If you follow me on
Twitter, Facebook or Instagram etc. etc. then you can't have failed
to notice that for the last ten days my book, The Craft Room,
has been on a blog tour.
What
the fuck is a blog tour? I hear you all shouting.
Well,
it does exactly what it says on the tin. The book visits a
whole load of book blogs and
gets reviews, or promotional posts, depending on what each individual
blogger wants to do. They don't get paid to review, so it's entirely
up to them and impartial.
I'm almost as new to this as those of you still wondering what the
hell a blog tour is and this marks yet another stage on my (oh for
fuck's sake I'm going to have to use the word journey here – kill
me now, Billy) journey as a writer.
When
I published The Craft Room
in August 2017,
I had no idea how to market it. Weekend Rockstars
the year before had
been easy, there's a very specific niche market of middle-aged
part-time musicians with a huge online community that I am already
part of. Job done, it sold
well, and still does. I
worried that because of its broader appeal, I would not be able to
market The Craft Room as
an indie author with no agent/publishers to back it for me. I was
right to, it sells, but not to the same extent as Rockstars
has, and I had begun to doubt
if it was actually any good.
I
made new covers for them a couple of months ago, in the hopes it
would encourage sales.
Guess
what? It didn't, but they do look prettier.
My
third novel should have been ready to publish in June, but my
favourite editor pointed out I had included an accidental Deus
Ex Machina near the end (the
result of its ever-changing plot line) and it would be better if I
were to change it completely and
force the characters to work out their differences, rather than just
killing one off. This has led
to an awful lot of rewriting and it only now being ready to send out
on query.
Unfortunately,
having just finished those rewrites, my synopsis now looks
incredibly dull. The Deus Ex Machina
sounded
quite exciting, and, while the new version is infinitely more
satisfying in full, as a brief outline it looks a bit shit, and could
instigate the
following hypothetical conversation.
'So
how do your protagonists resolve their differences now Dave?'
'Well,
they sit down together, at a table, have a drink and talk about their
feelings.'
'Really?
Nobody gets killed?'
'No.'
'No
alien invasion, shoot-out in the woods, eldritch demons dragging
people down to hell, massive fight?'
'No.'
'That's
not like you.'
'I
suppose not, but it's much more interesting
than it sounds, they've both just separately left the same party that
they thought was a bit shit, and ended up in the same remote pub
after a walk in the dark, so they realise they have more in common
than the thing that's been driving them apart. Being forced together
by circumstance makes them have to talk it all through and gives a
more satisfying conclusion.'
'Yeah,
but the last version had a really icky,
grisly death, shinbones going
through eye-sockets and everything,
and their relationship only held together by keeping up a lie for the
rest of their lives.'
'I
know, I liked it too, but it wasn't right. Trust me, read it, you'll
agree. This is how people should deal with their problems in real
life, art needs to reflect real life, encourage us to be better
people, push us gently into doing the right thing.'
'I
can't be arsed to read it all you stupid fucking hippy, get out.'
Obviously
my imaginary conversation with an imaginary publisher will never
happen, because now it looks so dull in brief that no agent will ever
touch it with a bargepole. Nevertheless, it will go out on query
before I give in and do it all myself again.
(If
you're an agent/publisher reading this, can I grab your attention
with the headline: It's a coming of age story about a young man who
goes to live with his estranged father and the difficulty with
reconnecting after a decade apart when the girl you love is in love
with your dad. Thanks for your time – email me, we'll do lunch, or
drinks.)
All
this means that there will be no
new book til at least Christmas (hopefully
even longer if the industry pick it up)
so I
thought I'd try and drum up some publicity for The Craft
Room instead. But how to do that
(bearing in mind I really am as lazy as I say, it's not just for
comic effect).
Then
Twitter came to the rescue, I started following Chris
Mcrudden simply because he posts some really funny stuff. Then he
turned out to be in publishing, and from his mentions and retweets I
ended up following a whole bunch of other publishing types. That was
when I discovered that blog tours were a thing. I had long wondered
how you go about getting reviews and am much too lazy to spend hours
contacting individual book bloggers and begging them to read my book.
And then I found out there were blog tour operators, who do all the
hard work so I don't have to.
On
the recommendations of Lucy
V Hay and Sam
Missingham, I contacted Rachel Gilbey of Rachel's
Random Resources and, for a very reasonable fee, she set up the
tour. I got the schedule and
the dates through back in July and spent the summer nervously
awaiting my fate. Remember the bloggers don't get paid, they can be
as mean as they like about my work.
And
then it began, and the reviews have been uniformly good. Most of them
great, they love my book. For the last year, I have worried that its
slow sales have been because it is not good enough, but people who
read hundreds of books a year have said it is very much good enough.
Here's a selection of quotes
that are currently making me very
happy.
'light hearted, witty, full of chaos, it's dramatic, yet addictive!.. The plot is crazy, pacy and cleverly written.'
'I ended up finishing this book in one
evening as I became quite attached to both the characters and the
story!
If you enjoy a story that is a little quirky with humour slightly on the darker side then I'm sure you will enjoy The Craft Room!'
If you enjoy a story that is a little quirky with humour slightly on the darker side then I'm sure you will enjoy The Craft Room!'
'The Craft Room is a completely original and addictive read that I fell in love with. I raced through this book as I couldn’t wait to find out what the hell was going on in it. I laughed my way through and I gasped in shock and delight as events unfolded.'
'Dave Holwill has put together a fabulous cast of characters, an increasingly wild plot and some laugh out loud one-liners to create a very entertaining, you-didn’t-know-you-needed-it-until-it-was-here, combination of Serial Mom, Rambo and Blue Peter'
'A brilliantly engaging read from start
to finish which I found difficult to put down... This is a dark
comedy which had me smiling right to the end.'
'It’s a breath of
fresh air, and quickly added itself to my list of favorite reads this
year.'
'This is a story that is dark, funny and completely unexpected – four stars from me – a very enjoyable story – highly recommended!'
'I was so glad I had
given this book a chance, it truly was hard to put down… A little
naughty, a little inappropriate, and a whole lotta fun!'
'Dave Holwill
manages to combine Hyacinth Bucket with The Purge in The
Craft Room, which is a chillingly funny look at a post mid-life
crisis from a woman who has a lifetime’s worth of suppressed anger
to take out on everyone around her.'
'Anyone who enjoys the comedy of the
likes of The League of Gentleman will be in sync with this book.
Those of a squeamish or prudish nature should probably give it a
pass, but they will be missing a treat of a read...'
'I really, really loved this book. It
completely appealed to my macabre sense of humour and my delight in
any book that goes off at a bit of a tangent from well-worn literary
tropes.'
Being
new to this, I have retweeted and shared every single post, retweeted
link and shared promo. I have no idea of the etiquette for this, but
it seems polite to make sure the bloggers get publicity for their
blogs as much as I get it for my book, even
if it looks like endless self-promotion and narcissistic
back-slapping.
I got so excited I put The Craft Room on
a free ebook amazon promotion. I
suddenly felt
validated, and that the last four years of constantly writing,
rewriting, editing, formatting and cover designing (along with the
endless self-promotion online) has
been
worth it. Before this I
had almost hit a point of wanting to stop and get my spare time back
again.
As
it is, I will carry on. Book number three is done, ready to be
rejected by the industry and thrown into the world anyway. I will
launch it with a blog tour, and this time I will prepare more
content, interviews, promotional materials etc. to make sure the
promo posts are more than just blurb and bio. I've learned a few
things from this experience. Book number four is a jumble of about
100,000 words ready to edit down to something comprehensible and
readable, and I am about to spend the next month and a bit knocking
out the rough draft of book number five (which a lot of you will be
pleased to know is a sequel to Weekend Rockstars
set ten years later).
I
am resigned to the fact that writing is unlikely to ever fulfil me
financially, but this acceptance from the blogging community means
that my soul overfloweth with joy. I shall continue, and
sacrifice whatever spare time I once had to the Gods of words.
I have no idea if it has had
any significant effect on sales or not yet (the free promotion at the
same time kind of skews all the figures for the last week) but I feel
that sales are not as important as my self-esteem, on which the
effects have been very significant. My heartfelt thanks go out to all
those who participated, particularly Rachel
for organising the whole thing, and who I will now happily recommend
to anybody wanting to do similar.
Here's
the full list of stops on the blog tour, in case you wanted to read
the reviews in full.
Reviews
Promos
