Training for published authors

Justin Somper is the author of the best-selling 'Vampirates' books. He spoke about the challenges for published authors, and how Author Profile offers training and support for the business of writing.

"I think I’d always wanted to be a writer. But I didn't really go into the publishing industry to become a writer. I went into the publishing industry because I loved books and I wanted to be around books."

The challenges for a published author

Publishers are assessing authors in terms of having a vibrant blog. That is tipping the balance in some acquisition decisions.

"I think that authors are increasingly faced with pressures that they didn’t have in the past.

"It’s like they need to emerge from the publishing womb ready to take on television, Twitter. They need to be great at events at festivals.

"I think that publishers do expect authors to contribute a lot more time, energy and expertise to all of this.

"So the kind of authors who are coming to Author Profile, and indeed who publishers are recommending to come to Author Profile, are those who just want some help with how to deliver an event. How to turn the book they've been working on into an effective presentation."

Business training for writers

"There's a lot of training out there for writers: creative writing training; and even things about how to get an agent, how to get into the business.

"But what there doesn’t seem to be is training for authors who are up and running and are doing it. And are being asked to do a lot of different things.

"So suddenly, you go from being isolated in your room where you are doing the writing, to having to do an interview – whether with a local radio or perhaps a TV show.

"You are faced with audiences. If you are a children’s author you might be going into a school. As an author for children or adults, you would be going to a festival. Suddenly, you have to bring your book to life to audience of 100, 200, 400 people.

"And of course increasingly you really need to have a strong presence online. You need to be connecting with your readers very directly .So you need to understand how Twitter works, how Facebook works, all those kind of things."

Supporting authors

"There is a lot of training for how to get into the business. But no training for authors who are up and running."

"There is no doubt that publishers are now assessing authors in terms of 'have they got a vibrant blog' even before they're published. I know that is tipping the balance in some acquisition decisions.

"But having a very vibrant blog, where you talk about what you are writing, is a very good marketing tool. It's not actually giving away your book.

"There are a lot of people like myself who have learnt this stuff the hard way over quite a long period of time. And I think people are quite generous in sharing the information anecdotally.

"But what I want to do is to really fast-track that.I want to share this information with authors at every point in their career and work them and keep updating them.

"Because what was true about how online worked 6 months ago isn’t true anymore. You have to keep re-evaluating stuff.

"But it’s really all about supporting authors, and supporting publishers and agents. And helping everybody to deal with this array of new challenges that are emerging."