Tag Archives: Publishing

December 19, 2016 · 11:07

My Second Book is on its Way!

This is a short post to let you know that the second book in the Malayan Series will be published during the summer of 2017. (And yes, I’m referring to the northern summer!)

At this time, I can’t give you the exact publication date nor can I reveal the book’s title, though there is one. What I can say is that the sequel to the multi-generational family saga begun in The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds (Book #1 in The Malayan Series) will continue to follow the Wong family, so that anyone who has read my debut novel will recognise many of the characters. The characters themselves, however, are about to enter a world which nothing in their experience could have prepared them for.

Stay tuned! There will be further news early in 2017, as well as the chance to pre-order! On that high note, I will sign off for this year and wish you all Season’s Greetings, be it Happy Hanukkah or Merry Christmas or simply the very best in the year ahead.

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November 1, 2016 · 09:25

A Thank You Message

At last, it’s publication day! From today my novel – The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds – will be available for purchase at major bookstores (Barnes & Noble in the US, Waterstones in the UK and at many others) as well as on leading websites worldwide. My book is available in three formats: print, as an audio book and also as a Kindle e-book, the latter from Amazon.

The past month has been exhilarating. When the e-version of my novel was placed on the Kindle First platform beginning October 1, 2016 I sat in trepidation, knowing that early readers would soon be reviewing my work. At heart writing is a solitary activity, and although I knew what I wanted to achieve with my novel I had no idea how readers would actually react. The process of waiting for those first reviews was nerve-racking. I told my editor, Elizabeth DeNoma, that I was not going to check for reviews.

October 1 fell on a Saturday. Bearing in mind that my book is over 400 pages long (nearly 500 pages in the paperback version), I was surprised to receive an email on the evening of Monday, October 3, when it would only have been noon in Seattle. Could anyone have actually finished reading the book? Apparently, yes. Elizabeth’s email said that the first reviews were in, they were “pretty great” and I should take a look.

My heart was thumping when I opened Amazon’s US site. Everything was a blur and my eyes could barely focus. I felt a little like the parents of my protagonist at the moment when they stood staring at the island of Penang. There before them was the object for which they had given up so much, yet as the island rose in front of their eyes, its beckoning shape seemed too daunting.

A day later, I received my first fan mail. As an author who is keen to be read, I cannot tell you how thrilling that was. Many others have written since, either on this blog or via Twitter or my Facebook Author page. Thank you to all, your words mean a lot.

Thank you, too, to readers who have written reviews on Amazon. To say that I’ve been overwhelmed by my book’s exceptional reception would be an understatement. The start of my novel is somewhat meandering – mimicking life as I imagined it would have been in 1878, when the story begins. With pace being the norm today, I worried that readers would not be drawn in. How wrong I was.

“…fabulous job of writing drawing you immediately into an unknown Asian family and their world…”

“Loved it – it was hard to put down” was a common refrain, but it took a week before I could read such compliments without heart palpitations. A fortnight passed before I really grasped the sentiments readers were trying to convey. It was difficult to take in the adjectives readers were using: “wonderful”, “enchanting” and “epic”. Some of the comments brought me close to tears – and I don’t cry easily. One reader said: “When I started this book I wasn’t sure I would like it. But it turned out to be a very good book and I didn’t want it to end.” For an author, there can be no greater compliment.

There have been highly personal messages from readers who grew up in South-East Asia, for whom my book brought back vivid memories. To be clear, no familiarity with Malaysia is required: readers who knew nothing about Malaysia beforehand have enjoyed the story as much. A few even had their interest piqued: “I loved this book so much I’ve started making a Pinterest board about it so I can see all the items and sites described.” This reader, like many others, described my novel as a journey.

“I was sad when I finished this book. Felt like leaving a good friend.”

“It has been an honor to travel with this courageous, feisty and loving woman, to be her companion. I will miss her.”

“One of those books you hope will never end and you feel bereft when you reach the final page. Excellent story, beautiful writing.”

At this point, I must make a digression to thank my publisher. One of the reasons so many of you have found the reading experience to be unique and authentic is in part thanks to my publishing team at Amazon Crossing and their bold editorial decisions. My editor, Elizabeth DeNoma, loves my book as much as many of you do; she did not want to see any of it cut. As a debut novelist no one had heard of, I’m really grateful for this.

Amazon Crossing made other decisions that preserved the cultural content of my work, notably with respect to dialogue. Some of what the characters say to each other is written the way Malaysians speak, which means that the word order is slightly changed. The vast majority of readers have appreciated the sense of place which this helps to create. Someone put it thus:

“I loved the dialogue. Making the word order match the dialects represented made everything more real.”

Who said books had to be dumbed down?

I also wanted to depict my homeland, Malaysia, in the fullest possible way, so that people who had never visited would be able to picture it and smell all the smells I grew up with. From the reaction of readers, it’s just possible that I succeeded. “There are some books you devour, and others you savor. This, Selina Siak Chin Yoke’s debut novel, is the latter. Her beautiful descriptions bring the time and place in which her characters live to vibrant life, and turn the setting itself into a character in its own right.”

There have been many, many other heart-warming comments; I could not possibly quote them all here. If you submitted a review, please know that I have been deeply moved by the way my story has resonated.

Now that The Woman who Breathed Two Worlds has been published, the cover name of my blog will no longer be ‘Journey of my First Novel’. The blog’s URL will remain the same and if you’ve subscribed to this site, there’s nothing you need do.

Let me conclude with the following lovely comment from another reader:

“The rhythm of the words, the flow of the story, the tales that were shared – it all seemed so real. It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that tugged at my emotions, culminating in tears for a woman I felt I had grown to know.”

As we say in Malay, Terima Kasih Seribu Kali (Thank You a Thousand Times). Thank you for reading, for writing to me and for all your kind words. Your messages make the years of toil worthwhile.

NB All of the above reader comments (and more) can be found on Amazon’s US site as well as on its UK site. With thanks to Amazon Crossing for allowing me to cite them on this blog.

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July 28, 2016 · 13:19

Freedom or Theft?

Until recently I had not given a second’s thought to the problem of pirated books. Rather naively, I assumed that piracy was limited to music and software. Until I stumbled on an article in the Sunday Telegraph of 19 June 2016.

In it Robert Colville, a British journalist, author and commentator, describes how he felt when, two weeks after his book The Great Acceleration was published, he discovered that an illegal version had been uploaded onto a website. His first reaction was a sort of flattered bafflement – that anyone should wish to pirate his book – followed closely by anger. Being a journalist, Mr. Colville naturally did some digging. It did not take him long to find other authors with similar stories.

I was stunned to learn of people who indulge in stripping e-books of their software protections and who then distribute the stripped files over the Internet because they think they are making “information” freely available. Excuse me, but since when did Stephen King and Tom Clancy become “information”?

You do not need to be a bestselling author to be pirated: when Mr. Colville’s book was illegally copied onto a website, it ranked 309,607 on Amazon!

The more of his article I read, the more agitated I became. The subject is a salient one, now that I’m on the verge of having my first novel published. Getting to this point has taken five years of toil and persistence and much investment, emotional as well as material – research trips, developmental editing, not to mention forgone earnings. All of these costs were sunk before I was even signed up by a literary agent and a publisher. Yet there are people who seem to believe they should be able to read my novel without paying for it.

My agent Thomas Colchie confirmed that some of the other authors he represents have seen their books illegally uploaded onto a host of websites. Fortunately in the US and UK, large publishers are able to force stolen versions of books to be removed from websites, which contains the problem somewhat. However, this still means that 10% of e-books in the UK – or 7.2 million books – are read illegally. A whopping number, and one for which I fail to see any justification.

Do the people who pretend to be freedom-of-information warriors also refuse to pay at supermarket check-outs and in restaurants? Do they help themselves to Boots’ shelves? Because it seems to me that that is what book piracy is: theft, pure and simple.

Many of those who benefit from versions of illegally downloaded music, movies and books probably don’t think of themselves as stealing. Some may not even understand what I’m talking about. As a youngster in Malaysia, I routinely copied songs for other people and listened to music that had been copied by friends. Back then, I had not heard of intellectual property, I did not understand the consequences of my actions on the singers or songwriters. The same cannot be said of these so-called book pirates.

According to Mr. Colville’s article most of them are aged between 35 and 55 and sufficiently educated that they know how to strip e-books of their software protections. These are not teenagers who cannot afford books. Even if they were, let’s be clear about one thing: books are not an essential item like food or medicine. There can be no moral justification for stealing them in a wealthy country like the UK. If you want to read a particular book and you can’t afford it, take yourself down to the local library.

Lurking in the midst of this troubling phenomenon is a warped sense of entitlement. Some of the modern book thieves apparently believe that “writers are wealthy and publishers are wealthy and therefore, it’s okay to steal from them”. This line of reasoning is both factually flawed and morally disingenuous. First of all, the average writer is not rich. In 2013 authors earned on average just £11,000 – well below average earnings in the UK at the time of £26,500. In my own case, it took two full years to complete my first novel; if I hadn’t already been comfortably off, it would have taken a lot longer. As for publishers being wealthy, this completely misses the point. It isn’t as if my publisher does nothing and then suddenly reaps benefits. In my blog-post The Things that go into Creating a Book, I mentioned that I had not appreciated how rigorous the editorial process would be. My publisher is putting in a huge amount of care and professionalism into ensuring not only that every sentence in my book is as good as it can be, but also that every semi-colon is in the right place. Publishing a book is a huge enterprise that involves large numbers of people and their time.

So, when next you are offered a pirated copy of a book, please spare a thought for those who have put so much of themselves into making it available. That labour must be rewarded appears to be tacitly acknowledged by one of the piracy websites quoted in Mr. Colville’s article, which actually offers to pay its programmers! Apparently, even anarchy has limits. Not everything should be free after all.

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February 1, 2013 · 11:13

I’ve Finished, Now What?

Many readers of this blog have asked when my novel will be published. A few even assumed, after my last post, that it had already been published!

Ahh, if only…

Two years ago, I attended one of the conferences organised by a unit of Bloomsbury Publishing (of Harry Potter fame). The conference was temptingly called ‘How to Get Published – the Insider Guide to the Media’.

Several hundred of us hopeful writers made our way into a hall at the Wellcome Collection in central London. It was a typical conference hall, with seats on an incline that pointed towards a stage at the front. From their vaunted podium, the first thing senior executives of Bloomsbury did was to greet us. Then they proceeded to say that at any point in time,  a million manuscripts were floating around in search of a publisher. Thanks for the welcome, I thought. The message was so razor-sharp, it could have sliced stone-hard bread: British publishing didn’t need us; it already had enough backlog.

During breaks, I heard other people’s stories. A few delegates, having lived through multiple rejections, had been attending the same conference for many years. Some had been told by agents that there was ‘no market’ for their work. While listening to such war stories, I could see the attractions of self-publishing, though none of my fellow writers showed much enthusiasm. They wanted the prestige of traditional publishing. Others didn’t feel they had the business background to self-publish.

While at the conference, I bought a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook without knowing whether or how I would use it. This tome not only lists agents and publishers in major Western countries, it also gives detailed suggestions for how pitch letters and synopses should be written. Covered with such plaudits as ‘The one-and-only indispensable guide to the world of writing’, this from William Boyd, who could resist? It seemed a snip at £18.99. (Older editions are even cheaper on Amazon). For a fleeting moment, the conference on How to Get Published made me wonder whether I even wanted to be published, but this lasted all of a nano-second before natural ambitiousness took over. I could see my Chinese and Nyonya ancestors standing over me, wagging fingers, tsk-tsking. I left armed with a resolve to complete writing my novel. I decided to worry about publication at a later date.

That crucial moment has now arrived. I have to decide how best to get my novel published and into the hands of the readers whom I believe will be there. This may seem presumptious for a first-time novelist, but on the other hand, I’m supposed to know my audience – and I do. My target readership is Isabel Allende‘s, the Chilean-American writer who has sold 57 million books world-wide. That’s a nice number,  not at all bad for a target audience, I’d say. I think my novel would appeal to her readers because I write in the same story-telling style, and also because my work is a multicultural historical epic family drama, as are many of hers.

But I’m looking to attract new readers too, especially those with Asian roots. While writing my book, I consciously set out to portray Asians as we see ourselves, and to weave as much of South East Asia – be it place, ancestral stories or folklore – into the story as possible.

Knowing this is all very well, but what the hell should I do now? Previously, I would have had little choice but to go down the route of traditional publishing. That would mean fighting for the attention of an agent, because with the million manuscripts floating around, agents too are inundated. Even if I succeeded in finding an agent, there would still be no guarantee of publication – the agent would have to place the manuscript with a publisher willing to take on the book and the risk of a new writer.

But we are now in the digital age, and I have the option of publishing and selling the novel myself. Yet, when I think about what this would entail – all of the copy-editing, proof-reading, lay-out, design, printing (since not everyone in my target audience would have an e-book reader) and most of all, the marketing which a traditional publisher would undertake for its authors – I shudder. It would take me light years away from the creative process. I baulk, despite having a business background which equips me well enough to grapple with rankings on Amazon, persuade reviewers to read my book, even trudge from store to store to sweet-talk them into stocking copies. Because I do have business experience, I realise that this would be a very long-term project for a new writer. Not impossible, just extremely tough for my genre. Though it is a perfectly legitimate route, and one which would give me complete control over my work, as well as (in principle) the lion’s share of any royalties.

Whenever I think about publishing, it becomes abundantly clear that writing was actually the easy part!

For the moment, I have decided to pursue traditional publishing. This is mainly because my first novel is intended as the start of a trilogy and – call me mad – I’ve already started the second. Only a small part, mind, and there’s still a lot more research to do. But a start has been made! This second novel will continue the epic family saga beyond 1941, when the Second World War reaches Malaya.

One way or another, I intend to get published. Meanwhile, if you’re in London over the next two months, I’ll be reading extracts from my novel at two events:

16 February 2013 at the Islington Chinese Association, as part of a Cultural Day to celebrate Chinese New Year

8 March 2013 at a lunch to be hosted by the Hong Kong Society Women’s Group, where together with Kerry Young, author of the acclaimed novel Pao, I will read and explore perspectives on the Chinese spirit for International Women’s Day

Do come if you can!

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