Cover of 'Hidden Gems', a novel by Curtis Bollington
Help support a struggling writer. In fact help support a struggling person!
I’ve published my book ‘Hidden Gems‘ as an ebook, and it’s available from Amazon, lulu.com, Apple, and all other good online bookstores. If you have an iPad or iPhone, or a Kindle, then you have no excuses not to buy it. The alternative is to download an ebook reader, of which there are loads available, including a free Kindle reader for your computer.
For less than a fiver, it’s a good read.
Just click the following link to buy a copy.
Alternatively, you can search on Amazon
In case you’re wondering what it’s all about, here’s the blurb…
A crisis in midlife and a midlife crisis are not necessarily the same thing. Arthur Pod is a wedding photographer. His happy lot is upset when his car gets stolen not long after he falls in love at an Irish-Innuit wedding. Then his new girlfriend’s poodles get dognapped by psychotic twins.
Nathaniel Boot is a smuggler who is losing interest in the work that has kept his family for generations. Jobs aren’t going as smoothly as they should. And then there’s his dull marriage, as well as his chaotic genius of an apprentice to deal with…
The lives of both become entangled from a distance, because of a rare, ugly sports car build by the Russians in the late 50s. A car that almost ignited the Cold War, and caused the death in the sixties of a wayward diplomat with a fetish for female clowns.
Really, it’s just an old-fashioned story about love, adventure, crime, animals and travel…
Thanks
Curtis
How long did it take to write your book? Did you try sending it out to mainstream publishers before going down the Ebook route?
On how long did it take to write, that depends upon which version you mean. I started writing it more than 20 years ago. It was an on and off project. Then about five years ago I read through what I’d done, ditched that and started again. This time it took me about six months to write. Since then I’ve edited it and edited it again (I cut about a quarter out). Of course I’ve tried sending it to agents and publishers, and received the usual crop of rejections. I didn’t send it to many though, because I did some investigation into the book market at the time, and realised that unless I was prepared to write to formula in whatever the current popular genre was; or unless I was already a celebrity, there wasn’t really much chance of getting published through ‘traditional’ routes.
I think the ebook market is a liberation. I love writing fiction, but we’re not all Dan Browns. All I want to do is to find an audience for my work, whether that’s a couple of dozen people, or a couple of thousand. Online publishing lets me do this. It’s also a very fast process. I’m currently working on my next book, which I started in January and hope to have finished by April or May, I’ll spend a few weeks editing it then put it online.
The only downside is the editing and marketing process that is traditionally provided by publishers and agents. Editing and proofreading your own work is not really the best option, but no funds mean no alternative. I know there are a few errors in mine, only because every time I read through it I found more — despite thinking I’d got them all. Marketing with no budget is also time-consuming — hitting discussion boards, social networking, etc.
I can see publishing agencies springing up in the future to fulfil this role for a percentage.
The upside of publishing online is that you get up to 70% royalties, rather than the 6% or so you’d get from a publisher.
My aim is to sell enough ebooks to then think about getting some paperbacks printed — only about 100 to start with.
The other key difference between self-publishing and traditional publishing is the ‘bubble and pop’ model. Big publishers will aim to market hard a sell a lot of books in a short time, then move on to the next title. Self-publishing and epublishing generally operates by selling fewer numbers per month, but over a much longer period of time — years even.
Regards, Curtis
Lovely to meet you today Curtis; I’m off to buy the book for my new Kindle now. All the best, hope to meet up again soon.
All the best,
Mike Potts
Great to meet you today. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the book. We’ll get together for a coffee soon hopefully,
Best regards,
Curtis