You've just written your first novel. Your twelve complimentary copies are delivered in a huge cardboard box from Bookpoint. Now you can sit back in your comfiest armchair, a tin of ice cold Guinness in your hand, the X-Files just starting on your TV, and you can wait for those royalties to come rattling into your bank account.
Right?
Wrong!
Now comes the hard part. If you're like me, a comparatively unknown writer, you must go out and promote the book. That means meeting the public, the media, the book shop employees who order the books, and anyone else who might help move that heap of paper that is your first novel currently sitting in the depths of the warehouse.
It's now a year since Nailed by the Heart, my first novel, was published. And, hell, what a year it's been. My life has changed out of all recognition. A big part of that change has been due to the need to come out of my normally shy self and hit the road to promote the book.
Before I sat down to write this I took the dog for a long walk so I could think about what I'd write, and I asked myself what memories immediately spring up about the promotion. The images came thick and fast, and as usual for me it was the more bizarre ones that stood head and shoulders above the rest: For instance what circumstances led me to standing semi-naked, with a lot of other semi-naked people, in a car park somewhere in Birmingham in the early hours of a winter's morning? Just what did attack me in that Hounslow bed and breakfast room at 2am? What on Earth were top horror writer Stephen Laws and I doing shopping in a Isle of Wight supermarket? Why was I repeatedly locked into a bare cell beneath Wakefield Town Hall? Why do the hotel chambermaids always insist on bursting into your hotel room as you're standing there naked just about to take a bath? Have you been travelling by rail for that bit too much when you come to think fondly of a BR carriage as home from home.
Brian was a mine of information about the business of getting books into shops and warned me of some of the pitfalls of meeting the buyers. It was a long and sometimes arduous task that Brian did superbly with me tagging along as extra ballast. The rep's job is, at regular intervals, to present publishers' forthcoming books and take orders from the shops. It sounds simple but when youčre faced with a buyer who's just seen their third rep of the day and they now face another ninety minute presentation their enthusiasm can wane. The rep will flick through several ring binders that contain nothing but booksleeves. The buyer will glances at each sleeve and in a monotone give their order which the rep jots down on the form: "Five of that; three of this one ... two ... no, none of that one, she didn't sell last time." (That's the death knell for an author – when shops won't even stock the book.) When I visited the shops with Brian he was taking orders for a Stephen King. Most books were ordered in amounts of half a dozen or less. When it came to King the buyers' eyes widened. "Oh, a Stephen King. We'll take a hundred of that."
Some of the buyers Brian introduced me to looked at me with as much pleasure as if he'd just plonked a bucket full of heffer's brains down onto the counter. Then there were some buyers who were brilliant (must mention Martin Kelly and Jim of Waterstones here – thanks boys); those buyers went out of their way to be friendly; several even went so far as to take their James Herbert displays out of their windows and replace them with Nailed by the Heart. It doesn't get much better than that.
Naturally, I say "yes." A few days later I find myself getting on the train at Doncaster. There's this chap I've never met before booked onto the seat opposite me. But I've seen plenty of photographs of him. "Mr. Laws?" I ask, sitting opposite him. He doesn't know me from Adam, but I introduce myself as a fellow horror writer from the Hodder & Stoughton stable. I'd been slightly nervous of travelling all the way down to the Isle of Wight with such a well known and respected author. My God, I think. What do I actually say to him? I thought there'd be long embarrassed silences when we'd run out of polite conversation about the weather. But I soon found that the author of Ghost Train, Macabre and Daemonic (amongst others) was a very much down to earth kind of guy; and, by heaven, we'd even both worked for local authorities. We had so much in common that we talked non-stop all the way to Kings Cross; and we were so engrossed in a conversation about Quatermass (we both love the series with a passion that's nothing short of indecent) that I managed to steer us both onto the wrong Tube train which lead us to missing the next train connection to Portsmouth. Nevertheless, we did make it as far as the Isle of Wight where we made rigorous preparations for spending a night in a haunted house. That is, we visited a supermarket and bought the largest bottle of whisky we could find. For an account of actually what happened in the haunted house the British Fantasy Society have produced an excellent booklet entitled Annabelle Says.
The fastest way to reach the public is via the media. That should be written high on a first time novelist's list of book promotion. Not that it always runs smoothly. Years ago when I was promoting my collection of short stories, Blood & Grit (BBR Books) I had a call asking me to go along to Radio Sheffield. "Turn up around ten-ish," I was told. "They'll tape an interview and put it out sometime next week." So as I'm driving into Sheffield a few days later, not knowing where BBC Radio Sheffield had their studios, but confident I'd find it sometime in the morning I idly flicked through the channels on the radio. Then I hit one that made me sit up and take notice. "This is BBC Radio Sheffield," said the DJ, "and right after the news at nine thirty we will be talking live to South Yorkshire horror writer Simon Clark about his latest book."
LIVE!
You've seen Macaulay Culkin do that scream with both hands over his mouth. Right then, I wanted to do the same. It was nine twenty. I had ten minutes to reach the studios to do that broadcast. I tore through Sheffield's suburbs like something out of the Blues Brothers movie, beads of sweat stood out on my forehead as the minutes ticked away from the dashboard clock.
Where the hell were the studios? Why hadn't I bothered to look at a map first?
But then the Gods smiled on me. Picking a sidestreet at random I saw the studio, a Victorian stone built house in its own ground. I parked the car, snatched up my copy of Blood & Grit, dashed across the car park only to find the main entrance blocked by no other than Arthur Scargill who was being interviewed live on television. As I stopped wondering what the hell I could do next I caught sight of my reflection in a window. "Here's another fine mess you've gotten me into," I thought grinding my teeth. Ten twenty-nine. I should be live on air in less than three minutes and Arthur Scargill is declaiming some point to the cameras. Oh bugger it! "Excuse me," I said pushing rudely by the man (while hearing some very rude words from the interviewer directed at me). But I'd made it. I was ushered into the studio. I looked calm, composed. Then the DJ said, "And here live on air is Simon Clark who will now read to us an extract from his book." I picked up the book, with carefully selected passages, marked by scraps of paper. That's when every single piece of paper fell like snowflakes to the floor. I looked at the book blankly, hoping it would fall open at a page where I'd diligently rehearsed reading a passage. The Gods were, at last, pissed off with me. I picked a paragraph at random and somehow stammered my way through it. The DJ later winked at me and said, "Well done. I thought that went rather well."
I staggered back to reception. Arthur Scargill was still declaiming on the steps. I begged black coffee from the reception and folded myself into a chair and waited until Arthur had finished.
Television (as Arthur well knows) will probably put you in front of your largest audience.
A few weeks ago I found myself in some tunnels that ran beneath Wakefield's town hall filming a five minute slot for the local TV programme. Anyone living in the YTV region might have seen me. I was the very tall guy, dressed in black, with less hair than Richard O'Brien. Some people are now actually saying I'm the spitting image of Captain Picard – I wish! I'd often cherished a fantasy of playing the monster in a horror flick. Now was my chance to live that dream. The film opened with me being 'discovered' by the interviewer in this subterranean cell. The door would open. My face would loom, skull-like due to the carefully arranged low-angle lighting, from out of the darkness. It was all very simple. The door opens. I stare balefully into the camera then begin to speak about how stimulating subterranean passageways are to the horror author.
It sounds simple. But by take twelve you realise that there's more being an actor than you first thought. "Action!" calls the director. The door would open. "Cut!" shouts the director. "Simon, luvvie. Your expression was too benign. Can you give me a little more Boris Karloff next time."
"Action! Cut! Simon, luvvie," he says in a gentle and most understanding voice, "don't worry we've got all day to do this; it doesn't matter how many takes we need. Only this time, Simon, love. When you walk through that door, just do it fucking right."
It sounds as if book promotion is chaotic and fraught with peril. It can be – if I've got anything to do with it. But on the whole it all went smoothly. Most involved getting on a train at A to travel to B to chat to a radio DJ or sign books and talk to people who enjoy horror fiction. I've met a lot of strangers who turned out to be so friendly and warm-hearted it restores my faith in human nature.
I've just noticed there's some matters I haven't actually explained fully yet. I'll either have to leave those to your imagination or maybe I'll get invited back here again to go into those in more detail.
So, to conclude: Do I like promoting books?
No ... I love it!