All Change For Authonomy

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Warning - traffic destroying writing post follows...

One of the infamous, shadowy international writers group, the Grey Havens gang, alerted us to a blog post on Harper Collins' Authonomy site which heralds major changes to the site. The post recognises that Authonomy has major structural issues and appears to be a heads-up that changes will be made in the near future that will address these.

Authonomy is a peer-review site for writers to post samples of their work for others to read, criticise and, if they think it is of oustanding, publishable quality, to 'back' it. The most backed books each month are skimmed for a read by Harper Collins' editors. I have written much in the past about authonomy, if you're interested in all the background it's all collected at this here link. Probably the most controversial - and widely read and linked - post is this one, which led to this guest post on Eoin Purcell's blog, apparently so contentious that Eoin froze comments on it. I still think the post I did for Eoin best defines my view on authonomy at that time.

Just to be abundantly clear before I toss my hat once again into the ring of Authonomy debate - I am not sore that my book 'won' but didn't get published. I recognise, more now than ever before, that the book was funny and popular  but very, very badly written. I get that. However, I invested a lot of time, energy and thought into Authonomy and have gained much from my experiences with the site - both personally as a writer and professionally as someone who consults on communications - particularly in the digital/social space. (I have to add this caveat every time, depressingly, as the first response to anything I have to say about Authonomy is so frequently, 'that's just sour grapes cos you didn't get a contract', which isn't the case at all.)

At the time I left authonomy, I wrote:

We've never seen people - even the editors who review the books are anonymous. I'm sure HC thinks its being terribly funky and Web 2.0, but it's not. It's missed the first rule of these types of engagements with a community. Foster a community, be part of a community, engage with the community. HC hasn't, because it doesn't respect that community enough... Many people have had enough of being treated like the carvers in front of Gormenghast - even more so when it's become clear that the Groans don't want any of our carvings.

I liked the Gormenghast analogy so much I used it again in this post on the future of publishing, in which I pointed out that:

With all the energy of a group of kids in a huge playground, we invested a huge amount of time and effort on the site, vying to get to the top and using fair means and foul to do so. At the core of it, though, was a sincere belief in quality – the majority of users adhered to a principle that they’d only ‘back’ books that they would genuinely buy in a bookshop.

The changes that Harper Collins are making to authonomy will refocus the site, the company says, on that idea of rewarding quality rather than the messy cronyism, begging and whoring that has come to characterise the site. As Harper's blog post says:

In recent months, we'll admit that the site has been suffering from a kind of 'vote inflation' where support was given (or traded) very freely and as a result the rank of all books has been somewhat cheapened... We want the charts to mirror more accurately a community consensus, and for the feat of reaching an editor to be based on something other than months of superhuman networking effort. 

That's great, but I can only hope that my silly little voice (and others like me) got heard to some degree in the hallowed halls of Harper Collins: 


A site like that needs the active participation in the community of the organisation behind it. With sincerity that wins the trust of the community. You cannot run online communities, you have to be part of them. You have to accept the principle that you give up ownership in favour of participation. Putting up a patronising blog post every week or so from an editor, or the occasional forum intervention from an unnamed contributor in response to critical threads is not really what Web 2.0 is about, is it? Even the critiques on Authonomy are from unnamed editors. But then my argument is that it was never about critiques.

(that extract from my post on Eoin's blog)

Part of the problem has been, I am quite sure, 'old world thinking' - it's something we come across professionally pretty much every day these days - companies bring us in to consult on social media, digital and community programmes and want someone to provide the content and populate the profiles/communities for them because their own key staff are doing more important stuff, like talking to clients and partners - but the whole point about this stuff  is that it's not an ad campaign. You can't just book it and walk away from it, it's all about engagement and talking to people using new tools and a new degree of accessibility. Sure, it involves being exposed, taking some responsibility and actually engaging with customers and other stakeholders. But those concepts are core to this stuff, not peripheral. You need to be there yourself - just getting some developers or an agency to do it won't work. And running a community site with faceless camp guards policing it won't work either.

If the changes to Authonomy include Harper Collins' editors actually engaging in the site, being named members and helping authors, influencing debate, mentoring work they believe to be of merit, being kind to work that is fifth rate and telling authors, gently, that this is the case - wouldn't that be wonderful? If real world editors actually were part of the community, if books that rose to the top were taken, for instance, into a manuscript development program similar to the Hachette program that got my pal Phillipa Fioretti into print, wouldn't Authonomy very quickly become THE place for any aspiring author to go? Wouldn't it give Harper first dibs on pretty much every emerging talent in the world today?

Yes it would. 

The one thing Authonomy has ever lacked has been the active community participation of the people that created it. If that's about to change, it could be very big news indeed for publishing. And I would welcome it with open arms - it would become what I believed Authonomy was to start with - a vital, energising response from the publishing industry that embraced and leveraged the powerful democratisation of the Internet. 

Gormenghast and the Future of Publishing

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Longer-suffering readers of this silly little blog will know about Harper Collins’ authonomy website and my opinion of it. For those that weren’t around, this post pretty much explains things. The post was something of a bombshell in its time, BTW.

Authonomy was Harper Collins’ attempt to harness the process of change that the Internet is undoubtedly going to bring to publishing in a similar fashion to the change it is bringing the music industry. Although the company scrupulously avoided outlining any strategy, it is my opinion that the overall gameplan was to create a website that would attract authors and encourage them to put their books online (Authonomy), a website for readers (Book Army) and then allow the authors to ‘self publish’ for the readers by using a POD (print on demand) supplier. Today’s POD systems can create high quality single books at near-market prices.

The Authonomy deal was this: if you made it to the top five books each month on Authonomy, a Harper Collins editor would read and critique your manuscript, or MS. Getting an MS in front of a Harper Collins editor is a bit like getting ten minutes with Warren Buffet to chat about your new business proposal – and just as difficult. So it’s no wonder that the site soon attracted something in the region of 6,000 writers. You’d be surprised how many carvers there are living around Castle Gormenghast.

My ‘generation’ on Authonomy (before anyone starts squealing ‘sour grapes’, I made it to the top five and got a ‘gold star’ as well as a crit from an HC editor. You’ll have to read the ‘backstory’ linked above to see what I thought of it) was pretty much the first ‘wave’ of writers to discover the site and consisted of a heck of a lot of really talented people. With all the energy of a group of kids in a huge playground, we invested a huge amount of time and effort on the site, vying to get to the top and using fair means and foul to do so. At the core of it, though, was a sincere belief in quality – the majority of users adhered to a principle that they’d only ‘back’ books that they would genuinely buy in a bookshop. Although there was a huge element of popularity and ‘plugging’ of books, we reasoned that if you could market yourself on Authonomy, it just proved you could market yourself in the real world too, so was fair game as part of the mix that makes a book.

It looked very much as if HC had created a site that was intended to do what the Internet does best – improve access and disintermediate the gatekeepers, in this case the agenting system that means that only books with obvious mass market commercial potential get through to publishers. Now it looked as if readers could actually vote for the type of book they’d like to see in bookshops – and if HC was to add authonomy winners to its lists, there’d be a new and wonderful outbreak of crowdsourced work to choose from. I can honestly say, BTW, that I read more work that I would buy on Authonomy than I have seen in bookshops all year. Really.

Of course, it was not to be. The POD plan lurked and I ‘outed’ HC when they sent a private email to some of us offering us beta list status. I accused the company of being insincere, in offering a clear ‘get published’ carrot when in fact it only ever intended to create a POD site to hedge against the tide of innovation. It is still my humble opinion that this was the case.

But something else has happened as a result of authonomy, something rather wonderful. In fact several things.

One thing is that I have stayed in touch with a relatively close-knit group of writers I admire and respect, and we’re just as much in touch a year after we all wandered away from Authonomy muttering darkly (A huge number of people have left the site, disaffected with the whole game and the way HC has chosen to play it).

A much more important thing is that the disaffection and annoyance at the ‘traditional’ publishing industry and the way it treats writers has resulted in two groups of writers from authonomy creating real, truly important (IMHO) initiatives that I believe are much more about the true future of publishing than Authonomy.

Year Zero Writers

Dan Holloway is a lecturer by day and maverick by night. Actually, he’s probably pretty maverick by day, too, but we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

The author of the evocative and hauntingly beautiful Songs From the Other Side of the Wall, Dan founded the Year Zero Writers group as a collective designed to pool resources and talent in a way that would enable writers to reach out to audiences with their books. You can find out more about Year Zero here. Dan’s Year Zero projects include Free-e-day (see the BookBuzzr link below) and (to my knowledge) the first ‘FaceBook book’ (The Man Who Stole Agnieszka’s Shoes was written in weekly instalments on a FaceBook group, taking the input of readers to mould the plot). has seen Year Zero growing in popularity, attracting readers and participants and spawning a vibrant writers’ blog that is attracting readers in a most satisfactory manner.

Four books have been ‘published’ by Year Zero and more are planned - one compilation of short stories (Brief Objects of Beauty and Despair) and three novels. You can go to the Year Zero site, interact with the authors, find out more about their work (it is excellent) and then either download a PDF (free - in other formats here) or order a printed copy (paid for) of those books (the links are to Dan's 'Songs'). Although not the most active member of Year Zero, I am deeply proud to be associated with it.

Dragon International Independent Arts

Diiarts is a small independent imprint founded by writer Sarah Jane Heckscher-Marquis, which on November 14th will ‘conventionally’ publish four books that were hugely popular on authonomy and that represent, along with the three books that Year Zero has announced, some of the first books to have been published as a result of the authonomy project.
SJ has taken the highly unusual step of getting so frustrated at seeing great fiction (and I would personally, having read large amounts of all of them, commend them most highly to you, particularly Paul House’s stunning work, Harbour) mouldering on the slushpile and being overlooked by the Groans that she has put up her own money to publish some of her favourite work from the site. With the avowed intent of creating and maintaining her own small list of high quality fiction, she has had the pick of the best stuff on authonomy and has, I believe, chosen wisely.

As SJ says in the diiarts.com launch press release, “We believe there is a great deal of high quality, distinctive writing out there, which the larger publishers are just not picking up. Not only are readers missing out, but we’re losing something of the richness and diversity of the English language. We’re in danger of losing the spirit of innovation and thoughtfulness that’s been the hallmark of the English novel since we invented it. What we’ve seen is that more and more authors are expected to compromise on their vision, their voice and their artistic values, to cut their work down at whatever cost to fit supermarket display racks. We believe—passionately—that our authors should be in control of their own work. When they are, great books are the result.”

What has me chuckling evilly is the fact that both of these initiatives came about as a result of Authonomy. And, of course, I believe they both represent different facets of the change that will eventually lead to the flooding of Gormenghast - 'e-books' and small, independent publishers who are passionate about books, not shareholders, together will forge what I believe to be the future of publishing.

Books, Books, Books!

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I have written about Dragon International Independent Arts before. Dragon was founded out of frustration at Harper Collins' authonomy, one of a number of initiatives to have been born out of the great coming together of writers that authonomy has caused. Strangely, I believe these grassroots movements of writers are doing more to define the future of publishing than companies like Harper Collins, still mired (as is much of the publishing industry) in offline thinking. And I am pleased to be able to tell you all that Dragon, for one, is doing very well indeed, thank you.

Founded by SarahJane Heckscher-Marquis, Dragon set out to establish a viable small independent publisher that would give people access to books of quality that had been overlooked by 'the machine', breaking down the barriers between readers and the books they want to read - as Dragon itself has it, 'Books for people who love books'. Sarah's brave move saw a number of the more interesting books on authonomy get put into print. Check them out:

Harbour
Paul House

Set in wartime Hong Kong under threat of Japanese invasion, this is a lush period piece and one of the many books on authonomy that I'd have bought if I had the chance. And now I do - you can buy the paperback here and the good news is that delivery to the UAE (or anywhere else in the world) is free!

1812
M.M. Bennetts

Now I'm going to come right out and say it: this isn't my kind of book. It's a huge historical novel set in the middle of the Napoleonic wars - but it's flawlessley written: I can remember one review on authonomy that made the point that there wasn't a single word out of place in the book and the Historical Novel Review called it 'compelling' and 'vivid'. If you 'do' historical novels, you can buy the paperback here.


Pistols for Two, Breakfast for One
Matthew Dick

Matthew Dick's a silly bugger and much of his silly buggeriness is evident in his excellent book. I remember first reading this book on authonomy and enjoying myself immensely. It's engaging, funny, swaggeringly well-written and redolent of the rather wonderful Terry Thomas school of absolute caddery as it follows the cowardly career of Hugo Hammersley, devious swine and serial womaniser. Buy it here.

Who must I kill to get published?
Jason Horger

There are 10,000-odd manuscripts languishing in the great online slushpile that is authonomy, so it's a dead cert that there are 10,000 people out there asking themselves this very question. A wannabe author finally finds an agent interested in his book only for the agent to turn up dead. Again, a book that was widely admired in its time on authonomy and a very popular one, too - perhaps because it's written with flair and a light, deft touch that is eminently readable. It's also funny and buyable here.

These first four Dragon titles were released in November and are available to bookshops throughout the UK thanks to a distribution deal that Dragon has done with Central Books - and, of course, globally online as the links above prove - don't forget that free delivery now!

Kindle versions will be available from April, too.

Now there's news that Dragon is to publish a further two titles - Heikki Hietala's Tulagi Hotel and Greta van de Rol's Die a Dry Death. Again, both books were popular reads on authonomy.

In fact, SJ has done a neat job of cherry-picking some of the better books from the authonoslush, books that bobbed at the top of the 10,000-odd hopefuls and that stood out because they had that 'something' that makes you want to read the damn thing.

I had originally seen authonomy as a fascinating exercise in democratising publishing through the crowdsourcing that many companies are now finding is an important asset - listening to customers in order to define products and services that better suit their requirements. It's a great use for social media, for instance.

Fed up with being offered discounted copies of Katie Price's ghost-written pap and worse, I had thought the idea of actually selecting books through a filter of peer-review could shake things up a little. That wasn't authonomy's aim, as it turned out, but it is Dragon's and the fact that the company has not only survived but is expanding its list (they're also getting involved in non-fiction and possibly even film) to other media is something I am following with great interest and a raa raa for the li'l guy.


 

Not what it says on the box

Some may remember the mad, frenetic dash to get my first book, Space, to the top of the pile over at Harper Collins' authonomy peer-review writers' website.

The rationale behind authonomy seemed simple enough. Using language like 'Publishing contract, anyone?' (that language has since changed, incidentally, to 'Get Read. Get Noticed. Get Published'), authonomy allowed writers to post up some, or all, of their books and then solicit votes from other users of the site. The more votes you get, the nearer to the top of the pile you get. And if you are a 'top five' book at the end of the month, your book is forwarded for review to a Harper Collins editor.

Now Harper Collins is a huge publisher that doesn't even look at unsolicited, unagented manuscripts. And most unpublished writers would chop off their left legs to get their work in front of an editor (it's a date!) at a publishing house as powerful as HC. The expectation is that if your book's any good at all, you'd get asked for a 'full read' (heavy petting) or even get through to negotiating a contract (you're smoking a fag together by now).

But it turns out that HC was just teasing. I got to the top of the pile thanks to the support of a huge number of people, many of whom were genuinely impressed and amused by, and liked, my book. I enjoyed myself immensely doing it, by the way.

Like other people who've made it to 'the editor's desk', I put a huge amount of effort into it. And don't get me wrong - I've learnt a huge amount from the experience and made some really cool contacts and pals as a result. So for that, I can only thank HC for the site.

But the HC review of my book (next to the gold star on the book page) was slapdash and odd. And many other writers who'd got to the top of the 'greasy pole', as some called it, got the same feeling. Now, over 25 chart-topping reviews, five months, into the exercise, HC has not asked for ONE full read from a writer whose book reached the top, let alone taken anything further to any degree.

Yesterday, HC sent me a note offering me the chance to put my books up as POD (Print on Demand or Publish on Demand) books on authonomy. Soon, according to the email, all books on authonomy will be available as POD books but for now only 'a few early adopters' have been offered the opportunity - and a 'gift' of the first 10 books free.

Working with blurb.com, authonomy will add a button to each book's page, which currently allows you to read the book, watchlist the book or back the book. They'll add 'buy the book'.

Which potentially means that the whole exercise was purely about populating a new POD site with a community of unpublished authors who can now upload their books to sell them, at an unusually expensive cost to the author per book (limiting the profitability for the writer), to people who come clicking to the site.

This was arguably never about publishing contracts or talent spotting. It was never about 'Beating the Slushpile', as authonomy claims in its graphics and claimed in its original 'blurb'. It was about creating a POD site so that Harper Collins could hedge its bets against the 'new revolution' of Internet based publishing and digital publishing.

Worse, the exercise exposes some interesting values from HC and its approach to social websites. At no stage did it share its roadmap with the writers populating the site. At no stage did it seek our input, advice or approval. It just rolled out what it was giving us and we were expected to be pathetically grateful to receive it. All the way to the offer to become a POD book and sign away our rights in return for being part of a huge publisher's experiment.

Many of the writers I know on authonomy are disappointed, upset and angry at the move. It's not why we went there (there are established and, from a profit sharing point of view, better POD sites out there) in the first place. And people feel that while it's maybe not been directly dishonest, HC has hardly been transparent about its intentions for the site and the writers (some 3,500 and more) who have put their work on it.

And HC certainly hasn't been inclusive at any level - in fact, it communicates with the people on the site either through a sysadmin's alias ('Rik') or the alias 'authonomy'. We've never seen people - even the editors who review the books are anonymous. I'm sure HC thinks its being terribly funky and Web 2.0, but it's not. It's missed the first rule of these types of engagements with a community. Foster a community, be part of a community, engage with the community.

HC hasn't, because it doesn't respect that community enough. Lets face it, we're just wannabe's on the slushpile anyway. But I rather feel that it might just find that community pushing back a little now. Many people have had enough of being treated like the carvers in front of Gormenghast - even more so when it's become clear that the Groans don't want any of our carvings.

Someone on the site asked recently, 'Is authonomy a con?'. I'm afraid my answer is 'yes', I feel it rather has been.

PS: HC asked that I keep their offer to myself for the moment. I don't feel able to respect that request.

PPS: Authonomy-topping author Dan Holloway's manifesto for changing publishing is here. It's got some good thinks in it...

Books

I have previously ranted about Authonomy, the HarperCollins alternative to the publisher’s slushpile. I am glad I discovered it for any number of reasons, but one has been the chance to read a hell of a lot of original fiction that you, the consumer, are not and possibly would not otherwise be exposed to. It's Web 2.0 thinking at its best: the site is completely populated by content from its participants. And what content!!

It’s interesting that you have a chance to participate in this new egalitanariasm: if you’re a keen reader, you can sign up for Authonomy yourself and vote the type of books you like to the top of the chart, to the HarperCollins Editors’ Desk. Each month, the top five books are plucked for a read by HC editors. As I have said before, most authors would wax their bits in public for a chance to get that sort of attention.

So you can actually influence the kinds of books that are being sorted and selected. If, like me, you wander around bookshops wondering why there’s so much mediocrity there, Authonomy actually has the potential to act as a barometer of public opinion.

So here’s some of the writing I have encountered in my journeys around Authonomy: writing that has delighted me or otherwise convinced me that there’s more good and interesting work in all this unpublished stuff than there is in my local bookshop.

Incidentally, most people would expect me to use this as an opportunity to plug my own book, Space, on Authonomy. But I’m above that. It might be the No. 1 thriller, No. 2 comedy and No. 3 sci-fi on this site, but I’d hardly expect you to click on this handy link and read, laugh at and back my own book first. I am simply not that kind of chap.

Right. Here’s my guide to a tasting of smart new literature from unsigned UK, Australian and American authors.

The Banjo Players Must Die by Josef Assad is one of the more original and challenging books on Authonomy. It’s as mad as a hatter’s convention and insanely creative and funny.


Evil Unlimited by my mate Simon Forward is one of the top ranked books on Authonomy, a funny and madcap sci-fi comedy that somehow makes you think of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and then feel ashamed of yourself because it's an original book with its own life and style to it. Do try it!


Going to the Mountain, by JW Reitz. A luscious book about growing up as a settler in Xhosa country, about looking back on your life’s action: guilt, as the author says, and sex and death.


Sunday’s Child by Anne Lyken-Gardner is a dark but beautifully told tale of a childhood of abuse in Latin America. It’s a haunting and lyrical work that some will find traumatically evocative. It's one of my favourite things on Authonomy.


The Girl on the Swing by Ali Cooper is a book that attracted me for all the wrong reasons: not my kind of book at all. But its clever, dense language and descriptive prose soon turn into a book that captures you.


You want action, Asian gogo bars and big gun, move fast thriller stuff? This is the book for you, Hunting Buddha by Jamie DeBaisio is a really fast paced gangsta book set in Hong Kong. Guaranteed riveting read from Ch1.


How about a bit of ‘classic’ sci-fi? Bob Pickup is a train driver by day who composes intergalactic science fiction that’s about as ‘out there’ as you’d want and highly readable, too.


And, of course famed blogger Keefieboy's new (and timely!?) financial crash book, Tybalt and Theo, which time-switches between present day disaster and a distant, simpler past...


There’s loads more out there – well over a thousand books are now on Authonomy and anyone can go along, dip into them, chat to the authors and generally have an influence on the way new writing in the UK is shaping up.

And I, for one, find that exhilarating. Give it a whirl – and don’t forget Space!!!

How Social Media Taught Me How To Write

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I picked up a parcel from Sharjah post office yesterday containing a jar of homemade chutney. We had some with a slice of cheese on toast last night. It was delicious.

It had been sent to me by Australian author HélèneYoung after I came in as a runner up in a frivolous competition held in a guest post on on Hélène's blog by writer pal Phillipa Fioretti. (Did I mention that Phillipa's first book, 'The Book of Love' publishes on the 1st April? Yes? Oh, okay then) I confess I had not seriously expected to ever see a jar of home-made chutney arriving from 'down under', let alone one sent by a Bombardier pilot and novelist, but then that's the power of social media for you - the power to globalise chutney.

I met Phillipa on Harper Collins' authonomy, where I had put a lump of my first book with the hope of finding someone who'd want to publish it. One of the fascinating side effects of authonomy was to drive a huge focus on editing work, with writers encouraged to critique each others' work and sharing views, information and approaches to writing on the site's lively forums.
I started writing books because I had reasoned I could write well. I had written millions of words in a 22-year career in media and communications, from articles, news stories, interviews and reviews through to market research reports, speeches and white papers - I'd churned out all sorts of things for all sorts of people, from CEOs to Kings. Why not write a book?

I quickly learned that Space, my first book, was as funny as I thought it was. It was popular on authonomy and hit 'The Editor's Desk', voted there by the community of writers that made authonomy snap, crackle and pop. I also learned that it was very, very badly written - although I didn't know it at the time. I remember Jason Pettus of the Chigaco Centre for Literature and Photography being particularly horrified at the way Space was put together. It broke most of the 'rules' of bookish writing - to the point where I have now retired it as uneditable.

I had a second book up my sleeves, a serious book about Jordan called Olives, that I also put on authonomy - although this time around I was just after 'crits' for the work. The frenetic effort it took to get the first book to the top of the slush pile was exhausting - and the proffered 'crit' from a Harper Collins editor was hardly value that returned the effort. 

The crits on Olives started to make me think more deeply about how it was written and I started to make some big changes and a series of wide-ranging edits to the book. Phillipa worked with me on a big edit and made me go and buy some books on editing and writing (I had hitherto vehemently resisted doing that but Pip bullied me), and Heather Jacobs, another of the little band of writers I've stayed in almost daily touch with since authonomy, did a painstaking line edit of the book. Heather taught me I use 'that' too much, the latest in a series of lessons that has completely transformed the way I approach writing.

I haven't met a single person since I started all this. It's all been online. I have canvassed agents in the UK, had feedback on my work from hundreds of people from around the world and profited enormously from having broken my pre-authonomy 'I'm not telling anyone I write these things' approach and have made friends online with a number of smart, talented writers whose daily doses of input, support and general silliness have been invaluable. There are writers everywhere in my online life now - on Twitter, on Facebook and the blog, too. It's nice to have them there, because I know they understand.

If it hadn't been for authonomy, I'd have learned nothing. I probably would have given up and gone back to the day job. Now I'm on book number three and 'shopping' Olives in the meantime.
>
I wouldn't have got a jar of Australian chutney, either...

Sorry, folks, this week's mostly going to be about books (Which usually sends readership plummeting, but hey ho!) - you can blame the Emirates Airline International Literary  Festival - in particular, don't forget the social media and publishing session on Friday! There's a Twitvite and FaceBook event page, BTW.

Gamers Break Authonomy

It's a remarkable old world, chaps and chapesses. Really.

Many of you will be all too familiar with my involvement in Harper Collins Publishers' authonomy, the peer-review writers' site that involves thousands of writers clambering up a greasy pole to get their work in front of an HC editor for review. Every month the top 5 books, voted by the 'community' get reviewed by an HC editor (or janitor, we can't quite be sure which sometimes). To date not one top 5 book has moved beyond a read and crit, apart from a suspected 'token full read' given to my mate Simon Forward. The crits have been of variable quality, that afforded my own first book, Space, a good example IMHO of the WTF quality of some of the crits that HC hands out.

(If you would like to read some quality stuff, try my second book Olives, BTW. I ain't 'plugging' that one, though - it's a serious book about the Middle East, while Space was a comedy about chickens and stuff.)

But that hasn't stopped thousands of new writers from posting their work up there and trying to climb that self-same slippery pole. It's hard, folks - you have to chivvy people to go and read your book by participating on the forums, plugging the book and generally shouting a lot. And then they have to like it enough to vote for it - vote enough times for it to beat out everyone else and rise to the top of the begrudging souffle that is the online slushpile. You need hundreds of votes.

But, rather brilliantly, uber-gamer Vineet Bhalla, 'Klazart' to his mates, posted a YouTube video urging fellow gamers to pop over to authonomy, log in and vote for his book. (It's here...)

In a marvellous demonstration of the sheer power of social media, hundreds of gaming fans (possibly thousands) have done just that - garnering Vineet's book over 700 votes in the past 48 hours and launching it up the authonomy charts by some 3,000 places to its current 17 - and rising.

The howls from the authonomy 'community' of writers, bilked by the brash 'gamers' who've suddenly appeared on the site, have been wonderous indeed - suddenly the place has come alive again and started to pop and splutter with action and life - from apopleptic authors ranting pompously about cheats and darn gamers to gamer punks telling them all to piss off as they scrawl on the walls and pour beer on the carpets. The gamers have a point - the authonomy 'rules' make it clear you're welcome to invite friends and family. HC can't have imagined that 'family' could include over 8,000 gaming fans who follow a popular gamer's YouTube space!

Authonomy's forums, which had settled down to a rather sedentary and boring repetition of every topic, from how you deal with POV (Point of View. If you don't know, don't bother. It's not critical to your life, believe me) to whether book titles that contain leopard testicles are saleable in today's market, have suddenly come alive and thrill to the sound of argument, contention and challenge - battle, even.

It's great. It's like an invasion of anarchists at an old people's home. Any half-decent anthropologist would get a thesis and at least two bacon sandwiches out of this lot.

But the influx of new voices has been too much for the site - authonomy has gone down, baby, a mere few thousand new readers has been enough to smack the servers for six and deny access to many, the site's up and down like a tart's knicks. (Well, it is Sunday and sysadmin Rik will be down the pub sinking a few nutty browns before dragging his weary arse into the laughter factory tomorrow morning.)

Meanwhile, I do heartily recommend nipping over and taking a look at the writers vs gamers debate - it takes me back to the late 1970s and, for me, that was a good time.

Oh what larks, Pip!

Bee Bones

Back in 2007, a post on uber-blog Boing Boing alerted me to a new website from Harper Collins Publishers called 'Authonomy'. The site allowed you to upload the first 10,000 words of your book and then have other writers critique your work or vote it to the top of a pile to be read by a Harper editor.

I posted about it a lot at the time, pimping my first, silly, book Space - which I uploaded to the site. I also posted about my disaffection for a process and website I came to see as debased, not because my book didn't win a gold star (because it did) but because the gold star was actually duller under its micron of plating than the average Shiny.

Authonomy did something marvellous for me, though. It allowed me to meet other writers - to learn from them, to share the ups and downs with them. It transformed my approach to writing and led to me writing more books and, I like to think, better books.

I've kept in touch on a regular and almost formal basis with a group of ex-authonomites, the feared and shadowy Grey Havens Gang. And I've kept in looser contact with a number of the people I met during my month-long odyssey propelling Space to the top of the greasy pole. You know how Twitter, Facebook and all can keep people sort of popping up every now and then.

One such is Richard Pierce. Like everyone else I knew on authonomy, he never got picked up by Harper as a result of winning the monthly plugfest, but he did get taken up by British publisher Duckworth, who published his novel, Dead Men. Which I thought was a tad funny as that wasn't the book Richard was shopping on authonomy - that was a book called Bee Bones. It's a long time ago now, but I remember Bee Bones being pretty popular on the site - a stark and yet very human book that explored a young man rooting about in his dead mother's life.

Having had his taste of the conventionally published life, Richard has taken to self publishing - and so Bee Bones is coming out as a self published novel, some seven years after I first came across it on authonomy. Which is a while, I know, but then it took Olives - A Violent Romance about the same length of time to become a book rather than a manuscript.

I'll be buying it - I enjoyed it on authonomy as I enjoyed so many books from a selection which I thought at the time consistently threw up better and more diverse reads than I could find in my local bookshop. A number of the writer friends I made have been published - a few conventionally (a couple becoming best selling novelists) but many more taking the self-published route (a couple becoming best selling novelists).

So if you need a book recommendation, take this one. Richard's Facebook page is linked right here and when he presses the button and lets Bee Bones out into the wild, you can be among the first to know.

I hope he doesn't mind me nicking his cover...

authonoblog

OK.

I said I'd done posting about authonomy, the Harper Collins social networking slushpile writer's group peer-review website thingy. And I lied.

In about 10 days I'll get my very own crit from an HC editor, which will be nice. Not really expecting 'We love you, here's a contract' so much as 'Nice, tidy it up'. We'll see.

Meanwhile, this is the last 10 days of the current month at authonomy, and a number of smart, talented people are now hoping for their own 'top out' moment on the editor's desk. I'd like to recommend you pop over and take a read of these books then add them to your bookshelf so that they get the backing.

There's a lot of debate about this, but one of the things I find so neat about authonomy is the possibility of a new egalitarianism in literature: we're getting to choose the kinds of book we'd like to read from a sample of raw work. There are over 3500 books on authonomy and getting to the top of the pile is some achievement.

Some of you guys were kind enough to help me do it: take a look at these little marvels and see if you agree with me that they should be in bookshops!!!

The Voices of Angels is young adult fiction from Spain-based expat Hannah Davis. It's a magical wee book, about a girl called Lizzie who can see people 'marked' with their own imminent deaths. Her parents send her to stay with her grandmother in Andalucia where she discovers that the veil dividing this world and another, more infinite existence, is so thin that she can walk through into infinity.

Songs from the Other Side of the Wall is an amazing piece of literary fiction, a book whose author is able to paint with language, creating masterpieces of precise word-pictures, colours and wordscapes that have you reading for the sheer joy of consuming Dan Holloway's writing. It's the story of a girl whose lover is killed and who reconnects with her estranged parents, finding love and redemption as she rebuilds her life.

Carry Me Away by American journalist and editor Robb Grindstaff is the story of Carry, a 'GenX biracial military brat' who lives her life in the belief that she is going to die at 20. It's a remarkable portrayal of a young woman, brilliantly executed and deftly paced. It's a very 'American' book in its tone, dialogue and language. And it's eye-poppingly good.

Punchline by Paul Fenton will make you laugh. If it doesn't, you're dead.

Diary of a Small Fish is another very American book. Author Peter Morin has built a tense political thriller, with whip-crack dialogue and a nice cynicism that combines with, somewhere, just a little bit of heart. It's a damn good read, a sort of curl up by the fire with a glass of red sort of read.

Last, but not least, I have to mention Tybalt and Theo. Much beloved Dubai (and now Spanish) blogger Keith Williamson gives his own little spin to the financial crisis by building in a splendid time-shift and throwing in porridge-bowls of silliness. It's rushing the authonomy charts and currently sits at 25.

Did I say 'beloved'? Sorry meant malign hunchback misanthrope. Key got stuck or something...

Do More Evil

 The Man in the Mustardy Shirt

I consider myself extraordinarily lucky to have a large number of talented friends dotted all over the world. Some are online pals, others are ‘real world’ friends – and some are people I met online and subsequently have hooked up with' in analogue'.

One such person is my old authonomy buddy, Simon Forward. We joined each other in the race for the authonomy ‘Editor’s Desk’ and both got there, gleefully and manically mucking about in the forums as we plugged our respective works, promoting them to creaking point but also having a great deal of fun in the process. We became something of a double act: Simon’s schoolboy humour and my suave, sophisticated charm worked together like a dream.

Not content with bobbing around at the top of the foetid pool of festering books that is authonomy, Simon then tossed a second book into the ring, a kids’ yarn focused around hero Kip Doodle. And, damn me, but he did it again and so became the only writer to get to the top at authonomy twice. Not, you understand, that it did him the blindest bit of good...

Simon has, in fact, written several highly successful published novels, although sadly on other people’s behalf – he’s one of the writers of the massively popular Dr. Who books, for instance. This resulted in The Niece From Hell (who is Dr Who bonkers) getting a signed Dr Who book to add to her signed Caroline Lawrence ‘Roman Mystery’. Caroline, a highly astute million-selling kids’ author who knows a niece with a minted uncle when she sees one, seeded TNFH’s massive and ever-growing collection of Caroline Lawrence books by whipping one out and signing it for me when we met at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature. But getting a signed Dr Who book awed the child into a rare (and prolonged) silence. For this alone, I owe Simon a great debt.

It is with great pleasure, therefore, that I can now report that The Man In The Mustardy Shirt has only been and gone and gone ‘e’. He's taken the plunge and released his hilarious sci-fi comedy, Evil UnLtd, on Amazon’s Kindle, which means you can get your hands on the book for a mere $2.99 and, what’s more, you can have it in your eager paws in seconds flat.

What better way to celebrate than talking to him about the project? Here’s the View From Forward.

Evil UnLtd is clearly something of a pangalactic caper - was this an escape from writing Dr Who books for you?
Pangalactic is the telltale word there, I think. As in gargleblaster.  The Hitch-Hikers influence is strong in this one, Obi-Wan, but it's fair to say that, rather than an escape from, this is an extension of my Doctor Who writing. Basically name a TV sci-fi series and it was an inspiration of one sort or another. Even the sci-fi series' I loathed played their part - if, for example, they were bland or boring, I thought how much more interesting even the same storylines would be if you replaced the wet goody-two-shoes hero types with a band of villains.

On a very basic level, saving the universe/world/space-whale then becomes a different ball game. Even if it's just saving the universe/world/space-whale for themselves. Then when it comes to the details, well, everything just spirals in all sorts of directions, which is just great from a creative point of view.

How would you describe the plot, briefly?
It's a very organic affair, kicking off with a sort of Reservoir Dogs bank-robbery goes wrong scenario, with a gradually unfolding mystery that culminates in what I hope is one of the bizarrest action-packed sf climaxes  you'll have ever read - until I can come up with a better one for Evil 2.

Do you not think we already see enough commercialisation of Evil without contemplating a future of evil commerce?
We see way too much commercialisation of Evil, yes. Which is why the world needs a brand of Evil we can actually laugh at.

Who's your favourite character in the book and why?
That would have to be Dexter Snide. I have a soft spot for all of them - and no it's not just the marsh world of Delta Magna - but there's something wonderfully odious about Dexter. He's essentially like the Master, I suppose, a sort of Moriarty figure - which means I should give him a thinly veiled Time Lord opponent at some point I guess - but he's also the pure unadulterated evil in me. That is, I'd never do or say the things he does, you understand, but I do love writing him.

I also love the Hatchling, as he's the most enigmatic of the bunch - spending so much time in his egg as he does - and the rare point-of-view scenes I do for him are a treat.

What's your proudest 'funny moment'?
That would have to be the climax. At the time, I didn't quite know how the whole thing was going to wrap up, and it just came to me in a flash. One of those things that just grows organically out of the plot and as I was writing it, everything just clicked. Although that may have been the RSI.

Did you ever sit back and think, 'Crumbs, this is just too silly!'?
Not really. I mean, there were times I had my doubts whether it would appeal to anyone else, but the curious thing about SF comedy, I find, is that the characters and the universe you're creating have to take themselves seriously. So it's as immersive in its own way as crafting a straight-faced sci-fi epic - for which, by the way, I have the greatest respect, and I think you have to love your 'proper' sci-fi in any case in order to write a full novel of the slightly dafter variety. There were probably a few bits and pieces I chucked out as too silly or not working, but if something is daft and makes you laugh, you just construct a rationale for it within the context of your universe and voila! suddenly it's part of that universe and as a bonus you've (hopefully) written an entertaining discourse on the ins and outs of a society of leaf-like aliens who eat music. (I haven't, you understand, it's just an off the top of my head example.)

Why did you decide to go down the Kindle road? Did you evaluate various 'e-publishing' options, or just go straight for the 'Big K'?
I'm afraid to say, I didn't really investigate alternatives and plumped straight for the Special K. Possibly out of a desire to fit into that slimline red dress, who knows. But more probably because, while I was resistant to the e-publishing route for a long while, one particular friend and my mum-in-law kept urging me to publish something of mine on Kindle. They happened to specify Kindle and so when I finally buckled under the persuasion, I opted for that route. When I think about it now, there's part of me that associates the Amazon brand with a degree of trust that perhaps wouldn't be felt with other options, so I'm hoping that people will see the book on the Amazon site and that might help persuade them to give it a whirl.

What's your hope for the project? 100 copies sold? International fame? Just get it out of your system?
Here I have to separate hopes and realistic aims. Hopes are to attract the attentions of a publisher or Joss Whedon. (Evil is already - for plot reasons - kind of a TV series in book form and Joss, for my money, is the man to head the screen version.)  But this is an experiment and there's a sales figure I'd consider a success, although I'm not sure what that is at this stage. I don't know enough about the general volumes of sales of Kindle e-books, although I gather recently they outstripped Amazon hardback sales for the first time.
If every one of my Facebook and Twitter and authonomy contacts bought a copy, that'd be a few hundred sales right there, and more if they spread the word and so on, but you know how it is, you invite twenty people to the party and only eight can make it.

How would you define success? If you reach that, would you take other projects online?
Real success would be, like I say, attracting the attention of a publisher. When (a sample of) Evil was on authonomy, it proved its appeal to a wide range of readers - not just sf-heads - but there was a forum in which people could be enticed to give a book a chance, even if it was outside their normal comfort zone, because you'd been helpful or entertaining or just plain daft in the online discussions.

Without that - and without the kind of budget a mainstream publisher can command - it's going to be a huge challenge to attract the readers and convince them to give Evil a chance. So I'll be tweeting, facebooking, blogging and quite possibly even putting together a book trailer and seeing how it goes. That said, if I do feel this one meets with a measure of success, I will be putting other projects online. At the very least, I'll be uploading Evil 2 and future Evil volumes, maybe make that an annual event. Because a) establishing a series might prompt more interest and b) I enjoy writing these characters and, damn it, some of my work needs to be out there, being read, by some of the people at the very least.

Why Evil as your first Kindle book? Wouldn't KipDoodle find a more ready 'e-reader friendly' audience?
I considered making Kip Doodle available - that one was even more popular on authonomy - but as much as adults do enjoy it, I didn't think it would reach many of its target audience - ie. kids - on Kindle. I may be wrong, but I didn't imagine a lot of kids reading e-books. Although a friend of mine pointed out there were something like 15,000 kids' books available on Kindle already. Whereas I figured there might be some crossover between, say, sci-fi geeks and the sort of technophiles who'd either have a Kindle or be into downloading the software to their PC/Mac/iPhone/whatever.

What has been YOUR favourite Kindle buy so far? Is there anything you wouldn't read on a Kindle?
It's early days for me as a consumer. I have my eye on a few titles, and if nothing else the novelty value has re-awakened my previously flagging enthusiasm for reading. But so far I've focused on some of the classics that I've overlooked - not least because they're free, or close to it. Most significant has been Jules Verne's Mysterious Island, which I enjoyed, not necessarily because it's his best, but because I've found it surprisingly ripe for comedy.

More inspiration like that can only lead to more Evil and is therefore very welcome.

BUY EVIL!

I'm sad to say that Amazon does NOT support the Middle East on Kindle and won't allow downloads unless you have a valid address in the UK, US or elsewhere in the world you can give 'em. This sucks royally, BTW.

However, if you have a Kindle (or the Kindle PC reader, which is surprisingly usable, BTW) and you can download books, you can buy your very own copy of Evil UnLtd for $2.99 from Amazon UK by clicking here or Amazon.com by clicking here. 

Ha. I want to see the silly bugger sign this one.

Strange Searches

Image via Wikipedia

I like to take an occasional look at how people get here to this dusty little corner of the Internet – the results are almost always rewarding in some strange way. There are a number of perennial favourites - I still ‘own’ the immortal nmkl pjkl ftmch and this picture of a plastic chicken is still highly popular – as well as some new delights. And people searching for words like mafsoum, akid and mafi still land here, which is a giggle!



Souks
Keeping this blog going for years has finally paid off. If you Google souks, this moany little collection of near-daily offcuts is number seven search result in the world out of something a little over 400,000 results. Tada! I am now a recognised and leading authority on souks! I shall have a sheriff badge made.

Cow Aorta
If you’re looking for cow aortas, believe it or not, this is the world's number one place to find them thanks to the RTA’s slightly strange looking sustainability campaign trophy thingy.After that, you get about 98,000 scientific journals and things talking about real cow aortas.

Klazart Authonomy
It is amazing to me that anyone’s still interested in this! Gamer Vineet Balla, AKA Klazart, ‘gamed’ the Harper Collins authonomy website in early 2009 by inviting a horde of gamer buddies to vote his book to the top. This resulted in a great deal of authorial brouhaha at the time, but oddly someone, somewhere, is still interested in the incident. Someone also found this here fusty wee blog by searching ‘how to move to rank 1 on authonomy’. I wouldn’t bother, mate.


Someone else also found da blog by Googling 'Eva Bartholdy' which pulled me up short - she's  a character from my first book, spoof international thriller Space (which, incidentally, made it to the authonomy editor's desk and was part of the proof that the editor's desk thingy wasn't really worth it in the first place).

Womin fack animal
Somewhere in the world, a drooling pervert with acute dyslexia got this instead of what he was looking for. And I am glad.

fake indian driving license in Australia
Don't ask me. It lands on this.  I get a lot of fakes - fake cheque books, fake plastic coconuts, fake driving tests, fake numerologists, fake plastic tokens, fake soybean plants, fake windscreen cracks, fake Hiltis and fake camels. Fake camels really does boggle the mind...

people you know and trust are somewhat fake?
Part of the Great Fake Series, this one had a slightly sad and betrayed air to it. Luckily it lands on advice from me of no value whatsoever.


us food is crap
Number three search result in all the multiverse! I'm quite proud of that.  I'm equally proud that hundreds (if not thousands by now) have searched for the ingredients of, or directly for, Pringles and Aquafina - and got to my posts outlining quite how both of these mildly egregious products are manufactured.

Sexy Tweets
Okay, I wrote a post about how to Tweet Sexy.  I wonder if the Googler in question got what he/she really wanted?


nimble 80286
If you persist to the second page of search results you get this, but why anybody would want to search for a diet bread and a processor beats me.

Phillipa Fioretti
Through no fault of her own, people are starting to search for my writer friend Pip and landing here. This won't last as she is soon to be playing in much more stellar company - her first novel, The Book of Love, goes on sale in Australia on April 1 and, of course, I am hoping that it is going to sell like billy-o, thereby relegating her fleeting involvement in this shameful little blog to the millionth page of search results after all those glowing reviews by otherwise hard-bitten critics.

eeste
God alone knows what it is and in which esoteric language, but searching for 'eeste' gets you this post on ve middul eeste pee aar awordes, the title inspired of course by one Nigel Molesworth. Maybe it's the brilliant new name for Vegemite after they dumped iSnack 2.0...

To all of you who have been deceived into coming here because of the strangeness of SEO, I am sorry but there is nothing of much use to anyone here. To those of you that keep coming by for some mad reason of your own, thank you for your visit. Don't forget to wash the handbasin on your way out for the convenience of other guests.

Slushpile

The publishing game is a funny one. You’d have thought that writing a book was one of the hardest things you can do, but you’d be wrong. The really hard bit is getting it published.

Most UK publishers won’t even look at your book unless you’ve got a literary agent, although some authors have done it the other way around (Iain Banks, for instance). So you have to send off the first three chapters of your magnificent octopus* to literary agents along with a letter outlining why it’s interesting and a synopsis of the book itself. You also have to enclose an SAE (stamped addressed envelope). Agents are aggressively analogue and won’t respond by email. 98% of them won’t take submissions by email and they are really, really picky about people following the rules, Manuscripts should be double spaced, printed one side, loose bound. Letters should be straightforward and informative, not quirky or different. And so on. Agents make aspiring authors jump through an awful lot of hoops. In the right sequence, too, if you don’t mind.

The putative author is lucky to get any response at all beyond a photocopied rejection slip. Most agents don’t even bother reading the contents of their daily ‘slushpile’ – the 40-odd envelopes that land on the agency doorstep every day. I rather suspect many give the job of going through these submissions to the secretary or an intern.

Some are better than this. But they are in the minority.

So it’s a soul-destroying process. You send off batches your manuscript (or MS as it’s called in the trade) and get batches of copied rejections back for your efforts. If you’re really lucky – and everyone involved will tell you how lucky you are to get this – you’ll get some feedback, a few lines of encouragement and perhaps even a tip or two on improving the book. Writers buffeted by constant rejection receive these occasional flashes of light with an almost pathetic gratitude. And all this, mind you, to get someone to agree to bother representing you and therefore take 10-15% of your earnings.

Enter a bit of Web 2.0 thinking: publisher HarperCollins has launched a brilliant new website called Authonomy. Writers can post their work up on Authonomy, anything from 10,000 words to a complete book, and people can visit the site and read their books. If people like a book, they can put it on their virtual bookshelves, which increases the book’s ranking. Every month, HarperCollins’ editors skim the top 5 books off the pile and take them off to read. Getting an HC editor to read your book is, particularly if you’ve been drowning in the shitty stench and mush of the slushpiles for a while, probably worth a finger or so.

So, new talent gets a chance and the slushpile gets disintermediated. And it will, if others follow this example. On Authonomy, new authors can support each other, read each other’s work and comment, as can readers in general. People can be as critical as they like or as supportive as they like. And, the theory goes, over time good work will get recognised and make its way to the top of the tree. There are also forums on the site where people can discuss writing and publishing in general, plug their books or make recommendations. Not bad, huh?

There are question marks, of course. Isn’t this all a bit demeaning, a sort of literary ‘Big Brother’ where people are scrabbling over each other, all pretending to be nice to each other as they seek out that top five slot? Yes, there are elements of that. Does it replace the slushpile? No, it doesn’t – but it’s a first step for a business that has remained maddeningly crusty, dusty and analogue.

Why do I know all this stuff about writing or even give a damn? Because my book’s up there with over 1,000 others. It’s called ‘Space’ and I wrote it a few years back because voices in my head told me to do it. It’s a wilfully self-destructive and scabrous little thing, intended to make you laugh and to generally behave as badly as a book could behave. It’s also been rejected by pretty much every agent in the UK. Irritatingly, it made all those that read it laugh, but many felt it was too different. I do hate that.

Anyway, do feel free to wander over to Authonomy and have a read of Space. If it makes you laugh, feel free to put it on your bookshelf and help propel me closer to getting an HC editor to read the damn thing.

Similarly, feel free to have a look at Keefieboy’s book, ‘Travels in Xanadu-du’, which is also up there!

* Magnum opus. It’s a Black Addder joke...

First Fictions

Richard Pierce-Saunderson's first published novel, Dead Men, which charts the last days of 'Scott of the Antarctic' is being published by Duckworth. As I'm doing a panel session at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature focusing on how authors found their route to publication, I thought it would be interesting to explore Richard's story and look at how he took 'Dead Men' all the way to the hallowed shelves of your local bookshop.

So, you’re off on a blog tour of the world. Why stop over in the Middle East?
 You’ve got a different circle of readers to me. I want to extend my reach, so to speak. And then you sent me an article about the UK Ambassador to Lebanon hosting a dinner to commemorate the centenary of Scott getting to the South Pole, which contained a reference to Maxime Chaya from Lebanon, who’s retraced Scott’s footsteps to the Pole, or some of them anyway. And given Dead Men is about Scott’s last days, I found the connection too much to pass by!

What do you mean some of them?
No-one’s ever completed that journey from Scott’s base at Cape Evans to the South Pole and back on foot. That’s about 1,800 miles.

Oh.
Quite


So. First fictions. Let's start where we met, on the Authonomy writers’ web site back in late 2007. Tell me why you ended up there in the first place.
My wife found it for me, actually. The Guardian reported in September that it had come out of beta, and that it was open to the public. It was pitched as a chance to get your work in front of Harper Collins editors, and a place where writers might expect to improve their skills. So I joined, with a book I’d written some years before, called Bee Bones. I didn’t really expect much, to be honest. And for someone who’d been banging on the locked doors of the publishing industry for years it seemed like a last throw of the dice, before chucking in the writing lark and focusing on day job and family for the last years of my life.

Did it teach you anything?
It did, actually, and not just about writing.

Explain.
You know, writers are odd people. They’re desperate to share their words, to get them printed on someone else’s paper at someone else’s expense (and for their gain), but when it comes to marketing themselves, they’re actually clueless. What I learned then, in 2008, is that if we want something, we have to go for it.

What we called shameless plugging, back on Authonomy...
Exactly that. The community there was fairly light-hearted, as I recall it, and you and Simon Forward and I used to play these silly games where we’d try to plug our books in a subversive sort of way, rather than spamming people to come and read them. It meant we devised all sorts of subtle (and mostly humourous) strategies which might drive readers to our books. The thinking needed for those stratagems has stood me in good stead, I think. And it stopped me from packing in writing, stopped me from giving up, because it made me feel like I did have somethinig to say. I don’t know if you feel the same way.

Well, Olives has been published.
There you are then. Part of not giving up was also to grow a thick skin, and to be able to deal with criticism.

Just ignore it, you mean?
No, no, the opposite, in fact. It’s when we’ve not yet developed thick skins as writers that we tend to ignore any criticism of our writing, and skim over advice that could actually make us better writers. Personally, I tend to find that it’s the writers who deflect criticism or call it invalid who are those who are producing sub-standard work. Developing a thick skin means taking all criticism seriously, but learning not to take it personally, and to understand that writing is very subjective.

You’d not learned that before then?
No, I hadn't! Anyway, within the first couple of weeks of being on there, I’d asked for, and got, a long review from an American guy, which basically recommended that I scrap Bee Bones because the plot was faulty, and because it was totally unbelievable.

That must have been a bit of a blow.
In one way, yes. In another, no. He made some valid points about how the book might have been differently structured, which I think I used when I rewrote it. But after about half a day’s grieving, I decided that his core criticism was just his opinion, that the book could stand, and so I left it up there. I’ve still got a copy of that review somewhere.

Do you think it informed your subsequent writing? Because Bee Bones hasn’t been published, has it?
It did inform what I’ve done since. And no, Bee Bones hasn’t been published – yet. There are two versions of it now. But, and this is perhaps the most important point, that book was actually the key to Dead Men getting published.

How so?
I sent Bee Bones to Peter Buckman, the guy who agented Slumdog Millionaire, after Harper Collins had reviewed the book on Authonomy and turned it down (it got to Number one at the end of October 2008, as you know).

I know, I was in the Top Five with you the same month.
I thought I’d let you get that one in. But not with Olives.

No, it was a funny book called Space. Still unpublished, too. Anyway, we digress.
Right, Peter read the first three chapters of Bee Bones and an extended synopsis, but didn’t take it on. He said it was a good book, but too midlist (ie no chance of selling really, really well). I asked him if I could send him my next book when I finished it and he said yes. I had, in the meantime, started Dead Men after coming back from the Antarctic, and after getting lots of encouragement to write another book from my friends on Authonomy. So, when I’d finished the book after 6 months (and some helpful comments from people), I sent it to Peter. Two 3-hour phone calls, five weeks, and a massive edit (from 113k words down to 85k) later, he asked me if I’d sign for him.

It’s taken four years to get it published?
That’s the thing, though. Everyone thinks you’ve made it as soon as you get an agent, because that part is ball-breakingly difficult, but I had to wake up and smell the coffee, because getting an agent’s only the start. Peter made a massive effort to sell the book to mainstream publishers, but nearly all of them, without exception, quoted the market place as being too difficult to try to sell a new author into with such a complex book. Some of the feedback we had included “A few years ago I may well have offered, but it’s so inhospitable out there in the markeplace”, and “It’s an impressive and really quite brave novel; an ambitious and complex novel.” But still nothing, until the lovely independent Duckworth came along and took it on at the end of summer last year. To an extent that extended selling process was more depressing and discouraging than being constantly knocked back by agents, and one that led me, on more than one occasion, talking to Peter about self-publishing.

But you didn’t go that route?
Peter persuaded me to be patient. Also, I have self-published poetry, and in all honesty I’m just too lazy to do all the marketing gruntwork self-publishing involves.

So Duckworth are doing all the hard work for you?
They have arranged some events for me, and I’ve arranged others. But my mind-set’s different now. I just hate doing admin stuff, and to have someone who points me in the right direction is really helpful, because I’m one of the most disorganised blokes in the world. Now that we’ve got events set up, I’m desperate to do more, and not too lazy to catch trains from one end of the country to another. In fact, if any airline wants to sponsor me to tour the US and Australia and New Zealand, I’d gladly do that, too.

You’re obviously bonkers, and still on that shameless plugging trip.
Now that a third party’s put time and money into editing, typesetting and printing my book (and converting it into Kindle and Kobo format), I suppose I am.

So, what next?
The Kindle version of Dead Men is already available, although I am trying to encourage people to use their local bookshops instead. The physical book comes out on 15th March, although there’s a rumour that the Natural History Museum in London might be putting it on their shelves in the week starting 5th March. I just hope it sells lots of copies.

So, many congratulations are in order. Have you bought your celebratory copy of Olives yet?
Erm...

Here's a link to 'First Fictions' at the LitFest, which you can still buy tickets for at the amazing, knock-down price of Dhs65 and which even includes a seat!

And this here is your very own link to Richard's debut novel, Dead Men, which you can pre-order from Amazon or snap up on Kindle.

And here, last but by no means least, is a link for Richard to buy Olives ... >;0)

Whereto Publishing?

Image via Wikipedia

"If you can see into the future, you're not looking ahead far enough," said the bloke that put the hole in the toilet seat that is the Internet, Tim Berners-Lee. Right now, that is particularly true in the world of publishing, where a great looming cloudy thing is gathering on the horizon.

Problem is, nobody knows quite what's in it.

I have long been fascinated with the question of where publishing's going. This is because I used to be in the publishing industry (before I fell into PR, insensibly, like a boiled frog) and also because I have a nasty book-writing habit. Harper Collins' experiment in online talent-spotting and stealth POD site, Authonomy, showed how book publishers were casting around for some way to use the Internet in their business models. At the same time, magazine and newspaper publishers have been watching revenues dwindle as all those bloodshot morning coffee eyeballs drifted onto the Internet.

The problem facing both categories of publisher is that they are wedded tightly to their business model - and it's a business model whose very existence is based on inefficiency. It's simply got to go.

This is not something I say because I want it to go. While I have long suffered from the whole 'carvers at the gates of Gormenghast' aspect of submitting to publishers, I am deeply attached to the papery wonderfulness that is a good book. It's just that it doesn't really work very well anymore.

Authors are paid a percentage of the cover price of a book. Publishers print lots of books, essentially speculatively, and depend on trying to sell a high percentage of the total number of books. They will never, ever sell all of the books. If you're doing very, very well you might sell 60%. The rest are returns and so the cost of any given book is actually a tad over 140% of its actual cost of production, print, shipping and so on. This is the first inefficiency - wastage on returns.

The total cost of the book will include something like 40% for the distributor (20% for the disty and 20% for the retailer). The author will make something around 8-10% of sales, although the percentage depends on who that author is.

Given that I can put a book in your hands for nothing using the Internet, the process of chopping down trees and squeezing them through printing presses, shipping them all over the world and then accepting the unsolds getting shipped back again (to be remaindered and then, if all hope is lost, pulped) seems to be terribly inefficient. And it is.

I have often said that the last refuge of the about-to-be-disintermediated is 'quality'. Never has it been so true of publishing the traditional way. You need professional editors to give a book quality. You can't replace the quality of a paper book. You'll lose all quality if you open up the publishing market to any Tom, Dick and Harry who thinks they can write a book.

In the time I was involved with Authonomy, you'd often hear me saying that I had found more books on the website that I wanted to read than I had found in my local bookshops. That was, and is, the case. There's a lot of great writing out there that could not be published not because it wasn't good or highly readable, but because it didn't fit into the commercial needs of a market that was based on focusing solely on the 'next big thing' precisely because of its inherent inefficiencies.

I have posted before about some interesting efforts to redefine book publishing that were born out of authonomy - and I think that life is about to get even more interesting for these fledgling attempts to find an alternative to the traditional publishing model.

At the same time, magazine and newspaper publishing (with many of the same inherent inefficiencies of sales and returns and the like) are both seeing declining sales and advertising revenue (see this guest post from writer pal and newspaper editor Robb Grindstaff). Early attempts to apply 'old fashioned' thinking to the Internet have racked up failure after failure - we ain't going to pay you for content we can get for free. This total disaster is the latest warning that newspaper 'paywalls' aren't the solution.

If Apple's announcement today is what I think it is going to be, a smart, usable tablet 'multi-reader' supported by a user-friendly transactional portal, then we will see if the soundbite of the year will come true: "Apple is going to do for publishing what the iPod did for the music industry."

Authors in the UK can make 75% of an e-book sale, which is not only fairer on the content creator, it reflects the fact that the actual cost of distribution of an e-book is zilch, nada and mafie. Editing and marketing are a cost - and an imprint will still want to gatekeep to keep quality high. But selling fewer books could make an author just as much money - and so smaller , more defined audiences can be served with more of what they want.

This doesn't mean the end for books and newspapers, by the way. It doesn't mean the end of journalism and authorship. It just means the end of publishing houses stuffed with gatekeepers, yoyo-toting cretins and marketing departments that want to sign up any half-celebrity or vampire novel rather than actually finding out what readers want. There'll be new publishers - quality imprints that are slicker, world-sourced and more nimble, marketing-centric and reader-driven, participative and community-minded.

And they'll be efficient.

Klazart and Authonomy - Update

Harper Collins Publishers today published a statement on its authonomy book-review website concerning Vineet Bhalla ('Klazart') and the great voting debacle.

"48 hours ago none of us had heard of Starcraft. That was before Klazart posted his book on the site and started to invite support from the Starcraft community. His efforts were spectacularly successful and he has reaped the rewards of these newcomers’ support. We do not consider his actions to be breaching any site rules and his book will not be removed by us."

The statement goes on to say:

"We are willing to admit that the recent events have shown up real flaws in the algorithm behind the talent-spotter ranking. Some excellent suggestions have already been made and we’ll be considering these."

A number of writers have already left the site - a vast number have stayed but are grumbling away on the forums.

Meanwhile, the book's number 6 on authonomy with over 1200 votes. Some 2,000 new users joined the site over the weekend and have yet to vote for anything.

Is this most controversial of books any good? Will it get anywhere? See for yourself: it's here. What do YOU think?