Carol Drinkwater - Publishing Talk

www.publishingtalk.eu
Sept-Oct 2012
write it, publish it, sell it
Social Media
Get started
with WordPress
Ben Hatch’s
social media
success story
Self-Publishing
Steven Lewis: Why travel writing
is a natural fit for self-publishing
Marketing
How to build an
authentic author brand
HOW TO:
Write a Book
Proposal
Sarah Such explains
how to get it right
INSID
ER A
DVIC
E
Ask a
n Age
n
t
Publis
hing C
areer
s
Writin
g Clin
ic
Carol Drinkwater
From TV star to travel writer it’s been quite a journey
Building an online platform
Sarah Salway
Writing for ereaders
Tom Evans
Room to Write
Isabel Losada
#ptmag
Publishing Talk Issue 2
What we’re talking about this issue
Is travel
writing the
ideal genre
for selfpublishing?
06
Carol
Drinkwater
shares her travel
writing tips.
12
What makes
a winning
book
proposal?
What does your
brand say about
you?
10
Interviews
06
12
4
14
Tutorials
A Passionate
Journey: Carol
Drinkwater
Danuta Kean talks to
Carol Drinkwater about
the passion, power
and purpose of
travel writing
10
Independent
Traveller:
Steven Lewis
Travel writer and
self-publishing expert
Steven Lewis tells Jon
Reed why travel writing
is a natural fit for selfpublishing.
18
Advice
How to Build an
Author Brand
John Purkiss explains
how to build an
authentic author
brand – and helps
you identify your
archetype.
08
09
Writing Clinic
Sarah Salway answers
your writing questions.
Getting Started
with WordPress
Want to build an
audience for your
writing? Start blogging
in minutes with our
step-by-step tutorial.
14
Ask an Agent
Sarah Such considers
what makes a winning
book proposal.
Full magazine available at www.publishingtalk.eu/magazine
22
The Way to Write…
…for ereaders. Tom
Evans looks at how
to make the most of
ebooks.
Publishing Careers
Working too hard?
Suzanne Collier helps
you restore your worklife balance.
Regulars
05
Trending Topics
Book buzz and forthcoming events
16
Social Media
Success Story
How Ben Hatch
became a bestseller
thanks to his Twitter
followers.
20
Room to Write
Narrative non-fiction
author Isabel Losada
writes wherever she
finds adventure.
21
Talking Point
Danuta Kean considers
the publishing
phenomenon that is
Fifty Shades of Grey
Interview
From TV star to olive farmer and
travel writer, Carol Drinkwater
has been on quite a journey.
She talks to Danuta Kean about
finding fresh angles, being authentic
– and avoiding Al Qaeda.
A Passionate Journey
C
arol Drinkwater is
laughing. Her laugh drips
with sunshine, warmed in the
olive groves of her Provençal farm
on the outskirts of Nice. We are
talking about travelling as a lone
woman through North Africa and
the Eastern Mediterranean. “I have
spent time wearing one of those
black tents,” she laughs. “It was
very strange. You really do see the
world very differently with one of
those on.”
she had fallen in love first with
Michel, a French television
producer, and then an abandoned
farm of 68 400-year-old olive trees,
which in 2001 was immortalized in
her memoir The Olive Farm
(Orion, 2006).
Drinkwater’s writing is warm
and self-deprecating, but also
unflinching. Reclaiming the farm
involved not only obsessional hard
graft, but occurred at a time of
immense pain within her personal
Seeing things from a fresh
life – including the miscarriage of
perspective is a habit for
a much-wanted baby. The book
Drinkwater, who in the 1990s went revealed that behind the image
from her-off-the-telly to olive farmer of national sweetheart was a
and author. Best known at the time formidable writer, with a gift for
as ‘Helen Herriot’ in the longportraying people and place in
running TV drama All Creatures
vivid detail. It was inevitable more
Great and Small,
books would follow and that
travel editors would queue to
commission her.
6
Full magazine available at www.publishingtalk.eu/magazine
“The whole thing evolved
reasonably naturally,” she recalls.
Two further volumes followed
The Olive Farm, including the
2011 bestseller Return To The
Olive Farm. A further two travel
books delve into the roots of the
Drinkwater’s beloved olive trees The Olive Route (2007) and The
Olive Tree (2009). All have sold
well and positioned the author well
away from the twee Brits Abroad
genre that bloomed for a brief
period after Peter Mayle’s A Year
in Provence.
about Paris, which talks about
my first impressions of the place:
the Paris of the ‘20s; the Paris
of the page; and the Paris of the
literary world. It’s not ‘being’ in
Paris at all,” she says by way of
explanation. The mythic Paris
of her imagination provided an
anchor that measures experience
against expectation.
Though the act of forgetting
provides a dramatic tension that
helps her write, Drinkwater does
not imply it is easy. “You have to
keep balance,” she adds, flashing
that famous sunbeam smile. “You
The two travel books involved
have to make a very conscious
journeying through dangerous
territory –including the Arab Spring decision to say, ‘I know this or
that, but I have to let go of that
countries and Palestine. Even
now,’ particularly if you are taking
when researching short travel
pieces, Drinkwater is meticulous in somewhere that is well known,
even if only on paper.”
her research. “I read everything,”
she confides “I print out all the
material I can find on a place.” Her With global travel the norm,
finding fresh angles let alone fresh
training as an actor then kicks in.
“I then I just let all that stuff go – a places to explore is not easy. But
bit like learning your lines and then asking the right questions about a
travel destination can help writers
forgetting them.”
blocked about where to start:
“Sometimes I have to think what
Forgetting research enables a
is it that has not been written
writer to ‘be’ in a place – rather
about or is not well known about a
like an actor inhabiting a role on
place or attracts me that I haven’t
stage, she says. Writers have a
habit of showing off their research come across before? I will then
use that as an entry point.” One
– consciously or not – but it can
approach Drinkwater has taken is
make their writing unpalatable.
Drinkwater’s approach is one way to challenge stereotypes. I wonder
if this is because she was the
to avoid that problem. “At the
victim of tabloid stereotypes when
moment I’m writing something
her name was linked to fellow All
Marketing
hen people ask me
what it takes to write
a book that sells, I tell
them it is 50% writing and 50%
marketing. As an author you
are marketing yourself as well
as your book. The challenge is
to find your audience and then
connect with them. If they like
you and your book, they will
spread the word.
W
John Purkiss is the co-author of Brand
You (Pearson). He studied economics
at Cambridge University and has an
MBA from INSEAD. John has worked
in banking, management consultancy,
sales, marketing and executive search.
He was a partner with Heidrick &
Struggles and now runs the leadership
practice at Veni Partners.
Find him at www.johnpurkiss.com and
follow him on Twitter at @JohnPurkiss.
How to Build
an Author Brand
John Purkiss helps you
connect with readers by
building an authentic
personal brand.
So where does your personal
brand come in? As Jeff Bezos,
the founder of Amazon, once
said, “Your brand is what people
say about you when you are
not in the room”. Sometimes
I hear the phrase ‘branding
yourself’, but that sounds to me
like sticking something on the
outside, rather like branding a
cow or a sheep. To be effective,
personal branding has to be
authentic. It has to come from
within.
My co-author on Brand You
is David Royston-Lee, who is
a business psychologist with
a marketing background. The
first four exercises in the book
are those he has used for many
years with a wide range of
clients. They work for anyone
who does them conscientiously.
The first step is to discover the
talents you love to use. You
may take them for granted
because they come naturally to
you. Since you are reading this
magazine, writing may be one
of your talents. You may have
many others. I invite you to make
a list of the high points in your
life, when you felt fantastic about
what you were doing.
Your brand is
what people say
about you when
you are not in
the room
Maybe you were so immersed
that you lost track of time - an
10
Full magazine available at www.publishingtalk.eu/magazine
Ask An Agent
Write
Literary agent
Sarah Such looks
at the crucial
factors needed
in a successful
book proposal.
a
Winning
How to write a book
proposal and what exactly
it needs to include are
two of the questions I am
asked most frequently as
a literary agent – and not
just by new writers. Even
seasoned authors and
experienced journalists
may not have written a
book proposal previously.
In any book submission
process the competition
will be immense and the
turndown rate high, so it is
worth taking the time to get
a proposal right. But what
does that mean?
Book
Proposal
Do you h
ave a
question
you’d lik
e
to ask a
n agent?
Email it
to
agen
t@publis
hingtalk
14
Full magazine available at www.publishingtalk.eu/magazine
.eu.
People assume that there is a
set format for a proposal but, in
fact, they all differ in shape and
form – there is no boilerplate.
The structure and ‘personality’
of a proposal will be determined
by the subject and the individual
writer’s style. So proposals, or
outlines as they are also known,
can vary hugely, but all share the
same objective. They need to
convince an editor and sales and
marketing teams on many levels
for a publisher to offer an advance
and invest in a writer when a
book is not yet written.
Most writers are not inclined
or financially able to complete
a whole book without knowing
they have secured a publisher
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18
Full magazine available at www.publishingtalk.eu/magazine
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