And in an interesting turn of events, I actually learned of a 'different' kind of publishing house I was previously unaware of!
Julie was born in Cardiff in 1963 and was brought up between Cardiff and Aberystwyth until her late-teens. She went to school in both areas as well as having a brief spell in boarding school in Shrewsbury. Julie spent her twenties in South Wales, her 30’s in Gloucester, Bristol and Hereford and her 40’s in Devon, Cornwall and Hertfordshire. She has three children; Tom, Christopher and Charlotte and currently lives in Cornwall with her daughter Charlotte. Julie began a degree in Psychology in 2013 and is currently studying at the University of Plymouth. She includes among her hobbies and interests reading, movies, walks by the sea, meditation, astrology, numerology and of course, writing. Her favourite fiction authors are Marian Keyes and Cecelia Ahern.
1. I see that you're with Titan Publishing House, a 'Vanity Press'. What made you decide to go this route in publishing?
I don’t consider Titan
to be a Vanity publisher at all. I researched publishing when I
first completed Angel On My Shoulder in 2011 and found that it’s an
extremely difficult place to access. I tried for 3 years and applied
to many publishing houses, following the submission guidelines for
each one. I came close to a contract on two occasions but it didn’t
happen. I also looked into Vanity publishing and decided it was not
the way for me. Vanity publishers will take any book and you pay for
everything. In return they take a small handling fee, usually 2-5%
and publish it for you, at your own cost, but they do little else.
In contrast, the big publishers pay you for your book and do
everything for you. Titan are in the middle. They don’t pay you,
but neither do they charge you. They do turn down books, charge for
nothing except editing, and take 30%. They distribute, promote it
and support you. They are an indie publishers and I consider them to
be half way between the big publishers and the Vanity publishers.
After 3 years of trying
to get published I decided to give it up and self-publish. In July
this year, I looked for a professional editor as I was determined it
would go out free of errors and found Titan, who offer an editing
service. They offered to consider my book for publication with them
and after reviewing it, offered me a contract. I paid for the editing
but nothing else.
2. After signing with them, how much
have they helped with promotions, distribution, etc.?
Titan have 39,000
distribution channels, which I find incredible. They have promoted
it on every network site I have ever heard of. It’s on app stores,
google mail, amazon, available in 133 countries, and in both e-book
and paperback. It takes a while to filter down through all the
distributors but a few days ago after just 2 weeks my book was
available in Waterstones, the largest book store in the UK and
shortly will be in WH Smith, another very large national chain.
3. Are you seeing a return on your
'investment'?
Not yet. It’s been out
for just under 3 weeks and it will take some time for me to recover
the editing cost. I also paid someone to set up my website so have
invested some into this but I do expect to break even this year.
4. Do you still maintain the rights to your 'baby', and how much creative control have you retained?
Yes. I have signed
contracts with Titan. The text is copyright to me, the published
book to them. But, they have confirmed that should I be offered a
contract by a large publication house they would release me without
charge to enable me to accept it. (Penguin? Harper Collins? You
listening? ) As for creative
control, I have had a free hand. I was not asked to change any
content of the book, just the layout and grammar within editing. I
was also able to have the typesetting changed after it was done as I
was not happy with the page count. At my request the format was
re-done, and was tightened to have the page count reduced and thereby
make it more affordable to the reader. As for the book cover, I had
a very clear image in my mind of it and the style, which was Vector.
Titan do not offer the style I wanted for the cover but put me in
touch with a vector artist and I worked with her directly until I had
what I wanted. I am delighted with the result.
5. Your debut novel, Angel On My Shoulder, features, of course, Angels. Out of the plethora of Angels currently out in 'Book Land', what makes yours different from the rest?
As a therapist and
teacher of spiritual consciousness for some 12 years, my
understanding of angels and our relationship with them is both broad
and deep. I have used both aspects in this book - my spiritual
knowledge and my therapist’s knowledge. Clarabelle, Sarah’s
Guardian Angel is both angelic and a therapist to her, helping her to
sort her life out – a little like I do with my clients. I have
also brought humour into the story, with the angels getting things
wrong, getting stressed and frustrated, having their own issues with
each other – for example Clarabelle falls out with her own angelic
brother over her crush on Arch Angel Michael. This is a different
take on angels. For a start they don’t do stress and they
certainly don’t do crush’s!
In regards to Sarah,
there are many books that tackle relationship break ups, even more on
self-growth and self-help. I have combined it all into a book which
comes from a different angle; shows you how to sort your life out as
well as the impact and work of angels, but does it in a humorous way.
I use magic, miracles, angelic inter-angelcy-meetings,
co-incidences, serendipity and more. As you read about the
character’s life and how it improves my hope is that the reader
will relate to it. It is not aimed at the spiritually conscious, or
those on a mission for self-help; any kind of ‘eureka moment’ is
more of a bi-product. I realised that through the characters in the
book I could help people to perhaps know a little more on how to deal
with life’s ups and downs and I wanted to inspire at the same time.
I felt that just about anyone who has ever been through a bad
breakup, ever had their confidence shattered, could relate to the
characters in the book and I wanted to give them hope.
As for belief in angels, even those who would not consider themselves to be spiritual in any way like the thought of having a guardian angel, so I made the ‘teacher/therapist’ an angel, helping show Sarah, the main character, how to sort her life out. Some will say that our ‘angel’ is our inner selves, others will say it is our subconscious, or our instincts, others will say it is God or angels – it doesn’t matter who or what you think that voice is, there is a voice outside of our noisy head that will guide us, if we will listen, and if we will let it!
6. Since Angel On My Shoulder is considered 'Chick Lit' or Romance, is there any other Genre you'd like to take a swing at? Something your readers would never expect?
Yes.
Angel will be part of a series, probably 3 or 4 and then I will move
on. I am a hypnotherapist and will be writing books around this, how
it works, with case studies and evidence to prove its use and
benefits. I am currently in the middle of a degree in psychology and
will be doing something like this for my dissertation and my masters.
The outcome of that, I will develop into a book. I also am a
qualified past life regression specialist. I see books on this too in
the future, with stories of past life experiences. A third area I
want to write about is sexual abuse. As a therapist, I specialise
with trauma, sexual abuse, PTSD and I want to develop a book to help
victims and families of victims, to understand it better and
therefore be able to move past it. So in the future there will be
non-fiction books as well as fiction. The final area will be
spiritual books. Possibly on the cosmos, the way the universe works,
manifestation, positive thinking, I’m not sure yet. It will just
unfold when the time is right.
7. Is there a Genre you'd like to see
gone forever?
No. Everyone has their own tastes and
interests and no one should be denied what inspires them.8. Being from 'across the pond', have you noticed a difference in how authors are from North America?
Not yet. I have noticed a huge
difference in language and word use. My book has been reviewed by a
couple of Americans and some of the British words I use are not the
same meaning in the states, so it can be a barrier. For example I
refer to a frying pan and make a joke out of it, which the Brits got
straight away. My American reader did not understand the joke as you
don’t have ‘frying pans’ and she asked me what it was.
9. Other than the 'Angel' series, do you have any other stories in the works?
Not at the moment.
10. Have you received any unkind 'critiques', and if so, how did, or would you handle them?
Not yet. I am sure I will
as you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Constructive criticism is a very good thing. It helps us grow and
develop, so any negative critique I would look at and examine how I
can use it to benefit me as a writer, how I can improve and be able
to see a different angle.
You can visit Julie's Website and purchase books here:
