Total change of gear!

For once, I'm loving the freedom of writing for myself! Having done three women's fictions (and rather enjoyed them, although I don't read much in the genre) I'm writing a new crime series. I'm about three quarters there which means, if I finish by the end of the year, I will have finished four books in a year. Blimy.

I've known other writers who can knock out a book - a good book - in eight to ten weeks but I didn't think I'd be one of them. I did write Finding Noah in ten weeks but then, I never sold it. Three of this years books have sold. I'm not sure about this one.

I'm going to show it to my present editor, partly because I genuinely want to know if she likes it and need feedback, but there is a line in my contract that says I have to offer them my next book first. I don't have to sell it to them, if they like it, but I'm curious to see what they would do with it. 

I'm also curious if an agent would like to represent it. Part of me still needs that validation of peer review. January will be interesting! 

Crime, like women's fiction, has expectations attached. Five suspects and two red herrings is the normal formula, and I'm very suspicious about fomulaic books. I've just read Diana Setterfield's the Thirteenth Tale (again) and followed it up with the beautifully cast but slightly disappointing film. The luxury of being able to write like that, as twisty and turny as the story needs, complicated characters that don't make sense but are so powerfully written, you just go with it. I don't even think it's a perfect book, I just couldn't put it down. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't get away with all the coincidences (how many motherless children? A toddler surviving in the wild?). I still enjoyed it enormously, and put it back on the shelf to enjoy another time. Seriously, it reminds me I'm just an amateur learning my craft.

First two months of new book

Wow, interesting times! Instead of lamenting spending most of my advance many months ago, I'm getting advance warning of royalties to come. The downside is, I haven't seen a penny for the one million Kindle Unlimited pages that have been read. One million? OK, that translates into a very small payment of which I get - 45%, but still. Proper money at some point. The book has sold a few hundred paperbacks and about 4k ebooks, mostly at 99p. I don't put these numbers up casually to boast (well, maybe a bit) but because aspiring writers don't see enough transparency from other writers. Writing does not pay brilliantly but the advance system is a crap shoot. You either get offered too much, never pay it back and get dumped by your publisher, or you get offered too little but won't see royalties potentially for years. Because my previous publishers bundled my books together, I'll never pay out the advances even with good sales on the first books because the second and third sold less well. 

Publishers like Bookouture work differently. You write the book upfront. They work on the book, offering multiple rounds of edits and marketing and design work upfront. You all get a percentage of the final sales, which vary depending on their sales strategies. At the moment they are using Kindle Unlimited, a system I don't entirely understand but which pushed my book up to no. 51 in Kindle sales for a heady week. Before that they had a 99p countdown which generated lots of e-book sales. Because we share the costs (because I'm writing fast the editor has to do a lot of work and she has to be paid) we also share the profits.

It's not perfect for me, the main problem being I have only just received half of the royalties for the audio rights we sold back in the summer, and I haven't got a penny of royalties at all and won't until book 2 is already out. But if I was offered another deal, I could see how you would be able to predict your income to some extent and even (gulp) receive a regular income. Of whatever scale. If I hadn't become the sole breadwinner this year, it would have been easier...

Talking of book 2, it's already made reasonable preorders and has a very pretty cover.