My Civil War novel A Fine Likeness on sale for only $2.99. Happy Valentine's Day!

Um. . .isn't Valentine's Day February 14? Yes it is, but I love my readers so much I've decided to celebrate early. From now until the day after Valentine's Day (Feb. 15) I'm discounting my Civil War novel A Fine Likeness to $2.99.

My novel has been out two months now and I've received some wonderful reviews and a modest number of sales. I'd like to increase both by offering this discount. I love getting new readers!

I also love my existing readers, so if you've already purchased A Fine Likeness at full price, here's a deal for you: I'll send you a complimentary copy of my short story collection The Night the Nazis Came to Dinner and other dark tales. Just email me at seansontheweb (at) yahoo (dot) com and answer this question about the book: what Union officer was entrusted to guard Rocheport? (Hint: he did a really crappy job!).

I love my readers!

Websites for Writers: Piers Anthony

It's Monday, so it's time for another website for writers. Today we're looking at Hi Piers, the official homepage of Piers Anthony.

In the unlikely event you haven't heard of him, Piers Anthony is a longtime author in many genres. He's most famous for the Xanth series of humorous fantasy, but he's also written science fiction, horror, and an increasing amount of erotica.

Piers has seen it all, and luckily for us tells it all. He's famous in the writing community for tangling with editors and even suing when he felt he was being wronged. Because of this, he's been blacklisted by many publishers. He says that no major house is interested in his work except for the bestselling Xanth series. To make sure his several novels a year see the light of day, he has resorted to various small presses and epublishers.

Of greatest practical use to aspiring writers is his no-holds-barred review of epublishers and vanity presses that he updates every month. Cheated writers often tell him their stories, which he then posts online, although he's always fair-handed when it appears the writer has unrealistic expectations of their publisher.

For inspiration, check out the section on books by Piers Anthony. He's published more than 140 in the past 50 years! This is what persistence and a solid work ethic will get you.

Also of interest is his newsletter, where he talks about his life, what he's reading, and his views on publishing. At times his views of the publishing industry seem to me to be overly negative, but then again he's been in this crazy business forty years more than I have, so maybe I'll feel that way some day. He's also a strong advocate of self-publishing, once being a co-owner of Xlibris. In his latest newsletter he states, "I think of mutation, wherein 99% of the changes may be deleterious, even lethal, but the 1% that survive power the forward evolution of all living things. We would not be here today without mutation. Editors reject 99%, but the 1% they accept is not necessarily the best; natural selection operates imperfectly in publishing. So yes, we need self publishing, even if it is 99% bad, for the sake of the 1% that may otherwise be lost."

Good point, but I think that for most writers self-publishing is a bad idea.

While I don't always agree with what Piers has to say, I always check out his newsletter and value his insights. It's rare to find a writer so brutally honest about the business.

The Indie Press: Saviors of the Midlist?

It's tough being a midlist author these days. The big six New York publishers are cutting back and demanding every publication be a hit. They no longer want to invest in an author who can only sell 10,000 copies in the hopes that she'll either become famous with time or (horrors!) keep a loyal following that ensures she'll sell 10,000 copies of each of her next dozen books. It's feast or famine with the big boys these days.

But now small and independent presses are stepping up the the plate. Publishers Weekly has had some interesting articles about how midlist authors are being saved by the smaller guys.

An article titled Smaller Presses, Bigger Authors reveals the big six want 20,000-30,000 sales per book or you'll get dropped. Established writers, even famous writers, are having a tough time selling books that are a bit out of the box, a bit too experimental. Alice Walker went to indie press New World Library to publish a collection of her poems. It sold out its 7,500 copy first printing. Great sales for an indie, a financial flop for a big publisher.

Oh great. I have a hard enough time getting my books published even at indie presses, and now I have to compete with Alice Walker!?

But seriously, this is good news for the midlist too. Small and indie presses are more open to unestablished authors and experimental work. If they think a book can sell 5,000 copies they'll give it a shot. Some really small presses are happy with less than that. Your advance will be much lower, but you'll generally get a bigger percentage of the royalties and you'll be under less pressure to become a big name. It appears the smaller houses have a more realistic view of the marketplace. That's why they're blossoming right now.

Indie presses report seeing more manuscripts from established authors, as well as debut literary fiction from unknowns. This has been going on for some time. Back in 2007 PW profiled Night Shade Books. In that article they tell how the company has done well with good choices of authors, good distribution, and taking on sf/f books that are cool but not bestseller material. Even successful sf author Liz Williams moved from Bantam to Night Shade after her sales weren't good enough for such a large publisher.

Night Shade has a solid reputation, pays an advance, and can sell thousands of copies. Not hundreds of thousands, or even tens of thousands, but thousands. That's realistic, and they won't dump you if you "only" sell 7,000 copies. I met the owners at World Fantasy Con a few years back and they're very approachable and down to earth. That's a big plus too.

So maybe this isn't such a bad time to be a midlister after all.

Websites for Writers: AuthorsDen

Last week I got an Authorsden page. AuthorsDen is a site where authors can market their books and post articles, fiction, poetry, and blogs.

So why did I get an AuthorsDen account when I'm paying a web designer to make a personal site and I already have a successful blog? Because you can never have too much publicity. AuthorsDen is a community of authors numbering in the thousands. My rather basic site, listing my books and a few news posts, has gotten more than 200 hits in less than a week. People obviously read AuthorsDen.

Plus it's free. Well, the cheap account is free, and that's rather limited. With my bio, seven book listings, and two news announcements I've already used 71% of my space! I'll have to start deleting old announcements pretty soon, and after a couple more years of book publishing I won't have any more room at all! Like most free pages, AuthorsDen offers various levels of paid membership to get more features. Bronze is the cheapest and costs $40 a year. That gets you 2 megs storage capacity as well as a blog, newsletter, and a couple other features. There are three more levels all the way up to platinum, which costs $1,200 and gets you featured on the front page. I bet platinum members get a lot of hits, although I'm not sure how many of these hits turn into sales.

Which brings me to a problem with AuthorsDen. To a great extent it's a promo op for self-publishers. I've talked about the downsides to self-publishing before. Most of these authors don't have an audience, and I'm getting the impression that the site is mostly used by its members. That's not a bad thing, since writers are usually avid readers, but it feels like a bit like a closed group, much like many of the Yahoo discussion groups.

Still, having another platform is worth the effort I put into it. Setting up my site took less than two hours and cost me nothing. I've found a few other pros like Dianna Graveman so it's not all self-pub oblivion, and it helps my SEO. Who knows? Maybe I'll get a few sales too. A little extra push is always a good thing in this game.

Yes, I know this Websites for Writers series is supposed to feature nonwriting sites of use to writers, but the only one I found last week is turning into an article for Gadling. Since they pay me and this blog doesn't, it's ending up there. I love y'all, but business is business!

Visiting Madrid's book fair

The past two weeks have been fun for Spanish book lovers. The Feria del Libro (Book Fair) at Madrid's lovely Retiro Park brought out all of Spain's publishers and major bookstores. Many foreign publishers also showed up. I've talked before about the value of going to book fairs, especially the London Book Fair, as well as fan conventions.

I joined a couple of members of my local writer's group to browse more than 300 stalls packed with books. I discovered two military history bookshops I didn't know about and some publishers that I might try to sell translation rights to. Writers should go to these things to see what's out there. Plus it's fun to buy books! I got a couple that will help me with a book proposal of my own in the coming months.

Seeing so many books together at one time really brings home how massive of an industry publishing is. The sight is simultaneously a reassuring and depressing one. Reassuring because there's room for all types of writers, depressing because it's so easy for your title to get lost in the avalanche.

I also got to see my old friend Claudia Gray, whose YA vampire fiction is selling well in both English and Spanish. She held up remarkably well during the day despite my having kept her out until four o´clock that morning showing her Madrid's nightlife.

So come on, writers, if there's a book fair or convention near you, go to it. You won't regret it.

Learning from losing

Aw crap.

I just heard from one of the judges at the Fresh Blood Contest that my Civil War novel didn't make the cut this round. I lost by five votes!

The contest has been an interesting ride, and while I'm bummed about losing I did learn a lot and am proud not only to have made the top ten finalists, but to have made it to top five before the public votes favored the other books.

When the voting was up to the judges, what mattered was my writing and I did fine. But the later rounds are by public vote, and it is essentially about how well you market yourself. I started a fanpage on Facebook and hit up people for votes on various newsgroups on Facebook and Yahoo. I also promoted it on my Twitter account.

The problem was, I went on assignment to Ethiopia and Somaliland for two months just when I needed to raise my public profile. With all of Ethiopia still on dialup, I was at a major disadvantage, and learned firsthand about one of the troubles facing writers in developing countries. But of course that was only part of the problem. I'm sure there was more I could have done to promote my book in the early stages when I was in Europe. Should I have been a bit pushier? Joined more newsgroups? Started a MySpace page? There are probably several things I'm not even thinking of here. Feel free to share them in the comments section because they may come in handy one day.

I believe A Fine Likeness will get published, and that it deserves to be published. It's a good story based on detailed historical research, and is now being peddled by an author who is a little wiser about the need for self-marketing.

Thanks to everyone who voted, especially those friends who bugged their own friends to vote, and to those who only know me through the Internet but had faith in my writing. I'm extremely grateful and proud to know you. If you're still interested in the contest even though I'm out of it, I suggest you vote for Heart of the City by Lisa A. Koosis. From a writer's point of view I think it's the finest submission (besides mine, ahem) and the one I was most worried about. I'll be voting for it now that I'm not voting for myself.

The image is by Alexander Gardner of a dead Confederate sniper at Gettysburg, courtesy of the Library of Congress. Yeah, it's probably disrespectful to this poor bastard to be using this, but it's topical and reflects how I feel.

Self-publishing silliness

I've been posting about my experiences at Eastercon, from the people I met to a lecture on swordplay for writers. The con was tons of fun, but an incident in the bathroom made me sigh and shake my head.

Get your mind out of the gutter! What happened was that as I sidled up to the urinal I was confronted with an ad. Not the usual ad for a TV show or safe drinking, but one for an obviously self-published fantasy novel. I looked across the row of urinals and saw one stuck to the wall above each one. A desperate self-publisher did the same thing at last year's London Book Fair.

Being curious, I took the urinal ad and checked the URL. Yep, self-published, and according to the Amazon rankings the second and third books in the series hadn't sold anything, at least on Amazon. The first book had a ranking of six million, meaning it had sold one copy, (probably to the author's mother) a few years ago. Even my London guidebook, which has been out of print for almost a year, has a ranking of 1.5 million. My book on medieval handgonnes, which doesn't come out from Osprey until October, has a ranking of 142,000 thanks to preorders. That's what a good publisher can do for you.

I've written before about how self-publishing is more often than not a pitfall for writers. It almost never leads to fame or big sales. And with the kind of associative advertising these jokers engage in, it only leads to ridicule.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. I tend not to take photos in public restrooms.

Voting has started in the Fresh Blood contest

Well, it's finally started. I and the other eight finalists in Dorchester Publishing's Fresh Blood Contest had our first chapters analyzed by the judges and now public voting has begun. My Missouri Civil War horror novel A Fine Likeness got off without too many slings and arrows. The chapters, judges' comments, and voting information are up on ChiZine's website.

You know, I wasn't nervous about this contest at all, even though a publishing contract is the grand prize. Perhaps organizing my trip to Ethiopia kept my mind off it, but now that voting has started I'm getting a wee bit obsessed.

You can vote by sending an email to freshblood (at) chizinepub (dot) com with the subject line "Fresh Blood Vote: A Fine Likeness by Sean McLachlan". You can insert a different title and author, of course. If you do, feel free not to tell me about it. :-P

You can also check out the book's fanpage here.

My writing year: a look back and a look forward

It's the last day of 2009 and almost exactly ten years since I began to shift my career away from archaeology and into writing. Each year has been slightly more successful than the last, a steady progression that I'm striving to continue and hasten.

So how did I do in 2009? Two of my books were published, Outlaw Tales of Missouri and American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, and one of my books, Moon Handbooks London, went out of print.

I had two significant steps forward. I saw my first book published by Osprey Publishing, who are very professional and make a great product. They even (GASP!) pay on time. I also finished a second book for them on medieval handgonnes. I also started working for Gadling, the world's most popular travel blog. It's teaching me to write timely, breezy, catchy articles, something history writing doesn't generally encourage. It's also a thrill to have millions (yes, millions) of readers every month. Gadling pays on time too!

Another potential success was getting my Missouri Civil War novel into the finals of Dorchester Publishing's Fresh Blood contest. The grand prize is publication. I'm now trying to teach myself online promotion, something that doesn't come naturally to me. I've already set up a Facebook fan page and am planning more outlets to get people to know my work.

Of course every year has its ups and downs. With all the travel and nonfiction commitments my fiction languished. I wrote only one short story and only got 25,000 words into my next novel. I'm planning on pushing my fiction a lot more in 2010. Not sure where the time is going to come from. . .

So what's ahead? Well, I'm negotiating some more books with Osprey and trying to win that contest. Gadling should be happy with my upcoming Ethiopia series. I'll also be writing more fiction and trying to become better at selling myself while not overselling myself. I think 2010 is going to be a good year for me.

Check out my other blog to read about my travel year.

Missouri Civil War novel A Fine Likeness gets a fan page

As I mentioned in my last post, my Civil War horror novel, A Fine Likeness, is a finalist in Dorchester Publishing's Fresh Blood contest. This novel covers the Civil War in Missouri and includes historical figures such as Bloody Bill Anderson and Jesse James alongside the fictional protagonists.

Since I can only win through public support, I've started beating the drum early and have created a Facebook fan page called (go figure) A Fine Likeness deserves to be published! More than just a way to blab about my literary greatness, I'll be talking about the history behind the novel, something I've written about in several nonfiction venues.

Voting doesn't start until Mach 2010 but I have a lot of promo to do. I'm very happy that in the first nine hours I got 24 fans. Most are personal friends, of course, but I've noticed a few friends of friends in the bunch, and that's encouraging. My first fan was David Lee Summers, a fellow writer who I haven't seen in way too long. He just won himself a copy of the book if it ever sees the light of day.

So check out the fan page. I'll love you for it.

My latest short story out from Damnation Books

My latest short story, a horror tale set in 1864 Denmark, is out now as an ebook from Damnation Books.

The title, "Dannevirke", takes its inspiration from the name of a Viking earthwork protecting Jutland from Germany. It was the first line of defense against German aggression for centuries, even seeing action as late as 1864 when the Prussians invaded. I used to live in Denmark and I've always been fascinated that such an old fortification should have been used so recently. And therein lies a tale. . .

It is the winter of 1864, and the Danish army prepares to defend their homeland against a Prussian onslaught by fortifying the Dannevirke, an old Viking earthwork on the border of Denmark and Prussia. A unit of militia—farmers and fishermen who have never fought a battle—dig in and prepare to face the elite Prussian army. The Danes think their position is hopeless until a strange old couple offer them a way to save themselves and their country. On the night of the gibbous moon they must dowse for a certain spot near the old Viking fort, and they must bring a prisoner and a blade.

If you've been following this blog, you know my focus is military history and I write a lot for Osprey Publishing. I guess it's not surprising that this has bled into my fiction writing. I'm currently working on a series of novels set in Civil War Missouri.

"Dannevirke" is on sale at a reduced introductory price. Normally selling for $2.50, it went on sale for free at the stroke of midnight Dec. 1, and goes up in price 25 cents with every sale until it reaches its cover price. So download it now and help fund my next trip!

Different names for fiction and nonfiction

You might have noticed that the short story cover I posted in my last post doesn't have my name on it. I've decided to use a pen name for my fiction. I've spoken with several authors who do both fiction and nonfiction and they all recommended this. The reason is that fiction is expected to sell more copies than nonfiction, and distributors will look at your previous sales to determine whether they will carry your book. If one of my nonfiction titles sold 5,000 copies, a good amount for a nonfiction history, that's only mediocre for a novel and the distributor might pass it by.

So my fictional name will be Sean J. Lachlan. The "J", of course, stands for my son Julian! And I simply dropped the "Mc" t0 make it different. I'm not really attached to my last name anyway.

Of course, distributors know that writers do this, but that doesn't bother them. In fact, they won't care if I mention my real name in the "About the Author" section. All they care about is the numbers on their computer screen. Yes, the publishing world is a strange place.

I don't miss my writing newsgroups

Back in June I blogged about dropping out of all my writing newsgroups. I was going through a really busy period, not to mention being distracted by living in Oxford, and I needed to simplify my schedule. As a midlist author, I wasn't finding much of value on them. Most newsgroups are filled with aspiring writers all asking the same questions and having the same conversations over and over again. Ebook or traditional print? Should I self-publish? Is website xyz good to write for? This sort of thing is good for beginning writers, although they should be careful of all the poorly informed advice out there. For a midlist author there's not much to learn from these groups.

I even had trouble getting more advanced topics discussed. I brought up the Google Books settlement a couple of times but nobody wanted to talk about it! Perhaps this was because there were so few published authors on the lists, but you'd think it would still be a topic of interest.

I also got tired of all the egos. There are always people trying to hog all the attention, and a lot of mutual back scratching. I don't need to see some guy trying to make his reputation on the internet by bragging in front of a bunch of fellow writers in the hopes he'll sell some books, and I don't need the group dynamic either. I can provide all my own encouragement. For good advice I look to fellow midlist authors who are friends of mine. While writing newsgroups are good for the rank beginner, they're are something you grow out of sooner or later.

New Year's resolutions: eight months on

At the beginning of the year I posted my New Year’s writing resolutions in order to pressure myself to keep on track. Let's see how I did in August. Yeah, it's a bit late to be blogging about this. More on that later.

Write 7,000 words per week minimum, 10,000 preferred.
I've been keeping up the word count this month, helped by my job at Gadling. Today I wrote my 100th post for them. My nonfiction books keep me busy too.


Get through that huge list of magazine article ideas I'm going to pitch. As I send them out, the list will be added to, so this is a perpetual goal. Same goes for several book proposals I have.
I sent only one magazine pitch this month, but I got a yes from a magazine I'd never written for, so that's nice.

Search for another paid blogging job.

This is no longer a goal now that I'm blogging for Gadling.

Finish a how-to book on writing that a publisher is interested in.
This project has been put on the back burner since I'm in crunch time for one of my Osprey military history books.


Try to get an agent for my fiction and nonfiction.
Working on it. Still no luck.


Do another round of edits on all three of my novels.
I've already done this. Right now I'm working on a summary for my Civil War novel, which I'm submitting to a contest.


Write my next novel, set in London and Oxford.
I did some writing this month, although not nearly as much as I like. I've been struggling with this one and having a lot of nonfiction work doesn't help.


Finish two short stories and two novellas I've been fiddling with.
I haven't done anything with these.


Write and send out "Willoughby: England's First Great Explorer", a book proposal I was supposed to write last year (whoops!).
Still haven't done anything with this proposal.


Increase my online presence.
I've been slacking off on my blogs, as you can see, but my work with Gadling is gaining ground. Several of my posts have made it to the front page of AOL, which gets me lots of hits and tweets.

All in all, a pretty good month. I'm especially happy about breaking into a new magazine market.

Why readers preorder books

In a previous post back in April I wondered why people were preordering my American Civil War Guerrilla Tactics, which comes out this month from Osprey Publishing. Why preorder something months in advance when doing it a week in advance will get you the book just the same? I've discovered the answer.

I went to The Gameskeeper, the local gaming store here in Oxford, to convince them to stock my book, gamers being big Osprey fans. The owner and I got into a long conversation about publishing and I brought up the subject of my preorders. She said gaming books often get very early preorders too, and it's because fans want to signal to publishers that they like a certain subject or title. They want to support the process. It's kind of like voting with your money. Apparently military history buffs do this as well.

This makes me feel good about my preorders. Some people started preordering my book back in February! :-)

Damnation Books opens its doors

The soon-to-be publisher of my horror story "Dannevirke" have opened their doors. Damnation Books came out with their first catalog of dark fiction novels, novellas, and short stories as the clock struck midnight on September 1. They are being published both as electronic books and in print.

Damnation Books has set itself apart from the usual crop of ebook/POD publishers with a couple of interesting policies. Firstly, for short stories they pay semipro rates of three cents a word. That attracted some rising authors along with the usual horde of amateurs. I'm sure they were inundated with submissions, but they got to sign on writers who had several publications to their name.

The second innovation is variable price books. When a new title is released, it's free. After the first "purchase" the price rises five cents, and continues to rise five cents until it reaches its list price. I took advantage of the time difference between the U.S. and England to make my order at four in the morning U.S. time and scored seven books for 65 cents. I felt a little guilty about that! Hopefully this policy will draw in readers and create buzz for the books. Both this and the payment policy are gambles for a startup company, but I think they are wise moves. They're already getting attention for their first anthology, The Zombie Cookbook. I couldn't resist ordering that one, now could I?

My short story doesn't have a release date yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing it come out, and I'm looking forward to seeing how Damnation Books fares in the rough world of publishing.

Going out of print

At the first of this month I reached a new milestone in my writing career--one of my books went out of print. Strangely, it wasn't my earliest book, but rather a book I only wrote three years ago, Moon Handbooks London. The story is a sad one and a warning for aspiring guidebook writers.

Back in 2005 I saw on a jobs board that Avalon Travel Publishing wanted to expand their Moon series, already popular for Asian and South American destinations, into Western Europe. I applied for the London gig and got it. The advance was good, the royalties generous, and I was really over the moon, as it were.

But if something looks too good to be true in your writing career, it probably is. I wrote the book and it was published, but it received no marketing. None. Zilch. Nada. Moon, a newcomer to a near-saturated market, assumed their name recognition would allow them to compete with the likes of Lonely Planet, Frommer's, and Rough Guide. Problem was, Moon Handbooks didn't HAVE any name recognition in Western Europe.

I complained to my editor about the lack of marketing, and her only reply was, "But we featured you on our website!" Now catch me if I'm wrong, but in advertising you go to the customer, right? You can't expect the customer to come to you. When I asked if any review copies went out, I received evasive replies.

It came as no surprise to me that the book had poor sales. When it came time to do the second edition, I got the runaround for the better part of a year before my editor finally told me there would be no second edition. Most of their writers in Western Europe got the same news, as did several longstanding writers in other regions.

It was a tough lesson, but one I learned well. Now I only work for publishers who have strong marketing plans, or at least publish books that don't have a huge amount of direct competitors with better marketing plans. Something to think about before you sign your next contract.

Now the rights to the content have reverted to me. I'll be updating and reusing the contents for various projects. One of the ways to survive midlist purgatory is to know how to turn disappointments into opportunities.

Excellent series of posts on writing history

As a history writer with a keen interest in the American Civil War, I was happy to discover Eric Wittenberg's blog, Rantings of a Civil War Historian. Wittenberg has written eleven books on the subject and numerous articles. His main interest is the Union cavalry.

One of my favorite bits in his blog are his rantings against idiotic neo-Confederates and the silly ways they try to rewrite Civil War history to suit their own narrow world view. This hilarious article is one of the best.

Of more direct interest to readers of this blog is a series of articles on writing Civil War history, which is useful to both nonfiction and fiction authors alike. The series is called Things I Wish I Knew Then But Know Now. Part one is "Don't Give Up Your Dayjob", a rather pessimistic view of how much money a writer can expect to make doing books. Well, if you write detailed studies of Union cavalry operations in the Gettysburg campaign like Mr. Wittenberg does, you really can't expect to make a living. You have to go for broader, more popular-level subjects and commercial publishers like Osprey, who still insist on accuracy while selling a lot of copies. It's great that dedicated specialists like Wittenberg are writing books, but narrow topics will get a correspondingly narrow readership. Despite Wittenberg's pessimism, this post is worth a read to sober up enthusiastic beginners who think they'll hit the bestseller list on the first try.

Other posts in the series are about self publishing, learning to take criticism, marketing, working with your editor, the hidden costs of publishing a book, and the costs of researching one.

Public domain photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

The Bloated World Of Publishing

Did I say tomorrow? Well, it's been three days now but I'm finally getting back to writing about the London Book Fair. I got busy writing my next novel and researching my next history book. Sue me.

One thing that really struck me at the London Book Fair was the sheer immensity of the publishing world and how much it repeats itself. I'm not talking fiction here, because while there may be plenty of publishers churning out fantasy novels or mysteries, at least those all have somewhat different plots. One would hope. No, I'm talking about nonfiction, my forté. I saw half a dozen publishers coming out with heavily illustrated histories of World War Two or the monarchs of England this season. A dozen different coffeetable books on the castles of Europe or Hollywood's greatest stars. Tens of "timeline histories." Countless cookbooks.

It seems the publishing world flows in comfortable grooves. One publisher comes up with an idea and the rest do their own spin on it, only the spin isn't all that unique. This is less noticeable in the average bookshop because all these titles aren't under one roof like they are at an international book fair, but one has to wonder about the economic viablility of such a replication of effort. The smart move for publishers seems to be to find a niche and dominate it, like Osprey does with its short, narrowly focused, heavily illustrated military titles. Or Taschen does with its gloriously beautiful photo and art books.

The redundancy is especially noticeable with guidebooks. Having written my own guidebook to London, I flipped through every London guidebook I came across. I'm not sure how many there were; I lost count after a dozen. Besides slightly different layouts, there really wasn't much to differentiate most of them. Mine had more text and background, plus a bigger museum section than most, but the same venues came up in title after title. Is it any wonder that many guidebook publishers are jettisoning titles in the face of recession? I got the distinct impression that half them could go under and it wouldn't make the least bit of difference to the consumer.

If the publishers figure this out, freelancers like me are going to find it tough to find work.

The London Book Fair: An Author's View, Part 2

As I said in my last post, I recently attended the London Book Fair and had an amazing time. The fair is mostly geared towards agents and publishers selling international rights, but it can be a productive place for authors if they go about it in a professional manner.

This last detail is key. On more than one occasion I saw writers desperately pitching ideas to people who were not in a position to make a decision, or whipping out a manuscript faster than Jesse James in a gunfight. Since the fair is basically an international business meeting, most of the representatives at the booths were from marketing, not editorial. These folks are good sources of information for what direction the company is taking, what subjects are doing well and what aren't, and who to contact in editorial, but there's no point hard-selling busy people who can't accept your manuscript. A little soft peddling and some educated questions can land the right business card, however.

The majority of authors I came in contact with were self-published, and hung around the big Authorhouse booth. Some made some rather odd attempts at marketing. One fellow set up a little stand of bookmarks on top of the recycling bin, which led to some cynical remarks. Another shameless guy put up stickers inside all the stalls in the men's room. Not only is this going to create even worse subconscious associations than the recycling bin marketing campaign, but it's a pain in the ass for custodial services, who were stuck with the job of scraping them off.

Despite the sometimes embarassing company, I found the fair to be very helpful. If you're a writer and decide to go, please keep in mind that the fair is not geared towards you. Maintain a professional demeanor, have something to bring to the table (like prior publications), don't be annoying, and realize that this will mostly be a learning experience, not a fast-track to publishing success.

More insights and news from the London Book Fair coming up tomorrow!