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Shakespeare was right “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, and books by any other title would also read as well. The problem is that if you don’t get to read the book you don’t know how good it is! And this is where a well thought out title that grabs attention will tempt you to buy – even if you are disappointed when you read it.

Of all our titles on Amazon the one that sells the best and most consistently is ‘I was Benny Hill’s Toy Boy’ by Jon Jon Keefe. We first published this memoir ten years ago and it is still selling! No prizes for guessing which words grab attention – apart from the obvious mention of Benny Hill!

There are over a million titles on Amazon so unless you are well known author or have been lucky enough to have had your novel reviewed or shortlisted for a prize then you must rely on other methods to be noticed. Marketing is one aspect – so good metadata is very important.

A clever approach to your target audience is also key, and if you haven’t got a bottomless budget then plenty of energy to do most of the marketing yourself!

But it all starts with a good title! The Cistercian was changed to Father Paul’s War, When We Remember Zion was changed to Portrait of a Lost Boy and Feeling the Fear was chosen as the title for an author’s collection of short stories. Our authors were consulted and agreed to the changes.

As I write we have just changed our next publication from Field of Flowers to Flight of the Faithful.

In the world of indie publishing we are delighted when a publicist manages to arrange interviews with our author in print and /or broadcast media. The same goes for articles penned by the author appearing in the national press which are enthusiastically pored over by novelist and audience alike. We are thrilled when reviews are published but their effect is determined by which publication the reviewer is writing for - a good review in the Times Literary Supplement or The Guardian is of course gold dust.

However, publicity and profile does not necessarily promise big sales.  And debut novelists might not achieve best-selling status despite good reviews.  If you don’t have a big marketing budget or reputation then ‘foot slogging’ is the way to keep your book in the public eye.

All authors need to continuously work hard to promote themselves and their novel. This can be done by maintaining a strong presence on social media through Facebook and blogging, as well as developing a talk to give to an invited audience in a bookshop or other venue. Authors can then sell copies of their books at these events. One author is regularly invited to give his talk both here and abroad and sees an increase in sales immediately at the event and afterwards via book sellers and Etailers.

Writers often embark on national tours to local groups and bookshops giving talks and thereby gaining an audience, awareness of their work and sales of their book.  Bookshops will sell novels by local authors and even host talks if they believe an author and their book can generate interest.  So, taking a copy of your book to your bookstore and offering to leave it to be read can be very effective.  As a result, one of our authors has seen his novel selling steadily in his local bookshop more than a year after publication to the delight of himself and the bookseller.  But don’t forget the value of asking readers to write a review to appear on Amazon, every authors’ global bookstore.  

Golfer Gary Player said “The more I practice the luckier I get.” The same might be said of authors and book promotion. The harder you work at getting noticed the more chance you will have of selling your novel.

In today’s crowded market place a small publisher can only achieve so much publicity.  Reviews are the ‘Holy Grail’ and unlikely to be given to debut or first time novelists however talented they are.  At APP our publicists have achieved Herculean feats in getting reviews both in national, local and online media.

But that simply is not enough.

There are two and a half million titles clamouring for a reader’s attention on Amazon alone.  And in case you think Amazon is not important just remember 46% of all sales are now accounted for online! It is no coincidence that the biggest buy-ups of the past two years have been with online bloggers and vloggers like Zoella and Carrie Hope fletcher with thousands of followers, putting their books into bestselling spots even before publication!  So you the author have to be prepared to write articles, phone or visit bookshops, give talks to specialist groups, be interviewed in the press or broadcast media and generally be visible and available to help promote your book.

Blogging, tweeting, talking and writing all have a role to play in getting and keeping your name in front of the reading public.

I am always asked by a potential author what a book launch is for.

The answer is to officially mark the publication of the novel with a ceremony and to give the author a chance to talk about their book and sign copies for the invited audience of friends, family and interested parties.

And to be honest –since it is quite time-consuming to design invitations, organise equipment, refreshments, prepare speeches, and prepare a bookshop for the event- I have mainly thought about book launches in terms of numbers of attendees.

As a publisher, I would count a book launch as successful if a substantial number of “author signed” books are sold. The bookseller would also judge the event in these terms since they have staff and overhead costs to recover.

However, it has now become apparent to me that there is a third –and equally important criterion for judging a book launch a success and that is from the author’s emotional perspective.

To an author who has invited his/her close friends and family to the official unveiling of their work, the congratulations and good wishes that flow from this event represents a validation that is so important to them personally and professionally that it is hard to quantify.

Their reaction to seeing their manuscript in book-form on sale in a bookshop after perhaps years of lonely toil cannot be understated.

However ambitious, or  modest, their desire for literary success is, this particular event is precious and special just because it is filled with friends and family who are there to congratulate not to criticise.

George Orwell, Tolstoy, F Scott Fitzgerald and John Steinbeck.  What do they have in common with APP’s authors Michael Bartram, John Franks and Mark Cheng?

Correct, they are all good writers. But they have more in common than that. All of them had the title of their novel changed from their first draft.  Would Of Mice and Men become such a classic if sold under the original title Something that Happened? Arguably not – titles matter a lot.

S J Hall –a recent winner of The Peoples Book Prize and best-selling author of Theatres of War categorically stated at the award ceremony that the title helped sell his book.  When an author comes to APP with their manuscript and we agree to publish, we look at the title in relation to the story and the cover design.  Most of our authors have seen their novels transformed, not just with editing, but with careful selection of appropriate title followed by a thorough briefing of the book designer.

So The Cistercian became Father Paul’s War.  When We Remembered Zion was changed to Portrait of a Lost Boy.  Watersmeet morphed into Where Waters Meet.  In today’s crowded market place with over 2 million titles on Amazon your title needs to grab attention.

Michael Bartram's 'Portrait of a Lost Boy' begins on the Jaffa-Jerusalem train. During this journey, Stefan Lehmann, one of the novel's main protagonists, learns of the community of German Templers who had made their home in the deserts of Jerusalem. Who are the Hoffmannites? What are Templers?

A quick google search reveals the confusion surrounding the Templers. Several articles point to 'The Knights Templar', whilst a few websites use the two terms of 'Templers' and 'Templars' interchangeably.

Who are the Templers and what is their story?

The Templers were members of the 'Temple Society', a group of German Christians founded by Christoph Hoffmann near Ludwigsburg in 1861. Their aim was to promote spiritual cooperation and advance the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem. This would speed the second coming of Christ, when all Jews had converted to Christianity. Hoffmann's belief was that the creation of a peaceful and egalitarian 'kingdom of heaven on earth' in Jerusalem would be a centre from which the work of conversion could begin.

The first Templers arrived in Jerusalem in 1867, but Bartram's novel opens in 1898 and introduces the reader to the small Germany Colony which had already been established on the outskirts of Jerusalem. Despite the challenges of the sweltering heat and an arid landscape, the German Templers had succeeded in creating “exemplary colonies and pretty houses surrounded by flower gardens - a piece of their homeland in the heart of Palestine”.

The German Templer Community

The visit of Kaiser Wilhem II to Jerusalem in 1898 was of huge significance to the Templers, who lined the streets in their finest attire to welcome their king.

A contemporary painting of the Kaiser entering the Jaffa gate.

For all superficial similarity in their names, the Knights Templar have little in common with the Templers.

The Knights Templar were among the most wealthy and powerful of the Western military orders, whose abrupt disappearance has left them shrouded in speculation and legend to this day.

The temple referred to in the 'Knights Templar' is the Temple of Solomon, the ruins of which were believed to lie beneath the site of the Templar headquarters on Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The Templars' existence was tied closely to the Crusades, during which the Templar Knights became skilled warriors, with their white mantles and infamous red cross that have become the emblem of their order. Following the First Crusade which recaptured Jerusalem in 1099, many Christian pilgrims who journeyed to the Holy Land were in danger from highway men and thieves who would prey upon the travellers. The order was established in 1120 for the protection of these unfortunate pilgrims.

The organisation - officially endorsed by the Catholic Church around 1129 - was in existence for nearly 200 years during the Middle Ages.

The  Knights Templar came to an end with the loss of the Holy Land in 1244.

The Templers were scattered by the rise to power of the Nazi Regime in the 20th Century.

Templars and Templers: two distinct communities, two unique histories, linked by religion and the Holy City of Jerusalem which has been the setting of some of mankind's most dramatic stories.

The novel tells the eerie story of a kidnapped child and the subsequent effect it has on his family. Bartram tells his tale against the backdrop of the significant historial events from the first half of the 20th Century; Both the World Wars, the Dresden Bombings, the formation of the state of Israel and others.

What really allured the APP family to the text was how Bartram combines thrilling fiction with history. Recently we have been reflecting on how much of a neglected narrative technique this is. 

In the 19th century, it was very popular to do this, especially in Europe, writers like Robert Louis Stevenson, Alexandra Dumas and Victor Hugo all used historical events to accompany their legendary tales.

While reading Portrait of a Lost Boy, two novels immediately sprang to mind. Dr Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Pasternak used the time period between the Russian Revolution and World War Two as a setting for his mysterious cast of characters. Zusak uses World War Two and the bombings of mainland Germany by the Allies to juxtapose the beauty and innocence of his village community. 

If you liked either of these novels, I highly recommend Portrait of a Lost Boy. Like Pasternak and Zusak, Bartram does an exquisite job in transporting his audience into wartime worlds, while still keep them engrossed in the unfolding events and twisting plot development. 

Is there a halfway house between writing specifically to sell, and writing a good novel for the sake of writing?  I read somewhere that there are now more writers than readers. And as a group they have become quite savvy and commercial. Often this is as a result of not being published by the big boys, or being published and not marketed.

 So the self-publishers and the industry that has inevitably grown up around digital publishing has developed its own wisdom. Everyone knows publishers aren’t interested in a book, unless there is a sequel, or the author has already written the trilogy. And everyone knows the sites and user groups to get on to have a book/text exposed – read or critiqued.

 But let us not forget those brilliant ‘one-off’ books that burst on to the scene just because they were well written, and original. Did Yann Martel have a trilogy up his sleeve when he wrote The Life of Pi?  Or Edmund Du Waal with The Hare with Amber Eyes?

 John’s blog is interesting because although disappointed that Where Waters Meet did not jump into the top ten in its first week of sales, on reflection he did publish a well written book that he (and we) are proud to be associated with.

 Like every other business we would like commercial success. But we would also like to be respected as publishers with some standards in literary fiction. Digital publishing has opened up the market for publishers and authors to produce mass market novels, some of which have little to do with literary merit. John Franks and APP hoped that Where Waters Meet would sell millions of copies. But we would rather have John’s book in our catalogue than something that sold millions, but had no literary merit at all, and I’m sure we can all think of books that fit that particular criteria!

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

Having a book published has proved to be an emotional rollercoaster. The first moment of excitement was when APP told me they believed in Where Waters Meet and wanted to publish it. After some years submitting manuscripts to agents without success, I had inevitably become rather down in the mouth, so when the novel was accepted, I didn’t believe it at first but then rapidly built up to a feeling expressed quite well by the simple exclamation, ‘Yes!’

Then came the editing. This was the most intense and emotionally difficult phase. The necessary probing, structural criticism cuts deep. There’s no getting away from the fact that sometimes it hurts. But as draft followed draft I became aware of a growing satisfaction that what I had always believed was a good story was becoming a crisply crafted novel.

I found the day I first saw copies of my book a strange experience: I looked at the lovely jacket with my name on it and thought, ‘Who’s this John Franks person?’ I opened it, read a few lines and found it surprisingly fresh, very different from reading the manuscript I’d spent months staring at on a computer screen.

Where Waters Meet had become “real”: a book to be read.

Getting the book to market was a very different experience. APP, publicists and myself, producing promo videos, distributing proof copies, contacting the media; daily posting on social media. Where Waters Meet became a product at this point, and at the crudest level we were trying to convince the Market that this was different to the other thousands of novels published. A crowded market; hard to get your book noticed and despite not getting the national review coverage we’d hoped for, we were collectively pretty successful at spreading the word, and received an extraordinary level of enthusiastic feedback from a diverse readership; once someone opened the book and began to read they found it compelling. All this culminated in a well attended launch at Foyles Charing Cross Road. After that, somewhat exhausted, I ‘sat back’ waiting for the first sales reports. An uncomfortable phase for me because I had lost sight of wanting to write a good novel and switched to thinking about commercial success and money.

Sales have in fact been good for a first novel, and pulling back from the unrealistic hope for five figures and national press excitement, this is very pleasing to reflect on. What is even better is achieving results relative to my original intentions: write and publish a good novel; receive feedback that endorses the book’s quality; see that it has entertained and perhaps provoked those who read it. On this level Where Waters Meet has been a huge success: five star reviews on Amazon; numerous highly complementary emails and social media posts from booksellers, authors, regular and more casual readers; adoption by the vast reading community of the Marine Society as a Christmas recommended title; selected for the Peoples’ Book Prize 2014. And with APP publishing the book in E format as well as paperback, you can find Where Waters Meet on global bookselling websites. It’s out there doing what it was always meant to do: intrigue, impress, entertain, and sell!

John Franks

Author of 'Where Waters Meet'

Everyone loves to hate Amazon.  They steal your bookstore business, they are moving into publishing, they are a threat to every high street retailer.  AND they don’t pay UK corporation tax!

They are accused of devaluing the bookselling and publishing businesses with a ‘pile it high sell it cheap’ paradigm and by publishing and selling any ‘old tosh’.  Endless articles are penned bemoaning this state of affairs and questioning where it is all leading the literary world to.

And yet how many of these very same people order a book, download a piece of music or do their weekly shop online?  The fact of the matter is, it’s jolly convenient to sit at home at midnight ‘browse’ the bookstore (Amazon, Waterstones or WH Smiths) and simply click a button to purchase.

How many of us love receiving a parcel just two days after we have ordered it? And don’t we just love our Kindles, tablets, eReaders!

Amazon is successful because of us all – not simply authors who cannot find an agent and want to publish their novel themselves.  And actually Amazon does at least give the small independent publishers a chance to compete with the multi-national global publishers.  I don’t like to see the high street being decimated and book shops closing but we have all colluded with this.  As John Donne says in his poem…

No man is an island, Entire of itself, … Any man’s death diminishes me, Because I am involved in mankind, And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee.’

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

The Americans have already cornered the market in the fast food, film and pop music sectors. Now books are packaged up and sold as a mass market product in exactly the same way. Get ‘two for one’ in any shop or supermarket. Put one in your trolley with your bacon and beans. Bookshops are closing by the dozen whilst the Global bookstore Amazon carries 1.8million titles. Is this the end for the British publishing industry and the more discerning reader?

Well yes and no. Yes in the sense that the old publishing paradigm is dead. Digital technology has allowed for cheap entry and production for anyone with a PC – so marketing and publicity is now what shifts titles and we know who the masters of marketing are don’t we - of course, our cousins across the pond!

Consolidation has meant that the big houses are getting bigger – and there are fewer of them as they swallow up the independents. However all is not lost. This is the time when boutique publishing houses – small and fleet of foot [intelligently focused] can corner a significant part of the readers’ market. These companies nurture their authors and promote meritorious literature on a small marketing budget. And in a way these houses will become the nursery slopes through which the big boys will trawl to discover authors that are achieving respectable sales with minimal investment

So no, I don’t think it is the end of British publishing houses – just the end as we used know it. These changing times herald a bonanza in the new digital age of publishing and it is both exciting, and scary. I love working with talented people pitting ourselves against the giants in publishing and being creative with small budgets and social media. We are the new and adventurous challengers – the Davids to their Goliaths.

Bring it on boys - we are ready!

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

So you have written your novel, found a publisher, submitted your manuscript to scrupulous editing, approved the cover design, and waited impatiently to see the finished product. When you first hold that proof copy in your hands you are transported with delight. Your baby has been born. It is then that you realise that writing your book is only the beginning – it must be promoted to bring it to the attention of the reading public.

The role of the publicist: It is very difficult to make this happen without the services of a professional publicist. They know the media and the reviewers, and how to compose a good press release. Local press and media coverage is relatively easy to achieve, but attention from the national broadsheets and personal interviews are a different matter. There needs to be a hook or an angle that the publicist can exploit.

The publicist needs at least three months lead time before publication to approach reviewers, long lead magazines, specialist media and broadcasters. And even then nothing is guaranteed. But without a publicist nothing substantial can happen (unless you’re extremely lucky, or extraordinarily well connected).

Author’s role in publicising the book:

In addition we encourage our authors to undertake their own promotional activity.

Set up a Facebook page – link it to our website and their own if they have one

Use social media to trail and promote the forthcoming book

Blog

Tweet

Like and Link

Make videos and upload them to YouTube as well as the websites.

All our books are listed on Amazon – but since there are 1.8 million titles on Amazon it is vital to try and achieve standout. Make sure you have the right metadata so that search engines can point to your book or subject. Your publisher should be working with you helping to promote awareness of the forthcoming title by refreshing the website and uploading fresh and interesting information. At APP we use specialists in each field to achieve the best results.

You might shift a couple of hundred books between friends and family (particularly if you have a launch party), but to have any chance of recouping your publisher’s investment you have to be selling in the thousands. The real effort (and financial outlay) all lies in the marketing. The big publishers commit many thousands of pounds to key campaigns. APP is a small publishing house – and we have to be fleet of foot and punch above our weight to compete against these Goliaths.

The ultimate aim:

We live in a digital world that can be reached by using dynamic messaging across social media channels. So writing your book was the first part of your journey – getting it noticed and sold should be the ultimate objective for you and your publisher. Using a professional team to publicise and promote your book will give you more chance of achieving success!

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

A lot has been written about the less attractive trend to come across the pond from America, namely the use of interns – unpaid placements in the workplace. Market conditions have driven and allowed this trend to survive. On the whole I disapprove, because it discriminates against those who cannot afford to work for nothing. However there are positive aspects to internships – and at APP we have employed the services of interns to both parties’ mutual satisfaction.

But we observe strict protocols. No intern should work more than three days a week and their hours ideally should be from 10am until 4pm. Also the internship should last no more than four to six weeks giving the intern free time to study, look for paid work, or enjoy their spare time. Interns should at least be paid their travel and lunch expenses so they are not out of pocket.

Now to their job specification. Here is a young person – who will be tomorrow’s employee in the work place. Using them to make tea or file is a complete waste of their time and your opportunity to invest. Having fond memories of their placement and the way they are treated will pay dividends in unexpected ways. So take the time to brief about your company’s products, services, processes, and ethos. Then allocate a task where your intern understands the rationale behind it and can follow through to see the end result.  

We select candidates for their academic skill and broad range of interests. They understand the social media scene better than my generation. So both parties benefit from the placement and an intern is able to extend their CV and talk about their experience with confidence. Exploiting interns is not only unfair and damaging; it undermines your own corporate and brand reputation. We gain as much from employing young enthusiastic talent as I hope they do from their internship with APP.

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

My husband is in the film industry–and all along he has said it’s all about the editing.  A good editor can make a poor film good –or a good film excellent.  In the same way, a good editor will turn a half way decent book into a potential best seller.

But first we need to define editing. The first and most basic level is proof reading for typos, literal and grammar. The second level is copy editing where language, consistency, grammar and general writing principles are checked.  And the third level is structural editing where plot, structure, character, narrative, language and consistency are forensically examined.  The third level is the most painful and time-consuming (for both author and editor), but ultimately the most rewarding.

In my previous life I spent years helping researchers hone reports and proposals to make them understandable and accessible to their audience.  This forensic skill equips me to undertake this task for our authors.  So after our authors have their book professionally copy edited –it is then passed to me for my input.  And this is where the author can go into meltdown!  They have been lulled into a false sense of security by the apparently painless process of the previous edit.  “Phew” they think, “that wasn’t too bad, my precious novel was not torn to shreds.”  I try to warn them that the next stage will be painful because I will be dispassionately looking at all the aspects of their writing and commenting, querying and challenging.  But (and here is the big but) if they stand back and accept the observations and challenges, then their novel will be a much better read.

But do not underestimate the time or effort needed to submit your manuscript to a structural edit.

Hours, days and weeks must be put aside and real emotional and physical stamina are needed –not just to face the comments but to accept, change and often re-write passages.  Mark Cheng had to spend a further year refining Father Paul’s War before we moved forward with it.  John Franks and I have just finished going through his manuscript for Where Waters Meet –and I believe his novel when it is published in October will be a credit to his writing skills and our judgement as publishers.

We don’t publish trash or poorly written novels and we won’t allow our authors to publish a book that does not do justice to their talents.  We may be second or even third division publishers, but with well edited books we could just become the Wigan of the publishing world!

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

You would be forgiven for thinking that the first time an author and APP meet is when a manuscript has been read and we wish to publish the novel. Not a bit of it – by the time contracts are signed, APP and author have been working together for at least a year.

Mark Cheng who penned Father Paul’s War first sent in his manuscript over a year ago. Although the story was strong, there were elements that needed strengthening.

Mark agreed to make the changes to the novel which took him a further year to complete. APP then asked Mark to submit his manuscript to our Literary Consultant who would prepare a written critique. This is designed to hone work for publication and avoid plot, narrative, and character flaws.

Similarly with our next author John Franks we discussed issues of approach and narrative in his novel Watersmeet which took him a year to refine. Following the critique by our Literary Consultant further changes were made until the novel was deemed fit for publication. All the while author and publisher find their relationship deepening. Trust and mutual respect builds between the two parties and they begin to work together as a team.

We still meet regularly with our previously published authors Carolyn Pertwee and Ian Phillips who submit many ideas and / or manuscripts for their second novels, confident that they will receive an honest appraisal. The author wants to write something that he or she is pleased with, and the publisher wants to publish something that sells! Often this can lead to tensions, but at the end of the day no author wishes to publish a novel that does not have a fighting chance of success. So commercial imperatives will always prevail!

APP likes to be honest with our authors (especially when we reject a manuscript), since we know the time and effort it will take to publish a novel with no guarantee of commercial success. When we do sign an author the hard work starts in earnest, since they now have to submit their work to a professional editor who will go through the manuscript in a detailed and forensic manner – querying, checking and challenging.

And publishing the manuscript is just the start, but more on that in my next blog…

Janet Weitz

Publishing Director & CEO, Alliance Publishing Press

Author John Franks has signed a contract with APP to publish “Watersmeet” a literary fiction novel set in pastoral England before the Industrial Revolution.