Monday 6 October 2014

Leigh Russell - Race to Death Blog Tour

Today I am very excited to be hosting the first stop on the Leigh Russell Race to Death blog tour.

Leigh Russell is a prolific writer who, best known for her Geraldine Steel series, is a bestselling author in print and eBook format. Race to Death is the second title in Leigh Russell's latest series featuring newly promoted DI Ian Peterson. Rather than writing a review today, I am delighted to be able to share with you a feature post written by Leigh.

Considering that Leigh has been a published author for a number of years, and that I am very new to the publishing world, I wanted to take advantage of Leigh's experience with this feature. I am constantly being told that the industry has been completely overhauled in recent years thanks to the digital revolution. Therefore, for this blog tour stop, I asked Leigh Russell to tell me a bit about how the world of publishing has evolved in her eyes since she began writing. Here's what she had to say:


My own personal writing process has changed almost beyond recognition over the past six years. To begin with I wrote longhand, in pencil. The first draft of Cut Short was written with no plans for the future. I had no idea anyone else would ever read it, let alone publish it. Certainly it certainly never occurred to me that it would become the first in a long running bestselling series, nominated for major awards and reaching number 1 on kindle. At that stage I was writing just for myself. Nine books on, I have abandoned handwriting in favour of typing my manuscripts. It's much faster, which is just as well as I'm now delivering two manuscripts a year to my publisher. The other big change is that I now write for my readers, not for myself.

            The world of publishing has also undergone huge changes, which are ongoing. When my debut, Cut Short, first came out in paperback, in 2009 a fellow author suggested I ask my publisher to bring it out as an ebook as well. At that time, I had heard of ebooks but wasn't quite sure what they were... The ebook duly came out about six months after the paperback and that happened again in 2010 with Road Closed. By the time Dead End was published in 2011, the ebook and print book were published at the same time. Sales of my books are huge on kindle, with all of them reaching the Top 10, and one even hitting the coveted number 1 spot. Sales figures of my print books are not quite so high, and that seems to be a trend throughout the publishing industry. I do wonder where books sales will go next.

            Another change that has come about due to the internet is that it is now possible for readers to contact authors directly. A day never passes now without my receiving an email via my website, or a DM on facebook or twitter, from a fan of Geraldine Steel or Ian Peterson. It's lovely to hear from readers all around the world, and I always respond as promptly as I can. This is a bonus that simply didn't exist for authors just a few years ago.

            My life as an author has changed so much since Cut Short came out in 2009. Who knows what further changes are in store for us?

A very interesting question indeed, one that is both exciting and daunting for someone just starting out in the industry! Although the digital changes in publishing pose lots of challenges to publishers and authors, they also offer a lot of opportunities and you can read something I wrote a while back about the new author-publisher-reader relationship here.

I'm very grateful to Leigh for taking the time to share her experience as an author with me. For more about her books and upcoming events visit
leighrussell.co.uk . For more feature posts like this, visit leighrussell.blogspot.co.uk
To purchase Race To Death click here


The Blog Tour

The next stop on the Race To Death blog tour is Our Book Reviews and you can check out the rest of the blog tour schedule below:
 


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