Cannes 2012 Begins

Posted on April 26, 2012 by

Once again Cannes has crept up on us without warning.  I mean it’s always at the same time of the year and it only happens annually so you would think we would have plenty of time to get ready, but somehow we always leave France at the end of May convinced we have all the time in the world, but the next thing you know it’s right in front of you.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, Cannes – in this context – is the once-yearly international film festival that takes place on the French Riviera.  This makes the headlines round the world as one of the most prestigious film awards ceremonies of the year, but what many people don’t realise is that more goes on there than just the awards.  It is also one of the world’s largest film markets, and that is where the real business of film-making takes place.

In the Marché du Film behind and underneath the main Palais du Festival buyers and sellers congregate to connect film makers with those who want to distribute them and get them in front of an audience.  Films that have been made on spec are presented as finished products to buyers who then work out the best place to screen them for the maximum return.  Every year thousands of films are connected with audiences in this very building.

And in the hotels and houses on the other side of the road deals are struck and films are commissioned by the big studios and financiers.  It is an ideal opportunity to put a full package together, as during the couple of weeks of the festival thousands of actors pass through the town and cross paths with locations, film commissions, script writers, photographers and everything else you need to make a film.

Cannes is where the film world happens.  And so we go there.

Playing with CO2 ice

Posted on March 24, 2012 by

Randomly got hold of a box of discarded CO2 ice the other day and thought it would make a good addition to a photo shoot.  The thing about dry ice is that if you put it in water it bubbles violently and gives off steam in rolling clouds.  Light it right and put it in the proper setting and it can look really mysterious.

img_3948

The cauldron was one I had lying around that I picked up in a charity shop a while ago.  Add in a birdbath and it gets a bit surreal.

img_3931

The other fun to have is to start messing around with the colour profiles.  There’s nothing modern about a bubbling cauldron, so why not give the pictures an aged look.

img_3940

Through the Square Window – Promotion

Posted on February 16, 2012 by

This week I used a new facility on Amazon to help promote my two books.  I had no idea what to expect or if it would even be any use at all, but a few people had suggested on Google+ that it had worked well for them.  As it was not going to cost me anything it seemed like a good idea to try, so I gave it a go… and Through the Square Window got to number 9 on the charts!

So how did this happen?  Quite frankly I have no idea, but here is what I did and maybe you can make sense of it.

Publishing something on the Kindle platform through Amazon is relatively easy from a technical point of view.  So long as you have the right tools and some basic knowledge of how the system works you can create good quality e-books yourself without having to go through any costly publishing companies.  This sounds great, but of course the cost of generating the e-book is not the end of it.  Assuming you wrote the book well enough in the first place that people will enjoy actually reading it, you still have the basic challenge of letting people know that it exists so they can buy it in the first place.

Without a budget, social networking is your friend here.  Get the message out to everyone you know, and if you’re lucky enough of them will be interested – and have Kindles – and buy a copy.  But that’s often where it stops.  Nobody else hears about you and your book stops selling.

Reducing the price can help encourage sales, but for most copyright works Amazon have a minimum price at which they will let you list your book.  This is fine if people are already buying it, but even £1.95 is more than some people are willing to pay for a book that might be utter tripe.  This is where the Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program comes in.  If you enrol your book with KDP Select not only is it eligible to be ‘borrowed’ under Amazon’s library system but you can list your book as free for a set period.

Giving your book away for nothing may seem like a strange way to generate actual paying sales, but on Amazon it kind of makes sense.  Go and buy a book there and the bottom of your screen is lined with pictures of other books under the heading “People who bought this also bought…”.  If you can get your book out to a number of people then every time someone searches for a book there is the possibility that yours may end up in the list at the bottom of the screen.  Having seen it they might just click on it.

So I tried it.

 

And the picture above shows what happened.  For no reason that I’ve been able to fathom, about 36 hours into a 48 hour promotion Through the Square Window hit number 9 on the Bestsellers (free) list.  Amazing.

Since the promotion has ended my sales have dropped again, but to a far higher level than they were at before it.  This was definitely a success that I would consider using again, although you don’t want to do it too often I would imagine, or people will know to wait until the next time before buying it for free.

G