Following shortly after the one from Clare, I have another guest post by a C Cooper. This is total coincidence - I'll be very happy to receive posts from writers with different names!
Cara Cooper is a lovely lady who writes lovely stories - and was very kind to a certain seaside writer when she worried she'd get lost in London on her way to a workshop. (OK, I'll admit it was me and I have no sense of direction.) Anyway, over to Cara ...
As a writer I feel we are often like old fashioned mangles! There’s a lot of squeezing involved. First there’s the effort of squeezing a story out of your poor old brain when all it wants to do is laze in front of the Bakeoff. The next lot of squeezing comes in trying to get as much as possible out of the precious words you’ve crafted. That in itself is an art and there are various ways to do this.
When you first get into the writing game, acronyms like PLR and ALCS and can be a mystery as they were for me. Linking into writing groups on social media can be invaluable for learning what’s what. So can organisations such as the Romantic Novelists Association (RNA) or the Crime Writers’ Association (CWA) both of which I have found really helpful.
Meeting people both in person, and online in this way was how I discovered I could sell the large print rights of my pocket novels and the magazine serials I had written to Ulverscroft http://www.ulverscroft.com/home.php
They are a great company, not least because of the very nice people they have there. Also, their ethos is to bring large print books to libraries the world over. It’s excellent news for us writers. This is because a pocket novel only spends a couple of weeks on the shelves and an episode of a magazine serial is out there for even less time at only one week. However, an Ulverscroft book can be available for years. When you’ve toiled hard over your pocket novel or serial, it’s nice to know that you can increase its life by submitting to Ulverscroft. As you’ll see from an earlier post on this blog, (just put Ulverscroft in
the search box) they are only interested in previously published works of around 25,000 to 70,000 words. Do however check with the original publisher first to check what rights you have sold them and what are available to you to sell on. Also some magazines may ask that you send your original manuscript to Ulverscroft, not the version into which they themselves have had editorial input.
As well as seeing your book on library shelves with covers that have excellent artwork, you will earn PLR (Public Lending Right) on loans of your book which is a nice bonus. Another bonus can be applying for ALCS (Authors Licensing and Copying Society) payments which you can do by logging on to their helpful website https://www.alcs.co.uk/
I didn’t realise that I could apply for ALCS payments for longer titles and missed out. But at least I have learnt for future publications. Good luck in applying to Ulverscroft, just contact them with a brief blurb and see what they think.
You can find more of Cara's books here.
5 comments:
This was interesting. I hadn't heard of Ulverscroft. You can't go wrong with getting in the libraries!
Hope you both have a great day.
Very helpful and interesting post. Have just sold my first Pocket Novel and knowing I can possibly sell it on helps a lot. Thanks.
Thanks! All I have to do now is write a pocket novel and get it accepted. Seems like this is more worthwhile doing than I'd thought just from the payment from DCThomsons.
Great post - thanks for sharing this, Carol, and reminding me about Ulverscroft!
I'd never heard of Ulverscroft before--thanks for an informative post!
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