How My Book Reached #1 On The Amazon Kindle Charts

It's been a crazy couple of days. I've written a crime thriller called 'Run, Run, Run'. And in the last couple of days it's risen from relative obscurity to #1 most downloaded thriller on Amazon UK. Before I tell you how it happened, here's the blurb for the book:

‘Run, Run, Run’ is a crime thriller, a novel that never lets up, taking an ordinary couple into a life they could never envisage.

After giving evidence against a gangster in a murder trial, Dan Thompson is whisked away into the Witness Protection Scheme. But even that can’t protect him and his wife, Sally. Somebody knows their new identity - somebody who shouldn’t.

Frank Tong is an artist who finds inspiration for his paintings from the violence of his criminal life. When his brother is put away for murder he wants revenge. And he has a mole in the Witness Protection Scheme.

Dan and the pregnant Sally have no choice. They have to flee. They go on the run from both sides of the law.

They must learn to lie, steal, shoot and fight to survive. They can’t use their credit cards, cash machines, mobile phones - anything that will give away their location. They must constantly look over their shoulder. It’s living life like a criminal - a difficult task for two law abiding people.

What will it take to return to a normal life? How far are they willing to go?‘Run, Run, Run’ is a crime thriller that will have your heart racing and your mind buzzing.

…Sometimes to get justice, you have to run away from it…

That's what the novel is about. I believe it's a good book, of course. I aimed to write a thriller that had rounded characters the reader would care about without letting up on the pace.

But, as an independent author, it's my responsibility not just to write a good book but to get it out to people. It's tough to pull myself away from the gripping story I'm currently working on. But it has to be done.

When I first released 'Run, Run, Run', I made sure it was available in every online bookstore, including: the iBookstore, Barnes and Noble, Smashwords and Amazon.

Then, a couple of months ago, Amazon began their Select scheme. Subscribers to Amazon can download books for free, whilst the author still gets a fee.

If you entered your book into the scheme, you had to withdraw it from other bookstores. I thought about this a lot before deciding to go ahead.

What swung it for me was the fact that you could also offer your book for free for up to five days, as an introduction for new readers. Plus, Amazon has the largest share of the market and, I think, is fairer to independent authors than either the iBookstore or Barnes & Noble.

'Run, Run, Run' went free on Sunday 29^th January 2012 for a couple of days. That's when the madness began. Downloads of the book gradually gained momentum, starting at 600,000 in the charts. By the end of the second day it had become the #1 thriller and #2 overall at Amazon UK, overtaking more established competition.

It was a tough decision to take it off the free list. A writer's main wish is to be read, so it's a thrill to see thousands of people choosing to read your book. I can't thank those people enough and I really hope they enjoy it. But, to keep writing a writer needs to get paid. Whether the book can mirror its success now I'm starting from scratch by going back to charging for it (only a paltry sum), we will have to see. But at least people now know about the book and can judge it on its own merits.

'Run, Run, Run', a crime thriller, is available from:

Amazon US and Amazon UK

The Changing Face Of Book Covers

There is a lot of discussion at the moment about the demise of the printed book. But with the shift to electronic reading, what is the current state, and future, of the one page that first attracts us to a book – the cover?

I remember, as a child, buying my first paperback that had a shiny cover with embossed, silver lettering. There was a man running from a car, the action silhouetted against a blue tinted background. I can't, for the life of me, remember the name of the book or what it was about. But I do remember the cover. I was in awe of it.

Fast forward to life today and we are fast embracing the digital revolution. It could be argued that book covers are more important than ever.

The biggest issue concerning book covers these days is size. Even printed book covers had to exist in at least two sizes – the hardback and paperback versions. But in the electronic world, the situation is even more pronounced.

E-book covers have to look good in at least two sizes – 800x600 pixels and 90x60. And that is just cruel. Pity the poor designer who has to do this. Such polar opposites make the job quite tricky. But it can be done.

That small, thumbnail size is probably the most important as things stand. It's the image people see when they're browsing. The one epithet you want to avoid when designing a cover that looks good at this size is 'busy'. A 'busy' cover just doesn't work at this size.

I've seen some wonderfully intricate designs with calligraphic typefaces on covers in bookshops. But then, when that design is transferred to electronic retailers like Amazon, it has no impact. What a publishing is hoping for, at this stage, is that the consumer will have seen the cover in a bookshop on the high street, and retained that memory. That's certainly an attitude that will die out.

In the future, book covers will have to work in electronic form before they're even considered for the print form.

In drawing parallels with the art world, I believe the pop artists of the 1960s would have made geat e-book cover designers. To me, that's also when graphic design also came of age. A lot of book covers used in that era had strong lines and shapes, and a bold use of colour.

But one issue that is the same for printed covers as it is for e-book covers is 'genre'. Largely speaking, people expect certain genres to have certain types of covers. This has always been one of the main challenges of designing book covers. You want the cover to be original, yet you want to assure the reader that the content is in line with the genre she adores. That challenge remains.

What about the future? That could be very interesting. I don't think any retailer has yet managed to build an interface that replicates the joy of browsing in a bookshop. I think the iBookstore comes close. The Amazon interface almost puts me off browsing. But I'm sure they'll change that, especially as e-readers haven't yet finished evolving.

In essence, a good book cover still needs to satisfy the same requirements. It needs to grab people's attention and it needs to reflect the book's content. But with a multitude of formats and delivery systems, it now needs to be very adaptable. Maybe we'll get to a point where there will be a slightly different book cover for each delivery system or interface. And browsing for books will again become a joy.

Mark Capell is an independent author and fouder of The Creative Criteria, providing digital publishing, design and marketing for independent authors.

The Dangers Of Turning Fact Into Fiction

I love fiction. And I love fiction that's based on fact. But mixing the two can get you into trouble if you're not careful.

For anybody living in London in August 2011, the riots were inescapable. You didn't have to be caught up in the middle of the fighting to be affected. There was a mood, a tension that lingered in the air. Shops were closing at 3 p.m. People were eyeing each other suspiciously. Even a particular item of clothing suddenly acquired a demonic trait. As I put it in my novella, 'Riot Murder':

“The hoodie was transformed from a benign piece of leisurewear into a uniform for the disaffected, the angry, the malevolent. So much so that ‘hoodie’ was no longer a piece of clothing. It was a whole person. A hoodie was somebody likely to steal, plunder and do you unimaginable harm.
People were crossing the street when a hoodie crossed their path - even if it was a 70-year-old gentleman walking his dog. That’s how quickly the fear had permeated the collective consciousness. And lifting the hood was tantamount to cocking a gun.”

The climax of 'Riot Murder' depends on a particular detail of the 2011 riots. It was something so extraordinary that I felt compelled to use it. I can't say what it is because it forms the main twist of the novella. But I can talk about the issues it raises. It concerns a real person.

Now obviously there are legal ramfications to using real people in a novel. Characters can't be lifted directly from real life. Real people can sue.

But here lies the rub. All writers draw inspiration from real life. Even those specialising in the fantasy, or science fiction, realm. And what people do in real life make the very best stories in themselves; even though they are often incomplete and not utterly satisfying.

For a while, I thought about devising another storyline. But I kept returning to this man and what he did. When his court case came up, I decided I had to use the storyline I'd devised. It was a story screaming out to be told. Now let's get one thing clear. I did not know the man, had never met him, or read his life story. It was just one detail I wanted to use, which is perfectly fair game. Every other facet of my fictional character was made up.

But we live in litigious times. People trip on a paving stone and their first thought is who can they sue.

What I did, finally, was set the story forward in time. 'Riot Murder' takes place in the summer of 2012. The London riots have reignited, as many Londoners think they will, and an undercover cop is murdered. Setting it in the near future liberated the story in many ways. I didn't have to feel guilty about taking liberties with what actually happened this summer. So it worked out for my story.

I think the moral of this story is that no writer should be put off being inspired by real life. The real world is the lifeblood of fiction. Stories are important to the progression of society, no matter how trivial. Even a little detective novel can make people think twice. It's why stories were invented by our cave dwelling ancestors.

I want to say: to hell with opportunistic people's greedy need for the fame and potential financial reward of a court case. Stories must be told. But, of course, as a writer, you have to take this into account; you need to be careful. Make sure your character is genuinely different from its real life inspiration. And always include a disclaimer before your story.

There's always a workaround. And that workaround might just open a whole new world of possibilities.

'Riot Murder' – a Myles Morgan mystery by Mark Capell is available from Amazon and Amazon U.K. and will shortly be available from Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore.

A Future Without Books? - A Review Of BBC1's 'Books: The Last Chapter?'

The worst part of this TV programme on BBC1 was nothing in the show itself. It was the title and pre-show publicity. The title, 'Books: The Last Chapter?' embodies everything I hate in the e-books versus physical books debate.

'A book is an instrument for the transmission of ideas,' said Bob Stein, from The Institute For The Future Of Books. It's this single fact that is often overlooked by the Luddites who genuflect and predict the end of the world when envisaging a future without the printed page.

The rise of e-books does not mean the end of 'books'. E-books are books. It's not hard to fathom, it's there in the term.

Alan Yentob did a good job in presenting the current climate and putting it into its historical context. There is no global warming situation for bibliophiles, just a natural evolution.

I sniffed an interesting parallel between the present day situation and the moment when William Caxton invented the printing press. It could be argued that it was at this point in history that books as objects lost their true individuality. Before that, books were handwritten. Monks were probably decrying this advance in the same way Julian Barnes called for the 'protecting' of the physical book.

But this particular debate is about books as objects. It's not about content, which is what truly matter. As Theo Gray, of Touch Press, put it: 'There will always be people who fetishise printed books.' The show humorously illustrated this in the form of an interview with Rachael Morrison, a librarian at the Museum For Modern Art who has the responsibility of sniffing books and describing their aroma in a log.

The humour continued when Yentob interviewed three people who embodied the traditional publishing values – agent, Ed Victor; publisher, Gail Rebuck; and author, Ewan Morrison. The show sat them down in a quirky, surreal, Georgian living room, with a portrait of a rabbit with huge breasts hanging over them, as if to emphasise their antiquated trade. Their views weren't as unenlightened as the show wanted them to be. But there was an uneasy guffawing when they all agreed that they needed each other.

Books take a year to write, said Morrison. Publishers remain as curators, said Rebuck. Agents are needed to protect writers, said Victor. Now anybody involved in digital publishing could challenge all three statements. And if your name is Joe Konrath, John Locke, or Amanda Hocking, challenge them successfully on empirical grounds. In a year we could all be out of a job, said Morrison. In the upcoming age of the author-entrepreneur he might just be right.

One issue the book didn't address is the one that turned me on to the digital experience - e-ink. I don't like reading on a glaring screen. Over long periods of time my eyes tire. But with e-ink on devices such as the Kindle, Nook or Sony e-readers, the experience is comfortable - even more comfortable than reading paper.

The value of having not just 'a' book but all the books you want on you all the time was the major boon of the e-book revolution for Publishing Consultant, Mike Shatzkin. 'I have no physical sentimentality about the physical book at all,' he said. And neither did this TV show, which was a pleasant surprise.

Hypnotism And The Art Of Writing Good Sales Copy

It's not what you think. The art of writing good sales copy is not about brainwashing people. That's to misunderstand hypnotism. As a hypnotist once told me: you can't make people do what they don't want to do, you can only put them in a relaxed state where they're more suggestible. And that is similar to what you do when writing good sales copy.

And writing good sales copy is tough.

There is so much poor sales copy on the internet it makes you want to cry. It's as if the writers believe that if you hit somebody over the head with a hammer often enough they will eventually capitulate. They could learn a thing or two from hypnotists.

When meeting somebody, a hypnotist mirrors a subject's actions. He might even make a conscious effort to use the same vocabulary. This is a short cut to gaining your trust. It's a subconscious reaction and stronger because of it. A good hypnotist will speak at the same rate as the subject at first. Then, gradually, slow down, taking you into a more relaxed state.

Hypnotists are very careful to control the tone of their voice. They need to be soft enough to seem friendly and warm, like a mug of hot chocolate, but precise enough to be clear.

Once you are relaxed the hypnotist will blink his eyes ever more slowly. By that stage, you are so relaxed and suggestible that you follow. Until you find that it's too much effort to open them again.

Then he will concoct a story, taking you on a beautiful journey, using only words and the tone of his voice, to a beautiful place. And who doesn't want to go to a beautiful place? When you're relaxed and comfortable in that beautiful place he will make suggestions that he hopes you will take into your waking state.

And that, in a nutshell, is the art of writing good sales copy.

Cliches - How To Love Them

I had a great creative writing tutor when I was at college, which is a while ago now. He told us: 'Cliches are cliches because they work'. By that he meant that if a phrase only becomes a cliche because people decide that it works. Then he went on to tell us to avoid them at all costs.

So, in a way, that's contradictory advice.

Cliches can be good. With a cliche you know what you're getting. You have this phrase that, for years, people have used. Which is good. It means that they identify with it. It's familiar to them, like a pair of old slippers. They know exactly what it means, which removes any chance of misunderstanding. And misunderstanding is the enemy of good communications.

So what's the problem?

Cliches make the mind fog over. If used one after another, the reader or listener shuts off. We tell ourselves that this person has nothing new to say. The human mind is a wonderful device. Its curiosity has propelled us forward with great scientific advances. It likes nothing better than to make discoveries. If curiosity killed the cat it also drew the human race out of its caves and into the light.

From the point of view of the writer, cliches can be a product of the lazy side of the mind. When reaching for a phrase, often the first thing we think of is a cliche. And that's okay. We might beat ourselves up about it but it's natural. The mind wants to get a lot done as fast as possible. It's only when we settle for that initial phrase, rather than exploring other possibilities, that we should hit ourselves over the head with a blunt instrument.

But where does that leave us? Cliches are good and bad. Which is it? Do we use them or not?

Yes, we use them. Frankly, it would be hard not to. And sometimes they are a useful shortcut. But they should be used judiciously and sparingly. At the end of the day, when all's said and done, in a nutshell, come rain or shine, for better or worse, there's so many of them it would be hard to avoid them.

So you might as well love them.

Copywriting - Greeting Cards

Not many copywriting jobs are more fun than devising greeting cards. So I thought I'd post a few I'd worked on for an online greetings card company. The brief was to take existing, stock photographs and add captions. Some of the cards can be personalised. Apologies for the watermarks but they have to be there.