Confessions of an Author

Well, the business side of things is pootling along quite nicely. Just over a year ago, I made the scary decision to publish my first book. The journey since then has been unexpected (you can read about it on my regular blog). Gradually, more people are reading and recommending my books, and I sell on average, 10 a week. This is enough  for me to continue (which is good, because I like being an author!) I have more or less given up on big bookshops, because the economics just don't work. Although it's lovely to know people can buy my book in Waterstones, they will only order books through a wholesaler. I have to post books, on demand (so singly) to the wholesaler. So, the postman wants to be paid, and the wholesaler wants to take a cut, and the bookshop wants a cut. Which means, in effect, I  make a loss on the basic cost of producing the book. Smaller bookshops are different, because they'll take a few copies on sale or return, and although they take quite a big cut, I...

Crops and Cows 1 Hello and how was your week? Mine was a mix of disasters and interesting things. It began nicely, with a walk to our local pub. Husband was working from home, but decided he could take a few hours off, so we walked for 45 minutes through the woods to our nearest pub, for lunch. It was warm, the trees had laid a path of autumn leaves, the dog was happy. All was going well until we arrived and realised we hadn’t actually brought any money with us. Embarrassing. The sweetcorn crop next to the house was harvested. We saw them cutting it, and trailer loads of cut green stuff being carted away. But we never actually saw any of the corn cobs. We watched the tractor for ages, and decided it must be somehow removing the cobs before chipping the stalks. It was bit of a mystery. Monday was also the day of the red sun – did you see it? If you live in England, you’ll have had a weird yellowy sky that was dusk at about 3pm, and the sun was red and hazy. Apparently it...