On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile -- Introduction

Regular readers may recall that a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I had recently completed a new essay on writing and publishing, with the title On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. This essay is on the long side: it runs to 72 A4 pages and about 24,000 words. So I decided to make it available as a free PDF download. Yes, folks, it's FREE, so you can't go wrong.

That was a couple of weeks ago. Which means that the info has dropped off the bottom of the Previous Posts list to your right. So I was going to mention it again at this point.

However, it has been pointed out to me that some readers don't really want to go to the bother of clicking over to some other page, reading the download suggestions, and then downloading something that they probably won't print out on paper anyway. (This despite my telling them that printing it out is much the most convenient way to read the thing -- but who pays any attention to me?)

So, it was suggested to me that, to give readers a chance to get a taste of the essay, to dip into as they wish (or not), I should post the whole damn thing right here on the GOB, in reasonably sized chunks, over a period of several days. Which is what I am going to do.

This suggestion was made to me, by the way, by no less a personage than M.J. Rose. Ms Rose it was who, just a few short years ago, more or less invented the whole business of plugging books on the internet. She is a published novelist herself, runs a blog called Buzz, Balls & Hype, which she is smart enough to offer in two different places (thus proving her mastery of technology), has written ebooks on how to buzz your book, offers online courses in same, probably runs five miles before breakfast, sleeps about two hours a night, and is a nominee for this year's Booker. OK, so I made that last bit up, but the rest is true. Anyway, when M.J. makes a suggestion, the smart thing to do is to pay attention.

So, Rats in chunks it is. Beginning today.

Please bear in mind that, if at any point in reading what follows, you decide that you can't wait several days to read the rest of this amazing essay, or decide (sensibly) that you will be better off reading something that long on paper, then you can still, of course, go to a page on my Kingsfield Publications web site where you can find a download link.

Meanwhile, here, to be going on with, is the introduction to the essay. Part 1 follows tomorrow.

Introduction

Aims

This essay has two principal aims: first, to help writers, literary agents, and publishers to understand the full scale of the difficulties that face them; and second, to suggest strategies which will enable such participants in the book trade to survive and perhaps even prosper.

These aims may immediately be thought to be both presumptuous and unnecessary. After all, you are saying to yourself, people who work in publishing are all professionals; they know precisely what they’re doing, and they don’t need any help from smart-arse commentators.

That is true, up to a point. But there is, unfortunately, a considerable body of evidence to show that writers, in particular, have a grossly overoptimistic view of their own chances of achieving success (however defined); and every year brings a fresh crop of stories about publishers who have either paid far too much for a book which turned out to be a dud, or decided against publishing a book which some other firm accepted and then proceeded to turn into a smash hit. I immodestly suggest, therefore, that all riders on the publishing merry-go-round might do worse than spend a few minutes considering the thoughts which are presented here.

The essay should be particularly useful for writers, because they are the ones most likely to labour for years, motivated only by dreams rather than hard cash; and, when their dreams fail to materialise, they are the ones most likely to suffer psychological and physical damage, as a result of powerful emotions such as anger, bitterness, and frustration. It will do no harm at all for these people to have a clearer idea, at an early stage, of the nature of the problems they face.
By ‘writers’ I mean, for present purposes, novelists. Much of the essay will be written in terms of the problems facing novelists, but almost everything that I have to say will also apply to writers of non-fiction; and much of it will be relevant to playwrights and screenwriters.

The essay is written in the context of book publishing in the UK, but the position is not, I suggest, very different anywhere else in the world.

Publishing from a writer’s perspective

Without writers there are no books. Without books there are no publishing firms, no leisurely lunches on expenses, no specialist book printers and binders, no book-trade van drivers, no librarians – and not even any readers. The whole of the book trade begins, therefore, with writers; with their hopes, fears, ambitions, and funny little ways. For that reason alone we should take a close look at this bizarre species.

Nearly all writers yearn to be published; not only do they want to be published, but they burn to be successful. They want to be rich, famous, and worshipped by the critics; they look forward to an orderly queue of admirers forming outside their bedroom door.

Writers recognise, of course, that this happy state of affairs cannot come about overnight; but in the early days, when hope is intense in their bosoms, they can see no reason why it should not be achieved by 4 p.m. next Thursday.

From a statistical point of view alone, such hopes are fundamentally absurd, and the material in this essay will explain in some detail why it is that writers are unlikely to be successful in achieving their ambitions.

The essay is prompted by my dismay, which has intensified over several decades, at seeing so many intelligent, sensitive, and hard-working people waste so much of their time on the largely futile business of trying to write and sell novels. (I have written about a dozen myself, without, so far, igniting any huge fires.) It irks me that human beings are so slow to learn, and, having learnt, are so ineffective at passing on what they have learnt. This essay is therefore my attempt to remedy what I see as certain deficiencies in the educational process, at least as far as fiction is concerned. I shall eschew, as far as possible, offering advice; but the facts, when explained, may suggest to readers that some courses of action are far more sensible than others.

In the course of this exercise, I hope to minimise the frustration and despair, and to maximise the profit and enjoyment, not only of writers but of all those involved in the book trade.

I shall try, as far as possible, not to apportion blame or to make too many criticisms of individuals who are doing their best in difficult circumstances.

Between us, we shall, I hope, develop a sense of proportion, and, above all, a sense of humour; the latter is an essential attribute on the part of those who wish to contemplate the vagaries of the book business while remaining sane.

Some of the facts and ideas which are set out here have already been presented to readers in other media: either in my blog, the Grumpy Old Bookman, or in my book The Truth about Writing. (Note: full details of this and other major publications mentioned in the text can be found in the references section at the end.) There is, however, much new thinking on offer in this essay, and it has largely been inspired and stimulated by the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is the author of a book called Fooled by Randomness.

Dr Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb is one of those rare creatures, someone who has a successful track record in the business world and yet is comfortable, and respected, in academia.

In the world of high finance, Taleb has held a number of senior posts, including that of managing director and head trader at Union Bank of Switzerland, and worldwide chief derivatives trader at CS-First Boston; he is currently Founder and Chairman of Empirica LLC, a research laboratory and financial products trading house in New York.

Taleb’s educational background includes an MBA from Wharton and a PhD from Université Paris-Dauphine. He is a Fellow in Mathematics and Adjunct Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, and Visiting Professor of Risk Management at Université Paris-Dauphine.

Taleb first came to public attention as the author of Fooled by Randomness, the subtitle of which is ‘The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets’. When first published, this was selected by both Amazon.com and the Financial Times as one of the best business books of the year, and is published in 14 languages. It has, however, a relevance far beyond the world of business.

Taleb’s intellectual interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, mathematics, finance, literature, and cognitive science. He specialises in the risks of unpredicted rare events (‘black swans’), and as an essayist he is principally concerned with the problems of uncertainty and knowledge.

For more information visit Dr Taleb’s web site; the URL is www.fooledbyrandomness.com.

The structure of the essay

Part 1 introduces the reader to the concept of black swans, as defined by Taleb.

Part 2 describes a hypothetical experiment with rats, which Taleb uses as a means of illustrating a number of erroneous ways of thinking and arguing. The chief error is perhaps that of falling prey to survivorship bias, which means that the observer sees only the survivors of any particular course of events, and fails to take adequate note of the characteristics of the many other participants.

In Part 3, we note that Taleb’s experiment with rats is in many ways analogous with the slush-pile procedure, as traditionally carried out in the offices of publishers and literary agents. We then proceed to review Taleb’s various forms of faulty thinking, as they apply in the context of writing and publishing; in particular, we try to learn how to think clearly about publishing issues, a skill which is in notably short supply.

The evidence assembled in Part 3 demonstrates beyond question that randomness plays a major part in publishing; specifically, we learn that, provided a manuscript reaches a certain basic professional standard, it is randomness which thereafter determines the ‘success’ of that book.

The fourth part of the essay is intended to provide practical assistance to those who are involved in looking for suitable books to publish (slush-pile selectors). Starting from the most basic of questions – Is publishing a sensible business for companies or individuals to be involved in? – we move on to consider both reactive and proactive procedures for managing the slush pile.

Part 5 outlines a similarly pragmatic approach that may be applied by those are slush-pile contributors, i.e. writers.

DON'T FORGET: if you want to read this essay in full, you can go to a page on my Kingsfield Publications web site where you can find a download link to get the whole thing in PDF format.

Luis Carmelo: The Giant Cloud

Luis Carmelo has sent me an email to say that the Minion has begun to publish his novel, The Giant Cloud, in twenty daily episodes. Well, far be it from me to discourage anyone who is taking advantage of the new technology. Take a look and see what you think.

MFA -- many fools available?

A while back I thought about writing a post on creative-writing degrees in the UK. And I actually started to do a bit of research. But I soon gave up. You know why? Because it was too bloody depressing, that’s why. It was depressing even to think about doing the research, much less actually to do it.

Creative-writing degrees, like all degrees, are offered by universities, and the oldest and most famous such courses, in world terms, are those offered by American universities. These are usually postgraduate degrees, requiring (it seems) two years of full-time study (or even three) plus the expenditure of substantial sums of money on fees, accommodation, keeping yourself alive, et cetera. In the US the courses usually lead to the award of a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) qualification.

Now it so happens that I know a great deal about universities. I studied or worked in them for the best part of thirty years. I have three degrees myself (MA, MEd, and PhD). And I wrote a rather scholarly book, published by the Open University Press in 1988, and entitled The Goals of Universities; in its day it was modestly influential. There are, therefore, few people in this world who are more enthusiastic than I, in principle, about the benefits of higher education. But there are limits. And by God the creative-writing degrees of this world exceed them.

What I was going to do was draw up a checklist for anyone mad enough to be thinking of taking a creative-writing degree. (I say mad enough because, of course, as you may have gathered by now, I have absolutely no faith whatever in courses of this nature. More of why below.) This checklist would give the student a clear idea of what to look for when choosing a creative-writing course. And the list would include some of the following:

Does the course have clearly stated objectives?
Are the costs of the course clearly set out?
Who teaches the course, and what have they written?
Are the benefits of taking the course clearly identified?
What is the average increase in earnings among graduates of the course?

And so forth. All fairly basic stuff, but most of it questions that potential students fail to ask. Remember please that I have had a lot of experience with students who take postgraduate courses, particularly mature students. What tends to happen is that, after they have taken their first degree, students go out into the world and get a job. And then after three or four years they see other people making faster progress than they are; earning more money; getting promoted.

Success in employment tends to be linked with success of other kinds: the successful graduates have nice cars, comfortable apartments, and glamorous boy/girlfriends. And so those who are not doing quite so well, after earning their first degree, say to themselves, Gee, if only I had a Masters in Cooking the Books, or a PhD in Flattery of Bosses as Recommended by Machiavelli, then all my problems would be solved. So they sign up for second degree. Often at considerable cost in time and money and effort.

In order to take the higher degree they have to give up their existing job. This loses them a couple of years of valuable work experience. They cease to earn money, and begin to spend substantial amounts of it on fees and living expenses. And then they complete the course, after an enormous effort, and guess what. Nothing goes quite the way they expected.

It turns out that employers are not too impressed by a Masters degree in Cooking the Books from the University of Chipping Sodbury. They prefer someone with a track record of achievement in a real job. So it’s hard for the new graduate to get back in employment at all, much less in a job which pays more and leads to all those juicy benefits which were expected. And the debts mount up. And the boy/girlfriend bogs off and finds someone else.

So then the new graduate begins to sue the university which gave them the higher degree. But that’s another story.

All of this applies with nobs on to degrees in creative writing. Taking such a degree – even the most prestigious MFA at the top university in the world (whichever that may be) – is not going to guarantee that anyone will publish your novel. And if it’s published there is certainly no guarantee that the critics are going to like it, or that the public will buy it. So you may end up having spent a vast amount of money, two or three years of your time, and be effectively far worse off in many ways than you were when you started.

All those things are what I was going to point out in my original proposed post on creative-writing degrees in the UK, and I was going to demonstrate the truth of these propositions with evidence drawn from various quarters. Except, as I say, that I found the mere contemplation of the exercise so depressing that I abandoned the idea.

I was reminded of all this, however, by the storySouth web site, which I mentioned yesterday. Jason Sanford, the fiction editor of storySouth, has an article on the web site entitled ‘Who Wears Short Shorts? Micro Stories and MFA Disgust’. I recommend that it should be read by anyone who is even remotely tempted to contemplate taking an MFA or the equivalent.

The word ‘disgust’ in the title tells you that Sanford has his reservations about the world of MFA, and with good reason. This essay is apparently a revised version of one which appeared earlier, and which aroused a certain amount of comment and ire. It was interpreted as an attack on anyone who has ever taken a college writing course. Well, attack is too strong a word, and it's not written in terms of individuals. The essay simply points out what is blindingly obvious, namely that the world of creative-writing teaching is incestuous, mediocre, bland, and in general something of a racket. Whether consciously so devised or otherwise, the MFA is essentially a machine for separating ambitious fools from their money, and it works very well.

Sanford ends his essay by saying that if anyone can write an essay countering his arguments, he will gladly publish it. We shall see.

Sanford also provides useful links to other articles and essays on the MFA fiasco. The most illuminating of these is perhaps the one by Briggs Seekins, 'The Poetry Workshop and its Discontents'. As the title indicates, this deals specifically with the world of poetry, as seen during his three-year course of studies at Syracuse University, and afterwards.

Seekins is alarmingly frank, and is not afraid to reveal his past self as distressingly naive. But he was, of course, no more foolish than any other applicant to such a course. Here is what he says about himself prior to becoming a student:

I wanted to become a successful poet.... I wanted to have poetry books with my photograph on the back. I wanted to be admired by pretty, bookish women. I wanted to give readings in bookstores and on campuses. I wanted to be a sophisticated, liberal intellectual who drank wine with other sophisticated, liberal intellectuals, while talking expansively about literature and life.

Today, fortunately for Seekins's mental health and general welfare, he realises that 'my "literary" aspirations were petty and mediocre and my ideas about high culture were naive and politically uninformed.'

Reading Briggs Seekins's article should, with luck, put anyone off the idea of trying to become a poet via the academic route.

There is more. Sanford also offers a link to an article in Salon by Sarah Gold. She too reveals the amazing naivety both of herself and her fellow students. Midway through the course, she and her friends suddenly realised that they were 'running up huge student loans' and for what?

What we'd realized, of course, was the trickiest thing about graduate arts programs: They can't promise anything. Unlike graduate degrees in law or medicine or business, completing a master's degree in writing wasn't going to guarantee us a higher level of income, a more highly esteemed professional position or even respect from our friends. In fact, it had dawned on us, we could all excel in our writing classes, graduate with honors and then find ourselves in exactly the same place we were when we started. Only poorer.

OK. Enough. Let us end this discussion so that we can think about something less depressing, such as the war in Iraq or the possibility of dying from Avian Flu.

I have read somewhere that there are 140 creative-writing degrees on offer in the UK. I don't know whether that's a correct estimate. What I do know is that 14, or even 1.4, would be too many. Taking such a course will teach you nothing that you can't find out for yourself from a dozen or so books, plus lots and lots of PRACTICE.

And if you think a degree course might help you with personal contacts, then forget the course and for goodness sake go to London and get a job in a publisher's office, or work for an agent.

Wake up. Get real. Stop dreaming useless dreams.

Prizewinners long and short

Yesterday's Independent, linked by booktrade.info, carried a report on the outcome of a How to Get Published competition which was run by the hosts of a well-known UK TV chat show, Richard and Judy.

Richard and Judy invited would-be novelists to send in the first chapter of a novel, plus a synopsis of the rest of the story. The first prize was a promise of publication by Pan Macmillan. And 46,000 people took advantage of the opportunity.

By any standards, 46,000 is one hell of a number. Would you like to read 46,000 first chapters, plus ditto synopses?

One of the entrants was a 52-year-old 'grandmother and homeopath from Bournemouth'. Name: Christine Aziz. And Christine has won. Now all she has to do is finish the book. (Apparently it was not a condition of entry that the complete work should be available.) Fortunately, Pan Macmillan are going to give Christine a £50,000 advance, which will give her 'the luxury of having time to finish writing' the book without worrying about money.

The winning manuscript, provisionally entitled The Olive Readers, is described as a love story of courage and redemption told by a young woman who writes from a dystopian future.

Well, good luck to Ms Aziz. Though as she has already contrived to come first in a field of 46,000, good luck is obviously an attribute that she already has in abundance.

One interesting feature of this competition is that Pan Macmillan have also decided to offer contracts to the four runners-up as well. These writers get an advance of £20,000 each. Maria Rejt, publishing director Pan Macmillan, says that 'the shortlist reflected an extraordinary range of talent from the extremely commercial to the exquisitely literary.'

Yesterday also saw an announcement concerning the Million Writers Award. This is a competition to select the best short stories published online in 2004. It is organised by storySouth, which is an online literary magazine.

The explanation of how the award works takes a bit of working out, being spread over several pages of the storySouth web site. You can find the rules here, but if I understand them correctly the procedure goes like this.

To begin with, the purpose of the award is to publicise online fiction, and to demonstrate that online magazines and journals publish fiction which is every bit the equal of their more respectable print equivalents. As far as the 2004 contest is concerned, we seem to have got as far as having a list of all the nominations. By my count these run to 140 or so. You can find the list of stories here.

The next stage is for the fiction editor of storySouth, Jason Sanford, to select what he regards as the ten best stories from the nominations (rule 6). This list will be published on 1 March, and members of the public will then be able to vote for the story which they consider to be the best.

All in all this seems to be an an enterprise well worth supporting. In the meantime you can use the list of nominations to find stories that might interest you. At a quick glance, most of the stories listed seem to have appeared in online journals with a distinctly literary bent. However, there are some commercial mags listed, e.g Plots With Guns, Shots, and Scifiction.com.

I dipped into one or two of the stories on offer, with mixed results. The first one I tried opened with a sentence which I considered clumsy, and proceeded to offer a character who 'paled visibly.' How can you pale invisibly, I wondered? So I gave up on that.

I then tried a story by China Mieville, which I thought was rather good. And another by Terry Bisson, ditto. So I guess it's just a matter of choosing a name you know or a title that looks intriguing. There are several biggish names represented here.

So far as I can see, getting on to the list of the best online stories for 2004 carries no benefit at all other than the amazing glory which will astonish all your friends. This competition does prove, however, that there are a hell of a lot of places where you can publish -- or at least submit -- a short story online. And if all else fails you can always put the story on your own blog. One of these days I'm going to start a blog which will feature my own short fiction.

Hugh Hewitt: Blog -- part 3

Continued from yesterday. Some of the remaining chapters of this book offer little to detain us, but I will go through them all, for the record, and at the end offer some final thoughts.

Chapter 6

Chapter 6 is entitled 'Why do Bloggers Blog? And Why it Matters to You.'

The author's thoughts on these two questions are not very illuminating, but he does make some fair points. One of these is that 'the information monopoly, especially in the world of politics, is shattered'. This is fair enough. The existence of a million or two blogs certainly does provide a few extra sources of information, over and above the MSM.

Chapter 7

Part III of the book begins here: Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and Tornadoes -- What's an Executive to Do?

Given that executives are Hewitt's stated target readership for his book, this third part is, I guess, the heart of the whole thing.

Chapter 7 is entitled 'Establishing a Defense', which indicates that Hewitt primarily sees blogs as a source of danger and risk to businesses and organisations of all sorts. Better be ready, he says, to defend yourself against a blog storm, e.g. if you're a food producer and you're found to have been using a food dye which is carcinogenic -- precisely what has happened in the UK over the last couple of days. The suggestions for defending a company seem sensible enough.

Chapter 8

Here the advice becomes frankly risible. Hewitt proposes that a leader of industry ought be blogging daily, to his employees, and the employees should be faithfully reading said blog.

Boy, is this ever a two-edged sword.

In the first place, what gives Hewitt the idea that the average CEO can write, or even dictate, a halfway readable blog? It takes talent, folks. And the example that Hewitt gives of a 'good' post in this context is the sort of thing that would have British employees sniggering for a week. That's if the boss was lucky; if he wasn't lucky he would be faced with a delegation from the union, asking some searching questions.

I don't know what the position is in the US, but here in the UK we have traditionally had a healthy degree of scepticism about the wisdom of our bosses. We often suspect them of being more or less complete fools, elevated well above their deserved station by having been to the right school or having married the boss's daughter, or whatever. A blog written by such a person might have the unfortunate effect of proving, within a week, that such suspicions were fully justified. I recommend extreme caution before Hewitt's recommendations are adopted.

Chapter 9

Title: 'Blogging You, or Your Organization, to the World'. In this chapter Hewitt argues along the lines of 'they won't know unless you tell them', a position with which I have some sympathy. Modesty is the enemy of talent, that sort of thing.

This chapter is notable also for the fact that it is crisply written: short sentences, short paragraphs. A sort of Ed Murrow technique, and none the worse for that.

Chapter 10

Title: 'Finding a Blogger For Your Organization's Blog'. Now this is a bit more sensible. Hewitt suggests that, if an organisation has concluded that it would benefit from a blog, it should recruit a 'professional' blogger, with a track record, to write it. You need, he says, someone who can write and who is ridiculously productive. I second that.

Chapter 11

'There is Plenty of Time to Start', says Hewitt. By which he means that you have not yet missed the boat, but that you should launch your blog as soon as possible.

Chapter 12

'A Dozen Blogs I Would Launch if I Were...' This chapter contains the names of some real companies and some hypothetical individuals, such as an eBay entrepreneur or a Cleveland Browns fan, and describes how blogging might be of benefit to them. There is further encouragement for businesses of all kinds to take advantage of the blogosphere to improve their reputation and profits.

Chapter 13

'Getting Started: the Technology'. An extremely brief chapter, containing hands-on advice of an elementary and obvious kind.

Conclusion

The conclusion is titled 'The Inevitability of Dominance'.

Here Hewitt repeats another of his constant refrains, namely that the key to blogging is trust. 'To build trust', he says, 'is a tremendously difficult thing, requiring patient attention to detail and discipline over long periods of time.'

Well, he got that right. And developing trust is likely to be a real problem for companies that hope to increase sales and reputation through the blog medium. Unless what they say on the blog is extremely carefully handled, it might well end up by having the opposite effect: it will just provide ammunition for critics.

Appendices

There are two lengthy appendices.

The first contains some of Hewitt's early writings on blogging. These demonstrate that he is undoubtedly a capable polemicist: when he puts the boot in, people emerge bruised. Whether Hewitt is justified in saying what he says is a different matter, and doubtless there is room for more than one view on that.

In the course of these reprints of earlier writing, we hear a lot more of Hewitt's view that the American MSM have lost all credibility because of their 'bias'. The media, he alleges, are 'filled to the brim with agenda journalists who will not only shade the truth, but who will also almost inevitably distort it... for the purposes of advancing the causes of the left.' This has led to the rise of Rush Limbaugh -- a man who, it is implied, is without any agenda at all. Well, that ain't what I've heard, though I confess that I have no personal acquaintance with the gentleman.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to say that I have to take issue with Hewitt's continual use of the word 'bias'.

It is certainly the case that anyone smart enough to be working for any of the MSM will have acquired a set of opinions and beliefs, including opinions upon political matters -- if only, like me, that they wish to spend as little time contemplating politics as is humanly possible. Since Hewitt is so damn keen on objectivity and the truth, he might start by dropping the word 'bias' and substituting the word 'mindset', a term which is at least reasonably neutral and is not immediately insulting.

I am prepared to accept that American MSM have a mindset which leans towards what, in American terms, is quaintly spoken of as 'the left' -- though it is a left entirely unrecognisable to most Europeans of that persuasion. But surely it is blindingly obvious that Rush Limbaugh and like thinkers also have a mindset. Not only is there room for both sets of opinions, but there is a need for both. One has the uncomfortable feeling that if Hewitt were appointed as dictator of America -- and I doubt that he would turn down the opportunity -- we would be presented with only one point of view.

In this section of the book we also have repeated evidence that Hewitt is all too often ready with a quick sneer. The TV programme Meet the Press is referred to as Meet the Cuomo Aide -- a position formerly held by its presenter. Now I am not an unqualified admirer of Meet the Press, which I see on satellite, but this kind of abuse is unhelpful. It is doubly unfortunate because, as I said above, Hewitt at his best puts his finger on some important facts, and he can really turn a phrase; it's just that he lets himself down with these sneers, insults and sweeping generalisations.

Here -- lest I be accused of my own unfair treatment -- is a bit of Hewitt at his best:

Ultimately, the blogs force a choice upon you: If you join in and have the goods, you are opting out of elected life and any prayer of eventual judicial or other high-level governmental selection because candor is the first requirement of successful blogging... and there is no erasing your past work. But if you can set aside those ambitions, the world of blogging is where the life of the mind has moved. Genuine argument is emerging from the stranglehold that the bigs of the first three generations have imposed upon it. 'Cut and thrust' is back, and a web duel makes light sabers look tame.

This quote might perhaps be described as the key to the book. I have little doubt that what it says is true, and I also find it deeply worrying. It suggests (and again Hewitt is probably correct) that anyone who says what they think is going to find it difficult to gain elected office. To get elected you have to be all things to all men; it's no good, apparently, having principles.

After 40 pages of early writings (reprinted) we come to the second appendix, What the Blogosphere has Wrought. This consists mostly of emails from readers of Hewitt's blog, responding to his request that readers should tell him how they use blogs and the internet to acquire information. All one can say is that some of these people spend far too long in front of a VDU. Stop it at once. You will only get over-excited.

Final thoughts

First, some thoughts on blogging, as they come to me after reading Hewitt.

I may be out of touch, but it seems to me that blogs are not yet as well established in the UK and Europe as they are in the USA. As Hewitt demonstrates, there are some US blogs, particularly in the political field, with massive readership and, as a result, real punching power. I don't see the UK equivalents.

Hewitt is also correct in saying that blogs provide a wonderful opportunity for ambitious young men and women. The young Kenneth Tynan, for instance, would have sacrificed the whole of his left arm, gladly, for a facility like blogs, back in the 1950s. But again, where are the clever young men and women of Oxbridge on the blog rolls? If they're there, well, sorry, but I've not noticed.

I also agree with Hewitt (a tad reluctantly) when he criticises the MSM for being superficial and not as informative as the better blogs. For instance, the GOB, as you well know, deals with books and publishing. I make no attempt to provide up-to-the-minute news coverage: others do that, chiefly booktrade.info in the UK and Publishers Lunch in the US. But recently I have more than once felt obliged to point out that articles about the book world in major newspapers have been less than accurate and perceptive: see my posts of 18 February and 7 February.

And what of Blog as a whole? Well, as I said at the beginning, the book is worth reading if you are (a) a blogger, (b) someone who reads blogs regularly, or (c) someone employed in the MSM.

It is for the most part well written and presents us with some valuable insights.

However, in my opinion the book lets itself down, badly, where it overtly reflects the author's political preferences (one might reasonably call them prejudices). In those passages he adopts a tone of voice which is all too common in American politics, at any rate as observed from the UK. It is a tone of voice which is strident, aggressive, and, in a word, nasty. It is not a tone of voice which is used in rational, civilised discourse. It is at best unattractive and at worse repellent.

It is a voice which reflects a particular mindset. This mindset admits of no possibility of ever being wrong; it admits of no possibility that others might have a contrary but valid, and valuable, opinion; it denies the sincerity of its opponents, and it attributes to them the worst possible motives.

America deserves better than this; and America is certainly capable of it.

Hugh Hewitt: Blog -- part 2

Continued from yesterday.

Chapter 1

Part 1 of the book is entitled What Happened, and Chapter 1 deals with blog swarms and opinion storms. The chief content of the chapter is a description of how four famous names in America got into big trouble as a result of the research and hard work of various bloggers.

The four stories concern Senator Trent Lott, who was forced to resign as majority leader of the Republican party after some unwise remarks; the exposure of Jayson Blair, a young reporter on the New York Times, who had an unfortunate tendency to invent stories which he then presented as the truth, and whose downfall brought others to grief with him; Senator John Kerry, who seems to have embroidered upon his service in Vietnam; and Dan Rather, of CBS TV, who placed too much reliance on documents which bloggers soon demonstrated had been forged.

Most people will, I guess, have been broadly aware of these stories before, but it is interesting, and useful, to have the details.

The Dan Rather affair is a particularly good demonstration of the power of the internet, and Hewitt is right in thinking that Rather should have taken more care before gleefully presenting material damaging to President Bush. By the sound of it, however, any reasonably thoughtful person, aged fifty or above, ought to have been able to spot these forgeries just by looking at them -- which is what the bloggers did.

Hewitt's conclusion from these incidents is that bloggers have already played a crucial role in public life in America, and will continue to do so. I have no difficulty with that.

Chapter 2

Hewitt's second chapter is a brief account of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century, his point being that the massive changes which occurred then are echoed by present-day events. In particular, he argues that it was the invention of printing which made Luther, Calvin, et al so famous and so influential so quickly, and that the internet facility to blog is a similarly revolutionary development.

The picture is perhaps over-painted and over-simplified, but in general I support the thesis. I will certainly admit that I for one was initially slow to see the possibilities of blogging; and it may well be that blogging developments still have a long way to go and that my own crystal ball is severely fogged.

Chapter 3

Next we have 'A Brief History of Text'. This includes a quick history of writing, so brief as to be perfunctory, and some fairly obvious points about how a small number of people, writing for a relatively small number of widely read outlets, have in the past exercised huge influence. All perfectly true.

The chapter includes lots of quotes from other writers, plus some data on the typical lifespan and activity levels of blogs. The bottom line: people who start blogging tend to give up, and even if they continue they don't update very often.

Chapter 4

We now move into Part II of the book, which is entitled What Is Happening Right Now, and Why. The first chapter in this part is headed 'There is a New Sheriff in Town' -- or actually, Hewitt suggests, a million new sheriffs, i.e. the bloggers.

Again, lots more quotes and extracts from other sources, together with data showing that the readership figures for the big three weekly newsmagazines (in the US) are falling; meanwhile the blogosphere, the Fox News Channel, and talk radio, have all attracted more readers/viewers/listeners.

Chapter 5

In Chapter 5, 'The Meltdown of Mainstream Media (MSM) and Where its Audience Went', we begin to hear more of Hewitt's belief that the MSM are staffed 'by people who are overwhelmingly left of center' and that their choice of news items, and the way in which they present them, inevitably involves 'bias'.

Hewitt's explanation of how this state of affairs came about is, once more, interesting and useful. And I certainly agree that 'consumers of news and information are hungry for reliable, unfiltered information'. And this, he says, 'is where the blogosphere comes in.'

I simply don't follow this at all, for several reasons.

First, are we seriously supposed to accept that all MSM are corrupt? That they deliberately distort the facts for their own ends? Given what I know of Americans generally, and American traditions, I find this hard to accept.

It may be true, for all I know, that there is not a single newspaper left in America which overtly supports the Republican cause. But there was one once, and in 1958 I worked for it: it was the New York Herald Tribune. The Trib was so Republican, in fact, that if there was an earthquake in Japan the headline would read 'Ike hears of earthquake'. If the New York Times is such a godawful lefty shit-sheet, how come the Trib died and the Times survived?

Furthermore, how is the blogosphere going to rescue America from the horrors of a left-leaning press? What earthly reason is there to suppose that bloggers are going to be objective, unbiased, totally accurate? None whatever, known to me. On the contrary, there is ample evidence to suggest that bloggers are very much pursuing agenda of their own, without the ability to do much original fact-gathering.

If there is a problem with MSM bias, which I take leave to doubt, the solution is not in a million blogs but in the conscious and deliberate pursuit of objectivity and even-handed treatment of the news. Fifty years ago, as a schoolboy, I was present at a lecture by a senior staffer from the London Times. He explained to us schoolboys that the Times made every attempt to be even-handed and accurate. In terms of its political stance, e.g. in editorials, it adopted the following procedure: immediately after an election it would tend to support the new government, no matter which party was in power. Midway through the government's term, the Times would tend to become more critical; and at the end of a term of office, the government could expect its every move to be subjected to close scrutiny.

That is one way for a responsible paper to proceed. Doubtless there are other strategies, equally valid and responsible.

Another example of neutral and objective reporting used to be the BBC Radio World Service. At one time this had an international reputation for accurate reporting, and it was virtually the only source of untainted news for the citizens of many countries. In recent years the World Service has not always maintained this high standard, but it could, in principle, regain its reputation.

Hewitt mentions none of these possibilities. Instead he tells us that, on matters such as nominations to the Supreme Court, 'the blogs will move much more quickly and with much greater authority than the MSM.' Well, they may indeed be quick to comment, but where the authority is going to come from I really don't know.

More tomorrow.

Hugh Hewitt: Blog -- part 1

Hugh Hewitt's new book, entitled Blog, provides useful information, plus plenty of food for thought, for anyone who (a) writes a blog, (b) reads blogs on a regular basis, or (c) works in the traditional mainstream media -- i.e. newspapers, magazines, radio, and television.

The subtitle of Blog is 'Understanding the information reformation that's changing your world'; and the dust jacket goes on to add: 'Why you must know how the blogosphere is smashing the old media monopoly and giving individuals power in the marketplace of ideas'. All of which gives you a fair idea of the contents.

The back page of the dust jacket claims that 'until now, no influential blogger has written a definitive book about this phenomenon.' That is a typical piece of publishers' hyperbole, and it isn't true. We have had, for instance, Rebecca Blood's Weblog Handbook, Biz Stone's Blogging, and Essential Blogging, by Cory Doctorow and others.

The back page also says that the new book 'helps you position yourself and your organization at the forefront of this information reformation.' That gives us a hint that much of the content of Blog is concerned with offering advice to businessmen on how to use blogs to further the interests either of themselves or their companies. The inside flap copy repeats this emphasis.

Well, I suppose Hewitt and his publishers are entitled to aim a book on blogging at the business community if they wish, but I wouldn't have thought that that was the best market to aim at; neither do I find Hewitt's advice to such people particularly convincing. But more of that later.

Hewitt himself is a name new to me, but he is evidently well known in some areas. He is obviously what the Americans call a high-energy guy. He acts as the host of a nationally syndicated radio show, heard in more than 70 cities, and is a professor of law at Chapman University. He is also, as you would expect, a blogger, and in his spare time he writes a weekly column for The Daily Standard. Previous books by Hewitt have featured on the New York Times bestseller list.

So much for the background. What I propose to do is to go through the book chapter by chapter, giving you an outline of the key points, and also giving you my own take on some of the issues. All of which will, I suspect, occupy us for several days.

Introduction

We soon learn two things about Hugh Hewitt; he tells them to us straight. First, he is a practising Christian; and second, he supports the Republican party and occupies what he refers to as a centre-right position in terms of politics.

Since the book's author declares his position in forthright terms, I suppose the reviewer ought to do the same. Well, I am not a churchgoer, though Mrs GOB is. I assume that she prays for my welfare while there, but when questioned on this point she tends to muttter evasively.

As for my political viewpoint: I hold the view that the last great privilege of the Englishman is that he is still able to ignore politics. Just about. And I tend to exercise that privilege to the full. If pushed, I would say that I too share the views of the centre right -- in UK terms. But it is actually quite hard to tell. The new Labour Party has moved well to the right in recent years and now occupies much of the space hitherto taken up by the Conservatives. And the Conservatives seem to be having difficulty in deciding what exactly they do stand for. So it may well be that I am actually to the right of modern Conservative thinking on several issues.

As I say, Hewitt makes his political position crystal clear. And it also becomes plain, early on, that he takes the view that many of the American mainstream media (which he abbreviates to MSM) are staffed by people with an entirely different approach: in particular, they are left-wing liberals.

I get the impression, from the book overall, that Hewitt is not a mouth-frother. He appears to be rational and amenable to argument. All the more unfortunate, then, that I also get the impression that he holds the view that the MSM are hopelessly 'biased', towards the left, while people like himself are somehow much more trustworthy, honest, and committed to telling it like it is.

Admittedly, it is many years since I was resident in America, and I am not a daily reader of US newspapers and magazines; as a UK citizen I obviously don't listen to US talk radio or watch network news very often. However, as a general observation, based on European experience and European history in the last hundred years or so, I would say that there is very little reason to believe that writers, reporters, commentators, TV news editors and the like, are going to be any less 'biased' if they come from the right than from the left.

Political systems of the extreme right and left tend to produce dictatorships (Hitler, Stalin) which are pretty much indistinguishable if you happen to live under them. Both the extreme right and the extreme left also go in for book burning and news control on a massive scale.

All of that being so, I do have a bit of a problem as early as page xv of this book, when Hewitt tells us that 'Blog is a book about trust; how the old media -- mainstream media -- lost it and how new media is gaining it.'

As an example of all this, he quotes his own blogging from the Democratic National Convention in 2004. His blog, he claims, gave his readers interviews with three of the President's key men and with two leading Democrats. What this meant, in practice, was that people got 'unfiltered information from the president's side and a good dose of hilarious and ineffective spin from the two lefties.'

It may be that, in this isolated instance, Hewitt and his Republican buddies did tell the truth and did present a more neutral, objective bundle of information than was available through the liberal mainstream media. But on the whole I can see no reason to believe that media dominated by right-leaning personnel are likely to be more objective than the MSM which are so despised by Hewitt. None whatever.

Furthermore, by about five or six pages into this book I am already beginning to feel doubts about Hewitt's belief that the blogging world is going to become a useful business tool.

If the blogging business is about trust, as Hewitt says, why should anyone trust a blog which is sponsored by a commercial entity? Is it likely that such a blog is going to give us a completely objective picture? I find it difficult to believe so myself.

As an example of what he thinks should be happening, Hewitt tells us that a 'savvy publisher' should be developing 'a blog about books that became a must-stop in the world of reading and selling and buying books.... There is a New York Times Review of Books in blog form coming.... It would be best to own it,' says Hewitt.

Well yes. Maybe. But are we really expected to believe that HarperCollins or Random House can somehow organise and pay for a blog which will generate trust? Especially if, as Hewitt recommends, the blog starts running ads for the publishing house's own books, and 'buzzing that publishing house's own buzz.'

In my view such a blog ain't going to attract any but the most naïve readers. It is already the case that the key trade magazines in publishing, the Bookseller, Publishing News, and Publishers Weekly, are all compromised by the fact that they depend for survival on publishers' advertising; they aren't likely to be all that critical of the people who keep them alive, and some readers are smart enough to figure that out. Some readers (me, for instance) have got so fed up with it that we no longer even subscribe.

Hewitt also uses the introduction to stress that he is aiming his book at senior and mid-level executives in business, government, the arts, the church, and especially politics. His view is that company CEOs should all read his book, then distribute it to their senior leadership, and finally 'hold a few days' retreat to discuss what is going on.'

I mean really. Hold a few days' retreat to discuss blogging? Retreats are the biggest waste of company time and resources ever invented. There is nothing that you can do on retreat in Hawaii or deep in the woods of Maine that you can't do in an hour round a table in your office; or even over lunch in the canteen. And besides, while it is true that blogs are going to change many things, they are not quite that important.

None of this inspires great confidence in Hewitt's thinking.

Later in the introduction we get the first taste of a recurring theme. People are deserting the old 'biased' media, Hewitt says, and transferring their loyalties to new ones, or to versions of the old media which tell the truth. An example of these allegedly more reliable sources of information, which occurs many times in the book, is Fox News.

Fox News? Is this man serious? Is this the same Fox News that we see in Europe?

I do occasionally watch Fox News, or try to. Usually when I switch to that channel I see a list of the temperatures in European cities. I assume this is because American viewers are watching adverts at this point, but the European branch of Fox can't sell the ad space so we get a weather statement instead.

I have watched Fox News from time to time over the last couple of years, and I've made a particular effort to do so while reading Blog. So far I've seen a lot of weather and nothing else worthy of note. I've seen a live report on the arrest of a rape suspect (a matter of zero news value I would have thought) and a discussion about the death of Princess Diana.

The Diana piece featured an interview with that well known source of reliable information, Mohammed al Fayed, together with a studio discussion involving Geraldo Rivera and a woman lawyer. The discussion centred on whether Diana's death was an accident or whether it was a murder, arranged by Prince Charles and his father, and carried out by British intelligence.

True, the moderator of this discussion did occasionally try to distinguish between fact and fantasy, but without much success. All in all, to call this discussion superficial would be to pay it an undeserved compliment. If this is the shape of the future, Hugh, then thanks but I'd rather live in the past.

Well, so far we haven't even got out of the pages with Roman numerals. I thought this would take some time. More tomorrow.

Copyfight

Ebookad.com is a useful source of ebooks on all sorts of subjects, and it also provides links to various news items about the ebook world. One such link recently was to a piece on the BBC news site about copyright and the 'copyfight'.

Those of you who depend on copyright for your living, or part of it, need to be aware of what is going on in this area. The BBC article won't provide any definitive answers, but it does provide further food for thought on an extremely complicated issue. Getting to grips with copyright law in your home nation is difficult enough, but throw in the complications of international variations and headaches will ensue.

My own position, for better or for worse, is to produce the work and not fuss too much about whether anyone is going to rip it off. Frankly, I am not likely to produce something that is going to make a fortune for anyone, so maintaining a grip of steel on my copyright is beside the point.

In fact, in relation to my latest essay, On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, I am making it available free. The section of the essay which is headed Notes to Readers makes it clear that you can do pretty much what you like with it -- short of passing it off as your own work.

In other words, you can print the essay out to read it, you can photocopy it for distribution to your students (if that applies), you can email the PDF to a friend, and so forth. If you are smart enough to figure out how to make any money out of the damn thing, please let me know, because I would like to know too. Other than that, feel free.

When is a fact not a fact?

Hugh Hewitt, about whom I shall have a lot to say next week, complains bitterly about the ‘bias’ of what he calls the mainstream media in America. Well, Hugh, the problem in the UK is not so much bias as excessive credulity; either that or an alarming lack of interest in verifying the facts.

Take for instance, the case of 13-year-old Emma Maree Urquhart. In my post of 7 February (see archives), I related how Emma has written a novel, Dragon Tamers, which has, allegedly, set the world on fire and is selling in vast numbers. I expressed some dismay that the Times, in which I had read this story, had done nothing more than reprint the publisher’s press release without, apparently, asking a single relevant question.

Today the Independent does more of the same. (Thanks to booktrade.info for the link.)

There is an article in the Indie about young Emma’s Dragon Tamers which is written by the paper’s Scotland correspondent; and he seems to be an unusually trusting sort of chap.

The headline is ‘Schoolgirl’s tale about dragons becomes hot stuff in Hollywood.’ But when we read on, what do we find? We find that this article is based entirely on hot air.

Emma Maree, we are told, is ‘mulling over the possibility of a Hollywood movie deal.’ But we are not told that this is something that every writer does, usually three times a day, after meals.

The book’s publisher, Charles Faulkner, head of Aultbea Publishing, said that ‘discussions were well under way for the book to be turned into a Hollywood film after interest was expressed from several major studios.’ But we aren’t given any details.

There is a lot more in the same vein: apparently there are discussions about a television series, an audio book, a game, and translating the story into ‘almost every major language of the world.’

Well now, look – I don’t want to spoil anyone’s fun. And I certainly don’t want to damage the emerging career of a 13-year-old. But surely it must be obvious to even the dimmest young journalist that this is the purest flim-flam. There is not an independently verified fact or name or figure anywhere in sight. So either the Independent is employing someone who is remarkably naive, or else they are printing the story knowing full well that it’s all bull. Which is it?

One thing we can say for certain. This guy Faulkner writes one hell of a press release. And when he talks to reporters they just seem to sit there in a trance, writing it all down. I wonder what he puts in their whisky.

Two down, 33 to go

I have just read another Booker prize-winner, which together with Possession makes two; so I only have to read another 33 and I shall have read the complete set; I shall then be able to regard myself as an expert on literary fiction; either that or I shall have become completely deranged, I’m not sure which.

Actually, now that I come to look at the list of prize-winners, I realise that I have read one other Booker winner. But it was such a second-rate piece of work, and induced such an amazing sense of tedium, that I am not even going to mention its name. Instead I will talk about Yann Martel’s Life of Pi.

I read Life of Pi not because it is famous but because it was recommended to me by a dentist, a lady without an ounce of intellectual pretension in her body. She said it was ‘a perfectly delightful story’, so I decided that it must at least be worth a look.

Well, now I've read it, and I suppose my friend is right. The book is very much worth a look. But what I found difficult – indeed impossible – while reading it, was to separate my reaction as a reader from my knowledge that the thing was a prize-winner; and that it was therefore something special.

Just in case you don’t know, I think I ought to begin by pointing out that Life of Pi won the Booker in more than usually bizarre circumstances. Yann Martel had written a couple of other books, which were published in the UK by Faber. But the early books had not sold well and Faber had no faith that this one would do any better, so they turned it down.

Pi was also rejected by at least five other big publishers, and was eventually taken on by the small firm of Canongate.

Now, consider this: if the eventual publisher, Canongate, had not taken the book, it is likely that the manuscript would have remained for ever in the author’s filing cabinet. Furthermore, if the book had been accepted by one of the bigger firms, it would not even have been entered for the Booker Prize in the first place, because publishers are only allowed to make two nominations and the big firms have to enter their most famous authors; if they don’t, the famous authors are likely to go elsewhere.

The Life of Pi saga thus provides a beautifully clear demonstration of something that I have written about at length in my recent essay, On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, namely the random way in which success is achieved (or not) in publishing. (Click here for a free download of my essay in PDF format.) Pi is a book which was turned down for publication by numerous ‘good judges’. It was entered for the Booker Prize by a small firm which had no stronger candidates. And it so happened that the particular set of judges who were reading in 2002 happened to like it best. Or a majority of them did. Such are the rolls of the dice.

Do you begin to see how difficult it is for a reader who knows all that to judge the book, in 2005, in isolation? It’s impossible. You can’t put all that background out of your mind. As you read you are inevitably saying to yourself, If I had read this when it was just a pile of paper, would I (a) have wanted to publish it, and (b) would I have ever dreamed that it would go on to be a huge success?

The answer to both these questions is probably No. If I pretend for a moment that when Pi was being shopped around I was the chief editor at that well known bastion of literature, Clapham & Irons, I have to say that I would probably have sent the ms back to its agent with a polite note. Interesting, I would have said, but not for me. I certainly would not have seen it as likely to sell 1.8 million copies, which it is reported to have done.

So now let’s have a look at the book itself.

It begins with an Author’s Note. This is, I think, part of the fiction. But some bits of it may be true. Yann Martel tells us that he went to India to write a novel, a book which didn’t work out, but he had a bit of money left so he went to the town of Pondicherry, and there he found an elderly man who told him the rudiments of the story which Martel later made into Life of Pi. The main character in this story was a sixteen-year-old boy whose name is Pi. Later, in Toronto, the author managed to locate Pi, now a grown man, and talked to him at great length. The novel tells the story of Pi’s life, before and after a shipwreck.

Now it’s the shipwreck bit that had put me off, until the lady dentist told me not to be so silly. What I had heard was that the book was about a boy who was shipwrecked and found himself in a boat with a hyena, a zebra with a broken leg, and a 450-pound Royal Bengal Tiger. And that really didn’t sound like a novel I wanted to read. It reminded me too much of Edward Lear: ‘The Owl and the Pussy Cat went to sea in a beautiful pea-green boat’; all that sort of thing.

Anyway, after the author’s note we get into the story proper, which is now told by Pi himself in the first person.

To begin with, the writing is quite pleasing. But already, by page 11, I made a note that my attention was beginning to wander. A bit. For my taste there was too much family history (what some people call backstory) being passed on in lumps -- not easily digestible. But I persevered. I think I would have done so anyway, even if I’d been reading it as a pile of paper.

Part One of the book, which is really all background, lasts until page 97. And then, with the words ‘The ship sank’, we begin to get somewhere. Part Two, which lasts until page 289, tells us what Pi got up to in the lifeboat. Or what he says he got up to; together with the hyena and the rest of them. The tiger’s name, by the way, is Richard Parker. If you want to know why, read the book.

Part Three is a little coda, in which Pi is debriefed about his experiences by a couple of Japanese chappies who are anxious to find out what made the ship sink.

Once things got going, I had no trouble in remaining interested in this book. I don’t know that I would second my friend the dentist in saying that it is ‘perfectly delightful’, but it’s certainly interesting, and thoroughly well written. It apparently took Martel four years to complete, and I don’t know where he was at the time, but it reads as if it was written by someone who was not in a hurry. It reads as if the author was sitting in some Indian village, a long way from a telephone or a satellite dish, and quietly got on with his work when he wasn’t having a zizz. This is not, on the whole, a bad impression for a writer to make on a reader.

Life of Pi, as we have seen, might all too easily have ended its days in the author’s filing cabinet, without ever having been set in type. But once it was published, and particularly after it won the Booker, it proved to be a book which generated genuine word of mouth. The Booker alone will sell you perhaps 100,000 copies. But to get above that you have to enjoy the benefit of unforced enthusiasm. And that Life of Pi was able to do. Would that we were all smart enough to emulate that.

Should you wish to know more, you can find an informative interview with the author here. Of course, if you care about whether Richard Parker, the tiger, is actually a Christ figure, and all of that literary symbol and metaphor crap, you will have to do your own research, because I’m not remotely interested. And neither, I can assure you, is the dentist.

Value for money

The Times today carries an article about whether MBA courses provide value for money. Acquiring an MBA degree obviously which involves a year or more of your time, plus fees, and living expenses, and not a little effort. That being the case, how long is it before your enhanced earning power covers the cost of your course and begins to show a profit?

The research has been undertaken by an outfit called TopMBA, and the results are based, naturally, on various assumptions. In principle, however, the research suggests that for a US two-year degree a typical payback period would be just over three and a half years; for a one-year European MBA the period is two to three years. Thereafter, the additional earnings resulting from your MBA are pure gravy.

This prompts me to ask the following question: has anyone done any similar work on the monetary value of a degree in creative writing?

If I had to guess, I would imagine that the result is negative. In other words, I doubt whether, on average, the typical creative-writing graduate, with an MFA or whatever, is ever going to earn enough from writing to cover the substantial cost of the degree, let alone wallow in the gravy.

But I may, as usual, be hopelessly cynical and ill-informed on this point. Given all the weird things that people do research into, perhaps someone has produced data on this.

By the way, you may from time to time see advertisements from 'colleges' and other institutions which offer to teach you to write short stories, articles or novels through a correspondence course. And these adverts absolutely GUARANTEE -- yes, folks, they one hundred per cent infallibly guarantee -- that if you don't earn the full cost of the fees by the time you have completed the course (earn it, that is, from writing stuff for the press, under their guidance), they will refund your money.

I believe every word of that. Do you know why? Because the catch is in the phrase 'complete the course'. Barely one person in a hundred ever does finish the course. The world is full of dreamers, many of whom sign up. And they are then set assignments. Which, after an initial flurry of enthusiasm, they never complete. So these trainee writers never qualify for a possible refund.

Mind you, we all know that, even if the hopefuls actually did write 20 articles, or short stories, or half a novel, the chances of getting their work published in a paid-for context are slim indeed.

Gerard rides again

If you haven't yet come across the amazing Gerard Jones then you really must be introduced. As a matter of fact, if you already have visited Gerard's site you should still go take another look, because he's done things to it.

A few years ago, Gerard set up a web site called Everyone Who's Anyone. To begin with, this featured publishers and agents to whom he had sent the ms of his book Ginny Good, a ms which, to a man, and woman, they firmly rejected. Gerard not unnaturally took a dim view of this (don't we all?) and he published their names and addresses, telephone numbers, and probably, in some cases, size of shoe. Some of these people had previously done their best to keep these contact details out of the public eye because they really didn't want to be bothered with people like you, me, and Gerard.

What was much more fun was that Gerard also printed the full text of the rejection letters that people sent him -- letters which, like many of those written in haste, often included some ill-advised statements that made the sender look foolish. So various rather pompous agents and editors (or possibly their 'interns') wrote in and asked Gerard not to publish their first letter; whereupon he published the second letter, and made them look even bigger prats than before.

In the course of time, however, I dare say a few lawyers' letters were sent, and Gerard's site gradually softened into a more orthodox list of about 2,500 agents, editors and publishers in the US, UK, and Canada; and, as such, it was undoubtedly useful to all sorts of people.

Now he has sent out a general email telling those of us who are listed, in one capacity or another, that he has already updated the site to include about 4,000 talent agents, independent movie producers and movie-studio executives. He has changed the site title to reflect this: it is now Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing and Tinseltown Too; it is up to its fourth edition.

In the course of time, Gerard Jones's book Ginny Good actually did find a publisher, albeit a new and small one: Monkfish books. What is more, the book has generated some genuinely warm and enthusiastic reviews.

Gerard spent something like eighteen years in writing and rewriting Ginny Good, and then sending it out. It is said that his rejection slips/letters total in the low thousands, and I can believe it because he has that sort of manic energy. Of course, it would be a mistake to assume, from this evidence, that if you just persevere long enough you are bound to get into print eventually; you might end up by getting nowhere. But by golly you have to admire someone who keeps at it that long.

In his latest email, Gerard kindly includes a copy of the letter that he has been sending to movie producers. This, as you would expect, is just as much fun as everything else. He is clearly a believer in the dictum that modesty is the enemy of talent. Ginny Good, he says, turned out to be 'the best book published anywhere in the world so far this century.' He is not, he says, 'gonna try to hype the book. You'll either read it and go gaga over it like anyone with any brains does and want to make a movie out of it or you won't.' It is also, he adds, 'one of the coolest, most significant, funniest, smartest, most honest, heartbreaking, edifying, illuminating books in all American literature going clear back to whenever whoever came over on the Mayflower landed wherever they landed.'

Gerard, I love you. Keep on doing it, man.

Kate Atkinson: Case Histories

I wonder if any of you fancy Kate Atkinson. I speak in a literary sense, of course.

Kate first appeared on the scene in 1995, with her novel Behind the Scenes at the Museum, published in the UK by Transworld. This won the Whitbread award for the best first novel of the year. The award meant that the book was then shortlisted for the title of overall Whitbread Book of the Year (compared with biography, et cetera), and it won that award too.

So far so good. A success story. Except that when I read Behind I couldn't see much in it. I now realise, of course, being definitely older and perhaps wiser, that Kate was simply the beneficiary, or possibly the victim, of randomness, aka chance. It so happened that the goddess Fortuna smiled upon her. Kate's book was a perfectly competent piece of work, but it wasn't, in any absolute sense, a 'better' book than 150 others that were published that year. It just happened to be the one that the Whitbread judges liked best. With a different set of judges, some other book would have won, and Kate Atkinson would not have become a superstar; she would have been just another writer, not eligible for the full treatment of big publicity budget, author's tour, press interviews, the whole bag of tricks. In all probability she would have been dumped after two or three books which didn't sell very well.

In publishing, however, remarkable things happen to books that win prizes. A winner-take-all mechanism kicks in, and books which are not, in reality, any 'better' or more 'brilliant' than many others somehow acquire a reputation and a sparkle which colours everyone's view; technically, this is called survivorshp bias. (For more details of the winner-take-all mechanism and survivorship bias you will just have to read my latest extended essay, On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile; this was described at nauseating, self-satisfied length in my post of last Friday.)

So in 1995 our Kate became famous. She then went on to write a couple more books, Human Croquet (1997) and Emotionally Weird (1999), and now she has published Case Histories, which I have just read. First I'll tell you what I thought of it, and then we'll have a look at a few other opinions.

As for me, well I found Case Histories to be hard going. For one thing you have to go 60 pages before you get anything that might reasonably be called a scene (in dramatic terms) in which two or more actors engage in a dialogue. And to my mind that ain't the best way to proceed. So I began to skip. Fast. Which is not, of course, the ideal way to read a novel. You should read every word, but I'm afraid I am very old-fashioned about these things and I expect the writer to give me some help. Reading a novel is suppose to be fun, at least in my estimation; it's supposed to be an enjoyable, interesting, satisfying experience; it's not supposed to be a whole lot of hard, tedious work.

Anyway, I did stick with the book, after a fashion, and after a couple of hundred pages or so I began to see a little more virtue in it. And by the end I could also see, very clearly, that if the material had been organised differently, Case Histories could have been an impressive novel indeed. But it would have been an impressive crime novel. And that, I suspect, is something that Kate Atkinson and her publisher would rather die than admit.

It has long been noted in these columns, and in places like Ansible, that those who choose to write and publish what they consider to be literary fiction would rather be burnt at the stake than admit that they have anything in common with sordid and inferior genres such as science fiction, romance, or crime. But the truth is plain: the average writer in any one of those genres is likely to have a far superior technique to the average writer of literary fiction. Why? Because the genre writer is required, by both publisher and readers, to make the book interesting, exciting, accessible, and rewarding. Literary writers apparently feel themselves under no such obligation, which is why I, for one, don't bother with them much.

So. Seen in the cold light of day, ignoring all the glamour and dazzle which accumulates around prize-winning books, what do we have in Kate Atkinson and Case Histories? What we have is a very promising talent and a somewhat lost opportunity. If someone (Al Zuckerman, for instance) were to sit Kate down and teach her her some of the basics of novel-writing (as Zuckerman did with Ken Follett), then she has certainly got the wit, the wisdom, and the general know-how to produce an absolute stunner. But she ain't done so yet.

(Should you wish to take your own course of instruction from Al Zuckerman, by the way, you can do so by reading his book Writing the Blockbuster Novel. Don't let your lip curl at the catchpenny title -- the book contains much that would be of value to any writer.)

All of that is just my opinion. So now let's take a look at what some other people, professional critics and therefore far superior judges to my modest self, have said about Case Histories.

Kate's publisher offers us two brief 'reviews', which most of us would call puffs, from other writers, and a link to a longer review in the New York Times. Here's a brief quote from one of the short 'reviews': 'Kate Atkinson's funny, furious fourth novel rumbustiously drives a path through the genre of detective fiction, demolishing its careful, forensic summations of human behaviour and replacing them with bloody, believable, vigorous tales of wrongdoing and loss, of personal eccentricity and recognisable fate, and most importantly of people who were very much alive before they were dead.'

You get the general drift of all that, don't you? What this worldly-wise, deeply experienced and generally infallible judge is saying is that detective fiction is all formula-driven crap, and what we have in Case Histories is Literature with a capital L -- or even LITERATURE -- which is clearly seen as a far superior genre altogether. Indeed one is left feeling that to use the word genre in the same sentence as the title of Kate's book is an insult in itself.

All of which you can safely forget, because it is the kind of statement that could only be made by someone with a profound ignorance of what the better writers of crime fiction have to offer.

On the publisher's web page devoted to Case Histories there is one other link to a review, and that is to Janet Maslin's write-up in the New York Times. Presumably this review is the most favourable, in a prestigious journal, that the publisher could find.

'There's nothing fancy,' says Janet, 'about the way Kate Atkinson's new novel unfolds. Ms Atkinson simply starts her story, grabs hold of the reader and doesn't let go.' Yeah, well, she didn't grab me, as I've said.

As with the short puff already quoted, Maslin's attitude is that this book appears to be a piece of crime fiction but is actually so much better than that. 'The ingredients for conventional sleuthing would seem to be in place,' she says, but fortunately the book heads off 'in a different direction.' Kate's style has 'a hint of Henry James', which is good, obviously, but it is 'occasionally too coarsened with pop-cultural references.' God, these literary people are such hideous snobs, aren't they? It's enough to bring up your breakfast.

Maslin's conclusion is that Case Histories 'winds up having more depth and vividness than ordinary thrillers.' No, it doesn't, darling, and that's the whole nature of my objection to it. It's really not as good as it would be if the author just put aside all fancy-pants notions, stopped believing what the critics say about her, and concentrated on doing a good professional job for the reader.

That said, I do have to express some understanding and sympathy with Kate Atkinson's position. Here she is in 1995, aged... well, pretty young, winning a prize for best novel of the year. You and I know, because we no longer believe in Father Christmas, that this award dropped into her lap as the result of pure randomness. But for those who are favoured by Fortuna it is all too easy to believe that it was the result of doing something right. So you go on doing it. Especially when the critics tell you how brilliant you are. It takes quite exceptional powers -- powers which it is unreasonable to expect the young to possess -- to separate yourself from all that adulation and to take a long hard look at your skills and what you are trying to do.

And it has to be remembered that Case Histories is only Kate Atkinson's fourth novel. She is still only a beginner. Thomas H. Uzzell, of revered memory, used to argue that you had to write a million words of fiction before you got the hang of it. And he was dead right. Kate Atkinson still has some way to go.

Interview with Neal Stephenson

The science fiction magazine Locus has an online presence which I look at once a month, because it offers a remarkably full set of links to all kinds of interesting articles about this and that as well as pure scfi. This month it provided a link to an interview with Neal Stepehenson, conducted by Mike Godwin.

As you would expect, if you know anything about Neal Stephenson, he has a great many insightful and rewarding things to say. And if you don't know anything about Neal Stephenson, then this is a good place to start.

Among other things, Neal introduces us (well, me) to the theologian Walter Wink, and his concept of domination systems (not as dirty as it sounds). He comments on US attitudes to scientists and technologists, and demonstrates that he understands the difference between alternate history and alternative history (I told you he was smart).

By the way, it looks like you should add Robert Hooke's Micrographia to your reading list, along with Urn Burial. You can find some of Micrographia here. I've been telling you that those seventeenth-century guys were worth reading, and maybe you'll take it from Neal if not from me.

What song the sirens sang

By the way, the latest Ansible (see post immediately below) begins with the following famous quotation: 'What song the sirens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture.' Who wrote that? Quick now, and no cheating.

The answer, of course, is that great seventeenth-century physician of Norwich, Dr Thomas Browne. The words are to be found in Chapter V of his famous essay Hydriotaphia, better known perhaps as Urn Burial. Ansible's use of this quotation, in a casual, throw-away manner, is itself sufficient to disprove the oft-heard allegation that science-fiction freaks are ignorant slobs, unfit to do more than empty your dustbin.

I was first introduced to Thomas Browne about forty-six years ago, by William Styron. He used Urn Burial as the source for the title of his novel Lie Down in Darkness. Browne says this:

And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right declensions and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementoes, and time that grows old itself bids us hope no long duration -- diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

Better remember that, folks: diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation. What that means is that you ain't gonna live for ever, so make the most of it while you can.

Urn Burial is a meditation upon the meaning of life and death. Browne's prose is dense, and for modern readers it is often quite difficult to understand. It is also patchy (in my view) and uneven. But read certain passages aloud and you will hear prose of a quality which has seldom been equalled. Virginia Woolf said that 'Few people love the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, but those who do are of the salt of the Earth.' So perhaps he's worth making a little effort.

Browne is also full of good sense. What better way could I find to construct this post than to offer some of his thoughts for your reflection:

'The religion of one seems madness unto another.'
And to some, any kind of religion is deeply suspicious.

'The greater part [of men] must be content to be as though they had not been: to be found in the register of God, not in the record of man.'
Think about that, o ye who yearn to be famous.

'To be ignorant of evils to come and forgetful of evils past is a merciful provision in nature.'
I recently met an old man in a gym (older than me, even). He told me that he had been sent by his doctor, but for sixteen hours a day he had to be linked to an oxygen tank to aid his breathing! 'It is lucky,' he said, 'that we don't know what the future holds for us.' Thus echoing Browne, who beat him to it by 360 years or so.

'But all was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly.'
This is said in reference to the pharaohs of Egypt trying to mummify themselves to last for ever, but it applies to much else. 'Feeding the wind, and folly' certainly rings a few bells with anyone who has had anything to do with publishing.

'Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us.'

'Happy are they... who deal so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next.'

And so on. But there is no substitute for reading the original. You will probably do better to look for an old edition on abebooks than for a modern one on Amazon, either in the UK or the US. And if you would like to get a taste of the thing online, before buying, you can find a complete text here. Plus a great deal more.

Ansible to everyone

Dave Langford's latest Ansible newsletter quotes Popbitch as the source of the following report: 'Famous Sri Lanka resident Arthur C. Clarke has survived the terrible floods. He was found in the sea clinging on to a buoy...'

As I say, this report is at least third-hand so it may not be entirely accurate, but it sounds like good news for science-fiction fans.

Meanwhile the Ansible newsletter is excellent news for anyone who is remotely interested in science fiction or fantasy. It usually provides mentions of a number of books which might be worth reading, plus occasional humour; not a bad mixture. I have provided a link to Ansible above.

As for Popbitch, I haven't provided a link to that because when I went there the first thing that greeted me was an advert for thoroughly filthy DVDs. Also there were some very hurtful things said about Prince Charles on the message board, so naturally no reader of the GOB could possibly be interested. You can find it on Google if you absolutely insist. Oh all right then.

On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile

Here is an important announcement. Well, it’s important to me, anyway.

Over the last two or three months I have been working on an extended essay about the many problems involved in writing and publishing. Its title, as you can guess from the heading of this post, is On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile.

For better or for worse, the essay turns out to be far too long to be posted here – even if I split it up into various parts. It runs to 72 A4 pages: about 24,000 words. So instead of posting it here I have decided to make it available as a PDF file. It’s free, of course.

If and when you download this file, you will be able to print it out – which is certainly the most convenient way to read it. You may also copy the PDF and email it to a friend if you wish. In short, you are welcome to enable other people to read the essay if you would like to.

What’s the essay about? Well, it’s about the problem of randomness (chance) as it affects writers and publishers.

Some years ago I came to the conclusion that success for writers and publishers is governed by randomness to a far greater extent than is generally recognised. This conclusion has recently been echoed by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, with his work on ‘black swans’ (random events) in the arts.

The effects of randomness in publishing create serious problems for all those who work in the book trade. In the latter part of my essay I therefore go on to suggest some practical strategies which can be employed by writers, agents, and publishers; these strategies naturally cannot guarantee success (I’m not that clever); but they may help players in the book-trade game to survive and perhaps even prosper in what is increasingly a turbulent environment.

If you’re already prepared to give the essay a try, you can find a download page here. If you want to know more, the introduction to the essay is reproduced below.

INTRODUCTION

Aims

This essay has two principal aims: first, to help writers, literary agents, and publishers to understand the full scale of the difficulties that face them; and second, to suggest strategies which will enable such participants in the book trade to survive and perhaps even prosper.

These aims may immediately be thought to be both presumptuous and unnecessary. After all, you are saying to yourself, people who work in publishing are all professionals; they know precisely what they’re doing, and they don’t need any help from smart-arse commentators.

That is true, up to a point. But there is, unfortunately, a considerable body of evidence to show that writers, in particular, have a grossly overoptimistic view of their own chances of achieving success (however defined); and every year brings a fresh crop of stories about publishers who have either paid far too much for a book which turned out to be a dud, or decided against publishing a book which some other firm accepted and then proceeded to turn into a smash hit. I immodestly suggest, therefore, that all riders on the publishing merry-go-round might do worse than spend a few minutes considering the thoughts which are presented here.

The essay should be particularly useful for writers, because they are the ones most likely to labour for years, motivated only by dreams rather than hard cash; and, when their dreams fail to materialise, they are the ones most likely to suffer psychological and physical damage, as a result of powerful emotions such as anger, bitterness, and frustration. It will do no harm at all for these people to have a clearer idea, at an early stage, of the nature of the problems they face.

By ‘writers’ I mean, for present purposes, novelists. Much of the essay will be written in terms of the problems facing novelists, but almost everything that I have to say will also apply to writers of non-fiction; and much of it will be relevant to playwrights and screenwriters.

The essay is written in the context of book publishing in the UK, but the position is not, I suggest, very different anywhere else in the world.

Publishing from a writer’s perspective

Without writers there are no books. Without books there are no publishing firms, no leisurely lunches on expenses, no specialist book printers and binders, no book-trade van drivers, no librarians – and not even any readers. The whole of the book trade begins, therefore, with writers; with their hopes, fears, ambitions, and funny little ways. For that reason alone we should take a close look at this bizarre species.

Nearly all writers yearn to be published; not only do they want to be published, but they burn to be successful. They want to be rich, famous, and worshipped by the critics; they look forward to an orderly queue of admirers forming outside their bedroom door.

Writers recognise, of course, that this happy state of affairs cannot come about overnight; but in the early days, when hope is intense in their bosoms, they can see no reason why it should not be achieved by 4 p.m. next Thursday.

From a statistical point of view alone, such hopes are fundamentally absurd, and the material in this essay will explain in some detail why it is that writers are unlikely to be successful in achieving their ambitions.

The essay is prompted by my dismay, which has intensified over several decades, at seeing so many intelligent, sensitive, and hard-working people waste so much of their time on the largely futile business of trying to write and sell novels. (I have written about a dozen myself, without, so far, igniting any huge fires.) It irks me that human beings are so slow to learn, and, having learnt, are so ineffective at passing on what they have learnt. This essay is therefore my attempt to remedy what I see as certain deficiencies in the educational process, at least as far as fiction is concerned. I shall eschew, as far as possible, offering advice; but the facts, when explained, may suggest to readers that some courses of action are far more sensible than others.

In the course of this exercise, I hope to minimise the frustration and despair, and to maximise the profit and enjoyment, not only of writers but of all those involved in the book trade.

I shall try, as far as possible, not to apportion blame or to make too many criticisms of individuals who are doing their best in difficult circumstances.

Between us, we shall, I hope, develop a sense of proportion, and, above all, a sense of humour; the latter is an essential attribute on the part of those who wish to contemplate the vagaries of the book business while remaining sane.

Some of the facts and ideas which are set out here have already been presented to readers in other media: either in my blog, the Grumpy Old Bookman, or in my book The Truth about Writing. (Note: full details of this and other major publications mentioned in the text can be found in the references section at the end.) There is, however, much new thinking on offer in this essay, and it has largely been inspired and stimulated by the work of Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who is the author of a book called Fooled by Randomness.

Dr Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Taleb is one of those rare creatures, someone who has a successful track record in the business world and yet is comfortable, and respected, in academia.

In the world of high finance, Taleb has held a number of senior posts, including that of managing director and head trader at Union Bank of Switzerland, and worldwide chief derivatives trader at CS-First Boston; he is currently Founder and Chairman of Empirica LLC, a research laboratory and financial products trading house in New York.

Taleb’s educational background includes an MBA from Wharton and a PhD from Université Paris-Dauphine. He is a Fellow in Mathematics and Adjunct Professor at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences of New York University, and Visiting Professor of Risk Management at Université Paris-Dauphine.

Taleb first came to public attention as the author of Fooled by Randomness, the subtitle of which is ‘The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets’. When first published, this was selected by both Amazon.com and the Financial Times as one of the best business books of the year, and is published in 14 languages. It has, however, a relevance far beyond the world of business.

Taleb’s intellectual interests lie at the intersection of philosophy, mathematics, finance, literature, and cognitive science. He specialises in the risks of unpredicted rare events (‘black swans’), and as an essayist he is principally concerned with the problems of uncertainty and knowledge.

For more information visit Dr Taleb’s web site.

The structure of the essay

Part 1 introduces the reader to the concept of black swans, as defined by Taleb.

Part 2 describes a hypothetical experiment with rats, which Taleb uses as a means of illustrating a number of erroneous ways of thinking and arguing. The chief error is perhaps that of falling prey to survivorship bias, which means that the observer sees only the survivors of any particular course of events, and fails to take adequate note of the characteristics of the many other participants.

In Part 3, we note that Taleb’s experiment with rats is in many ways analogous with the slush-pile procedure, as traditionally carried out in the offices of publishers and literary agents. We then proceed to review Taleb’s various forms of faulty thinking, as they apply in the context of writing and publishing; in particular, we try to learn how to think clearly about publishing issues, a skill which is in notably short supply.

The evidence assembled in Part 3 demonstrates beyond question that randomness plays a major part in publishing; specifically, we learn that, provided a manuscript reaches a certain basic professional standard, it is randomness which thereafter determines the ‘success’ of that book.

The fourth part of the essay is intended to provide practical assistance to those who are involved in looking for suitable books to publish (slush-pile selectors). Starting from the most basic of questions – Is publishing a sensible business for companies or individuals to be involved in? – we move on to consider both reactive and proactive procedures for managing the slush pile.

Part 5 outlines a similarly pragmatic approach that may be applied by those who are slush-pile contributors, i.e. writers.

(End of Introduction)

Still interested? To reach the download page, click here.

Trouble at (Penguin) mill

Publishers Lunch yesterday, and booktrade.info today, draw attention to reports that the head of Penguin Group UK's operations, Anthony Forbes Watson, is 'leaving the company' after fifteen years. You can find the brief Reuters report here. The stated reason for Watson's departure is 'differences on the way forward' for Penguin and Dorling Kindersley.

Hmm. I wonder what 'leaving the company' means? Does it mean that Watson got fed up and resigned, or that he was sacked?

Anyway, before we go any further let me make it clear that I see no cause for rejoicing over any person's career coming unglued. Whether Watson left voluntarily or was booted out, the fact is that things have not gone smoothly at Penguin in the past year, and no one can take any pleasure in that. (Except, possibly, Penguin's competitors; and even they, if they are smart, will realise that there but for the grace of God....)

The chief problem (to bring new readers up to date) is that, in the early part of last year, Penguin opened a brand-new warehouse and distribution centre. It was designed to be a state-of-the-art installation, and would, it was claimed, save them oodles of money. The whole system was, as you would expect, heavily computerised. And unfortunately it turned out that the software didn't work. The result, sadly, was quite a lot of chassis, if I may quote Sean O'Casey.

The failure of the new warehouse system meant that books were not being delivered to booksellers; not, at any rate, until long after they had been ordered, and well after customers had got tired of waiting and had bought something published by a firm other than Penguin.

Writers and agents were severely displeased. The Society of Authors set about trying to negotiate compensation for lost sales. These negotiations failed, by the way.

The estimated loss to Penguin was put at £20m to £30m. Which is a hell of a lot of money, by any standards. Penguin's parent company, Pearson, was forced to announce that annual profits would be at the low end of market expectations because of the warehouse problems and a slowdown in the U.S. consumer book sector. That last bit was, I suspect, strictly a face-saving exercise.

So far as one can tell, the warehouse system still isn't working particularly well. Or let's put it this way: Penguin has not invited journalists to have a look round and marvel at the wonders of science and technology. (Pity about the books, though, isn't it? If only someone could program a computer to write books, so that those damned authors wouldn't keep making a nuisance of themselves.)

This debacle led a number of observers, such as Publishers Lunch and yours truly, to wonder whether, in the course of time, anyone would be held responsible -- because a disaster of major proportions is what it was. And now it seems somebody has. Possibly. Though you would never know from the Penguin press release. The overall Penguin CEO, John Makinson, says of Watson that 'in the face of our distribution difficulties last year, he led the business with distinction and delivered a remarkable publishing performance, which leaves our UK business with a very healthy outlook. Anthony fully deserves the enormous respect that he commands both inside Penguin and throughout our industry and I'd like to thank him for the energy, commitment and achievement that he has brought to Penguin.'

Well, as it happens, I have some sympathy with people who get caught with massive software development schemes that go wrong. About fifteen years ago I had regular dealings with a man who was responsible for a major computer development in the UK national health service. It went wrong, of course -- these things do, more often than not -- and the man in charge was hauled before a House of Commons committee, in the full glare of the television lights, to explain himself. He did not have a happy time.

That experience was sufficient to prove to me that handling these big schemes is no easy matter. In the years since then, of course, there have been umpteen similar cases; see almost any issue of Private Eye for the latest example.

As far as the book world is concerned, ample warning of the possible difficulties was provided by the case of Tiptree. In 1992, Tiptree was declared book distributor of the year, but when they tried to introduce a new and improved warehouse system, everything went pear-shaped. You can read a case history of it all here.

Will the Penguin disaster also be the subject of a full enquiry, the results of which are made fully available to the public? Given the culture of commercial confidentiality, and the desire to bury the past as quickly as possible, I very much doubt it.

Meanwhile, the job formerly done by Anthony Forbes Watson will be taken on by the overall Penguin CEO, John Makinson. He apparently feels that he can do that job, and continue with his present duties, without too much trouble. He intends to announce how he will proceed 'in a few days'.

Hoaxing PublishAmerica

You may recall that on 28 January I referred briefly to vanity presses (to use a convenient shorthand term), i.e. firms which will publish more or less anything by more or less anyone. And I mentioned that PublishAmerica is somewhat controversial because it claims to be different from the average vanity firm; it makes itself out to be a traditional mainstream publisher, with a selection process that turns down certain books. PublishAmerica demands no up-front fees from authors, and pays an advance (albeit only $1; but hey, that's a bigger advance than you get out of some).

Personally I can't get very excited about this controversy over whether PublishAmerica is a mainstream or vanity firm or something in between. It seems pretty plain to me that whether PublishAmerica is a vanity press or not, anyone who publishes a book through them is unlikely to sell many copies unless they have a lot of close friends who are prepared to go out and buy it.

However, it seems that some in the book world took serious offence at PublishAmerica's various claims, and set out to show that they ain't true. A group of writers (and some non-writers) who are members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America organisation set out to write a novel which was undeniably awful. Under the co-ordination of James D. Macdonald, each author was given minimal information from which to write a chapter (with no idea of the chapter's location in the book, time of year, background of the characters, what the plot was, et cetera), and encouraged to write poorly. You can find the whole story here.

The result of this many-handed collaboration is claimed, proudly, to be a 'truly awful book, a serious contender for Absolute Worst Book Ever Written.' The result was submitted 'for review' by PublishAmerica to see if it was 'what this book publisher is looking for.' And, er, well, PublishAmerica offered a contract.

Point proved, no doubt. PublishAmerica really will publish more or less anything by more or less anybody. But I think we knew that anyway, didn't we? OK, so PublishAmerica exaggerates a little. But doesn't every company? And at least they're not asking you to invest your life savings. On the whole, the SFWA effort seems to me to be a sledgehammer and nut thing, but everyone must exercise their own judgement on that.

Be that as it may, the point of this post is to say that I have read some of the ms of this novel, and it seems to me to be very funny -- which I believe is what some of the authors intended it to be. If you want to take a look at it yourself you can find it here in PDF form. It's free.

Suggestion: Don't left-click on the PDF link (as I did at first without much luck, because the file will then try to open in your browser, and I guess will do so if you have unlimited patience). It is better, I suspect, to right click and then save the file to your desktop. It will then download quietly in the background while you do something else. After which you can open the file in Adobe Reader, as usual.

As I say, the PDF version of the novel is free. But the SFWA have arranged for the book to be printed too. Any sales profit goes to the SFWA's emergency medical fund. (I understand they've sold about 75 copies so far.) The book version is printed and published through Lulu, which the SFWA describes as a Print On Demand company which doesn't pretend to be anything else, and which to me looks like a very interesting and go-ahead firm. The world of printing and publishing is certainly changing fast.

More on children's books; and branding

Yesterday I ventured to suggest that selling large numbers of children's books was not easy to achieve, and especially so for a new publisher. And later yesterday booktrade.info provided a link to an article in the Sunday Times which proves that even established firms can find the children's market very hard going.

Tessa Strickland and Nancy Traversy set up Barefoot Books, a children's book publishing company, some eleven years ago. They did well at first, but in 2002 ran into serious trouble. Expansion into the US market had created all kinds of problems and they made a loss of £1.3m on sales of only £2.4m.

One of their attempts to improve the situation involved asking for help from the Sunday Times bunch of pundits. The experts made a number of suggestions, the chief of which seems to have been to increase brand awareness. Barefoot have apparently achieved this 'brand awareness' by linking themselves to companies which complement their products -- in this case companies which market stuff to parents who value quality over the mass market. They also persevered with a 'stallholder' scheme, whereby mothers effectively act as the company's agents or sub-contractors. The mums buy books from Barefoot at a discount and sell them on to friends or any other market they can find.

Result: the company's financial position is much improved. In the latest full year profits are at $200,000 on sales of $5m. And no, I don't understand why one year's figures are quoted in pounds and another's in dollars, either.

Personally I think it is very difficult indeed to establish a brand-name consciousness in publishing. At least 98% of readers don't give a tuppenny whatsit who publishes the books they read. Readers just simply never notice the publisher's name. It's there, on the cover and the title page and the copyright page, but their eyes just glide over it. If they like a book, however, they will go out and look for other stuff by the same author; and quite often such books are put out by different publishers, but the readers won't notice or care.

With excellent timing, booktrade.info also provides a link to an article from the New York Times, reprinted in The Ledger for some reason, which tells us that Jane Friedman, the boss lady of HarperCollins, is trying to make the name of that firm as recognisable as the brand names of some of her big authors, such as Michael Crichton.

Well, to my mind that is a totally lost cause. For one thing, there is no real consistency of product, not even among the offerings put out by a major player such as HC. A Michael Crichton book is simply not even the same as a book by another famous name -- and it definitely isn't the same as an HC book by an unknown, or a book in a different genre.

To my mind, the nearest thing to a real brand name that was ever achieved by a UK publisher was about 40 to 50 years ago, by the firm of Victor Gollancz. In those days, all Gollancz books had the same distinct look: the dust jackets were all bright yellow, with black lettering. The only difference between them was the title of the book and the author's name.

This was very helpful to me, for one. In those days I was reading mostly crime fiction, and Gollancz had a strong list. So I could go to the crime section of the local library, look for the books with a bright yellow cover, and be fairly sure that they were at least worth a try. Gollancz published the early John Le Carre. They also had a strong line in science fiction, with books like Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan.

But I don't think Jane Friedman is going to use bright yellow covers on the whole of her HC output.

The NYT article has a whole lot more on the branding of publishing companies, none of it very convincing.

Fame and glory

You may perhaps be aware that there are a number of prizes or awards for blogs (as for virtually everything else), and the nominations for the title of best weblog of 2005, in various categories, are now available. I'm afraid it appears to be too late to vote, but never mind, you might find a link to an interesting site.

The Bloggies are now in their fifth year, and so I suppose they have achieved a certain amount of prestige. Unfortunately, the GOB didn't get shortlisted for a Bloggie -- dammit -- but all is not lost, because the GOB did get listed by the Guardian as one of the top ten literary blogs. Which is nice. 'Intelligent and unfailingly interesting' says the Guardian. Very flattering indeed. The only trouble is, I now have to try to live up to the hype.

Can we trust The Times any longer?

In the 1950s a schoolmaster of mine was able to test the accuracy of the reporting of the UK newspapers which were then in existence. During the school holidays, there was a minor fire in one of the school buildings. This event was reported in every national newspaper, though there wasn't much damage; so it must have been a slow day for news.

'500 boys homeless!' screamed the Daily Mirror; though nobody was homeless because the fire wasn't in that sort of a building, and in any case the boys weren't there. The Times, on the other hand, got the details almost dead right, with one trivial exception.

This was pretty much what one would expect, and people of my age generally regard the Times as an authoritative source of accurate news. But by golly I'm beginning to wonder. Saturday's edition carried two very dubious articles.

First, there was a report about a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Emma Maree Urquhart, whose first novel, Dragon Tamers, is said to have sold 50,000 copies. This story was also featured on Sky television news on Saturday night, complete with interviews with Emma, her parents, and the publisher. 'Comparisons with J.K. Rowling are perhaps premature', said Sky. Yes indeed, I think one could say that.

Before we go any further, let's get one thing clear. If Emma Maree and her publisher have managed to sell a decent number of copies of her book, congratulations to them. I am delighted. I am always pleased when anyone achieves even a modest degree of success in the book world, because God knows it doesn't happen very often.

Having said that, I have to go on to say that, for me, this story in the Times has all the earmarks of a load of old cobblers.

First of all, there's that 50,000 figure for books sold. Now that's a nice round number, isn't it? It's not 48,874, or 52,389, you notice. It's 50,000. And is that 50,000 books that customers have actually bought and paid for, sales which will show up on Bookscan? Or is it 50,000 copies that have been shipped, and are sitting on booksellers' shelves somewhere, waiting for buyers? Or is it even 50,000 copies that have simply been printed, and are warehoused by the hopeful publisher? All of these are questions which would occur to anyone who knows anything about the book trade, but the Times hasn't bothered to ask them.

And then there's the publisher, which is a firm called Aultbea Publishing Company. I did a search on Google for "Aultbea Publishing Company" and found 204 references, condensed into 9 to avoid repetitions. These 9 entries suggest that Aultbea publishes a small number (3?) of journals of a scientific/technical nature, dealing with pharmaceuticals and health products. An example is Pharma-Supplements Now. The company does not appear to have its own web site, but it does appear to be the power behind the web sites for the individual journals.

The Times tells us that, when Emma had finished her book, she consulted the internet to find a publisher. Did she indeed. It's hard to see how she found Aultbea that way. Even today I can find no internet reference to Aultbea being interested in children's books. (Amazon tells us, by the way, that Aultbea have published one other children's book, The Adventures of Little Mo, by Jessie McDonald, and no other books of any kind.)

Take a look at the entry for Emma Maree Urquhart's Dragon Tamers on Amazon.co.uk. This tells us that Emma's book is 128 pages long. And when I looked first looked at the page the book had an Amazon sales rank 0f 66. Ten minutes later, the ranking had changed to 90. A bit later still, it went to 40. All of which suggests, if nothing else, that the story in the Times (and, for all I know, every other paper) has caused people to go online and buy the book. But what rank would it have been, say, last Tuesday, before the press coverage began?

And how, I ask myself, did a small magazine publisher with no standing whatever in the book trade manage to shift 50,000 copies in today's market? Did they use the sales and distribution services of some other company? If so, which? (On Amazon, by the way, delivery is promised in 3 to 5 weeks.) It's all possible, I suppose, in principle -- but how was it done? The Times didn't ask, so we don't know.

One way and another, the Times piece about Dragon Tamers looks very much like an Aultbea press release reproduced pretty well verbatim. And I'm afraid that, for the Times, that really isn't good enough. It's one thing for the paper to take on a tabloid shape; it's quite another for it to take on tabloid habits.

Well, as I said before, good luck to Dragon Tamers and all who sail in her. But personally I do find it difficult to believe that a firm with no track record in book publishing has sold 50,000 copies in six weeks. I doubt whether the flurry of excitement over Dragon Tamers is going to last very long, and in the meantime my faith in the Times's passion for accuracy has not been increased by this story.

As if that article wasn't enough to test my patience, there was also a piece in Saturday's Times about the effect that Gillian McKeith is having on the sales of health foods. (McKeith, you may recall, is the author of You Are What You Eat, and stars on Channel 4.) What has happened, according to the Times article, is that the foods which the lovely Ms McKeith recommends have been shifting off the shelves in large numbers.

The story itself is accurate. I have no doubt about that. For one thing, I had noticed myself that Sainsbury's had sold out of aduki beans. But in my opinion the Times, which is regarded by some members of the public as a reliable source of information, might at least have pointed out that the McKeith pronouncements on diet are of questionable value. See my posts of 11 August 2004 and 21 January 2005 to find out in detail why I hold that view; but briefly, the lady's 'scientific' statements have been systematically demolished by journalists who know what they're talking about.

Ben Goldacre, in the Guardian, describes McKeith as 'a menace to the public understanding of science, and anyone who gives her a platform should be ashamed of themselves.' But the Times mentions none of this.

In the days when I worked on a newspaper (47 years ago), the first thing a reporter would do, when working on a story like this, was to send a minion (me) scurrying off to the clippings library to see what had been written previously about the person in question. Did the Times reporter do this? Did he trouble to do a Google? If so, he can hardly have failed to notice that many observers have profound reservations about McKeith on diet.

The Times also refers to McKeith as 'Dr' McKeith' at the end of the article, and I would expect any responsible journalist who writes about this lady to have noticed that her claim to that title is questionable, to say the least. The current television series very definitely does not mention the title 'Dr' -- and with bloody good reason, because there are laws about that kind of thing.

Mind you, McKeith's p.r. company is reportedly Max Clifford Associates. So that would explain why the Times didn't feel it necessary to do much checking. Good ole Max is of course a byword for accuracy and probity in his dealings with the press.

All in all, Saturday 5 February 2005 was not, I suggest, a good day for the Times. But it was a pretty good day for p.r. companies.

Jonathan Stroud: The Amulet of Samarkand

Strictly speaking, The Amulet of Samarkand is a children's book. Ten years and up is said to be the age range aimed at, and my local library has it tagged as a Young Adult book. However, it looked interesting to me (perhaps because I am about to enter my second childhood) so I read it.

And you know what? It isn't at all bad. In fact it's very good. One thing we can say for certain is that Stroud is a pro. He knows how to bolt together a novel, which is more than can be said for some much-praised names.

Amulet is the first book in a trilogy about a 5,000-year-old djinni, or demon, called Bartimaeus. As this one fact suggests, the book is all about magicians, magic, summoning up powers from another place, et cetera. It is set in a sort of parallel-universe London. Oh, and the magicians in this world are far from admirable. The one who calls Bartimaeus up from the depths (or wherever) is a young -- very young -- magician's apprentice called Nathaniel.

The outcome of this story is never much in doubt, but I found it gripping because of Stroud's masterly technique. Before becoming a full-time writer he worked as an editor in a firm which publishes children's books, and he clearly didn't waste his time there. He learnt more than most about narrative technique, and he discovered what interests young readers. (And old ones too.)

Amulet is a wee bit long for my taste, but then everything is these days. And if you're looking for a good read, and you don't mind people on buses giving you funny looks, then you could, believe me, do a lot worse. I recommend it. But you do need, of course, to be receptive to a bit of fantasy.

There is a special web site devoted to the Bartimaeus trilogy, but it is so heavily graphic and takes so long to load that I'm afraid I gave up on it. Much more rewarding is the interview with Stroud which was organised by Write Away. This features some unusually intelligent and perceptive questions, plus interesting answers.

The second book in the series is already out: The Golem's Eye. Stroud also wrote three earlier novels for young readers, but judging by the comments on Amazon these are not quite as successful as the Bartimaeus books. Which is hardly surprising. As I keep saying, it does take writers a few books to get into their stride. If only publishers would give them the chance.

Royalties for secondhand books

Today's Times carries several letters on the question of whether authors should receive a royalty whenever a copy of one of their books is sold secondhand.

The third letter makes it clear that this issue was kicked off by A.S. Byatt, and the only Google reference I can find suggests that Byatt was apparently miffed that used stuff was being offered on Amazon, side by side with the new edition, for considerably less money. And what's more -- shock horror -- the author doesn't get any royalty on the used book sale.

Well now, as usual I will try to refrain from ad hominem -- or in this case ad feminam -- criticism. Let's just say that the idea that you can somehow arrange for authors to be paid a royalty every time one of their books is sold on a market stall strikes me as being one of the most wildly impractical schemes that I have heard of in a long time.

It would, presumably, require legislation, and given that we have an eminently sensible government, renowned worldwide for its sagacity, there is no chance of that coming about. Everyone would realise that the police have got far more important things to do with their time than go round checking whether Mr Bloggs at the Used Books For U emporium was keeping proper records. For a start, Mr Plod has to stop all those wicked people hunting foxes, so he's much to busy to worry about books.

One way and another, therefore, it seems to me that the lovely Antonia's scheme is a bit of a non-starter.

The Times correspondents certainly think so. One bookshop proprietor goes further. 'During 30 years of new and second-hand bookselling,' he says, 'I have fended off the hordes of customers trying to sell back to me last year’s over-hyped, second-rate bestsellers. Authors should refund their royalties on books so soon unloved and discarded.'

And he adds more abuse: 'As it happens, publishers, with their cardboard “cloth” covers, yellowing paper and unyielding bindings, have nearly perfected the book that disintegrates before it can be resold.'

Right on, brother. A friend of mine recently showed me a marvellous copy of Burckhardt's Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, dating from about 1935. He had bought it on abebooks, and was mighty impressed with the speed of delivery. And the point about this book, of course, is that it was beautifully designed and printed, heavily illustrated, a pleasure to look at it, and in pretty near perfect condition after 70 years. It is clearly good for another 70 years. You can't say that about most books being printed today.

Another Times correspondent is even sniffier about the Byatt proposal. 'I have already removed Dame Antonia Byatt’s books from the shelves of our second-hand bookshop. If she does not want us to sell them without giving her a cut (again), she is welcome to come and collect them from us free of charge.'

Oh dear. If I might offer a comment: Authors would be better advised to campaign for a proper royalty on first-time sales from their publisher's warehouse than to worry about royalties on secondhand copies. As I have pointed out more than once (see my post of 21 October 2004), some of the wonderful cut-price offers that are made to readers are so structured that, under the terms of a typical contract, the author will get nothing at all.

Unoriginal thoughts

There are, I suspect, few original thoughts in publishing. But there is always someone reading a thought for the first time. So, just in case... here are a few things that you may not have heard or thought about before.

Booktrade.info has a link to an article by John Sutherland in the Guardian on Monday 31 January. This says much the same things that I said in my blog post on 24 January, namely that the system of literary prizes simply magnifies the winner-take-all mechanism which is highly destructive of writers' interests.

What happens when book X wins a major prize is that all the publicity, and consequently sales, centres upon that one book, leaving the rest out in the cold. As I pointed out only yesterday, in the US market last year, 200 books provided 10 per cent of the sales. In other words, you are either massive or you are nothing. (Same thing with actors, by the way.)

This blockbuster system does publishers and booksellers no harm at all, provided the stream of blockbusters is uninterrupted. But it is acutely damaging to writers, most of whom can't get published at all. Even if they do end up in print, sales are likely to be tiny.

Sutherland's article highlights the situation of Andrea Levy. Prior to winning the Orange Prize, last summer, her novel Small Island had sold 2,000 copies. Post Orange, and now with the Whitbread Book of the Year award too, she is a big-timer. The bookshops will pile her stuff high.

But... As Sutherland points out, and as I pointed out a week earlier, there is no sensible reason for supposing that Andrea Levy, excellent writer though she may be, is somehow streets ahead of everyone else on the shortlist for those two prizes -- or even for supposing that she is a better writer than those who never even made the shortlist. Different novels suit different folks. But that's not the way the system works.

Another link on booktrade.info is to an article by Philip Jones, editor of the Bookseller. Jones draws attention to the fact that, in the UK, ownership of the big publishing firms has shifted from US-based conglomerates to European ones. The Germans, the French, and the British are now the contenders for ownership of any significant UK publishing companies. Random House, which within living memory was a proud and prestigious independent New York literary house, is now part of the German monster Bertelsmann! (Don't mention the war.) And Jones goes on to speculate whether these take-over kings might not soon begin to threaten to buy some of the more vulnerable US companies, such as Simon and Schuster.

Here again, this is not an original thought. Plenty of people have noticed it before. Some time back, beginning on 30 December, I wrote a lengthy review of Eric de Bellaigue's book British Book Publishing as a Business since the 1960s. After it appeared, Eric kindly wrote me a note. In it, he commented on the European take-over of great swathes of intellectual property which had once been American-owned, and said how surprised he was that the Americans seem to have accepted this quite calmly. Maybe the explanation lies in the fact that publishing is such a low-profit business that no one really cares very much who owns it.

Insofar as there is any money in publishing, it is to be found in the really dull bits, such as hymn books and textbooks. I am reminded of this by another link in booktrade.info to an article which claims that US college students are being charged too much for their textbooks.

This story is as old as the hills. Nearly twenty years ago I was a Fulbright Fellow at an American university, and this university had a bookshop the size of an aircraft hangar. When I first went into it I decided that it was the worst bookshop I had ever been into. The floor was bare concrete; the books were stacked in lines, on wooden pallets, still in the packets of 20 or 30, as loaded by the publisher. There was no attempt to make the place interesting or pleasant at all.

Weeks later I discovered how wrong I was. I realised by that time that American college teaching is heavily textbook orientated. Every student on a given course simply has to have at least one set book, and probably several. And some of these things cost (at 2005 prices) over $100 each. What this meant, at this 'badly managed' bookshop, was that it was generating some of the highest sales figures per square foot of floor space of any bookshop in America! See, it's not the glamorous bits that really make the money.

The Book Standard

Today also sees the launch of The Book Standard, which is a highly commercial site intended for book-trade professionals and a few readers. It is the brainchild of trade-magazine publisher VNU, which apparently is the parent company of a host of book-trade and showbiz journals, such as The Bookseller, Kirkus Review, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, et al. VNU also owns Nielsen Bookscan, which collects data on sales of books from some 6,000 (US) locations.

Some of this site's content is going to be free, allegedly, and some of it will cost you $9.95 a month. Whether any of it is going to be worth reading remains to be seen. Today, however, you can find a link to a story about a blogger who got a book contract, and another one to a report on the firing of the editor of the Paris Review. For a magazine with such a small circulation (10,000 copies), the PR gets one hell of a lot of press coverage.

Another snippet which is buried fairly deep in the site is that, in the US market last year, 200 books represented 10 per cent of all sales. This demonstrates, should you need a reminder, the power of the blockbuster and the winner-take-all mechanisms which currently operate.

The Book Standard site is definitely US orientated, but the book world is a global village these days so you can reasonably expect at least some coverage of the UK and other English-speaking nations, with no doubt the occasional peek at the rest.

GOB in book form

Excuse me if I immodestly point out that you can now buy the Grumpy Old Bookman in book form: to be precise, in trade paperback format, available from most good bookshops and to be had from Amazon for a mere £9.09 and possibly free delivery if you buy something else as well.

Now, let's face it, I do not expect many readers of this blog to rush over to Amazon and buy a copy. The book consists of 130 posts from the first seven months of the GOB (March to September 2004), and so there is nothing in it that you cannot read for free by clicking over to the archives, in the column on your right. However, you may care to bear the existence of this book in mind when next you need a present for a bookish friend. He or she can always put it in the guest room; or the bathroom; which, come to think of it, is probably the best place for it; alongside Seneca's Letters from a Stoic, which also consists of bathroom-length essays. Though Seneca is, of course, a rather superior writer.