter 14 – Self-edit in Write a Western in 30 Days for details about what to look for when doing that final self-edit.

The e-book version can be purchased from Amazon.com here

and from Amazon.co.uk here

It is also available at other outlets, both e-book and paperback