Writing Tips

They say that you aren’t a real writer until you’ve had your first 1 star review.
The emergence of Amazon two decades ago, followed by the launch of the Kindle, accelerated a shift in the way in which readers and writers connect, and rewrote the definition of what we mean by a book review.
Readers have always communicated with writers. Before the internet revolution, it was done the old-fashioned way by pen and paper. When the World Wide Web emerged in the nineties, anyone with an internet connection could track down an email address and let the writer know what they did (or didn’t!) like about the book they had just read.
Similarly, prior to this a ‘book review’ was an opinion piece, written by a professional journalist or literary expert, and published in a newspaper, magazine or journal. The problem was that these ‘gatekeepers’ only had enough time and column inches to read and review a small number of books each month. With thousands of books published each year, authors and their agents needed the right connections to get their latest manuscript in front of these influential eyeballs.
A blockbuster author is all but guaranteed space on the books page of every national newspaper, whilst lesser-known writers have to fight it out for the few remaining paragraphs of space left over. In many ways, that hasn’t really changed.
The changing of the guard.
However, the advent of Amazon helped catalyse the rise of the ‘review society’. Now, anybody buying any product, or using any service, is exhorted to ‘leave a review’. At the same time, the ease with which one can set up a simple blog to share your thoughts has led to an explosion in booklovers sharing their passion with the world (you can read my own small contribution to this by visiting my Recommended Read Blog).
The newest revolution is in social media. Facebook in particular is a fantastic platform for readers to talk about the books that they have finished. If you aren’t already, I would recommend joining a few of the many Facebook book groups out there.
Democracy is a double-edged sword.
This democratisation of the review process has been, for the most part, positive. Traditional book reviews have sometimes been seen as elitist; the reviewers part of the book industry. What so many of us want is a good honest recommendation from a person just like us. I liken it to trying to choose a wine. You can read a detailed review by a wine connoisseur, or you can go with your best mate, who had a lovely bottle from Tesco last week and reckons you’ll really enjoy it.
As writers, we really appreciate the effort that so many of our readers go to. It validates what we do, gives us valuable feedback and ultimately helps sales. For those of us typically locked out of the review pages of the national newspapers, a review on a blog, a post on Goodreads, or a star rating on Amazon is much appreciated.
So, with all that being said, what are the downsides?
The first question is should read your reviews? Not everyone does. That’s not because we don’t appreciate them- really we do – but because it can be a bit uncomfortable. For everyone who gets a warm, fuzzy feeling inside when a stranger writes about how much they loved their latest book, there are those that cringe with embarrassment. Any teacher will tell you that there are kids in their class that hate it when they tell them how pleased they are with their work. It’s human nature.
Then there are the bad reviews.
Writing a book is emotionally demanding. I know it can sound a bit pretentious, but you really do put your heart and soul into it. Even those of us that aren’t writing searing, honest memoirs about our heartbreakingly miserable childhood have still spent hundreds or thousands of hours plugging away, in solitude, doing the very best we can. For me, that finished book is the culmination of the previous year’s work. Waiting to see what others think of it is like going into your boss’ office for your end-of-year appraisal, having not had any previous feedback on whether you’ve been doing your job to the standard expected. It can be nerve-wracking. A bad review just confirms what you suspected all along – you’re actually an imposter, who has no business foisting their meagre talents on the world at large.
Human nature is such that a writer can look at a list of thirty or forty 4 and 5 star reviews, and skip straight to the two 1 star reviews.
Trolls don’t just live under bridges and on Twitter.
Another unintended consequence from this ubiquitous reviewing culture is that the pseudo-anonymity of social media has made bullying much easier. Once upon a time, if you stood toe-to-toe with somebody and told them they were useless and crap at their job, you ran the risk of a headbutt. Not anymore. And unfortunately, book review sites aren’t immune to these keyboard warriors. Trolling is rife on review sites and whilst Amazon will remove personally offensive comments about the author, they won’t touch reviews that are factually inaccurate or deliberately contain spoilers designed to ruin other customers’ enjoyment of a book. They’ve also just removed the option to comment on posted reviews, or explain why you think a review should be taken down, leaving it to the ‘judgement’ of a faceless moderator (or more likely AI bot).
Goodreads (owned by Amazon) is another site with little or no moderation. Unlike Amazon, which at least blocks the ability to post reviews until after a book has been published, Goodreads allows reviews for any books listed on its site, including those not yet available. The reason is to allow reviewers with advanced copies to post their thoughts and ‘generate buzz’ before a book hits the shelves. It’s not uncommon for publishers to create a holding page for a book a year ahead of publication; it is a useful way of letting fans of a series or author know to keep an eye out for their next book. I’ve got off pretty lightly, compared to some I know, but I did ask that a 3 star rating for a book that I hadn’t even finished writing yet be removed…
Opinions are like ar$eholes; everyone has one.
You are not going to please everyone. Furthermore, it’s probably best not to believe your own hype. Telling you not to place too much stock in your reviews is the easiest advice to give and the hardest advice to follow.
For a dose of realism, read the Amazon reviews of the ‘big’ authors. What you’ll soon see is that in amongst the hundreds of gushing 5 star reviews there are middling 3 star reviews by readers who got bored halfway through. There are thoughtful dissections of why they feel this book isn’t as good as their last – hard to read, but valuable sometimes. And there are excoriating 1 stars from readers who absolutely hated the book, or who have an axe to grind. And of course there are those who are clearly as mad as a box of frogs or who don’t fully understand the system (nothing is more depressing than ‘best book ever, I couldn’t put it down’ – 1 star.”)
Similarly, a 1 star review for one of my books lamented that it never arrived. It was an eBook…🙄
Identifying the axe grinders.
A useful exercise is to click and see what else that person has reviewed. I have some brutal 1 stars from somebody who has read and hated everything I’ve ever published – seriously, maybe my books aren’t to their taste and they should stop the self-flagellation? I will willingly forgo the royalties from those sales if it helps put this poor person out of their misery.
Another reader gave me a blistering 1 star that was so bad I wondered if they knew me personally! A look at their review history indicated that they don’t actually seem to like crime fiction. Rather more tellingly they were similarly disappointed with a packet of lubricated suppositories. I wonder if they were perhaps sitting a little uncomfortably when they read my book?
However, my favourite review ever is this gem for my second book, No Smoke Without Fire:
“Good power ,and seems quite sturdy, have to make sure you don’t leave it lying down full in the kitchen as it might leek and annoy the wife.”
So with all that in mind, what do you think about reviews?
If you are a writer, do you read them?
As always, fell free to comment here or on social media.
In the meantime, I’m off to check the Amazon page for my latest, Out of Sight… please be kind…
Paul

Click here for more details about DCI Warren Jones 7, Out of Sight.
Out in eBook on June 4th 2021 and paperback and audiobook on August 5th.
Amazon Link.
Consider buying paperbacks from Bookshop.org to support independent sellers.

Hello, and welcome to the latest #TuesdayTip.
This Friday sees the publication in eBook of the seventh full-length DCI Warren Jones, Out of Sight. And so I thought it would be interesting to relate the journey of this, the eleventh book in the series – a book created largely during one of the strangest years in my, or anyone’s life.
It all started so well…
Officially, I started writing what would become Out of Sight during the first week of September 2019. I had just submitted the first complete draft of book six in the series, A Price to Pay, to my editor at HQ Digital, the imprint of HarperCollins that currently publishes my series. That book marked the completion of my latest contract – three novels and three shorter novellas published over the previous three years. I had pitched my latest ideas for another six books a couple of months previously and although I had not yet received confirmation that I would get another contract, I was keen to start work on the next instalment, which I intended to be a novella.
The basic premise, as is normal for me, was little more than a collection of loosely-linked ideas. I’m not a great plotter, and tend to write out of sequence, so the final product usually bears only a passing resemblance to the initial outline. However, HQ have always been generous enough to let me crack on and see where the book leads.
I had also started a new job, teaching science three days a week at a new school, so I had quite a lot on my plate!
By October, I had written about 15,000 words – and then my editor phoned to discuss my next contract and the future direction of the series. The upshot was, that for a number of (very good) reasons, it had been decided to stop publishing my novellas. Rather they wanted to concentrate on full-length novels.
My first thought was “what the hell am I going to do with this partially written novella?” Ditching 15k words and starting again seemed like a cruel blow.
But then a nagging worry that had been keeping me awake at night suddenly had a solution.
As stated earlier, I am not a plotter. And for the first time, this was proving to be a potential problem. You see, I kept on having really good ideas, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that they weren’t all going to fit into a short novella. But suddenly, I had 120k words to play with. Ideas that I had reluctantly concluded wouldn’t fit into the book could now be used.
It was as if a great weight had been lifted off my shoulders.
Immediately, I set about rewriting what I had already completed.
For the next few months, I happily juggled writing book seven with completing the edits for book six and the forthcoming novella, At First Glance.
Then March happened!
Suddenly I found myself installed on the kitchen table, our lovely office given over to my partner who needed its privacy more than I did. On top of that I, and thousands of teachers around the country, found themselves remote teaching with little notice. It’s hard to overstate the size of that shift. My school was better equipped than many, with all learners having devices to use at home, and already versed in Google Classroom, nevertheless writing and rewriting resources for a practical-based subject such as science for students to use independently was a huge undertaking.
Experienced teachers such as myself may take 30-60 minutes to plan a typical lesson. Suddenly, each lesson was taking up to two hours to prepare. The need to track our learners’ progress – normally done by walking around the classroom and interacting with students – became ever more important and time-consuming. I resigned myself to the fact that my jealously-guarded, two-day-a-week writing time was going to have to take a back seat. No longer needing to produce two books that year became an even bigger blessing. Then there was the small matter of having to reorganise a wedding (repeatedly)…
A faint glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
By June, I had found a new rhythm. Lessons that I and my colleagues had written in April could be tweaked and delivered again to a different class. Both of 2020’s books had been published, and by the end of the summer term I had largely regained my two writing days. Now the challenge was to hit my September 1st deadline!
One of the biggest jobs at this stage, is to start putting my book into the correct order. I write out of sequence, and so, by the time I hit 90 to 100,000 words, I have scores of short sections that need placing in a logical order.
In July I moved all these fragments into ‘working draft 2.0’ and started identifying what sections needed rewriting, what chunks of text needed moving again (for example references to the forensic analysis of a piece of evidence needs to take place after the evidence been discovered!) and what needed writing from scratch.
At the end of July, school ended and I could become a full-time writer again. 2020 was the summer without a holiday, so there were no excuses there and I ploughed on, taking advantage of the nice weather to do some red-penning in the garden.
By the beginning of August, the book was ready for its next stage. It had been through several drafts and it was time for a fresh set of eyes. By now, Public Health England were inviting people at random to take home tests for Covid-19 to monitor its prevalence in the community. My partner and I were fortunate enough to be selected; the timing couldn’t have been better. Since the very first book, The Last Straw, was completed, my father has been a beta reader, alongside my partner. And so, armed with our recent negative tests, we took advantage of the relaxation in the rules to surprise my Mum for her birthday (they were shielding, as were we, so our negative tests meant that we could be confident that it was safe to do so). Alongside her gift, I also presented them with a bulging lever-arch file…
Some new eyeballs.
Now it’s time to wait! What would they and my partner think? I emailed my editor to explain that the book was completed, but that pandemic logistics meant that I might not quite hit my September deadline. My editor values the input of my beta readers almost as much as I do and so was more than happy to give me a bit of leeway.
A few days later, my partner finished her read-through. Lots of red pen, but she liked it! And importantly, hadn’t spotted any significant errors that would necessitate a big rewrite. I worked my way through her edits, then had my first ever editorial meeting by video, with my Dad! He had spotted many of the same errors as my partner, plus some others, and had some interesting ideas which he read out, and I either corrected there and then on my laptop or noted for later. He then suggested that as Mum (a former teacher) was at a loose end, she could have another go at it. Needless to say, the following week’s meeting had even more corrections!
Barely a fortnight after my initial deadline, I emailed my editor the most polished submission of my career!
The waiting game.
Of course that’s only the first stage, but I could now start writing book eight, summer 2022’s novel. At the end of October, my editor sent her initial feedback. It was positive! She liked it. But I needed to lose about 8,000 words and make some changes. She suggested a deadline of December and so I placed book eight on hold, printed out a copy of the manuscript and her editorial letter, and wielded the red pen again. I’ve written before about the editorial process (#Tip 48), so won’t go over it again, suffice to say, some darlings were killed, some new ideas incorporated, and what emerged was meaner, 4,000 words leaner, and all the better for it.
Then some wonderful news – my editor was leaving to have a baby! I was disappointed that we wouldn’t be working together for the next book, but she handed me over to Dushi, who had worked on the series previously so was familiar with the characters. I knew I was in good hands.
Christmas came and went, and mid-January, Dushi sent back her thoughts. This is the first time that I have had two editors go through a manuscript and it was a fantastic experience. Dushi did a brilliant job, and so I printed it again and spent the next week or so incorporating her suggestions. It was now even tighter, with a further 2,000 odd words ditched. We also finally settled on Out of Sight as the title.
Mid-February, the manuscript came back from Dushi with her line edits.
This time, there was no need to print. These are done on Word, using the ‘track changes’ feature. Dushi had corrected my spelling and grammar, rigorously applied the HarperCollins style guide, tightened some sentences and used the comment function to suggest some more tweaks and request clarifications. That took two full days, largely consisting of me clicking the ‘accept change’ button, adding or removing a few sentences, as per Dushi’s suggestions, and writing my own response to some of her comments. Remarkably, it was now three hundred words shorter!
Amusingly, despite dozens of passes by me, three beta readers and two editors, it was only then that I noticed a character picked his daughter up from school on a Sunday… A hasty correction fixed that problem before I received emails from bemused readers, and snarky comments from Amazon reviewers – bullet dodged!
The final push.
I submitted this draft on February 23rd, along with my acknowledgments and dedication. I always leave this to the very end. Last year I was nearly caught out when I referenced events that should have taken place in May but were cancelled, so had to rewrite my acknowledgements just before publication. Lesson learned!
A final set of edits came back from the copy editor, with some more tweaks and then it was off to the proof reader. By now we had a fantastic cover, and the team at HQ had written a nice, punchy jacket blurb.
April the 8th was set for my cover reveal, neatly coinciding with my self-declared ‘DCI Warren Jones Day’ a few days later. The book became available for pre-order on all the major eBook sites, and the paperback and audio release dates set for August the 5th. I am going to write a separate post detailing my interactions with my long-standing audio narrator, so keep an eye out for that later this summer.
Marketing a book is always interesting. My publisher does a lot of work behind the scenes of course, but I’m no Richard Osman so much of the hard work falls to me. I actually quite enjoy making my own graphics and videos, it’s a creative process that I never realised was so much fun. You may have seen some of my posts on social media. There will be plenty more to come, particularly in the run up to the audio and paperback releases.
Now it’s just a case of sitting back and waiting for the glowing reviews and multi-million dollar royalty cheques to come rolling in… And finishing book eight.
I hope you enjoyed this insight into the creation of a book, particularly in a year that threw up unique challenges.
As always, feel free to comment here or on social media.
Until next time,
Best wishes.
Paul

According to the file creation date on the Word document that would become the first draft of the book that would eventually be published as The Last Straw, DCI Warren Jones came into being on Tuesday 12th April 2011 – exactly ten years ago today. So for this reason, I decided to bring forward this week’s #TuesdayTip and put together an article sharing some of that journey and what I’ve learned in those ten years.
For a quicker, more light-hearted read, you may want to check out my post on the HQ Stories blog, where I catalogue the 10 things I’ve learned in 10 years.
https://www.hqstories.co.uk/2021/04/08/ten-things-paul-gitsham-has-learnt-in-ten-years/Your debut novel probably won’t be the first book you have attempted to write.
An oft-quoted saying can be paraphrased as ‘the first million words don’t count’.
Whilst there are exceptions to every rule, most authors have at least one previous attempt locked away in a drawer somewhere. I have several. Some are literally in a drawer – I became quite the expert at purloining blank exercise books from school for my scribblings*, and these unfortunate attempts will never see the light of day. Neither will the three hidden on my hard drive.
Yet none of these were a waste of time. Writing is like any other skill. You need to practise, and whilst a million words seems like a lot, when you add up those abandoned manuscripts, the various short stories and essays I’ve written for creative writing classes, and my rambling missives on social media, I’ll bet it isn’t far off.
But, The Last Straw was the first novel I completed.
The key point I am making is do not despair at a perceived lack of progress. Your first finished book is just the visible point of a very big pyramid.
(*For the avoidance of doubt, I pilfered these exercise books when I was a pupil, not as a teacher twenty years later!)
Titles come and titles go.
The title of my first book was The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back.
It was clever, fitted the story perfectly and highly original. It was also ridiculously long.
Take a look at the titles of a typical crime fiction novel and you’ll see why my publishers promptly renamed it The Last Straw. If nothing else, at least that fits on the cover!
Since then I have published a further ten titles – all of them follow the loose theme of a play on a well known phrase. I’d love to take credit for these titles, but really I can’t. Naming a book is an art form in its own right and only a few are mine. No Smoke Without Fire, Forgive Me Father, Blood Is Thicker Than Water and At First Glance are the only names that stuck. The rest have either been tweaked by my publisher or are entirely a product of their marketing department.  Aside from a couple of times where I have fought my corner, I’ve generally been content to accept the wisdom of those more experienced than I.
And so do names!
I’ve written previous articles on how to name characters (TuesdayTips 31, 32 & 33). But don’t let that fool you. Since day one, I’ve found choosing the perfect name for characters almost impossible. When I started writing The Last Straw, the two lead characters’ names were place-holders – Smith and Jones. Fans of British comedy will know why that pairing was never going to be the final choice. As it happens, I became very attached to Warren Jones, but Tony Smith became Tony Sutton  – a popular surname in Essex, the county from where he comes. Other characters in that manuscript changed in the final draft. With the benefit of hindsight, I would go back and tweak the names of a few of the series regulars – some are very similar to each other – but I’m stuck with them now, and I’ve grown to like them.
Finishing the book is just the start.
First of all, if you’ve just completed your first draft, congratulations! Seriously, give yourself a pat on the back.
My best friend, upon hearing that I had completed The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back, told me I should be proud of myself. ‘Do you know how many people have started but never finished a novel’? And he was right. Probably hundreds of thousands of people have ideas for a book. Tens of thousands have tried to write it. Yet only a small number actually get to type The End.
Even if that’s the final step of your journey, you have accomplished something that many people attempt, but never quite manage.
But that first draft is just that. By the time I was ready to shyly ask some close friends and family to have a look at my book, it had gone through months of revisions. That first draft was completed at the beginning of November 2011 – a little over 6 1/2 months after I first started writing it, but it was the best part of a year before I bought my copy of the Writer & Artists Year Book and started submitting to agents and publishers.
Rejection, rejection, rejection.
Aside from a lucky few, almost all writers have a pile of rejection slips (or more likely unanswered emails) evidencing their attempts to get an agent and/or publisher. It’s not personal. There are a million reasons why you aren’t signed. The chances are good that it has nothing to do with your writing! Agents and publishers have very clear ideas about what they are looking for at any given time, and it can be something as simple as the fact that they have just signed a writer similar to yourself – if you’d submitted before them, they could have taken you on instead. Keep on plugging away!
Back in 2012, I was still a full-time school teacher and self-publishing was in its infancy. Many authors were starting to take advantage of the new opportunities offered by Kindle and forging very successful careers. Some are extremely well-respected today and have earned an impressive following. But many of the tools and services that exist now were not available, and I just didn’t have the time to do all the hard work that publishers do when it comes to editing and polishing a book, choosing a cover, typesetting, converting and uploading to Kindle, then marketing it etc.
It would have been a fascinating project to take on, but I wanted to spend my precious free hours writing more books and so traditional publishing was the best route for me. If I were starting today, perhaps I would have chosen differently, but I don’t dwell on that .
Publishing the first book gets in the way of writing the next one!
After finishing book 1, I was buzzing so much I promptly started on book 2. But that soon ground to a halt when my first beta readers gave their thoughts. There were months of work to be done on book 1 before I could start submitting it. The same thing happened with book 3; feedback from book 2 came in and I had to put that manuscript to one side. Nevertheless, by the time I finally got the call in summer 2013, from a new, digital-first publisher. I was half-way through book 3. They offered me a three-book deal. Now I had to juggle writing book 3 with editing books 1 and 2 again as my publisher sent them back for revisions and rewrites.
Some novelists only produce a handful of books during their career, with a gap of years between them. They finish a book, publish it, promote it and then start thinking about what to write next. For an ongoing series, momentum is the key to building a following. And so you find yourself stepping onto a treadmill; many writers I know are working on three books simultaneously: completing the edits for the upcoming book, writing the next in the series and planning the following book.
Publishers change.
The publishing industry is very dynamic. Personnel come and go constantly, accepting promotions within their organisation or moving to a different publishing house. The traditional concentration of the industry in central London can make such career changes quite easy. Even the publisher itself can change.
My original publisher was Carina UK (their logo can be seen on the original editions of my first four books). Carina was a digital-first imprint of Harlequin, a publishing house known primarily for its women-oriented fiction, including the famous romantic fiction imprint, Mills & Boon.
I vividly remember my only visit to their headquarters in Richmond. I was buzzed into the office and upon reaching the first floor was confronted by a sea of pink, a massive M&B logo and a room full of women.
“Anyone expecting a delivery?” was how my presence was announced by the receptionist.
“Actually, I’m an author,” I said.
Now, it’s a myth that all romance writers are women – I know quite a few male authors of romantic fiction, but they usually hide behind their initials or pen names, so I can forgive her assumption.
“I’m with Carina.”
“Ah, that makes sense,” she said, pointing towards a corner of the room that had been painted the distinctive blue that they still use today. Back then, I was one of only a handful of male authors, and even fewer crime writers, working for the fledgling imprint – something that changed rapidly over the coming years.
After my first four books were published, it was all change. Harlequin was bought by HarperCollins. The Carina UK imprint (which shared its name with a different imprint in the US) was renamed, along with the rest of Harlequin and became HQ Digital (later HQ Stories as they started to publish more physical books and audiobooks), retaining its distinctive blue branding. For obvious reasons, they kept Mills & Boon as it was, given its name recognition and heritage.
Since then, I have had many more books published with HQ and have had several editors over the years. It’s always sad when they move on, but change is a part of life, and I have always forged enjoyable and productive partnerships with their successors.
Covers aren’t as unique as you think.
One of the lovely traditions when releasing a new book is the cover reveal. I had mine for Out Of Sight just last week. If you are with a traditional publisher, then the chances are it will have been cooked up by the design team (or whoever they subcontract to). There’s no question that there are certain tropes within the genre.  A recent joke doing the rounds on Facebook was asking if anyone knows who the woman in the red raincoat is that features on so many covers, since she probably needs counselling!
When choosing the cover, there is quite often some dialogue with the publisher, and you may be asked your opinion. For a series, there will be an attempt to unify the fonts, colour palette and layout to allow for a consistent branding. I have been very fortunate over the years, with my publisher completely changing the covers of my first four books after a few years to make a more distinctive look as the series expanded.
All well and good, but there is a little secret…
The original cover for my second book, No Smoke Without Fire, perfectly encapsulated a key scene in the book. I loved it. So imagine my horror when a few months later, I spotted the exact same cover image on a different book. The title and genre were different, but they’d even used similar fonts! I checked the publication date and it had been released about a month after mine. Plagiarism! I sent an urgent email to my publisher…
Well it turns out that generally speaking, they don’t have teams of photographers scouring the world for that perfect image… Instead they use a stock photo from a database and then modify it. Ten minutes with Google reverse image look-up revealed that the picture had been uploaded to one of the major stock image databases a couple of months before publication date – roughly about the time that our respective cover designers will have been choosing the perfect image…
Show me the money!
Everyone has heard of the six, seven or even eight figure advance. It usually helps if you are a celebrity. Unfortunately, the reality is different. Only a select few authors get to sign contracts for life-changing sums of money. In fact, surveys have shown that median income for writers is now far below that needed to live on if it is your sole source of income and it appears to be declining. And most of that income is derived not from advances, rather royalties on books sold.
I remember well the excitement and anticipation of my first royalty cheque. At the time, Harlequin paid its authors quarterly, so this cheque would be a bumper sum covering three whole months of sales.
£50.60 for 52 copies sold.
The following quarter was a breath-taking £217.60 as 242 copies landed on Kindles… Since then, things have picked up, and whilst sales will always be up and down, all my titles continue to sell. The annual release of a new book also renews interest in earlier entries in the series.
But you know what? Whilst I am grateful that I earn enough from writing that I have been able to reduce the hours in my day job to part-time, I couldn’t stop writing about Warren if I wanted to. Over the past ten years, he and his team have become like friends to me and no longer chronicling his adventures would leave a gaping hole in my life. All that being said, if Netflix are reading this, please don’t be shy, my email address is on the image at the top of he page…
And finally, whilst we are on the subject… Amazon Sales Rankings tell you nothing of any value! Obviously, a book in the top ten of the paid book chart is selling more copies than one languishing around the 500,000 mark. But the algorithm used to calculate your sales ranking each hour is a closely-guarded trade secret that takes into account everything from actual sales in the past hour to historic sales data over an unspecified period, the outside temperature and the colour of Jeff Bezo’s underwear last Tuesday. Unfortunately, because rankings are relative to other books, yours depends on others’ performance as much as yours. There are services that attempt to use the hourly changes in the rankings to calculate when sales occur, but Amazon deliberately makes it difficult for them to work accurately. I suspect this might be because authors publishing directly via Amazon have privileged access to real-time sales data, one of the key selling points for their services.

So there you have it. Ten years since I started writing DCI Warren Jones and just over seven years since The Last Straw was published. A further ten novels and novellas have since been written, with the seventh full-length, Out of Sight, just a couple of months away, and more are in the pipeline.

Happy Warren Jones day!