Harsh

As another round of writers pass the authonomy 'top five' test, one of the books that passed out last month received an unusually harsh spanking from Harper Collins' editor.

Remember one of my points was 'respect'? That I was annoyed at HC's 'one way' communication and its faceless editors? Well, imagine how you'd feel having put your work in front of 4,000 people so that an anonymous jerk with the backing of a major corporation could write:

"...stands out from the crowd of Authonomy proposals; not necessarily through its content or writing, however, but through the high status its author is held in within the Authonomy community."

So it only got there through the writer's popularity? That starts the girl off well, doesn't it? And then we go on:

"I don’t honestly believe that Seeing Red is a great work of science fiction."

At least that's honest, if a tad brutal. But then you can't really get into the writing thing unless you're up for a bit of brutality. I mean, all editors are brutes, no?

"Seeing Red’s take on science fiction is naïve and simplistic..."

Oh hang on. Aren't we being a bit, well, unnecessary here?

"The world of SF...has moved far on from cheesy concepts expressed in this book"

Note the missing definite article. The editor can't spell 'found', either.

"...the settings are straight from central casting."

Our hero goes on to have a right old go. Get this - and do imagine this was your hard work, voted to the top by something like 500 people on the site who have said, essentially, that they would buy it if it were on sale:

"Of course, there is nothing wrong at all with referencing the styles of older pulp novels – they may be the equivalent of B-movies but at their best can have a tremendous joi de vivre and embrace some truly mind-boggling concepts. But I do not believe that the intention here was to deliberately pastiche that sort of science fiction to make a particular point or create a specific effect."

And this from a patronising, condescending goon that can't even spell 'Joie de vivre'!

But the real kick in the head comes last. Remember, this is supposedly from an editor at one of the world's largest and most powerful publishing houses, so carries unusual weight:

"I cannot see any science fiction imprint picking this one up for publication."

This is Patty's reaction to it. I don't think she's gone far enough, but there you go: Patty’s blog…

A Very Literary Fellow

 

Well, I've been asked if I'd moderate the Social Media Session at the Emirates Festival of Literature next week and I obviously frowned, said I'd think it over and then screamed 'Yes!' one second later, clamped to their right arm like a strychnine-poisoned pitbull wired to the mains.

It's a public session and is open with no registration or ticket requirement and I think it's going to generate not only a great deal of interest but also a lively and interesting debate.

The permalink to the information page on the session is linked here. And you can follow the Festival's rather sound Twitter feed at @EmiratesLitFest.

Why so interested? Well, there is my genuine interest in the topic from a professional point of view for a start, I do, after all, work for an agency that's very wired up with all this social media stuff. But this one's personal, too. As many of you know I have a nasty book writing habit and I will gladly use and abuse any route that could get me near any of the very lovely and charming gatekeepers I can hornswoggle into giving some of my work their consideration. Added to that, having stayed in touch with a number of writer friends since the whole Harper Collins' authonomy thing (using, in many cases, social media!), this whole area has been one where we have enjoyed extensive debate - and which offers a future of opportunity and fear in seemingly equal measures.

I have been fascinated by the role of the Internet in authorship and publishing ever since that involvement with Authonomy. I believe that social media is inextricably tied in to the future of publishing and that innovations such as the iPad are game-changers that are inextricably tied into social media.

There are a number of opinions about the way that publishing is evolving. Some of the more aggressive proponents (Dan Holloway's views, linked here, are always fascinating) of social media see it as a platform that has the potential to disintermediate publishing houses and put control back into the hands of authors.

Publishing houses are trying to find ways to use social media and the Internet that compliment their more traditional marketing machines, one reason why we had authonomy at all, but they are becoming fearful (and rightly so) about where the control is going to reside in the new distribution models that are starting to look not only possible but likely.

Meanwhile, authors are finding that they are gaining more control from their use of social media - more connection to their audiences, more direct relationship with readers and a marketing powerhouse that's in their hands and not at the whim of the publisher's disinterested publicist. Golly, people are even using social media to open bookshops these days!

All of this and more is going to get poured into that session and I think we're going to have a real roller-coaster ride with it. Always so much more fun than a sedate stroll around the park, no?

Critical

Well, this is a turn up for the books - I've been criticised!!!

Was just on the way out of the door last night to have a few jars with a pal when up popped an email from Harper Collins' authonomy, the would-be author's peer-review Web 2.0 gadget thingy, saying that my 'crit' from an HC editor was ready.

For those who were interested, kind, supportive, curious and generally wonderful about the whole authonomy thing, my heartfelt thanks to you all.

For those who would like to see what HC said, it's here. They didn't take any of the books that came top 5 this month as, indeed, they haven't taken any book that's topped out on authonomy so far. Having said that, the journey has taught me much and I'm deeply glad I did it.

Normal service will now be resumed.

Must Use Bigger Elephants

I'm over in Australia today rabbiting away about my remarkable tally of rejections from the British publishing industry on Ozzie Sci-Fi writer Patty Jansen's brilliantly titled blog, Must Use Bigger Elephants.

It's all part of Patty's 'Blog Tour', a brilliant scheme writers have evolved to share space on each others' blogs and therefore give each other access to their readers for a day. I've guest posted on a number of other writers' blogs (and gladly hosted them on this one), mostly because of the international community of writers I've stayed in touch with since we all met on Harper Collins' Authonomy website.  Few us still visit Authonomy, but a great number of us still stay in touch.

It's interesting, Authonomy could well turn out to have had a demonstrably important and wide-ranging effect on writing and fiction that was completely unintended by its founders. And one not entirely in their interests, as many of us have thrown up our hands at the publishing industry and gone it alone. Tools like blog tours give writers access to global audiences as well as giving readers access to new writers. And of course self-publishing means you can reach global audiences far more easily than all the printing, shipping, distributing and stocking involve in 'traditional' publishing.

So do please be my guest and pop over to MUBE and have a root around and perhaps, if you're into science fiction, take a look at Patty's work. Don't forget to behave well while you're there and wipe your feet before going in...

The Newest Profession

The blog is littered with writer types this week, sorry. Today comes a guest post from deepest Cornwall as mustardy-shirted author Simon Forward takes the helm and tries to crash into the nearest landmark. I leave you in extremely unsafe hands indeed...

The Newest Profession? Independent authors, of course! They’re everywhere these days. Loitering on every virtual corner, peddling their innermost thighs – I mean thoughts, for a few pennies and bringing the internet into disrepute. As rampant and desperate as a sexbot, their responses are almost as automatic and you could be forgiven for not realising there’s a real live person on the other end of that Tweet.

They weren’t getting anywhere through the traditional route, so zealously guarded by agents and publishers (the two faces of an industry Janus, albeit both are wearing blinkers and looking backwards). So they removed the gatekeepers from the equation and struck out alone.

Unfortunately, even with the gatekeepers out of the way there’s this massive fence to climb. And it’s getting higher. Readers are building up the walls against the rabble. And who can blame them, with an mob of whores scrambling to find some way into their personal library? Pick me! Pick me! It’s like the X Factor audition stages out there. Tens of thousands of hungry souls – Zombies Got Talent. There’s a reason ITV show an edited version of the competition – who wants to sit through that lot of hapless wannabes? I pity the readers, I really do.

As a reader, I’m hugely selective. A book’s something you invite into your life, after all, and spend a fair chunk of quality, intimate time with. I’m very fond of my Kindle (if you turn that around you get kind of my Fondle, but I digress), so I’m very fussy about what I put on it. (In fact, I’ve ended up with a collection of reads queued up from people I know, so there’s a strange kind of non-industry nepotism going on there. Luckily, most have been good, but I’ll admit it’s possibly not the best filter for buying books.)

Currently, I buy hardly any traditionally published books except for firm, established favourites. I don’t buy into the notion that the backing of a traditional publisher is an integral stamp of quality. I’ve seen too many bloody good manuscripts passed over and too many not-so-good ones passed through the system and excreted onto the bookstore shelves. Too often it’s a stamp of mediocrity. It’s safe. It’s the soft option. It’s selling wool to sheep, which is what large parts of the industry are good at. Trouble is, any readers who are looking for something new may well be inclined to turn to the independents. But a brief scan of the internet will turn up a baffling array of authors bleating for attention, with way too many press-ganging a small army of friends and relatives into posting 5-star reviews on their Amazon listings. Trying pretty much any trick, in fact, just to turn a trick.

Readers, be afraid. Be very afraid.

But, on the other hand, as an author, what’s a whore to do? I’m reasonably sure batting my eyelashes and hitching up my skirts is not going to do me – or anyone else – any favours. There’s a great scene in the movie Glengarry Glen Ross where Alec Baldwin is lecturing a bunch of losers on what it takes to succeed in sales. He reaches into his suitcase and produces a pair of brass balls. I’m not sure how far those would get you on the streets of Babylon, but it seems to me you need them for this business.

As a Doctor Who author, once upon a time, you could sit back and let the brand sell your books for you. And I remember attending two different conventions, one in the UK, one in the US. In London, the writers were like B-list (I’m being charitable) celebs, we had some fun on a discussion panel in a relatively small room tucked over on one side of the hotel. In Los Angeles, we were A-listers, welcomed and celebrated as near as damnit on a par with the stars of the show. I’d sit on the signing panel with fellow authors and fans would come coyly over to me and ask if I’d sign their copies of my book. One even brought a bag full of all the Doctor Who output – books, audio dramas, a novella – I’d written at that point. Sigh. I’ve come over all nostalgic for those days now.

Part of the reason I’m getting misty-eyed is because I wasn’t there to sell books. I was there to enjoy myself. Which has a lot in common with why I write. But yes, I’d also like people to read my books because, you know, I get exponentially more enjoyment out of other people’s enjoyment of the things I enjoyed writing. Still, for all my desire to share, I’m preternaturally shy. I pour my heart and passions into my stories – why the hell would I want to pour myself and my opinions out all over the internet? Yuck. I hate myself a little bit more every time I do it. Those virtual street corners are far from my natural environment – well outside my comfort zone. I have this conviction, you see, that anything interesting I might have to say is limited to my works of fiction.

Today I would rather be back in my shell, writing my latest sci-fi adventure. That will be of interest to readers. But the poor thing’s being (temporarily) neglected again in favour of promoting my latest release.

If a book is released on the internet and no-one’s around to see it, does it make a sound? Simple answer: no. Authors have to advertise on Facebook and Twitter and all the rest, and beg for a simple RT or a wall post to pass the message on, spread the word. And like wealth, the bulk of Retweets and FFs generally flows upwards to those who least need them. So authors have to work harder to make themselves heard, which in turn drives more folks away because, let’s face it, do we really want our Twitter streams flooded under a deluge of #PleaseReadMyBook?

So it would seem that while publishers, agents and self-whoring authors are all keeping good books safely out of the reach of readers, we authors are also keeping ourselves away from (writing) good books. Where, I’d venture to suggest, our time is best spent.

Back in 2008 when I first signed up on the Harper Collins’ authonomy site, there was so much wild abandoned pluggery it’s a wonder God didn’t step in to strike the whole thing down. The funny part is, there were two key figures most known for their shameless plugging. One Alexander McNabb and, er, me. Him in his field of sunflowers, me on my Cornish cliff top in my (then-infamous) mustard shirt. When it comes to whoring, he taught me everything I know.

But that’s the thing: it was funny. To start with, I was there to enjoy myself, to have a laugh – and laughs we had aplenty. And why not? It was a game. Until I suppose we all discovered there wasn’t a prize. But it was also, as I wrote in a post for the authonomy blog, something of a microcosm of the indie publishing universe. The experimental authonomy world was flat and when we all travelled to the edge we fell off into a bigger version of the same old circus.

Readers, authors, publishers. We’re all losers in this game, the way it’s currently being played.

Maybe what’s needed is some kind of convention. An organised virtual event or one-stop shop, a meeting point for readers and authors and publishers. Somebody is at least talking about something of the sort:
Is it the answer? I’m not sure what shape this new model should take. I have no idea - because that, like the whole whoring business, it’s outside my remit. It’s not my cup of tea. All I know is, something needs to be done by somebody.

“Change, my dear, and not a moment too soon,” says the Doctor at the end of the Doctor Who story, The Caves Of Androzani, and at the beginning of another regeneration. Of course, what was needed to trigger it was Peter Davison’s Doctor keeling over and dying.

I’m not sure what we should learn from that.

Meantime, if anyone needs a whore I’ll be the shy, reluctant one still trying to wear his author hat while accessorising with something sluttier.

12

12 hours to go on authonomy before the top five are culled for spanking by a Harper Collins editor...

And if you haven't read Space yet, then please feel free to do so now, before it's too late!

You can read Space on authonomy by clicking on this handy, easy to use hyperlink. And if the book makes you laugh and looks like something you'd buy and read, then you can 'Bookshelf' it and vote for it to stay in the top five books to be 'cherry-picked' for review by Harper Collins' editors at midnight tonight. Believe me, your vote counts right now!

Incidentally, there's a load of other fiction by new writers in the UK, US, Europe and Australia up there, so have a poke around too and see what takes your fancy!

Try Stalking the Widowmaker by Greg Horbay for instance, or MM Bennets' epic 1812. MM Trevalean's Tartare is certainly an interesting, if unsettling read and then there's Dan Holloway's Songs from the other side of the wall, a work of literary genius. Also try Peter Booth's Their Name is Legion or Lauri Shaw's wicked Servicing the Pole! And last, but by no means least, Peter Morin's Diary of a Small Fish or Simon Betterton's Doubts.

Yes, I lied. That last post wasn't the last post. But this post is - honest! :)

What’s Cornish For Fatwa?

Today's post is a guest post by author pal Simon Forward, one of the little band of writers I've kept in touch with since Authonomy - and the only one I've managed to meet face to face, Simon is a naturally funny bloke who brings his humour very much to bear in his writing - his mad sci-fi fantasy Evil UnLtd was the first book to get him up to the giddy heights of the Authonomy Editor's Desk and he went on to repeat the feat with kids' book Kip Doodle And The Armchair Of Lost Dreams. To date he's the only author to have been twice authonomised, although I'm told the swelling went down soon after.

If you have a Kindle (or the Kindle PC reader, which is surprisingly usable, BTW), you can buy your very own copy of what is now to be known as 'The Controversial' Evil UnLtd for £1.99 from Amazon UK by clicking here or for $3.19 from Amazon.com by clicking here or Smashwords by clicking here.

Hang on! Controversial? Yes, read on...




I’m writing to you from a dingy attic room in a secret location, somewhere in the South West of England. I’ve stocked up on canned foods, bottled water, all the basic essentials, because I expect to be here for some time.

Ordinarily I like to write in a nice open public space, especially my favourite local café, but I fear I can no longer safely venture out as I have been targeted by extremists.

It’s not something you expect to happen here in this fairly sedentary part of the world. There are such things as Cornish Nationalists, but nobody can take a separatist movement seriously when our key industries – tourism and fishing (and, once upon a time, mining) – are all in decline (or consigned to history books and sighing recollections). But never underestimate your ability to inadvertently upset some fundamentalist wherever you live in this 21st century world of ours. That would appear to be the lesson I should have learned.

What did I do to incur this wrath? Well, I wrote a book. And now I am the Salman Rushdie of the South West.

It’s a comedy, in which villains are the heroes, entitled Evil UnLtd (Vol I: The Root Of all Evil). It is, I suppose it’s fair to say, in a similar vein to the late great Douglas Adams’ The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. On the front cover, it bears the tag line, The Farce Of The Dark Side.

I should have foreseen the consequences.

At a recent book-signing for the paperback edition, one gentleman asked me if it was “a proper fiction book, or an actual philosophy of Evil”. I didn’t even know there was such a thing – although part of me felt like I ought to write one. Similarly a woman in my local cafe expressed an aversion to the whole notion of a book about bad guys. These were only the warning signs and I foolishly disregarded them as just amusing anecdote material.

Since then, however, matters have escalated to a far more serious level. Certainly the situation is no longer a laughing matter.

It began with a threatening email. In the most abusive language imaginable, it told me to vacate my home county of Cornwall. The email seemed to me to be typed in the semi-illiterate fashion of one of those people versed in little more than txt-spk.

Those of a squeamish nature look away now:

you fuck shit: i'm on to you: get out of cornwall and your budis: or feel the pain:--
GODOFG00D

Simon Forward in hiding in a remote Cornish location 

wearing a disguise mustardy shirt so nobody'll spot 'im.

I was concerned and shaken by the harshness of the message, hurled at me out of the blue by some random stranger. But ultimately, with no other explanation offering itself, I concluded that it must be some bizarre form of spam that had slipped through the standard filters, with the specific reference to Cornwall being simply an odd coincidence. Surely it couldn’t actually have been directed at me personally, I naively thought.

It was followed by a second but frankly unintelligible email, including one of those links you know never to click on, which served to confirm the spam theory in my mind.

At around the same time, on a visit to my café for another session of cappuccino-fuelled creativity, I noticed – with some dismay – that my stack of business cards, which my friend, the manageress, had kindly allowed me to display on the counter, had been mysteriously depleted. No member of staff had been responsible – they all like me – but someone had evidently taken it upon themselves to remove the cards and destroy or otherwise dispose of them.

Having decided not to let it bother me, the email was already behind me at this point and far from my thoughts, so I never connected the two incidents.

Until last Saturday, when I received a phone call on my mobile. I failed to answer the ring quite in time, but although it was an unknown number I rang the caller back.

The fellow who picked up sounded awkward, as though as though having something difficult to say but not quite sure if he had his speech prepared. Eventually, he proceeded to explain that the reason he had called was to apologise, because he had thought I was “actually promoting evil.” But he had since determined that I had in fact only been promoting a book.

Horrifying realisation dawned and I said, “So you were the one who sent me that abusive email.”

He confessed. And I also knew in that instant that he had been the one to attack that display of business cards, since they carry information on both my email address and my mobile phone number. About a hundred other questions and/or remarks struggled to emerge from me at that point, but I ultimately settled for shaking my head in disbelief. A gesture that perhaps doesn’t communicate itself too well over the phone, but maybe some hint of it crept into my tone. In any case, the culprit reiterated his apology and stated that, obviously, he wasn’t the sort to stand for genuinely bad people but he now realised his mistake. He went on to say that he might check out a sample of my book online.

Feeling that most of the comments I wanted to make at that point would only have exacerbated matters, I decided to end the call with a simple thank you for his apology.

Several thoughts occurred to me in the silence after hanging up.

First, that those business cards also bore the tag line, The Farce Of The Dark Side, in a larger font than any of the contact information. There were clear references to the fact that I was an author and that Evil UnLtd was a “New Series from Galaxy 6 Broadcasting, available on Kindle from Amazon and other ebook formats from www.smashwords.com.” On the reverse of the card, there’s also a line-up of (computer-generated) comic mug-shots of the (entirely fictional) characters who feature in the series. Most prominent is the logo, a sort of business plaque, incorporating a cartoony performance graph with a broken devil’s fork.

It beggared belief that any thinking human being could interpret that as the promotional material of an actual evil organisation, but even if that was their first impression, I had to wonder why they wouldn’t simply investigate the listed links to, I don’t know, check their facts before launching into their campaign of protest.

Second, they might have paused to consider that actual evil organisations don’t tend to proclaim themselves as evil. More often than not, in fact, they tend to claim to have God or good on their side, while perhaps criminal organisations might admit to a measure of self-interest. Rarely, if ever, in the real world, do they own up to evil, let alone include it in their official logo.

Clearly now, the individual has apologised and I should be free to feel safe once more. But naturally enough I’m now concerned that there are others out there who may object to my bringing Evil with a capital E (aka laughter) into the world and – even in this ostensibly idyllic setting of Cornwall – find more aggressive ways to express their righteous anger. I used to enjoy the fact that ours was such a relatively small community where so many people knew everyone. Now, I worry that this could work very much against me as I struggle to promote my humble humorous offerings. Am I about to have a Cornish fatwa on my head? Imprisoned in my own home, fearful of venturing out, will add further challenges to the already-difficult task of book-promotion.

Of course, I should feel grateful that there are people out there willing to fight evil in the world, without regard for their own safety or indeed the facts, but I would much prefer if they would at least look past a book title before embarking on their crusade. To the best of my knowledge, Douglas Adams based his most famous work on his experiences hitch-hiking around Europe and not around the likes of Betelgeuse as the title originally implied.

Failing that, if these people are going to burn my books, I can only hope that they will please buy a copy for the purpose. Despite the name, the Kindle version is not ideal for this and I do recommend the very reasonably priced paperback.

And if my life is in danger, well, I do have one idea to cheat the nutters of their goal. As an absolute last resort, I can always die laughing before they get to me...

Books - A Journey

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

This is all totally irrelevant to anyone, anywhere, ever, but I thought I'd take the chance to document some stuff now I've finished another book and have a little time before I can face editing it.

My first completed novel was a rather silly affair called Space, which I reckon I started back in 2001, but probably only really started in the spring of 2002. The oldest archive files I can find for the book only date back to 2003.

The oldest book files I have are actually a backup of an unfinished novel called Booze - those date back to September 2001, so I must have started Booze then put it to one side to work on the the less controversial Space.

When I'd finished Space and shopped it to agents, being rewarded with a remarkable tally of rejections (by the time I gave up, I had over a hundred), I started back on Booze, a rather scurrilous tale about a Kuwaiti buying a monastery that holds the recipe to an aqua vitae that tastes like angels' tears and is as addictive as crack cocaine. I began to get messages back from agents that said things like 'Humour doesn't sell dear boy' and so the work in progress that was Booze got shelved and, indeed, lies gathering dust even now.

I'll finish it one of these days, it was great fun. Let us remember that I still think Space is funny - it made me laugh enough, re-reading it after all these years, to put it up on Amazon for sale at a princely £0.99. Its first review on Amazon pointed out that "...it just isn't very funny."

It's linked here for your cheap Kindle read buying pleasure!

So I wandered off and decided to write a serious book. The result, Olives - A Violent Romance, was originally written in September 2004, pre-dating - I always thought rather presciently - the 2005 Amman bombing by a year. However, the bombing in the original manuscript was a dream sequence.

The original MS starts...

The first day of my new life started out in the dark, dreary sodium wetness of Heathrow Airport and ended in a cell. Let’s just say things didn’t go according to plan. Now, months later and looking back to the start of my time in Jordan, I wonder that I stayed there at all. Part of me bitterly regrets not leaving the second I was released. But there’s a tiny glimmer of hope in me that won’t go away, although now I’ve run out of choices and the consequences of my actions are written in the wreckage around me. 

And was considerably improved by the large amounts of editing and rewriting that went on between then and 2011 when it was finally published. Most of these took place post-2007, when I discovered Harper Collins' Authonomy and met other writers who taught me how to write better books, principally Australian Italian novelist Phillippa Fioretti. Other than that, the whole Authonomy experience was, as I have documented extensively in earlier blog posts, pretty pants.

Beirut - An Explosive Thriller was started in Autumn 2009 after the 'reader' for an agent called Eve White, who had requested a 'full read' of Olives had finally responded that it was all 'A bit too low key' for them. I was in a fury. The book's crammed with spies and bombs and shit and it's too low key?

That was it. The final straw. I was going to write a mad book and it was going to be based in Beirut. The first versions of Olives had Paul moving to Beirut, looked after by Gerald Lynch (who at that time was called Nigel Soames, a character who nagged at me because he wasn't 'working'), who felt guilty at the way things had panned out for the feckless young journalist. Beirut just made all sorts of sense as a location. I chucked Prague, Hamburg, Spain, Malta and the Greek Islands into the soup mixture just to be sure.

Work on Beirut - An Explosive Thriller actually started with 'The Muezzin Cried', a short story I posted here on the blog, derived, as usual, from a dream memory.

By December 2009 I had realised I was actually going to have to go back to Beirut if I was going to pull this one off. I had been travelling there since the '90s, but hadn't been back in a few years. I needed to refresh my memories and impressions of that sexiest of Eastern Mediterranean cities.

At the time, I had been involved in running a social un-event for online people in Dubai called GeekFest. I called a friend in Lebanon, Alex Tohme, and asked her if she'd be up for running GeekFest Beirut? Of course, she was totally up for it. And so I had my ticket to Beirut sorted!

On the 6th February 2009 GeekFest Beirut took place and I spent a few halcyon days striding around the city often in the company of old friend and partner in crime Eman Hussein. Thanks to GeekFest, I had 'my' city in the 'can'. I went back again for ArabNet with colleague and friend Maha Mahdy, discovering Barometre in the process thanks to geek and blogger Roba Al Assi. And again for GeekFest 3.0. And again, and again. The gorgeous Paul Mouawad Museum, the model for Michel Freij's own private museum, I discovered for myself.

It was with Maha that I went in search of Shemlan, the village nestled high in the Chouf that was home to the 'British Spy School' MECAS - The Middle East Centre for Arab Studies. I was to go back time and again, with the lovely Micheline Hazou and then also with friends Eman and Sara Refai. This village and an inspirational gentleman called Barry were to combine in the person of one Jason Hartmoor, the anti-hero of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy.

Work on Shemlan actually started back in 2011 but was postponed because I decided to self-publish Olives and that took 110% of my time, back in November 2011. Beirut followed in September 2012.

By early 2013 - having visited Estonia, the location of the book's finale - I restarted work on Shemlan and it went like a rocket. I raced to the mad, climactic and rather unusual end of the book, propelled by death metal and much musical mayhem. I sent it off to my agent and when he responded, weeks later, that he wasn't even going to try shopping it to publishers, I terminated our relationship.

Boy, did that feel good.

Shemlan was published on 1 November 2013. I didn't publish a book in 2014, I spent the year wrestling with A Simple Irish Farmer and quite a lot of existential self publishing angst. Olives and Beirut have sold quite well, but Shemlan - easily the best of the three books - was plagued by the fact I didn't do a UAE print run and was too exhausted by the whole farrago of promotion to actually get out there and market the thing. Shemlan has been terribly - and unfairly - neglected as a consequence.

Seriously. I can't even look at a book blog now. If I see the words, 'I love books and...' one more time, I'll burn the puppy. Big brown eyes or no big brown eyes...

I've written a screenplay for Olives since. I just don't know what to do with that, so it's in a desk drawer. It was fun to do!

So here I am, fifteen years into my journey as a writer of books. I have one more book now finished, being steadily rejected by a number of agents. That's taken, as I have documented earlier, a year to write. And I have another new book to edit now, which took about a month to write. If traditional publishing turns both books down, as I confidently predict they will, I shall self publish them in September this year (A Simple Irish Farmer) and March next year (the newnew book) to coincide with the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature.

And after that, I reckon, I'll be hanging up my literary shoes...

Booked

In the penultimate post in a series of slightly embarrassing 'teasers' intended to recruit readers and backers for that glibbest and most delightful of books, Space, Tuesday Belgravia talked to one of the more charming characters in the book, Lysander Cullinane, the head of a shadowy British government disinformation operation, The Space Agency. She caught up with the posh spook in his trailer on the set of the book, during a short break in writing his final scene...

So you’ve been quite a popular character in Space. Who’s your own favourite character?
Oh, it’s got to be Eva Bartholdy. Of course, she plays a great deal greater role in the book than it seems at first. She’s a charming lady, although she does have quirks. But then we all have quirks, don’t we?

Things haven’t been going terribly well for you, have they?
No, I have to confess they have been better, old thing. It’s odd to have to admit it, but I’m even a little sad that I ever got involved with young Dr. Ben Jonson, although this really isn’t all his fault. Things have unravelled a tad, though. For a start the Russian mafia have been bugging my office, then I’ve lost a good operative in Ian Beresford. Having young Neon seconded from the Americans went pretty wrong, too. She’s a little too, um, trigger-happy, isn’t she? But she does look absolutely marvellous in a black leather catsuit, one has to admit!

And then there’s the virus...
Yes, the virus. Well, we’ve always run campaigns here at The Space Agency that have worked well in terms of disguising what’s actually going on. We’ve had some great successes: stories that have diverted attention away from the real machinations and intent of those in government. It’s important to do that, sometimes. As you know, we invented the Loch Ness Monster, spontaneous combustion, UFOs, out of body experiences. All that paranormal claptrap originated from the teams of young creatives and the massive archives we have here. We’re running most of the Internet, these days. Authonomy was one of ours, you know. Web 2.0 thinking is so exciting, don’t you think? Put the writers where you can see ‘em, that’s what we say!

You mention your archives – aren’t they based on Nazi research?
Yes, found by Kenneth Spamp in the closing weeks of World War Two. It was a treasure trove of strange stories and odd tales. The Nazis were so into that sort of astrological mumbo-jumbo! So we used it to weave our own little web of disinformation!

It's all rather complicated!
Well, the chap had over 350 pages to play with and he certainly filled them up with words. Mostly 'gun', 'blood' and 'dead' from what one can discern...

So, getting back to this virus. It’s got a bit out of control..
It has, rather, hasn’t it? Not a good day.

And the suicides.
Yes, and the suicides. Quite a few of those, aren’t there? This interview’s going to look pretty negative in print, I have to say. Well! Have you ever seen a Yeti? I have!

You’re killed in the next scene.
Yes, on a park bench by the Thames near Richmond. It’s quite a nice place to die.

Any regrets?
What? Apart from being responsible for the virus that’s locking up the country’s computers, telecoms, power and road networks; the multiple murders created by my out of control ‘minder’, the suicides of my second in command and my computer expert and the fact that the man who founded my agency is not in fact dead at all but running a super-powerful cabal of shadowy international power freaks who are reverse engineering two millennia old spaceships?

Yes.
No, no regrets at all, dear heart! It’s been a spiffing day!

Thank you, Lysander Cullinane.
Any time, my dear. Now. Have you seen that wretched Russky, Litvanoff?


You can read Space online on authonomy by clicking on this handy, easy to use hyperlink. And if the book makes you laugh and looks like something you'd buy and read, then you can 'Bookshelf' it and vote for it to stay in the top five books to be 'cherry-picked' for review by Harper Collins' editors at the end of the month! There are three days to go and, believe me, your vote counts right now!

Incidentally, there's a load of other fiction by new writers in the UK, US, Europe and Australia up there, so have a poke around too and see what takes your fancy!

Try Stalking the Widowmaker by Greg Horbay for instance, or MM Bennets' epic 1812. MM Trevalean's Tartare is certainly an interesting, if unsettling read and then there's Dan Holloway's Songs from the other side of the wall, a work of literary genius. Also try Peter Booth's Their Name is Legion or Lauri Shaw's wicked Servicing the Pole!

How To Write A Book

This, believe it or not, was my Christmas gift from 
The Niece From Hell - a 'starter pack' of book napkins!.

You have to bear in mind the advice below comes from a self-published author who's just started out and will likely never sell more than a couple of hundred books, not Jeffrey Deaver, okay? You are, of course, more than welcome to buy my book and decide for yourself whether to listen to me.

Pal Abdulla Al Suwaidi (@Aabo0 to you) asked me on Twitter to share the resources I used developing my book, Olives - A Violent Romance. To that end, the below.

In terms of actual literature on writing books, there are hundreds of books on how to write a book. It's notable that few of them are written by successful authors of anything other than books on how to write books and many carry mendacious subtitles such as 'How To Get Published'. I think you've more chance of being published by wearing a duck on your head and standing naked outside Blackstone's than you have by reading these books. Books on writing will only take you so far - the rest of the process is as arcane and mystifying as the famous Nebulising Nonentity of Nether Thragulon Nine.

I own two books about writing, foisted upon me by an insistent and exasperated Phillipa Fioretti as we worked together on an early edit of Olives. Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Brown and Dave King and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman. Both are books I am very glad I bought. Other than those, I suppose I've read a load of articles and stuff online but most of my learning has come from working with writer friends on my manuscript or theirs - there are writer's websites such as Harper Collins' Authonomy or Litopia which let you post up your manuscript and allow others to 'crit' it. The upside of this is you get lots of advice and input, the downside is there can be a lot of backbiting, competitive 'backing' where, for instance authonomy, the site is based on competing and it can be hard to know if the advice comes from a seasoned pro or a complete dufus.

Should you join a writers' group? I have found (as I acknowledge in Olives) the company of writer friends utterly invaluable, but I stress they are friends - people whose company I sought and enjoy. I have never belonged to a writers' group as such and look on them with mild horror. But don't 'go it alone' for pity's sake. I did that for over five years and now fervently wish I hadn't wasted so much time.

I follow a number of blogs, but these are more focused on publishing rather than writing. However, I'd recommend:

The Passive Voice - mostly posts from other people's blogs, but his selections are usually thought-provoking and his observations often add value, too. And, of course, he's finding other writers worth following for you.

The Shatzkin Files - Consultant Mike Shatzkin was one of the early voices that 'got' digital and he remains a must-read commentator on publishing.

The Bookseller - The trade journal of publishing. I find this great for following the industry and occasionally  useful for 'reality checking' some of the more strident neologist voices.

Pub Rants - A useful agent's blog. Kristin is one of the very few agents who I follow.

Writer Beware - A good early warning system for scams and scammers. As self publishing grows, so will the marketing scams that promise to market your book etc.

Mad Genius Club - A bunch of writers writing about writing, always worth a visit.

The Independent Publishing Magazine - Does what it says on the cover.

Obviously, if anyone else has any smart ideas on writer/author/publishing blogs to follow, feel free to chuck 'em in the comments.

As for the rest of it, here are some of my learnings so you don't have to smack your head against the same brick walls I did.

How to write a book

So, you've set up all these blogs in your reader and popped off to Amazon to buy those books. You've got a nice, sharp pencil and a piece of paper ready. Now you can start writing your book. Step back from that keyboard, I was serious about the pencil and paper.

1) A Novel Form
What kind of book are you intending to write? Be clear with yourself, categorise it from day one. Chic-lit for the over 30s European housewife? A thriller for early 20-something professionals? Tighten it as much as possible and try to imagine your audience. Is it a large audience? What kind of books is it buying? Where is it buying them? Is your genre of choice one you read a lot in? Which authors do you admire/enjoy the most? Are they selling well? How will you be different to them, yet occupy the same space on the shelf? (One writer solved this problem by using a pseudonym that placed him next to his 'target author' on bookshelves!)

These questions all seem far removed from the beautiful process of creating literature and they indeed are. But if you want your beautiful literature to get published, you'd better start thinking commercially from the get-go. Publishers don't buy beauty any more, they buy books they think they can sell in the mainstream. If you're in it for the beauty and to hell with the consequences, then you're self-publishing and you're as well to understand that before you press a single key.

Now to use that piece of paper (some people use whiteboards or big charts, I happen to use paper). Presumably you've got an idea of the basic plot of the book. Now you can Google 'narrative curve' and came back to this after you've spent a couple of days reading all the advice out there. I start out by putting the events in my book in little clumps of text and linking them with arrows, so each clump is a little like a scene. Each scene, then, takes your character forwards on the journey of your book (the journey can, of course, take place on an armchair), by moving the character or by moving other characters and situations that influence or impact your character. The arrows let you move to the next scene and connect scenes. Force yourself to do this through the whole book to the end (the temptation is to do about half and then decide to resolve the rest when you get to it). It doesn't have to be totally granular - it can be a very 'broad brush' approach, but you want to have an idea of what you're setting out to do. Ideally, the whole thing can also be colour-coded to belong to the beginning, middle and end, which takes you back to the narrative curve stuff.

2) Start writing
Now you can start putting your scenes on paper, knowing where they belong in the full picture. In fact, books are ideally structured in scenes, each scene having an objective to it that moves the story forward. Each scene belongs in a place, so be careful to let your reader know where he or she is. Each scene has a single point of view, that is the events are witnessed through one character. If you start using two or more POVs, you'll confuse the reader. This is where you Google "point of view" and come back to this article in a couple of weeks when you've exhausted yourself with the endless debate writers love to have about POV.

How much should you write? I'd aim for 1,000 words a day, but if you're doing 500 that's fine. The keyboard has arguably done us some dis-favours here as it makes it all to easy to dash ahead like a charging rhino, which is hardly the stuff of considered prose. Writers who worked long-hand did a great deal less editing, I suspect, than we do today.

3) Consider these things.
What person will you write your book in? There are arguments for first person and arguments for third person. Come back when you've done Googlin' - I wrote Olives in the first person, but my other books are all written in the third person. The first person demands that you really get behind one character and I created something of a rod for my back by choosing to narrate my story through a character who isn't intended to be necessarily likeable or admirable, in fact other characters elicit your sympathies and admiration. I personally think it's worked, but I'm biased. And it was a hell of a lot of work to do. Third person would have been simpler and easier all round. Having said that, there is some really smashing literature out there written in the first person and a cherry-pick of the very finest I'd suggest would include Camus' The Stranger, Fowles' The Magus and Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. If you're going to write in the first person, I'd recommend some movement of green paper over to Jeff Bezos' account.

Who is your main character? No, I mean really who? One of the things that makes JRR Tolkein's work so fabulous is that he created his world before he populated it, even down to defining its history, folk-lore, culture and languages. What are your character's personality and quirks, background and situation? How will your character be changed by the story you're telling? How will other characters interact with your main characer - and who are they? All of this is "characterisation" and, yes, you should Google it right now and come back to this article in a few days when you've defined your characters and fleshed out their lives so you feel you know them. They can develop as you're writing, of course - but you're best having thought them through first so you can have them react to situations realistically and in a way we believe and can empathise with.

4) As you write...
Think about where you are in each scene and how it is best experienced through your character's POV. What are the sights and sounds? The smells? The feelings? Close your eyes and  breathe it in, live it. And now put it down on paper. Use one word where ten will do, but pick the word that really nails it. Don't kill yourself being a 'rivet man' and detailing the scene to the point where we all start haemorrhaging , just set it up in a few well chosen words and then make it come alive for us by referencing it through your characters' senses. Don't forget touch - a cold key in the pocket, a warm baby. You might like to Google "writing style" here and come back in a couple of months or so.

Language is the only tool you've got, in the same way as voice is the only tool you have during a phone call. That means you have to use it to create pictures, draw the reader in and build a sense of reality. Strangely, less is more - a few well chosen words is all you need because we will fill in the gaps for you. But do avoid cliché and don't use two verbs where one will do. In fact, one writer friend is a passionate killer of adverbs and she's right almost all of the time. Consider your choice of words. If Simon gets up and walks from the room leaving Helen behind is Simon being as interesting or engaging as if he pushes back the chair irritably and strides out of the room, brushing past Helen? Be careful not to let yourself get too 'purple' here, it's a balancing act.

Focus on your characters' emotional responses, but do try and avoid telling us what those responses, those feelings and reactions are. We're better off you showing us what they are in the way the characters react. Here's another Google moment, the idea of "showing not telling". See you in a few days.

5) Hammer away
 Keep hammering away at it, building your scenes and helping your characters live the lives you've given them in your mind. Keep to the straight and narrow, don't forget we're going to have to read this, so your amusing, if self-indulgent invention of Granny Smith who is a totally great character but actually matters not one jot is something you might like to reconsider spending time on given you're almost certainly going to dump her when you get around to the edit. Do bear in mind many books suffer from a 'soggy middle', something you should avoid if you've planned well but can also avoid by bearing this particular bear trap in mind. One day, probably in about 80-100 days depending on your genre and story, you're going to sit back and experience a remarkable moment of satisfaction.

Now the doubt can creep in from the dark corners and gnaw at you. Is it any good? Did it all work? Will anyone read it? Is it just a pile of self-indulgent tripe?

Welcome to my world. And good luck to you.

The Klazart Exploit

You'll have probably read my post on the 'Klazart Exploit', the gaming of Harper Collins' authonomy peer-review writers' site by Starcraft commentating YouTube uber-geek Vineet Bhalla.

If not, it's here.

The most excellent Lauri Shaw, a princess amongst women, has now interviewed Vineet about who he is, why he did it, what he thinks about it all and where he thought it would take him.

The interview's here and I do recommend it as a Web 2.0 case study, a piece of interest to anyone who has a view on authonomy or writing and as just a neat adventure story.

Cheers!

Publish vs Self-Publish - A Voice of Reason?

I posted on Patty Jansen's blog last week and she's posting on mine this week. I do hope she doesn't make as much mess in my place as I made over at hers. I met science fiction author Patty on Harper Collins' peer-review website for aspiring authors, authonomy. Here's her take on the whole business of getting published and where the self-publishing 'revolution' is taking us. We don't necessarily see eye to eye on this, but in diversity lies life...

On Friday, Alexander wrote a guest post for my blog entitled Rejection – An Author’s Guide detailing how his books had gained him 250 rejections, and how, despite being given hope, he had ultimately failed to find a publisher.

My first reaction was: Wow, 250 rejections. My second reaction was: Is that all? I loved Olives, and recommend it to anyone, but for the sake of argument, let’s take a different perspective.

After Alexander’s post, I went and tallied up my own rejections. I don’t tend to keep close tabs on these, because, frankly, it gets depressing. I counted more than 300. Many more publishers, especially for book-length manuscripts, never bothered to respond at all.

Within that massive pile of rejection, there are some acceptances. Some small stories to small magazines, soe to delightful but fairly unknown local anthologies, all of them fun and stroking my ego as writer, but none significant. There are also a handful of special acceptances I would like to talk about.

In 2010, I won the Writers of the Future contest. Apart from publication (at 10c per word), and $1,000 prize money, this involved a one-week workshop with some of the greatest writers of Science Fiction and fantasy alive. The workshop, the use of resources, travel to LA, accommodation at the famous Roosevelt Hotel was all paid for. This is especially significant, since I live in Australia.

It didn’t fully dawn on me how big this thing was until as part of the program, we visited the printing plant where the book was being printed. The print run is 40,000.

Later that week, there was an acceptance ceremony broadcast on the internet, which was watched live by many people, and has been watched by many more since.

Also, I have recently sold a story to the largest Science Fiction short fiction magazine, Analog Science Fiction and Fact - a print run of 25,000 dedicated readers and many online sales.

My point of mentioning these is that there is just no way a nobody writer is going to attract those kinds of numbers with a only self-published material. Yes, you can do give-aways, and sometimes these attract a few thousand freebie downloads, but how many people are actually going to read freebie downloads?

The second point is that many people want to be familiar with a writer before buying books. Do they like the style? Can they be fairly sure the book is going to meet certain standards? Personal opinion aside, when a writer has published traditionally, this writer takes both skill and audience to a self-publishing venture.

Therefore I think it’s plain dumb to write off publishers completely. How I hate the term legacy publishing, and see it bandied about with vitriol, as if large companies are stupid. These are business people, who owe the writer nothing except what’s in the contract. They owe it to their company to make a profit, and will make decisions accordingly. That’s not evil. That’s how many of us make a living. They do not owe unpublished writers anything.

On the other side of the spectrum, with the option of self-publishing, writers no longer owe publishers anything either. Fed up with shitty or downright rude business practices, writers choose to vote with their mouses, and good on them. I am one of them, and started my venture into self-publishing when a contract on a novel fell through and I couldn’t bear to take the damn thing to market again.

But.

That is not to say that there is nothing beneficial to be gained from interaction with large or slightly less large publishers.

Large publishers have one major thing in their favour: numbers. Even if your book tanks, it will have been read by many more people than you are likely to reach with self-publishing only. These people have already invested in your work and, unless they absolutely hated it, are more likely to buy your next self-published book over the self-published book of an author they don’t know.

To be honest, I find the mutual disdain between self-publishers and publishing houses and those published by them quite silly. There are books that won’t appeal to large publishers on first sight (mind you, they will appeal if they sell well self-published). Writers used to go to small press with these titles. These days, they might as well do it themselves. As aside, I think small press will suffer more from the self-publishing boom than large press and will probably have to re-invent themselves as editing and formatting services. There will always be a market for mass-published books.

From a writer’s perspective, self-publishing and traditional publishing enhance each other. You draw people to your work by publishing traditionally, and sell your other work to them for 70% royalties at Amazon. Sneaky, huh?

A bit more about Patty
Patty Jansen lives in Sydney, Australia, where she spends most of her time writing Science Fiction and Fantasy. She publishes in both traditional and indie venues. Her story This Peaceful State of War placed first in the second quarter of the Writers of the Future contest. Her futuristic space travel story Survival in Shades of Orange will appear in Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

Her novels (available at ebook venues, such as the Kindle store) include Watcher's Web (soft SF), The Far Horizon (SF for younger readers), Charlotte's Army (military SF) and books 1 and 2 of the Icefire Trilogy Fire & Ice and Dust & Rain (post-apocalyptic steampunk fantasy).

You'll find Patty on Twitter (@pattyjansen), Facebook, LinkedIn, Goodreads, LibraryThing, google+ and her Must Use Bigger Elephants blog is at: http://pattyjansen.com/

Fake Plastic Souks Is Ten

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oh golly, oh gosh! I nearly missed it. Happy Birthday, Fake Plastic Souks! Ten years ago this month, I was sufficiently intrigued by the idea of expressing my opinion without using a pseudonym (at the time the standard approach for bloggers in Dubai) and was also missing writing magazine articles (I used to do a lot of that) enough to contemplate starting a blog. It's hard to imagine today, but back then it was all, well, terribly experimental. Now, of course, it's quaintly retro.

It all followed on from another experiment in online scribbling, a Wiki called 'Orientations' I had started to put together, which played with the idea of creating a hyperlinked series of articles that led you on an adventure, a little like playing Colossal Caves, around what was something of a stream of consciousness. PB Works, the nice people wot hosts the Wiki, have been threatening to take back that workspace for years and yet the crumbling ruins of that largely incomplete experiment still exist. The first word of the first post on Fake Plastic Souks linked, through the fiendishly clever use of houmus, back to the Wiki in a sort of nod to the past.

Here's the first Fake Plastic Souks post, linked for your clicking pleasure!

That first post was inspired by the sententious rumblings from the Arab Media Forum and amused me greatly. Like many things that amuse me greatly (my first novel, for instance), I find I am in an audience of one. Luckily, that has never detracted from my amusement. The ability to amuse oneself avoids a great deal of unpleasantness in life, I find.

An awful lot of water has flowed under the bridge since those early days, quite a lot of the events which took place around me documented as I jotted things down. It's not quite Samuel Pepys, but I occasionally enjoy stumbling across something old and dusty. In all this time, a tad over 1.2 million pages have been read. Which is nice. I would hate to think how many words I've thrown into this little cloudy corner. I've probably written about 700,000 words in my various novels (not including the two books I made from FPS posts for publishing workshop purposes) and likely more in the blog.

Oh yes, the books. There were two of them, made when I needed a text to create a sample book for a 'hands on' publishing session I did for the LitFest chaps. The first one documented 2007-2009: Fake Plastic Souks - The Glory Years. I joked that I'd do another one if that book sold more than ten copies and to my mild amazement, it did. So I made the second, Fake Plastic Souks - The Fear Returns, which covered 2009-2011. The links take you to the Kindle editions, but there are also paperbacks. I never did get around to a third one. Just as well, probably.

It all seems a little irrelevant these days. Mind you, an early and perhaps over-passionate proponent of 'social media', I now find myself yearning to sit under a tree and play with wooden toys rather than post, share, tweet and snap for the benefit of small and frequently mildly bemused audiences.

I think my favourite things from over the years are were when I 'outed' Harper Collins' Authonomy and the 'Shiny' posts, which did rather tickle me. Documenting the egregious contents of Tim Horton's French Vanilla Coffee not only provided me with amusement, it has informed something like 10,000 people. The 'stuff they put in our food' posts have always caused the most 'Yews'. My abiding interest in food, of course, led to the co-creation of Dubai's first 'food blog' with partner in crime Simon McCrum, The Fat Expat. That was finally shuttered due to lack of time and photographic talent back in 2013. TFE was never really Instagram gold, but I still use it to find recipes even today.

These days, as people may have noticed, I post rather more infrequently and have stopped looking at Sitemeter or analytics. In the early days, the blog would attract a sort of 'background radiation' of readers, about 30 or so per post. That grew to hundreds and even thousands, with anything up to 40,000 page views each month. I was just starting to think that was getting rather reasonable when I met Russian writer Boris Akunin, whose blog gets about 1,000 comments a day. When he invited readers to join him in a walk around Moscow to protest Putin, 10,000 people turned up.

I was duly humbled.

Anyway, there's no real point to this post. I just thought I'd mark the occasion...

Reminder

Just in case anyone is in any doubt as to what to do.

Go here. Authonomy. Sign in. You just need mail/password

Read this: My book. It's damn funny.

Comment on it and/or add to your 'bookshelf' if and only if, you like it and it amuses you.

Do the same for Keefie.

Thank you.

Marketing And Promoting Books

Writing a book is just the start of the journey to publication, whether you’re self published or taken on by a publisher. More and more people, including agented and published authors, are taking to self publishing as Internet-enabled tools to create and distribute books lessen the value of a mainstream publisher's contribution to the process. We’ve seen this process before, it’s called ‘disintermediation’, when an intermediary is removed from a process by the Internet. And Amazon is a great disintermediator.

This means I can find my readers anywhere in the world and get a book to them without having to physically create and distribute tens of thousands of books. It also means anyone who has written a book can now get on the Web and promote it. Including the lunatic on the bus who has an atom bomb in a corned beef tin, the author of a dreary memoir of life in Tuscany and the deluded nincompoop who’s penned a trilogy about a dystopia where dolphins are smarter than people. Oh hang on a second...

That clutter means authors – all authors – have an awful lot of noise to cut through. And we face readers increasingly barraged by needy wails of ‘buy my book’. And yet you need to get your book out there.

As they say here in Dubai: What to do?

There are a lot of people out there ready to help you in this endeavour, for a few dollars. I tried a couple but I never really believed in them and I was right. The recommendation of someone who sells recommendation is worthless. Honest reviews are gold dust, but only part of the formula. Social interaction is good, but you really have to balance promotion with content – some would argue I got that balance wrong with Olives – A Violent Romance, but I’m happy with myself overall.

The one critical lesson I’ve learned about book marketing is the lesson I learned when I first took a sales job in the early 1980s. AIDA – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action. People don’t just buy books. They have to have their interest piqued in some way – something has to catch their eye. And that something has to evoke enough curiosity for them to want to look under, literally, the covers. What they find has to make them want the book, because only then (and I have been amazed at how much pushing it takes to take the horse to water) will they actually click on that link to Amazon.

It’s worth looking at each of these four cardinal rules of sales:

ATTENTION

Your cover is critical. I love the cover of Olives, it’s a point of considerable pride that I could pick my own cover artist and that the talented Naeema Zarif brought her unique style to the book’s cover. But compare Olives to Beirut and you’ll find I was being self-indulgent. Appropriate to the book? Yes. Artistically valid? Yes. But that’s not what it takes. It takes immediate, in your face whambam.

As I pointed out in my workshop at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature on book promotion and marketing, you need a ‘book hook’, something that makes the book stand out and attract attention. In Olives it was water rights and the drought gripping the Levant. Lead with this, build your content around it – and get that content out there.

Traditional media is key. Radio, TV, newspapers, magazines. Features about you and your book hook, reviews. Do signings, book clubs, conferences, book fairs, workshops, readings. Take every chance you can to get out there. Recruit supporters whenever you can. This can be exhausting, but it’s necessary. Build a media database and send out review requests to as wide an audience of reviewers as you can. The more you’re in front of people, the more attention you’re getting.

If you can’t bear the thought of all that attention, I’d consider whether you want to do this book thing. I fear in today’s world all authors are being forced blinking into the spotlights to face the audience and ‘engage the community’. And yes, that includes the conventionally published.

Talking of communities - I cannot over-emphasise the importance of communities in promoting books. If you're an active and contributing member of an online community, their help can get you off the ground in no time.(Anyone out there remember the deep joy of Klazart gaming Authonomy?)

A website for a book is critical – it’s somewhere you can point people (Twitter is great for attention, but you need to trigger a click somewhere – and that somewhere has to build interest) and tell them more about the book. The Olives website is probably too busy and contains too much information. The site’s not there to celebrate or justify your work – it’s there to trigger a link to ‘buy the book’. You also need to bear SEO in mind – the site is a discoverable asset: when I search your name, your book or even the topics your book is based around, I should find YOU staring at me.

The Olives website is hardly the Huffington Post – in the year it’s been around, it’s pulled 4,200 page views - some 340 visitors clicked on the ‘Buy Olives’ link. The majority of visits have been from the UAE and USA. However, it’s also been somewhere I could post some of the many positive reviews of the book, giving me credibility – particularly with book bloggers who can be resistant to self published writers. And good reviews are critical in building attention and desire.

The Olives blog has been a much bigger traffic draw with over 10,500 page views (about 500 of these were for the Olives is blocked in Jordan post – a wee whiff of controversy I refused to capitalise on and fan into flames. Looking back, I rather wish I had now).

The blog was intended to create a stream of content that was, again, discoverable and also to engage potential readers with the book, taking excerpts from the book that touched on some of the issues it’s built around – the water conflict in the region, nationality and identity and the Palestinian story. It also discussed issues brought up by book clubs and reviewers – including the book’s treatment of alcohol and sexuality in the Middle East. It also gave a steady source of content that went beyond ‘buy my book’.

The Beirut- An Explosive Thriller website is, by the way, much cleaner and faster to get to the point.

INTEREST

So you won the click. Now you can sit back and enjoy yourself. Not a bit of it. Now you have to build interest. I’m interested enough to give you my consideration, how do you hold me? In today’s world, when every movement of our online eyeballs brings a new skateboarding dog or man with five nipples, that’s a big ask.

The big tool here is your ‘blurb’, the summary of your book’s content that graces the back cover. Writing blurbs is a skill in itself – what do you leave in, what do you take out? How do you describe your story enticingly and draw the reader in? I’m not about to write a piece on how to write blurbs, it’d turn this already long post into a book in itself. But précis, précis, précis is the key. And, as in your writing, try and make one word do the work of ten. A quick example from the blurb for Beirut – An Explosive Thriller:

Michel Freij is about to become the next president of Lebanon.

One of the feared Grey Havens Gang suggested:

Michel Freij is poised to become the next president of Lebanon.

See? That one word is so much more dramatic. It’s detail like that has to go into your blurb. And you should learn it off by heart, because when people ask you ‘What’s your book about?’ you have their attention, your answer will dictate whether you have their interest.

The content you create, including the content of your book site, should build on interest, deepening people’s engagement with your work. This is desire at work.

DESIRE

I was attracted by the cover, liked the sound of the book and enjoyed what the author said about it/what I read on the book’s website. I think I’d like to read some more of it. The extract made available by Amazon (you MUST enable sampling on Amazon, Smashwords et al – and have a sample, say an opening chapter, on your website) was well-written. Hell, I’m going to do this thing.

This is desire.

For most of us, desire is tempered by price. I’ll give you an excellent and personal example. I am re-reading the paperback of Evelyn Waugh’s ‘Scoop’. I’ve had that book for years, this was the first time I notice Penguin hadn’t bothered re-setting the book – the margins are massive and if that had been my book, people would have complained to me. Whatever, I simply can’t settle down with paper these days so I tootled off to Amazon to get me a Kindle copy. £7.99. I couldn’t believe it. The Kindle version of a 1938 book is £1 MORE than the paperback.

I really want to read Scoop on my Kindle, but I’m not paying a greedy, stupid publisher (listening, Penguin?) £7.99 for it. It’s simply not happening.

Book pricing can make you or break you. And that’s another post right there.

ACTION

It all leads to this. The click on your 'buy my book' link, the click through to Amazon or iBooks or wherever else your book is available from. It goes without saying that each site needs to be well populated with good, well-edited content, properly tagged and your author pages etc available and updated. Don't shrug this advice off - Olives was filed under 'theatre' in iBooks for almost a year because I tagged it in Smashwords as 'Fiction - Drama'. I only found out after my Mum bought me an iPad for my birthday!

It doesn’t end with action. That click to buy your book is a chance to engage your readers as components of your marketing campaign. Encourage reviews, seek feedback, enrol evangelists. Now, if readers are telling you your book sucks, there’s valuable input for you. It might hurt, but thicken up your skin and suck it up – if you need to improve your game, there’s no better way to do it than listen to your customers. If multiple readers have a problem with a character or point out a flaw in your dialogue, you’d be mad not to re-evaluate that work.

There’s no more powerful marketing tool than third party endorsement - if readers like your work, get them to tell others. Encourage reviews on Amazon, Goodreads or Shelfari. Repost these to Twitter (not in a constant stream, mind) and host them on your book blog. Post ‘em to Facebook. Get the good news out there. Because you won a click on ‘Buy with Whispernet’ and now the eternal, Sisyphean cycle starts again. A happy reader buys you attention. A happy reader makes you interesting. A happy reader builds desire. A happy reader can provoke action.

I love happy readers.

(You can become one too, by clicking on this link to the website for Beirut - An Explosive Thriller and then wandering over to the 'Buy Beirut' section!)

If you want to talk books and have a drink or three, the celebration of the launch of Beirut takes place tonight at Billy Blues in Satwa, Dubai. The invite's here.

Fire Petal Books - Making A Dream Come True

One of the many side-effects of doing the authonomy thing for me has been my membership of a shadowy cabal of revolutionary, anarchist and even occasionally just normal writers from around the world who have kept in touch over the past year and more, generally swapping edits, news, information, help and assistance and quite a lot of 'there there's too.

One of us, US based editor and writer of young adult books Michelle Witte, recently announced to the group that she was going to open a bookshop. She'd had something of a road to Damascus moment and decided that this was what she wanted to do more than anything else - a community bookshop aimed at young people in Utah, a space where reading and books, teaching and community mattered more than the chain-store big business shareholder-driven push for profit.

To my absolute delight, she didn't stop at announcing what she was up to. She set about making it happen with blinding speed. She set up a Kickstarter project, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed and a website, Fire Petal Books.Oh, and a YouTube channel as well!

And then she cast around for people to help with donating items for an auction to help her fund the startup costs - coming up with a list of authors, literary agents, editors and others that is pretty impressive to say the least, including Neil Gaiman, Chris Cleave and many others. Agents and editors, including two editors from Harper Collins have offered manuscript critiques and even a 15-minute phone call! 15 minutes on the phone to a Harper Collins editor is pretty stunning - especially given that HC will only look at agented authors, let alone talk to writers who aren't signed.

Now Michelle's auction is on - you can find details and bid on stuff here. You'll currently need more than $100 to bid for Neil Gaiman's signed copy of Beowulf, but don't let that stop you. She's got stories running on her in Publisher's Weekly and book trade e-publication Shelf Awareness and there's more to come.

I have the feeling that this is one lady whose dream is going to come true. It just goes to show, doesn't it? All you need is guts, determination and the new tools of the online world!

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.