22 December 2020
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So you’ve written your novel. You’ve had it professionally edited, or are about to. Which way do you go now? Are you trying to get agent representation and go down the traditional publishing route? Or will you publish independently?
Pros and cons for both, and only you can make that decision. It’s possible, though, to give yourself an edge whichever route you choose.
A submission package edit, where publishing professionals look closely at your novel opening, covering letter and all-important synopsis, is valuable for writers targeting an agent or publisher. It’s vitally important to get your submission right and to impress. Agents and publishers have received many more submissions than usual over recent months, so their time is limited. Your application needs to be as good as it can be. Fiction Feedback’s submission package special helps you achieve this; their editors will examine the work, show how you could make improvements and then copy-edit your revised versions to perfection. The cost is £295 and the novel opening can be up to 10,000 words.
So what about writers thinking of self-publishing? For you especially, marketing is the next crucial step. Without marketing, all your expenditure of time, talent and money can result in no sales. That’s not what any writer who’s gone to the huge effort of writing a novel wants to contemplate. And yet, marketing remains an unfathomable mystery to many. Fiction Feedback help writers through providing critiques, developmental editing, copy-editing, submission package specials: could they help with marketing too?
The answer was a resounding yes. Fiction Feedback liaised with marketing communications expert Anna Caig, who has helped many authors successfully market their books, to offer a bespoke book marketing course. How is it bespoke? Because once you’ve signed up, Anna reads up to 3,000 words of your novel. She asks you to complete a questionnaire about any marketing you’ve already done and what you’re comfortable with. So if, for instance, you’re not at ease with social media, or if you’re fine communicating online but you’d never speak in public, you get the chance to say. That way Anna doesn’t waste your time proposing channels that are never going to work for you, and you can cut to the chase.
The course is held over Zoom or similar platform and comprises four one-hour sessions. They’re just for you: it’s one to one. That’s how the course can be completely tailored to your ambitions and preferences. Already there’s been encouraging feedback, with one author saying: ‘The one-to-one sessions were highly geared to my personal objectives and therefore far more valuable and inspirational than generic online courses or presentations to a mass audience. The sessions were focused on additional marketing activities to those with which I was already familiar.’
Anna Caig, marketing expert (L) and Dea Parkin, editor-in-chief of Fiction Feedback.
The Fiction Feedback course costs £475. Writers booking by 15 January 2021 using this email benefit from a discounted price of £445.
Fiction Feedback has been maximising writers’ potential since 2008, working for independent authors and publishers alike.