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The Ultimate Promo Package

Published by Owen Jones on 11 January 2022
Megan Publishing Services

Megan Publishing Services

The Ultimate Promo Package

The Ultimate Promo Package is Megan Publishing Services’ prime advertising deal, which is designed to give a three-stage boost to the book or artwork that you want to promote.

NB: The Ultimate Promo Package is subject to limited availability because I need to read each book in order to provide a review – no more than one package a  week (not per person – in total)!

Stage One: Lift off provides a powerful push to get your work noticed. Within a month, but at your own pace, we will produce an author interview, a book review, and a book sales’ page, which means that it will receive a random share of 30,000 banner adverts on MPS (Megan Publishing Services) a day and I will promote them on at least a dozen of the top Social media platforms

Stage Two: After-burner consists of creating six Tweets based on, and so uniquely relevant, to your work, which will be promoted across the Internet. The book review will be posted to Amazon US, Amazon UK and Goodreads. The Amazon US review will be available on ALL Amazon franchises around the world.

Stage Three: Cruising means promoting your work using three of your Tweets posted to my ever-growing band of 75,000 artistic reading and writing Twitter followers three times a day (every eight hours) for 365 days, which means that they will be seen potentially 82,125,000 times. Note that posting the Tweets every eight hours means complete global coverage within peak periods (due to the various time zones).

In short, the Ultimate Book Promo Package includes:

  1. A review of your novel on my high-traffic website, Amazon and Goodreads (permanent placements).
  2. Six Tweets based on your novel for you to use. I will send three of these Tweets to 75,000 of my followers three times a day for 365 days or at least 82,125,000 potential impressions.
  3. An author interview about yourself and up to three of your books (permanent page).
  4. A sales page for one of your books on Megan Publishing Services for one month.
  5. Random banner ads out of approx 30,000 per day for one month (linked to sales page above).
  6. Promotion of all website pages to more than a dozen Social Media accounts, including: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Livejournal, Plurk, Digg, Diigo, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Reddit, Blogger, Surfit, Favoritus, Folk’d, G+, Favoritus and more.

First come, first served due to limited availability (I have to read the books myself, in between writing my own) – no more than one package per week!

Read the details here: http://smarturl.it/ultpromopak?IQid=mpsstick or

contact me now:

owen at meganthemisconception dot com

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NANOWRIMO 2018

Published by Owen Jones on 30 October 2018

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NANOWRIMO 2018

NANOWRIMO 2018

NANOWRIMO 2018

Have you ever wanted to write a book? Many people have… I hear it from someone every week. The main reason they cite for not doing it is that they wouldn’t know where to start. I have written fifty-two novels and a hundred and twenty-five short manuals, but I still remember vividly how scared I was writing the first one. It took me seven years and I kept putting it off, because I had no confidence in it or myself. Now let me introduce you to NANOWRIMO and NANOWRIMO 2018 in particular.

Written correctly, it is NaNoWriMo 2018 and stands for National November Writing Month. The ‘national bit lasted a year, then it went global. I joined NaNoWriMo in 2013 and have participated every year since, so this year will be my sixth.

As it happens, 2018 is the one year when I really don’t have time to get involved, but I feel that it would be such a shame not to join in and I enjoy it a lot anyway.

However, the point of NaNoWriMo is to help beginners to gain the conference to write. So, to me, that especially means their first book, but many people only write one book a year, so NaNo is a big thing to them. And I have written many books, but it still is to me too.

NaNoWriMo offers so much support to writers. It is a fantastic feeling writing in a group. I say ‘a group’, but I have never met any of the people I have written with. We write together connected by Skype. However, the world is divided into sections for the NaNoWriMo 2018 experience, and most cities in the West have NaNo writing groups.

The challenge is to write 50,000 words during the month of November. I know that that might sound daunting, hut it is 1,667 words a day – call it 2,000 if you want a cushion. It doesn’t have to be published or edited in November, only written.

I urge everyone who wants to write a book to get on over to nanowrimo.org and sign up right now. You won’t regret it, I promise you, even if you don’t finish on time this year. You will have started and that is the biggest hurdle. Start now, finish wherever, and then really go for it next year.

I’ll be one of your writing buddies, if you like. Look me up, owenjones, and say ‘Hello’.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: NANOWRIMO 2018

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When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

Published by Owen Jones on 17 August 2018

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When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink

A Night in Annwn – one of the free audiobooks on MPS

When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

I will admit it straight from the off! I am a writer with an axe to grind and I cannot understand people who complain that books are too expensive. Most books, in the form of ebooks, cost less than the price of a drink!

My ebooks cost an average of 8p or 10c per 1,600 words, which means that a coffee costing £2.40 is the equivalent of a 48,000-word book! Let’s call it 50,000 words… because many writers use that as the norm these days.

Mine are usually 80,000 to 112,000 words long or about the same as a coffee and a slice of cake!

Now, I’m sure that you don’t need me to tell you that a coffee and cake is normally consumed in twenty to thirty minutes, but most people would spend a week or two reading a book of 90,000 words!

So, where is the expense?

Not only that, but the coffee will soon be forgotten, but a good book could be remembered forever and even change your outlook on life, something that a coffee, no matter how good it is, will ever do.

People just don’t think much any more… their priorities have been skewed the wrong way. It is very sad.

I talk to a lot of people every week about reading and books, and it still saddens me to hear someone announce proudly that they haven’t read a book since leaving school… and I hear that several times a week!

The even more depressing problem with this sad state of affairs is that parents who don’t read much raise children who don’t read either. This has nothing to do with education, or at least, very little. It has to do with parents encouraging their children to fantasise with a good book.

The Baby Boomers are the first generation of working class writers, and their parents were the first generation of working class readers, so that was not all that long ago, but we need to keep the momentum going forward, but I can’t help thinking that we are going backwards.

It is very sad to witness and the remedy costs no more than the price of a coffee… with or without cake.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: When a Book Costs Less Than a Drink…

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Marketing Your Work

Published by Owen Jones on 30 July 2018

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Marketing for Small Businesses in 52 Parts

Marketing for Small Businesses in 52 Parts

Marketing Your Artwork

Marketing, advertising, promoting, publicising… it’s all basically the same thing, ie getting the word out there that you have something fantastic to sell. So, where do you begin?

This may sound odd, but you should begin before you have anything to sell.

Let’s say you’re a writer, like I am. You could set up a website in the name of your book, with an eye to it becoming a series, and talk about books you like; review books and post articles on events going on in the literary world – the Pulitzer Prize, that sort of thing. Then, when your book is ready, you already have an audience to present it to. So, it is never too early to start building what is called your author’s platform.

If you are that kind of person, you could make weekly or even daily posts about the progress of your novel. Some authors like this approach to marketing; others feel that it detracts from the suspense of the launch. I personally would not give away any spoilers, but I would talk about how I feel the writing is going and about cover designs. It’s up to you through, isn’t it?

About six weeks before you’re ready to publish, you could offer your potential readership the chance to pre-order at a discount. The effect of this is that you have six weeks to sell something that isn’t yet sellable (as it is unfinished) and all the pre-orders that you do make will go through on the one day, causing your book to jump in popularity. This is great because many people buy, and many firms recommend books on the strength of where they are in book lists.

However, as an unknown, you will find it very difficult to sell pre-orders.

Once you get to that stage, you could join a few of the online joint promotion schemes which combine the strengths of Twitter and Facebook. Try Bridgette’s T4US on Facebook. She and her group are innovative and hard-working.

Maybe I’ll see you there 🙂

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Marketing You Artwork

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Reviews of Books on Amazon

Published by Owen Jones on 22 July 2018

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Reviews of Books on Amazon

Reviews of Books on Amazon

The Reviews of Books on Amazon

I have been with Amazon for a relatively very long time – since a few weeks after it started, I think, but I can’t help thinking the the people at the top  – the ones running the firm (that might not include Jeff Bezos, the guy who set it up) are buffoons. Why? Well, let’s start with the question of reviews of books on Amazon.

They tried to fix the problem of sham reviews of books on Amazon, but all they ended up doing was punishing small authors by hunting through their friends’ lists to see whether somebody on one of those lists had written a favourable review and then deleting it. This does not stop more affluent or well-known authors from having fake reviews of books on Amazon posted, because they have access to a larger group of reviewers.

Please don’t get me wrong, fake reviews are not good – they are often called ‘sock puppet’ reviews. However, many readers become pen-pal friends of their favourite writers these days, and what is wrong with that for Heaven’s Sake?

Having said that, Amazon is quite happy to let Trolls leave ten-word shyte reviews without ever having proved that they have read the book (by having purchased it – called ‘a verified purchase review’).

No, they’re fine!

But why are they? I don’t understand…

The current Reviews of Books on Amazon policy stinks because it favours famous authors with representation in the form of an agent or and publisher, so it should be changed, but that is unlikely… just look at how Amazon rewards their top Kindle Unlimited authors with tens of thousands of dollars in bonuses leaving most people with an income under $20.

Another problem with reviews concern series. ONE woman didn’t like ONE book in a 24-part series but her review is attached to all of those books!

Is that mind-blowingly bonkers or what!

The other issue that they fall down on is taxation. Amazon is the only on-line company that I know of that makes the vendor, writer, in my case, work out the tax and add it to the cost of the item, book, for each country the item is sold in!

This is Stone-age lunacy!

I do all my own work myself, and am expected to work out the various taxes for fifteen countries for each of my 140 books?!

Aren’t repetitive mundane tasks what computers are supposed to be good at?

Put it this way: Amazon is by far the biggest on-line retailer of books, but it is the only retailer who forces its authors (and every other vendor) to do this.

I think that the CEO of Amazon should pack it in and grow sweetcorn. Let them head-hunt someone who really knows about taxation and fairness.

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All the best.

Owen

Podcast: Reviews of Books on Amazon

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Pirated eBooks – Writers

Published by Owen Jones on 21 July 2018

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Pirated eBooks - Writers

Pirated eBooks – Writers

Pirated eBooks – Writers

There seems to be two schools of though amongst writers concerning pirated ebooks: those who think it’s a good thing or irrelevant and those who would have pirates walk the plank. I am in the latter group after discovering that one site was claiming to have given away 1,755 copies of one of my books when I have sold less than a hundred. That is just one ebook, I have fifty and that is just one pirate company and there are hundreds.

If you don’t believe that search for ‘Pirated eBooks’ on Google. They are promoting hundreds of pirates and thousands of articles telling readers where to download free copies of copyrighted books and which the best download sites are. Thank you very much, Google!

Google was a good firm when it started but they have been absolute tossers since Panda (look it up – they closed millions of small Adsense accounts so that the big ones could make more money (so they have to write fewer cheques)).

Ebook Pirates

Anyway, if you hate the ebook pirates too, what can you do about it? There are two effective approaches:

1) Google ‘pirated ebooks’ and check the sites for your books; or Google ‘mybook free pdf’ where ‘mybook’ is the title of your book, and then issue a DMCA with Google for every instance where you discover a link to pirated content. Google will ask whether you have asked the company to desist from promoting a free ebook download link to your book. Just say ‘Yes’, but don’t bother writing to them. They ask for so much evidence that you are the true author that it’s a joke. If they reply at all.

2) Join Blasty. It is still free at the time of writing. They will find pirated copies of your book and issue a DCMA to Google for you at the click (or two) of your mouse. The process can even be automated. I have been with them a few months and have issued 1,198 DCMA’s and there are 398 in the pipeline. All free. The link is below.

An important point to note about DCMA’s is that they do not force the pirate to remove the reference to your book, but they force Google to stop promoting it. However, to be honest, if your stuff is not on Google, you might as well close shop.

So, there you have it: three options: ignore the piracy, combat the problem yourself, or let Blasty do it for you.

Here is the link to Blasty

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All the best,
Owen

Podcast: Pirated eBooks – Writers

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Editing Tips For Indie Writers

Published by Owen Jones on 26 April 2017
Editing Tips For Indie Writers

Editing Tips For Indie Writers

Editing Tips For Indie Writers

Here are my editing tips for Indie writers, because editing is a most important and time-consuming task for writers, especially those who do everything themselves, which is the vast majority of Indie authors, since most authors derive more pleasure than money from their efforts. It requires the editor/writer’s close attention to the document’s every detail, its format, and all of its elements; a thorough knowledge of spelling, grammar, punctuation, terminology, sentence structure, clarity, conciseness, tone and voice, inconsistencies, and typographical errors.

A good editor has a wide knowledge of writing skills and general knowledge or and an attention to factual details, which might mean validating an author’s claims in a story through research.

It is difficult for most writers to edit/proofread their own work and mostly for two reasons. Firstly, they are close to their work, and secondly, they are biased in their own favour. There are also two distinct processes involved in the editing process: mechanical editing and substantive editing.

Mechanical editing involves a close reading, with an eye on consistency of capitalisation, spelling, and hyphenation and other end-of-line word breaks; agreement between verbs and subjects; scores of other matters of syntax; punctuation; beginning and ending quotation marks and parentheses; number of ellipsis points; numbers given either as figures or as words; and hundreds of other, similar details of grammatical, editorial, and typographic style.

In addition to regularising those details of style, the copy editor is expected to catch infelicities of expression that mar an author’s prose and impede communication. Such matters include, but are by no means limited to, dangling participles, misplaced modifiers, mixed metaphors, unclear antecedents, unintentional redundancies, faulty attempts at parallel construction, mistaken junction, overuse of an author’s pet word or phrase, unintentional repetition of words, race or gender or geographic bias, and hyphenating in the predicate, unless, of course, the hyphenated term is an entry in the dictionary and therefore permanently hyphenated in every grammatical case.

The second, non-mechanical, process—called substantive editing—involves rewriting, reorganising, or suggesting more-effective ways to present material. All this while not over-tampering with unusual figures of speech or idiomatic usage that is pertinent to a piece of work. All authors have their own voice, and this needs to be preserved and encouraged.

Two editing tips that will help the Indie author/self-editor are:

1] Leave the work for at least two weeks and do something else. Write short stories, plan your next book, or write articles for your blog. This will distance you from your work and give you a better chance of making a good job of editing it.

2] Upload your book onto an e-reader and have that read your book back to you, while you follow the text on your computer correcting errors as you go. Hearing misspelled words and typos will make them more noticeable than reading them to yourself.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Editing Tips For Indie Writers

 

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Kindle vs Book

Published by Owen Jones on 31 December 2015
Kindle vs Book

Kindle vs Book

Kindle vs Book

If you are an avid reader, I am sure that you have heard of Amazon and its electronic book device called the Amazon Kindle? So, what are the pros and cons of the Kindle vs book? There is a problem with the amount of trees we use for paper and this has partially been countered by the use of recycled material, but have we overcome the problem? Probably not, so the Kindle vs book question could help out tremendously here. The latest version of these popular handheld book readers can hold the content 3,500 books and that saves a lot of paper and a lot of recycled paper too.

Kindle vs book? That is the question. Obviously, it has to be a personal choice. I personally like having a physical book to read and hold, but I do not like lugging the weight of half-a-dozen thick, paper books with me when I go on holiday. I like it even less, when I am travelling around, say, the Far East and finish my last book before my vacation ends. It is not always easy to find a good book store abroad.

This is where the Kindle wins the Kindle vs book debate. If you run out of reading material, you either go on line with the built-in Wi-Fi and download a book or if there is insufficient wireless coverage, go into an Internet Cafe, download it by computer and transfer it by USB. However, this should never be an issue as the latest Kindles can hold 3,500 ebooks.

There are hundreds of thousands of books written by famous authors before 1923 that are out of copyright and you can download them free of charge from at least three sources and probably more. The Kindle vs book debate will go on and on, but I think that it is just a question of horses for courses. And talking about courses, universities will probably switch to ebook readers within five years, soon to be followed by colleges and high schools.

Kindle Screen Size

There are at least two Kindle screen sizes: the standard Kindle screen size of 6″ and the Kindle DX with a screen of 9.7″, which is marketed to better read text books, newspapers and magazines. However, there are other ways of reading Kindle ebooks too. You can get a free Amazon app to allow you to download and read Kindle books on your desktop, laptop, tablet, palm top and even cell phone. You can even read kindle books on your TV screen, so the Kindle screen size is really up to you.

Handheld Book Readers

Kindle is Amazon’s ebook reader, but there are other handheld book readers too. Dozens of them in fact, but they are all about the same price and Amazon has the advantage of having such a huge catalogue of e-books ready for instant download. some of which are free. There are other e-book stores and libraries though offering free, downloadable ebooks for handheld book readers like the Project Gutenberg Press Library and Google Books. if you are interested in handheld book readers, you will have to look at the Kindle, but remember that there are other choices too.

Electronic Book Devices

Electronic book devices are usually just called ebooks or ebook readers. Kindle is only one of the many electronic book devices on the market. Indeed, people were reading ebooks ten years or more before Kindle handheld book readers became available. Kindle recognises that too and you can use one of the free kindle apps to read Kindle books on you desktop, laptop or cell phone screens. Amazon Kindle handheld book readers are popular because they are so portable, but a full size computer screen is still easiest of all electronic book devices to see.

Kindle Reader Format

The kindle reader format is Amazon’s own, in-house format called AZW and every ebook that you buy or download from Amazon will be published in this format. However, the Kindle will read other formats if you transfer material from a computer via a USB cable or if you get Amazon to convert the file for you. If you want to convert a document to the Kindle reader format, you can send it to an email address at Amazon, where they will convert it free of charge and send it back to you. Using the Kindle reader format will solve strange formatting quirks produced by non-AZW formats. The Amazon Kindle will also read ebooks to you as audio books. Stephen king was the first author to publish a novel exclusively in Kindle reader format.

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Kindle vs Book

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NaNoWriMo 2015

Published by Owen Jones on 10 October 2015
Tiger Lily of Bangkok - NaNoWriMo Winner

Tiger Lily of Bangkok – NaNoWriMo Winner

NaNoWriMo 2015

Are you aware of NaNoWriMo 2015? I imagine that if you are not a writer then you are probably not. However, NaNoWriMo 2015 is very important to the world at large and to many, about twenty-five thousand people individually every year.

NaNoWriMo 2015 takes place in November and stands for ‘National November Writing Month’ or something very similar, but is actually open to anyone in the world. NaNoWriMo 2015 is a n organization that encourages and more importantly supports writers, especially novices, to write a book once a year during the month of November.

I know people who have written a book for NaNoWriMo 2015 every year for more than a decade, but never write one outside that month. It is a breath of fresh air to write a book a year and then return to their normal lives. Not that you need to take a month off work to write that novel.

To ‘win’ at NaNoWriMo 2015, you have to write a novel of fifty thousand words in thirty days. Now to someone who has never written a book before, that may sound frightening, but it is easier when you realise that it only means writing about seventeen hundred words a day.

NaNoWriMo

NaNoWriMo

If you think that that is a lot, it really isn’t.

Ten years ago, I read at the bottom of a diary page, ‘If you want to become a writer, write for ten minutes a day’.

That will sound stupid to non-writers, but I can assure you that once you are ‘in the groove’ and the advice said actually writing, not thinking about it, the time flies.

I cannot write for only ten minutes, because ten minutes turns into hours, and in hours you can write seventeen hundred words.

I personally write at the speed of about six hundred words an hour, but I know those who write much faster. Well over a thousand is achievable by those who can  type. I am still a two-finger plodder after thirty-three years of learning.

So, if you would like to try your hand at writing a book, go along to the NaNoWiMo.com website and read more. It is all free.

If you see me there, say hello and we can become writing buddies!

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: NaNoWriMo 2015

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Starting a New Novel

Published by Owen Jones on 30 August 2015
Starting a New Novel

Starting a New Novel

Starting a New Novel

I have been thinking of starting a new novel for a while now, because I feel at a loose end unless I’m writing. That’s why I bombard my regular readers with posts like this every day. The truth is that I have been looking for a subject for a month, while I have been carrying out essential site maintenance.

There wasn’t really time to implement all the updates necessary and write a new novel, but I did compile the anthology ‘Asian Shorts‘ which reached number forty in ‘UK Paid: American Asian (stories)’ this week, so that’s not bad and I am pleased for the contributors as well as myself. However, lots of work to do to get it up another thirty-odd places.

I also compiled an ebook of fifteen PLR articles on ‘Acne’ from a website I no longer have the time to run, and I wrote another novella in the Megan Series. It is number twenty-two and called ‘Megan at Carnival’. I am hoping to be working with my daughter soon, translating the first Megan into Thai.

That’s all well and good, I’m still paddling the canoe, but it is not the same as starting a new novel – a full-length one. I get asked every week to write another in the ‘Behind The Smile’ series, of which there are now five.

It sounds like the best option for now, while I pitch the full-length, stand-alone novel I wrote in the summer, to agents. No, I don’t have one of those yet either.

I should have started looking for an agent seriously, four years ago, but I never put my heart into it. Still, I’m trying now and better late than never, eh?

Meanwhile, I’ll get on with starting to write a new novel. For now, its code name will be Lek6 (not a difficult one to crack, I know), but the title ‘Full Circle’ keeps presenting itself to me and I like it.

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All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Starting a New Novel

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Site Overview Update

Published by Owen Jones on 11 August 2015
Site Overview Update

Site Overview Update

Site Overview Update:
August 11 2015:
Megan Publishing Services

Quite a lot has been happening at Megan Publishing Services over the last few days culminating in the following changes. Today, I want to report in this Site Overview Update that I finished:

1] transferring dozens of pages of useful information over from the now defunct site: kindle vs book RIP, I had that site for about five years.

2] listing all my books (novels, novellas and PLR niche content – 38 novels etc, and 95 PLR niche content ebooks. A total of 133 books)

3] writing and publishing a new PLR niche content book on teenagers’ second most favourite topic: acne and its  treatment. I also listed it for sale on Kindle, Lulu and Smashwords. This book has not yet been approved (but it will be today), so if you want to get the content for your website, get it first. It is such a common subject that I expect demand for this booklet of 15 x 500-600-word articles to be high. The content has come from one of my own websites that I have just taken down because I no longer have the time for it. The cost is $7.99

**Update: the book went live on Amazon at 1pm: http://smarturl.it/acne?IQid=MPSpage **

4] writing an article on Amazon book reviews which was picked up by ‘Modern Indie Books’ and displayed prominently. In fact it has the joint biggest slot with an article from The Guardian. You can see in on this website or in the paper (today only) here: http://smarturl.it/indie-books?IQid=MPSpost

5] our new virtual assistants service and received our first enquiry.

That is the end of all the changes that were forced up me to comply with Google and Amazon’s on internal developments, plus a few ideas of my own to centralise the services that I have to offer.

All you busy writers and webmasters, check out the new virtual assistants’ services we offer along with advertising on this site and the PLR content.

While on the subject of this site, in the first ten days of August, it has received more visitors than in the whole of January and June already and is set to be the year-so-far’s top month with a margin of more than 30% over the second month (July) percentage-wise – there have been 49,000 pageviews so far already! (So why not get yourself a banner ad and sell your stuff? Starting at $4.99 p/m with photo).

That concludes the Site Overview Update. What shall I do now? There’s still half the day to go 🙂

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: ‘Site Overview Update’ – none.

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Progress

Published by Owen Jones on 6 July 2015
Progress

Progress

Progress

The concrete boys were back today and surprised me yet again. Instead of just laying storm-water drainage, they are resurfacing the road (lane) to a depth of five or six inches with reinforced concrete. Now that’s what I call progress since no more than five residents own cars.

It just goes to support the idea that Thailand has borrowed a shed-load of money (from China?) and is trying to spend its way out of an (impending?) recession. I don’t know, like I said the other day, but it seems that way to me.

Still progress is progress, and it may ease flooding in our lane for decades (the concrete certainly won’t be worn away any time soon).

I am also making progress with my books. I have edited and re-edited that new book, which i eventually called ‘Andropov’s Cuckoo’, I am happy with that now, so I have started to submit another, a book I wrote in 2014, called ‘The Disallowed’. It was meant to be a gruesome vampire horror story, but I didn’t have it in me and it came out humorous.

I started reading and re-editing that yesterday, because I couldn’t get out, and made sufficient progress to be able to submit it to a couple of agents looking for comedy today (agents generally only want to see the first three chapters to decide if they might be interested in the book).

So, that’s more progress. It takes them four to twelve weeks to say yea or nay, and I will have it re-edited by Wednesday, then on with the next. I’ll do them all before I start anything new – probably. I do so prefer writing to what necessarily has to follow it, if you are an indie publisher.

However, I already have seven stand-alone books or series, with thirty books in the series, so any progress selling them could make a huge difference to my circumstances.

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Progress

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Pitching A Book

Published by Owen Jones on 1 July 2015
Pitching A Book

Pitching A Book

Pitching A Book

I’ve just been pitching my book to a literary agent, like I’ve been talking about for a while, so I’m full of hope that this will be a big turning point in my career as a writer. I have submitted to agents before, but only half-heartedly, not that I realised that it was half-heartedly at the time, it’s just that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I sent my first book, ‘Daddy’s Hobby’ in paper format from Thailand to London. It cost me £32 and when they didn’t reply, I gave up. Fifteen months later, I submitted another book to three agents by email, but when they replied that it wasn’t what they were looking for, I gave up again.

Then I bought the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’ (http://amazon.com/B00LGPJ2B6) from Amazon, and realised that there were recognised formats for pitching a book, a few right ways, and lots more wrong ones, and my way was not good. I read that yearbook from cover to cover in two days and it is not thin at 816 pages. I learned a lot and was determined to try again.

And then Christmas came.

Now, this is one of the disadvantages of having a book in e-format: you can easily forget about it. If you have a book on your shelf you see it there every day and that is a reminder, but my book is in the cloud. It might as well have been in cloud cuckoo land, because I forgot about it and my intentions for six months, until just recently.

Next time, if I can’t get the book on my shelf, I must remember to leave it on my computer’s desktop to jog my memory.

My Dad always said: ‘If you haven’t got a memory, get a notebook’ and it looks as if that time has come for me, because I just lost a period of six months of pitching my books and at sixty-one years of age, I may have less than twenty of those left 🙂

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Pitching A Book

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Luxury

Published by Owen Jones on 30 June 2015
Luxury

Luxury

Luxury

If buying books is a luxury, which it probably is, then the USA is doing far better than the UK, no matter what Cameron says. For the last six months, Americans have been buying more of my books every month and Brits fewer. Now, in June 2015, American sales of my books are at an all-time (3 year) high and British sales are at a twelve-month low. Other than that, June was pretty poor anyway. Does that ring true with your view of the consumption of luxury goods, whatever you perceive them to be?

Since I last said that I was going to send my latest novel to a few agents, I have edited it and re- edited it at least three times, and tomorrow I will be ready to send it off, so please wish me luck.

The jungle telegraph told my wife today that two falang (Thai for Caucasians) had been seen walking around the village. I met them this evening, Frank and his son. He’s been coming here for about as long as iI have lived here, eleven years and his brother had a house in the village about twenty years ago.

I wonder why they didn’t just tell Neem that Frank was back over? It’s strange here sometimes.

The funeral is still going on. I love the music and the singing. This one is a special wake, because they seem to have live singers and musicians, not just CD’s like most families. It’s a luxury do. I have stayed in the pub/shop an hour later for the last four nights partly out of respect and partly because I love the music and singing.

Neem and two of her friends massacred the flowers, bushes and trees in our garden three days ago. It is the most brutal form of pruning I’ve ever seen and she carries it out every couple of years, as far as I can remember, but today, after only three days, there are green shoots and leaves everywhere.

Thailand, or at least where we live, is so fertile it’s quite unbelievable to a man from South Wales.

It’s a luxury that we don’t enjoy back in Wales.

All the best.

Owen

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Podcast: Luxury

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Mental Cruelty

Published by Owen Jones on 24 June 2015
Mental Cruelty

Mental Cruelty

Mental Cruelty

I have turned my attention away from ‘Asian Shorts’ temporarily, because it is ‘out there’ already and my novel isn’t. Not only that but 2,000-odd links on my websites will stop working on July 15th. thanks to Amazon and that would be a catastrophe. I have to start tackling that problem tomorrow. Mental cruelty though I consider it to be.

This morning, I was putting my submission package together looking for representation for the new novel, when I realised that the publishing industry considers it slightly too short for its genre – about three thousand words. I had never thought about matching expected novel length to genre before. You learn something every day, don’t you?

If you’re lucky you do, I suppose.

I think my next novel will be sixth in the Behind The Smile series and I’ll probably call it a day then. That will make the story a combined 675,000 words long and most stories are only about 75,000 words. I put nine books into six, so that has to be good value, doesn’t it?

You can read more about this popular series here:

http://behind-the-smile.com

Going back to ‘Asian Shorts’, I would like to enter it onto some websites that specialise in promoting temporarily low cost books, does anyone know of any? I have never tried that particular form of promotion before.

I don’t seem to be able to concentrate today, I feel a bit snowed under and it is so hot too. A strange metaphor to pick when it is so hot 🙂 but I really am not looking forward to having to change over two thousand links – it’s a nightmare of boredom for someone like me who thinks that having to rewrite a Tweet is mental cruelty. Two thousand links! That’s more than mental cruelty, especially when it forced upon-you by another.

Well, that’s it for today, I can’t bring myself to bore you any longer.

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Mental Cruelty

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First Edition of Asian Shorts

Published by Owen Jones on 17 June 2015
First Edition of Asian Shorts

First Edition of Asian Shorts

First Edition of Asian Shorts

I am inordinately proud to announce that the first edition of ‘Asian Shorts’ will be available as from tomorrow, June 18th – Yay!

On the negative side first, it is only 74.4% (see update below) of the length that I wanted it to be, but perhaps I was over-ambitious in the first place. However, this means that if you still want to submit a(nother) story, please do so until I update this post to say that the book is full…. and if it is, perhaps we can do a second one! That really depends on you, dear writers and you, dear readers.

On the positive side, many things. The quality and divergency of the writers and their stories spring to mind. They far exceed what I had hoped for in this my first effort at such a project.

Everyone who has submitted a story has my most sincere gratitude.

There is also a surprise, which I only heard of today as I write this post and that is that one of our contributors has pitched the book to Asia Books, the biggest book chain in Thailand. However, it is not a ‘cold call’, he has sold through them before and had a meeting with them which ‘went well’. They have agreed to read the manuscript! How many writers get even that far?

So, fingers crossed on that one.

Does that make you want to submit a(nother) story to this first edition of Asian Shorts?

It does me.

Needless to say, I will be working on this project now until it’s done (besides publicising it for the rest of my life), so my own new novel, which is still untitled and the web site maintenance I was talking about this morning will have to take a back seat, but that’s how it goes when you’re a one-man band, eh?

If I have ever had a plea to make, it is this: if you want to get in this first edition of Asian Shorts (and make my life a bit easier), send me your story and bio now, right now, before we go to print for the first time.

** Update: I was reading an article by a short stories anthology master, and she says that such a book should be about 30k words long – ours is 37k, so I think we are looking good, and I am clsing submissions for this edition. However, I will create a second one, if the stories are sent to me.

Thank you.

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: First Edition of Asian Shorts

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Final Chapter

Published by Owen Jones on 13 June 2015
Final Chapter

Final Chapter

The Final Chapter

I am finally on the final chapter of that book I told you I was starting, which is why I haven’t posted for a long time. The story flowed easily from my subconscious, or wherever, to my finger tips and thence to my hard drive. I had predicted to myself that it would be 70,000 words long, and so far I am at 63k.

With the last chapter that should make 66-67k, and rewriting and editing should push it close to 70k. It’s funny to have a premonition how long a book is going to be before I’ve started to write it, but it happens every time and it has never been wrong.

The Final Chapter is second only in difficulty to write to the first, which is why I’m writing this to you, to give myself time to think how to word how the story will end. I usually start a story with a good idea what the title will be as well, but I’ve changed my mind twice already on this one and I am uncomfortable with that  kind of uncertainty.

I didn’t mean title of the final chapter, I meant the book, but now I’m doubting the title of the final chapter as well. You see, I have given all the chapters in all my books titles, not just numbers, but you have to be careful not to give the plot away in the chapter headings. A potential reader may scan those, think he or she can see the story and not bother to buy it.

The first part of the first chapter has to make the reader want to read more, and so buy the book, hopefully, but the final chapter is the next most important. If the author is planning, or even just hoping, to write a sequel, a cliff-hanger ending may be appropriate, or even just a sense that there could be more to come might be enough, but in this book the main characters die, so there will be no sequel.

So, how do you make the reader feel comfortable enough with the deaths of people they have got to know (and like, again, hopefully) that they don’t feel so upset that they don’t want to read any of your work ever again? That is my problem for today in this final chapter. I hope you read the book to find out whether I succeeded or not one day 🙂

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Final Chapter

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Storm Not Monsoon

Published by Owen Jones on 2 June 2015
Storm Not Monsoon

Storm Not Monsoon

Storm Not Monsoon

Yesterday, late afternoon, black clouds could be seen on the horizon, then a wind appeared from nowhere and suddenly the clouds were overhead emptying their contents all over us. When I say suddenly, I mean, I knew what was going to happen, but I didn’t have time to finish my half a bottle of beer.

The shopkeeper let me take refuge with her and when we ventured outside thirty minutes later, three houses had been blown down, a friend had lost his garage roof and a neighbour his whole garage. Most of the debris is probably twenty or thirty kilometres away, but somehow nobody was hurt.

The monsoon is three weeks late, so I asked whether it had started, but I was told it hadn’t. I have been here ten years but never seen anything like that before.

I’ve changed my mind about the snake I saw the other day, it was a Wall’s Bronzeback, which the book says is olive green. Confusing, isn’t it? However, it also says they are plentiful in the northeast, and that’s where I live, so that’ll do me.

The book I was supposed to start writing yesterday, I actually started a week ago, but I typed it all up yesterday and today. 18,656 words, so that’s a nice little boost in production. I’ll start chapter seven out of about twenty when I go for a beer later on, if rain doesn’t stop play.

I have been keeping book sales records for five years now, and May has been worse that April four times, including this year, but it was still 52% up on last year. Since I write several books a year, that would seem about right, so it doesn’t look to me like the book-buying public is buying much more than usual.

It was my best sales month in the USA ever though, so if books are considered luxury items, perhaps their economy is doing better too. Worst print book sales since May 2013 though, and that was my worst ever.

On the plus side, June has always beaten my May sales 🙂

All the best,

Owen

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Podcast: Storm Not Monsoon

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