Tag: traditional publisher

I’ve reached the end of my indie era

Jessica Redland Author4 Comments

When I secured a 3-book publishing deal with So Vain Books in September 2014, I was elated. Six months later, that contract extended to include a prequel novella. So exciting! My star was going to rise and my publishing dreams were going to come true.

Not really.

Two years later, my dreams were in tatters and my star was in a locked box at the bottom of the North Sea. With my publisher about to cease trading imminently, I secured my rights back and was back to square one. It was over and, with less than 2,500 sales across all four titles, it hadn’t quite been the success I’d hoped.

It had taken me one year and twenty-three rejections to get my publishing deal and another nine months to get my first book out there. Although trying to secure another publishing deal seemed the logical route, I couldn’t risk losing what little momentum I had by taking the time to try to do so. Besides, I didn’t have anything new written so I’d have been going out with the same trilogy and novella that So Vain Books had published and I wasn’t sure how well that would be received.

I hadn’t set the publishing world alight with my chart positions or sales volumes but I did have very good reviews. It seemed that hardly anyone discovered my books but those who did loved them. With that encouragement, my husband knocked together temporary covers and I re-issued the four books as an independent (indie) author in the autumn of 2016.

Indie publishing (or self-publishing) is not an easy route. It’s an amazing route to market for so many different circumstances – struggling to find a traditional publishing deal, not wanting a traditional deal, writing something niche, wanting control of decisions to name just a few reasons a writer might choose this route – but it is heaving with other indies. To stand out and achieve success, a lot of time and money needs to go into promotional activities and this can be a massive challenge if you’re not writing full-time and/or don’t have the money to invest. Both applied to me.

We knew the covers looked a bit ‘home-made’ because they’d been a rush-job to get my books back out there so I asked hubby to re-do them hoping fresh covers would have a positive impact. They didn’t.

I toyed with changing the titles but I knew that, like the covers, the problem was visibility. I didn’t have the know-how (or the money or the time) to get my books out there to a wider audience so the reality was that I could change everything about them and it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

I had hoped that bringing new books out would gain momentum. I did have a flurry of success with my first two Christmas books in 2017 but the level of sales and the chart positions were still nothing to write home about and they dipped off in the spring.

I paid to go on blog tours which brought me some brilliant exposure and some new fans in the blogging community but didn’t translate into sales. I even won several Chill With A Book awards including book of the month several times, cover of the month and book of the year 2019 for Dreaming About Daran. But it still didn’t translate into sales.

In 2018, completely disillusioned by lack of sales but too swamped down with the day job to invest the time in improving things, I concluded that the indie route was not for me. Several author friends were enjoying great success as indies and it was inspiring to see them doing so well… but it hadn’t hit the mark for me and I was starting to question whether I was kidding myself that I could even write!

I decided to try for a publishing deal again with a new novel I’d written and the potential to open up conversations about taking on my backlist.

A typical fortnight of sales as an indie. Some months would be much worse

Securing a publishing deal with Boldwood Books in spring 2019 is the best thing that could ever have happened to me. I had nine books in my backlist at that point and Boldwood offered me a deal for four brand new books and five from my backlist (although that was really six titles as I’d written a sequel to the original novella and the two would be combined to make one full-length novel released through Boldwood).

This contract turned me into a hybrid author where I had a traditional publishing deal but I also had self-published titles available.

My debut with Boldwood was The Secret to Happiness – the book that secured me the publishing deal. It was released first followed by the re-issue of my original ‘Welcome to Whitsborough Bay’ series, re-edited and re-titled. Making Wishes at Bay View was the combined Raving About Rhys and Callie’s Christmas Wish. New Beginnings at Seaside Blooms replaced Searching for Steven. Finding Hope at Lighthouse Cove was the new title for Getting Over Gary, and Dreaming About Daran became Coming Home to Seashell Cottage.

I later signed contract addendums for the final three books in my backlist which Boldwood have been steadily re-releasing over the past year with new titles (except Christmas at Carly’s Cupcakes which kept the same title), new covers and a fresh edit. Christmas at The Chocolate Pot Café became Starry Skies Over The Chocolate Pot Café and Bear With Me became All You Need Is Love.

None of the edits have fundamentally changed the stories; they’ve just updated aspects such as technology, removed extraneous detail and added in more emotion at times, and have generally resulted in a more polished manuscript and smoother story. It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with my amazing editor, Nia Beynon, from whom I have learned so much. Her input has definitely improved my writing.

I am currently working on the edits for the very final book in my backlist to be re-released: the story formerly known as Charlee and the Chocolate Shop. At the weekend, I took the indie version of this book down from sale ready to get the new title, cover and blurb up for pre-order this week (watch this space for the reveal!)

Each time I unpublished one of the other titles in my backlist, I thought nothing of it but when I took Charlee down on Saturday, it felt like quite a poignant moment. As I watched the final of nine titles on my author dashboard (the behind the scenes place where indie authors upload their books, load blurbs and covers and keep a track of sales) turn to ‘unpublished’ it struck me that I wasn’t just unpublishing another title; I was saying goodbye to being an indie author. Even though I struggled to make sales, I was indie for 4.5 years. I’ve had lots of jobs that haven’t lasted that long! It is the end of an era and that feels a little strange.

Although I didn’t have a great start with my first publisher and being an indie was exceptionally tough, I learned so much through those experiences. I learned about the type of author I am, which parts of the publishing process I’m good at (and not so good at), and I’ve appreciated all the amazing things Boldwood have done for me all the more because I know what it means to feel so far away from anything resembling success as an author.

I will be forever grateful that the publishing world has evolved so much over the years that there is an indie route available and that, even those my sales were limited, I still had sales. People who weren’t friends or family members discovered my writing and some of those readers are still with me today although they now sit alongside an amazing group of new readers who’ve discovered my stories thanks to Boldwood.

Indie wasn’t for me but it did help make me the author I am today and I’m glad I experienced it. So, goodbye to being an indie. Will I ever try that route again? Who knows?! I’ve just submitted the first book on another twelve-book contract with Boldwood, releasing four books a year over the next three years. I’m due back the edits on that today, after which I’ll start writing the fourth book in the Hedgehog Hollow series and I would hope that I continue to build a readership and write books that my readers and publisher love. But it’s good to know there’s still the indie route there if I didn’t get a third contract or if I wanted to write something different at some point in the future which didn’t fit in with Boldwood’s genres. Given the choice, traditional publishing is my preferred home but I think it helps when I have such a brilliant publisher and such a great relationship with them. I couldn’t imagine home being anywhere else.

Wishing you a fabulous week and thank you so very much for the part you’ve played in supporting my writing journey so far.

Big hugs
Jessica xx

So many choices and so few decisions

Jessica Redland Author4 Comments

I have a problem. My problem is that I’ve done a lot of writing recently … but hardly any of it has been novel-related. I’ve written a short story for The Write Romantics Anthology out later this year which I enjoyed and I’ve written several blog posts but I haven’t really progressed with my novels.

Why?

I think the fact that I say novelS – plural – rather than novel could be part of the problem.

By the end of November last year, I was absolutely storming it with my writing. I’d finished book 1 and it was out there seeking representation, I’d also finished my first draft of book 2 thanks to NaNoWriMo AND cracked on with about a third of book 3. (I cheated on NaNo. Officially you’re meant to start from scratch with a new book but that simply didn’t work for me timing-wise so I finished one and started the next and, let’s face it, my aim was to do 50,000 words and I achieved it. It made no difference to me whether that was on one, two or even twelve novels! Eek. Twelve. The thought brings me out in a cold sweat).

Fast forward eight months later and I’m in exactly the same position. Book 1 is out there seeking representation (still waiting on the final publisher decisions before going down the indie route), book 2 is no longer at 1st draft but it still needs work, and book 3 is still a third in and I’ve changed my mind about the order of events that I’d plotted out so carefully so change is needed. Problem is, the change is within the third I’ve already written. Typical.

So what I’m doing right now is dithering. I do a bit on book 2, I then move to book 3 and I’m now feeling I want to revisit book 1 again and all of this is not actually getting anything done.

A few thoughts spring to mind as to why a normally-organised and in control person like me is dithering so much:

  1. I’m bored of writing the trilogy, having worked on it for 11 years now and I’m ready to start something fresh
  2. I’m having a crisis of confidence thanks in part to my awful NWS critique on book 2 (where my reader kept saying there were lots of good bits then forgetting to tell me what they were)
  3. I’m genuinely not a good enough writer. I can see there are plot points to be improved upon and I’m not talented enough to do anything about them
  4. There is too much else going on in my life. Between a full-time job with a ludicrous amount of unexpected travel, family time, Brownies, keeping up with social media (as a good writer should) and life in general, I don’t have the time or energy to undertake the amount (or quality) of writing I’d like to
  5. I feel like my life is on hold whilst waiting for three final publishers to come back to me. One of these is several weeks overdue and the other two are due this week (specific timescales they gave me via email discussions as opposed to the general guidance provided at submission time). If I did get the call and if I did accept it, where I go next with the books may be quite different to what I’d do if I became indie so I’m in a state of flux not knowing at the moment

Or could it be all of the above? 

I’d say it is. Except perhaps 1. Eleven years is a heck of a long time to work on a trilogy but I’ve had significant periods within that time when I haven’t written at all (we’re talking several years when I had the munchkin) so it hasn’t been eleven solid, intensive years. I also love my characters, my setting, and believe in their stories so I don’t think I’d ever get bored of them. But perhaps that links into points 2 and 3. Because I love them so much and am so passionate about the stories they want to tell, I panic that I can’t do them justice.

Another problem is that my writing time is so snatched. I may get two hours one evening and then 2 days with nothing. This is hard for the thought process. Approx two months ago, I scrolled through book 2 and wrote on a set of post-it notes the main points of the chapters. I stuck them on a glass display cabinet next to my desk. As I was writing these out, thoughts were whizzing through my mind as to what I could link/change/add in/remove. The next step was to capture these but we were going out so my thought process got broken. A week later, I had time to pick it up again but the cogs that had been turning so well were now dormant and rusty. I tried to look at the chapter details and remember. But I couldn’t. So I put some token thoughts on in other pretty-shaped post-it notes and it all looks very impressive … but it’s not quite right because of that break. And because it’s not quite right, I’m putting off returning to book 2 because I’m still unclear what I want to do to it or why. What I really need to do is do that whole exercise again in its entirety. But where do I have time to do that?

Answer: Take a month off work (at least) and write solidly.

Likelihood of that happening: Absolutely zero.

So how do I overcome points 2-5 above and deal with the snatched writing time so that I can get this trilogy finished to the absolute best of my ability (ignoring the doubts of points 2 and 3)?

I don’t actually know.

One of my day job roles is a coach. I ask questions of others and I guide them to help them reach the solution that they have within themselves. I’m quite good at coaching myself and I like to do this in the form of writing. I’ve found that writing down my thoughts in a post such as this really helps. I explore the options and the pros and cons of each, coming to the conclusion that’s right for me. I’ve effectively coached myself through the problem. I did this with my recent decision to write under a pen name and the exploration prior to that around the indie route. When I started writing both those posts, I wasn’t really sure what I’d decide and the process generated my conclusion.

This time I can’t coach myself because the answers aren’t within me. I will put my hands up (or I would if I didn’t need them to type this) and say I honestly don’t know what to do.

Do I just hang in there and wait for no 5 issue to be resolved and hope the timescales given to me are met? What if they aren’t met, though? How much time might I wait? Time that I would be wasting. Time that I could have been writing. If I could get my act together and write!

Hmmm. Answers on a postcard please or, even better, in the comments section below. I’d love to hear your take on it. Do you recognise yourself in this post? How did you overcome it (assuming you did)? Help!!!!!