The mother of a
tattoo artist and a former rock star, Sheila Lowe lives in Ventura with Lexie
the Very Bad Cat, where she writes the award-winning Forensic Handwriting
mystery series. Like her fictional character Claudia Rose, Sheila is a
real-life forensic handwriting expert who testifies in court cases. Despite
sharing living space with a cat—a Very Bad one at that—Sheila’s books are
decidedly non-cozy. Visit her at www.sheilalowe.com.
Questionnaire:
Thanks for letting
us interrogate you! Can you give us a
go-for-the-gut answer as to why you
wanted to be an author?
I’ve written for as
long as I can remember. I started with poetry, wrote a novella about the
Beatles (it was England, 1963, and I was a Beatlemaniac—Ringo was my hearthrob),
then a historical mystery/romance. Went on to study handwriting analysis and
wrote technical articles and books on handwriting. Finally, when I was about
fifty, I got back to what I really wanted to do—write a mystery. Why did I want
to be an author? I don’t think there is an answer. It was just something I always
did.
Tell us (we won’t
tell promise!) is it all it’s cracked up to be?
I mean what are the perks and
what are the demands?
Getting published
is a heartbreaking business, but if you’re a writer, you have to write. It’s
one thing if you write just for fun, as one of my good friends does. He doesn’t
care how many books he sells, he just enjoys the whole process. But if you want
to be published and succeed, it takes a strong commitment, not only to writing
the book, but to getting it published, whether you have a publisher or do it
yourself, and then market it. But first, make sure your work is ready for
publication, which means working with an independent editor along the way.
That’s an investment, not a cheap one, but vital to your success.
Which route did you
take – traditional or self-published
– and can you give us the nitty gritty low down on what’s that like?
I’ve
done both. I started with Capital Crime, a small press, which sent Poison Pen out for review and got a
starred review in Publisher’s Weekly.
That brought it to the attention of a senior editor at Penguin, who ended up
publishing the first four books. When my wonderful editor left and the one who
replaced her did not offer to renew my contract, I self-pubbed a standalone
titled What She Saw, about a young
woman with amnesia, something that has always fascinated me. Eventually, I got
my rights back from Penguin and gave them to Suspense, a smaller house (they
publish Suspense Magazine). They re-issued the first four books with great new
covers (which gave me a chance to go back and do some editing), plus the next
three.
One
of the great things about going with a small house or self-pubbing is that you
have total, or at least way more control over your cover, title, and content. At
Penguin, for each book I would receive the same boilerplate email, “here’s your
cover, we hope you love it as much as we do.” And if I didn’t love it the
response was, “there’s no time to make changes.”
Unless
you are discovered(!), You can
probably make more money self-publishing or with a small publisher than a big
one. A big house might pay an
advance, but if they do, the amount will be no more than they expect to make
back on your book, a few thousand bucks. They usually pay 8-10% of the cover
price in royalties on a mass market paperback, which means you have to sell a
lot of books to earn back the advance. A small house is unlikely to pay an
advance, but will offer a far higher percentage. If you self-publish through
Amazon’s CreateSpace as I did that one book, you’ll receive around 70%. Amazon
keeps 30% for their trouble.
Most
of the time, to be published by a big house, you’ll need a good agent, which is
almost as hard to find as a publisher. Go to writing conventions where you can
meet agents and at least start a relationship. Agents attend those things
because they expected to be pitched. Just make sure you have your elevator
speech ready. You have about 14 seconds to grab their attention.
Further
Very Important Advice: If you are lucky enough to get a deal, make sure you do are not selling your
characters. Read the contract carefully and license the characters only for
the book or books covered by that contract. That way, if the series takes off
and becomes Harry Potter-sized, and you want to change publishing houses or
make a movie deal, you will be able to. Otherwise, if you don’t protect
yourself, you’ll lose all control over those fictional people you have created
and love.
Tell us for real what your family feels about you
spending so much time getting your book written, polished, edited, formatted,
published, what have you?
My younger son is
39 and live in Germany. The older one is 42. I live with Lexie the Very Bad
Cat, and when she complains that I’m not giving her enough attention or it’s
time for a meal, I generally stop and listen, but she’s pretty tolerant. The
truth is, my tendency to much work and little play has interfered with a couple
of relationships. Bottom line, published authors and their families need to
understand that there are sacrifices to be made. Not everyone sits at their
desk from 9:00 a.m. to Midnight like I do (with bathroom and food breaks), and
I really don’t have to. But that’s the way I like it. Which is probably why I’m
not currently in a relationship.
This is for plant lovers... Are your plants actually still alive?
They are, because I
pay a gardener to keep them alive.
In writing your
book, how did you deal with the phone ringing, your family needing dinner or
your boss calling you saying you’re late?
With my other
career as a forensic handwriting expert, unless I am testifying in court, I’m
mostly able to make my own schedule. I’ve been my own boss since 1989, and having
worked in the corporate world in another life, it’s a luxury I deeply
appreciate.
How about the social networks? Which ones do you believe help and which ones
do you wish you could avoid?
I spend a
significant amount of time on Facebook, my personal page, where I’m never sure
new “friends” come from. I check to see if they’re friending me because they
are readers or writers, or in one of my networking groups, or if they are on
the same political page. Otherwise, I delete a lot of requests from men in
cammo who have no profile and no mutual friends. All of my posts automatically
go to my Twitter feed (I’d rather be more selective), but who has time for all
the others? I know some authors do a super job with this, but I am not one of
them. I do have an author’s FB page, but rarely go there.
Book sales. Don’t you just love
them (or lack of?)? How are you making
the sales happen for you?
My greatest success
in sales has come from BookBub ads. When I advertised my then-self-pubbed book,
What She Saw, for free, I had 117,000
downloads, which led to sales of all my backlist titles over the next two
months, plus over 400 reviews, mostly 4 and 5 star. I made more in royalties
for that $500 investment than my Penguin advances. It’s hard to get accepted by
BB, as I’m told they only take 20% of submissions. But you can keep trying.
That doesn’t cost anything.
What is one thing you’d like to jump on the
rooftop and scream about?
Scream in a good
way or a bad way? Having to do sales and marketing. Even the big publishing
houses do little-to-no marketing for midlist authors—most of the money goes
into promoting the big names. My publicist at Penguin told me she had 200
authors and could devote 10 minutes a month to each one. So, be prepared to put
time, effort, and some money into publicizing your work. I’ve retained
publicists for several of my books, which means they get to do all the stuff I
would rather not spend time on.
Okay, too much
sugar for you today! Here’s a nice cup
of Chamomile tea and come on over and sit under the cabana and watch the waves
roll in. Now…can you tell us what you
love about being a published author and how all those things above don’t
matter because it’s all part of the whole scheme of things and you wouldn’t
have it any other way?
I feel very lucky
to have been published by a major publishing house, and to have landed with
Suspense, who treat me well. If they had not I probably would be
self-publishing, but I’m very grateful not to have to worry about issues like
formatting, cover design, and getting ISBNs. With each book, I ask myself if I
should write another, and somehow, they keep on coming. I guess I must be a
writer 😊.
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