Drive to Nowhere: the future!

As with many self-published novels, it's been hard to promote Drive to Nowhere and keep its momentum going. However, it's given me the confidence to continue writing different things and maybe one day get a book 'properly' published! I am still close to my characters, and they may well be featured in subsequent books - I have, after all, left it open for a sequel. Perhaps Eeare could start in her own adventure series!

(Thanks to all the positive feedback I've received so far - particularly from Dom and Victoria, and Anne for her encouragement.)

Drive to Nowhere at the London Book Fair's New Title Showcase

Those of you who know the story behind by thriller Drive to Nowhere know it's a self-published creation, done on a minimal budget.

I'm a self-published author and proud of it. I don't have an agent, I can't afford promotional tie-ins with social networking websites, and it's difficult to get it reviewed as people want free copies in return, which costs money.

One thing that independent publishers and authors can do is be featured in the London Book Fair's New Title Showcase. Essentially, as you can see from the image, it allows your book to be displayed on one of a series of bookshelves. It's not cheap but it is affordable (less than £200) and it also gives you free entry to the Fair (more about that another time). The three-day London Book Fair is absolutely massive, attracting tens of thousands of visitors from around the world and featuring hundreds of stands. Book buyers, agents, publishers, authors, marketers... pretty much everyone in publishing goes to the LBF. So, the chance to have your book out there for all to see is great. You see it as soon as you come in, as well!

The trouble with the New Title Showcase, for all its good intentions, is that the organisers could do more in promoting the actual books on its stands. The stand's signposting is a little crude looking when compared to, say, the snazzy Wiley stand or the glitzy HarperCollins or Mills and Boon ones. I appreciate there's a budget to maintain but even so, there are no signs that explain what its mission is and what the books it displays are all about. Yes, it's a showcase of new books. And some of the larger independents will have stalls elsewhere in the show, and their books are displayed on the outside part of the stand. But for the 425 books on display, 300 of those come from independent publishers - it's likely that most of the people are just like me. Drive to Nowhere is still lost in a swarm of other books, albeit a far smaller swarm (for the record, mine's on the longer stand, third row down, eight across).

Quite frankly, if you came across the books as they're displayed, you would only be attracted to a book by the look of its title and cover. They aren't really categorised properly and I didn't notice that my book had been particularly thumbed through. Maybe a small, one-sentence blurb posted on the shelf underneath each book might help differentiate them. There's an accompanying free catalogue, which a lot of people were picking up thinking it was a Fair directory or something similar, so at least there's that, and each book has a sticker so people can look it up in the catalogue.

Drive to Nowhere at the London Book Fair

I haven't had much time to market Drive to Nowhere, but it will be showcased in April 2008 at the London Book Fair in Earl's Court. No, I won't have a special stand and be surrounded by dozens of keen buyers (I wish). Instead, it's going to be listed at the New Titles Showcase which is essentially just a series of bookshelves that display new books from small or independent publishers. It's not cheap to exhibit (between £100-£200), but it is not extortionate when you consider that it is a small way for people to have their books seen by people who matter without forking out for a big stand. And I've probably spent about £100 shipping review copies of my book around the UK and the world, so this will allow me to target lots of people in one go.

The problem is that it will certainly be difficult for me to stand out from the hundreds of other books that will be gracing the shelves! It's probably one of the last paid-for things I'll be doing to promote Drive to Nowhere, at least for now.

A room with an Eeare

Eeare. What kind of a name is that? "It doesn't sit... quite right," someone told me. "It looks a little odd."

I could see her point, and if you say the name out loud ("ear"), it doesn't actually seem like a name. But it stuck, and it's out there. I'm used to the name now.

A friend is going to donate a copy of my book to my old high school library -- her niece now attends the school -- and I hope they stock it!

Of course, I couldn't help but think of my old school when I wrote the book, but only two rooms in the book are based on real places. When I wrote about the science laboratories, I totally imagined Lab 4, where I used to have my geology lessons. And in one later scene, Eeare talks to her art teacher, Mr Moore, in a portable classroom -- a modular room on brick stilts; sometimes called a demountable. Although Mr Moore himself isn't based on my old art teacher, the classroom they have the conversation in totally the same one I had my art lessons in (at least in my mind). I'm sure they look a lot more modern now, but the one I had was kind of shabby and 1980s-style!

You can read the first two chapters for free right here.

Captain Epic Kindred, rock star extraordinaire

Random facts about Captain Epic Kindred

• Captain Epic is the father of Eeare Kindred.
• His real last name is Fitzgerald.
• He is a vegetarian and likes tofu burgers.
• His favourite game is Mah-Jong.
• He calls all his butlers Giles.
• He has a gold tooth and likes to lick it with his tongue to try and suck the mineral content out of it.
• He owns a genuine astronaut's costume, which he has worn at fancy dress parties.
• He likes dating famous models.
• His favourite drink is water (contrary to popular belief!).
• He is thirty-nine years old.
• The famous French musician Christophe Apostrophe remixed Captain Epic's single Global Insanity.
• He has signature dreadlocks.
• He is a single dad.

For more about the lovable party animal Captain Epic, you can purchase Drive to Nowhere at your favourite online retailer!

Interesting print quality comparisons

Having a self-published book that is printed on demand means you (or rather, your readers) have to tolerate inconsistency in print quality, because different printers have different ways of reproducing your source file.

So, if you are about to order one of my books or have just done so, although the interior of the book - the main content - will remain the same there are some slight exterior difference.

For example, after designing the front cover of Drive to Nowhere, I purchased proof copies from the Lulu site. The printed colours, especially the blacks, did not come out as dark as I would have liked (see version on the right), although the quality was nevertheless acceptable.

The company that printed the books when I ordered them via Lulu was Anthony Rowe, a short to medium run book manufacturer in the UK. When comparing the book to the source file, my design definitely looked darker on screen (and my monitor has been colour calibrated) and the edges of the letters on screen was smooth. But as we know, in the print on demand world this doesn't mean that the actual physical book will turn out the same.

For this reason, I chose not to try and redo the cover because no matter who you use, the cover will always look slightly different.

If you order my book from Amazon UK, then Lightning Source will print it, so it will look different again. I'm still waiting on that copy, but I also ordered a copy of my book from the Amazon US site which I think is also printed by Lightning Source. It was interesting to discover the colours turned out far darker than the Anthony Rowe version -- almost too dark, in fact, but closer to my original intention. In addition, there was less of the blurred, fuzzy edges that had characterised the Anthony Rowe versions. Also of note: they'd added their own version of the barcode to the back of the book and on one of the last pages, and the back cover was EXACTLY as I'd intended. So if the third printer produces a front cover that's in between these two versions and has the Amazon.com style back cover... or is that too much to ask?

Drive to Nowhere and Amazon distribution

You can now 'search inside' Drive to Nowhere - a process that the publisher must initiate. It was all quite easy, though, and took less than three weeks.

The book is currently listed for sale on all Amazon sites including Japan and retail prices remain steady at approximately $19/£9.

When you purchase a Distribution package through Lulu, the book is eventually listed by a number of online retailers. However, physical shops don't tend to automatically stock your book unless you have a reputation because print-on-demand books are not returnable. You're a liability to them if you're an unknown.

One solution is to buy in bulk yourself and sell the books on consignment to the physical bookstores. For most, this is not economical, takes up space and defeats the whole purpose of print-on-demand. You need to buy a lot of books to get a higher margin on them.

The other advantage of an ISBN is that theoretically customers should be able to order a book in from any bookstore, right? It doesn't always work that way, however, due to the deals big chains have with distributors. With a little persistence it should be possible, though