My Audio Book Journey #1

Last year I set out to convert both my published novels, One Apple Tasted and Sail Upon the Land, into audio books, and I'd like to share my research, the process, what I did wrong - and right - and what happened next, as it unfolds.

But first a bit of background.

Publication has been far from straightforward for me. As the sole breadwinner for what Trollope would call 'a promising family' of three children, taking the James Mortmain (the experimental novelist father in I Capture the Castle) route -impoverishing his family for the sake of his art - would have been unacceptable to me. And it is a truth only whispered that most creative writing is supported by other work (journalism, teaching etc), kind and solvent partners and/or family/inherited money. This has the unfortunate effect of excluding a diversity of voices who can't afford it.

In December 2022, Martin Reed wrote that ALCS (Authors' Licensing & Collecting Society) report shows a 60% drop in median incomes since 2006, so things are even more precarious than when I first tried. The days of huge advances or being able to earn a living at fiction are long gone, unless you are a tiny minority of bestsellers.

ALCS argues this is evidence of a 'global trend towards the devaluing of creative labour' - and yet us writers just keep on writing. 

I've always earned my living as a writer - to start with as a features writer and commissioning editor on magazines and newspapers from Vogue and Country Living to the Times and the Telegraph. As an early adopter, I was writing digital content from 1995 - first, trying to persuade my media employers that the internet was coming and would gobble them up unless they paid attention.

I felt like Cassandra wailing on the walls of Troy.

I retreated to the commercial digital world and wrote and content designed things like the Land Rover website, both short and long form, Marks & Spencer fashion copy and the Tesco Real Food website. 

All the time I was itching to write fiction and poetry, and squeezed out stories and poems in the slivers of time between school runs, teenagerdom (a vast kingdom of pain and joy and sucked up time), contracts, and the labour of looking after a family on my own. 

In 1995, I went to Arvon where Beryl Bainbridge was one of the tutors. She loved my work and introduced me to her agent. I made my first mistake when I accepted an invitation from another agent to represent my first novel One Apple Tasted, which he loved.

He had sadly misrepresented me and my work and, although we got close with Victor Gollanz, in the end the weirdly random rejections wore my spirit right down and I consigned OAT to the bottom drawer. I went back to family and work and left my dreams behind. I didn't have time to dwell on what might have been.

In a series of bizarre events, that manuscript came out of hiding and was picked up by Elliott & Thompson for their launch list, and finally - edited and updated - saw the light of day in 2009. It garnered terrific reviews including a lovely one in the Independent:

'Following in the footsteps of once-popular novelists Rose Macaulay and Margaret Kennedy, Josa Keyes debuts with an entertaining and charming romance about love, sex and the upper-middle classes behaving badly.'

It sold fine. I did a few festivals, all seemed well. I wrote a piece about sex for the Telegraph which sold lots of copies.

My second novel was nearly finished. Another agent loved it - but rinse, repeat is all I'm going to say about that. It didn't sell to a publisher in spite of much positive feedback from fellow novelists and readers. Generous Sunday Times bestseller Katie Fforde offered a coveted coverline without even being asked, as did the much admired Rachel Hore.

Using skills picked up in my other professional lives, not the least project management, I published Sail Upon the Land in 2014. It was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society prize in 2015. It's now gained a solid 746 4* ratings on Amazon, and continues to attract praise, such as from Ms Rebecca on Goodreads from the US: 'This book, this slim little story of four generations of souls brings feelings in waves. I cared for every one of one of them, I laughed a few times, and tears streamed for a long while. The descriptions of places may make them live and breathe enough that they become characters themselves, never to the point of suffocation though.' 

The saddest line for me in many a review is, 'I look forward to more from this author.' What is lacking in my life is time, encouragement, backing and everything else you need to pop out your best work.

The children are far more independent now and first lockdown gave me a break to think about myself and what I wanted. Unable to perform my poetry, I published a slim volume called My Love Life & Other Disasters. That too garnered lovely reviews and I've been quoted in the Times and the Telegraph. 

At last I had time to think about audio - a format that boomed during the pandemic. The next post will be on what I considered and what I rejected to kick off that process.

Josa Keyes was born in Kent, UK, and ran wild in the countryside until she was corralled into boarding school at 7. Suddenly she found she could read, and 10 years of single-sex boarding school saw her gain a reputation as a bookworm and a place at the University of Cambridge to read English. She entered the Vogue Talent Contest, and was a finalist, which led to 5 years on the job training at Vogue in many useful skills including copywriting, sub editing and proof reading. Her career continued in broadsheet newspapers and glossy magazines until she found the internet in a locked cupboard at work in 1994 and fell in love with that infinite library and art gallery. As sole breadwinner, this meant she could get contracts in the newly emerging digital industry and support her family, although she went back into magazines from time to time - her last paper role being features editor of Vogue in 2006. All the while she wrote the odd poem or short story and attempts at novels.

An early version of One Apple Tasted was written in five weeks in the 90s, but not published until 2009. Her second novel Sail Upon the Land was indie published in 2014 and was long-listed for the Historical Novel Society's award in 2015. In 2019, she took her Master's in Creative Writing at Brunel University London to help kickstart a new phase. The pandemic delayed things a bit, but she took the time to publish poems she'd successfully performed since 2015 in a slim volume called My Love Life & Other Disasters. She starts a new career path in teaching Creative Writing this year with a month in Oxford imparting the joy of poetry and fiction to teenagers from all over the world.