3) Outlining research and findings

Primary Research - Done and findings.

For primary research, I wanted to find people who read short stories book and ask them what attracts them into buying a short stories book, what stops them from buying it plus also if they have or not read a short story book and if no then why.

Responses


1)Have you ever read a horror short stories book?  (/ Counting as the number of people reading)

Yes / / /

No //

1b) If no could you explain why (can be in one word)

It's not the kind of thing that interests me.  
Not my sort of thing 


2) What attracts you to reading a horror short stories or what would be needed to help draw you into reading the book?

The Diversity and the cleverness in a good short story.
The Title
A gripping storyline that is realistic
Thriller
The cover it's got to be eye-catching

3)  What put's you off buying a short stories book?

I love character-driven stories, and that tends to mean Novel
Repetitive stories etc same plot  
I don't read books really
The Price
If it's not a good book cover

Now question 3 with the reply about the 'character-driven stories, that was an answer I didn't think about as a response and thinking about it, it is a good answer and does for me explains why more people go for novels. When thinking about it, people that buy a novel book are for the stories, but once you get into the book, you also get attached to the character and it them that pulls readers in. With short stories you have multiple characters all of which you don't find out much about them nor will you read about the character again. Short stories are I think mainly for people who enjoy stories more than the characters or who are not interested in getting to know the character, which is most likely why novels are bought more because of the long single story, same subject and getting to know the characters.

Images








Bookshop

In a blog before I wrote that I would be asking Waterstone some questions, now at that this point I have messaged another bookshop here in Bath asking if I could send them some questions. Why I've changed is because on the Waterstone website they have so many different subjects for contact that for me I'm not sure what to use to contact them and when I went on Facebook to message them there wasn't a link to message them so I couldn't think of another way to asks them, so I've found another bookshop that looks amazing and has now asked them if it would be ok to ask them some question.

Topping & Company Booksellers of Bath, (Updated 2018) 5th March Available at: https://www.facebook.com/ToppingsBath/

Findings -

Questions asked where

1. What's the popularity of short story book?

2. How popular is Horror?

3. Why would you say Novels more popular than short stories book? - Change (what is more popular novels or short stories?)

4. What is the attraction a short stories book has to get people to buy it?

5. What would you say the audience is for a short stories horror book?

Ones in bold are questions I sent.

Evident



(Images of the answers will be added, once they reply.)

Book Titles 


I create a survey to help get other to choose to form a list of book titles I created and to see what others like the best.

List of Titles

Road Journey Horror
Road Journey Horror Stories
A Horror Journey
Horror Trips
Driven Horror Stories

Results

I've decided to pick Road Journey Horror Stories.



Secondary research - Done and Findings

For A secondary research, I wanted to find a blog or an article based or written by a self-published author and it relating to their own experiences on self-publishing and what I found is, self-publish author named Rob Dircks.

Dircks, R [2017] '5 things this self-published author did to sell over 20,000 books with almost no money', Entrepreneur, Available at: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/279385 (Accessed: 15th March 2018)

Rob Dircks is the author of 5 books, but the article is only talking about his books 'Where the hell is Tesla? And Don't touch the Blue stuff' and how he got so many copies sold. The article is him giving his top 5 tips on how he sold his books. Now most of his suggestions I already know about but it nice to hear from someone who has done all this which then makes me even more determined to actually do it, because when I started thinking about writing  I knew that to help get my book out there that I would have to use social media but hearing it from someone who does it to help sell his book is great as well as talking about another author who uses Twitter to help get himself notices and a tip from him is to be yourself.

A tip that is very helpful but also troubling for me because he says to use the reviews to make your book better. Now I understand that 100% and to use their advice as a helpful guide, not a failure but for someone like me I think I would get a bit defences to comments whether it's negative or just a useful tip. For him, it was little editing errors but mainly positive, so that does help me to make sure to make sure it's thoroughly looked over, proofread, everything.

Original short stories book

Now, this for me was hard since most short stories book is not the author's original stories but just collections from other authors but I did find some that were the authors own work, not collections. Trying to find authors who self-published short stories is a bit of a challenge.

Wanting to find was the advertisement, where it's sold's (reviews/price)

Stephen king - He has at least 15 short stories book (separate) Now for advertisement because he's Stephen King, a well know author it wouldn't be hard to get his books sold so that giving him the advantage of getting his short stories sold to his fans. His book is sold from website to bookshops so again having more platforms to sell his book.

Rachel Sherman - The book she wrote is called The first Hurt: Stories. This was self-publish in 2006; It can be found on Amazon for $10.53 of paperback $11.87. It's not a horror but is interesting. Her reviews are all five stars except one which is a four but all very positive Years between 2006 to 2009. Her other articles say she well knows and has since then written a novel in 2009. I think that with her short stories it helped her get a bit of an audience for when her book came out, but also with the novel, it helps other to discover her short stories. The advertisement is manly amazon, and even she has her website, which is not unusual for a self-publish author to have.

Assessment 2 Issues

Issues

Book Cover

When I started my FMP, I had two book covers in minds. One where I would get a butch of images that all relate to my book and then draw an outline around the pictures to help me create the drawing images. The second involved taking a photo of a car front window then using photoshop to add a frosted effect to the window along with a pair of red eyes looking through or a handprint.

Book cover 1

Finding an image of the car I wanted to use was easy, but when it came to outlining the car, I discovered that I needed to add more detail into the car to make it look more car-like, which for me is turning out to be impossible to achieve.


Book cover 2

Adding the frosted effect turned to be hard to do. What I planned using was youtube to help find a video that will help get me the frosted effect on the front window. The problem was not being able to 1. Active the same effect as the video had or 2. not finding a video with the effect I wanted.


Resolutions

BC 1. Decided to come up with another book cover design. This will be a more straightforward design and will be an image instead of a drawn cover.






BC 2. While creating my simple book cover, I used the outer glow effect and did a bit of experiment which got me to discover to use text to help create my frost effect. I did try using one letter for effect but it wasn't working so I decided to use a font that used images as the letters. Finding the perfect one I did the same thing I had done before but for this, I create multiple of the same pattern, then using outer glow change the setting.

Before




After




Stories 


When I started to come up with story ideas' I used single keywords to help give a central focus for the story. The problem was I couldn't come up with a story, and it was getting frustrating. Every single word could be anything as a story, but each time I did come up with a story idea I couldn't get into actually writing.

 Resolutions
I looked up other short stories to help give me ideas on what I could write. Then I came across a book called Campfire stories: Top 31 scary stories to tell in the dark (Time for the Nightmare) and it gave me the idea to try and stick to a theme for the story which was car journey's (now road journeys) because it was something that at this point had not seen anyone write about. Now with a themed, I got six keywords and was able to come up with a story for them.





Questions
For primary research, I wanted to email question to different publishers to get their opinion on short stories and horror. I did pick three out, but the problem was 1. too many help contact and not knowing which one to use and 2. no social media or messager to ask first.

Resolutions

I ended up changing it to asking a bookshop since they sell the books and would most likely know what genre books get sold more, which novels or short stories are more popular sold.

Vlog

This is my first Vlog for my FMP. In the Vlog, I will be talking about my FMP Schedule, Book schedule, and my self-publishing Blog.


Link to the Vlog. Vlog 1

ascertain areas of development

For my project, I am creating a book which I will also be self-publishing as well.

Genre, Horror and the main themed is road journeys.

The two lectures I have spoken to about my FMP pitch is Nick and Steve.

Nick

With Nick, I told him that I was planning to write short multiple horror storybooks. I the idea is to write six stories. He did ask about the flow of the stories like the number of pages and the word count. From the research I did I've discovered that a short story word count is anywhere between 1,500 to 30,000 words, which will be the word count for my book. As for the pages, what I will mainly do is write out my story with any amount of pages I have then when it comes to using InDesign I will figure out a font and size that will hopefully give each story similar page amount or start with the shortest pages amount story, then going on upwards to the longest.

There was talk about me, not self-publishing, only because if I were to do that I would have to open a tax self-assessment, which I didn't see the point of doing for just one book.

Self publishing and book marketing group on Facebook (Answer I got for a question I asked)

We then discuss that I would only have to do that if I were selling the book for money, so with that information I have decided to carry on, and self-publish.

Steve

With Steve, again I was asked what I was planning on doing for my FMP, and I told him I wanted to write a book and self-publish it. He then explained to me that he was just starting to run a course about publishing on Wednesday, and that If I wanted I would need to talk to the head of the department if I could join and the answer he said I would most likely get is, yes I could join, No I have to stay on this course or yes, but I would have to pay.

One topic we did talk about was my book cover, and that was something I needed to focus on because it is not one of my strongest areas and my last one was rubbish. What I am planning on doing this time is to create at least two book cover, one which will be drawn and the other photograph with added effect. Why I am designing two is because I want to to know which one is more eye-catching and second if I only end up doing one, I at least had a second idea and for my primary research, I can you the cover I design to ask other what they think needs improving.

Last Year's book cover

Front                                                                    Back

   

Range of research sourses

Primary research

Because my project is based on a book, short stories and the genre horror, I would need to ask a question relating to each topic along with asking the right audience.

People to ask are, maybe publishers - About book, short stories and horror. This will include the popularity of the genre horror and short stories book, the attraction to help sale the book and why novels and brought more than short stories?

Other audience our horror fans and book readers because they are my primary targets audience they would be the best people to ask. Finding the right people, I would need to join a Facebook group of people who all have a similar interest in horror.

I could also have the group to look over my stories, this way I can get feedback from them whether it's good or bad or just commenting about a mistake, but it still responses to my stories. Also, I want to ask if they could write down their age so that I know what the age are reading my stories and see if the audience I had set my book for is close to the ages or not.

I also think I should try and interview someone who has self-publish a short stories book with the genre Horror and questions about the book, how they get people to buy it (advertisement) and maybe tips/

I would say that questionnaires will be needed for my primary research but I also feel it would also be good to ask question just by posting, only because for me when I do a questionnaire that has a lot of question where I can just tick then it comes the one question that needs a written question and usually that makes me not that interested in finishing the questionnaire, so I think for some question I will post because I feel like I will get more responses but I will create surveys if my theory is wrong and I will send it to another horror fan group.

Secondary research 

For my research is to find a book close to my book and look at the detail of the cover, advertisement and also sales/reviews.

Another is to find an article that relates to self-publishing whether it's to do with tips on how to self-publish or a self-publish author talking about their time as a self-publish author form their journey or suggestions they would personally give. Another could find a self-publish author who's made it big as a self-publish author. This will help me find out if short stories authors can also be as successful and novel authors.

Propose research techniques to support and develop ideas

Primary Research 

Book - With the book, because it's a short multiple stories book I am writing plus it being a horror I want to find out the popularity on short stories book and the genre Horror, why Novels are more popular than short stories book and the attraction to short stories book.

Questions

1 What's the popularity of short story book (Authors the original writer, not a variety of different stories from different writers)?

2. How popular is Horror?

3. Why are Novels more popular than short stories book?

4. What is the attraction a short stories book has to get people to buy it?

5. What would you say the audience is for a short stories horror book?


These are the question I want to ask a publisher. The plan is to look for publishers who have published horror and short stories and maybe even both together. At this point, I want to ask at least three publishers (Might ask two more)


Publishers I want to email

1. Bloomsbury - They've published both horror and short stories books as well as short stories, genre horror.


2. BelleBooks/Bell Bridge - They've published both Horror and short stories




3. Penguin - Horror and Short stories and also a horror short stories book

Both Bloomsbury and Penguin, I have heard of before, but BelleBooks/ is not one I am familiar with, so I might get different responses/opinion.

Another primary research is I will be doing is joining a horror fan group, and ask question main for the people who do enjoy reading.

Another primary research is I will be doing is joining a horror fan group, and ask question main for the people who do enjoy reading.

Horror short stories book

1. When would you feel like reading?

2. What attracts you to reading a horror short stories or What might draw you to reading a horror short stories? (If they've not read short stories)

3. What puts you off reading a short stories book?

More questions based on Horror stories

What is the most commonly used location?

The most common villain?

Favorite horror, Location, Villain, and scenario  (In case there is a story that does relate to mine)




























I also want to get (at the moment) both groups to read my stories to help get their option on the stories what they like, what they might have preferred and even get the age range of the reader. This way it helps me to know were the age rate I placed for my audience just about right or more far over.

For this part I have joined a group called Self-Publishing & Book marketing, it's here where I will be posting my book cover's to get their response being people who want to be a self-publish author or who are.

I will also try and attempt to find a self-publish author who's written short stories book (can't be sure if it'll be horror based) and ask about what they did after they published, how often does a book get purchase, tips, any advertisement, who your original targets are.

Kind of a change of plan

At this point, I have looked up the three publishers, and so far it looks like I will have some trouble. Bloomsbury I have messager on Facebook asking if they could answer my question and if so can I do it on message or by email (the reason I asked on message because the email is for different uses and I thought that it would be better to ask and get a response that way.)


Me: Hi, I am doing a college project and was hoping if you could answer some questions for me? If so can I message you the questions or email them to you? If you could let me know as soon as possible that would be great.

Bloomsbury Publishing UK: Thanks for Messaging us. We try to be as responsive as possible. If your message relates to an order from our website, please email contact@bloomsbury.com


So hopefully I will get a response and will be sending my questions to them soon. As for the other two BellaBooks/Bell Bridge, there is no social media but only email but it looks to be more for business then question and for penguin even though they have social media there's no messager. But they do have an email address for different topic mainly for books and the authors/wannabe authors.

So for another research project, I will be asking the same questions (maybe written them out differently) But I want to ask the well know bookshop Waterstone. Why? Because it is slightly similar to publisher except they help sell the book meaning they should have an idea on most sold genre books, why novels get bought more than short stories and what benefits a book get attracted to the buyer.

At the moment it will just be Waterstone, but I will look up other and also asks.




Secondary Research 

For secondary research, I want to focus on articles based on self-publishing and the popularity, advertisement and what chances of being a successor. Looking for a blog or again article where the writer is a self-publish author.

Also looking up authors who started out as self-publish then got picked up by big publishing companies.

I will try. Look for a book, short stories, genre horror and must be the author own original work (That is hard to find since most are collections from other authors) Look at advertisement, Where it's sold (reviews and price) It might end up coming down to using a book with multiple authors, but it still relates to my project because it's still a short story book that I need to learn about, from the cover, story-themed, price and reviews.

FMP Pitch

This is my link to my FMP presentation. I used the website prezi.com because I think it makes the presentation more interesting and better than using powerpoint.

Megan's FMP Pitch

This is the recording and audio of me doing my presentation with Nick. What I was doing was explaining what I am doing for my FMP, my plans, who my target audience are and my research idea are. At the end of the presentation he explained what I could do to help with my timeline, like my stories I needs more deadline for each instead of just one and then to get people who are my target audiences to proofread and get their feedback on what's good, what they might want differently and main making sure there are no mistakes.


Recorded FMP Pitch


Getting the feedback I got has helped me with how I will do certain things for my project like the proofreading, At the moment I am requesting to join two horror fan based group (might join more) on which I will ask if aloud to link in original story works and if so then I will use the website FictionPress to download my stories (one at a time) and get others to comment on it, and I'll ask if they could add in their age or put in between (example 20-30) if they feel more comfortable. It will help give me an idea on the type of age group who are reading my stories and that way I can update my audience ages group; if turns out there are younger or older who enjoy's reading my stories.

Strength and weakness throughout the course

Strengths

I would say a strength of mine that started of as a weakness would be presenting. I do still get nervous, but I do think as time gone by and the amount of presentation I've done on the course, I believe it has improved me more to be able to present.

Finding links relating to my project and giving a reason for why it relates to my project I think is something I am good at doing. Meaning that I don't use non-usefully for my project and instead using information that will come in useful.

Weakness

I think a weakness of mine is to talk to someone face to face, like if I had a question that needs answering, then I'll use Facebook as a way to communicate with other instead of going up to someone and talk to them.

I would say my timing on asking the question on social media - groups, needs to improve on and to find other sources to get answers from. So being told I need to expand on using more than one social media when asking questions.


Photoshop, depending on the area I am doing, I'm still not 100% confident in using photoshop. Some parts of Photoshop I am ok with using, but for others, it will involve using youtube to help me create what I want.


Photoshop is a topic I need to improve on for my FMP as I will be creating two book covers. One which I am pretty confident I will be able to do, the other will be a bit of a challenge, but I want to try.

Strength/Weakness 

Questionnaires I think are a weakness and strength. The strength I would say is asking the right questions, I might ask all question I should, but I do ask ones that do relates to my project. Why it's also a weakness because of who I ask them to, I need to start asking people that are interested in what I am doing. For example last year I wrote a horror story and the Facebook pages I posted a link to my survey were, my page, Bladud Digital and the Major Crimes Fan page. Now I did get replies back, but it would have been better if I had used group pages that had a related interest in horror themed.

The questionnaire is what I need and will improve on for my FMP. The idea is to find groups that should relate to self-publishing, to horror, books in general (Idea is to email publishers)

FMP ASSESMENT 1.1

FMP Creative thinking techniques
Publishing - Ebook, Book, Magazine, Website, App, Poster. Ebook/Book- Write a multiple short story book, fiction, Paranormal. Then self-publish it. Magazine - Bath-based Mag, Genre paranormal, buildings, tours, etc. Objects and facts. Website - Bath-based website, paranormal side. Similar to the mag

The purpose of the Creative thinking technique. On this document, I will be listing the variety of publishing that I could do for my FMP. Then I can list the ones I could do and write down what next to it what I could do. Example Magazine - I could write a paranormal magazine about bath, buildings, history and ghost tour, ECT.

This will also show that I have thought about other individual projects I could do and explain why I chose the one I will be doing for my FMP. I will also write down what and how I will accomplish the goal for my FMP and also explain what issues I will have and how I will overcome it.

My Inspiration for my FMP project is, author Paige Mckenzie, the genre Paranormal, and style is drawn images. (Photoshop design drawing)

1. Multiple short story book's. Because for my Project I've decided that in the time I have I didn't have enough to write one whole novel so instead I choose to go with writing a short story book with multiple plus I also like the idea of writing more than one story with a mixed variety or horror stories.

2. Genre/theme, Paranormal and car journey. Why it's my inspiration because it a genre I am confident in writing about, it a genre where you can come up with loads of creative stories which I have a lot of ideas for different stories for my FMP. The main theme for the stories is car journey because from looking up different books I've not seen any stories relating to car journeys and I thought it would make a cool and fun themed for the multiple short stories.

3. Drawn images. (Photoshop design drawing). I've noticed how most book covers are drawn then taken and I wanted to give drawing ago because they always look good and also it will also be different from the last previous book covers I've which have all been photos.

Examples
  

Developments I need is photoshop skills. I know what I want my cover to look like, I need to look up tutorials that relate's to what I want. The main one would be youtube, watching some videos to decide which would be easier to copy from and also do a bit of experimenting. Because I want my cover to be drawn I’m going to need help and tips to get it looking good and professional, So my plan is to each lesson I will try and draw one of the images needed for my book cover then decide whether to use it or. Another development will be needed to maybe update my Grammarly account to get more help with grammar and others. Reason why is because I use Grammarly a lot for spelling and grammar, but I am still being told that my grammar needs improving and since I want to self-publish my book it needs fewer mistakes and to make sure I make fewer mistakes I will need to update it in order to get more help with other writing issues.
Lastly, I will also need to improve my people skills, because for one part of the project I will need to ask some question for my research project. Even though I have an answer to my question, I still like to hear from a person profession on what my options are.

Issues at this point I have is, having my stories re-looked at. I want to have my stories to be looked at by a proofreader, and so far in Bath, I have not been able to find one. I was hoping to have someone in Bath to look at it because I thought it would be better but I think I might either search online or have others I know to look over it for me, including myself. Also to look up on how to be your self-proof reader to help me out more.

With wanting to draw the cover I know I have given myself a big challenge because it's not one of my strong points, but I will also create my cover using a website I have found and took photos. My worry is taking pictures to use for my cover then being sued because the area I took the picture is some own property, which is one of the reasons why I wanted to draw the cover so that I don’t have to worry about that. I’m hoping because it’s an image of a road it won’t count as that but it’s something I will need to look up to make sure that's not the case.

Conclusion

My book cover will be my biggest challenge so that it will need more attention to it. I need to do research on rights to images and properties, more videos on drawings using photoshop.

My stories at this point are going well, (writing wises) But I will need to look up someone to edit my work or for myself to learn to self-proofread my own stories, But I will get others like the family member to read it through at least.

The research I think won’t be a big problem for me but I need to add more images to, my blogs.