No Such Word...

I changed the title of my memoir on Amazon Kindle a couple of weeks ago, hoping to generate more interest in the book.  'Surviving Schizophrenia' became 'There's No Such Word as Can't'.  I also put the book on a free promotion for two days, then kept the price really low.  I sat back and waited...

And I have been really surprised by the outcome.  The book has not had many new readers at all, despite the new neutral title.  I thought that taking the word 'Schizophrenia' out of the title would definitely encourage more people to download it, people who wouldn't want to read about mental health particularly, but who might enjoy the book and learn something useful from it.

Nope.  In fact, the reverse - I think the use of the word 'Schizophrenia' actually helped to sell the book!  It has been really interesting to see the book fail to flourish under its new title - I was so convinced that the opposite would apply.

And the key to this conundrum,  I am sure, is marketing.  That is the crucial difference between us Indie authors and the traditionally published ones.  Using the word 'Schizophrenia' may have piqued people's interest initially, which was enough to boost sales, and then the book sold well for a while through word of mouth.

Of course, there could be other reasons.  The book has already been on the market for a couple of years - perhaps its time has simply been and gone.  I could well be flogging a dead horse - just because my instinct tells me that there is still a huge untapped market for my book, doesn't mean I am right.  I probably just need to move on to something new - and I'm trying, I really am. 

It's just that I can't seem to stop pushing my memoir, because I really believe in it as a worthwhile product. Nothing else I write seems to invoke the sense of worth that book does.

I am sure though, that if I just keep on writing I will come up with something equally good, hopefully better.  I am going to look for an agent, because the prospect of attempting to interest the general public in my work for years to come is not the most inspiring vision of the future that I have ever had.  In fact, I wrote to an agent last week, and have been encouraged by the fact that I did not immediately receive a polite rejection by return email (probably because she is on holiday or my email landed in her junk box, but still, you never know).

So, I am going to give it another week or so to see if anything else happens, and then revert to the original title (which has still been out there alongside the new one anyway).

Meanwhile, I am nearing the end of my ghost-writing project.  After fifteen months of weekly meetings, and devoting several hours each week to working on someone else's autobiography, I am really close to finishing.  Just one final push over the next week, and then a huge edit (not sure how long that will take) and I'll be done.  It will be sad in a way - the end of an era - but mostly I will be really pleased to have finished what I set out to do. 

Ghost-writing has been a really interesting process - not just learning so much about another person's experience of life, but also seeing how a book can build, slowly and steadily, with just three or four hours' work each week.  It shows what can be done with perseverance - because I had no choice but to keep going, week in, week out (and of course I was getting paid for it) just those few hours have built up to a massive piece of work. 

The book stands at over 150,000 words now!  (It will be much shorter after my edit, hopefully half the length, but it was important to the author that we got every detail of his life down exactly as he wished it to be recorded.  I have been printing the writing out weekly for him, so that he will always have that record, although the book itself will have to be shorter for the sake of the readers).

So, once the children are back at school, or not too long afterwards, my time will be my own again.  I don't like to make excuses, but I did fill up the last academic year somewhat, not leaving myself a great deal of time to write.  Between helping at the kids' schools and attending every single sports day, concert etc for all of them (and taking them to various orthodontic appointments and so on) and the Psychology A level I decided to embark on, and taking into account time allocated to the ghost writing and the writing group, I really have not had much of a chance to draw breath. 

All that will be left of that come September (once I have finished the ghost writing editing work) will be the writing group.  I don't want to stop that, especially as we have a brand new venue lined up, free of charge, which will give us a nice fresh start to the new term.  And it doesn't take up too much time to prepare for the group each week.  In fact the other day I had the bright idea that I might share the responsibility next time, by asking everybody else to take a turn preparing for the session.  Clever, eh?  It will make things more interesting, and at the same time reduce the pressure on moi.  I just have to run it by the others, but they are a nice lot and I am sure they will be agreeable.  (Are any of you reading this, by any chance?!)

So - yes, I should be able to devote more time to my writing soon, and about time too.  I don't know why I threw up so many obstacles in my path last year - I suspect possibly because I felt capable of much more than I have done for a long time (perhaps ever) and I wanted to test my capabilities.  It has been fun, but now I've had enough of flitting around and I'm ready to knuckle down again.

I fear that this has been a dull post.  I try not to use this blog as I use my journal, as a kind of tedious (to others, fascinating to moi, of course) thinking-out-loud tool, but sometimes I just seem to drift that way unintentionally.

Sorry, and all that.  Hopefully I will think of something better to write about next time!