CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

As a writer who has perhaps published a book and is engrossed in the mysteries of marketing, you may be able to discern seven distinct stages to the whole process - though you probably haven’t experienced all seven. I’ll try to summarise them for you here.   1. No marketing.   When you are in the throes of writing your masterpiece, you probably give little thought to its future marketing. And that’s perfectly understandable and acceptable. As you type out your next scene, you

There are few things more certain to stir up animosity in any group of writers than a discussion about ‘rules’.   As soon as someone mentions anything to do with there being rules about how to write, a series of explosions is triggered and a war commences. Two camps rapidly align themselves: in the first are those who believe that there are particular inviolable principles which apply in the world of fiction writing which, if an author hopes to be successful, he or she must m

C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, pictured above in my pencil sketch, are bound together for posterity as friends and as members of the writers’ group known as the Inklings which met in Oxford during the 1930s and 40s. This small group, meeting until late 1949 during Thursday evenings in C. S. Lewis's college rooms at Magdalen College (though also gathering from time to time in local pubs such as The Eagle and Child) was an informal literary discussion group associated with t

I occasionally get asked ‘How do you fit it all in?’ Several anthologies to edit, proofread, format and publish; 5,000 items of merchandise available for sale across the world based on my original artwork; original books to write and publish; a daily blog which has been running for over eight years now without missing a day; running a successful, expanding group on Facebook and answering queries, responding to comments and so on; plus private editing and proofreading work for

I used to run a business consultancy in fashionable Mayfair in London. I had an office just off Berkeley Square and used to take clients to tea at the Ritz Hotel, visible from my front door. Sometimes in the Spring I would have my lunch in a deckchair sitting in Green Park across the road, from where I could almost see Buckingham Palace through the trees. It was all very posh and wonderful.   I would get summoned from time to time by small and medium-sized businesses all over

It wasn’t until I became a parent quite late in life that I began to observe closely some things to do with children that apply more widely to the behaviour of human beings, and particularly to writers.   I noticed with my young daughter how she was always in the ‘Now’, always relishing the moment, always keen to have things happen straight away. She went through a period when she was about three years old of simply not understanding, and totally rejecting, anything to do wit

As many readers will know, I’ve written a book, Marketing for Writers , which goes into some depth and detail about what marketing is, how it works, and how, as writers, we can get the upper hand on its principles and use them to market our books.   Part of what the book tackles is the myths about marketing that are so all-pervasive that we believe them implicitly to be true. These things seem obvious to us, and for me to question them in any way seems, at first glance, to be

What are your goals and purposes as a writer?   That’s if we define ‘goal’ as ‘the object of a person's ambition or effort; an aim or desired result’, and ‘purpose’ as ‘the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists’.   Thus you might have a goal to ‘be living as an independently wealthy person on the proceeds of my writing’; or ‘To experience relief from personal psychological pressure’. And while that might be a part of your purpose - i.e. t