This blog post is definitely one for fellow writers, although if readers want to drop in a comment I’d be interested in what they have to say.
I’ve now published twelve books with a thirteenth due quite soon. Most of these are historical novels. That’s six Napoleonic era books about James Burke, and my three books on issues around colonialism and the British Empire in the mid-19th century. Unsurprisingly, the swashbuckling adventures of a British spy in the Napoleonic wars are massively more popular than the heavier books about Empire. That, after all, is why, following advice from my then agent and publishers, I wrote them.
The three books that aren’t historical are all Urban Fantasies. That’s about as far from historical novels as you can get. I love writing them because they are huge fun. There’s a large and enthusiastic audience for Urban Fantasy, so when they first come out they tend to sell quite well, but because there are only three of them (one standalone novella and two short novels which have, as they say, series potential) sales soon fall off.
After doing this for years, I’ve got to the stage where there is a decent readership for the books about James Burke. It means I now have to look more seriously at things like marketing, in the hope that I can keep the ball rolling and continue to attract new readers.
I find myself spending more of my time reading about how to sell books. Sadly, I can end up spending longer trying to find ways to sell the books I’ve already written than writing new ones.
There are lots of ways to promote your books – too many to list. Many people who write about this area, though, say that one of the most effective is newsletters. Newsletters let you build a relationship with your readers, providing a ready market as you produce new books. Newsletters have the advantage that they are cheap and that, although the administration can be a nuisance, actually writing them should come fairly easily.
Newsletters are therefore the first thing that I would like to explore.
I have put a toe in the water of producing a newsletter. There’s a signup form at the bottom of every page on my blog if you fancy a look at it. I’m happy to admit, though, that it doesn’t have many readers. In fact, I seem to reach far more readers through this website (around 3,000 visitors a month) or Twitter (over 2,000 followers) than I am ever going to reach through the newsletter.
An obvious first step in addressing this it is to try to increase the subscriber base. I’ve read that the best way to do this is to give something away to new subscribers.
During lockdown I recorded an audiobook of my Urban Fantasy, Dark Magic. It’s not the most sophisticated recording you are ever going to hear, but it’s fun and, even without my promoting it, it’s sold a handful of copies. Now Spotify have given me codes to give 100 copies away. So there we are: a free audiobook for anyone who signs up to my list.
I decided to trial it first by offering a copy to anyone on my existing list who asked for it. What it showed was a remarkable lack of interest, even amongst those who, according to my list handler, had opened the email offering it.
Thinking about it, the problem might be that most of the people on my list are there because they are interested in my historical fiction and they have no interest in Urban Fantasy. I read some more about how to make a success out of newsletters and was very firmly told by an expert that it was important to have different newsletters for different genres. So should I have one newsletter for historical fiction and a separate one for Urban Fantasy? That’s twice the work and loses the possibility of cross selling from the books of mine that people already know to the much less well known ones. And if I do have a separate list for Urban Fantasy, should I have a separate list for the mid-19th century Empire stories, which also seem to languish unloved by James Burke fans?
And if I do have a newsletter for just one genre, what do I put in it? I produce a blog post every week. Quite a lot of these are about things that might interest readers of historical fiction. Do I have to produce twice as much such material?
Which brings me to another problem I have with author newsletters. I subscribe to a few of these and, say it soft, I usually don’t read them. Even the ones I know are full of good stuff. What can I say? Life is short. But, friend, assuming you are reading this, can you tell me honestly that you read the author newsletters that you are subscribed to? And, if you do read some, but not others, what is it that makes you open them?
I really, really want to run a successful newsletter. To have an army of devoted fans just waiting for the next book to drop. But the more I think of the practical issues (What do I give to get them to sign up? What books do I talk about? What do I actually say in the letter?) the more I find myself recoiling from the idea. But what does that leave me with? Amazon ads? (Expensive, uncertain and involving a lot of effort to get right.)
Come on fellow authors (and readers if there are any still with me): what do you think?
I’m very gently easing myself back into writing. A fellow writer has just been boasting of sitting down to start a new book and bashing out 2,000 words “just like that”. That is so not happening here. I’m always happy to admit that I am a lazy writer, but even when I roll up my sleeves and get to work, I write slowly. I used to write commercial non-fiction (often anonymously) and the ability to turn out large numbers of words to a timetable was crucial. Nowadays, I write fiction and I like to take my time over it.
I keep reading stuff on social media about setting my writing goals. Really? If I were going to set goals and work hard to achieve them, I might as well go back to having a proper job. My writing is now beginning to sell enough to generate a pleasant side income, but it’s never going to produced the sort of money that I got when I was working. In fact, it doesn’t produce the sort of money that I get from teaching the occasional tango lesson. (Feel free to ask me to teach you!) So my writing goal is to finish the third draft of Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras and produce something that can see the light of day in the first half of the year. After that, I’d quite like to write another Galbraith & Pole book, but first I’ll have to have an idea for a plot and, so far, I just don’t.
I am going to try to do more about selling the books I’ve written already, particularly the John Williamson Papers. People who read them generally like them, but the never took off the way the Burke series did. It would be nice to see more people reading and enjoying them. I keep being told that the answer is a newsletter. I dohave a newsletter (you can sign up at the bottom of the page) and I’m going to try to give people more good stuff if they sign up. Keep your eyes peeled!
What else? I’ve no idea really. Outside of writing I’ll be doing a lot of dancing and I’ve already booked to watch other people dancing right through to August. Once it gets warmer I’ll be putting on my skates again. (I haven’t been skating since a madcap run round Buenos Aires in October.). Mostly, like a lot of people right now, I’ll be concentrating on not needing to go to hospital and not making any plans that involve railways.
So here we are at the end of 2022.It’s been a funny old year, hasn’t it? A sort of good news: bad news kind of a year. Russia invaded Ukraine, but the war hasn’t gone nuclear. A small, self-selected group of not-terribly-bright people elected the most shockingly incompetent Prime Minister Britain has ever had, but she was only there for 44 days. Energy prices have rocketed to the point where many people can no longer afford to heat their homes, but we have yet to face power cuts.
Against this exciting background, daily life has continued remarkably much as usual here, though admittedly rather less warmly than normal lately. After over two years when even visiting Wales seemed like an adventure (and was often impossible) we have started to go abroad again with trips to Sweden (pictured above) and, towards the end of the year, Buenos Aires. It was lovely to get back to Argentina, but generally we’ve limited our travelling to England. It turns out there are still some fascinating places we have never visited before: amazing stately homes like Basildon Park and whole towns like Shrewsbury full of wonderful historic buildings.
Basildon Park
I’ve blogged here about all this, of course. Although I am always threatening to cut down on blogging, I’m still turning out something every week, though sometimes the space has been given over to guests like Carol McGrath and Anna Legat. There have been some brilliant guest posts and all of them are still available on the blog.
Despite all the excitement of Mr Musk’s antics, I’m still on Twitter (@TomCW99). I struggle to amuse on TikTok, but do feel free to have a look at tomwilliams4777.
In amongst all this excitement I managed to publish three books in 2022. The first was Burke and the Pimpernel Affair. All the Burke books are different and this one was a straightforward spy caper with more than a nod to Baroness Orczy’s Scarlet Pimpernel. It’s a fun read and I hope you enjoy it. Also a fun read was Eat The Poor, another story about Galbraith and Pole, this time with a satirical edge to add to the fun.
The third book to be published was Tales of Empire. It’s a collection of just four short stories. I wrote one of them, but the significant thing is that it appeared under the Big Red imprint so Big Red is now definitely a real (if small) publisher and not just a cover for self-publishing. That made me happy. (And Tales of Empire is just 99p, so why not treat yourself and make me fractionally happier?)
So maybe not that bad a year after all. And 2023 might even be better.
This Saturday (3 December) I’ll be at the Friends of Brompton Cemetery Christmas Fair to sell copies of Something Wicked. It makes perfect sense because Brompton Cemetery is at the heart of the story.
Something Wicked is a police procedural with a difference: one of the policemen is a vampire. And although he doesn’t live in Brompton Cemetery (he prefers the comfort of an apartment near Sloane Square), Brompton Cemetery is the centre of a community that takes care to keep itself out of the limelight — or out of any light at all, come to that. The book is firmly tongue-in-cheek and, according to one early review, it is “frequently funny and clever”, which is not to say that it does not have its share of blood and horror. But these vampires are not the traditional creatures of darkness, hunting through the night to drain the blood of virgins. Instead, like regular people (or ‘Mortals’ as they think of us), they come in all shapes and sizes, from the perpetual student (“Jacob’s at least 110 years old. Still, they say you’re never too old to learn”) to the senior partner in a top law firm. Urbane and sophisticated (at least for the most part) they just want to be left alone, taking the odd sip of blood where it can do no harm. When things go wrong and a peer of the realm turns up drained and dead, the vampires send their own investigator to work alongside the Metropolitan Police to close the case before things get out of hand.
Brompton Cemetery
I had huge fun writing this story, taking all the standard vampire tropes and tweaking them to make a credible London subculture. Brompton Cemetery features heavily because after a visit it is difficult not to believe that there are creatures inhabiting some of the amazing sepulchres there. Tango also figures prominently. Partly this is because authors are always encouraged to ‘write what you know’ and I am passionate about the dance, but also because I have always associated tango – its social rituals and nocturnal lifestyle – with the Undead. My vampires love tango and humans who join in their dances can consider themselves privileged.
“Tango is, I think, a point at which your world and ours converge. The music speaks of great beauty and unbearable sorrow; of love and of death.”
Because I usually write historical novels, I tried to provide some historical context for my vampires, so we have visits to the world of Anglo-Saxon Britain, an interview with Charles II and a final solution to what actually happened to Princess Anastasia during the Russian Revolution.
So there you are: police procedural, vampire fantasy, an essay on tango and some history thrown in. What more could you ask for?
I like to blog about interesting places I’ve been, especially if they have a historical connection. So Monday’s day out can’t pass without a mention.
My son’s brigade was responsible for providing a squadron to mount the guard at Buckingham Palace and he went along to represent brigade headquarters and to generally admire the performance of the squadron. I was invited to gawp through the railings at Buckingham Palace and then to join him and other guests for lunch at Saint James’s Palace.
Although I have lived in London all my adult life, I have never been to see the changing of the guard. It’s worth a visit, if only for the music. Both the Old Guard (the one being changed) and the New Guard bring their bands with them and, besides the marching to and fro and the occasional shouted order, much of the hour or so of the ceremony is spent listening to music – and very good music as the Army takes its music seriously.
The Old Guard and their band
I did wonder (along with most of the tourists watching the spectacle) why it took so long and why there was so much time was spent with apparently nothing happening except for the captain of the Old Guard and the captain of the New Guard pacing backwards and forwards across the Buckingham Palace forecourt. The reason, I was told over lunch, is that Buckingham Palace and Saint James’s Palace are guarded by the same squadron so people have to come and go from Saint James’s Palace which is a brisk walk halfway down the Mall. (American readers please note: the Mall is a wide road leading up to Buckingham Palace, not a place full of shops.) The pacing backwards and forwards is to give the captains of the guard an estimate of how long it will take for the sentries from St James’s Palace to arrive so the ceremony can run smoothly. Obviously, this way of time keeping predates the wrist watch but never let a technical advance get in the way of ritual. Anyway, the whole thing was terribly impressive and the uniforms most spectacular. The New Guard were Gurkhas, so they could not compete with the Old Guard and its busbies, but their drill was perfect. Gurkhas take their soldiering very seriously and I am confident that His Majesty was in safe hands. Actually, security at Buckingham Palace is handled by the Metropolitan police with the military just there as a backup, though at the Tower (technically an Army headquarters) the police aren’t involved.
94 Squadron Queen’s Own Gurkha Logistic Regiment (QOGLR) mount guard
Because it was the King’s birthday, we got a bonus on Monday, with the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery trotting past the palace on its way to fire the birthday salute in Green Park.
By a happy chance the changing of the guard ended just as the gun salute was starting, so we had the pleasure of seeing that as well. Watching the immaculately turned out gunners kneeling at attention (yes really) in straight lines while the guns fired one after another, it was strange to imagine that this drill was originally all about the very serious business of getting your gun into battle at speed and getting out again at speed if things went badly. I doubt any of Wellington’s gunners looked nearly as smart as these.
On to St James’s Palace, built by Henry VIII as a hunting lodge when this part of London was forest. It looks quite small from the front but it’s a large complex which includes Clarence House where the King is living. Most of the working royals have apartments there to provide a London base and soldiers on ceremonial duties at Buckingham Palace are based there too.
The Officers’ Mess is rather lovely. You realise it is not as other officers’ messes when you see the sword rack – and when you realise that it’s genuinely needed as otherwise where would officers park the swords they were wearing?
Officers’ messes will all have some sort of silverware or artworks that reflect the history of the regiment but this mess is used by a lot of different regiments so it has some especially lovely things in it. I was particularly excited by Marengo’s hoof. Marengo was Napoleon’s horse. (He was one of several but reportedly his favourite and Napoleon was riding him at Waterloo.) After Waterloo, Marengo was brought to England as spoils of war and when he died (aged 38) one of his hoofs was made into a snuff box.
It’s still in use. Did I take snuff from Marengo’s hoof? Of course I did.
There’s also hair from Marengo’s mane.
There’s a silver statuette of Wellington in pride of place on the table so here, at least, we celebrate the winner of Waterloo rather than (as, notably, at Waterloo itself) the man who lost.
It was the Napoleonic links that most excited me, but there are some other fascinating things there. The most precious, historically, is this portrait of Queen Victoria – unfortunately impossible to photograph without catching a reflection.
It is supposed to be one of only four that do not show her wearing black. Apparently on Albert’s death she had all the paintings she could lay her hands on retouched to show her in mourning. If true this would explain why so many modern representations of the young Victoria look uncannily like this one.
It was an excellent lunch and a special day. I hope you enjoyed sharing at least part of it.
A lot of people say that you shouldn’t read your own reviews but that’s always struck me as rather strange. Very few writers do it for the money so a kind word from a reviewer is often the most rewarding thing you get in exchange for your creative efforts. This, which turned up yesterday, is a lovely example:
Of course, not all reviews are kind. Some of the negative ones are hilarious. My favourite review of ‘The White Rajah’ (no longer visible on Amazon as it was of an earlier edition) complained that it had been ruined by “the sexual proclivities of the author” and went on to ask what evidence there was that James Brooke was gay. A helpful reply in the comments suggested, “His diaries.”
More serious negative reviews can give useful indications of what does or doesn’t work in your writing and may help improve future novels.
Sometimes, though, a negative review shows that a reader has not enjoyed your book for reasons that are not their fault or your own. These always seem quite sad. The latest two-star review for ‘The White Rajah’ is a good example.
Perhaps this reader had read my Burke books or had seen reviews of them and thought that ‘The White Rajah’ was a similar sort of action/adventure book. I like to think that there is a certain amount of action and adventure in it (there’s a small war, and battles with pirates and escapes through the jungle) but the core of the story is about the conflict between James Brooke’s idealism and the pragmatic (and often brutal) realities of colonial rule. It’s not a particularly easy read. (Please don’t let that put you off – lots of people tell me it is a seriously good book and well worth the effort.)
It’s always annoying when you read a book which turns out to be completely different from what you were looking for. It can be a particular problem when an author writes very different types of books. One solution is for the author to use different pen names for the different genres and I do wonder whether I should have done this. I write three very different kinds of book: the James Burke novels which are classic action/adventure set around the Napoleonic Wars; the John Williamson Papers, which is a trilogy looking at issues of colonialism and class conflict in the mid-19th century; and my Urban Fantasy stories which are about Black Magic and vampires and werewolves and which are huge fun but very, very different from my historical fiction. I hope you like all three, but I know a lot of people won’t.
Reviews are valuable for both readers and writers. Reviews should help readers decide what sort of book they are about to read so that they don’t, like the unfortunate reviewer above, get 50% of the way through a book before realising that it just isn’t the one they wanted. (Why he thought this was a seafaring book, I have no idea. It has a ship in it, but so do a lot of historical novels but we’re not all rewriting Patrick O’Brien.)
Reviews do also provide feedback to writers who can feel that they are sending their work out into the void, even when their sales figures prove that they are not. If you have enjoyed a book, a review can be an easy way to say ‘Thank you’ to the author and most really appreciate that.
Reviews are also – and I can’t stress this enough – the best way of generating book sales. The worst thing about taking back control of my books and publishing them myself was losing all the Amazon reviews that they had accumulated when they were published by other people. If any of you would care to write reviews now they are published by Big Red (that’s me), that would be much appreciated.
If you are quick (and are reading this on the Friday I wrote it) you can still pick up a FREE copy of ‘Tales of Empire‘, four short stories by four indie historical fiction authors. If you do, please consider leaving a short review once you’ve read it. Thank you.
