UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion

Hi,

Just a quick introduction to myself, Andrew Fish and to my novel, Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow, which was released by Harpercollins' Authonomy imprint last month.

I've been writing, mostly for pleasure, since I was a teenager, way back when in nineteen-hundred and frozen stiff. There have been occasional attempts to get into print, but these have been somewhat sporadic and non-committal. In 2003, I wrote a novel, Bandwagon, which can only really be described as a musical comic fantasy. After the statutory half-dozen rejections, I decided to publish it myself and was partway through the process when my next novel, then titled Robin Who?, surprised me by being accepted for publication. True, it was only by a small press, but it was a step up. As a result, Bandwagon never got my full attention and sold a precise total of nothing at all.

Robin Who, meanwhile, was enthusiastically received by the publishers. They suggested I make changes (don't they always) one of which was the title, which at my suggestion became Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow. There was a cover design, again suggested by myself and including artwork by an Indian cartoonist friend. There were promises of publicity and distribution. It was all looking wonderful. And then everything went quiet.

Time passed. Tumbleweeds would have drifted by if they weren't alien to England. A year later, fresh from a management buyout, the publisher re-emerged, still committed to releasing Erasmus, but no longer committed to helping with either distribution or promotion.

In 2006, that made a big difference. After a couple of months fruitlessly trying to get the book into shops, I asked for advice and was directed to Scott Pack, former chief buyer for Waterstone's, then a literary consultant. He suggested ditching my existing publisher and signing up with his new baby, The Friday Project. After a few wrangles, this was achieved. There was a new cover, a fresh editing pass and then - a week before release - Friday went bust. Bugger.

Scott, not unnaturally was a bit embarrassed by this. He secured me the services of an agent, who made a few suggestions for further changes to the book. I made the changes, but since this didn't seem to achieve very much, all went quiet once more. Scott advised me to sign up to the Authonomy author community, which I did, but I wasn't holding out a great deal of hope.

Then, at the end of 2011, I received a phone call from my agent. Scott was involved in a new project, Authonomy the Kindle imprint, under the aegis of Harpercollins. He wanted Erasmus to be one of their releases. Since I'd more or less written the series off by this point, I accepted. A year later (these things always seem to take years) the book is now out for Kindle and other readers. It doesn't seem to be doing a great deal at present, but I suspect the proximity of Christmas to its release date may have something to do with that.

With all the waiting, I am now the author of twenty-three novels (Erasmus was the fourth), including two further installments in the Erasmus saga. I hope sometime to see at least those two released. There's another canon I'm also quite keen to see released, but as it's something of a harder sell, I think it's also predicated on Erasmus' success.

Anyway, enough about me - on to the book itself. Erasmus Hobart and the Golden Arrow is a time-travel comedy adventure. It's loosely described as being in the Douglas Adams/Terry Pratchett vein, although that says more about my influences than the style of my writing.

The story concerns a Nottinghamshire schoolteacher, one Erasmus Hobart, who has constructed a time machine in an old privy (an easy thing to hide in times past). Prompted by a school project, he decides to use his privy to find the truth behind the Robin Hood legend. Needless to say, things do not go entirely to plan and he finds himself enmeshed in a saga of homicidal knights, amorous female outlaws and the odd mischievous squirrel.

And that's pretty much it. Obviously, the ideal would be if everybody rushed out, bought it and reviewed it. If they simply spread the word, however, that would be a start. I have a website up at erasmushobart.com which includes a blog and links both to my author page here and to a Facebook page I've set up for the book.

Thanks for reading,
Andrew

Forgot to mention, you can also find the book on Facebook if you want to like it, share it or whatever other social-networking thing you're into.

Don't recall meeting you on Autho, Andrew.

When were you there?

I joined up in 2008 or 2009 (I forget which), but I wasn't that active. I looked around a lot at first, but when I just got lots of "I'll shelve your book if you shelve mine" and couldn't in all honesty put the old rubber stamp on many I found it all a bit disheartening.

I haven't looked up there recently, but I gather from people who have that there's a conspiracy theory that I was at school with Scott Pack. Not true, I must add...

Authonomy has its uses and good points.

Publishing isn't really one of them, so well done on striking lucky there.

Thanks - although it remains to be seen if I've struck lucky yet... Good luck with your books too - I shall definitely pick one up when I've cleared my current backlog.

Actually, people always say things like that. Make that I have now picked up The Banned Underground and will read it when I've cleared my current backlog.

Thanks for that Andrew. I hope you enjoy it. So, have you had much marketing support, or are you now with the rest of us indie or self published writers?

If so, this is an excellent and well read group, but you will need to engage in the conversations to make progress.

I don't think there's a marketing budget, but the publishers have agitated a little on my behalf thus far. Not sure what else they've got in mind yet.

I'll definitely be doing a bit myself - a lot of it on Goodreads - but I'll have to be careful to strike a balance between that and writing more books.

Hi Andrew.
I had a peek at the sample and thought it was a great start, I'll definitely be finishing it at some point :)

I bought the book yesterday but my TBR list is so out of control I have no idea when I will get to actually read it.

Sounds ominous - what's it doing?

Thanks for your support, though.

Thanks. Look forward to your review.

I think my Kindle is buying books by itself. There seems to be more books on it every time I look...

Damn - knew I should have published some more. Is it buying anything good?

I hardly dare look! But I have read some good stuff on it recently.

Haha, It's just about 13 months later and I'm actually reading this.