In 2015, AJ Waines
topped the UK and Australian Kindle Charts with her number one bestseller, Girl on a Train. She is now a full-time novelist, after
fifteen years as a Psychotherapist, with publishing deals in France, Germany
(Penguin Random House) and USA (audiobook).
Also in 2015, she was
featured in The Wall Street Journal
and The Times and was ranked in the
Top 20 authors on UK Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing). Her new chilling
thriller, No Longer Safe, is released on 4 Feb 2016.
1. How did you start out as an author?
Like many writers, my path hasn’t been straightforward! In
2009, I was burnt out as a Psychotherapist after fifteen years, so I had a go
at writing a psychological thriller. Within the same week in 2010, I managed to
land a top literary agent just after a small UK publisher made an offer on that
first novel, but the agency advised me to turn it down. As it happened, the
book didn’t attract a big-name publisher, so I wrote two more novels before my
agent and I parted company.
My new agent sent out the two new manuscripts, Girl on a Train and The Evil Beneath, and we got a pre-empt in France and a two-book deal
in Germany. Apparently, it’s very rare to secure overseas deals before getting published
in the home language. It wasn’t planned! I think timing was partly an issue. I
had a few near-misses in the UK, with several publishers saying they would have
snapped up the books if they’d been offered before the financial crash! Bittersweet
comments.
2. Have the deals abroad been valuable to you?
Traditional deals involve advances, so it’s good to have
some financial security, up front. Of course, you then have to earn out your
advance, before you get any royalties. I’ve been pleasantly surprised, however,
to sell over 40,000 copies of The Evil
Beneath in translation through a book club in France – and I didn’t do any
publicity or marketing for that; it was all down to the publisher.
3. So, with your first traditional deals gained
in Europe, how did you approach the UK market?
When the novels weren’t picked up in the UK, my agent
suggested White Glove – a new programme where authors with agents put their
books on to Amazon and get special promotion opportunities. We went for this
and it worked well for me.
4. How did you find a market for your books?
Was it difficult when thousands of new novels are being added to Amazon every
week?
The main issue, as you suggest, is getting noticed without
any publisher’s publicity or marketing! There was no book launch or any advance
promotion for those first books, so I was advised to ‘build a platform’.
Suddenly, I had to switch from being ‘anonymous’ as a therapist to being ‘in
the spotlight’ as a writer. I started a blog, wrote features for other sites,
set up an author profile on Goodreads, began Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, a
newsletter etc, and started to build a small readership that way.
It was a real shift in mentality, but the biggest barrier
for any writer – even if you’re published traditionally – is making your book
stand out above all the other books out there. But, sometimes a simple article
can unexpectedly lead to great things. I wrote a piece this autumn, about book
titles for an online site which was seen by a journalist from The Wall Street Journal. He interviewed
me and published a feature, which was then followed up by The Times and The Independent on Sunday. This led to an
audiobook deal in the US, so you just never know.
5. What do you need to be most aware of as an
Indie writer in the UK?
My situation is complicated, as I’ve got two books on the
White Glove scheme and also two new ones on Amazon that my agent suggested I
publish myself. So, in all, I have three types of publishing: Agent-managed, Indie
and Traditional - and there are plus sides and downsides to all of them!
For the White Glove scheme, agents’ approaches vary
considerably and some will format and convert the e-book for you, pay for cover
design and copy-editing, etc – but others don’t foot the bill. Invariably, I
need to do all the marketing and publicity, because an agent doesn’t have the
time or resources to actively sell the book. The agent does have control of the
account, however – they ‘manage’ the book entirely; change the pricing, manage
the meta-data, arrange promotions etc and they take a commission on royalties.
Some agents are more proactive than others – mine is very
good - at keeping the books in the limelight with promotions and special deals.
I went to number one in the UK and Australian Kindle chart due to a special
deal my agent set up and I sold 30,000 copies of both White Glove books in the
first six months of this year, so they’re doing a great job! Agents seem less
likely to want to manage the Print on Demand versions (CreateSpace) as the
Amazon royalties are so low, so I manage all these myself.
6. Are you still hoping for a traditional UK
publisher?
It’s an interesting question and a few years ago, I would
have said yes, absolutely. Now, I think it would have to be the right deal. It
used to be the case that once an author got a publisher, it was for life, but
now, even authors who get a two or three-book deal are finding themselves back
to square one if the books don’t sell as well as hoped.
My traditional foreign deals seem to involve spin-off
imprints, so they can be lucrative, but some authors are actively choosing to
self-publish because the royalties are better. It also depends on whether you
have your heart set on seeing your books in a high street store or in
libraries. Despite not getting a UK publisher, I’ve been very lucky with sales.
7. What has it been like to produce the last
two books, Dark Place to Hide and No Longer Safe, entirely on your own?
The nice thing is that I’m not actually alone - I have a
great ‘Team’ around me, including a cover designer, copy editor, proofreaders,
beta-readers, reviewers and so on. My agent has confirmed that the books are
‘commercial’, but they aren’t involved, so I project-manage everything from
start to finish, together with the online accounts, launches and publicity.
It’s a lot of work, but it’s been great to know I’ve done the whole thing
myself – I even managed the ebook formatting on the latest one, No Longer Safe!
8. What advice would
you give to a new author, Indie or Traditional?
Promotion is really key – I see it as an essential part of a
writer’s life - as well as a cracking novel, of course! Books are no longer
only found in bookshops, so I think it’s more or less par for the course now,
that new writers have an online presence, traditionally published, or not. Appearances
at festivals, libraries and book-signings are time-consuming, so I focus
entirely on online publicity. No writer who wants to be successful can afford
to release a book without all the whistles and bells that go with it. Learn
from authors you admire – that’s what I did. I tracked what other writers in
the same genre were doing to get themselves known and then set up the aspects I
liked, for myself. It’s quite refreshing to put up a review on Goodreads or a
guest post on my blog amidst the rigours of daily writing. It’s also incredibly
rewarding and touching when readers get in touch and I try to respond to every
message, if I can.
v
AJ Waines lives in Southampton, UK, with her
husband. Visit her website and blog, or
follow her on Twitter and Facebook. Her new chilling thriller, No Longer Safe, is launched today 4 Feb 2016.
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