Former Mojo creative Philip Taffs’ novel ‘The Evil Inside’ continues its success across the globe

Former Mojo Melbourne senior writer and creative director, Philip Taffs, began writing his novel ‘The Evil Inside’ – then called ‘The MacCallum’ in 2003.

After writing numerous drafts and being rejected by more than 70 publishers across three continents, he finally decided to self-publish in 2012.

The self-published version earned a glowing review from the respected US reviewer, Kirkus, and Taffs used this as ammunition to approach a new batch of UK publishers.

In 2013, world rights were bought by Quercus in the UK – publishers of the famous ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ series. The book underwent more editing and the title was changed to ‘The Evil Inside’.

Since being published in December 2014, ‘The Evil Inside’ has sold 4,000 copies in Europe and also been released in Spain, Portugal, Australia – and has just this week been pegged for a possible US release.

Reviews have been uniformly positive and in addition to the publicity generated by his Australian publisher, Hachette, Taffs has also marketed ‘The Evil Inside’ himself via paid FaceBook ads, Linkedin posts across various advertising and literary sites and cinema advertising that he has created himself.

Says Taffs: “My advertising training has been invaluable in promoting the book. Writing the book is only one half of the job. The second equally important part is knowing how, when and where to pitch it.

“It becomes a product outside yourself and you need to swap your subjective author hat for your more focussed marketing hat. Hard to believe but sometimes I forget for a moment that I am the author of this book.”