How to Stuff Three Hundred Goody Bags

Subtitled: Please feel free to learn from our mistakes! A light-hearted look at just one aspect of conference preparation.

So, my weekend was a rather frantic one, helping with the running of the Historical Novel Society 2016 Conference. It seemed to go very well, with lots of positive feedback (check out the Twitter comments for #HNSOxford16!)  and much general enjoyment. However, there were a few fraught hours before we opened for registration on Friday evening, not least when we were attempting to get 300 goody bags stuffed as quickly as possible.

In case it is of any help to anyone, here are some lessons that we learned, some more quickly than others.

1. It is a really good idea to know exactly how many you have of each item. 

We guesstimated how many books there were, started off by putting four books in each bag, and ultimately had a couple of our fabulous volunteer helpers retrieving two or three from the early bags so that we had *any* books for the later ones. Our guesstimate of the pens, however, was seriously under, so there were quite a few left over by the end. Useful for the FoH team, though.

2. Spread out. Really, really, s p r e a d  o u t  the piles you will be selecting your goodies from. 

We didn't. We tried to fit everything onto one long row of tables, despite the fact there were plenty of other tables around. The piles fell over. People stood by the several piles trying to select one of each for the bag they were filling but preventing anyone else from accessing them. Gradually we moved blocks of postcards, or half the bookmarks, onto a different table, but those filling the bags didn't always remember to take the newly-circuitous route so some bags missed out on some cards/flyers/bookmarks. In retrospect, we should have used at least twice as many tables to set out the selections from. At least.

3. Try to figure out a system before you start.

We had a system, to be fair. But then we introduced a new system. Then we refined it slightly. More than once. And not everyone heard every refinement, because it was, you know, a friendly volunteer activity and there was chatting. So some changes were taken on board more (ahem!) rigorously than others. 

4. Not everyone needs to be on bag-filling duty.

We all started by filling bags, but it quickly become apparent that this was impractical. There just wasn't room. So a few people moved onto assembling subsets of goodies for handing on to those with the bags. This was particularly useful for bookmarks - which frequently stuck together - and postcards.

5. Work out beforehand where you will be storing the filled goody bags.

We decided a nice long wall was a good collection point, but after filling about half of our bags, thought maybe we shouldn't block access to a fire extinguisher. At which point, a whole load of bags needed to be moved. At least it was a good opportunity to check some of the bags for more books for redistribution! 

It should be noted we did get all our goody bags filled and stored, and by the end of the conference - in fact, by Sunday morning - they had all gone. So something went right... ;-)

Big thanks to all those involved in both the stuffing of the bags and the provision of both the bags themselves and their contents, plus a huge congratulations to the organisers of the conference. The bar appears to have been raised!

The Art of Self-Promotion

Whether you are signed up by a traditional publishing house, a smaller publisher or self-published, it seems that the job of marketing your book falls largely down to you. Publishers have marketing departments who can advise you and provide the initial contacts, but as far as I can see, the agent and the author have to do most of the work.

If you're like my friend Carol McGrath, author of the Daughters of Hastings Trilogy 'The Handfasted Wife', 'The Swan-Daughter' and soon-to-be-released 'The Betrothed Sister', you do a good job of it. Carol works hard at keeping up contacts via Twitter, the Historical Novel Society and the Romantic Novelists Association. She writes reviews of other people's books for magazines and such. She appears frequently on other blogs (and writes her own blog rather more regularly than I do mine!). She does radio and newspaper interviews for the local press. She has a facebook page for readers who are not necessarily friends. In short, she works at it. Her book sales are doing very nicely thank you - though of course it helps that they are great stories and very well written.

I, on the other hand, hate the whole idea of self-promotion. It goes against my personal grain. I try to tweet but it's erratic and I'm very poor at reminding people of my novel that way. I haven't joined any writerly societies. Although I read a lot, I haven't written any reviews and I'm not featured on other people's blogs. The local press have probably never heard of me. And my blog, as you are doubtless aware, is very much unscheduled. Is my book a great story and well written? I like to think so, but my sales are still in double figures (though I was very excited when I first hit the dizzy heights of the teens).

I know what needs to be done if I want to improve my sales figures. Small steps so far include handing in my notice at my all-consuming part-time teaching job and agreeing to be on the committee for the HNS 2016 Conference. Getting on with writing the next book would help too! I guess mentioning the name of my book and including the link occasionally might help.... Moses in Chains, a fictional autobiography of Michelangelo. Available now for kindle, other formats coming at some point.

In other news, we went to see The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime last night. Absolutely stunning performance piece, especially from the central character played by Joshua Jenkins who was on stage virtually the entire evening, but also from the rest of the cast whose timing was essentially impeccable. It's on tour until the autumn - see it if you can. You won't regret it.

Assisting in the birth (of a book...)

Since it seems the entire world is agog over what is, let's face it, an entirely natural process, I thought I'd approach it from a different angle.

This week's blog is about the birth of a *book*. Yes, you read that correctly. And the labour involved in bringing a book into the world can be extremely UNnatural, especially coming as it does after a pregnancy that for many of us is much much longer than nine months!

Just for a change, I'm not going to tell you about the trials and tribulations of exposing my own book, 'Moses in Chains', to the world (though this link should take you to the Amazon page to get it for your kindle if you haven't already!) but instead about a different book of historical fiction, 'The Handfasted Wife', by Carol McGrath.

Carol first got the idea for her book several years ago while visiting Bayeux, and you can read her account of it in her blog. Inspiration comes in many different forms and a small extract of a large picture is not a particularly surprising route, I think. The idea fermented for a while until she started a postgraduate Creative Writing degree at Royal Holloway, for which a completed novel would be part of the final submission. Over several years, she honed the characters and their adventures until it reached the state in which you now find it. We spent many happy afternoons drinking tea in the garden and hot-seating some of the characters, exploring different possibilities and laughing lots. (I think it was tea, though in retrospect it may have been Pimms.)  Other readers gave opinions that were filtered through Carol's perspective and more than one of us went through checking the spelling, punctuation and grammar (it is much easier to find those stray commas and spaces in someone else's work, believe me - though I can assure you, both Carol and I know the difference between villain and villein).

As for the labour, it is all too well documented how difficult it is to find an agent these days, or a publisher. Through the Romantic Novelists Association, Carol had met a number of people who had read her book in its earlier drafts and provided helpful comments - this is typical of the RNA and probably the wider writing community, because they've all been there and they all know how hard it is - and through one of her contacts, Carol was lucky enough to be offered a contract by Accent Press. I say 'lucky' not because she didn't deserve it but because so often great writing is overlooked because it's in the wrong place at the wrong time; you only have to read about J.K.Rowling's recent experience to discover how much is down to who happens to read your draft and when they read it.

Getting the contract was not the end of the process, however. The labour continued as Carol made changes to the text as requested by her publisher, decided on the cover, prepared her blog tour and made plans for the launch. (Here are a few links to the blog tour that Carol managed to organise. Kudos to her!)  Eventually the day came when the book was available as an ebook or paper copy, through print on demand. Carol's busy schedule meant that the launch was more virtual than actual until last Thursday, when Coles Books in Bicester kindly hosted a launch with wine, canapes and copies of the book available to be purchased and signed.

Is that the end of the birthing process? You might have thought so. Carol at least had already decided on the name but the media is still in pursuit - she has had a mention in an article in USA Today and of course has to follow up on the reviews that people kindly write, on Amazon and elsewhere. And of course, since Carol is not a one-book-wonder, there are the other offspring to consider; fortunately the first draft of the second book in the planned trilogy is already complete. I'm pretty certain that the parents of another recent birth can't claim that!