I have just got back from Seattle, in the USA’s stunning
Pacific North-West, as a guest of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA)
2013. My novel The Hidden was
selected as the winner in the Thriller/Suspense category of the ABNA.
The trip
was incredible; the landscape, the people, the ABNA ceremony…….it was five days
of bliss. I met my fellow finalists, Rysa Walker, Ken Moraff, Evelyn Pryce and J.
Lincoln Fenn, as well as the Amazon team who are such warm, down-to-earth,
creative and on-the-ball people.
We finalists were treated like royalty,
showered with gifts, taken out to lunch and dinner, hosted at the event and
wrapped in this gorgeous warm blanket of respect that I, as an author, have
never, ever experienced before. Rysa Walker won the Grand Finalist award for
her novel Timebound – congratulations
Rysa! But the message from Amazon was clear; all of us five authors will be
treated equally in terms of time, marketing and support by the Amazon
Publishing team. This is great news for all of us.
I have always been an Amazon fan because I am an obsessive
book-buyer. I adore bookshops but when I scour bookshops and they don’t have
the books I am looking for I always go to Amazon and have done so since they started out. I am impatient and I want
books, I have to have them. Amazon always meets this burning need.
I had no opinion at all of this massive corporation before I met
the people behind it, other than it was a great service that fulfilled my
obsessive book-buying needs. I wasn’t prepared for the human ‘face’ of this
global company, for their obvious love of authors, for their incredible
creativity in trying new things in the world of digital and mainstream
publishing and selling, for their complete intuitive understanding of my novel,
for their vibrancy, normalcy and their incredible positivity and upbeat energy.
My entire writing life has been a roller-coaster of ‘yes, we
love you, but……’ to ‘no, your novel is not right for us…..’. I have two folders
on my computer labelled ‘lovely rejections’ and ‘standard rejections’. The
bottom line is my experience has shown me that publishers are cautious,
inward-looking organisations who only appear to ‘risk’ investing in established
names. I was blown away by Amazon’s forward-thinking philosophy when it comes
to authors, based on their respect of them.
I don’t want my blog to sound like an advert for Amazon. I
am just diarising my experience in Seattle, five days I will remember for the
rest of my life.
But I will say I love companies like Amazon, who take risks,
who are super-creative, who drill down deep into ‘what people want’ and provide
them with it, and companies who dare to challenge old and tired market models
and try something new. My love of this type of creativity extends to
solo-operators – writers, artists, musicians, photographers, designers,
illustrators – all creative people, and businesses or non-profit organisations,
small or large; in fact anyone who challenges the status quo.
While I was in Seattle I went to the EMP museum http://www.empmuseum.org/ next to the
Needle. I was enthralled by the story of Nirvana, the post-punk ‘punk’ band who
was from the Pacific North-West region. I got totally into the story of these
types of musicians who did everything themselves in the beginning; from booking
their own gigs, to designing their own posters and magazines. There’s a great
energy in Seattle. I adored it and hope to return one day.
On the plane back I wrote some more notes on my next
thriller, writing notes in pencil in my Moleskine notebook. I’m excited now
about having my feet on the ground and going back inside my head into the dark
world of thriller-dom.
While I write this novel you can pre-order The Hidden which is going to be
published by Thomas & Mercer in Seattle, from Amazon here…..http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hidden-Jo-Chumas/dp/1477848193/ref=sr_1_2_bnp_1_pap?ie=UTF8&qid=1371732758&sr=8-2&keywords=Jo+Chumas
It will be out on October 22 2013. When you’ve bought it and
read it, write to me, talk to me. I love my readers and will listen to what you
have to say, I promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment