Kate Lord Brown and The Beauty Chorus

I'm thrilled to have author Kate Lord Brown here today, to discuss five simple steps authors can take to get their book noticed. Yes, I know it's 'I' day on the A-Z Challenge and I'm going to file this one under 'information'! Here's a bit more about Kate's book, The Beauty Chorus.

Romance, glamour and adventure in the skies: an enthralling debut inspired by female pilots in World War Two. 166 women signed up to fly Spitfires and bombers from factories to airfields across the country. It was an adventure that would cost many their lives.

New Year’s Eve 1940: Evie Chase, the beautiful debutante daughter of an RAF commander, listens wistfully to the swing music drifting out from the ballroom. With bombs falling nightly in London, she is determined to make a difference to the war effort. Evie joins the ATA – the civilian pilots who ferry fighter planes to bases across war-torn Britain. Two other women wait nervously to join up with her – Stella Grainger, a forlorn young mother from Singapore, and Megan Jones, an idealistic teenager who has never left her Welsh village before. Billeted together in a tiny cottage, Stella, Megan and Evie learn to live and work together as they find romance, confront loss and forge friendships that last a lifetime.

Kate writes:

As a parent, you get to enjoy those ‘firsts’ in life all over again watching your children experience them. First steps, first snow, first day at school, first love. As an author, it is hard not to feel the same mix of joy and trepidation seeing your first book going out into the world. Will any one care about it as much as you do?

To be published, to see your words bound beautifully and up on the shelves alongside books by authors you have admired your whole life is a dream come true for many writers. It goes without saying that most writers are readers first, and book lovers in the broadest sense. I can honestly say that when I opened the DHL boxes yesterday and held the hardback of ‘The Beauty Chorus’ for the first time it was one of the most amazing moments of my life.

So once the book is born, how can you ensure people hear about its arrival? Perhaps the most amusing advice for début authors is in Douglas Gibson’s famously cynical memo. The former editor of Macmillan Canada titled it ‘Don’t Look for Your Book in Bookstores’. Carole Blake helpfully quotes the memo in her Bible for new authors ‘From Pitch to Publication’ (which I highly recommend): prepare yourself for publication day (no one will notice it), reviews (there will either be none or they will appear too early or late to be useful), and friends (who will give you a list of typos in your book).

The number of first novels this year is heartening. It remains to be seen for how many this will be the first step in a long career. Perhaps as they prepare for their newborn books to fly the nest, authors should enjoy the moment and remember Martin Luther King Jr’s advice: ‘You don’t have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step.’

If you are close to taking that first step, why not think about these five simple steps to help your debut:

• If you have a blog, make sure it is up to date with information about your new book, links to online stores etc

• Create a Facebook page for the book
• Contact local media (‘local’ can be where you live, places where the book is set, where you went to school etc)
• Talk to your local library – reach as many reading groups in your area as possible
• Consider making a video ‘book trailer’ for your book using some of the amazing free software online, and creative commons images from sites like Flickr

Kate Lord Brown’s début ‘The Beauty Chorus’ is being published by Corvus Atlantic 1/4/11
Amazon link here.

About Kate:

Kate worked as an art consultant, curating collections for palaces and embassies in Europe and the Middle East, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She was a finalist in ITV’s the People’s Author competition in 2009, and has written for magazines including Condé Nast Traveller and Blueprint. Her debut novel ‘The Beauty Chorus’ is being published by Corvus Atlantic in 2011. She currently lives in the Middle East with her husband who is an airline pilot, and their young family.www.katelordbrown.com