My publishing journey so far - Mark Edwards - Author Guest Post

I am delighted to share a great guest post by author Mark Edwards on the blog today.

More twists and turns than a bucketful of snakes… My publishing journey so far.

by Mark Edwards

As everyone knows, in the old days there was only one route for writers: write a book, find an agent, then hopefully a publisher. If you didn't find a publisher, that was it, unless you decided to vanity publish (ie pay someone to print your book). You could keep trying and trying…but if you never found a publisher who was willing to sign you, your writing career was dead in the water.

That's what happened to me. I spent my twenties and early thirties writing and writing. I got an agent and thought that it was going to be easy from that point on. Three or four rejected novels later my agent dumped me. Even when I started writing with Louise Voss, who already had a book deal, and one of our books was optioned by the BBC, I still couldn't get published.

So I gave up. For years I wrote nothing. I had a good job, a growing family… The constant rejection was too painful. My writing dreams were over. I'd given it my best shot and it hadn't worked out. Like so many writers before me, I never made it.

And that's the way it would have stayed… if it wasn't for Amazon and their Kindle Direct Publishing programme. I've written about this quite a lot before so will be brief for the sake of those who know my story. In 2011 Louise and I self-published our two novels on Amazon and then set about promoting the hell out of them. It was agony at first: sales were slow, but just encouraging enough to convince us it was worth continuing. After several months, we suddenly had a surge of sales (prompted by a lot of the people who'd bought the first book, Killing Cupid, buying the second, Catch Your Death, all at once). We hit No.1 and No.2 on the Kindle chart and stayed there for a month.

Within weeks we had a four-book deal with HarperCollins. The day this happened I felt hugely emotional. The amount of time and pain and hope I'd invested over the years… It felt like it had finally all paid off. Our books were going to be in shops, we were going to cross over to the non-Kindle-owning public. With a big publisher behind us, success was guaranteed!

But it didn't work out like that. Catch Your Death's bookshop sales were very disappointing (it was only in a few shops for a very short period). Then Killing Cupid came out during the worst week of the year for sales, during the Olympics, at the very height of Fifty Shades mania. By the time our first brand new book came out six months later, our publisher had effectively given up on us. All Fall Down got absolutely zero marketing, wasn't in any shops… When Forward Slash came out I don't think anyone knew it existed.

This is the problem with the old system. Have one flop and you're done. Bookshops won't stock the next one. There are no second chances.  This is why writers often have to reinvent themselves with a new name, which is something Louise and I considered. I'm glad, now, that we didn't.

In early 2013, shortly before Forward Slash was due to come out, Louise and I had an utterly depressing meeting with HarperCollins  which felt like attending your own wake. At that meeting I told them I was going to self-publish my solo novel, The Magpies. They were nice about it…but what happened next shocked everyone.

Amazon have something called White Glove, which is where you can publish via your agent. This means that Amazon help with some of the technical issues like formatting and promise a small amount of promotion. I signed up to this and self-published The Magpies at the end of March.

By promoting it to my and Louise's loyal group of Facebook followers, I managed to sell a few hundred copies in the first couple of days. This was more than All Fall Down had managed! But then it started to drop down the charts. I was despondent. If The Magpies didn't sell I was facing severe financial difficulties. When we got the HarperCollins deal I had gambled by quitting my full-time job, and had put all the money I'd saved into getting onto the housing ladder, buying a little house in Wolverhampton. I had massive debts and a baby on the way…

Then on Good Friday 2013, I checked my Magpies sales figures and saw that I'd sold a lot more copies in the last hour than usual. I checked again ten minutes later. More sales. They started pouring in. I knew that Amazon must have sent an email to people who had bought the Voss and Edwards books. By the end of the day, The Magpies was in the Top 40 on Kindle. A couple of weeks later it was in the top ten, and after hanging around at No.2 for a month it finally hit No.1.

It was incredible. This book had saved me. The Voss and Edwards books started to climb the rankings too. The Magpies kept selling. It's now sold over 200,000 copies and has reached No.1 or 2 in the UK, the US and Australia.

Then Amazon Publishing stepped in and offered me a deal for The Magpies and another book. Despite my experiences with HarperCollins, I didn't hesitate. I knew that with Amazon things would be different. They would actually make an attempt to market my books. Louise and I have also now signed with Amazon Publishing for our next one, and working with them is an absolute joy.

Of course, there's a downside. No books in shops. But our HarperCollins books were barely in any shops anyway! Amazon get a lot of bad press, but pretty much everything good that has happened to me as a writer has been because of them.

Now, I am self-publishing a new book, What You Wish For. This is the beauty of the current system. Authors can be flexible, try different things, get out books as fast as they can write them. I have no idea if this one will achieve a fraction of the success of The Magpies. But for now I am doing what I've always dreamed of, what my nineties self wanted more than anything. I am writing full-time, doing the thing I love.

A lot of rubbish is said about indie authors and the death of traditional publishing, and how one is better than the other, blah blah blah. As someone who has done a bit of everything, my feeling is that there is no 'better'. It's just that now authors have options. There is no single route. And it's as hard to be successful at self-publishing as it is working with a traditional publisher, and vice versa. The important thing is to be flexible and keep your options open. Find your own way. Don't take sides. Yes, I harbour some negative feelings about what happened with HarperCollins, but it's a bit like a divorce. At first you feel bitter, but then you get a lovely new partner and you forget all about the old one…

The important thing is to never give up. I did give up, for seven years. But trying again was the best thing I ever did.

What You Wish For - amazon link | Mark and Louise's facebook page |

Mark Edwards - Author Guest Post - Relationship between writers and readers

I am delighted to welcome crime fiction author Mark Edwards to the blog today! 

Mark has written a guest post all about the relationship an author has with their readers - would love to know your thoughts about this.

I Want You to Shout it from the Highest Mountain Top…

a guest post by author Mark Edwards

Recently, this meme sprung up on the web and was shared and commented on by numerous writers.

Entitled ‘The Care and Feeding of an Author on Amazon’ it asks readers who have enjoyed a book to share it on social networks, write a review and like it on Amazon. The idea is that by doing this you help to keep authors whose work you have enjoyed ‘fed’ so they will and can write more books for you to enjoy.

This made me think about my own relationship with my readers and what we writers expect from the people who enjoy our books, and vice versa. Of course, ‘expect’ is a strong word. It’s more what we would like to happen. Or rather, seeing as we writers are a needy bunch who crave praise like vampires crave blood, it’s what we would love to happen.

Until recently, readers had little access to the writers whose books they read, and little opportunity to share their opinion of their books. Cast your minds back to the mid-nineties, before Amazon was founded, long before Facebook and Twitter existed. Back then, a book would be published, the writer might go on a tour of bookshops and festivals, and very keen fans might write letters using these antiquated tools called paper and pens. Apart from encounters at signings and the occasional receipt of a letter, the only feedback writers received was from professional critics and their mums.

Then, as now, the most powerful marketing tool was word of mouth. Back then, it was really was passed from mouth to ear. Most of the books I read in my teens had been recommended to me by friends or family, or because I’d read about them in a magazine or paper. You recommended a book to one person at a time rather than tweeting about it to your thousand followers.

When I walked into a bookshop to browse the shelves, I had to trust the blurbs on the back of books. I had no way of knowing what the masses thought about this book in the way I do now, when I can skim the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads, or Google bloggers’ reviews. 

The internet changed everything for books and writers. Now, we writers are available 24 hours a day for readers to chat to. Most of us have websites, Facebook accounts, Twitter, Goodreads… We are easy to reach and communicate with. I personally respond to every reader who contacts me or tweets about one of my books, usually within hours or minutes.  On the Louise Voss and Mark Edwards Facebook page, I chat with readers every day. For me, it’s a hugely enjoyable part of being a writer.

Then there is that double-edged sword: the Amazon/Goodreads review. Now anyone can express their opinion – it’s like walking into that old-fashioned bookshop and finding thirty people standing by each book telling you what they thought about it. For writers, this is scary. When you notice that your review count has changed, you scroll nervously down the page, eyes half-averted, to see whether it’s a five-star winner or a one-star stinker, ecstasy or agony following.

Apart from the effect of all this on writers’ egos, and how much easier it is to contact authors, social media and reviews have a strong practical effect – and can make the difference between whether or not a book is a hit. There are so many books published every week, both traditionally and self-published, that getting noticed is a huge challenge. Most books vanish without trace, including many great books, because most readers don’t know they exist. It is not true that cream always rises. Yes, a book needs to be good – to connect with a lot of people – in order to break out, but the hard part is letting people know it exists.

This is why Sherry Snider, the creator of ‘The Care and Feeding of an Author…’, put together that graphic. Because she understands, as an author herself, how much we writers need our ‘fans’. If you don’t have a huge marketing budget, you are completely reliant on people spreading the word for you. So every good review, every tweet, every Facebook share, every face-to-face recommendation – they all make a difference.

In America, some writers have street teams – groups of fans who they ‘employ’ to spread the word about their books. They send the members of their teams free books, bookmarks, name characters after them in books, send them vouchers and so on, in return for favours, which could involve telling everyone they know about their books and asking their local bookshop to stock them.

Hugh Howey, author of Wool, has said that a large part of his success was being nice to his readers. He says writers should not concentrate on trying to get new readers but on nurturing those you have. This is a simple rule of business – your best customers are your existing ones, and it’s interesting to see a writer talking about his fans in such a way.

So what do you think? If you are on this blog, you must be a book reader. You must have favourite authors. Do you think that it’s fair for authors to expect so much? Do you resent being asked to share and help. Do you do it anyway? Or has this article made you think that you should do more to spread the word about authors you love? I’d love to hear what you think.

Many thanks to Mark for this very topical post. Please do share your views in the comments.

Mark Edwards’ most recent book is The Magpies, a psychological thriller about neighbours from hell, which is currently in the Amazon top twenty. If you have read it and liked it, please tell all your friends! Mark has also written three novels with fellow writer Louise Voss.

Kindle version

Paperback

All Fall Down - Louise Voss & Mark Edwards

We first met talented virologist Dr Kate Maddox in 'Catch Your Death', and two years on from her narrow escape in that book, we meet her again here, now living with her partner Paul and her son Jack in the UK, and hoping for a normal life. However her peace is about to he shattered, as a man connected to that terrible episode from her past appears and informs her of the horrifying news that a suspected new strain of the killer virus that Kate's parents died from is now on the loose in Los Angeles. Then there is worse news as a bomb goes off in a hotel in America killing the top scientists that were meeting there and thereby reducing significantly the chances of a cure to the outbreak being found. 

As one of the leading expert’s in the world on the Watoto virus, Kate is called upon to travel to the USA immediately to a top secret laboratory in California to assist a special team in desperately trying to find a cure for the virus and help to stop it spreading any further. Reluctantly she takes Paul and Jack with her to the US, sending Jack off to stay with his father Vernon, whilst Paul embarks on his own determined if ill-advised pursuit of an enemy from the past, still intent on revenge for the death of his twin-brother.

This is another exciting, scary page-turner from the able pens of crime writers Voss and Edwards; it is packed with action, adventure, intrigue and terror. I was intrigued as to the outcome and liked the way the story moved between the different strands in alternate, short chapters, so that the tension in what was happening to Kate was maintained as we were taken to find out where Paul was, and then on to what was happening with the killers, keeping all parts of the story in play and ratcheting up the interest for the reader.

The threat of the deadly virus escaping into the wider world is ever-present and drives the urgency for Kate to discover a cure, and the authors keep the pace of the story and the action pounding along to reflect this. The truly frightening killers behind this release of the virus are certainly unusual and different to your average crime villain and they have their own strong cult-like beliefs driving their actions, aiming to start the world anew. There were parts of the story where I felt I had to suspend my disbelief a little, or found myself wondering if something would really have happened that way, and I was also a little apprehensive about the violence at times. These are minor quibbles overall though. I think if you’ve enjoyed the previous two novels by this author team then you should definitely read this one too. Although this isn’t my personal favourite novel by them – that would be Killing Cupid – I would still recommend it as a fast and furious thriller with some very unusual killers and a tense, exciting plot throughout. You don’t need to read Catch Your Death before reading All Fall Down, although I would recommend reading CYD simply because it’s a very good read!

Published by Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins

Thanks to the authors and the publisher for kindly sending a copy of this novel to read and review. 

You can find the authors on twitter @mredwards and @louisevoss1 and visit their facebook page here and their website here. 

You can read my reviews of previous novels Catch Your Death and Killing Cupid by clicking on the book titles.

Voss and Edwards All Fall Down Treasure Hunt - Competition!

I am delighted to be part of the All Fall Down Treasure Hunt! 

All Fall Down is the new novel from authors Louise Voss and Mark Edwards. It is published by Harper Collins on 14th February 2013 and is available now in ebook format.

First prize in the treasure hunt: A Kindle Fire – the superb e-reader from Amazon that also allows you to watch movies and TV shows, play games and, of course, read books!

3 runner-up prizes of a signed set of All Fall Down and Catch Your Death 

To find out how the Treasure Hunt works, see below and also visit: http://vossandedwards.com/2013/01/07/win-kindle-fire/ and http://www.killerreads.com/news/the-voss-and-edwards-treasure-hunt-how-it-works/

Thanks to Mark for the guest post below - which also contains the next clue! The question you need to find the answer for here is at the bottom of the post.

Inside the mind of a killer
by Mark Edwards

Louise and I recently received a comment on our blog that told us that we should either seek psychiatric help or turn ourselves into the authorities for harbouring murderous thoughts. The commenter had just read a brief extract from our forthcoming novel, Forward Slash, which I had written.

As a vegetarian dad of three, who hardly ever entertains murderous thoughts – even while driving or trying to get my trolley down the aisles of Asda on a Saturday – I would like to point out that when I write from the point of view of a sadistic killer I am using that most vital tool for novelists: my imagination. I hope that being able to create the voice of a psychopath does not mean that I am in any way psychopathic myself. I’ve even taken the Psychopath Test just to double-check and am happy to report that I am completely normal, if not 100% sane.

So how do you get inside the mind of a killer?  Is it simply a case of tapping into that dark part of yourself and exploring the negative emotions that we all feel at some point? Or is it a more academic exercise, whereby the writer researches psychopathology and tries to work out what makes the violent criminals in our society tick? The answer is a combination of both.

The first thing that any crime novelist has to do when creating their ‘baddie’ is to work out their motivation and background. What turned them into a monster? Were they born bad, and does such a thing even exist? What are their aims? If they are a serial killer, they will almost always – in fiction, at least – be trying to achieve a goal, whether it’s fame, transformation or to fulfill their sadistic urges. Serial killers in books nearly always ‘get a taste for murder’ and then have to kill more and more, and in increasingly extreme ways. Another challenge for us writers is to create a villain who is original but who also follows the conventions that readers have come to expect.

In All Fall Down, we have two central villains – Angelica, the leader of a small group of women who want to bring about the end of the world, and her violent sidekick, Heather. Angelica’s motivation is grand – she believes that she has been chosen by an Ancient Egyptian goddess to cleanse the earth to prepare for a new Golden Age…although the true motivation and psychology behind this is not revealed until the end of the book. Angelica is methodical and, mostly, in control, except when her lusts drive her to carry out acts of extreme violence. At least one reader has told us he had the hots for Angelica while reading it – despite knowing what happens to the men she, ahem,  ‘romances’. She’s the ultimate femme fatale.

To write Angelica, both Louise and I had to understand why she believed in her apocalyptic visions – what was it that had made her this way? If we could convince the reader that Angelica truly believed in the Goddess, then all of Angelica’s actions become logical. She is like a soldier or agent with a mission that she has to carry out at all costs. We also had to understand what made her so charismatic and persuasive. Louise wanted to incorporate this cult mentality and detailed descriptions of Angelica’s psyche and motivations, having herself briefly been part of (an admittedly fairly benign) cult in the 90s.  She understood what made people follow leaders whose philosophies, if the public were ever to learn of them, would appear at best deluded and at worst, completely unhinged. Angelica is a cross between Charles Manson and one of the female assassins in Kill Bill.

Angelica’s sidekick, Heather, is, on the surface at least, more straightforward. She is more brutal and sadistic than Angelica, apparently enjoying torturing and killing anyone who gets in her way. She sees other people as problems that need to be solved – and goes about her business without empathy or conscience.

Once you have figured out what makes them tick, you need to let your imagination run free and harness your darker emotions. We all, at some point, feel anger or rage or loathing (I hope it’s not just me!) – these are powerful tools that can be used on the page.

If you can make the reader fully believe in your killer, no matter how extreme their actions, that makes them far scarier. You don’t have to be a murderer to get inside one’s head. I’d like to take the guy who left that comment on our blog out for a coffee so I can explain that to him… but he would probably be too scared.

The question you need to answer is: ‘What are the names of the two central villains in All Fall Down?’

The previous post can be found on Tuesday 5th February on Nikki-Ann's blog Notes of Life

The next post can be found on Tuesday 12th February on Keith Walters' blog Books and Writers 

Happy hunting!

How does it work?

Starting on Friday 11^th January, two blog posts will go up each week for four weeks on crime writing blogs within the community. As well as providing a fascinating insight into Voss and Edwards’ writing relationship, their inspiration for writing All Fall Down, life in a cult and killer viruses, each blog post will contain a clue!  To find the clue, simply read the blog post and answer a question – the answer to which will be in the post itself. Once you have collected all ten clues, send them in to killerreads@harpercollins.co.uk along with your name and address, and you’ll be entered into a prize draw to win a brand new Kindle Fire! Three lucky runners up will win a signed copy of Catch Your Death and All Fall Down. The deadline for entering is 28^th February 2013, and the winner will be revealed on 4^th March. 













Louise Voss and Mark Edwards have also written two previous novels together.

You can read my review of Catch Your Death here and also find my review of Killing Cupid here.