KATE HANNEY - Author
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The Importance of Target Setting in Publishing

11/21/2012

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Well, 'tis done! On the 10th of November I uploaded my new, 'compelling' novels, SOMEONE DIFFERENT and WATERMELON, on to the Amazon website. They are proudly published by Applecore Books, an independent writing co-operative founded by myself and my brilliant author friend, Wendy Storer. Currently, they can be read on Kindle, Ipad, Android, PCs etc, and within the next few weeks they will also be available to buy as paperbacks.

So what now? 

I've probably spent hundreds or even thousands of hours writing them, loving them, nurturing them. I've formatted them, I've finalised the covers, I've settled on the exact wording for the blurbs. I've got to the end of that process and clicked 'Save and Publish'. 

Finito! 
 
Well, not quite, because now I need to let everyone know they are out there. Mmm, what to do?

Coming from a teaching background, I am well versed in the world of target setting, monitoring and assessment and I got to wondering; what's the place for this in publishing? And more specifically, marketing?
  
So far, I've dabbled. There's the obvious Facebook and Twitter campaigns, and people have been so great in supporting me in those, but what's needed now, I think, is to reach a wider audience. And to do this, I need a plan, and that plan, needs targets.  So to keep me a) motivated b) on track c) focussed d) awake late into the night, I'm going to make my targets public, then there's no getting away from them; they're here, on the world wide web, nudging me in the ribs constantly. 

 And so, in the near future I AM going to:

 - Ensure that at least one of my books is featured on an online review website

 - Notify my local press and convince them my books are worthy of a mention (at the very least, a mention)

 - Be guest blogger  for other well-respected literary websites/organisations

 - Respond to every review I receive on Amazon

 - Organise a competition as soon as the books are out in paperback

 - Persuade at least one of my local Waterstones to host an 'event'

- Triple (minimum) my following on Facebook and Twitter

Is there anything I've missed? 

Well, I will be sure to keep you up to date as I tick off the targets that are met, but if any more experienced marketeers can suggest additional targets, I would love to hear from you; always up for a challenge, that's me! 


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SOMEONE DIFFERENT FINALLY HAS A COVER!

11/8/2012

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My other new cover, for my other new book! Not long now till they are out!

Soooo excited!

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WATERMELON FRONT COVER

11/7/2012

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Well, after deliberating over the cover of SOMEONE DIFFERENT for several weeks, my amazing brother, Michael, has just sent me this as an idea for my other new book, and I'm besotted. Bingo; first time!!


Isn't it fab?


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Books and Covers and Judging and All That

11/4/2012

4 Comments

 
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I will be self-publishing my two new books, Someone Different and Watermelon, shortly, and in this blog I talk about the trials, tribulations but great satisfaction I'm experiencing as I try to get the cover images absolutely right!

Books and Covers and Judging, and All That


How hard can it be? You’ve done the difficult bit; you’ve spent hundreds of hours drafting and editing and proofreading, and editing again, and then proofreading again, and finally, you can more or less allow yourself to believe that the book is actually finished. All you need to do now is get the cover done, and that won’t take long, because you know exactly what you want, right?

It’s got to be striking. People - specifically in my case teenagers - have to be utterly compelled to pick it up off the shelf. But it’s not got to be over-played, not too literal, or obvious. It’s got to be subtle, atmospheric; classy even. 

So you speak to your designer – in my case, my very talented brother, Michael Hanney – and he comes up with some images, and they’re good, amazingly good. They’re all variations on exactly the theme you asked for; all stunning in their own way, all a little different. So you begin to cherry pick. ‘Could we have that font on this one? ... Could we crop it just a bit but without losing those streetlights?’ And, ‘What if we had that image, but with the light more like it is in this one?’ 

So he smiles obligingly and goes away, and then he comes back. And there are more discussions, this time about those vital elements like the exact shade of blue the lad’s jeans ought to be, the precise distance the two figures should be apart, should the font be all uppercase, all lowercase, or just with uppercase initial letters, should it have a shadow, if so, how much, in which colour ...

He’s still smiling, but it’s looking far more forced now. Not because I’m being so particular, I don’t  think ...? But because I am so very, very painfully indecisive. Because I just want it to be right – exactly right, and getting it right is hard. 

But do you know what? I’m still thrilled to be doing this myself. My understanding is that many publishers give their authors only limited input when it comes to cover designs for their books, and for a control freak like me, that would be tricky. If it was along the lines of what I had in mind, then great; I’m sure they’d make a spectacular job of it. But what if it wasn’t? It’d belike someone dressing your baby in clothes that you hate, you having to look at her all day long, and take her out in public, and explain to everyone you meet that it wasn’t your choice. 

And so my bother and I will keep on tweaking and looking and thinking, and we will come up with the perfect cover image for Someone Different.

And then, when that’s done, I will very quietly and very tactfully remind him, that we still need to do one for Watermelon ...


4 Comments

    Author

    Kate Hanney - author of gritty, contemporary fiction for Young Adults. Current titles:
    SAFE
    WATERMELON
    SOMEONE DIFFERENT

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