RM: Fiona, the last time I looked The Most Beautiful Thing was number 4 in Amazon’s paid for Literary Fiction chart, with an overall ranking of 214 in the Paid Kindle Store. You also said on your blog that the book had had 20,000 downloads. Congratulations on that phenomenal success. How does it feel?

FR: Thank you Roger! We reached #2 in literary fiction and 158 in the Kindle store… (When I say we, I mean me and my husband Kaspa – the co-founder of Writing Our Way Home, our mindful writing company.) If I try to imagine twenty thousand people in one place then it really brings it home. I feel hugely grateful for getting so high in the charts, which we’d never have achieved if it hadn’t been for my colleagues and contacts who downloaded it and spread the word like crazy on the day (including you, Roger, thank you.)

Can you talk us through the publishing history of The Most Beautiful Thing? What led you to the decision to e-publish?

There is a real life paperback, and it feels important to have that artefact. I finished the novel some time ago and sent it out to a few agents (after deciding to leave my previous publisher, Snowbooks) but didn’t have any luck. I’ve already self-published a few books and eventually decided to put the book out there myself and see what happened.

We researched different printing companies and we liked the sound of Lightening Source, who were able to give us a nice matt cover, and a smaller sized non-US paperback. They only work with incorporated companies and so we formed Woodsmoke Press, after a long day deciding on the right name! We designed the cover ourselves after our first cover disappointed us when the proof copy arrived, and coloured in the lettering ourselves on a sheet of A4 on our office floor!

We’ve focused our marketing efforts on Kindle for several reasons – I’d heard some authors do well through Kindle, there’s a MUCH higher profit margin on Kindle novels, we could make them free on Amazon through their ‘KDP select’ scheme, and I’m engaged with a lot of social media so it feels like a natural medium to me.

How does self-publishing compare to being published by a conventional publisher? What are the best and worst – or the hardest versus the most rewarding – things about self-publishing compared to being with a publisher?

As everything in life, I’d say there are advantages and disadvantages to both. The best bit of self-publishing is being able to send your ‘baby’ out into the world in exactly the way you want to – designing the cover, deciding how to launch etc. Creative control is not to be sniffed at, especially when you’re a teensy bit controlling like me. And I guess the flip-side to that is that it can be very helpful to have other people’s input and to collaborate with others which is more likely in traditional publishing. I did enjoy the relationships I formed when I had a publisher, and found them supportive. The worst is having to do everything ourselves – from buying the ISBN numbers to taking new stock into our local bookshop to the entire marketing campaign… this can leave less time for actual writing! And it feels more exposing – our success (or lack thereof) can’t be blamed on anyone else…

Most self-publishing writers find the experience quite a lonely one, I think. You’ve mentioned your husband Kaspa’s involvement with the project. How important has his support been?

I’ve done this both ways – my ex-partner, although very supportive of my writing, had no involvement in any way. I realised early on that I needed to sustain myself through relationships with writing colleagues, and so I went out and found some good people who kept me going when the going got tough. Some of these people I know only through their books – Anne Lamott, Brenda Ueland, Annie Dillard.

But I do feel incredibly lucky to have Kaspa at my side. It works both practically (he knows things about computers that I shall never know, and we bounce ideas off each other) and emotionally – both a sense of ‘being in it together’ and a place to take my disappointments, fears and joys. I don’t want to sound too soppy. So I’ll stop there!

How did you go about marketing the book? Whatever you did, it obviously worked!

I’m very lucky to have built up many friends, readers and colleagues over the years, probably partly due to spending too much time on Facebook and Twitter! I sent many individual emails to people the week before the free KDP days, asking if people could email their friends on the day, and I also registered the book with a few blogs that advertise free kindles (I didn’t pay for any ‘packages’ this time, but I might do that next time…) On the day I tweeted and Facebooked like mad! I already had a few good reveiws on the book which really helped. And people really came through for me. Once enough of their contacts had downloaded the book, it went high up enough for strangers to see it, and then they did the same…

How comfortable are you with the whole idea of self-promotion? Do writers who are uneasy with this side of things just need to get over it?

I range from feeling weary and squirmy to enjoying it very much, depending on my mood and on the response I’m currently receiving from ‘the world’. I wouldn’t expect anyone to just ‘get over it’ – some people’s temperaments will make them naturally more resistant to putting their work out into the world. But I see it as a responsibility towards my work (much like artist Nel in my current novel!) and this helps me push through the resistance. If I hadn’t done everything I’d done, thousands fewer people would have met Joe.

You described “Writing Our Way Home” as a “mindful” writing company. What exactly do you mean by that?

We use ‘mindful’ as a bit of a shortcut, really – a word that people can relate to. As a company we’re all about helping people engage with the world, themselves and each other just as it is – with all the good and the bad. Our main ‘tool’ is writing – small stones, journalling, sharing experiences in private groups… Paying a different kind of attention to what’s around us and inside us can be hugely powerful. Our e-courses really do change people’s lives. It’s a real privilege to be running them.

What is the future for Woodsmoke Press (I like the name by the way – a day well spent!)?

Who knows! If I write another novel and if I don’t get any stunning offers from huge publishers then we’ll publish it. We’re also planning to publish another collection of ‘small stones’ (short observational pieces of writing) from our ‘River of Stones’ this January – and Kaspa and I have ideas for a collaborative book…

More broadly, is independent e-publishing the way forward for you?

Again, I’ll wait and see what unfolds. We have been able to make a bit of money with this novel which would have been much more difficult with the margins for paperbacks (especially as our printing costs are higher than they would be if we were doing big print runs). I wouldn’t say that being snapped up by a big publisher is a dream, as I know that this comes with its own complications as well as advantages. For me the most important thing is to bring myself back to the process of writing – and not be too thrown away by the successes or failures of my writing ‘out in the world’. I know that publishing success isn’t the answer to everything, but it’s still a struggle for me not to get sucked into that sugar high and want more more more! So staying grounded and continuing to tell my truth is central.

To celebrate, the ebook will be free for 5 days until Friday 18th May.

I’ll be returning the favour and interviewing Fiona soon as part of my occasional “Adventures in e-Publishing” series.

Here’s the blurb from my publisher, Severn House:

First in a brand-new historical mystery series featuring decidedly unconventional turn of the century sleuth, Detective Inspector Silas Quinn.

London, 1914. A killer is at liberty in the dark alleys of the city. The cadavers of his victims all have one thing in common: there is no blood in their bodies. As the killer’s reign of terror continues, Scotland Yard’s Detective Inspector Silas Quinn finds his suspicions focusing on the members of an exclusive gentleman’s club . . . Atmospheric and macabre, Summon Up the Blood takes the reader on a disturbing yet fascinating journey through London’s aristocratic watering holes, seedy brothels and shadowy underworld in the turbulent months leading up to World War I.

It’s being published first in hardback, which does mean it’s a bit on the pricey side. My publisher tells me it’s a limited edition, extremely well-produced hardback, aimed squarely at the libraries market. So you won’t see it much in bookshops (though you can order it, if you’re so moved, or get it on amazon). One thing you should be able to do – provided my publisher’s plan comes off – is take it out from your local library. Which will cost you absolutely nothing, as long as you remember to take it back by the due date.

So that’s what I would do, if I were you, and I fancied giving it a whirl.

Right, better get on with writing the next one now!

RM: Matt, I called Thirst eDition Fiction an “e-publishing venture”. How would you describe it?

MC: Hi Roger, “an e-publishing venture” is probably the best way to describe what we’re doing here. Or perhaps a “self-e-publishing venture” to be more exact. I’ve heard it being called a writer’s co-operative, or a “writer’s group with added benefits” even. But it’s easy to get hung up on definitions. What we’re doing here is working with commercial authors on non-commercial projects, or projects trade publishing deem as too risky to get behind under the current financial climate, but it’s the author who is driving the publication. In essence it is self-publishing but with a whole lot of support from other, commercial authors.

How did the idea come about? And what’s the thinking behind it?

I think to fully explain what I’m trying to achieve here, is to go back to what I did with the Macmillan New Writers blog. I set that up largely because I loved that sense of community. Here were all these wonderful new authors being published by one of the big six publishers in the world, and really we knew very little about the publishing business. We needed a place to come together in order to support each other.

With Thirst eDitions we’re not just sharing experience, but skills and reputation too, and we’re actually providing a product at the end of it: a published book. To achieve this we are following the same ethos of the Macmillan New Writers blog. That ethos is the sharing of expertise and the promotion of each others’ works. We have experienced self-published authors here; writers skilled in publicity; skilled in cover design and all with a broad collected experience of traditional publishing too. We also have a good idea of what a good book is, so we’re in the position of being able to vet each-others work and suggest changes before it goes out.

Personally, I think it’s a great idea. But then again I’m one of the authors you’ve selected to be part of the project. What exactly is the editorial policy?

In order to ensure that Thirst eDitions isn’t complicated by finance, the publishing house itself actually makes no profit whatsoever. All the royalties earned for each book sold return to the author. The only way this can happen, is that the author is responsible for the entire process of publishing, from putting pen to paper, to having the book edited, copy-edited and formatted, even straight through to the book cover.

However, the books themselves have to be of a certain standard before they can go out bearing the Thirst eDitions logo. Like all publishing houses, Thirst eDitions have readers who vet the books before they go out. The difference here is that the readers are actually the writers being published through Thirst eDitions. This might appear like an unfair gatekeeping process, but it’s actually a good thing in that, not only are we trying to protect the reputation and integrity of the community publishing, we are also trying to protect the writer’s reputation too.

Normally this vetting process will only be applied to new books, as these have not been tried or tested. Where a book has been previously published traditionally, having gone through a professional editing process already, it will not need to be vetted, nor will previously published e-books that have been successful sellers, unless enough concerns are voiced about the quality of the book and there are ways to improve it.

The authors and their books will initially come to us from two sources: referral or reputation. Books that are referred usually come via an agent or another member of Thirst eDitions team. Books that arrive with us via reputation will normally be self-published books that we have identified as being great books, and where we believe with our added support the book could become a better seller. In the latter case, we will contact the author and offer them membership of Thirst eDitions which they are not obliged to do – but if they do, it won’t cost them a penny. What Thirst eDitions gets in return for the author’s membership is the reputation a bestseller can give a publishing house – which is what Thirst eDitions is ultimately trading in: a reputation for good fiction. This reputation is a currency all the writers under the publishing house can spend, and is proven to boost sales.

What are the advantages for writers to publish with TeD. rather than to self-publish?

Where Thirst eDitions comes in, is with the shared knowledge, publicity and platform to get the book out there.

It is a self-publishing endeavour, but one where the author can have access to important resources in order to get the best out of that book, including advice from experienced commercial writers, a website presence and a slice of the reputation for good, quality fiction Thirst eDitions aims to build over the coming months. The writers will be actively promoting the endeavour, as well as their own books, and that includes pimping their fellow authors. It’s a real community.

It seems to me this is an entirely new model of publishing. It also seems self-evident that TeD couldn’t exist without e-publishing, and specifically without Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, which makes it all so easy. Is that fair to say?

That’s a good point, and yes, it’s true. Amazon has made it much easier to become self-published, but we won’t be restricting our books to just one platform. Our aim is to get this out on iBooks, into on-line bookstores and as far and as wide as possible in as many formats as possible. I think there is a danger in allowing one supplier access to books. It makes you very uncompetitive.

Eventually it would be good to see a Thirst eDition Fiction book in print, maybe through Print on Demand, but the technology in print has to catch up first and POD has to be more cost effective than it is currently.

 Which is better, e-book or printed book?                                                               

The e-book. Hah, no – obviously I would say that. In all honesty I don’t know. E-books are cheaper and more accessible. But printed books have something that e-books don’t, a physical presence, in much the same way a photograph has the advantage over digital pictures. You look at a bookshelf and the memories of reading a book or books, including where you were, how old you were, and who you were, all come flooding back to you. It’s difficult to see how an e-reader could do that.

However, printed books are expensive compared to e-books, and they are more expensive to produce. E-books are more automatic. I can see why high-street booksellers are wary of the e-book. In an impatient society, the e-book is more attractive. Having said that, I hope there is a place for both. I would hate for the physical book to turn into the vinyl of the literary world.

One of the things I’ve found hardest to nail with my own foray into e-publishing has been pricing. What’s a fair price for an e-book?

That’s a good question. Pricing e-books is something a lot of self published authors overlook – it’s the icing on the cake, but sometimes one that is applied without much imagination or thought. Price is a psychological point. It determines whether your book will put off those who don’t have much expendable cash or those who might think your book is too cheap to be entertaining. There’s also an issue of rounding up and down price points. For example, we all recognise 99p or £1.99 (and the equivalent in dollars), but £1.36 or 85p? There’s not much difference between that and £1.50 or 99p, yet it’s proven to put off-readers because these are denominations that are more fitted to groceries than buying books. The advice I’ve read is to keep it simple. Use either 50p, 99p, £1.50 or £1.99. As a rule, you wouldn’t charge more than 99p for a novella, £1.50 for a short novel, and no more than £2.99 for a full-length novel if you want to keep yourself competitive.

Apart from the sales of your own book, is it true to say that you personally are not making any money out of the books published by TeD? So why do it?

That is true (I must get my head examined!!) I guess what’s really motivating me here is the challenge, that and creating something – which is in my blood (it’s a family trait).

How will you know if the experiment has been a success? What’s your ambition for Thirst eDition Fiction? 

I would really like this to be a success for the authors publishing through it. I’d love to see a few bestselling titles bearing the TeD. logo – that would be brilliant. I go back to the whole thing about reputation. It’s what we’re building here, a reputable brand of published fiction, something readers can trust. If we can get a few bestselling e-books through this endeavour then the project will be a huge success to me. But it’s also about being a shop window, and if a few gems are discovered by traditional publishers, the way Amanda Hocking was discovered for example, then that would be a success too.

Photo (c) Sarah Lee.

Q. Whenever I think about Faber Finds, I’m struck by what an amazing idea it is; as Gaby Wood of the Telegraph described it, “an exceptional archaeology of lost books”. How did it come about?

RTK: It was the brainchild of Faber’s chief executive Stephen Page, who’d been having a hard think about the full gamut of cultural/creative possibilities for new publishing technologies. He realised that print-on-demand and ebook offered a way to serve all sorts of discerning niche readerships, little platoons of avid readers across all genres; and to do so in defiance of the usual drear economics of reprinting. So you could make a smart new edition of a cherished but long-unavailable title, such that any keen reader who’d been in search of a particular ‘lost’ classic might now locate it online, at the dedicated Finds site or on Amazon, and whistle it up bespoke.

I imagine that there are a lot of people who would say that you have the dream job. What gives you the greatest pleasure about being the editor in chief of Faber Finds?

It’s certainly a bibliophile’s dream, and as an editor you get the quite considerable boon of publishing books that you and everybody else already know to be excellent… For me probably the greatest pleasure is chasing down leads and suggestions for neglected titles that I receive from fellow writers and readers. They’re always good ideas, so I get the pleasure of making marvellous new discoveries. There are so many books in the world, I’m not entirely surprised that prior to Faber Finds I hadn’t read, inter alia, Robert Aickman, or William Sansom, or William Palmer, or Theodore Francis Powys, or Christina Stead… But now I wouldn’t be without them, and I also get the privilege of evangelising for them and for so many superb authors.

How do you decide on the books you are going to rescue from oblivion? Are they all out of copyright and in the public domain – or do you approach living authors? How much is down to your personal tastes?

The major area of focus is works of distinction that are in copyright but out of print. Notable works in the public domain are generally well served elsewhere – though I am looking forward to ways in which we might use our technology to offer interesting, innovative versions of out-of-copyright classics. But, yes, I am constantly approaching living authors – we very much want to be able to help currently practising writers or writers whose backlists have been overlooked to re-present and re-promote their fine work.

In respect of personal taste – I have taken on one or two titles that are especially dear to me, but mainly Finds is not about my personal taste: it’s about the myriad tastes of readers out there. I will happily publish anything that seems to be of real distinction, in whatever genre.

Is it fair to say that the imprint couldn’t work without digital technology?

Yes, it is absolutely a child of same. By the same token it needs the interface of the Finds blog www.faberfindsblog.co.uk, which I have been developing as a special repository of information and opinion about the books, a place where Finds readers can drop in to learn more but also to make their own suggestions for the list.

Is this the much-vaunted long tail in action – the business theory that suggests that you can succeed by selling small numbers of lots of items? Approximately how many books do you publish? And what’s your best seller, or is the whole notion of a bestseller irrelevant to Faber Finds?

Yes, I think Finds was very much conceived on the model of a ‘long tail’ business. We now offer around 1000 titles in all, and we reissue roughly 10 a month.

I’d never say the notion of a ‘bestseller’ is irrelevant, but rather than single out one book I’d like to stress the diversity of titles in our Top 50: from Keith Douglas’s Alamein to Zem-Zem to Kolymsky Heights by Lionel Davidson; Patrick Hamilton’s Twopence Coloured to Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book. We have Simon Heffer’s biographies of Enoch Powell and Vaughan Williams alongside the exquisite ‘strange stories’ of Robert Aickman; the scholarship of Jacob Bronowski and F.R. Leavis next to the poetry of A.S.J. Tessimond, and David James Smith’s study of the killing of James Bulger, The Sleep of Reason. It’s the mix, the open-door policy of ours, that I find thrilling above all.

Were you publishing e-book editions from the start, or was it originally just Print On Demand?

E books were always the intention where rights could be obtained, though POD was the launch format. But Finds began to roll out its ebook programme in 2009, and now we publish everything simultaneously into POD and ebook, rights permitting.

Have you noticed a shift in numbers from the printed format to ebooks as the Kindle and other e-readers take off?

Yes, simply put. We’re very pleased to have seen the proportion of sales for ebooks building since we made the commitment to get everything from the list into this format as quickly as possible.

Are you really neutral in the print vs. e-book debate, as you recently declared in the Faber Finds blog? Surely as a bibliophile, you prefer the physicality of a real book?

For me personally, as reader and writer, yes, my preference is still for physical books. But as Finds editor – on the level of content and what are the interests and preferred recreational reading modes of Finds customers – I don’t mind one bit. Whatever is their pleasure.

As well as running Faber Finds, you’re also a novelist, non-fiction author, screenwriter, playwright, TV presenter, columnist, as well as an energetic blogger. How on earth do you find the time?

Mainly I try to write whenever my children are asleep. But that, I admit, is rather a narrow window of time… I think all writers can accomplish a lot in different forms when they apply themselves; the real question perhaps is how well they acquit themselves in each – which is always a matter for others to be the judges of.

You’re both a writer and a publisher. Do you think digital technology has changed the relationship between the two? Are you optimistic about the future of books?

Very clearly digital technology has opened up new and alternative channels between writers and readers, and that has made a brave new world for all of us. For as long as there is both an open marketplace and a properly lively cultural respect for the written word, then I am endlessly hopeful about the future of writing and reading. To speak solely of ‘books’ is surely too reductive now. Part of what is exciting about our current moment is that the idea of a book can be re-imagined beyond a conventional set of covers, just as new kind of relationships can be had between writers and readers. But that’s all good, IMHO…

Your own novel The Possessions of Doctor Forrest did spectacularly well as an ebook, reaching number 1 in Amazon’s Kindle Horror chart. What insights has that success given you into the whole business of e-publishing?

When the mass-market edition of The Possessions of Doctor Forrest was published last month the ebook was price-promoted for one day, and I think a lot of horror fans were happy to give it a try on that basis. Thankfully it stuck around the upper reaches of the chart once it went back to the regular price the next day. But the promotion got the book onto the radar for Kindle users more generally – for a while it was #4 on the overall Kindle Fiction chart, which was a platform for the novel to be discovered more easily by all those new readers who have lately embraced Kindle. So I think the main lesson is one that everyone in publishing is keenly aware of – anything that enhances the general ‘discoverability’ of any given book is to be strongly encouraged.

Of The Cleansing Flames, the reviewer said: “While still fulfilling all the requirements of the historical crime novel, it is strongest in its wonderful sense of place, atmosphere and historical detail and the memorable characters that people this landscape.”

And of A Razor Wrapped in Silk: “The streets of St Petersburg are vividly portrayed as the author shows the imperial Russian capital on the brink of upheaval, contrasting the squalor of industrial Russia against the richness of the aristocratic ruling class… If you like historical crime novels, you will enjoy this.”

Can’t say fairer than that!