Nick Bryan

self-publishing update

Becoming An Internet Author – Week One

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The slow but determined march towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. A few days ago, I blogged a little about receiving professional edits on the text and my feelings on same. I think I reached equilibrium by the end, and I’m relatively okay with the direction it’s going.

However, there is obviously another side to the whole thing. If I’m self-publishing (or author-publishing or hybrid-authoring or whatever), I obviously have to do all my own promotion. Well, I’m hoping some good reviews will do a bit of the work for me, but I still have to get the book to some reviewers.

All of which means doing some tweeting, some blogging, some awkward-for-me self-advertising. Talking about myself. Becoming an Internet Author. Never mind my damn edits, how do I feel about that?

Fixed Books In Time – Even the Doctor can’t save us!

I do a little promotion for my stuff now, but it helps that I’m generally linking to recently updated items – a new post on this site, a Hobson & Choi update on Jukepop or whatever TV review I’ve recently scribed. The trouble with books – damn them – is that they’re pretty static.

Once the self-published volume goes up into the world, probably some time in July, I will need to keep plugging despite it remaining identical, no matter how self-conscious I feel about repeatedly mentioning a fixed point in time. Think I finally understand why they make Doctor Who so uncomfortable.

Still, there are thousands of authors in the world, self and traditionally published, and at least a few seem to get along without all their friends and internet followers deserting them. It must be possible. Just try and keep the ratio of ramble-to-promo strong. Don’t let the plugs get too dry and generic.

I’ll probably attempt at least some form of giveaway/competition once the book is out, so stay tuned if you want to get involved with winning stuff. It seems a nice way of doing a plug without boringly begging.

#MildyAmusing #Subheading

Aside from that, trying to improve this website. Make it clearer, more visually appealing and buy-my-stuff orientated.

Of course, anyone who has the words “writer” in their Twitter bio has probably been followed by a lot of random authors with a massive amount of followers, suspiciously similar number of people they follow, thousands of tweets about their book and almost nothing else.

To be honest, when I overthink myself to death about becoming an Internet Author, I’m mostly worrying about doing that. But only we can control our own destiny, etc. Most likely going to continue making poo jokes on social media even when I have a book published. I am a human being, not a wares-push-bot, and I’m pretty sure not everyone who follows me on Twitter is even that bothered whether I have a book out or not. Hopefully my fellow human people respect that I genuinely like what I’ve produced and am just trying to get along without being a pain in the arse.

Oh, and I might resist the urge to use ten million #hashtags as well. I kinda feel talking about your #book on the #kindle #ereader in the #crime genre might be too vague to get any traction? Correct me in the comments if I’m wrong.

But if anyone wants to try and get #HobsonVsWolf trending, that’d help me a great deal. (Little injoke for Hobson & Choi readers there…)

Receiving my first set of edits – A Psychological Journey

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So, the ongoing plunge towards Hobson & Choi self-publication continues. I sent my manuscript of Book One off to an editor, because if my trip to London Book Fair taught me one thing, it’s that you gotta let someone else loose on it.
After all, I’m competing with an array of authors who have editors, I’m bothering to get a decent cover done, so I might as well make sure the insides are up to scratch.

With that goal in mind, I got my book back from the editor about a week ago, and have just blasted through the whole lot of edits once, making changes accordingly. It’s a strange experience, getting edited for the first time, and even after chatting to other people beforehand, it’s still… interesting.

Denial

A lot of writers say that when they first get professional feedback on their work from a professional editor or agent (or perhaps other professionals such as doctors, lawyers and accountants), they hear the bad parts and their first response is to admit: “Yes… yes, I knew all along, I was just hoping I was wrong.”

Are they telling the truth, or do they want to sound like they know what they’re doing?

I don’t know about others, but I can tell you that I totally knew everything all along, and the feedback from my editor served only to echo my own genius back at me.

Ahem.

Acceptance

To be honest, as edits go, I probably had a fairly easy ride. Lots of good feedback about my actual story, characters, pace, etc, but quite a lot of language stuff. To be precise: I sometimes over-narrate, which is something I’m aware of, but apparently need to chop more thoroughly.

Long story short, a fair chunk of over-elaborate narration to be cut, got a few new additions to compensate. The main problem, to be honest, is that a lot of fun observations or witty jokes tend to be buried in internal narration, and in removing that to avoid over-telling things, I also lose some good turns of phrase.

All comes back to that whole Killing Your Darlings thing again, doesn’t it? I love these words, and some can be salvaged with a move to dialogue, but many will simply need to die.

Bargaining

I struggled with it for a bit, to be honest. Even wondered whether me and the editor were well matched – all the time aware that I was probably just being precious. Part of me feels that the very close third person narrative, including inner thoughts and fun character theorising, is a big part of the style, and by chopping it back, I lose a bit of the fun.

On the other hand… it does read better now. A lot smoother. I’ve saved a decent percentage of the jokes I really liked, and the ones that are still in narration are a lot less buried in blocks of text. We’ll see how it goes, I suppose.

So, long story short, Hobson & Choi Book One is getting alarmingly close to happening now – hopefully late July or early August. I may even get my new title and cover up here on the blog in the nearish future, and won’t that be fun?

Hobson & Choi Self-Publishing Attempt – An Early Update

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Like most of my big announcements, this one was somewhat buried in various podcasts and the London Book Fair blog post a month ago, so here it is up top: I am planning Hobson & Choi self-published editions, collecting the series storyline-by-storyline, with proper covers, editing, extra material and general joy.

The first of these should be out in the summer, for both e-readers and paper-readers. The second… hopefully by the end of the year, but that could end up being optimistic.

So, as I embark on this adventure, I thought I’d blog about it a little. These will be on an irregular basis rather than every week, as there won’t always be anything to report. And yes, it is taking a fuckton of willpower to not call this Self-Pub Update #1 and start numbering them, but I’ve only just made myself stop doing that with the writing blogs. Must be strong.

Anyway. How’s it going with the self-publishing, Nick?

EDITS EDITS EDITS

I’ll spare you lengthy descriptions of my editing process, as that’s another thing you can get extensively in other posts. Suffice to say, the knowledge this will be going public in the near future does focus the mind. After I went to all those self-pub seminars at London Book Fair, it became clear that editing perhaps wasn’t something I should do all by myself.

After all, I wrote Hobson & Choi, edited it before publishing to Jukepop, yet again before recording the podcasts, did another pass recently to get it into a book-shape with longer, more substantial chapters. I’m fairly close to this material. I know it better than I know the back of my hands, because I stare straight pass my limbs to the monitor. See picture to left for an illustrated metaphor of how my hands are kept in darkness by the shining glory behind them.

So, as everyone advised in the seminars, I engaged the service of an actual editor. Sent the manuscript off to them a week or so back, and the moment I get it back and have to face their opinions is one thing I’ll definitely blog about here. I’m only a little scared.

But the story needs to be the best it can be, I gotta compete with not just other self-pubs but traditionally published authors who get editorial feedback from agents and/or publishers. Mustn’t do this half-arsed, no matter how much my bank account sometimes wants me to.

MORE MORE MORE

As mentioned up top, we have extra material, to entice fans of the original serial into picking up the book anyway. This takes the form of an extra short story, set in the Hobson & Choi universe (well, it’s mostly one city so far) and expanding on some minor characters. To be precise, it takes place behind the scenes in the criminal pub The Left Hand.

This story exists in second draft form and I’m pretty pleased with it. Hopefully I’ll become even happier as edits continue. And in terms of providing even more value to existing readers: it’s entirely possible these editors will tear my text apart so much, it’ll basically be a whole new story.

JUDGE A BOOK BY THIS

Lastly (for now), the other thing I decided I shouldn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t do myself: making a cover for the book. Not that the existing H&C cover (on the right there) hasn’t served me well, but I don’t know shit about graphic design.

So I commissioned the nice people at Design For Writers, and it looks like we’ve got something. They come highly recommended if you’re after a book cover. It was a tough process at times and I needed to make intimidating decisions, including a new title for the whole first storyline (eek), but I think we’re there.

Which means I get to pull off one of those cover reveals all the cool self-pub authors do. I’m going to put it off for a few weeks, because we’re still months out from actually publishing, but trust me, it’s worth it. Or get me a drink and I’ll probably show you on my phone.

Don’t have to wait for me to drink the drink, I’ll happily give it up just in exchange for a pint existing.

Signing Off…

So that’s where we are with the Hobson & Choi self-publishing project. More updates will follow when something else tangibly happens. Questions? Worries? Suggestions for my marketing strategy? Comment below!