Steven Savile – Dr Who & Torchwood Writer Makes it Big on Kindle
Steven Savile has had an amazing career, writing tie-in novels for Dr Who and Torchwood as well as working as an editor and also writing original work. In this interview, Steven spoke about how he became a writer and the best ways for writers to make themselves known.
Darrell - How did you become a writer?
Steven - Oh goodness me, what a big question to start off with. Okay, basically I started out writing quite young, like most people, but didn't get serious about it until my early 20s, in which case I was reliant upon friends and family putting up with my 'madness'. My first sale came 19 years ago this month, actually, to Exuberance, a magazine in the UK. Paid fifty quid for a story 'Coming For to Carry You Home' as in Swing low, sweet chariot. It was a horror story, but with a hokey faux Stephen King style homely voice. I remember it getting a brilliantly awful review, something along the lines of take a dollop of Clive Barker, add in a soupcon of Stephen King, a dash of Graham Masterton and spice with a little Richard Laymon and you've got the recipe for Steve Savile's story... brutal but quite true. Starting out it's so hard to find your own voice and just be the best YOU you can be.
I then sold like wildfire, but you'd never believe it to see what actually appeared. I sold a novel to a publisher in the UK that never came out because of the paper price hike and the whole rainforest deforestation thing. I sold 4 stories, including a serialised 50,000 word story to Frighteners and Fear, our two big newsstand magazines. The day the first one, In Darkness, We Sleep, was due to appear the parent company Newsfield International went bust, so somewhere there was a warehouse with thirty thousand copies of my big break mouldering away...
Then I wrote a novel, Laughing Boy's Shadow, which was bought by Tanjen, a small press in the UK that had bookstore distribution, who went bust before it came out. I sold it to Gargadillo in the US, who went bust before it came out. I sold it to Indigo in the US who went bust before it came out. I sold it to Dark Tales as a follow up to Secret Life of Colours, who went bust before it came out. I sold it Aleph in Sweden, making it's first print appearance actually not in the English language. Subsequently I self-published 250 copies of it via my website and sold out in 2 weeks. That was back in 2001/2, so pretty much a decade ago. I recently sold it as a gorgeous limited edition hardcover/paperback in the US with Horror World, run by the fabulous Nanci Kalanta, who read the manuscript, cried, and two years later when she was setting up her small press asked me if she could do it. It's probably my most treasured possession. I love what she did with it. This month I retitled it Outcasts and put it up on the kindle in the UK/US at a bargain 99c/70p because it's a book I really do love and it feels like the little story that could...
During lots of ups and downs I made friends with a tremendously talented writer, Steve Bowkett, who happened to make note that his publishers, Hendersons, were looking for writers to work on a teen horror line. So I phoned up the editor on his recommendation, we chatted and she said 'Ah, you sound fab, but we're full on the horror... do you think you could write a pre-teen romance?' so... I obviously said 'I can do that!' and was greeted by 'great, we need the outline on our desks by 5pm tomorrow because we're commissioning now.' I took the then girlfriend and all of her friends out for a beer or three and asked them a gazillion questions about what they thought was 'hot romance' when they were 11-12 and came up with a pitch. Delivered it via fax from the local post office at 4:55 the next day and got a phone call at 5:30 saying 'this is brilliant. We love love love it... but it's too much like Steve Bowkett's story, can you give us another idea for tomorrow morning?' so I did... and they loved it. But the series was dropped before the books came out. However, it established a good working relationship with the editor, who then hired me to write a kid's guide to the internet in 1995 (pre-explorer/netscape stuff) that never came out, and then hired me to write my first two published books, a kid's adaptation of Return of the Jedi and a Jurassic Park II: Lost World data file. So in 1997 I was all set to be a kids writer.
The big change in fortune came around 2001 when I won the Writers of the Future award for Bury my Heart at the Garrick, a fantasy version of the last week of Houdini's life.
That led to this. I've worked in lots of different franchises now, things like Dr Who, Stargate, Primeval, Torchwood, Warhammer, Slaine, all things I either loved as a kid, or came to love as an adult... and on the side continued to write my original stuff, culminating in Silver, which came out in hardcover last year, and Immortal, which is due any day now...
Darrell - You've previously written for Dr Who, Torchwood, Primeval and other TV series. How has writing for TV influenced the way you write your novels?
Steven - Probably the biggest thing is character and understanding how important the people are in a story, then it's forced me to listen and listen hard. As a writer doing tv stuff your characters need to SOUND and ACT just as they would in the shows. You need to sound like John Barrowman or Dougie Henshall when you're writing a line for Captain Jack or Professor Cutter. It then becomes very useful when writing your own stuff because you get how the nuances of character work so much better than before. I'm a better writer now for all the tie-in stuff I've done. Of course you also start to think in terms of cycles not acts - a tv show has a fairly standard set-up, cliffhanger, fail, victory cycle... like those old Dr Who episodes from the classic series used to have (and then broadcast on four evenings a week so you'd keep coming back night after night...)
Darrell - How did you break into writing TV tie-in books - and is it a profitable course for authors to take?
Steven - That's another one of those long stories short things, I had done a few Warhammer bits and bobs, and found some of the Big Finish Dr Who books in a Waterstones in Nottingham. I had no idea that new adventures were going on (and it was pre new WHO) so I dropped them an email and Ian Farrington was in the process of editing The Centenarian. He offered me a slot for a short story and it took me quite literally forever to do Falling From Xian because I was obsessed with it being 'Dr Who' and not wanting to screw it up... from there I basically bartered one job for another, approaching publishers with 'Hi, I've written x, y and z and would love to work with you!' It worked.
In terms of profitable, tie-ins are a mixed bag. Many outsell traditional fantasy/sf novels probably 10-1 but they're selling the franchise not the writer so a lot of the audience won't follow from one series to another. I joke about being the most famous author you've never heard of... I wouldn't advise it to the majority of new writers though, it can be soul destroying watching the stuff you're most proud of being culled from the work because it's not 'x' series... and fans of certain shows are rabid. They all have their own versions of how that world really is and if you don't match their expectations they'll merrily crucify you for it. I enjoy it though. I enjoy the challenge of working in other people's sandboxes and playing with their toys.
Darrell - "Silver" is currently in the top 100 Bestselling Kindle books. How did you achieve such a fantastic accomplishment?
Steven - It's been top 20 for about 2 months now. I can't really take any credit for it. I've only just updated my website (http://www.stevensavile.com) for the first time in 8 months. It was 17 months before that for the previous update. I've added a newsletter function and a blog and am trying to be much more conscious of connecting with readers than I have been before. With Silver the only real piece of 'cleverness' in terms of the UK ebook was that I wrote a self-contained story featuring Noah Larkin, one of the characters, and offered it for free - all people had to do was email in to get it. I had a few hundred people do just that. Then once I was ready to do the UK ebook I sent a single email to these guys and said 'you might like to know...' it was just enough to break the top 100 thrillers... but the success came from the book itself and word of mouth and all those good old fashioned things writers have no control over. I just wrote what I think/hope was a good book.
Of course, when it first came out in the US I did the blog tours and signings and such, but that effort seemed to have minimal effect, so I work on the logic that the best promotion for your book is another book... and keep on writing.
Darrell - What do you think are the best ways for writers to market themselves i.e. Facebook, Twitter, book signings etc?
Steven - See above. I really don't know. Just be yourself. Write good books. Be the best you can be. I have Facebook but I use it mainly to chat with friends. I think Twitter's worthless. Book signings you are generally meeting people who would already/usually buy your book so you're not reaching new readers... so the long and the short of it is I don't know. You just have to find what you are comfortable with and what expresses your personality best. It should be different for everyone. I just shiver when I see some stuff though. Be classy.
Darrell - What advice would you give to someone about to self publish their first ebook?
Steven - Right now we're looking at a fairly level playing field, I think. For once you have a chance of finding an audience for your work without being dependent upon the old structures. While Amazon are playing nice you want to look at establishing some shelf-space. You need to be professional about it though. Think of yourself as a brand. I know it's a dirty word for creatives, but if you look at my website, you look at the blog, the newsletter, the book covers, there's a very definite visual theme running through all of this stuff, so you can look and go 'ah that's by the guy who did Silver...' it creates brand identity and faith in that brand. If you enjoyed Silver the odds are you'll enjoy Immortal, and Outcasts... that's what the visuals are saying. Think long and hard about pricing. I went low. A lot of colleagues claim that by doing so I devalued my brand - but it was a deliberate move. I priced it in impulse price territory where even if you don't like it you're unlikely to feel that you wasted your 70p. I make 21p a copy sold. On my latest paperback in the UK I make about 50p a copy sold... so I need to sell 2-1 on the ebooks basically to bring home the same income. I could price it at 1.49 and bring in a quid, doubling the royalty on normal paperback, but right now people in the UK are still new to the kindle and are shopping for bargains. The sweet point on prices will rise, I'm fairly sure, but today, low=attractive.
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