Blog | Alison Morton's Thrillers

Money, money, money!

Yesterday, I danced round the house. I’d received the following email:
(Parts have been removed to protect their modesty.)

The following payment is related to digital royalties for Amazon.co.uk. It will be paid by bank transfer directly into your bank account. Please allow up to five business days for the funds to appear in the available balance of your bank account.

If you have a query regarding this payment please email ap-amazondigital-uk@amazon.com and be sure to include the information below to expedite your request.

Payment made to:	ALISON MORTON(EHBVS)
Our Supplier No.:	xxxxxx
Supplier site name:	xxxxxx
Paid to bank:	Hidden for security
Paid to account:	Hidden for security
Payment number:	000000000
Payment date:	24-MAY-12
Payment currency:	GBP
Payment amount:	000000

Invoice Number	Invoice Date	Invoice Description	Discount Taken	Amount Paid
5CN-DIGITAL-Y3CPxxxxxxxxxx	17-APR-12	Mar 2012 Kindle Direct Publishing p		000000

Oh, yes!

It won’t buy me much (You’ll have to take my word for that). That’s not the point. For me, it means that some people have thought enough of my book to buy it. The have exchanged some of their hard earned dosh for my work and so attributed value to it.

Always the acid test.

Military or Civilians? The curious anomaly of the German Women’s Auxiliary Services during the Second World War is available as an ebook on amazon.co.uk, amazon.com, amazon.de

Did the books you loved make you into the writer you are?

Drafting my latest query letter, I did a little exercise. No, not twenty press-ups on the floor, but one prompted by this particular agency’s submission guidelines. As part of the marketing approach, I was asked to thinking of two to three (i.e. three) comparable books. That wasn’t a problem, but it started me thinking about what books I liked, the ones I returned to or was impressed, exhilarated or moved by so I drew up a list and put them into genres.

The results:
History
Historical fantasy
Romance (All of Georgette Heyer, Austen)
Urban fantasy
Literary fiction
Crime
Espionage
Thrillers/suspense
Modern/general fiction
Sci-Fi (all types)

Several combined genres, such as Lindsey Davis’ Roman detective, Falco, or JD Robb’s 2057 detective Eve Dallas, many contained a strong romantic theme e.g. Diana Gabaldon’s Highlander series as well as their core genre of historical fantasy adventure and some were European literary fiction with a fantasy element such as Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind.

So the answer seems to be a base of history, the next layer thriller/crime, a large dollop of fantasy, and flavoured throughout with romance.

Which is quite a relief as that’s what I write.

What does your reading history point towards? And are you surprised by it?

Researching – how to behave

Two years ago, I wrote a post on research, setting out five steps to getting a best result. During the past two weeks, I’ve been following that same methodology to assess service suppliers and have narrowed my search to two possibilities.

I googled then sifted the results, gathered reports, opinions, financial data (from the sycophantic to the ranting) and filed the source URLs of the most valuable. (Note to self and others: never, ever fail to copy the URL to somewhere safe. You will forget the site name and you won’t be able to find it again. And you’ll kick yourself raw. Emailing it you yourself is pretty solid.)

But then you have to get down to the dirty stuff.

I used the net to dig out clients of the two suppliers and then wrote to them in confidence. If you do this, you have to keep that promise. Whatever the temptation. You cannot blat out what you have been told all over the web. Well, you could, but you mustn’t.

Why? Because one day, when you have become the Great Wise One, somebody might do it to you.