Eclipse 20 March 2015

Because working from home means you can stand outside your front door, staring into a box and inviting your neighbours to do so, too.

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Change your book title and boost sales …?

Liz and her books. Photo by Simon Howes

I was setting up a post on my main blog introducing my two new books to the world and I thought it would be interesting to write a “making of” on this blog which is, after all, about my adventures in reading, WRITING and working from home … And the title of this piece explains it all, really – can tweaking your book titles change your sales profile? I’m sharing my experience of naming my books and tweaking those names … and what might have happened next …

Funny book titles equals higher sales? Hm.

My first book was called “Going it Alone at 40: How I Survived my First Year of Full-Time Self-Employment“. I realised there was a danger of people only reading the first part of the title and thinking it was a guide to empty nest syndrome or divorce, but it was my first book, so I could ‘leverage’ that and tell the world about my book. It was sufficiently differentiated from other books to do quite well, and I’ve had some lovely positive reviews (if the worst someone can say about your book is that it contains a few too many cardigans, then life isn’t too bad).

I wasn’t really planning on writing another self-help careers book … except I then put together a Quick Guide to Your Career in Transcription, because people kept searching for that topic on my blog, and that has indeed done pretty well, given that it’s a small book, not a full-length one. And then I kept on blogging about how I was building my business and developing my career and it became apparent that I could put together another book, about increasing your income, saying no and planning your time, plus what I’d learned about blogging and social media. I wrote some new chapters for the book which were later summarised in blog posts, and I published “Who are you Calling Mature? Running a Successful Business After the Start-up Phase” in early 2014.

I did some market research on this title, this way round (and yes, if you’ve clicked the links, you’ll notice that the titles aren’t quite the same now) and people generally thought it was a good and funny title, as well as thinking the idea of the book was useful, given that there are lots of books out there about starting out and not so many about what happens next. I asked friends and colleagues on Facebook and in person at networking events, and excitedly launched the book. At the same time, I launched an omnibus e-edition of the two together so people could get better value, and called that “Going it Alone at 40 AND Who are you Calling Mature? The Omnibus“, which was probably a mistake. Who was going to find THAT searching for business books?

Launch your book and watch it fly!

Or not. I’ll be honest, sales were not what I’d hoped for. I did all the stuff you’re supposed to do, including sending out review copies, and people have bought it and posted some good reviews. But not in the numbers I’d wished for.  Then I asked again, did anyone think there was anything wrong with the title? And I got lots of replies, some along the lines of the business area not being as large, but several saying that the title didn’t lead them to think about business, but about some kind of guide to growing old disgracefully. Oh. After some fulminating about there being subtitles and blue books with graphs on the cover not generally being the way to sell comedy books on ageing, I actually listened to the advice, realised that no one had a chance of finding the omnibus, and switched all the titles around.

Do your research and tread carefully

It’s been a week or so since I changed the titles around. I haven’t actually changed the book covers – yet. I considered it, but as my motto is “Do things carefully and don’t spend out unless you have to”, I thought I’d see if the change had an effect.

What did I do?

• I changed the titles around on Amazon, and added a whole new title to the omnibus, so it’s now called “Your Guide to Starting and Building your Business“.
• I remembered to change the titles on my business website’s publications page, and I took the opportunity to add to their SEO (search engine optimisation, AKA making sure that people can find your stuff) by adding sub-headings with the book titles.
• I changed the titles on my book pages on this blog
• I told people what I’d done and thanked them for their input
• I wrote a blog post on my main blog introducing the books (with their new titles) to the world – it’s common practice to launch independent authors’ books once they’ve garnered a few sales and reviews) and made sure they were helped by the SEO of that site

What happened?

I sold more books. It’s anecdotal, obviously: there hasn’t been enough time to see whether this is a trend or a spike. I don’t think the sales were ‘support buys’, i.e. my friends feeling sorry for me and buying a copy to help out (I do massively appreciate that when it happens, and am chuffed at all sales, but that does sort of skew your sales statistics!), but so far I have had significantly more interest and sales.

What happens next for those book titles?

Well, for a start, I’m going to leave them that way around, as it obviously works.

I’m going to see how sales go through next month, and if they are good enough and I can see they’re going to pay their way, I will get the covers redesigned (including the covers for the print books)

And I’ll let you know!

Update – 20 days on and I’m redoing my book covers!

Update: 20 June. I’m pleased to report that as of 20 June I’ve sold copies of my books every day, and more copies of the renamed ones. Luckily, I get a nice report from Amazon about daily sales. I don’t think I’ve been talking about my books any more on social media than I usually do, so I’m putting it down to the new book titles.

Update – August 2014

I ordered a new cover for the Omnibus e-book, and the two print books – and here they are. Doing that plus creating a dedicated books website has helped to build traffic and sales – but what started it all off was changing the titles! I’ve blogged a more detailed update here.

Book review – Louise Harnby – “Marketing Your Editing and Proofreading Business”

I’ve previously read and reviewed Louise’s first book, “Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers“, aimed at newcomers to the profession and those who needed to brush up their business planning skills. This book on marketing is for a similar audience, but it goes much more into the nuts and bolts of the actual marketing process, telling the reader what is out there that they can try, explaining why it’s a good idea to try it, providing some examples of people who have tried it (and in the interests of disclosure, I am one of the people who she mentions as examples of good practice) and giving some pointers as to what to do next.

As I do in my own writing, the author professes not to use jargon in her book, and she doesn’t, explaining concepts clearly and concisely without muddling the waters with marketing speak. As such, the book will be very accessible to those who fear marketing and can’t see the point of making the effort – or those who try to do it, but half-heartedly – the “embarrassed marketers” as Harnby calls them. But no one could fail to be convinced by the information that’s laid out clearly and methodically – and everyone can learn from it – I certainly learned a bit more about the relationship between Google+ and searching for your services, and about some of the other social media service that are out there.

The book is clearly laid out in four parts, covering concepts – ideas about marketing, what it is, how it helps you to grow your business; then activities, which sets out a chapter on each of various marketing channels including cold letters, face-to-face networking and social media, among many more; then a very useful sample marketing plan; and a good solid list of resources at the end. The marketing plan is a stroke of genius, as it takes a non-traditional editor – certainly not a woman who’s worked for a publisher then struck out on her own, which is something of a stereotype in our industry – and sets out what they can achieve around an editing career, branching out into all sorts of other activities and, as Harnby advocates at the beginning of the book (and something I strongly advocate, too) making sure that they have a mix of customers and types of work.

This book would be particularly useful for anyone starting out in editing freelancing or for anyone who’s giving it a go but not getting very far with getting customers. It’s also very useful for anyone planning to work with traditional publishers, as it sets out a lot of information about choosing which companies to target, etc., although one of Harnby’s own strengths is that she also works with self-publishers, and she has plenty of advice about how to deal with this market segment too. It also served to make me count my blessings and realise how lucky I’ve been to have gathered together a broad portfolio of clients through word of mouth, social media marketing and a couple of directory sites.

In summary, if you’re in the early stages of an editorial career, perhaps especially if you are not sure of the market in which you wish to work, buy a copy of “Marketing your Editing and Proofreading Business” and read it cover to cover (or percentage to percentage, I suppose, if you read the e-book version!). I will be recommending it to my mentees in the profession, and including it in the list of resources in my next book!

Find out more about the book on Louise’s website. You’ll find more info there on the book and links to where you can buy it.

Note: I received a review copy from Louise – thank you. Although I am quoted and referenced in the book, I make no financial gain from you purchasing it (although of course it helps my marketing effort in raising awareness of my website and thus my own books!).

Read this and pass it on …

I don’t do chain letters and blog award things very often, but I’ve been nominated in this writers’ one, and as I have my new books out at the moment (“Who are you Calling Mature?” and the Business Omnibus), I thought it would be a nice one to do. The person who nominated me is Chris Longden, aka Funnylass, a novelist who’s a friend of a friend; she writes satirical novels that are funny and make you think, and she’s been generous in sharing three nominations in her post.

So, the idea is that you accept the nomination, answer four questions, then pass it on and nominate two more writers. I’m glad that the writers can be fiction, non-fiction writers or even Plain English writers and editors like my friend and fellow-nominee, Laura Ripper (here’s her post from today, too) and here I go with my answers …

What are you working on?

I’ve just published my new business book, “Who are you Calling Mature? Running a Successful Business after the Start-up Phase”, and so what I’m mainly working on is building its visibility, collecting some reviews (including sending out a few review copies) and then talking about it. I’ve done this one in print and e-book versions simultaneously (exciting!) after producing a print version of my first business book, “Going it Alone at 40”. I’ve been working on climbing up the steep learning curve with that: I’ll admit to having 10 copies in my possession which are formatted a little oddly – for that reason, I’m going to give them away via BookCrossing. I can assure any potential buyers that the copies now available on print-on-demand will be formatted just fine!

So I’m working on building my profile as an author; I’m always looking at different ways to share knowledge, and I’m contemplating putting myself out there as a speaker locally, although that’s only in the thinking stage at the moment!

How does your writing differ from others in its genre?

I like to think that I have two Unique Selling points in the business how-to genre …

1. I have a relaxed and approachable style, encouraging rather than instructing, and happy to admit my own mistakes and learning points. I like to be a bit light-hearted, friendly and sometimes funny, which is something I do in my blog posts and something I take across to my books. My first book talks about what a homeworker wears, and my second one takes you on journeys through the real ways in which social media can help you – all trying to tell it how it is while encouraging my readers to take those first and subsequent steps. I hope that I come across as caring, too.
2. I give all of the information people need. I give a lot of information away on my blogs, and this, again, carries over into my books. I get really frustrated when people don’t tell you exactly how they did things, or you have to even buy an expensive downloadable or course in order to find out the nitty-gritty details. I share exactly how I’ve done what I’ve done, in detail, with examples from my own life. The books don’t have many images in them, but they have links to FREE material on my blogs which has screen shots and all sorts of extra explanations. I have vowed never to make my readers pay extra to access that material: it is important to me not to do that. They can buy the next book, or the other book, of course …!

Why do you write what you do?

I am passionate about encouraging people to believe that they can set up and run a successful business – on their own terms. I started writing my Word tips on my business blog when I didn’t know how to do something and wanted to make a note of it. That built into a successful series, then when I went full-time with my self-employment, I decided to blog about my experience, sharing exactly how I did it and what happened. That became the raw material for my first book, and my next year of blog posts formed the nucleus (although again much enhanced) of the second one.

I started writing with a how-to guide on lowering your cholesterol without drugs, which is still my biggest seller, and I added one on transcription as a career when I realised that I was getting a lot of searches on that topic reaching my business blog. All of what I do is basically to share what I’ve learned along the way, and to encourage other people by sharing my own experience and real-life examples. If I can inspire somebody to take the plunge and start their own business – and enjoy it – then I’m very happy.

How does the writing process work for you?

The kernel of my books comes from my blog. But it’s not just a question of copying and pasting a load of blog posts into a Word document – there’s a lot of editing and fiddling around, re-ordering, putting into context and new writing to be done.

Typically, I will collect together posts on a topic or number of topics, pop them in a Word document in a vague order, work out what else I need to write, and write that. Once I have a document – oh, and this is all done in the spare time I have in between doing jobs for my regular clients – I send it off to Catherine, my editor, and Chrys, my beta reader, who go over it for typos, errors, things that don’t make sense, things that need more explaining, repetition, etc., etc. Then I edit it again, and out it goes. It can be a long process – obviously the shorter books take less time, but I’ve put out one full-length book a year for the past two years.

Nominations

Now it’s nomination time, I’m pleased to nominate my friend and children’s / teens’ author Leila Rasheed as my first colleague. Leila has written a variety of books, and she also teaches and lectures in creative writing. Leila’s blog post is here.  My second nomination is Fiona Joseph. She’s a fellow non-fiction writer who’s produced some lovely books about figures from Birmingham’s history; she also writes short stories and has a novel coming out this year. Again, there’s lots of interesting stuff on her website and blog, and you can read her post, too!  Over to you, ladies!

Market research – please give your answer!

I’m trying to work out whether it’s worth producing my book, Going it Alone at 40: How I Survived my First Year of Full-Time Self-Employment, in a print version. This will also help me to decide how to produce my new book, Who are you Calling Mature? Running a Business after Start-up. Thanks for answering the poll – just click on one of the answers!

A day off

One of the great things about running your own business is that you can (often) take a day off when you fancy it, without having to ask anyone’s permission. So I had a day off with Matthew today – we started off at the Birmingham Social Media Cafe for its fifth birthday, and chatted with regulars and newbies, had lunch at Eat, and then did a bit of shopping – new coats for both of us and my birthday TKMaxx vouchers finally spent. Our friend Ali had told us about a new shop called Char Wallah and so we popped there – do drop by if you’re near the Pavillions, shopping centre. They have a lovely little shop nestling on the basement floor, with a huge range of teas as well as teapots and mugs. A really warm welcome and they have worked really hard on the concept and design, so deserve to do well. I hope to feature them in my Small Business Chats on the Libroediting blog soon, so watch this (that) space.

We’re now finishing our day off with a lovely cup of tea, curled up on the sofa with our books and cats. Hooray for days off. And if you run your own business and don’t take random days like this – why on earth not? We can all do one every now and then!

Well, I’m at home anyway …

Last summer, we had a load of work done on the house, including having all of the exterior paintwork done and a new front door. Cue anguish, hours of sorting things out, and sawdust EVERYWHERE. Did we (especially I) learn? No we did not. This summer, we had Terry in to hang pictures (only eight years after we moved in), do other bits and bobs (including installing a new floor in the cats’ toilet) and make cat safety window screens. We also had a company in to replace the roof of our bay window.

Now, Terry is pretty self-sufficient and very quiet – but you can hardly give a man 12 pictures and ask him to hang them around the house without being there to tell him where they go. Or expect him to know how tall you are so he can fit the locks on the window screens. And the roofing men, while efficient and good workmen, sang. Constant snatches of popular tunes and TV theme tunes from the 1920s through to now.

It wasn’t M’s fault, it was probably my fault: there was an assumption that because I’m at home all day, I can project manage these things. As I said, did I learn nothing from last summer?

Last week, I did the usual 34 or so hours of paid work. All I can say is, it was handy that M was away for work, because I had the whole of Monday and over half of Tuesday with the roofing men banging and whistling, and most of Wednesday needing to be on hand at various intervals to demonstrate my ability to reach fixings on the frames (I did have tranches of time when I could get on with stuff that day, thanks to Terry’s ability to refrain from singing while working). I had work in which can’t really be done on a laptop, and I certainly needed to be around as the roof men were an unknown quantity and I needed to be on hand for Terry. So, to cut a long story short, I ended up working really late on several evenings in the week, and most of the weekend, two things that I normally pride myself on not having to do any more.

Yes, it’s good to be able to be flexible. No, I don’t feel that I’ve been taken advantage of, apart from by myself. But being flexible because you like a flexible lifestyle or have one dentist appointment at a time unpopular for office workers and working all the hours there are because you’ve booked in too many other responsibilities during the day are two different things.

A picture hanging on the actual wall!

Next time we have work done, we’re going to do this: (a) arrange for me to book some actual time off to look after it, (b) arrange for M to have some time off work to manage at least part of it while I work. I will also try to make sure I have work that I can do with a laptop when I’ve got potentially noisy workmen in.

Well, it’s all part of the learning process, I suppose. How do you manage this kind of thing? Are you put upon, or do you bring it upon yourself?

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Want to read more about my adventures in full-time self-employment? Sign up for email updates, add this site to your RSS reader, click on the categories to the right, or have a look at my book!

A lovely day, some haberdashery, and some more books …

Lauren and Tilly working hard

I had a lovely day today – reorganising Libro a little bit has led to me being able to take full days off with impunity; hopefully long gone are the days of working all day, every day.  One of the things I’ve been meaning to do more of now I have more free time is my crafting / sewing. I’m more of a cross-stitcher really (certainly not a knitter) but I have made four sets of curtains for our house, not to mention that 150 metres of bunting last year … Anyway, I’ve been enjoying watching the Great British Sewing Bee on the TV, and was excited to see that Lauren Guthrie from the show was opening a haberdashery shop, Guthrie & Ghani in Moseley today.

Liz meets Stuart

So off we trotted and met Jen there, too, and to cut a long story involving a dash back to Kings Heath to buy the last copy of the book in Smiths, I bought the book, had it signed by Lauren, Tilly and Stuart, all contestants on the programme, and had a lovely chat with Stuart who, it turns out, was a contemporary of mine at University! Anyway, the shop is lovely, I bought buttons, ribbon and a pincushion, and will be back – and I’ll be talking a bit more on here about any crafty creations I manage to finish and anything else lovely I buy from the shop.

But of course, this has led to yet another book confession, as a shiny copy of the GBSB book had to be purchased in order to be signed. It does look great, though, doesn’t it! And has loads of hints and tips, and I haven’t bought a sewing book for *ages* (well, not a modern one; I can’t resist those old Golden Hands books when I find them second hand, even though it’s often a seventies fest inside).

This confession reminded me that a Virago book landed on the doorstep in the week, kindly sent to me by Dee from the LibrayThing Virago group. I very much enjoyed the last Mary Webb I read, and this is her last short novel plus some short stories, so a real treat, and a lovely original Virago Green, too.

After my second (ahem) visit to Guthrie & Ghani, I went to the regular BookCrossing meetup. To my shame, I didn’t take any books along (again), but I did only pick up one, a travel book about completing the Silk Road in China, etc., on horseback, so right up my street. Um, road.

And then I got home and found that my next read-with-Matthew read (we so enjoyed reading Capital together, we thought we’d do it again with another book – all are welcome to join in) had arrived – Ruth Ozeki’s “A Tale for the Time Being” which centres around the Japanese tsunami. We’ve both enjoyed Ozeki’s other novels, so this should be a good read – and it has 430-odd pages of fairly small print, so should last us a while.

So, a variety of books on a variety of subjects, and a lovely day, too, involving the purchase of buttons, ribbon, a pincushion and then some falafel at the Farmers’ Market! What could be better?

Business book review – Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers

Louise Harnby’s book, “Business Planning for Editorial Freelancers” is a must-read for anyone considering going into this line of business. In fact, there is a great deal of useful general information in the book that would be useful for anyone looking to start their own business.

The book is packed with useful advice on working out what you want to do, formulating a business plan, building a customer base, networking, using social media, etc. It’s peppered throughout with real-life examples from a handful of other editors, who are working in fields as diverse as genre fiction editing, STM publishing and academic articles, as well as Louise’s own experiences and some longer case studies at the end. There’s a great resource guide with loads of links to useful blogs, pages and reference materials (I was chuffed to see a link to my blog in the resource guide, which I hadn’t expected!).

Although I’m obviously an experienced editor (etc.) who has been running a business for some time, I found it useful for two reasons. One, it’s always gratifying to know you did the right thing when you started out, and indeed I have done much of what is recommended here. Two, I learned a few things, which is always nice, specifically about some editing software that makes the job easier (which I will hopefully be getting hold of and reviewing on here at some stage), and about how to embed downloadable pdfs into your website. It’s never too late to learn something new!

There was lots more to recognise, too, such as the emphasis on other editors being colleagues, not competitors, and the advice to use what you’ve learned in your previous jobs and life experience to deepen and broaden your offering as a freelance editor. I also realised how lucky I was to come into the work having learnt my trade in various jobs in the past, and how lucky I was to build the business pretty much by word of mouth and advertising on one or two sites, plus using social media. Things can be a lot more daunting than that, and I appreciate how lucky I’ve been that everything came together at the right time.

As regular readers will know, I’ve written a book about starting your own business myself recently. I think this book and mine complement each other very well – this is about hard facts, research and the resources you need to get there, whereas mine is more a collection of experiences and lessons learned along the way, along with coverage of other areas such as what to do when you’re ill and what to wear in the home office. There’s also a great deal of information about training courses in editing and proofreading and the professional organisations, as befits a book published in association with the Publishing Training Centre. So I’m not shooting myself in the foot by shouting loud about how very good and useful this book of Louise’s is: it’s excellent and I wish it had been around 4 years ago when I was setting up Libro. I will certainly recommend it to new editorial colleagues and more experienced colleagues who might want to pick up additional information on training, networking or social media, for example.

More information about the book on Louise’s website, which includes links to the various places where you can buy the book.

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Note: the author kindly sent me an e-copy of this book to review.

Book progress …

As you probably know, I’m putting together an e-book based on my posts on this blog and my main Libroediting one about the process of going self-employed and my first year working full-time from home. I’ve just got to do final edits and it’ll be ready to go.

I hope that those of you who have been reading and enjoying this blog will feel able to share the news – it does have new information and content as well as repeating blog posts, and people will get about 50 pages of A4 for £1.00, so it’ll be worth it! It’ll be available on Amazon for Kindle – if you don’t have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reader app or software from Amazon.

Anyway, I’ve written about my experiences having the book edited and I thought you might like to read it too, if you don’t read my other blog. Do pop over and have a read and let me know what you think! It’s been a very popular post among my fellow editors …