Robert New

Thanks to thebentonet.com.au and Ashfield Library, I’ve had my first media interview published. The full interview is below and you can obtain a copy of the Ashfield Gazette here. The gazette contains interviews with other authors such as Tracy Joyce (who I had the pleasure of being on a panel with at the Continuum Convention earlier this year) and Queenie Chan (Author and owner of thebentonet), so is worth a read. If you have not picked up a copy of Incite Insight yet, you can do so here (in either e-book or hardcopy).

When I was at the Continuum (Speculative Fiction) Convention in June, promoting my novel Incite Insight, I was on a panel with Steve Cameron, who by everyone’s measure was a successful writer. He’d had about 30 stories, scripts and articles published, had great reviews, won some major awards and been shortlisted for others. He’d been regularly published in major magazines and anthologies. In short he was someone people like me are envious of. His success was daunting and here I was sitting next  to him (feeling a little out of my league) on the appropriately themed panel of “writers and doubt.” Like me he had a day job as a teacher.

During the panel Steve casually mentioned something that raised my eyebrows:
“I make about $300 to $350 a year from writing. It’s enough to keep me in teaching.”
I recall a few jaws dropping when he said this. I mean he was a success and that was all he earned? What hope did the rest of us have of making a profit? But this served to remind me that the reason why I, and the reason why nearly all writers write, is because they have to. It is an urge that we have to satisfy. Simply put, I don’t write for money or glory, I write because I want, and well, need to.

I recently entered Incite Insight into a competition. In order to enter, I had to list all the marketing for the book. When I wrote it all down, I was surprised at how much had been done:

– Book launch at Readings Bookstore (+inclusion in their catalogue and display window at store).
– Paid inclusion in Ingram’s Advance Catalogue.
– Paid promotion of e-book through Book Gorilla, Booksends, eBook Lister, Fussy Librarian, and eReader News Today, in conjunction with KDP Select price promotion.
– Social Media Campaign (Facebook and Twitter).
– Panellist at Continuum (Science Fiction) Convention (additionally, bookmarks promoting the text were included in the gift bag given to all delegates.)
– Retail table at Continuum Convention.
– Free Bookmarks and book displays advertising the book at various retailers.
– Website of publisher.
– Website of author, including blog.
– Guest Speaking at Writers Groups.
– Amazon Marketing Service (paid advertisements on Amazon.com)
– Ditmar award entry.
– Book available for borrowing from 7 Libraries.
– Displays in 3 retailers.
– Emailed bloggers asking them to read and review the book.

All this has resulted in 300 sales. So not exactly setting the world on fire, but actually not too bad. As a comparison:

“The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith, aka J K Rowling, could not have received better reviews. Yet before the secret broke, the Bookseller reported The Cuckoo’s Calling had sold a total of 449 copies through BookScan since its April release.” (SPN, 2013).

While I still have a long way to go before I reach 449 copies (and to be fair that was print copies – my total of 300 includes only 90 print copies), I am really happy with my progress to date. I’ll keep up the marketing and hopefully keep the sales coming while I work on my collection of short stories which should be out early next year.

Just under two years ago, I knew no one who had published a novel. I wanted to improve my writing and publishing contacts so I joined Writers Victoria and the Monash Writers’ Group. One of the Monash Writers, Katherina Fares had a book launch for her novel View from a Barred Window last weekend, which I enjoyed going to. The photo below was taken at the launch (I’m in the middle). What amazes me is that out of the seven people in the photo only one hasn’t published a story, at least not yet (they will likely publish their first story later this year). I’m proud to say that all these people have become my friends. Over the last two years they have been a great source of inspiration and advice, and have introduced me to my editor, helped me get my book into libraries, told me when I’ve headed down the wrong path and helped me get published. So my advice to people who want to write stories is to get involved in your writing community, you never know who you’ll meet or what opportunities it presents.

This weekend I will be on several panels at the Continuum Convention. This is a Science-Fiction specific convention that is fan run. There are many well known authors (Kylie Chan, Ian Irvine etc.) on the panels as well as lesser known and unknown ones like me. As this is my first convention I am not quite sure what to expect, but I think it will be a lot of fun having public discussions on topics that interest me (a not dissimilar thing to what I did with my first book – The Conversationist).

I will also have a table at their Sunday Market to sell copies of Incite Insight.

Details can be found here: Continuum.org.au

“So are you writing another one?”

I think about my latest novel, the one I’ve been working on since Christmas. The one I was so inspired to write that I wrote a whole chapter in a morning.

“Yes,” I reply as something knots inside me.

Did I keep the guilt out of my voice?

You see, that story, the one I was, and am, so enamoured with has not had a single word added to it for four months.

My reasons for not writing are myriad – editing someone else’s book, kids, renovations, work, needing a break, chronic fatigue (damn you Epstein-Barr virus), not having large enough blocks of time to make writing worthwhile, promoting Incite Insight.

I know I need to stop making these reasons equate to excuses. It’s not ok that I’m not writing. I need to make the time and I know I’ll be happier if I do. At the moment though, I can’t see that happening for another month and a half, when my home renovations are done, work has settled down and the editing is complete.

You’re doing it again.

*sigh*

Yes, yes I am.

Now that my novel Incite Insight is available to buy/order from all major retailers, I have started the long hard slog of trying to reach a sales target that I and my publisher have in our heads.

To this end we have organised a book launch in Readings Bookshop (Hawthorn) for the first week of February (see the Readings website for information).

Here are some photos of me with a couple of readers getting their copy to read before the launch.

I know some of you are interested in the marketing side of books, especially for those considering self-publishing, so here is some further information on promotion:

Other promotional things that are happening include a marketing campaign on Amazon for the e-book (at one point recently the book made the top 40 bestsellers list) and a spot in Ingram’s catalogue (Ingram are the distributors of the book). These are more about building awareness rather than generating actual sales, but hopefully we’ll get a few that way as well.

In modern publishing, the publisher does some promotion, but a lot of the onus falls on the writer, particularly as a new author. So in this vein, in the next two months I’m likely to run a session for the Monash Writers Group about the publishing process from a writer’s perspective and talk to a book reading group at my workplace. I’m also trying to get on a panel at an upcoming book festival. All of which will be used as marketing opportunities. The aim is to introduce my work (and name) to new groups of readers. This may only result in a handful of sales and take a lot of work, but every little bit helps. At this point in my career the focus is on building brand awareness – ie get people to know me as an author as opposed to my day job (being a teacher).

Will it pay off? We’ll have to wait and see…

It is with much pleasure that I am able to announce that the E-book version of my novel Incite Insight is now available through Amazon – follow this link for details. Incite Insight

Just a reminder that you don’t need a kindle to read a kindle book – you can get  a free app for your phone, computer, tablet etc that will let you read the book (see the website for details).

My (hardcopy/printed) book is so close to publication which is very exciting, but at the same time knowing that it was originally going to be available a month ago means it is also very frustrating. My publisher changed who they print through (they are a publisher not a press) and the product produced by the new printer is not quite the same. The colours on the front cover appear quite different (for example), which means a number of revisions have had to be made, resulting in the delay. The advantage of the new printer is that they are local (rather than overseas) and can link in with the distributor Tale Publishing want to use.

So fingers crossed it will be available to order before the end of the year.

In other news the book launch for Incite Insight will be at Readings Bookshop (Hawthorn) in early February. Contact them (or me) for more details.