I’m going to pull some up – and will have to blog later. The garden has become a battleground. Below is the small patch of garden from which I dug the perennials, because I was going to grass it over. You turn your back for six months to publish a book, and look what happens…
Here she is - my lovely granddaughter. Yesterday, 5,000 miles away, she took her first steps and a few minutes later I got to see them. Isn’t technology wonderful?
If so, please will you order a copy of my new book – BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU – from your local library? They might just buy a copy. (Come on…a girl’s gotta hustle.)
First to Hassop Station Bookshop to deliver more copies of But i told you last year that I loved you, which is selling well.
Then to Sheffield to call on the family member who declines to be named. He gave me a helpful lecture on
1/ macro economics and free trade
2/ the current phone hacking scandal
In order to understand more about the latter, and the dark side of power, he lent me John le Carre’s Our Kind of Traitor to read, so my summer reading list is becoming ever longer and ever more varied.
Thence to John Lewis to buy some wool and a knitting pattern. It will be 2 months on Wednesday (not that I am counting the days or anything like that) that I fly off to see Lux, and I want to knit her something for the Californian winter, such as it is.
But when I look for a knitting pattern, I always feel desperate. I want a simple pattern that I can vary myself with pattern or colour or stitch. It is not easy to find one, unless I spend a fortune on a big glossy book of patterns. I could have a big rant here about the current state of knitting and the price of wool and the inaccuracies of fashionable designers’ patterns (no names no pack drill) but I won’t, as you can’t all be knitters, and I don’t want to bore you. I used to have a large collection of old knitting patterns that were just the ticket, but they got burned in the fire along with all our other treasures, and at times like these I feel fed up again about the fire.
Just as I was tossing the pattern books down in despair (along with an old lady who felt exactly the same as me) Zoe rang and the very first thing she said (presciently) was, “Are you all right?”
So I called in at her house and she lent me some patterns.
Thence to a friend who is reading my book and finds Sol adorable (ah, a woman with excellent taste), and thence to Hobbs Craft Shop at Monsal Head to replenish their stock of my book.
So… a day bookended with sales of my book – cash on delivery – just what I like.
On Saturday it was the village fete. The vicar always comes to bless the well-dressing which is made by the children in the village school, and then the fete queen is crowned, and she opens the village fete.
So there we all were on Saturday, waiting for the ceremony to begin, with the fete queen and her two attendants waiting in state on a small dais, under a prettily decorated canopy, when the heavens opened, and everyone without an umbrella rushed under the canopy to join them…
and mde it very crowded for the coronation.
But then the sun came out again and I got a photo of the well-dressing, the design of which I was thrilled with (you know how I love the Monsal Trail)…
I didn’t explain this before, but to make a well-dressing (in Derbyshire) you make a wooden frame and fill it with clay which has been mixed with water and salt. A design is sketched on paper - traditionally of a religious theme, though often not so nowadays - and this is traced onto the clay. The picture is then filled in with natural materials stuck into the clay, predominantly flower petals and mosses, but also beans, seeds and small cones. Anything that is natural is acceptable, and nothing that has been manufactured.
I have always maintained that a novel can be funny AND serious (take a look at Zuzu’s Petals and But I told you last year that I loved you) and this year the judges of the Man Booker Prize agreed with me and gave it to Howard Jacobson for The Finkler Question. I have been trying to read it. It is not hard going and it is funny. But it has not engaged me, and I have cut my losses and given up. I read for pleasure and not for improvement and any book that smacks of hard work or “application” gets slung in a pile in the corner to be given to more worthy friends with greater stamina and a more serious frame of mind. (So, shoot me.)
I have turned instead to The Mitfords, letters between six sisters, which is the collected letters of the Mitfords from 1925 to 2002. A book that is 800 pages long would not normally get past our front door, but I’m glad this one sneaked in as I am still engrossed, 300 pages in. There is a lot to like, but I am particularly taken with their exuberant enthusiasm for such a huge variety of nicknames. I long to start a letter “Darling Honks” and to sign off “Love from Sooze,” so if you get one from me like that, you’ll understand why.
p.s. Jane Linfoot and I still address each other as Daisy and Giovanna in our emails (see Plotting for Beginners) so maybe we are Mitford manquées?
p.p.s. Yes, I know one of the sisters is missing from the picture above. It’s Debo (the last surviving one, the one who lives five miles from here, the one who used to be the mistress of Chatsworth House, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire.)
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Six months of working at getting the book out - from quotes from the printer to signing copies in Waterstone’s - then a domestic to-do list of tax return, etc, etc, then a week of lolling in the sunny garden.
Since then we have made yet more jam – the last batch of which had to be boiled a second time the following day because the jam-tester of the family is impatience personified and the jam was NOT actually at setting point the first time.
Yes, yes. I am the jam-tester. Dave, bless him, did all the emptying out and washing of jars for the second attempt. We have now made sixty-something jars of jam and the five bushes in the garden are still laden with blackcurrants, so I am picking them and giving them away. There’s something magic about those bushes. I keep giving bushes away and the next year the ones that remain seem to up their fecundity to make up for the loss.
As well as jam-making, there has been an awful lot of yearning going on. I haven’t seen my Californian family since last November and it’s another two months until I see them again. Now the publishing frenzy is over there is more space for the yearning to fill. Lux will be one at the end of the month.
I’ve also been yearning for Wensleydale, so Zoe and I went up at the weekend. It was as beautiful as ever.
For those of you who are interested in how self-publishing works, here is something else to consider.
You may remember how delighted I was when one of the biggest wholesalers agreed to stock my book, because this meant that anyone anywhere would be able to order it - through their local bookshop, or online from Amazon, The Book Depository, Waterstones, WHSmith, etc etc, etc.
Yes, it was good news, but there are costs. Not only do I have to give the wholesaler a massive discount, to include their profit and the retailers’ profit, I also have to be able to send them boxes of books when they order them. I couldn’t happily store all my books at home, so I am paying the printers to store my books in their warehouse. Then when the wholesaler orders a quantity of books, I email the printer and they pack up the books (at a cost) and courier them (at a cost) to the wholesaler.
This week I got my first bill. I have 30 days to pay. I am still waiting for the shop that bought 60 books from me for my launch to pay me for them. (They are still within their 30 day limit, so I’m not complaining.) Meanwhile, another wholesaler has decided to stock my book (at a whacking discount) and they want 90 days credit.
There are so many people in the food chain of publishing – the writer, the agent, the publisher, the courier, the wholesaler, the retailer - that it’s no wonder it’s impossible to make a living as an author unless you’re a wham-bam bestseller-writer.
By comparison, the cost of producing and marketing ebooks is minimal. Draw your own conclusions about the future of publishing.
Oh, and don’t forget, you can buy my excellent novel – BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU – as a paperback or as an ebook. Even if it’s not your cup of tea, someone you know (your mother?) will love it. As a reviewer on Amazon says - A really great, easy to read book that will be enjoyed by people of any age, sex and marital status!
So why not buy a copy?
p.s. I have learned an awful lot about publishing in the last 6 months, but one thing still mystifies me. Why is it that yesterday morning the info about my book on Amazon (that everyone sees) said they had 4 of my books left in stock. At teatime they had 5 books left. And today they have 8 books left. How does that work?
Another lesson in self-publishing – only for those who are interested in the minutiae of printing.
When I first started thinking about the book I wanted to produce, I knew the cover was important – image, design, layout, colour, whether the finish was matt or glossy. (Matt! It had to be matt!)
What I didn’t realise was how difficult it would be to choose the paper the text would be printed on. I had some books on the shelf I wanted to match, and the rep for the printer (in the south of England - in other words – off my map) sent me some examples of books that they had printed. I could not adequately compare the two. He sent me some paper samples. The rep told me to choose the weight and type of paper – e.g. Muncken 80gsm. He didn’t mention the colour. If you look at the paperback novels on your shelf, you’ll see there are very few – if any – with white pages. Most of them are ivory, cream or off-white. When I got my approval copy for the short print run (the pre-release review copies) the pages were bright white, and I realised I had forgotten to specify – not bright white!
Once that was sorted, and they’d been reminded (on pain of death) that I had ordered a matt cover, I was delighted with the 50 pre-release copies that arrived.
I told the printer’s rep I wanted the same paper for the long run. I thought I had it sussed, but when they arrived the paper felt completely different. It was thick and stiff and white (the colour had not been specified on the rep’s estimate and was not picked up by me with my exploding brain).
I was gutted. If you have a copy of BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU, you will see it looks and feels professionally produced: it feels like a quality “product.” But it is not exactly as I wanted. I wanted off-white paper and I wanted the paper to match the paper in my pre-release copies, which was floppier.
I rang the rep. He was puzzled. He said the paper used in the long run and the short run were the same. In order to convince him I had to send him a book in the post so he could compare the two. He was still puzzled. After investigation, he told me that the long run and the short run were printed in different premises (which I knew) and that they were printed using different processes. The long run is done by litho, and the paper comes on rolls. This means that one run had the short grain of the paper going across the page and the other run had the short grain going down the page. Even though the paper was exactly the same weight, the grain going one way means the paper feels stiff, and when it goes the other way it feels floppy. If you have got this far in the story, you may have noticed I have become imprecise. I cannot now remember which orientation of the short grain makes it stiff. I do know it’s the litho-printing on rolls of paper that does it. Even the rep – a very experienced and knowledgeable man - did not realise the different processes made such a huge difference. I learned something. He learned something.
If the book becomes a runaway best seller and I need to get more printed, I shall have to choose the paper again, because if I want more than 1500 printing at a decent price, I will have to have them done on the litho-presses. So I will need a different weight of paper – lighter. Oh me, oh my.
I am still enjoying NOT working, but I have eight unused ISBNs in my drawer, and I so hate waste…
(Photo: July sky over our lane by Isaac Hepworth.)
I’m taking the weekend off from the blog while I weigh my options – should I slackline, garden, cycle, play my sax, or sit in the sun?
Yesterday was the day I did my tax return.
Today it’s jam!
Sue: “Don’t forget, Dave. We can only get 6lbs of fruit in a jam pan.”
Dave: “I wonder what’s the minimum amount of jam it’s possible to make.”
Sue: “With a pound of fruit I should think.”
Dave: “No, theoretically speaking. Would it be possible, for example, to make jam with only two blackcurrants…in a test tube?”
Sue - thinks: The poor boy’s been watching far too many of those Sixty Symbols videos on Youtube.
…such as when people you have not seen for 42 years walk in the front door of Waterstone’s and up to your table and say
“I want to meet Sue Hepworth,”
and you know that they know you but you haven’t a clue who they are, and they turn out to be your first serious boyfriend. And it’s so lovely to see them.
And then later, you think – “Oh my God, the last time he saw me I looked like this – ”
and this…
Oh, and John, if you’re reading this, Dave wants to know
1/ do you still have the Vauxhall Victor
2/ what kind of bike have you got?
Finding out what to do with the imperfect books that the printer sent me was on my to-do list and I’ve done it.
I have to tear out the imprint page ( i.e. the page with the printing and publishing info at the front of the book – often the reverse page to the title page – or the “title verso” as we say in the trade) and send those imprint pages to the printers and they will credit me with the run-on price for each book.
What is a run-on price? Ah…
…when you get an estimate from the printers – say for 2,000 books – they quote you a run on price – say for 1,000 copies. This means that if when they get your PDF, you say - “Actually, Geoff, I want 3,000 copies not 2,000 copies,” they charge you the price for the original 2,000 and then add the run-on price they quoted for the next 1,000. The run-on price is roughly half the price of the original quoted price (depending on various things.)
So now not only do I have more abstruse information to add to my knowledge bank about printing – so do you.
There has been space this week – and time – to do all the things that have been crowded out in the last six weeks of publishing and promoting frenzy…
Go for a walk with Dave round a different village from our own, in this case Litton, where we saw…
and this brand new calf…
and two well-dressings…
and if you don’t know what a well-dressing is – look it up! I am feeling far too chilled to bother telling you.
Also I’ve had time for this…
Unfortunately, when I looked round the garden I found that the blackcurrants were ripe for picking a month earlier than usual (this involves jam-making and the Little Red Hen is not here) and on my desk I had a list of neglected admin jobs -
1/ sort out the household accounts
2/ sort out the savings
3/ do my tax return
4/ find the receipt for the digital radio that died on the barge holiday
5/ invoice the book wholesaler
6/ ring the man to service the boiler
7/ organise three birthday presents
8/ decide what to do with the twelve books that arrived with black smudges on the cut edge of the pages
9/ take Gil’s pirate LEGO back to the shop and exchange it because the skeleton man and the skeleton horse were missing.
I ticked off this last one yesterday. The manager of TITLES in Bakewell was receptive and charming and insisted that not only should I have a new set of LEGO but I should take the incomplete one as well – what brilliant service.
Book promotion is exhausting.
I just had three events in the space of four days, and after yesterday’s signing at Hassop Station on the Monsal Trail (which actually means approaching people and handing over your book for perusal, because punters are far too shy to actually come up to your table and say “Hello”) I came home and went to bed at six o’clock and lay there in a stupor unable to switch off and go to sleep, but too tired even to listen to the radio. After two hours of lying there, I sat up and watched two episodes of Neighbours (so shoot me), had some cocoa, and slept for nine hours.
Now I feel human. Thankfully I have five days before the next event in Derby Waterstone’s.
Of course if I were J K Rowling, I would have a minder, and orderly queues and…
But I am pleased I am me, if only because I like my own books better than J.K.Rowling’s. Fantasy does nothing for me.
“Grandchildren are nature’s reward for not strangling your teenagers.”
( from But I told you last year that I loved you.)
“What do you mean it’s not suitable for me? My Gran has written it, and I want to read it!”
If you have not yet read – or finished reading – BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU – then don’t read this piece about me, in yesterday’s Sheffield Telegraph. It’s a great piece, and a lovely picture (thanks, Lesley Draper and Steve Caddy) – but there’s book plot in it.
It’s a rare day off between events today, and it’s very welcome. I went to check how the strawberries were doing and found these -
Yum.
Life is hectic this week. But yesterday afternoon was a rare interlude of R & R and I managed to get to my saxophone lesson. I have told my teacher, Mel, I want to learn to improvise. And to do that, I need to know some music theory. At present I don’t know any. None at all. Zilch. Yes, I can play, yes I can sight read, but that is the limit to my musical knowledge. So yesterday Mel spent fifty minutes on Major chords. Isn’t it complicated? Isn’t it challenging? Isn’t it dull?
Oh my God.
But this year I have learned how to publish a book. Maybe I can also learn the intricacies of music theory. Wish me luck: it’s my latest challenge. (Even if I don’t succeed, the attempt should keep my brain alive.)
Dave and I have lived within half a mile of the Monsal Trail (check the link for photographs) for 16 years. We’ve walked on it three times a week, and it’s always been my preferred cycle route into Bakewell.
Now the Peak Park has opened it up in the other direction for another eight miles through four previously closed tunnels, we both cycle up the new track almost every day. It’s a joy. We feel as though we’ve discovered a pot of hidden treasure in our back garden. It’s such a great thing to be organised by the powers that be, that we’re half expecting an announcement that it’s all a mistake, and the thing is now closed.
I went up it at eight o’clock this morning in the bright sunshine. I met just three hikers and one other person on a bike. If you haven’t already walked or cycled up it, do! The views are spectacular, and the silence is lovely. I have a favourite spot between the Cressbrook and Litton tunnels. I stop and lean on the railings and look down into the deep river gorge and listen to the birds. The only other sound today was a cow lowing in the distance. It was a perfect way to start my day.
In case you live locally, here are three events I’m doing this week, related to my new book – BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU:
Finally, someone ‘gets’ Sol. A reader who has written a review on Amazon says -
Sol doesn't understand - he is internally driven, whether by enthusiasms or personal sticking points - and seems set on escaping interaction with the world.
His original take on life is very demanding, but leads to some glorious one-liners ('your nose is rather reminiscent of the twisted spire in Chesterfield....I like the twisted spire. And don't forget, it's a tourist attraction.')
This man will surely become a new kind of hero in male leads....certainly my husband, when he leaned over my shoulder to take a look, nodded in agreement with the last line in the book.
My book is out there in the big bad world, and people are saying things about it. There’s a review on the well-read book blog, I Prefer Reading. You can read it here.
If you don’t want to read a synopsis, here’s an evaluative extract from the end:
But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You is an absorbing novel about an insoluble problem. What do you do when two people want mutually incompatible things & there’s no way to compromise? Fran is a very engaging character & the supporting cast of friends & family – especially youngest daughter Jem who obsessively reads her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend’s blog to find out what he’s doing – are funny & real. I enjoyed But I Told You Last Year That I Loved You & if you like reading well-written contemporary fiction with real characters & a knotty problem at its heart, I recommend it.
And another book blog – Random Jottings of a Book and Opera Lover - has a review here.
And an extract:
this thoughtful and well written book.
But they both say some critical things about Sol, one of the two main characters e.g. “I longed to get hold of him and give him a good thump…”
I’m sad for Sol that he’s getting such a bad press. He is very funny and very caring. When you read the book please bear in mind that Sol is doing the best he can.
Someone called Rhonda Lomazov, meanwhile, has tweeted this -
but i told you last year that i loved you Sue Hepworth.wonderful novel about a long marriage.
Readers who have been following my blog for some time know all about my publishing BUT I TOLD YOU LAST YEAR THAT I LOVED YOU. But if you’re new (or you like to get every angle on a subject) you might like to read my piece on I Prefer Reading, where I tell the I Prefer Reading lady about my decision to self-publish – here.
And (if you’re really at a loose end) you can read one of my old Times pieces about Dave’s yoghurt addiction.
And here is another one of mine about something entirely different.
