Minutes of the meeting at La Rosa Hotel on the above date.
Present: Adele, Gill, Harry, John, Lesley, Pip, Ian (chair).
Apologies: Jenny, Jonathan, Karen, Kaz, Michele.
Topic: Members’ work-in-progress.
Matters Arising
Ian welcomed attendees to the meeting, which was the last before the August recess. The next meeting is scheduled for Thursday 14 September 2023, but if we meet at all on that date it will not be at La Rosa, which is booked for a wedding. We aim to meet at the Royal Hotel just down the road (opposite the Capt Cook Monument). This would be confirmed nearer the time.
Members’ Readings
Harry — distributed a printout of a further instalment of his seagoing memoir, which he read aloud.
The Malakand enters the Manchester Ship Canal. Masts and superstructure must be lowered to clear the fixed bridges above Runcorn: a day of rush and bruised knuckles. There follows a 36 mile journey to Salford Docks, shepherded by tugs and pilots beneath daringly engineered swing bridges (including one actually carrying another canal) and mischievous urchins dropping bricks down the funnel.
Adele — read a further instalment from her Covid Diary, commencing on 28 January 2022.
The country now moves from Plan B to Plan A, i.e. fewer legal restrictions. Weekly deaths, hospital admissions and new cases show encouraging trends, but figures for the whole country are patchy and the map looks colourful, which is refreshing after the almost uniform black of recent months. The government has changed the rules for reporting, which would be backdated, but there is widespread suspicion that this is just to massage the figures.
Sue Gray’s report has been published. It concludes that the Number 10 gatherings should not have happened. A considerable number of violations of lockdown rules are detailed, some of which the Metropolitan Police were investigating, others not. It was hard to see any pattern in it all. It seems to make a mockery of the whole regime of restrictions, at a time when many private individuals were getting fined thousands of pounds for comparatively minor violations, and even more were losing family members to the virus.
On Saturday 29 January Adele attended a family day-out go-karting in Leeds. She wondered about the hygiene of the go-karts, which could be assumed to be well-sprayed with sweat and mucus. Her cautious driving earned her the last place but one.
Gill — continued reading from her YA novel: Fabric of the Earth: Seven Witches and a Boy.
The party of witches, including their “tailor” Tommy Bradley (the boy hero), have left Lake Windermere and are hiking through a snowy forest. The villain appears as a 10 ft high man in armour wielding a claymore, surrounded by wolves. He declines to engage with the witches himself, but orders the wolves to “tear them apart”. The witches don’t want to hurt the wolves who are innocent wild animals, so resort to a stratagem requiring Tommy to lure the wolves into a tear in the rockface, then suture the tear together with his magic needle until the wolves become disorientated. Tommy also discovers that the needle will painlessly suture the gash in his leg.
Pip — read a further chapter from her memoir in-progress: Caicos Moon, describing her coming-of-age on South Caicos, a Caribbean island. She makes a rare visit to a bar frequented by the locals, but feels the girls there view her as an unwelcome rival.
The US Coastguards garrisoned on the island included several married men, but the wives were rarely seen on the island. The author describes a day on the beach with Gus, one of the coastguards. Gus is soon to be relocated to South Carolina, his home state, where he has a fiancée. His final evening on the island is spent with the author under a brilliant full moon, which gives the book its title.
John — had a question for the meeting: he was thinking of self-publishing a book of poetry with illustrations. How did self-publishing differ from vanity publishing? What methods would members recommend for self-publishing, and how should he contact an illustrator for the cover and inside?
This prompted a wide-ranging discussion, best summarised by giving links to the main firms and agencies which came up in conversation. See below.
The meeting closed at 1:00 PM.
Links
Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook (the W&A)
The leading (but not the only) handbook for aspiring authors and self-publishers, with extensive listings of English and overseas periodicals, publishers, associations, prizes, plus good articles on every aspect of the trades of author, publisher and illustrator. Generally appears in bookshops the September before the year on the cover.
Self-publish, indie publish or use a literary agent? [by Adele]
Recommended by Ian, who thinks it is still better than anything he could write himself.
KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)
Amazon’s very own publishing house, for Kindle e-books plus companion paperbacks.
Recommended by Harry, who uses it with conspicuous success for his own books.
Probably the best deal for aspiring self-publishers, but there’s a knack to using it, and some clerical work required. A big part of the secret is building your own mailing list of customers, who (properly handled) will become repeat customers. It helps also to know (or learn) what an algorithm is, and how to game it.
Lume Books
An indie publisher which has built its business upon KDP. One of our members (Roy), writing as Walter Court, has used Lume (formerly: Endeavour Books) to publish his popular police procedural: Wesson’s Favour. If you just want to write books and don’t want to fiddle around with algorithms and mailing lists, and uploading manuscripts in the correct format, then Lume will do it all for you, and far better than you would for yourself (as a beginner). They operate like a traditional legitimate publisher, i.e money flows from them to you as royalties, and they don’t charge you anything, but they will only accept your manuscript if they think they can sell it.
(By way of contrast, a vanity publisher accepts any manuscript that comes their way, charges the author heftily for all work done, and doesn’t make a good job of selling the book – if indeed it was ever saleable. Legitimate publishers may reject you out-of-hand if they see a known vanity publisher in your list of published books.)
Lume was recommended by Ian, who regularly buys their books, but his information was antiquated. According to their website, Lume Books was acquired by Joffe Books in May 2023, and are closed for submissions. Joffe Books however is open for submissions. (It looks to Ian as if they’ve simply bought Lume’s backlist of books.)
DALL.E
OpenAI’s picture-drawing AI from the same stable as the iconic ChatGPT. Anyone can open an account, and to start you off you get a few free points (a “point” buys a fresh pic, or modifies an existing one). Thereafter you buy a block of points – but compared to what flesh-and-blood illustrators charge, it’s peanuts. Copyright of the generated pic is yours, provided you credit DALL.E. Five coloured squares at the bottom right is DALL.E’s trademark, and they’re satisfied with that if you don’t trim it off.
DALL.E can’t read your mind, but needs what they call a “prompt” – an English-language description ranging from the simple to the highly detailed before it reliably returns what you’re hoping for. So there’s a bit of a knack to using it for serious work.
This WWG website has a lot of pics by DALL.E, especially salted among the Serials. To see examples of Ian’s attempts to produce a coherent set of illustrations for a literary work, see Extract: Anitra’s Petition.
Ian has invested in a block of points for his own experiments, but will generate you a pic or two for free if you ask him nicely. Probably adequate for a “good enough” book cover. But seek flesh-and-blood professional help if you want to sell thousands of copies.
Whitby Writers Group 