selling your book – Della Galton.

Genre novels – what are they and how long are they?

Written by Della Galton on March 4, 2017. Posted in Genre, selling your book, Writing. 2 Comments

Publishers and agents like to categorise novels into genre. Partly so they know which shelf to put your book on at the library/bookshop. Genre refers to the type of story you’re writing. Here are some of the most popular genres and some very ballpark figures on how long they are.

Romance: quite a broad spectrum, ranging from Mills & Boon category romance (Approx 55,000 words) to more mainstream romance. (Approx 90,000).
Thriller: covers crime, psychological, cosy, political. (Approx 90.000).
Historical: Period stories. (Can be 120,000 plus).
Sagas: Multigenerational stories. (Can be 120,000 plus).
Fantasy/Sci fi: Includes other worlds, past, present and future. (Can be 120,000 plus).
Timeslip: (Can be 120,000 plus).
Erotica: Includes all genres, from mainstream to niche. (55,000 plus).
Literary: (practically any length – depending on publisher).
Commercial Women’s Fiction: a catch all for anything that doesn’t come under another category. (80,000 plus).

I should also mention children’s and YA which isn’t a genre exactly but is a law unto itself. Length depends on age group and publisher.

The above list is not exhaustive. It’s simply meant as a very general guide. Publishers will usually state what lengths and genre types they are interested in receiving.

Digital publishing means that there is a great deal more flexibility than there used to be because the cost of printing doesn’t govern the length of a novel. Many publishers today will consider novels from 55,000 upwards and this was once thought to be too short (except for category romance).

It’s usually easier to sell a novel that fits into a genre because publishers see the market as being more defined. Readers of sci-fi like to read sci-fi. Readers of crime like to read crime. However there are, of course, elements of romance in most of the other categories. It’s hard to avoid as it’s so much a part of the human condition!

A true cross genre novel, for example, a psychological thriller cross fantasy tends to be much harder to sell.

Also, interestingly, although publishers don’t want to buy them, it’s very often a cross genre novel that will become an out of left field bestseller. Fifty Shades of Grey was (in my opinion) category romance plus bondage! Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke was historical plus magic/fantasy.

As writers it’s probably better to know our genre and try to stay somewhere within it. However, I also think that we should write what we feel most passionate about and not follow too many rules. Phew! Did I mention it was complicated!

Selling Your Book – Five things you should do on Twitter – and Five things you definitely shouldn’t!

Written by Della Galton on September 7, 2014. Posted in selling your book, social media. 3 Comments

Yesterday I had a lovely day teaching How to Sell Your Book with several ladies from around the countryside. Thank you, ladies, you know who you are. Here’s what we talked about as regards Twitter.

Twitter is deceptively simple to use. It can be excellent fun and is a brilliant tool for selling your book because it has immense reach. And very little commitment is necessary. I love twitter.

All you need to do to get started is to sign up for a free account. You will need to upload a photograph and a brief profile. Make your profile as witty and interesting as you can. Be sure to use your writing name so that you can be found. Mention your book. You might want to have more than one twitter account, i.e. one for you and one for each of your books. But bear in mind this is more work – and probably not necessary.

Five things you should do on Twitter

Keep your tweets short and snappy so that others can retweet them if they wish to.
Always Include links to your books when you are promoting your book. Preferably Bitly links (see Bitly.com) as these can be tracked by you for statistical information so you can gauge their effectiveness.
Acknowledge fellow tweeters if they engage with you and reciprocate if someone retweets for you.
Use pictures –they are very popular on Twitter. You can use images of your book or find images in the public domain that are relevant.
Tweet regularly – at least five tweets a day. Of these five, only one of them should be a direct selling tweet, i.e. a reference to your book. The others should be about something else, for example:

A tweet that is funny – maybe a funny quote about writing – or your book’s subject if it is non fiction.
A tweet that is inspirational. See above. Or perhaps an interesting fact.
A tweet that is a retweet for someone else. (twitter is very reciprocal) or just chat.
A tweet that is linked to your blog – having a blog goes hand in hand with twitter.
A sales tweet – make sure it’s a good one and has links to Amazon or wherever you sell your book.

Five things you should NEVER do on Twitter

Continuously tweet Buy My Book. You can of course ask people to buy your book, but you will need to be a bit more creative about it.
Send new followers automated direct messages asking them to buy your book.
Tweet details of your book at specific people – especially those you don’t know – asking them to buy your book, retweet you etc. (this is rather bad manners)
Be offensive.
Be unprofessional.

Happy Tweeting and please do follow me at DellaGalton.com

Getting More Reviews on Amazon

Written by Della Galton on June 29, 2014. Posted in selling your book. 11 Comments

In an ideal world, everyone who reads your book and loves it will leave you a review on Amazon. In reality, as we all know, this doesn’t happen.

Don’t count on book sales leading to reviews. One estimate I saw suggested less than 1% of people will feel moved enough to leave a review (and that includes the 1* reviews). So if you have 500 sales in a month, you may if you’re lucky get 5 reviews.

Free downloads are worse because a huge percentage of people who download your book when it’s free won’t actually read it at all.

So, how do you get people to leave reviews on your book. Well, the short answer is to ask them. I don’t mean you should ask random people, I mean that if people take the trouble to tell you they loved your book, then seize the opportunity and ask them if they would mind reviewing your book on Amazon. They will often be more than happy to do so.

But you can help a lot by making it easier. Lack of time, opportunity and technical expertise often stop people who would otherwise gladly review your book from doing so. The following suggestions may seem obvious but they really do work.

If you’re going to ask someone to leave you a review, do it via email or facebook because then they are in a position to do it right there and then.
In the message send them the link to your book (so all they have to do is click).
Better still give them the link to the page where they write the review (click the ‘leave a review’ link and then copy that URL).
If a reader emails you to say how much they enjoyed the book, immediately email back and ask if they’d mind cut and pasting their email as a review. Give them the link again.
Don’t be shy about asking for reviews – it’s weird the first time you do it but if you make it easy people are surprisingly willing. It just never occurred to them before.

PS: My novel, Ice and a Slice is on a kindle countdown at the moment. It’s just 99p for the next few days. Just in case you were thinking of practising your own review writing 🙂

Want more publishing & publicity tips & tricks? Why not sign up for my forthcoming course ‘How To Sell Your Book‘ – only £45 – details on my course page

Wednesday Writing Spot – Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover

Written by Della Galton on August 7, 2013. Posted in Ice and a Slice, selling your book, Writing. 8 Comments

Don’t judge a book by its cover. Hmm, this may apply to people but it definitely doesn’t apply to actual books. That’s exactly what we do. Covers are everything.

Having a good cover can mean the difference between selling or not selling your book. If you have a big publisher you probably won’t get much say in your cover. Actually if you have a big publisher, they probably won’t get much say in it either. Supermarkets very often have the last word on covers.

If you have a small to medium sized publisher there is every chance you’ll get a lot of say in your cover. I had a lot of say in the cover of Ice and a Slice. I love my cover. And thankfully lots of other people have told me they love it too.

It’s quite rare though for people to notice that there’s a message within the title of my cover. Interestingly, it’s often children who spot this. My friend’s daughters (aged four and six) saw it immediately. ‘Why do the red letters say, I Lie?’ one of them asked.

Because that’s what the character does, I explained, hoping they wouldn’t ask me why the text of the title is also slightly blurred. Luckily they didn’t.

But it’s interesting, isn’t it, what you can do with the title on a front cover.

And if you want to see if SJ, my main character, really does lie, you can click here to buy a copy of Ice and a Slice for less than the price of a glass of Chardonnay. Cheers!

Book Launch Pictures

Written by Della Galton on July 21, 2013. Posted in selling your book. 8 Comments

Just in case you missed my book launch for my novel, Ice and a Slice, I thought I would post some pictures. Oh and let you know how the day went. It was fabulous. The launch was at The Red Lion, a pub in our village. I really recommend book launches in pubs, by the way. I’ve had my last two launches in this one. Pubs have some advantages over book shops (sorry book shops but they do).There is lots of wine and coffee handy, and you don’t need to worry about spilling it over the books – or at least no one else’s books, except yours. There is lots of space for socialising – including a beautiful garden at the Red Lion. You can have lunch there if you like – lots of people did this.

cake at book launch ice and a slice — Cake and Wine

All I had to arrange was an endless supply of coffee and soft drinks – which the Red Lion kindly provided (bill coming later) and some bottles of wine for anyone who fancied a glass. Oh and I took three huge cakes – I’d like to say they were home made but they were M&S.

And I took the books, of course. I took all of my books – why restrict yourself to the one you are launching 🙂 This is usually possible in a book shop too.

And I needed someone to take the money. Thank you very much, Tony and Adam.

Oh and I needed a pen.

Oh and my co-author of How to Eat Loads and Stay Slim came to the launch too. So we could both sign copies of How to Eat Loads – there aren’t many dual signed copies of that around!

Did I mention it was fabulous?

It was. Thank you so much to everyone who came. And if you didn’t make it, but you would like to read Ice and a Slice. You can buy it for £1.94 for your kindle by clicking here. Or if you’d like an actual paperback, heaven forbid, and you’d like it signed by yours truly, you can get it for £6.99 by emailing me – or posting a comment on my blog. I won’t even charge you postage and packing. And signed books make brilliant presents. 🙂

And if you’d like a copy of How to Eat Loads and Stay Slim – signed by both the authors, you can get that for £6.00. See above for how.

Thanks for reading.

Media Tart

Written by Della Galton on June 29, 2013. Posted in selling your book, social media. 2 Comments

Writers just write books, don’t they? Nope – not these days. Writing them is just the beginning. Then we have to blog, facebook, tweet, go on the radio, get interviewed by journalists and write features about them too. And if you have more than one book out at a time you have to do all this ten times more. So much for being a shy and retiring writer. You need at least a dozen other faces too. The week before last I was interviewed by Hot Radio about How to Eat Loads and Stay Slim. The interview is now on our page. I only just had the chance to listen to it. I was quite impressed. I am renowned for making a mess of radio interviews, especially live ones. On one memorable occasion when being interviewed about my How to Write and Sell Short Stories, I told the interviewer that it was selling much better than my novels and when she asked why, I replied – wait for it – perhaps my novels were rubbish. Not a good move 🙁 How to Write and Sell Short Stories is No 1 in one of its categories, I just noticed. Hey, maybe I’m getting better at publicity!

Another time on live radio I got so carried away talking about writing that I entirely forgot to mention the name of the book I was promoting – Short Story to Novel – How to Move On.

Hmmm, isn’t the rule of being interviewed that you slip in the title as often as you possibly can. Not leave it out altogether!

However, I must be getting better. The interview on Hot Radio is good. I sound like I know what I’m doing. Maybe it’s true that practice makes perfect! I actually sound quite entertaining 🙂 If you’d like to listen to it please click here.

Last week, I was also interviewed by the Daily Echo about Ice and a Slice and how I started writing – their photographer is coming on Monday to take pictures. Deciding what to wear is going to take up quite a bit of my weekend 🙂 I’ll post a link when that one is out.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a feature for 4Dorset about How to Eat Loads and Stay Slim, which includes a recipe for summer desserts. The link to that one is here.

Mind you, it’s a lot easier to get it right when you actually have time to sit and write the darn thing and you’re not just having questions fired at you, live on radio!

Anyway, the point of all this rambling was to mention the fact that you don’t just need to be a writer these days. You need to be a radio star, blogger, facebooker, tweeter, and be up for having your photo taking on a Monday Morning. Hmm – not quite what I signed up for!

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