10 tips on taking photos of a book you've written

 

Writers need a huge variety to photographs of their books and publications for publicity, illustrating blog posts and social media stories.

Ten hints:

1. Always use a spotlight - a desk lamp will do - or wait for lovely outdoor light.

2. Think about who is going to read your book, where and why. Dream up your ideas accordingly.

3. Chose a minor colour used on the cover for your background, eg gold or dark grey. A pashmina scarf works well as the fabric looks good when well lit.

4. Only use 1, 3 or 5 props with a limited palette of colours. You don't want to distract from the book.

5. Chose attractive props: sunglasses and a straw hat with a few leaves suggest summer reading. Spectacles with comparison books and a steaming cup of coffee work well for winter. Wrapping paper and ribbon suggest the book would make a good present. vintage black and white photos illustrate 20th Century historical fiction. Feature an ebook on Kindle or open a magazine showing your article.

6. Focus on the most important aspect of your book such as the title or author name.

7. Frame as closely as you dare but try to feature the spine.

8. When you take portraits of people, animals or birds compose the image with one eye in the centre of the shot.

9. If you are after a comic shot, crop the subject off at a shoulder joint.

10. Play around with filers or cropping until you get it right. Discard any that aren't perfect.

Enjoy yourself. This should be quicker than using Canva or CGI. Take three aspects of each shot: square for Instagram, landscape for Facebook and Twitter, Portrait for Facebook or Instagram Stories.

Sophie Neville won the Create! prize for photography

Author Sophie Neville has been shortlisted in three writing competitions and wins the Eyelands Book Award for an unpublished historical novel.

 

Author Sophie Neville

Sophie Neville currently has an unpublished novel 'in the running for the shortlist' of the Chanticleer Hemmingway Award for a wartime story in the USA. It did well in ACFW's First Impressions writing contest, reaching the semifinals in the Historical category.

The sequel has been shortlisted by Flash 500's Novel Opening Competition, by Fiction Factory, and the Virginia Prize for Fiction 2022. 

It has been highly ranked by Launch Pad in the USA, and won the Eyelands Book Awards for an unpublished historical novel on 30th December 2022, which was exciting.

For updates and more information, please see SophieNeville.net/news

An answer to prayer

But it will turn out for you as an occasion for testimony

Luke 21 v 30 NKJV 

I was single for a long time - which can be quite a grief. When I reached the age of about thirty-severn, I needed to decide where I should live so asked the Lord, ‘Will I have children?’ I didn’t hear a loud voice but was amazed to receive four words as if they had been spoken: ‘You will have grandchildren.' 

In 2004, at the age of forty-three, I was at an archery tournament, fed up with being single, when I prayed a really grumpy sort of prayer along the lines of, ‘Why can’t I marry that nice man over there?’ After about five seconds, he strode over, asked my father something, then put an arm around my shoulders. Four months later we walked down the aisle. I had never married or had children, but he was a widower, so I inherited his three. I now have five grandchildren. The twin boys and their parents came to live with us for nine months over Lockdown, which was wonderful.

Sophie Neville with the grandchildren

Funnily Enough is being recorded as an audiobook

   You restored me to health 

and let me live. 

Surely it was for my benefit 

that I suffered such anguish.

In your love you kept me

   from the pit of destruction;

you have put all my sins

   behind your back.

Isaiah 38

The good news is that 'Funnily Enough' will soon be available as an audiobook. I was recovering from a chest infection when we began narrating it and got a bit croaky but the recording will continue this month at Monkeynut Studios in Hampshire who produce Christian audiobooks. 

It will soon be available on all the usual retail platforms.

 Do you not know?
   Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
   the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
   and his understanding no one can fathom.
²⁹ He gives strength to the weary
   and increases the power of the weak.
³⁰ Even youths grow tired and weary,
   and young men stumble and fall;
³¹ but those who hope in the Lord
   will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
   they will run and not grow weary,
   they will walk and not be faint.

Isaiah 40 28-41

Sophie Neville, author of 'Funnily Enough' is short-listed for The Virginia Prize for Fiction 2022

Author Sophie Neville has been longlisted for The Virginia Prize for Fiction, 2022

 

One of Sophie Neville's unpublished historical novels has been longlisted for The Virginia Prize for Fiction with seven other writers.  The bi-annual literary competition is open to women of any nationality from any country, so it has been a great honour to be included.

Sophie Neville

The competition is hosted by the award-winning publisher Aurora Metro Books who list Virginia Woolf along with their other ground-breaking writers such as Germaine Greer, Benjamin Zephaniah, Meera Syal, Sarah Waters, Kit de Waal, Philippa Gregory, AS Byatt, Claire Tomalin, Suchen Christine Lim and Jean-Claude Carriere.

'A Girl Called Redemption' is about a bright Tanganyikan girl who finds unexpected humour working as a cook on the tropical island of Zanzibar in the heady days leading up to Christmas 1963. The plot twists like the alleyways of Stone Town as revolution and the threat of conjugal slavery separate her from the man she grows to love. 

To read more about Sophie, please see her website here 

 

 

Sophie Neville has a new novel short-listed in the Eyelands Book Awards 2021

 

Author Sophie Neville has been short-listed for an Eyelands International Book Award for an unpublished historical novel. The results are out on 30th December, with an awards ceremony to be held in Athens in 2022.

Here is Sophie's profile in their listing, which can be found on the Eyelands website here

Sophie is featured on the video about 2.30 minutes in:

Eyelands International Book Awards sponsored by Strangedays Books

Very Happy 2019!

Further adventures of the Donny Osmond Hat

It is still shiny. The purple velvet cap, bought in Carnaby Street in the late sixties, had a little outing recently, making an appearance on the local 6 O'clock News.

'Where did you get that hat?' I was asked.

'It's my mother's!'

I had to plough through our family snaps in an effort to date it. Here it is on a car-ferry with us in tow. Note Mum's brown suede coat with large rounded collars. She always worried about it getting spoilt in the rain. As children, we wore more resiliant anoraks or duffel coats with mittens attached to the sleeves. Turn your head and all you saw with the inside of the duffel's hood

We must have been off to the Channel Islands. What date? 1969? 1970? I would have been nine years old, wearing what we called a 'parker' - a prototype hoody made of pale grey cotton with someone's logo printed to the front.

Mum was working for HTV as a television presenter, making a special programme on Jersey when hired a sports car and zoomed around the harbour.

We visited Gerald Durrell's zoo.

My mother bought the hat in an effort to look glamourous when there was no hairdresser at hand. She said it was very expensive but acquired at a good price because there was a slight flaw in the velvet. Here we are at a wedding, Mum in white tights and the three of us in itchy crimplene dresses and straw bonnets.

It can be seen here matched with frothier dress, what must have been a fore-runner to Laura Ashley's designs with lacy bits, frilly cuffs and a pie-crust collar.

Was this the same hat, far right, on the set of the HTV drama series 'Arthur of the Britons'? I wore brown cordory and Mum her safari jacket. My sister was in Saxon costume, standing by to appear in the arms of Oliver Tobias who was playing King Arthur.

I wear the cap now when skies are grey or when I'm sailing. It is comfortable and remarkably good in all weathers. It never complains. How old it is now? 47 years? 48? The label says, 'MALYARD HATS LONDON W1. Chris Holmes has written in to say it was probably designed by the leading London hatter and milliner George Malyard whose work is listed in the Archive of Art and Design at the V&A Museum. You can see photographs of other hats made in 1969 here and here

I hope it's not too precious to wear sailing.

~Author Sophie Neville on the Solway~