Waiting for us today was a note. A message, from The Motherland. They are launching a rocket into space. They will be the first to land on the moon.
But who can we trust a world where you can trust no-one? Who has the truth… and who hides it?
In September, we will discover the truth.
It’s been a little while since my first Did You Miss? post, so I’ve built up a few more good things to highlight for you lovely blog readers.
There are so many people out there who are quite a lot smarter than me. Luckily, these people write down some of the smart things they think so that I can read them – sometimes for free, sometimes not. Here are a few people, all connected either largely or loosely to the publishing world, that I think are smart:
John Green – YA author and online personality. Have you seen his and Hank’s new educational vlogging? It’s a Crash Course in the history of the world and the basics of biology in weekly video blogs. It’s smart and funny and informative.
Darcy Pattinson – writing coach and author of the must have, go and buy it, DON’T QUESTION IT, JUST BUY IT revision workbook called NOVEL METAMORPHOSIS. Or at the very least, look at her website.
Rob Horning at The New Inquiry - He’s written a thoughtful and thought-provoking analysis of the Hunger Games. Here’s a good extract from the article: “We’re all supposed to use Facebook and Twitter, etc., but no one can read and “share” for very long without starting to have some reservations. The creepy voyeurism and exhibitionism of it is palpable, no matter how much of a digital native one might be.”
Robin Sloan – if you have five minutes and an iPad or iPhone, I was very impressed by this free app called Fish about the difference between “like” and “love” on the internet.
Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz – she’s a business coach for small businesses and writers. She sends around a very useful, very amusing free newsletter with practical thinking about how people can sell things better.
Let me know if you like any of these!
When I was younger I always imagined being an author was the most glamorous thing. How lucky they are to spend all day in front of a (then) typewriter, making up stories that hoards of fans will read. In my mind they went to posh dinners, fancy clubs and never had to worry about a boring day in an office.
When I started working in publishing, many moons ago as a marketing assistant, authors continued to be swathed in mysterious glamour, protected from us marketing folk by editors and agents, meeting only at the annual author party where we spent a day studying our catalogue for who’d written/illustrated what so we could be trusted not to say the wrong thing on the one day we were allowed to TALK TO AUTHORS.
As my career progressed through various marketing departments and companies, my involvement with authors in turn increased and gradually I started to see through the curtain of mystery. And, I started to realise that being an author is actually quite hard (much like publishing is hard – see here, and here) and in most cases, not glamorous at all.
This has become more evident in recent times when I surprised myself (not to mention colleagues) by accidentally falling for one of these strange, mysterious author beings, and now being the girlfriend of a full time writer. (For those of you who don’t know / hadn’t figured it out from Twitter – it’s teen thriller author Will Hill, who’s epic second book Department 19:The Rising comes out this week). Suddenly I see first hand the ups and downs of the life of an author: I see and share in the delight of a great review, a lovely email sent by a fan, a fantastic event, a foreign rights sale, the proud moment the finished copy arrives from the printers. But I also see and feel the stresses and pressures: how many times in one day an Amazon ranking might get checked; the worries that come near book release that people will like the book, and better still, buy a copy or two; the occasional calculation of how many books need to be sold before an advance will earn out; the challenge of keeping an inbox under control and replying to all those ‘when you have a sec, would you mind sending me…’ emails that come from people like me, who before now didn’t consider that the recipient of said email is also trying to write a book, with all of these things going on in the background.
And being involved in an author’s life, has suddenly gained me access to a whole community of other authors, all of whom share the same worries, joys and stresses. In fact, even here at HKB, we have two secret authors in our midst – in her previous days at Working Partners, Sara O’Connor created the middle-grade My Sister, the Vampire series and wrote four of the books, and our Publisher, Emily Thomas, is *drum roll* behind the scenes, actually author Lee Monroe, of Dark Heart Forever and the other Dark Hearts books.
It’s funny that marketing and sales people tend not to get too close to authors in some companies because as soon as you do, you start to think differently about the way you approach your job. It means that on our first week, we decided it was important for our authors to know who we all are in sales and marketing, and whom they need to speak to if they have any problems/concerns. It’s also why, when our website launches, it will have a special section just for our authors, where they’ll be able to access marketing materials, sales reports, and event dates from wherever they are, without us spamming their inbox and interrupting their writing time. It’s a small thing, but when I ran the idea past the author I live with, it certainly got a BIG thumbs up from him.
Authors have so many options open to them about how to publish their books than those days when I pictured my heroes swanning around at literary dinners. It’s the role of publishers to make life easier for authors, not harder, and we can only do that by understanding and making them part of the process as much as possible. So to our authors, and future authors – we’re here, we get it and we can’t wait to start telling people about your books.
And until then, I’m off to check the Amazon ranking of The Rising.
Sarah
Those of you who follow us on Twitter will know that yesterday was a proper mailing day as we franked, labelled and stuffed nearly 600 envelopes with Issue 2 of our newsletter…
Big pile o’ envelopes
They now waiting patiently by the door for the postman to come and collect them (lucky man)- but if you’re a bookseller and just can’t wait, or just really want a sneak peek at some more of our books, here is a look at this month’s ‘What are we reading?’ and a special preview from the lovely (and extremely interesting) Lydia Syson on why she wrote A World Between Us!
Don’t forget, if you want to know more about Key Notes or just want to say hello, tweet @HotKeyBooks or email us on keynotes@hotkeybooks.com !
Whenever The Bookseller newsletter drops in my inbox, I scroll through the headlines and then I get to the “News you might have missed” section. I often find myself talking to my screen. “No, I totally saw that.” and “Duh.” or “Ooh, yes I did miss that.”
In today’s news, I had indeed missed that Faber has landed a two-volume history of Metallica. The thirteen-year-old in me is very excited about this. I was quite the metal head back in the day.
But twenty years later, now that I’m eyeliner-free, we’ve had our own newsround circulating the Hot Key Books office this morning, and I thought we could share it with you. Did you miss…?
… a blog from Sarah Davies from The Greenhouse Literary about what she’s seeing in the submission pool and also what she wants to see. Any aspiring writers should click through (and then tell Sarah and Julia to send those wonderful books to us, exclusively, as our referral fee).
… a live webchat that Amanda Hocking did with the Guardian. Anyone wondering about self-publishing should be interested in her take on it all.
One good quote from the article: “Twitter is a useful way to connect with readers and writers and people in general. Through some of those connections, you may sell books (or whatever it is you want to sell). But if you ONLY promote, or even if you mostly promote, it’s not going to work out.”
… an article from (the Awesome Jeff Norton) on The Literary Platform giving a little love to editors. Thanks, Jeff!
… and a few weeks old, but still a level-headed article (sensationally titled “looking through the digital hype”) about how technology might change how people do or buy things, but not so much what they do or buy.
Anything we missed?
If anyone ever tells you publishing is a glamorous industry filled with dinners, drinks and lunches, just show them this photo:
This is far more representative of what it’s really like (in the SPAM team at least) – a lot of mailing (with a very occasional party). Yesterday, we franked and stuffed 500 envelopes with our brand new, and first, Key Notes newsletter. In fact, we franked so many envelopes that our machine “overloaded” – apparently 500 is its daily limit, so there you go – a nice frank (boom, boom) fact for you.
These envelopes will be making their way around the country over the next few days to lots of bookshops telling them who we are and giving a sneak peek at what we are planning to publish this year.
But we didn’t want to leave you out…so here is some of that newsletter so you can hear more about two of our books on the launch list, right from the editors themselves…
And just so you know, A WORLD BETWEEN US made Kate Manning cry on the bus. It did, really.
Sarah B
