Guest Post by Linda Gillard

Linda Gillard is well known to the forum – not only are her books popular, but she often pops in to say hello. She is the author of four published books, the first three being Emotional Geology, A Lifetime Burning, and Star Gazing. Her fourth book, House of Silence, has just been published, but this time as an e-book. In her guest post, Linda explains why she made this decision.

Six years of DIY book promotion and social networking really paid off when I threw an impromptu Facebook party on April 2^nd for the launch of my e-book for Kindle, HOUSE OF SILENCE. It wasn’t meant to be a party, I was just celebrating with a few FB friends (who included a few BCF friends.) But then a few more showed up, then some more and then we all got a bit hooked into watching the book’s Amazon ranking rise, especially when it went to No. 1 in the Kindle Movers & Shakers chart. It was all very exciting and people stayed with me, commenting and celebrating till past midnight. It was the best and biggest book launch party I’ve ever had.

Since I was first published in 2005, I’ve given up a lot of writing time to promote my novels, but I still have mixed feelings about it. I’d rather be writing. But you have to help your books find their readers. I’ve worked hard to promote my novels with guest blogs and interviews and I’ve joined in discussions on many book forums, including BCF. Participating in those took time, but it was great for building up a following and it was also very enjoyable. Many fans became friends.

About 90% of what you do in terms of self-promotion is a waste of time – sending out press releases no one reads, doing library or bookshop events attended by a mere handful of people. The trouble is, about 10% of what you do is really valuable – you just don’t know in advance which 10%. So I’ve been generous with my time when there appeared to be no immediate reward for me in terms of sales, because one thing often leads to another. Readers who are active on one book forum tend to be active on several.

I’m a great believer in casting your bread upon the waters. I’ve given away a lot of books, but I have faith in my product. I know from experience that if people read one of my novels, they’ll want to read the others, so promoting one is actually promoting all of them. That’s all the more true now I’ve moved into the arena of e-publishing.

After two years of my agent’s best efforts, we hadn’t found a publisher for my fourth novel, HOUSE OF SILENCE. Editors said the book would be hard to market because it belonged to no clear genre. Well, they did have a point. HOUSE OF SILENCE is a country house mystery/family drama/rom-com/love story. Or to put it another way, COLD COMFORT FARM meets REBECCA.

What’s that? You’re salivating already? Your clicking finger is itchy?… I’d better explain a fundamental difference between authors and publishers. (Brace yourselves. You might find the next bit upsetting.) Authors are trying to sell their books to readers. Publishers are trying to sell their books to retailers. Increasingly, this means Tesco. Readers and Tesco, you will not be surprised to hear, have very different artistic criteria.

So I was stuck with a career in the doldrums. I had a considerable, worldwide following and my loyal fans had been waiting for a new novel for three years. Meanwhile I’d kept myself in the public eye by writing guest blogs, chatting on book forums and winning the odd book award. I had a ready-made market for a new book, but no editor wanted to publish it.

To be fair, a couple of editors really loved HOUSE OF SILENCE, but they couldn’t get their marketing team on board. One enthusiastic editor backed off when she discovered my next book wasn’t the same. She was dismayed to discover I wrote one-offs, which are – you guessed! – hard to market. (Versatility is apparently a publisher’s nightmare. In what other field of creative endeavour is that true?)

And then came the e-book revolution…

Kindle was the answer to a grumpy author’s prayer. I wasn’t desperate to see my name on a book cover or on a shelf in Waterstones. (Been there, done that.) I didn’t care if I made money, so long as I broke even. No, this was about letting a book find its readers, who I just knew would love the story and characters.

So, with my agent’s approval, I decided to publish HOUSE OF SILENCE myself on Amazon for Kindle. Believe it or not, selling the e-book at £1.90, I’ll still make more per copy sold than I did from my paperbacks. I used to get about 50p if a £7.99 pb sold in Waterstones, much less if it sold on Amazon. With HOUSE OF SILENCE I’ll get 70% of the pre-VAT Amazon price. I only need to sell 100 to go into profit. (I paid a professional designer to do a cover to – oh joy! – my specifications. So there are no headless people. No supermodel legs. No illegible fonts. Just a cover that makes a clear statement about the content of the book. Spooky old mansion under a lowering sky. An oldie, but a goodie.)

I know some readers think authors are giving e-books away at silly prices, but the appalling irony is, we’re actually making more money this way! That’s why some established authors are moving away from mainstream to e-publishing. They can earn more and have artistic control. So authors are rejoicing. The revolution is here!

I know a lot of my readers would prefer a paper book – to be honest, so would I – so I’m looking into print-on-demand to see whether it could be economic to produce “limited edition” paperbacks for readers who don’t have access to e-books or who want to own “a proper book”. Those won’t come cheap, so it all depends how much readers are prepared to pay to own a paper book. Some readers fear e-publishing heralds the death of paper books, but it isn’t either/or. We can have both.

I know I have nothing to fear from e-publishing. I’ll acquire new readers with HOUSE OF SILENCE and they’ll turn to my out-of-print back-list, so I’m going to publish two more e-books, EMOTIONAL GEOLOGY and A LIFETIME BURNING on Kindle later this year. If editors don’t want my fifth novel (finished) or my sixth (work-in-progress), then I’ll put those on Kindle too. There are plenty of people waiting to read them. (Though not Tesco, obviously.)

The way I see it, I can’t lose and have everything to gain. And to paraphrase that old saying, “Selling well is the best revenge.”

Linda Gillard’s official site.
Linda’s Page on Amazon.co.uk

So, what are your thoughts about e-books? Have you bought an e-book reader yet, and if so, how are you finding it? How do you feel about authors moving to e-publishing instead of traditional paperbacks?

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