No blogging for weeks - we've been tied up in a multitude of complications following our re-location to Brixham.
No problems with solicitors, removers, builders, plumbers, electricians or decorators: all of our difficulties can be summarised in just two letters - BT.
Although we stayed within the 01803 area we weren't allowed to retain our number. We did everything possible to make things go smoothly: gave them plenty of warning; obtained the new number; had BT check the line; arranged for callers to the old number to hear a recorded message giving the new number.
We moved in, sorted out the office and tested the phones - the line was dead. We waited a day to give BT a chance to switch us on - still dead. There then began a long series of what should have been free calls, but having no landline meant using mobiles and hefty charges. The engineers checked the line and reported no problem 'at their end' and we were urged to check out our connections together with dire warings of massive charges (£100 callout plus £100 per hour) if their engineer had to visit the premises.
There didn't appear to be anything wrong at our end, so we had to ask for an engineer to come. Three days later we were still waiting. All of this time anyone dialling our number heard a phone ringing out, but our line was still dead. More phone calls from us elicited the mysterious response that 'action was required before an engineer could come'. It took many more calls and several more days before we could find anyone capable of explaining what the 'action' was. We were told that the line had previously been a party line and that broadband couldn't be supplied until changes had been made. We pointed out that, at that stage, broadband was a luxury and that a simple phone line would be a good start, but it appeared that the necessary changes would have to be made before our line could be activated.
All this time callers to our old number were being told to ring the new number that still sounded as if it was ringing. It was no good asking for the message to be changed to give a mobile number as it would take BT four working days to change the message, and by that time the problem should have been resolved.
Eventually, after nine days the phone started ringing - but hardly any of the calls were for us. We had been given the phone number that, until very recently, was the number of a hotel and a google search for the hotel produced directory listings all showing our number.
The final straw was when I asked a caller (who thought she was ringing the hotel) where she had found the number and she said that it had been entered as the contact number of the hotel on a contract form completed a few days earlier - so eleven days after we were allocated the number, somebody at the hotel was still under the belief that it was their number!
There followed many more phone calls (including one to BT's 'Moving Section' where we hung on for 74 minutes waiting for a reply - and then the line went dead) before we managed to have the number changed, together with the message on our old number.
So, we apologise to anyone who has been trying to contact us by phone recently.
Everyone that we spoke to at BT was friendly, courteous and did their best to be helpful. The problem is that BT is too complex an organisation and none of the staff seem to be aware of what other departments exist and their function. The result is that callers are passed around, often with long waits for phones to be answered.
A question for the chief executive of BT:
Is it acceptable for a major telecommunications company to keep callers waiting for over an hour for a phone to be answered?
These calls are only 'free' if one places no value on the callers' time. If we valued our time at the same rate that BT values the time of its engineers, then BT owes us over £1,000 just for the time spent on the phone sorting out what should have been a simple change of address.
All we have to do now is sort out why we have received bills showing charges that should not have been applied.
Monday, 29 October 2007
Thursday, 6 September 2007
How do bloggers
...find the time to complete a blog posting every day? I find that a month has slipped away since my last posting. There always seems to be something more pressing making demands on my time.
My current excuse is that we are in the middle of moving both our home and our business from Totnes to Brixham. Days have taken on a pattern of spending the first few hours in our Totnes office; making phone calls to ensure that the builder, roofer, decorator etc are coordinating; then going to various builders' merchants looking for everything we need to buy for the house we are doing up; and finally going to Brixham to put in a long afternoon/evening shift on DIY in an attempt to make sure that the house is ready by our planned moving-in date.
In many ways we will be sad to leave Totnes. It is a town of great character with its beautiful old buildings, its stunning site on the banks of the Dart, the whole town dominated by the Norman castle. But Totnes is not what it was: it now feels like a town in decline. Soaring house prices in recent years mean that the artists, poets, musicians and those in search of an alternative lifestyle - all of whom contributed to the atmosphere of the town - can no longer afford to live here. New arrivals are attracted to those features that gave the town its character, but are not contributing in the same way. Our favourite pub, where we used to enjoy the Totnes Blue Grass Band and a rich variety of folk music, has changed hands and now boasts an up-market champagne and cocktail lounge - and no live music.
The town is now being squeezed financially having been hit by both the moving of the College of Arts from nearby Dartington to Falmouth (estimated to cost the local economy £6m p.a.) and the closure of the town's largest employer with the loss of 160 jobs.
Add to that the continuing failure to make the narrow streets traffic-free (resulting in a dangerous and fume-filled experience for pedestrians) and perhaps you can see why we are making the 10-mile move to the attractive coastal town of Brixham - a town with its own set of problems, but beautifully situated at the southern end of Torbay and with property prices massively lower than in Totnes.
We're receiving regular enquiries about our Book Review Service, which reflects the problem faced by authors of books that are either self-published or published by a small independent press i.e. it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade anyone in the media to read and review such a book - and reviews are the vital tool in persuading bookshops to stock a book and readers to buy it.
Such authors have to wrestle with the decision as to whether it is worth paying a fee for a professional review of their work. It's impossible for us to give firm advice before the book is actually reviewed since, clearly, we have no idea how positive the review will be. All we can say with certainty is that good reviews were the key to success with my own book and, correctly used in an active promotion, this should apply to any book. A good review can make the difference between having a pile of unsold stock under the bed and seeing the book fly out of bookshops.
There was sad news for us last week. We have been working with an author to publish his first novel, a very funny tale of a private investigator working in Torbay - imagine a cross between Raymond Chandler and P G Wodehouse and you might have a flavour of the book. A local bookshop was prepared to stage the launch with a well-advertised book-signing. We were confident of good sales and the author, Terry Harper, had four more books in draft featuring the same characters. Unfortunately, Terry was taken ill and died after a very brief illness. He was a much-loved and respected indiviual who will be sadly missed.
My current excuse is that we are in the middle of moving both our home and our business from Totnes to Brixham. Days have taken on a pattern of spending the first few hours in our Totnes office; making phone calls to ensure that the builder, roofer, decorator etc are coordinating; then going to various builders' merchants looking for everything we need to buy for the house we are doing up; and finally going to Brixham to put in a long afternoon/evening shift on DIY in an attempt to make sure that the house is ready by our planned moving-in date.
In many ways we will be sad to leave Totnes. It is a town of great character with its beautiful old buildings, its stunning site on the banks of the Dart, the whole town dominated by the Norman castle. But Totnes is not what it was: it now feels like a town in decline. Soaring house prices in recent years mean that the artists, poets, musicians and those in search of an alternative lifestyle - all of whom contributed to the atmosphere of the town - can no longer afford to live here. New arrivals are attracted to those features that gave the town its character, but are not contributing in the same way. Our favourite pub, where we used to enjoy the Totnes Blue Grass Band and a rich variety of folk music, has changed hands and now boasts an up-market champagne and cocktail lounge - and no live music.
The town is now being squeezed financially having been hit by both the moving of the College of Arts from nearby Dartington to Falmouth (estimated to cost the local economy £6m p.a.) and the closure of the town's largest employer with the loss of 160 jobs.
Add to that the continuing failure to make the narrow streets traffic-free (resulting in a dangerous and fume-filled experience for pedestrians) and perhaps you can see why we are making the 10-mile move to the attractive coastal town of Brixham - a town with its own set of problems, but beautifully situated at the southern end of Torbay and with property prices massively lower than in Totnes.
We're receiving regular enquiries about our Book Review Service, which reflects the problem faced by authors of books that are either self-published or published by a small independent press i.e. it is becoming increasingly difficult to persuade anyone in the media to read and review such a book - and reviews are the vital tool in persuading bookshops to stock a book and readers to buy it.
Such authors have to wrestle with the decision as to whether it is worth paying a fee for a professional review of their work. It's impossible for us to give firm advice before the book is actually reviewed since, clearly, we have no idea how positive the review will be. All we can say with certainty is that good reviews were the key to success with my own book and, correctly used in an active promotion, this should apply to any book. A good review can make the difference between having a pile of unsold stock under the bed and seeing the book fly out of bookshops.
There was sad news for us last week. We have been working with an author to publish his first novel, a very funny tale of a private investigator working in Torbay - imagine a cross between Raymond Chandler and P G Wodehouse and you might have a flavour of the book. A local bookshop was prepared to stage the launch with a well-advertised book-signing. We were confident of good sales and the author, Terry Harper, had four more books in draft featuring the same characters. Unfortunately, Terry was taken ill and died after a very brief illness. He was a much-loved and respected indiviual who will be sadly missed.
Thursday, 2 August 2007
Frustrations
We had an enquiry this week in connection with our Book Review Service from an author in the USA who has self-published a novel. Dennis Batchelder went through the same process that we have done i.e. he set up a small publishing business to publish his own novel and is now using the lessons learned to help others achieve the same. If you're living in the States and need this sort of help, pay his website a visit www.netleaves.com
What caught my attention is that he uses almost identical terms in describing his frustrations with the book industry as appear in a book that we are about to publish (a practical guide to selling self-published books). As both Dennis and our new book say, we expect artists to sell their own paintings, potters their pots and sculptors their sculptures, but authors selling their own books are regarded with suspicion by the book trade and the public.
Why is that? Why does a book need to carry the logo of a mainstream publisher to be an acceptable book?
Whatever the reason, it's a modern phenomenon. At some stage in their careers, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and Beatrix Potter all self-published without having their work disregarded as rubbish. So what has changed? Why are the mainstream publishers now regarded as essential assessors of quality?
Clearly they are not infallible. Jill Paton Walsh failed to find a UK publisher for her excellent A Knowledge of Angels that, self-published, went on to make it to the Booker shortlist. More significantly perhaps, the constant stream of tacky rubbish of TV spin-offs and 'celebrity' memoirs indicates that the output of the mainstream publishers is not a sign of quality, but a sign of perceived commerciality - and judging by the 'returns' piles I see in bookshops, that's an assessment that they frequently get wrong.
So why does the 'essential badge of quality' idea persist? Well, it's an industry dominated by the big players and the current situation suits them very well. The last thing they want is for the book-buying public to realise that there are many excellent books reaching the marketplace via self-publishers and small independent presses.
The solution lies with ourselves - and the small independent booksellers.
As authors/publishers we have to ensure that we produce books of quality: books that are well-written, original, professionally edited and proofread, and competitively priced. Then we have to supply the bookshops with good point-of-sale materials to help the books sell.
The independent booksellers are unable to compete with the chains selling the top-sellers at knockdown prices. Where they can compete is on choice. They can offer their customers titles not available in the chains and they can establish a readership base for local authors - authors who are available for book-signings and any other events the bookshops care to arrange as part of their activities aimed at building a relationship with their clients.
This is a partnership that has to work. I can feel the tide turning.
Good luck with Soul Identity, Dennis. I hope it sells in millions.
What caught my attention is that he uses almost identical terms in describing his frustrations with the book industry as appear in a book that we are about to publish (a practical guide to selling self-published books). As both Dennis and our new book say, we expect artists to sell their own paintings, potters their pots and sculptors their sculptures, but authors selling their own books are regarded with suspicion by the book trade and the public.
Why is that? Why does a book need to carry the logo of a mainstream publisher to be an acceptable book?
Whatever the reason, it's a modern phenomenon. At some stage in their careers, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Virginia Woolf, Rudyard Kipling and Beatrix Potter all self-published without having their work disregarded as rubbish. So what has changed? Why are the mainstream publishers now regarded as essential assessors of quality?
Clearly they are not infallible. Jill Paton Walsh failed to find a UK publisher for her excellent A Knowledge of Angels that, self-published, went on to make it to the Booker shortlist. More significantly perhaps, the constant stream of tacky rubbish of TV spin-offs and 'celebrity' memoirs indicates that the output of the mainstream publishers is not a sign of quality, but a sign of perceived commerciality - and judging by the 'returns' piles I see in bookshops, that's an assessment that they frequently get wrong.
So why does the 'essential badge of quality' idea persist? Well, it's an industry dominated by the big players and the current situation suits them very well. The last thing they want is for the book-buying public to realise that there are many excellent books reaching the marketplace via self-publishers and small independent presses.
The solution lies with ourselves - and the small independent booksellers.
As authors/publishers we have to ensure that we produce books of quality: books that are well-written, original, professionally edited and proofread, and competitively priced. Then we have to supply the bookshops with good point-of-sale materials to help the books sell.
The independent booksellers are unable to compete with the chains selling the top-sellers at knockdown prices. Where they can compete is on choice. They can offer their customers titles not available in the chains and they can establish a readership base for local authors - authors who are available for book-signings and any other events the bookshops care to arrange as part of their activities aimed at building a relationship with their clients.
This is a partnership that has to work. I can feel the tide turning.
Good luck with Soul Identity, Dennis. I hope it sells in millions.
Sunday, 22 July 2007
Another strange week...
...in the weird and wonderful world of books.
Harry Potter 7 finally went on sale. We will not see the like again. Jo Rowling has done a wonderful job in promoting the magic of books.
The Richard and Judy Summer List continues to generate best-sellers - and the programme deserves praise for its own substantial contribution to the public interest in books.
How strange then that some of those paid to project the value of books into the public consciousness and to ensure that a love of books is a basic tenet of our culture, should appear to place no value at all on any works of fition. I refer to the extraordinary proposal of Hampshire County Council that its public libraries should no longer stock fiction. The proposal comes not just from the Council, but also from the Head of Library & Leisure Services and the Chief Librarian. How weird and sad is that?
Another cause for sadness - yet another local bookshop has closed, squeezed out of business by the supermarkets and chain stores selling books at a price below the price that the small retailer is paying for stock. If this carries on there will be many towns where the only books on sale will be the 'best-sellers' - and it may be pointless heading for your local library if you want a good read.
More cheerful news is that we do have a new independent bookshop in Devon. In the moorland village of Chagford you will find The Big Red Sofa, enthusiastically run by Alan and Dawn. You can select a handful of books, lounge on the eponymous sofa and drink good coffee while you look over your selections - or just talk books. They have an enterprising calendar of events lined up. In many ways I was reminded of Mostly Books in Abingdon, another small, independent bookshop run by a young couple with bright ideas. They deserve our support.
Our Book Review Service has received a lot of enquiries this week. It seems that we were right - there are a lot of authors who are discovering that their publisher does little or nothing by way of active marketing. No one has as much interest in a book selling well as the author and the author who is prepared to work hard at promoting their own work will see the benefit.
We will shortly be publishing our own practical guide to the marketing and selling of books that have been self-published or published by a small independent press. With some 25,000 such books being published each year, we are expecting to sell more than a few copies.
My resolution for the coming week - read something other than a manuscript.
Harry Potter 7 finally went on sale. We will not see the like again. Jo Rowling has done a wonderful job in promoting the magic of books.
The Richard and Judy Summer List continues to generate best-sellers - and the programme deserves praise for its own substantial contribution to the public interest in books.
How strange then that some of those paid to project the value of books into the public consciousness and to ensure that a love of books is a basic tenet of our culture, should appear to place no value at all on any works of fition. I refer to the extraordinary proposal of Hampshire County Council that its public libraries should no longer stock fiction. The proposal comes not just from the Council, but also from the Head of Library & Leisure Services and the Chief Librarian. How weird and sad is that?
Another cause for sadness - yet another local bookshop has closed, squeezed out of business by the supermarkets and chain stores selling books at a price below the price that the small retailer is paying for stock. If this carries on there will be many towns where the only books on sale will be the 'best-sellers' - and it may be pointless heading for your local library if you want a good read.
More cheerful news is that we do have a new independent bookshop in Devon. In the moorland village of Chagford you will find The Big Red Sofa, enthusiastically run by Alan and Dawn. You can select a handful of books, lounge on the eponymous sofa and drink good coffee while you look over your selections - or just talk books. They have an enterprising calendar of events lined up. In many ways I was reminded of Mostly Books in Abingdon, another small, independent bookshop run by a young couple with bright ideas. They deserve our support.
Our Book Review Service has received a lot of enquiries this week. It seems that we were right - there are a lot of authors who are discovering that their publisher does little or nothing by way of active marketing. No one has as much interest in a book selling well as the author and the author who is prepared to work hard at promoting their own work will see the benefit.
We will shortly be publishing our own practical guide to the marketing and selling of books that have been self-published or published by a small independent press. With some 25,000 such books being published each year, we are expecting to sell more than a few copies.
My resolution for the coming week - read something other than a manuscript.
Sunday, 15 July 2007
At last - into the blogosphere we go!
'Start a blog' has been on our 'to do' list for an embarrassingly long time, but we've finally made it.
For months there always seemed to be other items on the list that were more urgent, but as we're re-launching the websites of both Moorhen Publishing and the Book Review Service, the time to venture into the blogosphere has arrived.
It's been an interesting few months. We published my novel, Dartmoor...The Saving, and have explored a host of ways of promoting and selling it. It's gone well, with one local retailer selling 120 copies. Sales are running at around 125 copies a month and I now have a literary agent who seems confident of securing a contract with a mainstream publisher.
One of the reasons that I like the Richard Charkin blog is that it gives a picture of life at the other end of the scale of publishing. We feel we've had a good week if we sell 40 copies - he writes of Macmillan's multi-million-book sales in exotic locations.
Speaking of multi-million sales, this week sees the publication of J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What an extraordinary phenomenon this has become. The publication date of the versions for children and adults is the 21st, and all over the country bookshops are staying open until midnight on the 20th. Jo Rowling has become a very wealthy lady. I've bought the books and been to see the films, but the amount of money she has made out of me is tiny - certainly in relation to the entertainment I have enjoyed. If you are capable of providing millions of people with that level of entertainment, you deserve the benefits that result. And the charities she supports appear to be benefitting, too. I wonder if Jo will ever write anything again.
The dreadful weather continues. Local bookshop owners tell me that it's good for business. The more it rains, the more books they sell to holidaymakers unable to head for the beaches or the moors. It's an ill wind...
For months there always seemed to be other items on the list that were more urgent, but as we're re-launching the websites of both Moorhen Publishing and the Book Review Service, the time to venture into the blogosphere has arrived.
It's been an interesting few months. We published my novel, Dartmoor...The Saving, and have explored a host of ways of promoting and selling it. It's gone well, with one local retailer selling 120 copies. Sales are running at around 125 copies a month and I now have a literary agent who seems confident of securing a contract with a mainstream publisher.
One of the reasons that I like the Richard Charkin blog is that it gives a picture of life at the other end of the scale of publishing. We feel we've had a good week if we sell 40 copies - he writes of Macmillan's multi-million-book sales in exotic locations.
Speaking of multi-million sales, this week sees the publication of J K Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. What an extraordinary phenomenon this has become. The publication date of the versions for children and adults is the 21st, and all over the country bookshops are staying open until midnight on the 20th. Jo Rowling has become a very wealthy lady. I've bought the books and been to see the films, but the amount of money she has made out of me is tiny - certainly in relation to the entertainment I have enjoyed. If you are capable of providing millions of people with that level of entertainment, you deserve the benefits that result. And the charities she supports appear to be benefitting, too. I wonder if Jo will ever write anything again.
The dreadful weather continues. Local bookshop owners tell me that it's good for business. The more it rains, the more books they sell to holidaymakers unable to head for the beaches or the moors. It's an ill wind...
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