The Times They Are A-Changin'

The Man Who Fell to Earth (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This isn't really a book post, it just starts like one, so bear with me.

I've just heard that Beirut - An Explosive Thriller has been passed by the National Media Council in Abu Dhabi and I therefore have permission to print the book in the UAE. Many of my friends overseas have a hard time understanding why anyone would need permission to print a book and, in fact, have drawn parallels between this and the control of information by the Church in the dark ages.

The fact of the matter is it's something of a Catch22.In the Middle East it is generally assumed that the national media is controlled by the government and therefore speaks with the same voice. It isn't until you have a fully deregulated environment that you can afford to drop the regulation, and yet a fully deregulated environment is almost impossible to conceive here.

What has changed, however - and to a remarkable degree for someone who remembers how it was in the 1980s - is the lightness of the touch on the tiller. I remember Lawrence of Arabia being banned in the UAE and now a digitally enhanced recut of David Lean's seminal (if sometimes fanciful) film is showing at the Abu Dhabi Film Festival. I once had a DVD of Nicholas Roeg's 1970s art-house movie The Man Who Fell To Earth confiscated by the Ministry of Information in Dubai (and replaced in my Amazon sleeve by a booklet about finding the path to God). Today, bookshops in the UAE are selling EL James' books.

I'm not sure about selling 50 Shades of Grey and its two sibling titles in the UAE, to be honest. While I'm all for freedom of choice and expression, it rather flies in the face of a censored Internet and certainly is not in line with the cultural and moral environment here. I mean, we're asked to dress decently in malls and public places here. You sort of get the feeling that someone, somewhere hasn't understood it - that it has somehow flown under the radar. There was a period some years ago when one prominent bookseller in the UAE was selling George Bataille's scabrous work of porn, 'The story of the eye', much to colleagues' glee. It did not, of course, last.

Magic Menon (explained in this early blog post although I first mentioned the solvent abusing Black Marker Gang here.) must have retired now, too. It's hard to go on putting black pen on pages when they're iPad apps.The Ministry of Information is certainly no more. The dark offices where I was once brought in to be censured as a magazine publisher, all big desks and locked bookcases full of Jackie Collins novels, are now the friendly corridors of the National Media Council. I thought I was pushing it with Beirut - An Explosive Thriller - there was already quite a bit of controversy regarding the morality, or otherwise, of Olives - A Violent Romance. Beirut has a lot more contentious stuff in it. My reader in Abu Dhabi (He's much too jocular and friendly a chap to call a censor) did note the number of f-bombs, but explained he understood 'this is the British style'.

But when you've got 50 shades in tottering stacks in the malls, I suppose I'm pretty safe. Although I personally think it's only a matter of time before someone picks that book up and decides a light hand on the tiller is one thing, but enough is enough.

On Kindles and Olives

Cover via Amazon

When I first started out on this whole book writing thing, to my ever-lasting regret, I kept very quiet indeed about what I was up to. It was to take five years before I told anyone I knew that I had written a book, let alone that I was submitting it to agents in the hope of finding a publisher.

Why? Simply because I have always loathed people who announce they're writing a book. If it ain't in print, it ain't worth a damn, was the way I thought at the time.

Although I had shared the MS of Space with a couple of close friends by the time I found authonomy, I had stuck to my guns. When I finally let the cat out of the bag, I was shocked by people's kindness and supportive response.

Not as shocked as I was by the goodwill and support from everyone around me yesterday. The day started on a high when I heard from the National Media Council that I have the go-ahead to print Olives in the UAE. The team at the NMC have been wonderful - quite the opposite of my experiences of their predecessor, the wittily named Ministry of Information.To come out of that process having won fans for the book was a complete and welcome surprise.

This means I can provide a Middle East edition of the book for all those here who can't easily get on Amazon (because Amazon doesn't support the Middle East). I have distribution sorted out for the UAE, Jordan and Lebanon. All I need do now is finish my quest for a printing press that has stocks of the right grade of paper (booky books are printed on a particular type of lightweight but bulky paper) and I'm on track to be in the shops for the beginning of December. My first job this morning is to go to the NMC building in Qusais and get me an ISBN number for the UAE edition.

But yesterday really hit its stride when I tweeted the link to the Kindle Edition of Olives. My heartfelt thanks to everyone for the messages, congrats and the like. Putting the book on Kindle was the first thing I did when I made the decision to self publish - there's a natty piece of freeware called MobiPocket Creator, which I've posted about before, that renders the process pretty simple. You then sign into Amazon as an author and select your preferred distribution channels and then it's pretty much hey presto!

Get the Kindle Edition of Olives (UK)

Get the Kindle Edition of Olives (US)

Now all I need to do is sign off my CreateSpace proof (winging its way to me thanks to Aramex' natty Shop and Ship service) to get the print edition up on Amazon and pack the UAE edition off to the printers.

I cannot begin to tell you how liberating it feels to finally get my work out there. I can't say I regret not doing it sooner, because I think we all have to take our own paths to things. But I'm very glad I've done it now.