helena frith powell

  • Lifestyle
  • Women
  • Beauty
  • France
  • Contact

How to become a best-selling author

25th November 2006 by Helena 3 Comments  

I don’t know, do you? Maybe I should ask the odious Jeffrey. All I know is that having written three books, had this last one and the one before serialised in both the Daily Mail and the Sunday Times and had great reviews, the only real money I ever seem to make from my books is when my publisher sells them to other publishers or the papers start a bidding war to serialise them.

Ciao Bella is doing OK. Waterstone’s in the King’s Road has it in the window (or it did last time I was there, I even have a photo) it is on the tables at the front of the shop and I have been droning on about it endlessly on the radio, in the papers, even a TV appearance. So why is the odious Jeffrey on the bestseller list and I’m not? Is it because he writes a better book? I don’t think so. Is it because people don’t want to read a better book? Everyone I know (even strangers) who has read Ciao Bella loves it. So what’s going wrong?

Having spent most of my adult life trying, fighting to get a book published I thought that would be it. Instant fame and fortune, goodbye to my day job. But it hasn’t worked out that way, at least not yet. Oh well, as I heard in that oracle of common sense, The Simpsons, “forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling”.


Filed Under: blog --> Tagged With: author, become, selling

3 thoughts on How to become a best-selling author

  • Carmen says:
    25th November 2006 at 9:04 pm

    Hi Helena,

    Golly, I never look up these post a comment do da’s but I just finished Ciao Bella and had to tell you direct that I enjoyed it enormously! I was so keen to read what else you had to say about writing the book.

    Your meeting with your father in the fog on the beach was so beautifully described…the book was an incredible set of stories woven together and it will be wonderful for your children to have.

    Contrasting it with my own upbringing was depressing (…”brought up on farm in Australian outback…sheep farmer father has no clue who Dante was but showed me lots of paddocks…so useful when trying to get ahead in the music industry in London”)

    Many thanks and best wishes, Carmen

  • Kajsa says:
    28th November 2006 at 9:08 am

    Hejsan Helena!
    Hoppas du inte har något emot att jag skriver på svenska. Efter att ha läst “Two Lipsticks and a Lover” Har jag via amazon beställt ciao Bella Jag ser framemot att läsa den, och så även min granne
    Lycka till !
    Kram, Kajsa
    ..

  • helena says:
    14th December 2006 at 8:51 pm

    Hi Carmen
    Many thanks for your message. I thikn the Australian outback sounds very glam, and Dante can get tedious, especially when you’re 14 and in love with John Travolta….
    All best
    Helena

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

© 2021 Helena Frith Powell
Website by Web Inclusion
/* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: content-template-for-layout-for-header-and-footer-layout - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .helenaHero .mainTitle h1{ font-size:3em; -webkit-transition: all 0.8s; -moz-transition: all 0.8s; -ms-transition: all 0.8s; -o-transition: all 0.8s; transition: all 0.8s; margin-top:-100%; padding-top:100px; padding-bottom:50px; margin:0; } .scrolled .helenaHero .mainTitle h1{ font-size:1.2em; padding-top:30px; padding-bottom:20px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: content-template-for-layout-for-header-and-footer-layout - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17hfp_about - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .HFPA-section{ width:100%; background:#eee; } .HFPA-Image{ background-position:center right; background-repeat:no-repeat; height:276px; width:100%; -webkit-filter: grayscale(100%); /* Safari 6.0 - 9.0 */ filter: grayscale(100%); } .HFPA-Text{ padding:20px 10px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17hfp_about - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17footer - start */ /* ----------------------------------------- */ .footIt{ background:#222; padding:20px 10px; } /* ----------------------------------------- */ /* Content Template: 17footer - end */ /* ----------------------------------------- */