GRAHAM TAYLOR -

Graham Taylor has enjoyed an interesting and varied life so far. From being involved in the promotional side of the Punk Rock scene in London in the 1970’s, to becoming a policeman (not a natural progression), to becoming a vicar (an even more unlikely progression) and from there becoming a number one best selling author! What made Graham initially put pen to paper?

“A frustration with what was being published at the time.” he says. And Graham believed he could do better, a thought that probably many of us have had ourselves. From this premise Graham wrote “Shadowmancer”, a gripping tale that takes the reader into a world packed full of history, folklore, magic, and smuggling. Faber and Faber paid Graham £3.5 million for the publishing rights to Shadowmancer and his next six books after strong sales from his own self-published books and the film rights were sold for an additional £2.5 million. Shadowmancer went on to be on the top of the British book charts for an amazing 15 weeks. Not bad for a self-published, first time author!

The Times newspaper described his book “Shadowmancer” as “The biggest event in children’s fiction since Harry Potter.”

We are privileged that Graham has agreed to become a director of Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd. and lend his invaluable experiences and knowledge to help new authors to become published at a reasonable price. We asked him a few questions about how he managed to become the best selling author he now is even though he self-published his first book.

Q. Graham, once you had written Shadowmancer did you try to get a literary agent or publisher to read your book?

GPT. No. I’ve heard of so many writers who have gone through so many rejections over such a long time that I decided to self-publish the book straight away.

Q. How did you go about publishing your book by yourself?

GPT. I hunted around to find a printer who would print my book for a reasonable price and after finding one I then looked for a proof-reader who would proofread the manuscript at an equally reasonable rate.

Q. Once the book was printed how did you go about marketing it?

GPT. Firstly I managed to get the book available through all the major book wholesalers and also though the main Internet retailers. I then went to all my local book shops and offered to do book signings and got the local papers to write articles about “the local author” and mention the signings. From these activities people started to buy, read and enjoy the book and most importantly of all to recommend the book to their friends.

Q. What advice would you give to an unpublished author who is looking to get their work into print?

GPT. Self publish! You keep control of your work, you are in control of the marketing of your book and you’re not working to anybody else’s timetable but your own. You also keep all the ancillary rights to your book such as TV and film rights.

Q. Where do you see the future of book selling going?

GPT. I see the Internet continuing to grow rapidly as an important force of retail book selling. The major book retail chains are limiting their titles more and more thereby offering the buying public less choice. I also hope there will be a resurgence of locally owned and operated book shops that are prepared to offer a greater range of titles.

Q. How do you perceive a self-published book versus a traditionally published book?

GPT. I, and an increasingly growing number of people, see self-published books on an equal footing with the books published from the big publishing houses. You just have to make sure that the end product is produced professionally and the manuscript has been proofread to correct all the silly little mistakes that inevitably are present in an author’s original manuscript.

Q. Finally Graham, what was your motivation to become a director of Grosvenor House Publishing Ltd.?

GPT. I accepted the invitation to become a director in Grosvenor House Publishing because I have wanted to encourage self-publishing ever since publishing “Shadowmancer” by myself. It is a difficult project to publish a book, and then organise the distribution and promotion of that book without any “guiding light” to help you through the process. The whole procedure can be daunting and seem quite unachievable to the uninitiated. Grosvenor House Publishing has put together an effective vehicle that enables an author to become fully published with all the distribution and registrations organised for a very reasonable price. Also Grosvenor House Publishing gives the author a very helpful marketing package which covers all the basic necessities of how to actually get their book sold to the reading public, which after all is why we write books.

Graham Taylor has since written two more books, “Wormwood” another compelling adventure of sorcery, treachery, intrigue and supernatural struggles, which has recently been one of only five books to be nominated for the prestigious American writer’s award known as “The Quills”. Graham’s third and latest title is called Tersias and promises to maintain the tremendous successes of his fist two books on both side of the Atlantic.

How did Graham achieve the success he now enjoys?

He obviously has a great talent for conjuring up wonderful stories and the energy and discipline (not to mention the talent) to be able to write those stories in a very readable fashion, but Graham also possesses one vital ingredient, without which his marvellous books would still be just ideas. That ingredient is self-belief. His self-belief is so strong that he even sold his beloved Harley Davidson motor bike to fund the printing of his first book Shadowmancer!

BILLY HOPKINS -

Some years ago I retired after a forty-year career in Education, one half of it in Manchester , Liverpool . and Glasgow - the other half in teacher training in African universities ( Kenya , Zimbabwe , Malawi ).

When I returned to England , my grown-up family prevailed upon me to write my life story. “What a fascinating life you’ve led,” they said. “You simply must get it down on paper for the sake of posterity. Start with your childhood in Collyhurst, Manchester .” (Les Dawson’s earliest stalking ground). I did as I was told - took me a year. Then they said, “This is amazing stuff. You must make it into a novel - it’s bound to be a best-seller.” Once again, I did as I was ordered - the result a 150,000-word story entitled Our Kid.

Next they commanded, “Now you must go about getting it published and hit the bookshops with it. Forsythe, Clancy, Higgins - move over! First of all you must get yourself an agent - a ten percenter.” (Some of’em are fifteen percenters).

I looked through ‘The Writers’ Handbook’ and picked out thirty or so likely looking agents. Since it takes some of them six months to answer a letter, I realised that it would take about fifteen years to get round my selection. So I decided to do a very unethical thing and write to them all at the same time, enclosing a sample chapter and a synopsis, to see if anybody wanted to promote my masterpiece.

After a year or so, I had a dozen replies. The responses are worth a book in themselves.

The first one said “Charming story - charmingly told. What a pity, you’re not a little girl. Why not write it again and pretend that you are?” The second said simply “You should try to write sideways.” (Meaning’?) The next reply stated quite bluntly, “There’s no demand for stories about nostalgia, northern slums, and ‘trouble in’t mill’ stuff.” (Pace ‘ Coronation Street ’ and Catherine Cookson!) A third sent me a note in illegible scribble which we only managed to decipher with the aid of a magnifying glass and after prolonged debate. It said, “Someone left this stuff on my desk. I don’t know why. But I certainly do not have time to read it. I’m swamped.” Next one: “Too much conflict in this story”. Another “Too bland - not enough drama” “The story did not ‘click” And so the comments continued. “Add a daughter to the story.” “Why not add a brother?” I have been assured that any kind of comment is a bonus since most agents answer with a cryptic ‘No thanks’.

One agent answered after a year: “I have just found your manuscript. It had fallen behind the radiator. Great Pity as it has great potential and I’m sure I could have done something with it.” Needless to say I rushed off a copy to her. I heard no more. 3 months later, I discovered that she had gone bankrupt! Hope I wasn’t a contributory factor. But maybe she has a cornucopia of masterpieces hidden behind her radiator.

Three years on, I’m still waiting for the other 18 agents to answer. 1-lorror stories indicate that the slush piles in their offices are eight feet high! Most discouraging for would-be writers. What a chaotic world the publishing world is!

In the end I decided to publish the damned book myself. I bought fairly sophisticated desk-top equipment and learned how to use it. First I had three copies printed and bound in rexine. Cost me nearly £40 per copy. They were so well received by the people who read the book that I lashed out and had a hundred printed and results exceeded all my expectations. Family, friends, colleagues, and selected members of the general public were most appreciative. Perhaps it had something.

I eventually had 800 copies of my book printed and after advertising in magazines like The Oldie and Practical Gardening, I sold the lot. Not much of a profit but I got my book out there being read.

One copy landed on the desk of a man called John Sherlock who was born in Salford but had worked at every major studio in Hollywood as “creative consultant” on such productions as Peyton Place , Dynasty, Dallas . He had also been attached to major American universities as scriptwriting consultant on their creative writing courses. John Sherlock liked OUR KID so much, he recommended it to a London Agent (Blake, Friedmann) who gave it to one of their agents, Isobel Dixon. She loved it and soon persuaded Headline Publishing to publish it. It was slow to get started but then the news spread by word of mouth and sales rose dramatically.

To date OUR KID has sold 300,000 and in the year 2000 was on the best-seller charts for several weeks. The World Book Club chose it as its star book of the month for May 2000. A sequel entitled HIGH HOPES followed and this too reached the best-seller list (it rose to 9 th place). To date this last book has sold 150,000 copies in hardback and paperback. Finally a third book KATE’S STORY was published in hardback on August 2 nd 2001 and has sold really well, especially in the North West and Manchester in particular. (125,000 to date) and it got to Number 12 on the best-seller list. Since then I have written two other books: GOING PLACES and recently ANYTHING GOES (in hardback launched on July 4th 2005.)