Author Charles Fernyhough, who is publishing his second novel A Box of Birds with Unbound, explains how our crowd-funded publishing model actually works and why it’s good in a brilliant new blog post. You can read it below and head over to his blog Pieces of Light for more.

This crowd-funding business is new territory for all of us, so I thought I’d put together a few FAQs to help you decide.

This is one of those internet scams, isn’t it? Not at all. The people behind Unbound are highly respected in the literary and media worlds. They have a sound business model and have already brought established writers like Terry Jones and Tibor Fischer into print, with Kate Mosse and Jonathan Meades set to follow soon. They make lovely books and publicise them well, and I want mine to be one of them.

What are the risks, then? There aren’t any. You either get a beautiful book (and help a writer get back into doing what he loves most) or, if the project isn’t funded, you get a full refund.

Why are you self-publishing? I’m not. If I were self-publishing I would be paying for my book to be printed. (Here’s some more on how the Unbound model differs.) There are many reasons for taking the subscription-funding route, and one is that it gives me a chance to talk about why the book is important before it is actually published. (I’ve been doing that here and here.) There’s nothing particularly new in the subscription-funding model; it was big in the eighteenth century and Unbound are simply reviving it for the modern era.

What’s this about getting your name in the back of the book? When you pledge for a book, your name is recorded and entered into the subscription list, which will then be printed in the back of every edition that appears.

So can I change the name to make it a gift? Certainly. Once you have pledged, there’s a button on the right which allows you to change the name in the back of the book. Change this to the name of the gift recipient, and their name will be printed in the back of every edition of the novel. How’s that for literary immortality?

Am I going to get loads of junk mail? No. You have to register with an email address so that Unbound know who you are. They send a weekly newsletter, but you can easily opt out of that. That’s all.

It’s OK, I’ll just wait for the paperback. Er, no. There will be no paperback unless the project is funded. Help me to cross the finishing line and there will be a subsequent trade edition in partnership with Faber (due next year), with the potential for foreign editions and translations. Once the book is published by Unbound (in August, if I get funded on schedule), it will automatically be eligible for prizes and various other good things. But for that to happen, I need your support. You can do everything you need to do here. Thanks so much.

 
You can click here to watch Charles’ pitch video for the book, read an excerpt from, and find out how to support the publication of A Box of Birds.

Eventually, no matter how hard you try to avoid them, most marriages are ‘blessed’ with little ones - tiny bundles of ‘joy’ that will turn your lives upside down (assuming they were the right way up to begin with). Before you know it, you will have completely forgotten what it’s like to have a proper night’s sleep, a peaceful car journey and crayon-free walls. Fortunately, being married to Stephen, I was already well used to all of these things.

As any almost perfect mother knows, your offspring’s childhood is marked by distinctly different periods. The first of these is known as ‘the terrible twos’, when your child first begins to develop a sense of their place in the world and begins to push boundaries, often refusing to do as they are told. This is followed by the thoroughly unpleasant threes, the frightful fours, the forgettable fives, the soul-destroying sixes, the simply dreadful sevens, the excruciating eights, the nightmarish nines, the tiresome tens, the egregious elevens and the traumatic twelves. Then they’re into their teens and things start to go downhill. My advice is just to sit tight and wait for it to pass. In another room. With a nice cup of tea. Or a bottle of gin.

When it comes to your children’s behaviour, teamwork is all-important. Whether rewarding or disciplining a child, the key is consistency - otherwise they will never learn right from wrong. In order to ensure this, it’s important that both you and your partner work together. Some couples adopt a good cop/bad cop approach - Stephen prefers good cop/Robocop. I smile benignly whenever our children misbehave and he walks around in a metal suit shooting things. It seems to work. It’s inherent in youngsters to want to push the boundaries you impose on them - it’s all part of growing up but it can lead to confrontation, tantrums and tears.

My answer to this is simple - if you don’t give your children any boundaries, they will have nothing to push!

Many so-called childcare expects claim that you should regularly praise your children but I disagree. This can lead to over-confidence and possibly arrogance when they grow older, plus there’s nothing more unbearable than a mother relentlessly extolling their child’s virtues against all evidence to the contrary. Even if your son or daughter should do something you deem praiseworthy, such as painting a pretty picture or composing a symphony, just carry on as if nothing has happened and before long, not only will they develop a true sense of their self-worth but they’ll stop pestering you when you’re trying to watch Countdown. Ignore some sense into them - that’s what I say, dears.

Read the rest of the piece at The Huffington Post site…
And you can find out more about her book, How to Have an Almost Perfect Marriage, read excerpts from it and even buy it now if you want by clicking here.