As a writer, inspiration is everywhere. Coincidences are a hard one to write about as it needs to be believable, but if you can imagine it, there will be some truth to route it into reality which many people can relate to. 

Quite opposite to what your mother always warned, I URGE YOU to chat to strangers. The most interesting stories come forth from older, younger, foreign, local, shy and chatty folk when you ask the simplest of questions. 

Where were you born? What brought you to this area? Where did you take your last holiday? Any question really – it can lead you down all manner of conversational pathways, and you can discover so many unbelievable coincidences. 

This month I got to know Valerie Compton a little better, a wonderful lady who I met through our library’s ‘meet the author’ events. After we’d shared a couple of events together, Valerie invited me over to her place for a drink. We enjoyed her beautiful, both delicate and knarly, both established and developing garden a summer’s evening this week and discovered three things about ourselves. I was thoroughly amazed, compounded by the fact there were three of them. 

First, we both came to Northants for a job, not having any ties there beforehand. Ok, so that’s just something in common, not a coincidence. Take a look at coincidence number two. Her husband grew up in Swindon, as did I, and being between my grandparents and dad’s generation, knew so many things about Swindon I did and did not. He went to the rival school of my former grammar school, and I bet you we have mutual friends since the Gibneys have been in Swindon for at least four generations. 

Here comes the kicker. The third coincidence was that Valerie herself lived in East Grinstead (where I lived until I was four years old), knew my street, and probably knew my neighbours (if I could remember their last names). Added to that, Valerie and I were born in the same hospital – only 40 years apart! I was once of the first babies who had a UK ultra sound photo in the mid-80’s and now the hospital no longer stands, but Valerie and I had both passed through. 

So, get chatting. And as a writer, it could spur some thoughts which grow into a novel. Meet new people. Strike up a conversation. You never know what you will discover.

Lou x

This week I have invited Katheryn Lane to Miss Write as a guest blogger. She's so enthusiastic about the intricacies and development of book cover design, I just had to get her in as a contributor! I play a game of 'guess the genre' privately when I'm browsing online, so this blog post really ticked some boxes for me. Thanks to Katheryn, and all the best wishes as your continue on your writing path. Over to Katheryn...

Lou x 

I just love book covers! In fact I love them so much I’ve even dedicated a whole page of my blog to them! In my opinion, the cover is a key element of the book. You might have written a great book, but if it has a lousy cover, people might not want to buy it.  Apparently, the average reader spends as little as eight seconds looking at a book cover, (I certainly look at it a much shorter time! - LG). That’s if they even notice it at all!

I’ve asked a lot of authors about their book covers and some of them, such as Patti Roberts, are able to design brilliant book covers themselves (take a look at her great covers for the ‘Paradox’ series). Other authors, such as KE Saxon, ask someone else to design their covers (see the wonderful cover of her book ‘Diamonds and Toads’). Personally, I took the second route and hired a designer for both of my novels, ‘The Royal Sheikh’ and ‘Her Latin Lover’, as I was completely unable to master the art of cover design myself! After looking at numerous designers’ websites, I chose Judy Bullard, because she has done a lot of covers for romance novels, which fitted my genre, and she charges a very reasonable price (a major consideration!)

When I contacted her about my first novel, I didn’t really know how to go about the whole process. However, I sent her the book blurb and a description of the two main characters that I wanted on the cover, and she came up with the rest. For my second book, I had a little bit more of an understanding of how the process works, so this time I sent her some example photos of couples to give her an idea of what I was looking for. The pictures I sent were copyrighted, but she used these to find a non-copyright image that had the same feel to the pictures I sent. Next, she asked about the background and since the book is set in South America in a small town and up in the hills where coffee is grown, I sent her some photos showing the type of setting that I had in mind. Again, these pictures were copyrighted, but Judy found a non-copyright image that was even better than the pictures I’d selected. She then added the title and my name, with my name in the same font and size as my previous book to provide a bit of consistency between the two.  

Whichever method people use, do it yourself or hire someone else, for digital books, I believe that a really a good book cover needs to strongly convey the book’s genre, so readers know exactly what they’re buying (I think this is especially true for unknown, first-time authors), it needs to have a strong image to make it eye-catching and it needs to look good even at a reduced size as the final cover will appear as a small image on Amazon, approximately the size of a stamp. Therefore, the images and wording must be clear and easy for readers to see. Finally, don’t overcomplicate the cover by trying to put too much on it; sometimes it’s the simple covers that are the most effective. For example, the cover for ‘One Pink Line’ by Dina Silver is brilliant, no wonder it’s selling so well! 

Thanks for hosting, Louise - best of luck with the blog and your writing!

About Katheryn Lane

Katheryn Lane works full-time as a teacher, mother and wife, but somehow also finds time to be a part-time writer as well! She loves to write contemporary romances set in exotic locations. Her first romance, THE ROYAL SHEIKH, was inspired by her experience of living in the Middle East and her second novel, HER LATIN LOVER, takes readers to the treacherous towns and countryside of South America. In her free time (on the rare occasion that she has any!) she likes to lose herself in a good book.

THE ROYAL SHEIKH and HER LATIN LOVER are available from all Amazon websites, such as Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

You can connect with her online at the following places:

Twitter: @KatherynLane

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/KatherynLane.Author

Blog: http://katheryn-lane.blogspot.com

Email: KatherynLane1@hotmail.com

Having just done my first chain bookstore signing, I’ve put together 14 top tips on how to do a book store signing event.  I have done events before, for example a book launch and ‘meet the author’ events at the local library, but a stand in a national bookstore is quite different.

Some of these tips are no-brainers (or seem it), but my tips might be of use to any writer planning an event in the near future. Let me know if you have any to add to this list in the comments section below.

If you read nothing else of this post, read this!

Number one tip for running a bookstore signing:

TAKE LEAFLETS (or similar) TO GIVE OUT AS FREEBIES

People love a free gift, and even if they just shove it in their pocket or handbag, it will remind them about you and your book when they get home or later in the week. These delayed sales might outnumber the face-to-face sales from the actual hours spent at the event itself! People will also quite often take a flier, walk away, read it and return, so get ready with that award-winning smile!

2. Go with a game plan. How long will you be in store for? Do you have a target for sales? Finding out what other non-celeb writers normally achieve in that particular store is a good start – then try to smash that record!

3. Introduce yourself to the Manager when you arrive, and be friendly towards other staff. They might help send people over to your stall while they’re working if they like you!

4. Make sure you know how you will receive the money from sales. Barcodes are essential. This means the store can sell them at the tills and keep a tally of sales for you. It’s easy to lose count otherwise, and you don’t want to be handling money when you’re busy promoting.

5. You should have thought of this when writing the book in the first place, but just remind yourself who your target market is (e.g. women in their 30’s, retired men). If you only have 300 leaflets, stick to handing them out to that type of customer so you don’t waste your publicity.

6. Don’t be afraid to use a trolley to carry all your bits in – and park as close to the venue as is possible!

7. Make sure you have use of a table. Obvious, perhaps, but let the store know you will be needing one so they ear-mark you one for the day. You don’t want to be bringing your own with all your other paraphernalia. Also, take a plain table cloth, and try to put your stand in the appropriate area of the shop (e.g. fiction, non-fiction, genres even, if the store is big enough).

8. Create an eye-catching display – use signs, put a lot of copies of your book on the table, make pretty fans with bookmarks, get some ‘on theme’ helium balloons, have some flowers in a vase – all to make it look more pretty, approachable and friendly.

9. Don’t just sit there. Work the room. You never know where offering someone a freebie and an opening line may take you. Hint – be able to summarise your book in one sentence!

10.   I also found it useful to have a laptop with me. People may be reluctant to disturb you, but if it goes quiet you can work on your next project and look professional at the same time.

11.   Don’t hang about your table all day. I found that people approached it more freely when I was off ‘working the floor’ talking to customers. They might have felt a little intimidated with me guarding the stand, so I recommend leaving it as a display stand and get off your bum and circulate.

12.   Is there a coffee shop in store? If so, put fliers on the tables.

13.   Leaving the place tidy creates a good impression. Out of courtesy to the book store, I also took a quick look around the store and toilets 30 mins or so before I planned to leave to see if any of my fliers had been dumped or dropped… Then I gave them out again to more customers before I left! That’s recycling initiative for you!

14.   Finally, make sure you ask the Manager if it would be possible to leave some copies with the store at cost price. They will be happy to hold some books in stock if the event went well.

If you’ve not got an event booked in for the near future, why not approach your local book store? They’re normally quite happy to help, and if you don’t ask you don’t get! Planning the event takes some doing, but it’s worth it in the end.  

Best of luck with any events you have coming up – let me know how it went!

Lou x

www.facebook.com/louise.gibney.writer

@misswriteUK