Andrew Lownie Literary Agency : Articles

What about advertising your books on TV? by David Craig

Sun, 11 Sep 2022 16:13:00 +0000

Even just a few years ago, the idea of trying to advertise your books on TV would have seemed ridiculous. For a start, you’d probably have had to pay an advertising agency over £30,000 just to produce a 30-second TV-quality ad. Then the cost of running the ad would have been in the hundreds of thousands of pounds. But things have changed.

Producing a TV ad

Now you can make a TV ad for just a few hundred pounds. For example, you could choose a popular song and buy the karaoke musical version for less than £2. You could then write new words to the song promoting your book and, from a freelancers’ website like PeoplePerHour, find an excellent singer to record your version for about £80. For my ad promoting my book There is no Climate Crisis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlbUB4YqLrU I took Bob Dylan’s song “The Times they are a changin’” and challenged the doom-mongering of the climate catastrophists with the following much more positive message:

In fact we’ve never Had it so good The Earth has never Produced so much food Poverty has fallen More than we thought that it would And we’re all living longer Than our grandparents could So chill out, relax and lighten your mood For the climate it isn’t changing

After that you’ll need some visuals. Again, using a freelancers’ website like PeoplePerHour, you can find a experienced graphic artist who, for a couple of hundred pounds, can put together 30 seconds of visuals telling viewers about your book and why they should buy it.

Buying advertising spots

Previously there were two main problems with buying TV advertising spots. Firstly, they were hugely expensive costing thousands of pounds for each spot. And secondly, most were a waste of money as the majority of viewers wouldn’t have been in the target market for buying your book. As one business executive famously said “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half”.

But now there are so many TV channels, you can choose one that is much more likely to reach your target market than traditional mainstream TV stations. So, whether your subject is history or nature or geography or current affairs or arts and crafts or whatever, it should be possible to find a TV channel that is likely to attract viewers interested in that subject. Moreover, running a 30-second TV ad on some of these specialist channels can often cost only a couple of hundred pounds. So you can now reach a better-targeted group of potential customers at a much lower cost. In fact, a TV ad may now be much cheaper and more cost-effective than a newspaper or magazine ad.

Does it work?

This all brings us to the key question: does it sell books? Let me answer this in two parts: – given the low costs of producing an ad and buying a couple of TV spots on a specialist TV channel, for less than a thousand pounds your publisher can produce a TV ad and run it a couple of times to test whether this works for your book. Your biggest challenge will be getting your publisher to put up the money to try this – as to whether my TV ad worked, I’ll never know. The Advertising Standards Authority have decided that it is “socially irresponsible” to question whether mankind’s burning of fossil fuels really is causing catastrophic climate change. So my ad has been banned. Still, it was fun producing it.

David Craig is the author of There is no Climate Crisis and 10 other current affairs books.

Selfie to Shelfie

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 08:03:00 +0000

Self-publishing websites offer non-fiction authors an easy way to turn their manuscript into a book. But the result is almost always Print on Demand, while marketing is limited to a few websites and usually the only people who buy the book are the author and a some of their friends. If you have a marketable subject and a solid manuscript, it can be worth the extra effort to get your book into a mainstream publishing house. Agency author Jeff Maynard explains how he helps non-fiction authors navigate the final stages of the journey.

Many people write a non-fiction book and then meet a wall of frustration and delay as they attempt to attract interest from an agent or a publisher. This often drives an author into the arms of a burgeoning self-publishing industry. To the person who has spent years acquiring their knowledge, then more years writing their book, the self-publishing industry can be attractive. They can finally hold their book in their hands, show it to friends and say, “Look what I did. I’m published.”

But there are drawbacks and one of the biggest is distribution. Having your book ‘published’ and listed on a few websites, (usually as eBooks or Print On Demand) means you buy a few copies yourself, just to keep, then you are working hard (and paying fees) to sell other copies.

What I do is work with non-fiction authors, if they have a solid idea, to take them through the steps of giving their manuscript the best chance of attracting a reputable agent or publisher and, with that, get their book into more mainstream distribution channels, including onto the shelves of bookshops and libraries.

One of the first things to be recognised in this process is that non-fiction books are not marketed the same as fiction. Fiction authors usually build a following for their books, so the author’s name on the cover is a large part of the marketing.

Non-fiction is different. You are marketing a subject. Your market is interested in books about certain topics—it may be historical, pets, cooking, self-help, investing, insider knowledge on war/politics/sport or a host of other subjects.

Mentoring a non-fiction author to take their book to another level, involves making sure their manuscript has been written to a professional standard. Be prepared for rewrites. Whatever the topic, the author is still telling a story, so structure is important. And the author’s personality or point-of-view still needs to emerge. Once the manuscript is in the best shape possible, then title, sub-title and blurb are critical. Support documentation is also critical.

The fees for my mentoring service are structured, depending on the number of services required and the time involved. Importantly, I don’t want to waste an author’s money and my time, so I usually ask for a one-page summary of the topic and the author’s background. I will read that without fee or obligation. If I believe there is potential in the project I will then propose a fee structure based on time and let the author decide.

My mentoring service is not for everyone. But if you have a marketable topic, a unique knowledge of that topic and you are willing to work through potential rewrites, then I might be the person to help you get your book out of the self-published world and onto bookshelves.

www.jeffmaynard.com.au

Writing your first non-fiction book?

Fri, 27 Jul 2018 12:04:00 +0000

David Craig remembers the lessons he learnt writing his first book.

Are you considering writing your first non-fiction book? If so, how do you start?

The reason I pose this question is that I was recently approached by someone who had read one of my books, Squandered (published in 2008) and this had inspired them to produce their own book. They had sent their book to the usual agents and publishers and got the usual, mostly automatic standard rejections. So, they approached me and asked if I could help.

I read the book and felt that hidden inside was a really powerful story. Unfortunately, the book was 137,000 words long and had a title that was far too subtle for me to understand. Though, perhaps I was lucky. At least the author didn’t send me the original 200,000-word version – about the same length as Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment.

I suspect that the basic problem with the book was that it contained everything the writer wanted to say in the way they wanted to say it rather than them thinking through what the reader really wanted to hear and how to best communicate that.

So I thought back to how I approached my first non-fiction book.

First the length. In an age of every-shortening attention spans, you have to have a pretty powerful message to keep anyone’s interest for much over 75,000 words (about 300 pages). In fact, if you can’t present your proposition in 300 pages, then you may have a problem with excessive verbiage you should deal with.

Then structure: as my background was working as a management consultant running organisational efficiency projects, I approached my first book like I would a project. I broke the book down into easily manageable pieces of work. If I was going to write about 75,000 words, then that meant around fourteen or fifteen chapters of around 5,000 words each. This hugely simplified the task of writing a book because now all I had to do was write fourteen or fifteen 5,000-word essays. By splitting the book into these fourteen or fifteen easily digestible chapters, the task of writing a book somehow seemed easier than when being faced with the need to produce 75,000 words. Moreover, to make the book even more digestible for readers, I split these fourteen or fifteen chapters into three to four sections of just a few chapters each.

The title: with so much information overload nowadays, my inclination was to avoid excessive subtlety or creativity in my choice of titles. Some of my titles – Rip-Off, Squandered, The Great European Rip-Off, The Great Charity Scandal, Don’t Buy It! and The Great University Con – may seem a little too ‘in-yer-face’ for many writers. But at least readers know what to expect when deciding whether to buy my books. This approach – thinking through what the reader wanted to hear rather than what I wanted to say; keeping to around 75,000 words; splitting the book into three to four clear sections and fourteen to fifteen easily-digestible 5,000-word chapters and choosing ‘what-it-says-on-the-tin’ titles helped me with the ten books I have now had published.

Of course, my approach is not for everyone and some people may find it too ‘mechanical’. But some new authors might find this useful when approaching their first book.

David Craig is an agency writer and is happy to collaborate with new authors on their first non-fiction book. His latest book THE GREAT UNIVERSITY CON written with Hugh Openshaw has just been published.

Four ways to start a publicity campaign for your book

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 14:40:00 +0000

Journalist and agency author Helen Croydon passes on some of her tips for publicizing your book.

If you’re an author writing probably comes naturally. But what about pushing for publicity? That’s usually a daunting task for us creatives.

Today, book PR is an integral part of being a writer. Even if you have a publisher behind you, PR budgets are often limited and most publishers now recommend, or expect, authors to cultivate book publicity alongside them.

As an author and journalist, I supplemented my publishers’ PR campaigns by approaching editors, journalists and producers myself with story ideas around my books.

I run courses and private coaching for authors on how to pitch book-related stories to the media. Here are four ways you can kick start a publicity plan.

Create a Target List

The good news is that there are now more online magazines, blogs, podcasts than ever and many covering niche topics, so there are more options for you to pitch stories, interviews or comments. Research as much as you can all the websites, blogs, Youtube channels, podcasts, online forums etc that cover the themes of your book.

Strike at the right time

The bad news is that once your book has been out a week or so, it’s no longer news in the eyes of journalists so you should start researching your ‘target list’ weeks in advance and pitch your book in advance publication.

Different types of media have vastly different planning schedules. A monthly magazine, for example, will plan its editions around 5 months ahead. A weekly magazine would be around 1-2 weeks ahead. But an interview on a talk-based radio show could be planned the day before.

Widen your themes

Don’t just pitch an article about your book. Think what topics of the zeitgeist that your book touches on. My latest book is a memoir about how I swapped a glamorous lifestyle for outdoor sport. That’s relevant to the current conversation surrounding women and sport. By widening my story to a wider debate I secured an interview on Sky News about the barriers faced by women taking up sport.

Widen your target

Don’t just think of the mainstream press and broadcasters. In today’s digital age you can leverage visiability through social media, host book giveaways and utilise your own networks to spread the word.

Helen Croydon’s Ultimate Book PR Training run in accordance with Nine Media takes place on 14th June. She can be contacted at Helen@helencroydon.com.

Whose Story is it Anyway?

Fri, 10 Nov 2017 10:52:00 +0000

Bestselling ghostwriter Katy Weitz explores the tension between telling an authentic story while making it ‘appealing’ to readers.

So, true story… I was asked once during a Q&A session whether I would use a ghostwriter to write my own memoir. Ha ha ha, everyone in the room laughed. Funny question. ‘But really… would you?’ my questioner insisted. I thought for a moment and then came up with a surprising answer: ‘Yes!’ And the reason is that if I wanted to make it a damn good read, I would need another person’s perspective on my life story. The ghostwriter and their subject are two different people and, as the old saying goes, two heads are better than one. You may be blessed with immoderate levels of self-awareness and an uncanny ability to see the cause and effect of your behavior, but we are all utterly incapable of stepping outside our own heads. And that is why, perhaps inevitably, there is always a tension between what an author believes is relevant to their story and what the ghostwriter sees as the crux of the matter. Indeed, pick three ghostwriters and they may come up with three different stories for the same memoirist.

Of course, giving an honest account is the most important part of the job for any decent chronicler. If this is a story about a wretched childhood, for example, that’s the story we’re going to tell. But is every fact of equal importance? Do I need to tell the story about the brother’s wretched childhood too? What about his parents’ upbringings - is that relevant? How important is the environment my subject grew up in? The community at large? How do I even start to tell this story? The ‘truth’ can be told so many different ways, depending on where one chooses to put the emphasis. And there, right there, is the pivotal word: choice. There is no such thing as an objective author. Every ‘fact’ is a subjective judgment call. Our lives are made up of a myriad interweaving threads; of events, of relationships and of time recalled in different ways. We experience dozens of thoughts and actions every day that we may or may not consider important, but how far do any of them help shape or tell a story? To me, the answer lies in the reader. When I am writing a story is I am imagining those words being read by another person. This book is meant for an audience and that is something I never lose sight of. In every choice I make, I imagine how this story is unfolding in another person’s mind and thus, I try to make it as accessible and compelling as possible.

So there is a real difference between the story an author brings me and the one I end up writing for an audience, particularly a commercial one. I’ve experienced this with almost every book I’ve written. For example, recently I ghostwrote I Own You by Dawn McConnell about her brother’s sexual abuse and the further abuse she suffered at the hands of her husband. Dawn had originally written her own manuscript and in it, there was a lot of emphasis on her relationships with her other siblings. Indeed, whole chapters were devoted to them. And yet, this really wasn’t the story. As a ‘reader’, I found myself following her down these narrow, narrative cul de sacs without really knowing where we were going. Or why, for that matter. So, after we had completed around 20 hours of interviewing, I wrote my own chapter outline for the book that hardly mentioned the siblings at all, focusing instead on the main relationships in the story. This gave the book a tighter and clearer structure.

It is hard to get a perspective on your own life. For example, nobody themes their life story, but books do have themes. The blurbs tell us so…. This is an extraordinary story of survival, they promise, or love, or courage in the face of adversity. So a ghostwriter has to think about what the overriding theme of a book might be and then keep that in mind throughout the writing process. For Little Drifters by Kathleen O’Shea, for instance, I went through several drafts of the chapter outline, becoming increasingly frustrated that it wasn’t quite working before my agent Andrew Lownie directed me to: ‘Think about the underlying theme.’ He asked me: ‘What is this story all about?’ It proved invaluable advice and allowed me to identify the real ‘heart’ of the story. Suddenly, everything slotted into place. He made me realise that I wasn’t simply regurgitating a story onto the page, I was crafting it into something entirely new. That was one of the best pieces of advice I have ever received and one I have since carried through to all my subsequent projects. Today, before I sit down and write a word of any book, I’ll ask myself: What is this all about? Why am I telling this story? Because if I can’t answer that question I don’t even know where to begin.

And, as the appointed storyteller, one really has to know where to begin. And end. Beginnings and endings - every book has one of each, something you might not really consider for your own story. I mean, for most people the beginning of their story starts with their earliest memory, doesn’t it? They will inevitably tell you everything they can recall in chronological order and then stop when they arrive at the present day. But this might not be the best way to start or end your book. Consider it from the reader’s perspective. They want to be grabbed by the scruff of their necks – they want immediate and full immersion. So I might start a story in the middle of a dramatic showdown, or on a cliffhanger, or during a mysterious scene that becomes relevant as we get further into the book. And I’m usually keen, as are many commercial publishers, to end stories in an upbeat way. Love and redemption – they make us all feel good, don’t they? So I might choose to end the story at the moment my subject gets married, or when they have their first child. The truth of what is going on in their lives at that exact point in time might be different but then life doesn’t end with The End, does it? So I have to pick a place. I choose. I never lie but then, I am also aware of not ‘disrupting’ the theme by taking the reader on irrelevant detours.

The truth is that real lives aren’t simple. Not in the slightest. Our lives are messy; we make mistakes. We frequently make the same mistakes over and over again. And here too, the ghostwriter needs to exercise restraint when it comes to what one writes and what one chooses not to write. After all, I’m not a diarist, I’m creating a story. In one book, for example, the author left their partner several times before they found the courage to leave them for good. Now it was worth mentioning that leaving her partner was not easy, and took time and perseverance, but I couldn’t keep writing the same scene over and over, could I? It gets repetitive. So this was a case of picking one or two of the most memorable occasions that she tried to leave and focusing on those.

One particularly interesting aspect of ghostwriting a book is that you get to ask questions the author may never have considered asking themselves. These questions might be obvious to the reader and not so obvious to the author. For example, whatever happened to that abusive boyfriend? Or how was the murder reported in the local press? There might be very good reasons why your subject hasn’t tried to find the answers until now, other than not being interested. Perhaps they don’t know how to find out, or they don’t want to upset a loved one by asking difficult questions. But now, the story demands answers and your role becomes one of investigative journalist. Frequently, by asking certain questions, and making enquires, your efforts can actually alter the course of the book itself. For example, when I was writing Without a Mother’s Love with Amanda Wright, I knew it was important to give the reader an account of what happened to her mother’s murderer when he was brought to trial. Since Amanda had only been a child at the time, she had only a hazy idea of what happened. So I did some digging around at the local library and found the original local paper cuttings covering the trial, the verdict and everything that came after. It proved revelatory, even to Amanda, and it felt like the act of writing the book itself had become part of her journey towards healing. Indeed, further astonishing revelations came after the book was published.

One of the most common questions I find myself asking authors in the course of interviewing for a book is: how did you feel? It may seem strange but many people, especially ones who go through quite serious trauma, will be able to tell you what happened, but not how it made them feel at the time. It could in some circumstances be a coping mechanism, a way to disassociate oneself with something awful, to establish a certain distance between yourself and the horror of the event. Or, they just might not be the type of person who talks about their feelings much. But from a reader’s perspective, it’s crucial. A reader wants to be there in that moment with you, to experience what you experience, to see what you see and feel how you feel.

Another part of unlocking that perspective is also to find out: what were you thinking at the time? Sometimes, you have to write unflattering facts about your author. You cannot flinch from this job but you will do your damnedest to explain their thoughts or actions, to give as great an insight into their minds as possible. For example, when I worked with Tressa Middleton on her memoir Tressa: The 12-year-old Mum, I could feel myself wanting to shake Tressa as she recounted how she started taking heroin, despite the fact that the drug had more or less destroyed her family. What on earth were you thinking? I had to know! For the reader’s sake.

So has this tension I’ve described ever ended badly? Have any of the authors I’ve worked with taken issue with my perspective on their lives? To answer your question, dear reader, the answer is yes! One time, an author was so appalled with what I had written that the whole process came to a very abrupt end. But that was one bad experience in 12 years. Mostly, my perspective is welcomed. I work closely and collaboratively with my authors, discussing at every stage what I plan to write. I am always prepared to justify my perspective and approach, but if an author truly objects, of course I will find a way to accommodate their wishes. I am not in the business of annoying people. But this is rare - on the whole, my authors are grateful for my insight. They find that in the retelling and sharing of their story, a greater meaning behind their individual experience is revealed and they are able, in some way, to put the past behind them. After all, what am I doing this for if not to gain a greater understanding about the human condition and to share that with the world?

Well, that’s my story. What’s yours?

Katy Weitz is the ghostwriter of 10 published memoirs with an 11th due out in 2018. She can be reached at ghostwriter4hire.org

When is the right time to plug your book in the papers?

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 08:39:00 +0000

Agency author David McClure recounts his adventures in the newspaper trade after finishing a book on the royal finances

If you want to promote your book by writing a newspaper article, timing is everything – as I learned through trial and error over the past year plugging “Royal Legacy” (Thistle Publishing 2015).

To boost your chances of the piece running, it helps if it’s pegged to a news story in a timely manner. If you dilly-dally and deliver copy 24 hours after the news first breaks, it’s likely to be rejected as old meat.

As someone unused to writing to a tight deadline, this caused me sleepless nights. Out of the blue one evening the Guardian contacted me for an article on the high costs of running Buckingham Palace prompted by my book on the royal finances. By working round midnight I managed to hit the required word count but the product wasn’t as polished as I would have liked and the paper held it over for almost a week before another suitable slot emerged.

A similar commission from the paper came in July but this time I was better prepared. In fact the piece was already written: 750 finely honed words on the Queen’s surprise windfall from her private Duchy of Lancaster estate. Surprise to some, but not to me. From my shifts on the forward planning desk at BBC News, I’d seen how much of political news is part of a pre-planned grid - and hence anticipatable.

So, if you want your copy to stand out from the Polly Filler of the jobbing hack write it early and then update it on the day of the “unsurprised” news event. I tried this too for the announcement in January of the US President’s state visit to Britain which was quite predictable given that something grand had to be announced during Theresa May’s White House summit - and it duly came up trumps. The tweaked copy was submitted to the International Business Times at 8.30 on a Monday morning and it was posted on-line just after 10.30. As chance would have it, they filed the wrong, slightly out of date version, but once I pointed this out the correct copy appeared in a matter of minutes.

Good timing is vital not just for the 24 hour news cycle but also for the whole 12 month spin. Over the last year I have had roughly a dozen articles published in the Guardian and International Business Times. So, one a month. Actually, no. When I checked the publication dates I noticed that three were bunched round the Christmas period and another three in high summer. What this shows is that is far easier to get an article placed when there is less news around (i.e. the New Year and the Silly Season) and fewer staffers to report it. I had a freelance friend who used to stay in London all summer just to mop up work vacated by vacationers.

Sometimes during the busier periods it pays to let the staff reporter take the credit for your copy. Not long ago I submitted what I thought was a elegantly crafted piece to a mid-market Sunday paper only to be told politely that it was too long and a trifle too lofty for their house style. It was rewritten by the staffer under her byline rather than mine but I was happy because the piece made it into print and my book featured prominently. After all, the name check is the name of the game.

Intriguingly the story took on a life of its own being swept round the globe like an untethered hot air balloon. It first got an airing in an English language paper in India, then made a blast in the German mass-market magazine Bunte before blowing into town in the Stockholm tabloid Expressen.

So, with a fair wind and a little luck, your newspaper piece, may – like time - fly.