How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous

Not got enough to read? Fancy a free book? Here's how to get one.

Wednesday 5 April 2006 is publication day for my latest novel: How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous.

If you've been paying attention to the book world in general, you will know that the perceived wisdom these days is that a publisher should begin banging the drum for a book several months in advance of publication. After all, on this very blog you may have read reviews of books well before the publication date: Michael Cunningham's Specimen Days is a case in point, and Dara Horn's The World to Come is another. Why then, have I never (well, hardly ever) mentioned my own new book until just before its publication date?

Several reasons. First, it was fun to write (which is why I did it). But it wasn't much fun to publish it, even though I'm using my own company, Kingsfield Publications; that was just work. And it is, frankly, no fun at all to have to market the damn thing and try to arouse some interest in it.

Still, an effort has to be made. It would be silly, really, to go to the trouble of writing a book and then to make no effort at all to find readers. Of course, we both know, you and I, that there is no such thing as a book that everyone will enjoy. Never has been, never will be. But if you don't even know that a book exists, then there is zero chance of you making a judgement as to whether you might enjoy reading it. Hence, I do at least need to go through the motions of making people aware that the book is available, in the faint hope that a modest percentage might, just possibly, perhaps, maybe, find it to their taste.

So. Here goes.

How and why Lisa's Dad got to be famous is my twelfth (published) novel. And it's about a man called Harry.

Harry is a divorced man who has not been able to see his daughter Lisa since she was five years old. But Harry still loves Lisa more than anyone else in the world; and he worries about her future because she was born without a left foot. When Harry is offered the chance to win a million pounds for Lisa, by taking part in a reality TV show, he immediately accepts. All he has to do is find a woman who is willing to risk her life for him -- and he has just three months to do it.

And, if that hasn't put you off entirely, here's a brief account of what I'm going to do.

Beginning on Monday, I'm going to serialise the book on this blog. Yes, I realise that you may groan. But you don't have to read it. It's not compulsory. There will be lots of other stuff on the blog as well. But every day for the next, what, five or six weeks probably, there will be a daily excerpt. There may even be a handful of people who will read the book that way, one day at a time. But, more to the point perhaps, there will be visitors to this blog who pop in just the once over that five or six weeks, and they will at least realise that the book exists, and will have the opportunity to download a free pdf version of it if they want one.

Ah yes. The free pdf. I am making a pdf file of the entire book available free. All you have to do is click on this link, and follow the instructions. No strings attached.

Isn't this depriving myself of sales, I hear someone ask. Well, possibly. But you will not be left without links to Amazon.co.uk, and Amazon.com, where you can buy an amazingly cheap paperback copy if you wish. What is more, it is much more likely, in my opinion, that the availability of a free pdf copy will arouse interest, help to spread the word of the book's existence, and generally act as a marketing aid rather than do damage to the book's prospects.

If, for one reason or another, you are in my email address book, you may also find that I send you a note about the book in the next week or two, inviting you to read it, review it, draw it to your friends' attention, and all like that.

And here, to begin the drum-banging, is an interview with the author.

Interview with the Author

How old are you?
Sixty-six.

How many novels have you written?
Twelve. The first one was published in 1963.

So, if you’ve been at it for forty years, and if How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be famous is your twelfth book, how come you’re not rich and famous?
Well, some people would say it’s lack of talent. I don’t think so myself, obviously. I put it down to the fact that I don’t like doing the same thing over and over again.

Explain.
If you want to be taken seriously these days, you have to write a series of books in more or less the same style, like Jilly Cooper or James Patterson. In the 1970s I wrote three whodunits featuring a detective called Ben Spence. These were quite well reviewed and sold tolerably well. They were published in the UK, the USA, and a couple of other countries. So the smart thing to do would have been to go on writing more of that series. If I’d done that I might, just possibly, have achieved the same degree of success as Colin Dexter, with the Morse books, or Reginald Hill with Dalziel and Pascoe. But I got bored with writing whodunits and did other things instead.

Such as?
I’ve written more or less every kind of book, under several different names. My first novel could reasonably be described as literary. I’ve written whodunits, thrillers, a family saga – even one book which might be called a romance. Some of my short stories also qualify as science fiction and fantasy.

How did How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be famous come to be written?
Good question. In the autumn of 2004 I was ill in bed for a week, running a temperature. During that time I had a very vivid dream, in which the basic plot of the book came to me ready made, so to speak.

And did you start work at once?
Not immediately, no. When I first thought of the idea, I decided, as authors often do, that it was an absolutely brilliant story which would undoubtedly become a bestseller.

So why didn’t you get on with it?
Because I’ve noticed over the years that writers often come up with an idea for a book which they are quite convinced is going to be an enormous commercial success and will win the Booker prize as well. But I’ve learnt enough about writing and publishing to be sure that such ideas are invariably nonsense. So I held off.

But you did write it eventually.
Oh yes. Over the next few months I found that the idea never quite went away. So I did a detailed plan of the book, as I always do, and then I decided that it would be fun to write it.

What do you think of it now that it’s finished?
I’m quite happy with it. There’s no such thing as a novel that everyone enjoys, and some people aren’t going to like this one. But sometimes readers are surprisingly keen on something that you yourself think isn’t all that good. So I am quite happy for this book to go out into the world and see what people make of it. I think it will give some harmless entertainment to a fair number of people.

How would you categorise the book?
I would describe it as commercial fiction which doesn’t fall neatly into any of the obvious genres. It’s mainstream fiction.

What are you going to do next?
Most of my time and energy these days seems to be spent on my blog (the Grumpy Old Bookman). I have a number of ideas for non-fiction books, but at the moment I’m not planning another novel. I would like to write some more short stories, because they are enormous fun.

Why are they fun?
Because you have absolute freedom to write about anything under the sun. And that’s what I value.

For the last few years you’ve been publishing your work through your own small press, Kingsfield Publications. Why is that?
Originally it seemed to be a matter of necessity. Between 1963 and 1985 I wrote half a dozen novels which were published by major firms, both here and in the USA. But then between about 1985 and 1995 I didn’t write any fiction at all because I was too busy with my main job. And then when I started to write again, after retirement, I found that my agent wasn’t able to interest a publisher in a writer of my age. Especially one who couldn’t seem to settle on writing one kind of book. So I could see no alternative to being my own publisher. However, once I got into the independent publishing business I found that it had enormous advantages.

Such as?
You regain control over your own material and over your own fate. If you work through an agent and a leading trade publisher, you have to pay attention to what they say. And they usually want you to change things. And they mess around with your punctuation, and put a cover on the book that you don’t like. All that kind of thing. Which is all very well up to a point, and I recognise that professionals generally offer valuable advice – but I prefer to do things my way. When I publish a book of my own I can get it out in half the time of a professional publisher. I can choose what size of book it is to be, decide on the typeface to use, and design the layout of the page. I can even design my own cover. That’s a very satisfying process.

But presumably you can’t sell as many copies through Kingsfield Publications as you could through a big publisher?
No, I can’t. But then I never sold huge numbers of books anyway.

So, to sum up, you prefer to publish your own work, and have complete control over it, even though you sell fewer copies and make very little money.
Exactly.

This interview was conducted on a computer keyboard, in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, on 21 November 2005.

More titbits

Debra Hamel reviews Jeffrey Archer

Oh woe. Debra Hamel has finished her reading of Jeffrey Archer's False Impressions and is not overwhelmed by it. Three stars out of five, but 'the book needed more work. Readers should look elsewhere for their next page-turner.'

Writer wanted (UK Derby area)

Matthew Bell, of Rolls-Royce, tells me that he has the task of putting on a careers fair with a difference. The difference is that this fair is for about 1200 year 6 schoolchildren (10-11 yrs old), and their parents.

The aim is to teach kids the link between learning now and success in later life, while they still have time to change direction and turn their grades around. To capture the kids' imagination the organisers need a 90-minute storyboard, allowing 8-10 local companies to have a frame each in which to enthuse the kids for their profession and get the key message across.

Hence, what is required is someone with the ability to relate to an audience of children, to write the storyboard that will suit the companies, and give a slick, seamless show for the kids. (There will be a compere on hand to fill the gaps and link the frames.)

This, says Matthew, 'is a fantastic opportunity to make a real difference, and take on an interesting new challenge.'

If you think you could help, know someone else who could help, or you would like to know more, please contact Matthew as follows: matthew.bell at rolls-royce.com, or 01332 2 45654.

Michael J Lawrence on how to be a (show-biz) agent

Mike Lawrence was for twenty years the head of his own show-biz agency, Creole Entertainment Management, until ill health caused him to close the business. Prior to that, he worked for RCA Records for 14 years as Head of A&R (the same company and in a similar capacity to Simon Cowell); and at Pye Records he was Head of A&R and Promotions for a further 7 years.

Now he has put all that experience down on paper and has written a book (well, actually a ms) called Waiting in the Wings. It's a how-to book for those sensible people who want to be involved in the world of show business but don't want to to be an actress/singer/dancer/model.

Chapters cover such topics as forming an entertainment company, building an act portfolio, how to obtain clients, contracts, and a lot more.

Now, I have to say that I am 100% in favour of this kind of thing. Too many people retire after a lifetime of experience, and their hard-won knowledge and wisdom just goes to waste. We need more books of this kind, and less -- if you put a gun to my head -- of the fiction.

As we all know full well, Mike could publish this book himself. But he would prefer a regular mainstream publisher. Anyone interested can contact him as follows: micel at micel.wanadoo.co.uk.

V.S. Naipaul puts writers in perspective

According to the BBC, Nobel prize winner Sir V.S. Naipaul has 'lambasted literary greats from Jane Austen to Charles Dickens', describing the latter as 'the worst writer in the world.' Naipaul adds, modestly, that 'England has not appreciated or acknowledged the work I have done.' (Apart from giving him a knighthood, presumably.)

Well, I wouldn't know. I don't read Nobel prize winners very much. I can only say that I once had a colleague who always used to refer to V.S. Naipaul as Mr Nipple. After which I was never able to regard that distinguished writer with the high seriousness which, I am sure, he deserves.

The UK Nibbies

The Nibbies are annual awards made in the UK in order to drum up a few free column inches for the book world in the nation's press, and as such they are tolerably effective. Galleycat kindly lists all of them for you. The one I am happiest to see is the Waterstone's Newcomer of the Year award. It goes to Marina Lewycka for her delightful A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian. Recommended.

Opening drawers

I opened a drawer yesterday and found it full of books. Worse, some of them were books sent to me some time ago by people who hoped that I would review/mention them. Well, if you're one of those people, kept waiting for a long time, I apologise. I will get to them eventually.

Update on John Barlow's Intoxicated

The publication of John Barlow's novel Intoxicated was noted here on 7 February. Subsequently, however, John sent me a copy of the book, with a not-so-cryptic comment to the effect that I might as well have a copy, since no one else wanted one.

At about the same time, in a comment on Walter Ellis's sad tale about how he got lots of publicity but no sales, John said this: 'Walter, I read your comments and they almost broke my heart. However, since I had a very similar experience to accompany the recent publication of my own book, my heart was already broken.'

And, if that is not enough, on his own blog John writes that 'If your book flops, you’ll know very quickly; just check your infolder, and if it’s still empty seven days after publication, you’ve written a flop.'

From all of which, you will deduce that the public reception of Intoxicated has not made John a happy bunny. And, if he will forgive me for rubbing salt in the wound, the rest of us might benefit from trying to decide what, if anything, went wrong.

Bit of background to begin with.

John Barlow read English at Cambridge, and later got a PhD in Applied Linguistics. He first came to public attention through the Paris Review, which seems to have as high a literary reputation as any journal in the world. And his first book, Eating Mammals (a collection of novellas), was greeted with favourable reviews in such prestigious places as Publishers' Weekly, Booklist, and the Times Lit Supp. All very promising, and the right sort of credentials for a literary novelist.

You also need to know about John's geographical background. He was born in Gomersal, West Yorkshire (England), and Gomersal features as the location for at least one story in Eating Mammals. The Bradford/Leeds/Gomersal area is also the setting for Intoxicated.

Now the details of the novel's publication.

Unusually for an English writer, the first edition of Intoxicated came out in the US, published by Morrow, part of HarperCollins, and therefore a big-time, prestigious imprint. As is often the case with American books, the actual physical object is produced to a higher standard than a typical UK equivalent would be. It's a hardback, on decent paper, handsomely bound. The layout is well designed and has been given a good deal of thought. A considerable sum, several thousand dollars, has been spent on the dustjacket.

As for the actual content, the text, I find myself admiring certain aspects of it very much indeed. Overall, it is a very fine piece of work. I have criticism,s and it certainly isn't perfect, but it is the product of much intelligence and hard work. In fact, when I reached page 349 (out of 353) I noted down that 'this is a very beautiful book'. And I shall have to try, in a minute, to explain both to you and to myself what I meant by that.

On the negative side, I have quite a number of things to say. First, like almost everything else these days, Intoxicated is too long. At a guess, 120,000 words. And in my view it would be far more effective at two-thirds that length. But you can always skip.

And then there's its subject matter. The book is about a Yorkshire family, in the nineteenth century. Yorkshire then made most of its money ('brass') from wool. And Isaac Brookes is a successful mill owner who meets a hunchbacked midget on a train. They go into business together and produce a fizzy, fruity drink from... Well, actually from rhubarb. Rhubarb being a curious vegetable/fruit which grows well in the Yorkshire area. And Rhubarilla, as the drink is called, becomes enormously successful and popular.

Well now. Suppose you were an editor of literary fiction in a New York publishing house, and an Englishman with one respectable publication to his name came to you with a novel set in Yorkshire, in 1869, about a hunchbacked midget who makes a successful fizzy drink, what would you think?

Would you think Wow! This is an absolute winner. Watch out Michael Cunningham; and take a look over your shoulder, Dan Brown? Or... Would you scratch your head, study the Bookscan figures for literary fiction in general, and say to yourself, Well, this is all very fine in principle, nicely written and so forth, but...

And the principal but would be, in my opinion, Who the hell is ever going to read this thing, even if it's available free in a library? As for buying it -- is the average New Yorker, faced with the choice of this or the latest Jackie Collins, going to have much difficulty in settling for Jackie?

The surprising thing to me, and I mean this with no disrespect, is that the book ever got published in the US at all. I would have been faintly surprised to see a US edition even if there had been a UK edition to begin with, accompanied by good reviews. But to publish it first in the US strikes me as an odd decision, even by the standards of literary publishers.

So. If we are to wrestle with the problem, What went wrong?, I think the first thing we have to acknowledge is that a novel of this kind is inevitably going to have a very small readership.

John Barlow could reasonably take issue with that, and point to some of the favourable reviews that the book has already received. E.g. 'Intoxication delivers the goods' (Washington Post). But reviews don't necessarily sell books. And the absence of reviews isn't always a handicap. Josephine Cox, mentioned yesterday, is never reviewed in any UK journal that 'counts', but she regularly sells over 100,000 paperback copies of each of her two books in every year.

No, I'm afraid there isn't much mystery. There never was a profitable market for this book. The best that publisher and author could hope for (And they do hope, don't they? Oh yes.) was that the book might be one of those lightning strikes. Another Life of Pi, a book that no one really wanted (except one eccentric publisher, who was willing to take a punt), but which somehow, by the grace of whatever gods may be, took off.

And this one didn't.

My final thoughts on Intoxicated are very personal, and probably of no interest to anyone. But how did I come to find myself feeling that it was very beautiful? And what did I mean by that emotional reaction?

The answer lies in my family background. The characters in Intoxicated are Yorkshire people of the nineteenth century, and they remind me of relatives, long since dead, whom I knew and loved.

My parents were from Yorkshire -- from Bradford, to be precise -- and I suspect that my ancestors could be traced back to Yorkshire for a thousand years. Possibly ten thousand. When I was a boy, therefore, I spent a great deal of time in Yorkshire, staying with a multiplicity of aunts, great aunts, grandparents, and the like. Since I am getting on in years myself and since some of the great aunts and uncles were themselves getting on when I was a boy, it turns out that I actually knew some of the people -- or the kind of people -- that John Barlow is writing about. And I have no doubt whatever that they were the finest people I ever met in my life. They became my role models.

My family were skilled working class. Or not so skilled. They were not bookish people, but they were educated, to a point, and self-educated after that. They had talents: music, and amateur dramatics. They were not at all religious but they were law-abiding, honest, sober, reliable, hard-working, and decent rather than merely 'respectable'. They lived in crowded houses in narrow, dark streets, which were black with industrial soot and fumes. My grandmother could remember the mill girls going to work, so early in the morning that it was still dark, with the wooden clogs on their feet clattering loudly on the cobbled surfaces.

When my great-aunt Ethel became too old to look after herself, and had to go into a home, the man who ran the home remarked that he had never had an old person in his care who had so many visitors. She must, he said, have helped a great many people when she was younger. I don't doubt it.

And I suppose that is why I found Intoxicated so impressive. Despite its faults. It wasn't until about page 300 that I really began to get interested, and that after a good deal of judicious skipping. But if you can stick with the book that far you should find the end rewarding. The portrait of Taffy Thomas, for example, the music-hall performer, is a wonderful achievement. And the book is full of marvellous writing, even if it is, for my taste, over-written.

Oh, and before I forget, I enjoyed the various references to walking sticks which either do, or do not, have a horse's-head handle. I wonder if they came from Woolworth's?

The moral of all this, for writers, is probably not one that they wish to hear. But the moral is this. It can be a very painful and damaging experience to invest enormous time, energy, and emotional capital in a project which, if you are able to look at things objectively, is never likely to succeed. It may be best not to start.

Writers, almost by definition, find rational thought difficult. But surely, they will say, every year sees an example of an unexpected book suddenly rising to fame and fortune. Mine has a chance of doing the same.

Well yes. That's true. Sort of. It's also true that, if you go to Blackpool for the weekend, you may, like young Albert, end up by being eaten by a lion in the zoo. But it's not very likely.

Two other guys who give it away

Galleycat reports that two science-fiction writers who are nominated for the Hugo award have decided to give away electronic copies of their potentially prize-winning books.

John Scalzi and Robert Wilson are handing out rtf versions of their novels to anyone who is eligible to vote. For details see Scalzi's web site.

Not surprisingly, if you're familiar with his views, Cory Doctorow doesn't think they've gone far enough. I agree, and I shall be making my own new novel available in pdf form (the complete text, folks) to anyone who takes the trouble to click on a link. Details tomorrow.

Another review for Sam Bourne

On 17 March, it was noted here that The Righteous Men, by Sam Bourne, had received, so far, only one review by a major newspaper. This despite the fact that Sam Bourne is the pseudonym of the Guardian's political correspondent Jonathan Freedland. Furthermore, said review was distinctly sniffy.

Well, now there is another review. It's written by Matilda Lisle, and it appeared in the Observer, which is the Guardian's sister paper (Sundays only).

Sadly, Matilda Lisle didn't like The Righteous Men much either, describing it as 'an overly familiar and overly silly collision of codes, cabals and conspiracies'. She concludes: 'It isn't much of a book,' but adds that it is not the worst of its kind, and Jonathan Freedlan really ought to have put his proper name to it.

Which is odd really, because the Observer tells us that Matilda Lisle is the nom de plume for an Observer staff writer. And this week's Private Eye reveals that Matilda Lisle is actually Alex Clark, assistant literary editor of the Observer (and female, if you're wondering).

Dear, dear me. This is all very distressing, for reasons which were discussed last time, were expanded upon in the comments section, and which need not be further rehearsed here. All of this is not, one feels, entirely appropriate for a book which earned a six-figure advance, and is agented by the famous Mr Jonny Geller, a man of impeccable judgement.

Jacqueline Winspear: Maisie Dobbs

I am sorry to report that I am unable to join in the general enthusiasm for Jacqueline Winspear and her new sleuth, the eponymous Maisie Dobbs. Indeed I seem to be in a minority of one.

Maisie Dobbs comes covered in honours. It was: one of Publishers' Weekly's Best Mysteries of 2003; a Booksense 76 Top Ten pick (whatever that means); had starred reviews in both Publishers' Weekly and the Library Journal; was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2003; was an Edgar Award nominee for Best Novel 2003 (now that I find really difficult to understand); and, also, was an Agatha Award winner for Best First Novel 2003.

Well, you could have fooled me.

The principal character is Maisie, who has set herself up as a private investigator, and she looks into the curious case of the rest home for badly injured ex-servicemen. The book is set mainly in 1929 (for the first 67 pages), and then goes back to the time of the Great War (1914-18), or earlier, before returning to 1929. That flashback is all devoted to backstory, and seems to go on for ever; yet this is being sold to us as a crime novel.

On the positive side, the author has spent a great deal of time researching the background, and has planned her novel carefully. But the overall tone of the book is quite incredibly old-fashioned; I think it would have felt a bit quaint even if published in 1929. As for the characters -- well, to my way of thinking they're pure cardboard and stereotype. The good guys, and gals, are incredibly noble and self-sacrificing, and the villain doesn't quite twirl his mustachios, but very nearly. I found the characters' motivation questionable and their mode of conversation unrealistic. And for my taste there is far too much Cockney dialogue with lots of apostrophes. (I 'ope 'e 'asn't 'alf-inched that 'ammer, Miss. Lawks a mussy!)

No, no. This really will not do. Not for me, at any rate. The only truly interesting feature that I can find occurs when Maisie is following a woman and takes careful note of her posture. By copying that posture herself, she gains an insight into the emotion which the woman might be feeling. Maisie does the same thing with other people whom she is following or observing. Now that, I grant you, is an original thought. But I can't recommend that you wade through 292 pages, just for the one insight.

Though presented to us as a crime novel, Maisie Dobbs hardly qualifies as such. It is at least as much a romance (in this case a story of lost love) or a family saga. It reminds me of those Josephine Cox books about feisty working-class girls struggling to make their way through life against colossal odds. Only it's not as good.

And how, I wonder, did this book come to be published in the UK by John Murray? JM is an old-established firm which once published Byron; and a firm which, though no longer independent, still has something of a reputation for literary quality. The answer to that question may perhaps be found on the author's web site, where it is revealed that she once worked in 'general and academic publishing' in the UK. It never hurts to know a few people.

There are two more in the Maisie Dobbs series: Birds of a Feather, and Pardonable Lies. But personally I shan't bother.

More MNW

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Macmillan New Writing initiative is generating lots of comment. Ian Hocking has his say on his blog, and Michael Fuchs, one of the MNW first six, joins in. As he also does in a comment on my own review of Michael Barnard's book.

More short bits

Child prodigy strikes again

An anonymous commenter has been perusing PRWeb and has found yet another press release about the eight-year-old alleged wunderkind Adora Svitak. (I see that in earlier mentions I mistyped her surname as Sitvak. Though she seems to operate mainly under the one name Adora; just like Madonna.)

I really don't recommend that you read this stuff. It's probably bad for your blood pressure and/or digestion. But there it is.

The 50 least influential...

Following the the Observer's recent list of the 50 (allegedly) most influential people in UK publishing, Buzzwords has invited nominations for a list of the 50 least influential people in publishing -- not necessarily British. (Link from Bookslut.)

Well, you may or may not be surprised to hear the that GOB has been nominated. And it's all true, every word. I am deeply honoured.

On the same list, by the way, there are nominations from another Mike Allen, who is not me. But the name Michael Allen is a very common one, as you can find out from Squidoo. One other Michael Allen is the President of the Science Fiction Poetry Association. No, I didn't know there was one either.

Booker injustice?

Over at Campaign for the American Reader, Marshall Zeringue is inviting readers to nominate the book which should have won the Booker and didn't. Or did win it, and never should have. And all like that.

Not a matter on which I am equipped to comment.

New Prize

The Mercantile Library has announced a new $10,000 prize for the best first novel by an American. I haven't read the small print, but I get the general feeling that anything published through PublishAmerica or Lulu is probably not eligible.

Walter Ellis

In a comment on my brief reference to Seth Godin, last Friday, Walter Ellis, author of the autobiographical The Beginning of the End, has some understandably bitter things to say about the attitude of UK book retailers. Serialisation, good reviews, a tour, radio interview, and no sales to speak of.

Everyone Who's Anyone et cetera

Gerard Jones has just published the fifth edition of his online directory Everyone Who's Anyone (in the book world, originally). Over the past few years, however, the list has been expanded to include film people and a whole lot more. So now the web site is entitled Everyone Who's Anyone in Adult Trade Publishing, Propagandaville and Tinseltown, Too, is a Worthless, Superfluous, Giddy, Giggly, Chickenhearted, Money-Grubbing, Nazi Moron.

More useful than ever, then. And, despite everything, Gerard still has a sense of humour.

The most powerful woman

The Scotsman claims to have identified the most powerful woman in UK publishing. (Link from Booktrade.info.) And she is, unsurprisingly, the gatekeeper on the Richard and Judy TV chat show. Think Oprah UK.

Michael Barnard: Transparent Imprint

Michael Barnard is the man who dreamed up the Macmillan New Writing initiative, and Transparent Imprint tells the story of how he got it off the ground. It is a paperback original, costs £10, and will be published on 7 April 2006. Royalties go to a book-trade charity.

For anyone sufficiently interested in writing and publishing to be reading this blog regularly, Transparent Imprint is an essential read. It's not expensive, and it contains a great deal of useful information -- information of a kind which is not often made available to the public.

If the Macmillan New Writing (MNW) imprint is unfamiliar to you, let me say that it is a new publishing venture, UK-based but open to writers from anywhere, and its function is, as its title suggests, to identify and publish writers of quality who have not previously had a novel published.

For reference, relevant earlier coverage on this blog can be found on the following dates:
3 May 2005
17 May 2005
25 November 2005
10 March 2006 and
16 March 2006

In order to comment sensibly on this book and the story it tells, I think we first need to take a fairly detailed look at the author. Michael Barnard says that he is within a year or two of retirement, so he is presumably in his sixties. He joined the Macmillan group in 1972, and was made a main-board director in 1985. This looks to me like very rapid progress, so he is clearly a successful manager.

Unlike most of those who come to public attention in publishing, Bernard has not had a career in editorial. Quite the reverse. His principal responsibilities have been the group's technical, production, and distribution operations. In other words, he is a specialist in the essential but low-profile and dull side of the business. He is the author of several previous books about printing and publishing technology, and lectures on those subjects at university level.

We also need to consider, briefly, the nature of the Macmillan group. Originally founded in 1843, the firm has grown to be one of the top half dozen in the UK market. It has major divisions dealing with textbooks and educational materials (always remember, children, that it is these boring bits of publishing which actually pay the rent; not the bits that get mentioned in the newspapers); and it has offshoots and branches in most parts of the world. The German firm Holtzbrinck is now the company's owner.

All of this background is highly relevant, because it explains how and why Michael Barnard was able to get MNW started, once he had dreamed it up. Barnard is a hands-on, down to earth manager who has operated at board level for years. He is clearly respected; and so, when he came up with the idea for MNW, the scheme was not dismissed with a sniff, as some hopelessly unrealistic fantasy dreamed up by some starry-eyed fan of profitless literary fiction. What is more, if the MNW imprint fails miserably, it can be closed down painlessly once Barnard has retired. This is an unusual set of circumstances, and largely explains why similar schemes are not (yet) being tried elsewhere.

Here, to begin with, are some of the key points which are made in Transparent Imprint; in no particular order.

• Like most major trade publishers, Macmillan does not (other than through MNW) consider unsolicited fiction manuscripts sent in by anyone other than a reputable agent.
• Agents have, understandably, got into the habit of wanting lots of money for their authors. But paying substantial sums of money for a book does not guarantee sales and profit. Neither does the present scheme of things (hit the big-time first time or you're out) lend itself to the more sensible development of talent over a series of books.
• Accordingly, there is a need for a new approach. The idea of MNW is to find good authors, who are showing signs of being able to grow, and to publish them cheaply but effectively. Those whose reviews, sales, and reader responses justify it, will be invited to transfer to the more orthodox Macmillan imprints for subsequent books.
• The acceptance rate at MNW has so far averaged out at less than half of one per cent. (In 10 months, about 3,000 mss were received.)
• Macmillan do not expect MNW to be profitable, in and of itself. Ever. They do, however, anticipate that authors who 'transfer' will prove profitable.
• MNW is a separate division of Macmillan Publishers Ltd., the top company, and stands alongside Pan Macmillan. This means nothing to the average reader (and not much, it seems, to journalists), but it is vital in terms of Macmillan internal politics and accounting. No one in Pan Macmillan (the general book publishing company in the Macmillan group), would have wanted MNW bleeding away resources as part of their empire; neither would they want to risk career damage if things go badly wrong. This way, none of that happens; which is the main reason why it wasn't kicked into touch.

Transparent Imprint gives a largely chronological account of how the imprint was conceived, approved, and implemented. It goes into considerable detail about matters such as the material in which the books will be bound, where they will be printed, and so forth. This is most unusual in a book about publishing. Most accounts of publishing affairs, even of day-to-day activity, seem to concentrate on famous names rather than on mundane but essential aspects of administration and production.

There are 40 pages dealing with the press reactions to the first news of the imprint (which seems to have leaked out earlier than anyone intended). This is by no means the most gripping 40 pages that I have ever read, but it is worth ploughing through in order to get a feel for the semi-hysterical and perhaps deliberately misleading statements which were at one time appearing in the press. The GOB seems to have been one of the few places where the MNW initiative was welcomed, and my lengthy piece of 3 May 2005 is reproduced in full. The chapter gives a valuable insight into the extreme nervousness, bordering upon panic, which is felt in some areas of the book trade.

There is a great deal more that could be said about the content of the book, but you really ought to read it for yourself, so I don't think I'm going to summarise it here. What I will say is that two of the appendices are worth the price of the book in themselves.

Appendix 1 deals with money matters. Understandably, Barnard states that he cannot go into too much detail for reasons of commercial confidence. Even so, he tells us a great deal more than most publishers ever would.

Without access to the records of particular firms, or a subscription to Bookscan (very expensive), it is hard to get a feel for such matters as the average sale for a first novel from a top publisher. However, from hints dropped here and there, over the years, it is quite clear that many novels nowadays sell less than a thousand copies in the traditional British market. Sometimes a lot less.

This creates a serious problem for publishers. Yes, printing technology has changed, and production costs have reduced markedly. In the 1950s and '60s, a publisher reckoned to need to sell 3,000 copies of a hardback to break even; and fortunately the library market could usually be depended upon to cover the basic investment, if not provide a profit. But those days are long gone, and my guess is that if MNW sales average 500 per book, the management will neither be surprised nor too disappointed. The first six, launched together, should do better than that on the back of the publicity.

Books which get good reviews may justify a later paperback edition. Each book in the first six already carries two ISBNs: one for the hardback, one for the (possible) paperback.

All of the above being the case, the emphasis throughout the creation of MNW was to reduce costs. And in Appendix 1 we get given some tentative figures. Of course, as Barnard points out, and as was noted here on 2 December 2005, you can fiddle with these figures all day. Suffice it to say here that the costs that he quotes -- e.g. £300 for jacket and cover design and artwork rights, and £2,000 for printing one thousand hardback copies -- seem to me to be very, very low. They are figures which could only be achieved by a firm with an enormous amount of business to place, and the ability to place it in any country in the world where the price is right.

However much you tinker with sales estimates and costs, it is clear that Barnard is being realistic when he says that the imprint is not expected to be profitable in itself. It will only be profitable if it throws up talent which can be developed into substantial and regular sellers.

Appendix 3 is a copy of the standard, non-negotiable contract which is offered to all MNW authors. Well, I signed my first contract with a publisher in 1962, and I have signed a good many since. I have also written contracts, with my publisher's hat on. And I am here to say that I find nothing to object to in the MNW terms. There are a couple of points which I would need to have explained, one point where I think the terms are a little mean, and a reference to returns which is not as precise as I would wish. Overall, however, I wouldn't have any hesitation in advising a writer to sign it.

This is not quite the first time that an attempt has been made to arouse interest in new authors. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s there was an imprint known as New Authors Ltd. This was operated by Hutchinson, and it introduced a number of writers, such as Beryl Bainbridge, who went on to become famous. Of the 64 books listed for this imprint by the British Library catalogue, however, most of the authors' names ring no bell whatever.

There is one name which is not mentioned in Transparent Imprint, but which I think must figure large in the collective unconscious of the longer-serving Macmillan staff. It is the name of the creator of the Inspector Morse series, Colin Dexter.

Dexter has been published by Macmillan ever since his first book, Last Bus to Woodstock, in 1975. Initially he was just another crime writer, one of the extensive stable which was run, in those days, by Lord Hardinge. But gradually he grew in popularity; and when ITV started broadcasting two-hour television adaptations of his work, starring John Thaw as Morse, sales really took off.

And the point is this: throughout his career, Dexter has never used a literary agent. He came in through the slush pile and he has stayed with the firm ever since. Macmillan handle all rights business on his behalf.

Whether consciously or not, the MNW imprint is designed to find more of the same: i.e. writers who are talented, prepared to sign over world rights, and, preferably, are unencumbered with the likes of a top agent who is constantly yelling for more, more, more. Such finds would be eminently valuable to the company. And you know what? There are many worse fates than being one of those authors. My guess is that Macmillan, with its extensive contacts worldwide, is going to be just as good at getting a decent deal for a writer as is any agent.

In my view, Macmillan's courage and common sense in launching this initiative are to be saluted.

Short bits

Hotel Chelsea blog

The Chelsea Hotel in New York argues, with some justification, that everyone who's anyone has stayed there at some time or other, and the latest to get a mention on the hotel blog is Alexander Masters, who won the Guardian First Book Award in 2005 for his biography of a homeless man.

At first the Chelsea blogger thought there was no connection between Alexander Masters and the hotel. But he was wrong. The novelist Joan Brady has this to say:

In re Alexander Masters, he is in fact the great nephew of Edgar Lee Masters, who lived at the Chelsea for many years. I am his mother. His father was Dexter Masters, Lee's nephew. That is, he is not unrelated to the hotel at all. Furthermore, all three of us stayed at the Chelsea for over a month in 1970 or 1971.

Which is all perfectly clear, I hope. Though it reminds me somewhat of the statement made by Mary Gordon, the cousin of the nineteenth-century poet Algernon Swinburne, when she described their relationship as follows:

Our mothers (daughters of the third Earl of Ashburnham) were sisters; our fathers, first cousins -- more alike in characters and tastes, and more linked in closest friendship, than many brothers. Added to this, our paternal grandmothers -- two sisters and co-heiresses -- were first cousins to our common maternal grandmother; thus our fathers were also second cousins to their wives before marriage.

Concentrate, concentrate. It is, as I say, all perfectly simple. And it explains a great deal about why Algernon was so peculiar.

The Bookseller Crow

The Bookseller Crow on the hill looks like an enterprising independent bookshop in south-east London. What's more it has a blog. Click on the Bedside Crow. The bookshop owner is, it seems, a gentleman trader from the shires who struggles to make ends meet in sarf London, aided, he reports, by a wife who has three separate jobs. Well quite, quite. One understands.

I'm not sure whether the gentleman trader's wife knows, but he has taken an interest in books which have pictures of girls in knickers on the front. And there are quite a lot of them. I hadn't noticed this trend myself, so perhaps I ought to get out more.

Agents' blogs

I mentioned the other day that I'd forgotten the name of another agent's blog that I was going to recommend. So Carla Nayland kindly wrote and pointed me to one, Pub Rants, by Kristin Nelson. No, that isn't it. Neither is it one of those other blogs by agents that Kristin lists for us. But all are worth a look, especially if you're looking for an agent yourself. And, eventually, I noticed that one of those blogs linked to by Kristin actually mentioned the blog I originally had in mind: Agent 007.

Agent 007 offers a link, among other things, to Seth Godin's advice for non-fiction writers. His first point: 'Book publishing is an organised hobby, not a business. The return on equity and return on time for authors and for publishers is horrendous.' I like that. It's a point made here time after time, of course, but Seth Godin is one of the world's top marketing men, and it's nice to have someone who punches with that weight share your opinion.

My view: being an agent is the toughest job in the business.

Short stories

L. Lee Lowe has posted another short story on his blog, Into the Lowlands. Now, whether you think this is terrific, so-so, or bloody awful, the fact is that it's there, some people are aware of it (you and me for starters), and it's one way to do things. If you write a stunner, you can bet that someone will send an email to someone else, and so on.

Bill Walsh writes a novel

Amazon sent me an email which I was about to delete without reading, when I realised that it claimed that I had previously bought a book by Bill Walsh. Have I indeed, I thought. News to me. But when I followed it up I realised that it's true.

Bill Walsh is the author of Lapsing into a Comma, talked about here on 25 March last year. But unfortunately -- or fortunately -- the Comma Bill Walsh is not the same Bill Walsh as the author of Matilda, a book to be published by Penguin Ireland in April 2006. That Bill Walsh is a retired plasterer, whereas the Comma Bill Walsh is the Washington Post copy chief.

So, nice try, Amazon. But next time try checking a few facts.

Things could be worse

Is life treating you badly? Need cheering up? If so, go see the Word Pangs guy. He's got some links which will have you chortling in no time.

I jest, of course. Actually there's some serious stuff here. For those interested in the writing/depression link, for instance, there is a 1994 article from the New York Times which is more than relevant. And there's another link to the Wikipedia entry on writers who committed suicide. This will certainly set you back on your heels somewhat. It did me, anyway. And it doesn't even mention Tom Heggen.

Word Pangs also has some very funny stuff as well. You will be pleased to hear.

Welsh wizardry

The Western Mail gets excited this a.m. (Link from Booktrade.info.) Seems there's this small Welsh publisher, Crown House Publishing, who published a book by Janey Lee Grace, a presenter on BBC Radio 2. Title: Imperfectly Natural Woman. Subject: tips on living a green and holistic lifestyle.

Initial print run was 10,000. It came out in January, and no one took much notice. But then Janey mentioned it on the radio and it took off. Currently it is no. 2 in sales on Amazon.co.uk. The first 10,000 are gone and the firm is reprinting.

Hmm. Maybe steam radio is still pretty effective.

More about Senator McCarthy

In my post about Clancy Sigal, I referred to Senator Joseph McCarthy and 'his allegedly anti-Communist witch hunt in the US of the 1940s and 1950s.' In response, Archer wrote in and asked whether this was 'the sort of subtle British irony that fools us Yanks.'

Well, no. Actually I meant what I said. But I clearly didn't express myself very well. I tried to cram far more meaning into that phrase 'allegedly anti-Communist' than it will comfortably accommodate. My apologies for that, and I will do my best to explain.

First a bit of background. Those who know absolutely nothing about Senator McCarthy might like to take a look at the Wikipedia entry. Better still, read an excerpt from Richard Rovere's classic study of the man. Actually, this latter is not particularly easy to read online, because it appears to have been reproduced without paragraphs, but it won't take long to get the gist.

McCarthy was an undistinguished US Senator who discovered, in 1950, that by making speeches attacking 'Communists' he could attract huge amounts of public attention. So from 1950 until his death in 1957, McCarthy proceeded to ruin the lives of a substantial number of people who just happened, at one time or another, to have been members of, or supporters of, the Communist Party in America.

McCarthy, says, Rovere, 'walked with a heavy tread over large parts of the Constitution of the United States, and he cloaked his own gross figure in the sovereignty it asserts and the powers it distributes. He usurped executive and judicial authority whenever the fancy struck him. It struck him often. He held two Presidents captive -- or as nearly captive as any Presidents of the United States have ever been held.'

McCarthy, in short, was one of the nastiest lumps of dogshit ever to rise to the top in a western democracy -- which is saying a great deal. He was a self-serving demagogue, with self-serving being the key part of that description. Furthermore, it is doubtful whether he ever knew the first thing about Communism. The idea that Joe had the intellectual capacity to understand the finer points of dialectical materialism, for example, is too silly to contemplate for more than half a second.

In respect of this man, I have two points to make, and, as stated above, I was trying to build them into my earlier comment.

First, even at the time when McCarthy was riding high, it must surely have been obvious that the main purpose of his activities was not to eliminate 'Communist spies', but to enhance the name, power, and glory of Senator McCarthy himself. He was looking for a bandwagon which would take him to a position of power, and he found it. But it might have been something else entirely. I suspect that the anti-Communist aspect of McCarthy's activities came about more or less by accident. If he had discovered that he could gain power over people by attacking the price of budgerigar seed, he would have made a career out of that instead.

The second point I want to make is that McCarthy did enormous damage to America, both internally and externally. For a start, it is utterly absurd that any American should be held to be 'un-American' for exercising the right to hold a particular set of political views (always provided, of course, that they stay within the law). This did not go unnoticed in Europe and elsewhere.

Furthermore, I would draw your attention to the comment which led to Richard Condon's famous novel The Manchurian Candidate. Condon said that the novel grew out of a remark he once heard a newsman make, to the effect that the loud-mouthed Senator Joseph McCarthy couldnÂ’t have done more harm to the country if he had he been a dedicated Communist agent himself.

Condon built a book around that. He described a moronic Senator who rose to power on vague claims about 'Communists in the State Department', and whose wife actually was a Soviet agent. And, in so doing, Condon turned McCarthy into a buffoon. Which is too kind by half.

Now I won't go so far as to say that I actually believe that McCarthy was a Soviet agent (though stranger things certainly happened in that era). But I endorse the view that the damage he did was far more extensive than that of any Soviet agent known to me.

However, as I said at the beginning, Archer has a point. And on reflection it is probably impossible to build into one sentence the burden of what I had in mind when I used the phrase 'allegedly anti-Communist'.

But, were I to try, I might, perhaps, refer to McCarthy's 'nominally anti-Communist activities, which were primarily intended to increase the power and influence of McCarthy himself, and which in fact did more damage to America's interests, and to America's good name, than any Communist agent ever did.'

I wonder if m'learned friend Archer would accept that. Archer, you see, has a blog of his own, called LawyerWorldLand. How could I have missed it?

Oh, the joys of the writer's life

Well, we don't wanna spread too much doom and gloom, do we, but I thought you ought to know that Dr Ian Hocking used his own blog to take up the question of depression among writers which was raised here last week. The 'Dr' bit, he claims, is not directly relevant to clinical psychology, but since he is also a writer the connection is close enough to be useful.

At the end of Ian's post I have added a couple of comments about the value of feeling in control of your own fate, and the (severe) disadvantage of feeling that your fate is controlled by other people.

Meanwhile, over at POD-dy Mouth, the Girl has things to say on the same subject: i.e. she notes the never-ending stream of complaints which come from the mouths of those who, by the grace of God, actually do end up getting published; and, by contrast, the relative satisfaction of those who do their own thing.

And Steve Clackson at Sand Storm also records, not altogether humorously, some of the 'helpful' but conflicting comments which are coming his way from potential agents and publishers.

Oh, and just in case you thought that, since you are a natural-born genius and a future Nobel prize winner, and therefore above all the mundane matters which affect other writers, you might like to take a peek at the Raw Story's excerpt from the New York Times (link from Booktrade.info.)

The NYT story relates that it is getting harder and harder to sell literary fiction. Often, as many as three quarters of the books shipped get returned to the publisher. Erm -- are we supposed to be surprised?

While you're waiting

In London, the court case about whether Dan Brown has to pay damages to those other guys is all over bar the wincing and the whingeing. The Judge hopes to make a decision 'before Easter', which means sometime in the next three or four weeks.

Meanwhile, to keep your mind occupied, you might like to nip over to About.com, where you can find all kinds of interesting theories about Leonardo da Vinci and codes and such. And (thanks to Dwayne for the tipoff) there is a whole section of altreligion which explains that Leonardo's symbolism was Hermetic, his preference being Johannite Gnosticism.

Well quite, quite. That's what I always thought. As I sat there reading Dan Brown, and again when I was reading Javier Sierra's The Secret Supper, I found myself murmuring, Don't know what all the fuss is about really. Perfectly obvious, surely? Hermetic symbolism with a preference for Johannite Gnosticism. QED.

Philip K. Dick was a Gnostic, by the way. Not many people know that. Although you might perhaps have guessed if you've seen the movie Blade Runner. And if you want to find a nice easy telling of the story of Philip K. Dick's anamnesis, Robert Crumb has done one. Oh yes.

Jon Courtenay Grimwood: Felaheen

Jon Courtenay Grimwood is a writer who has been praised here before, notably for last year's 9tail Fox. Which was relatively accessible, as I believe they say in the publishing business these days.

Accessible, in its extreme form, means that a book can be read by someone whose lips move as the eyes scan the page. But no amount of lip movement is gonna get you through this one. Not on its own. This one requires a certain amount of nous.

Felaheen is one of Grimwood's earlier works, though still his seventh novel, and its subtitle is The Third Arabesk. Thus indicating that it follows Pashazade and Effendi which were the first and second Arabesks respectively.

We are in science-fiction territory here, and, as in all such novels (and perhaps as in all novels, period), the action takes place in a parallel universe in which things as not quite the same as they are here.

Central character is Ashraf Bey, who may or may not be the son of Moncef, Emir of Tunis, who may or may not be close to death, after an assassination attempt. But there are plenty of other characters, including Lady Hana al-Mansur, known as Hani, who is either ten or eleven, no one seems quite sure, and whom I rather took to.

I have to say that this book is seriously weird. I mean, like, seriously weird. I quite enjoyed it, but it sure as hell isn't going to appeal to everyone. Rest assured, however, that Grimwood knows exactly what he is up to. Even if the rest of us are sometimes left scratching our heads.

Details of all Grimwood's output on FantasticFiction, as usual.

Deborah Lawrenson sells again

Booktrade.info carries a press release from Arrow (a paperback imprint of UK Random House) to the effect that they have bought another novel by Deborah Lawrenson, who is described as a 'self-published success'.

Well, yes. She is. But as usual the press release is a little economical with the truth.

The truth was revealed here (not exclusively, I hasten to add) on 29 November 2004. The fact is that Deborah had a perfectly orthodox career, to begin with. She had three books published by Heinemann in the 1990s, but, when it came to the fourth, the publisher decided that 'the book would be difficult to market'. So they dumped her.

Whereupon Deborah published the book herself. (Deborah used, incidentally, the services of Matador; this, as I have remarked before, looks to me like one of the better such UK firms.)

The book's title was The Art of Falling, and it got some good reviews. So good, in fact, that it attracted the attention of Bloomsbury as well as Arrow, and she got offered a contract. Arrow then proceeded to sell 40,000 copies.

So this story is not quite the 'unknown hits big time' that is so beloved of those papers which ever publish anything about books. It's more a case of braindead publisher drops perfectly capable and competent author, who is forced to go her own way for a while until someone else wakes up to the fact that she has talent.

The greatest living British writer?

The Book Magazine provides an opportunity to vote for the person whom you consider to be the greatest living British writer (link from Bookslut).

As usual with such things, the list is a bit of a nonsense. If I've counted right, there are 58 names on it.

Nine of those 58 are names which don't even ring the faintest bell with me. I didn't even know they were writers.

I have read, in the sense of at least dipped into (and often heaved into a far corner of the room), books by 21 of the names.

And there are only five writers listed whose next book I would definitely want to read.

None of which stopped me voting, of course. And I shall certainly complain when the wrong person is declared the winner.

Some other blogs

There are so many other blogs that one can't possibly keep up with them all. However, here are a few which, for one reason or another, I have found worthwhile in recent days.

The Skwib, by Mark Rayner. Particularly his comment about the attempt to trade-mark the term 'super-hero'.

Carla Nayland Historical Fiction. Anyone who quotes extensively from Terry Pratchett is on the side of the angels. Or Angles? She does live in East Anglia, after all.

No rules. Just Write. Is the title of Brenda Coulter's blog, mentioned here before but somehow omitted from the blogroll.

Nimble Books LLC is the successor to various sites operated by W. Frederick Zimmerman, a man once described here as having remarkable energy, and even then I didn't know the half of it.

Marketing for Authors, Kate Allan's only occasional blog, has some interesting case studies.

Miss Snark remains snarky. Which is a very American word, hardly heard over here as yet. But I think we get the drift.

And I'm pretty sure there was another blog by an agent that I meant to mention, but damn if I can remember what it was.

Clancy Sigal: A Woman of Uncertain Character

The subtitle of Clancy Sigal's A Woman of Uncertain Character is: The Amorous and Radical Adventures of My Mother Jennie (Who Always Wanted to Be a Respectable Jewish Mom) by Her Bastard Son.

Should you be in any doubt, it's a memoir/biography, not a novel. Says the publisher, Carroll and Graf (an eminently respectable US firm): 'This memoir is about Clancy Sigal's intense attachment to his fast-talking, redhaired, sexy, unwed mother Jennie, a firebrand union organizer, and his roaring Oedipal rivalry with his mostly absent father Leo who carries a gun to social occasions.' The time: the 1930s and '40s. The place: Chicago. Publication date is Mother's Day 2006 -- or thereabouts; i.e., end of this month.

I wonder how many men have written a biography of their mother. I can't immediately think of any, but Jennie seems to be a thoroughly suitable subject. And our Clancy must have done the job well, because he gets a plug on the book's cover from Studs Terkel -- a man who knows a thing or two about Chicago characters. (If you have never read any of Studs Terkel's oral histories, you should. Masterly.)

Clancy himself writes a better description of his memoir than his publisher has done, at least in my opinion. It contains, he says,

...a lot about gangsters, street violence and the shadowy no-man's land between criminal and legal where my Mom and I lived.

Jennie, my mother, was a single woman on welfare with a disobedient, illegitimate son (me). Because she doesn't give me up for adoption, and because of her street smarts and her flirtations, she's a 'kourveh' (whore) to some in her Jewish world.

She's a union organizer, a dangerous life for a woman, alone, facing down strikebreakers with guns in their hands. Meyer Lansky, Bugsy Siegel and Al Capone -- who are in the story -- may be romantic figures today, but to us they were goons pure and simple...

I'm a conflicted boy, identifying with my scrappy, super-male father and struggling against my mother who is the source of my greatest strength.

There do not seem to be plans for a separate UK edition of this book, but I think we are going to hear quite a lot about it in the UK, especially if it gets sent to UK newspapers for review. Why do I think that? Well, because I get the feeling that Clancy Sigal is at least as well known in the UK as he is in the US.

I can't find a single, really authoritative source of online information about him, but I remember his name from thirty or more years ago. Clancy, you see, was one of many American writers, actors, and directors who fell foul of Senator McCarthy and his allegedly anti-Communist witch hunt in the US of the 1940s and 1950s. Many of those harried by McCarthy and his associates just came to England and carried on regardless: Joseph Losey and Carl Foreman being notable examples.

By American standards, McCarthy's activities are ancient history now. Even twenty-five years ago, the American film producer Sheldon Reynolds told me that his wife Andrea had known nothing about McCarthy until he gave her a novel about the man (The Troubled Air, by Irwin Shaw). But the era is not entirely forgotten, as the recent film from George Clooney, Goodnight and Good Luck, demonstrates.

Clancy Sigal seems to have been a fully paid-up member of the Communist Party, and not surprisingly that didn't go down too well in Hollywood. So, like many another talent, he went to England, where socialism was still respectable. He stayed for thirty years, until eventually the English wore him down too.

When Clancy Sigal left England, c. June 1989, to go back to America, he wrote a lengthy piece in the Guardian, explaining his reasons and giving something of a personal history. He had certainly made his mark here.

Not surprisingly, given his background, Clancy had mixed with the left-wing intelligentsia. Unlike most Americans -- and unlike most English writers, for that matter -- Clancy also seems to have lived and worked among the working class. He spent time in the industrial north, where the world is very different from that of the UK tourist brochures.

Clancy also crops up in literary history. He was for a time the lover of Doris Lessing, and they both wrote novels which dealt with their affair. Doris Lessing maintains that she never read Clancy's book, and he, apparently, is not kindly dealt with in The Golden Notebook. But he seems to have played an important part in Lessing's personal development. (For an account of which, see the 1982 interview with her by the British writer Lesley Hazleton.)

There are many other sides to Clancy Sigal. He was involved, for instance, in a mental health project called the Philadelphia Association. This was a charity (in legal terms) 'concerned with the understanding and relief of mental suffering.' The most famous collaborator in the Philadelphia Association was R.D. Laing, a man whom, perhaps out of sheer ignorance, I have always regarded as both mad himself and also bad. At one time he was certainly a huge name in certain circles, and Clancy Sigal was heavily involved with him.

Whether I'm right or wrong about Laing being a bad influence, it is a matter of record that he suffered from both alcoholism and clinical depression. And Clancy Sigal subsequently wrote a novel, Zone of the Interior, in which a thinly disguised Laing features. Clancy has written about this book quite recently, again in the Guardian.

The 2005 Guardian article gives an account of Clancy Sigal's own mental breakdown. And in doing so it reminds me of a television programme that I once saw, decades ago, in which the American psychiatrist Thomas S. Szasz was attacked by four British equivalents.

The Brits argued, basically, that the mentally ill ought to be treated, against their will if necessary, and preferably with drugs. Szasz argued, broadly speaking, that you should leave them alone. In the course of the discussion, one of the Brits described how he had once had a famous colleague who became depressed. But the British psychiatrist didn't immediately put the famous man on antidepressants, as he would have done with any ordinary patient. And when Szasz asked why not, the Brit replied that he didn't think it appropriate for a man of his standing. 'I cannot imagine,' said Szasz dryly, 'a better proof of my contention.'

Clancy Sigal's treatment by Laing and his colleagues seems to have been that handed out to 'ordinary people', and quite contrary to what Laing had promised him.

In recent years, Clancy Sigal has returned to the United States, and has also returned to the craft of writing for the movies. He was the author of the screenplay for the 2002 film Frida, a biography of the artist Frida Kahlo.

One way and another, the man has had what you might call an interesting life. Some would call it rackety. So far as I know he has never written an account of his own life. But let's hope that he does so soon, while he still has the chance, because it would make a fascinating read.

Productivity

A correspondent recently remarked on the fact that I seem to produce quite a lot of words on the blog, and that prompted me to do some calculations -- calculations of a kind that I'd been meaning to do for some time -- about 'productivity'. Although I have my doubts as to whether the number of words written by a writer can sensibly be covered by that term. Some words are more valuable than others.

From a long-term perspective, most of my writing has been done as a spare-time activity, while I was holding down a full-time job. In fact my job was, in a sense, more than full-time. However, I discovered fairly early in life that if you do want to write a book then you just have to keep at it; but if you do keep at it, the thing does get written eventually.

In order to keep track of time spent and words produced, I made it a practice for many years to keep fairly detailed records, and these figures might perhaps be of passing interest to other writers.

The busiest time of my working life was the last fifteen years prior to retirement. And during those years I spent an average of 4.5 hours a week on writing. ('Writing' I defined as researching, planning, drafting, revising, marketing, and publicising.)

This probably doesn't sound like very much. And indeed it isn't. I probably did it, typically, in 3 evening sessions a week. But during those fifteen years I produced several books and plays. I tended to write plays rather than novels because I could finish them quicker and they were not quite so tiring to complete.

On average, and it was very much on average, I found that writing a book took me three hours per thousand words. Roughly one hour to plan each thousand words, one hour to write, and one hour to revise and polish. Marketing and publicising were extra.

Within that average, I once completed a 75,000 word novel in 125 hours, and another novel, about 100,000 words in length, took me 600 hours -- largely because my then agent wanted revisions.

After retirement I became, so to speak, a full-time writer (and later writer/publisher). And I continued to keep records.

What I discovered, interestingly enough, is that the amount of time that I devoted to writing did not increase as dramatically as I had thought it would. The average hours worked as a 'full-timer' have been just under 17 per week.

There are several reasons for this. I tend to work in the mornings pretty regularly; but in the afternoons I often go for a walk, or do some shopping. Since I no longer use a central catering facility, simple things such as preparing a meal tend to take far longer. Then, of course, there are numerous little jobs around the house that Mrs GOB finds for me to do.

In any event, I don't think I would really want to spend very much longer on writing and publishing than I do at present.

As for what I produce in those 17 hours a week: well, the sheer volume of words produced has certainly increased since I started the blog, almost exactly two years ago.

The GOB, as you probably realise, is hosted by Blogspot.com, part of Blogger, which is part of Google, and Blogger no longer provides a facility for counting the number of posts and the average words per post -- although it did so at one time.

However, I have done a very rough calculation, and it seems that I write about 20,000 words a month on the GOB. This adds up to somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 words a year. And in the calendar year 2005 I also wrote, in addition to the GOB, some 80,000 to 100,000 words on other projects (including a novel).

All of which begins to look like a surprisingly high total. Something approaching 350,000 words a year. On the other hand, if you do the necessary arithmetic, I think you will find that it still works out at around that 3 hours for 1,000 words figure that I mentioned earlier.

I mention all this for two reasons. First, I sense that many writers are deeply frustrated by the fact that they are not able to do the job on a full-time basis. But if my experience is any guide, fitting some writing into a working week is by no means impossible. And, even on the basis of 4 or 5 hours a week, it is not impossible to work on a long project such as a book.

Secondly, even if you do win the pools, or suddenly get given a contract which is sufficiently valuable to allow you to give up the day job, you may find that the number of hours which is available for writing in a given week does not, somehow, increase in quite the dramatic way that you might have thought.

What you may find is that that slaving over a word-processor, without any kind of human contact, for eight or more hours a day, is a profoundly unsatisfactory way to live your life.

More short pieces

John Barlow

John Barlow, author of Intoxicated, has a blog up with various thoughts on how come, and why, people are selling his new book on ebay.

Buy a Friend a Book Week

It's nearly Buy a Friend a Book Week again. This is the brainchild of Debra Hamel, a smart lady who has written a book which should be read by all feminists and which won't do men any harm either. Details of BAFAB are available on its own web site, and Debra also has a blog which provides a link to her book about Neaira, a courtesan of ancient Greece. As of today, Debra is also reading Jeffrey Archer's latest. There's dedication for you.

Da Vinci column inches

The Da Vinci case is generating acres of copy, little of which is worth reading. But the Guardian has a piece claiming that people who once enthused about the book have now decided that it has become unspeakably vulgar, and more or less deny that they ever admired it.

'Suddenly,' says Viv Groskop, 'it is difficult to find anyone at all who will admit to having enjoyed The Da Vinci Code. This is rather peculiar with 40 million copies purchased worldwide, presumably not all of them by Dan Brown's mum.'

Well, my position is quite clear: it was set out in my post of 17 September 2004. The book was bought for the UK by Transworld, who paid only a modest advance for it, and began to pay attention to it only after it took off in the US. It was published in the UK in March 2003, and I read it about six months later. I found it a perfectly acceptable thriller; not outstanding, but certainly readable. But then, when I found that it was really beginning to sell, I realised that I couldn't remember a damn thing about it.

In my estimation, the most famous novel of our time is not so much vulgar as forgettable. But I'm certainly not embarrassed about having enjoyed it.

Melvyn Bragg on the world's 'best' books

Melvyn to his friends, and Lord Bragg to the rest of us (make sure you tug your forelock when you greet him) is a highly successful (at least in the UK) writer and cultural guru. In yesterday's Sunday Times he gives us his list of the 12 most influential books in the world. Like all such lists, it's a bit of a farce really, but he has some interesting choices. He seems to have limited his list, in the end, to books by British writers and thinkers.

Carmel Morgan: Smaller

Carmel Morgan's new play Smaller is indeed going to go into London. (So many of these 'prior to West End' productions which tour the provinces never get nearer than Brighton.) And I see that the large press advertisements for the play's run at the Lyric Theatre now include the name of June Watson in addition to those of Dawn French and Alison Moyet. And in the same size type; though June still doesn't get to feature in the photograph.

It would be nice to think that the GOB comments about the absence of any credit for June Watson had something to do with that. But it's more likely to have been Watson's agent.

Mind you, mention of June Watson's contribution is still missing from many online references to the play. Try here, for instance. And here. And here. Such is life, eh?

The Old Pals Act and the Grauniad

My reference last week to the Old Pals Act of 1898 (in relation to the Michael Dibdin review of Sam Bourne's new book) elicited from one reader some scholarly elucidation of the more obscure sections of Act. This came in the form of a comment from m'learned friend Iain, to whom I am deeply indebted. Essential reading, this one. It explains a great deal. Go take a look.

And, while we are on the subject of that post, perhaps I should explain my repeated references to the Grauniad newspaper, which another commenter took to be a fit of the dyslexics. In fact the repeated references were not typos but something of a conceit.

Many years ago, the Guardian had a reputation for having an unacceptably high proportion of typographical errors; and this in a time when people still knew about such obscure things as the difference between appraise and apprise. As a result of this failing, the UK satirical magazine Private Eye began to refer to the Guardian as the Grauniad, a practice which is copied by quite a few writers in the UK. In my own case, I almost invariably use it when referring to reports in the Eye, but not otherwise.

Little UK in-joke, you see. Sorry. Should have remembered that we have readers elsewhere.

PRWeb

Over the weekend I discovered that the UK weekly Publishing News gets its online news feed (or most of it) from an outfit called PRWeb. This site appears to carry any press release, from anywhere, on anything. And they then sort the releases by subject, geographical area, and so forth.

So, if you want to see every press release in the entire world on the subject of books, click on the News by Category heading, choose Arts & Entertainment:Books, and away you go.

Only the most obsessive news freak would, I think, want to read everything that's there. But if you need to write a press release yourself, this is the place to go to find examples of how other people do it: the good, the bad, and the indifferent.

More on the Dibdin/Bourne affair

On 13 February, I noted that the Times had gleefully published a book review by Michael Dibdin which had been rejected by the Guardian. Why was the Grauniad unhappy? Because the review was of The Righteous Men, by Sam Bourne, and Sam Bourne is the pen-name of the Grauniad's political man, Jonathan Freedland. And the review was, shall we say, ungenerous.

Subsequently, the Literary Saloon reminded their readers that I had written about the Freedland/Bourne novel when it was first commissioned. They reminded me about it too, because I had quite forgotten. And it turns out that, in my piece of 16 September 2004, I had complained loudly about the Fleet Street/publishing mafia, and the cosy deals done within that coterie, and had stated my view that, when the book finally did appear, it would not prove to be worth its very substantial advance (reported as the usual six figures).

Well, now the magazine Private Eye has come up with a few more details of what went on in the Grauniad office.

When the Dibdin review arrived, hilariously trashing Freedland's thriller, literary editor Claire Armitstead went to editor Alan Rusbridger and asked what to do about it. Amazingly, Rusbridger then referred the piece to Sam Bourne himself, aka Jonathan Freedland, asking if he wanted it to run. Surprise, surprise, Freedland said no.

The Eye also says that 'still fuming, Freedland has now advised Armitstead that she should never ask Dibdin to write for the Grauniad again.' It also notes that, one month after the publication of The Righteous Men, the Dibdin review remains the only one that the book has received.

How can this be? It is in flagrant violation of the Old Pals Act of 1898 (section 42[d]), which states clearly that any book written by a Fleet Street journalist must automatically be reviewed by every other newspaper in the land. And, preferably, that the author be given a full-page interview as well.

Shome mishtake here, shurely. Perhaps people just don't realise who Sam Bourne is. Perhaps he ought to send a note round.

Short notes

Here are a few bits and pieces which have cropped up in the post, in the press, or online. In no particular order.

Shameless Words

Shameless Words is a newish blog by an apparently anonymous writer, a 37-year-old journalist living in France. Will he be accepted by Macmillan New Writing? Watch this space.

The Daily Bulletin

Jack Saunders writes about depression in writers, and/or in himself, on an unusual site called The Daily Bulletin. Now that I think about it, Jack has turned up here before.

Still going at 92

Publishers Lunch reports that Lilian Jackson Braun, 92, is still going strong with her The Cat Who... mystery series. The Wall Street Journal says (in an article available online only to subscribers) that the 28 titles published since 1966 have sold over 30 million copies worldwide. Braun is completing the twenty-ninth title, and 'installment 30 [is] a gleam in her eye.' The Journal also notes that 'the testimonials and sales figures are all the more impressive for an author who's always operated below the radar,' touring very little, and facing 'something of an industry bias' against her traditional, light-hearted approach to the crime-fiction genre.

I've never actually read a Cat Who book. Could never quite steel myself to do it. But lots of people have, apparently. Details of the lady and her books are on Fantastic Fiction, as usual.

Million Writers Award

Jason Sanford, of storySouth magazine, has posted the Notable Stories of 2005 list. This is a list of stories (published online) which have been nominated by readers worldwide. From these, a shortlist of 10 will be drawn up, and readers can then vote for the best. Even allowing for some mutual backscratching, there ought to be something worth reading among that lot.

Times Lit Supp dumbs down?

The People column in the Times reveals that the front cover of today's Times Literary Supplement has a (not very flattering) picture of Chantelle (winner of TV's Big Brother) on the front cover. Does this mean that the august journal is dumbing down? As I have not read the TLS for twenty years I cannot say. But I just thought that regular readers of same ought to be forewarned. Otherwise the shock might prove too much.

Val Landi gets paired off

As from 1 April, Val Landi's A Woman of Cairo will be paired on Amazon.com with Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, currently the overall bestselling title after the Da Vinci thingy. I'm not quite sure how this works, or how Mr Landi wangled it, but it sounds impressive.

Murder Slim

Murder Slim is an outfit which deals mainly with music: 'From toe-tapping rockabilly to vicious punk, true alternative to ballsy garage, we've got it all.' But they also run to a literary magazine, Savage Kick, and, if the names Dan Fante, John Fante, Charles Bukowski, L-F Celine, Jim Goad or Jim Thompson mean anything to you, you're in the right place. They also publish Mark SaFranko's novel Hating Olivia, which has attracted quite a number of admirers on the hard-edged side of things.

Tentative conclusion

I don't know about you, but when I survey the above, I begin to think that all writers are a bit weird really. Apart from me, of course. And you. We're just fine.

MNW: second tranche of three

You may recall a series of posts here about the Macmillan New Writing (MNW) project, the latest of which was on 10 March.

The story so far is that Macmillan UK have set up a new fiction imprint to publish the work of previously unpublished authors, in any genre, with the first six books appearing on 7 April 2006. I am in the process of reviewing (or perhaps overviewing) all six: three were done last week, and three more feature today.

You may also recall that what I have done with these six books is to perform a 40-page test. That is to say, I have read the first 40 pages, or so, of each book, in order to get a flavour of it and to enable me to make some sort of judgement about the skills of the author. The books are listed here in alphabetical order.

At some point, probably next week, I will offer a few general conclusions about the MNW imprint, based on this overview.

Roger Morris: Taking Comfort

Unusually, this novel has a Contents page, and the chapters have both numbers and titles. Actually there are two Contents pages, because there are 55 chapters in a 215-page book.

Short chapters I always think of as a good sign. Yes, I am a simple soul, easily put off by slabs of thick prose (and not all that comfortable with joined-up writing). But titter ye not, madam (copyright Francis Howerd); there are lots of us simple souls out there, and we appreciate the kindness of those who make things made easy for us.

This book is written in the third person, and largely in the present tense, and it is immediately apparent that it is a little... different, shall we say. Not your run-of-the-mill book in any genre.

The principal character is Rob Saunders. He is about to start a new job, an experience which is often worrying to the strongest of us. And on his way to work Rob is a witness as a young woman throws herself in front of a train on the London Underground. Immediately before jumping, she drops a ring file, and Rob picks it up. He finds that, in some mysterious way, this action helps to make him feel safe.

From then on, Rob collects more items relating to death and various disasters, large and small. And the more items he has in his collection, and the more violent or terrible the event with which the object is associated, the 'safer' he feels, psychologically. But it turns out that these actions have not made him safe at all. Rather the reverse.

Hmmm. This is certainly an unusual novel -- at any rate in terms of the kind of novel that I am inclined to read. I would class it as both literary and experimental. Those who are more widely read in such fields than I am may, however, feel that it is neither very literary nor very experimental. It certainly isn't difficult to follow.

The book seems to me to be well structured and well written. And, having sneaked a look at the ending, I can say that if you do stick with the book you will not find it unsatisfactory: the conclusion has logic to it.

Roger Morris has a blog, which he entitled Roger's Plog, since it exists mainly to plug his new book. He also has a web site devoted entirely to Taking Comfort.

I have had more than one look at Roger's Plog over the last few months, and yesterday's entry is more than apposite:

What I should be doing: Visiting local bookshops. Visiting local libraries. Sending out my promotional postcards to everyone I know. Emailing everyone else I know. Spreading the word about my Goldsboro bookshop reading.

What I'm actually doing: Hiding under the bed. Metaphorically, of course. But you know what I mean.

This elicited a wry smile from me, because it is exactly my own position.

It so happens that I have a novel of my own coming out on 5 April. (Don't worry, you will shortly hear so much about it that you will rapidly sicken of same.) And what should I be doing? I should be launching an online marketing drive a la Val Landi. And what am I actually doing? Writing lots of posts on the GOB, and reading other people's books. I believe that this is known technically as displacement activity.

Anyway, Roger is a hip sort of guy, if you will excuse the grotesquely dated term. He understands about blogs (which I do too), and he also understands about making a video clip of himself and posting it online, which I don't.

All in all, this is an interesting book and an interesting author. Taking Comfort is not altogether to my personal taste, but it may reasonably said, without, I hope being too pompous, that it is influenced by, and reflects, the very natural angst among city-dwellers in the twenty-first century.

Suroopa Mukherjee: Across the Mystic Shore

There is a general point about the first six MNW books which I might as well make here as anywhere. The imprint, by definition, will print books of any genre; but even if it was confined to one genre, I always feel that each book published will benefit from a clear label of some sort, to tell the potential reader what kind of a book it is.

On the cover of Across the Mystic Shore, we have no banner, or label. Just the author's name, and the title. Now it so happens that the combination of these two, plus a picture of a foreign-looking riverside scene, tells us more or less what to expect: Indian author, Indian locale. But I can't help feeling that a little extra help would not go amiss.

Suppose we were to lift a phrase from the blurb on the inside flap: 'The entwining lives of four women forced to confront their past'. Something like that, and slap it on the front. Yes, I know, it's the simple-soul approach again. But in my view it never hurts to give the reader a little guidance
.
So to the book itself. The event which kicks off this novel is the arrival of a young boy in an upper-class Bengali household. This, to quote the blurb again, 'triggers a gripping story of love, desire and renunciation.... Central to the story is a dark and shocking secret that manifests itself and demands expiation... [This is] a colourful evocation of past and contemporary Indian settings and family life... An examination of relationships between lovers and family members and a perceptive study of motherhood.'

I don't think there is any need for me to try to paraphrase that blurb, because it says it all quite succinctly. In other words, as I see it, this is a variety of fiction which is aimed at, and will be enjoyed most by, women. And, furthermore, I imagine that author was writing as much for Indian readers as for those in the UK.

As regular readers will know, I try to avoid speaking in terms such as up-market and down-market, preferring instead to think of the continuum of different types of fiction as running horizontally. But, however you view it, Across the Mystic Sea is separated by some distance from Taking Comfort. It's aimed at a different audience entirely.

The book has a very definite old-fashioned feel to it. And again, I say that not as a criticism, but as a description. And the feel derives at least as much from the technique employed as from the subject matter.

What gives the book its distinctive character is, I think, the use of viewpoint. Because here, very unusually in a modern novel, we have the full-blown omniscient viewpoint, used, so far as I can see, throughout.

Modern fiction writers, at any rate if they're professionals, almost invariably use the main-character viewpoint, either in the first or third person. (For a full discussion of viewpoints see my various posts in November 2004, beginning on 4 November.) In the main-character viewpoint, the action is described as seen by one individual, and any internal thoughts given are those of that individual only. If the viewpoint switches to that of another character, the change is normally signified by a chapter break.

In the omniscient viewpoint, however, the author writes as God. The author sees, and describes, everything that happens; and the author may enter the mind of any character, and tell the readers, at any point, what any of these characters are thinking. In this case, Suroopa Mukherjee not only shifts the viewpoint within the same chapter, but within the same paragraph.

This is very definitely a nineteenth-century technique. And, while there is nothing whatever 'wrong' with it, it is relatively unusual these days, and it does give a slightly quaint and old-fashioned feel to the prose. Personally I find it unsettling.

In fact, I would go further than that. To my mind, this technique has the effect of diminishing the characters. It makes them appear a little like children, who are being described by an adult who understands them far better than they understand themselves.

Now, if that is an effect which an author wishes to achieve, so be it. And we have to remember that this book is about a non-Western culture, written by a non-Western author, and aimed, I believe, at least to some extent at a non-Western readership. And, as I remarked with reference to Henry Baum, I am not about to dictate to any author how she should write her book.

Cate Sweeney: Selfish Jean

The President of Harvard got into trouble recently for suggesting that women might differ from men in some respects. Well, perhaps he should get a job in publishing, because in the book world it is certainly obvious that women have different tastes from men. If you doubt that, go ask Mills and Boon, who collect hard data on the readership of their romantic novels (just about the only publisher, incidentally, who does). The last figure that I saw suggested that the readership of Mills and Boon books was 94% female; and the only surprise about that figure is that it wasn't 4% higher.

I mention this because Cate Sweeney's Selfish Jean is definitely a woman's book. One hundred per cent. Written by a woman, aimed at women, will be enjoyed by women. And therefore not much in it, I'm afraid, for me. But then, as Mrs GOB has often remarked, with a sigh, I am not much into relationships and the touchy-feely stuff. Actually that isn't quite true, but I know what she means.

Selfish Jean is a shortish book -- 218 pages, and not many lines to the page. But that, I hasten to add, is in its favour. I am not, on the whole, a fan of damned, thick, square books, as the Duke of Gloucester once referred to them.

The central character is Jeanette, from whom we hear in the first person. She wants a number of things, but a child above all; but she is past her best-by date, and adoption is proving difficult. We also hear about, in the third person, a small boy called Levi, who is 'trapped in the care system', a system which, on the whole, is best avoided. He is not happy.

So, we have wife who doesn't much like her husband any longer, but kind of needs him if they are to have any chance of adopting a child. And then there's Paul the social worker who checks her out for suitability, and whom she kind of fancies. And so on.

Don't be misled, however. Once again I have sneaked a peek at the ending, and I am here to say that this is not your average, predictable feel-good book. It's a cut above that. Or, as I suggested above, it's located on a different part of the continuum. Whether the audience which is likely to be attracted by the publisher's blurb will feel entirely happy about that, I'm not sure.

Not just a pretty, er...

The British model Jordan, who is also known by her real name, Katie Price, is a star, loosely speaking, in the Jane Russell/Jayne Mansfield/Pamela Anderson tradition. That is to say, her principal assets are carried around in front of her. And in Jordan's case, it seems to be common knowledge, indeed boasted about, that various surgeons have embroidered upon nature.

Jordan/Katie has already written a couple of autobiographies -- well she is in her late twenties, after all -- and the latest of these, just out, is doing pretty well. Last week Jordan -- a Whole New World, sold 10,301 copies and was at 26 in the top 50.

However, there is more to come. Last August, Galleycat noticed a Publishing News report to the effect that Katie's latest book contract includes not only autobiography no. 2 (i.e. the one just out) but also two novels. And, in this morning's Times, we have some gripping insight into Katie's working methods.

In the People column, Hugo Rifkind reveals that Katie has been giving an interview to US Vogue, in the course of which she puts in a plug for the first of these novels, Angel. Due out in July, folks, just in time for the beach. Listed on both Amazon.co.uk and .com.

How does she write, asked the Vogue interviewer. Answer: 'I talk. I'm not going to say I sit there with a pen and paper. I don't think anyone does that. I haven't got time for a typewriter or whatever.'

Well quite. It's a busy life. What with the washing-up, making the beds and everything.

However, as Kate Allan commented on our (first) report of the Random House saga competition, Sniff ye not. Commercial fiction may wrinkle the nose of some supercilious readers, but it pays the rent considerably better than the highbrow stuff.

Ghost writer for the autobiog, by the way, was Rebecca Farmworth, though whether she's doing the novels as well I know not. Nice little earner for somebody, anyway.

A Woman of Cairo update

On Thursday last I suggested that the progress of Val Landi's online sales drive for A Woman of Cairo would be worth watching.

Well, news is that, over the weekend, his web site for the book had 5,000 visitors from over 20 countries. So many of them clicked on to Amazon.com to buy the book that Amazon ran out of stock. Now Val is talking to Booksurge (the Amazon publishing arm) about getting the thing available again.

Val is so excited that he even includes some unnecessary apostrophes. Well, we'll forgive him, just this once.

25 books to remember?

A correspondent named Teddy has led me to the New York Public Library's list of 25 books to remember from 2005.

At first sight it all looks very pc and worthy, but on closer examination there is some stuff which even a vulgar fellow like me might find interesting.

There's a book about Joe Louis and Max Schmeling, for instance. I don't think I want to know any more about that era, and the two men's fights, than I know already, but it is all going to be news to someone.

Then there's a mention of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go, which apparently has an English boarding-school setting, and which deals with 'alternative reality'. Ishiguro is normally thought of as a literary writer -- he has, after all, won both the Whitbread and Booker prizes -- but someone has had the temerity to shortlist him for the Arthur C. Clarke award! Science fiction, in case you're wondering. Hmm. Mixed feelings on the part of author and publisher there, I suspect.

And there might be others. Worth a look.

More madness

Quite by coincidence, following yesterday's article about depression in writers, I learn that Dr Steven Hendlin, a clinical psychologist based in California, has a periodic column entitled Your Write Mind, over at Backspace (on the left of the front page). Intended to address the psychological and emotional concerns of serious writers, the first article deals with writing what you want to write as opposed to writing what will (or might) sell.

Suicide is painless

That great and good physician, Dr Thomas Stuttaford, has an article in Monday's Times in which he discusses depression, the risk of suicide among those who are depressed, and appropriate drug treatment.

What has this to do with us, you enquire. Well, to begin with, may I draw your attention, yet again, to the research published by Kay Jamison, Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Her study showed that 38% of a group of eminent British writers and artists had been treated for a mood disorder of one kind or another; of these, 75% had had antidepressants or lithium prescribed, or had been hospitalised. Of playwrights, 63% had been treated for depression. These proportions are, as you will have guessed, are many times higher than in the population at large.

Furthermore, may I draw your attention to some of the comments on this blog written by those who are bitterly aggrieved and deeply depressed at the injustice which has been done to them by those blind fools in publishing who resolutely refuse to recognise genius when it is presented to them on a plate.

Take, for instance, a recent email from one such. I asked him if I might quote him, anonymously, at some point, and he agreed. And, as I suspected, the opportunity to quote was not long in coming. Here is what he says:

I enjoy your blog; though, please, do include some homicidal musings about how you'd like to butcher some publishing types, it would cheer me up greatly. Pics of dead agents & publishers, their cheery apple polishing grins stiffened into death rictuses & frozen shrieks of terror, would also be pretty good. Hmm, yes.

Now, if my correspondent and I appear to jest somewhat, that is because this is all extremely painful for those involved. What is more, it is a laugh/cry situation, and on the whole he and I prefer the former option.

But you really would not have to go far to find some writers who are deeply depressed by their situation as frustrated novelists (or playwrights, screenwriters, et cetera). And Dr Stuttaford draws our attention to Professor Schneidman's book The Suicidal Mind, in which he highlights five groups of depressed patients who are at the greatest risk of suicide.

Of these five groups, three at least seem to me to include substantial numbers of writers. They include those who suffer from (1) frustrated desires for achievement; (2) damage to self-image, and the need to avoid shame, defeat, humiliation, or disgrace; (3) excessive anger, rage and hostility.

You don't have to read my mail to detect these features in the writing community. Just sniff the wind. And if you couple that with the entirely natural, and, in a sense, fully justified depression which results in a having your book repeatedly rejected, then you have, I suggest, a potentially health-threatening situation. One which you would do well to be aware of before you start.

None of this, by the way, is a new thought on my behalf. It was the main thrust of my 2003 book, The Truth about Writing.

However, Dr Stuttaford has a piece of practical advice. He says that modern anti-depressants in the SSRI (selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors) group are often attacked in the media. They are, however, a much safer drug to give to depressed patients than the older, and cheaper, tricyclic antidepressants. With the latter, apparently, it is far too easy to kill yourself with an overdose; and, in a ten-year period, nearly 4,000 people did so.

So, if you do end up in the doc's hands, make sure he gives you the right stuff.

Henry Baum: North of Sunset

Before I write about Henry Baum's latest novel, North of Sunset, I want to say something about the author himself.

Baum is not a new author. His first novel, Oscar Caliber Gun, was published by Soft Skull Press, a small press which has been publishing for some years and has an intriguing list of both fiction and non-fiction. (It includes, I see, such items as the screenplay of Secretary and a biography of Gene Robinson, 'the world's first openly gay Episcopal bishop.') Oscar Caliber Gun was also published in the UK by Rebel Inc., an imprint of Canongate, under the title The Golden Calf. And Canongate are no mean judges of a book either, having gone with Life of Pi when no one else wanted it. Finally, the book was also published in France, by Hachette. Reviews were positive.

In addition to that, Baum also wrote a successful blog, God's Wife, under the pseudonym Shirley Shave. 'Shirley' was a sex worker; her blog, if I understand the position correctly, was a version of another novel of Baum's, and she attracted a fair number of readers. She also got included in a collection called Best Sex Writing 2005.

And, no doubt, there's more.

The reason why I mention all this is because I want to make the point that Henry Baum knows what he's doing. He's not some total beginner struggling to fight his way through a first book. He's been there and done it, several times before. And so we must make the assumption, I think, that if he chooses to write a novel in a particular way, he has chosen to do it that way because that's the way which best suits his purposes, and not because he doesn't know any better.

That thought should be borne in mind, because the main thing I want to say about North of Sunset is that it's not written the way I would write it. But so, it is not unreasonable to ask, what?

The title gives us a hint of the locale and the plot. It's set in the Hollywood of today, and the principal character is Michael Sennet, a big-time movie star. Michael has money, fame, women, cars, the lot. But he is bored. Meanwhile, Hollywood is being terrorised by a serial killer, who knocks off people with vanity plates on their cars. And his path and Michael's soon cross.

And that's probably all I'm going to say about the plot. From here on, the topic is technique.

Over the years, I have developed certain views about the 'best' way to write a novel. These views are not absolute statements of the abstract, unchanging truth. They are simply conclusions that I have reached, after getting on for fifty years of studying theory and practising the art of writing, about the most likely way of interesting the kind of readers whom I am interested in interesting.

Let's take a couple of these conclusions of mine. One is, write each chapter from the viewpoint of one principal character; and don't have too many different viewpoint characters. Another is, write in scenes; scenes which more or less correspond to what was called a 'scene' in the traditional form of theatre.

For what it is worth, Henry Baum does observe the character-viewpoint 'rule'. Each chapter is headed with the name of the character concerned. But he does not consistently write in what I would call scenes. For instance, we get to the tenth page of the first chapter before we have any real exchange of dialogue.

Prior to that, the author has chosen to tell us stuff: information about Michael Sennet's history, for example: the parts he played in high-school plays; how he got started in commercials. I would not personally do that. In my view, such backstory, if it is needed at all, is best conveyed by bleeding out gradually during the course of the book. And, when it is conveyed to the reader, it should preferably be contained dialogue, which itself is embedded in scenes which are keeping the reader held to the page by virtue of the events of the scene alone.

But, I repeat, if the author decides to do it his way, I am not going to say that he is 'wrong', and that he has in any way 'failed'. It's his book. He can decide how to do it.

And maybe, when you come to think about it, maybe Henry Baum's way has a certain logic to it. Hollywood didn't invent the practice of writing in scenes; if anyone did, it was the Greeks. But it is to Hollywood (and its brother, TV) that we owe the fact the we have all watched tens of thousands of scenes, played out before our eyes. So it is at least arguable that the 'best' way to write a novel about Hollywood today is not to use the tools of that industry, but to approach the matter in a different way.

That would be, I suppose, an irony of sorts. And there are other ironies involved here too, if you read to the end of the book.

Like many a writer, Henry Baum seems to have had difficulty in placing his work with mainstream publishers, even after an initial success, and North of Sunset is a book that he has put out through Lulu.com. He also has a blog, Ash Tree, in which he writes about the difficulties of the writer's life and finding readers.

And what about readers? To whom is this book going to appeal?

Well, it isn't what I would call a crime/thriller book, despite the serial killer. Neither, despite certain sensational elements, is it Jackie Collins material. It is, I suppose, a literary novel; or at any rate it's a novel which will appeal to those who often read literary fiction, and who are prepared to make a bit of an effort. It is a book which which has been put together with a great deal of care and thought, and it will not, I suspect, reveal all its virtues unless it is read with care and thought.

Magnus Mills back on route

In last Saturday's Times, Magnus Mills had an article about getting his career back on route.

Magnus, you see, was once a London bus driver. Then his first novel, The Restraint of Beasts, became a bit of a literary success (shortlisted for the Whitbread first novel and Booker prizes), and, after that, Magnus gave up being a bus driver and became a full-time novelist.

However, it seems that he found that being a full-time writer wasn't as much fun as he'd hoped. So he got a job driving a van. And now he's back being a bus driver again, and seems quite happy with it.

There might be a few lessons here for those of you who feel frustrated by having to earn a living in a day job. But there are also a few lessons to be had from a previous experience of Magnus's. Details of this experience are a little hazy on the internet, so I will have to depend somewhat on memory.

Back in 1998 or so, when Magnus's first novel was about to be published, his publisher had a pretty good story on her hands (Bus driver writes literary novel). But then an enhanced version of the story appeared in one of the UK newspapers. It said that Magnus had been paid an advance of £1,000,000 for his book. So now it was an even juicer story. Now it was Bus driver makes million with first novel.

This was so good a story that it was lifted, without acknowledgement -- and, please note, without checking -- by every other UK newspaper with readers who also read books. So it became, as it were, established fact. And it generated numerous column inches of free advertising and lots of comment and gossip. It's my belief that the publicity went a long way towards getting Magnus's book on to various shortlists, because the book itself, if anyone troubled to read it, wasn't all that exciting.

After a few days, however, the author's publisher, or agent, was so horrified by the inaccuracy of this report that she was obliged to admit that the story was complete nonsense. The advance had actually been £10,000.

The Bookseller then ran a little comment, sarcastically saying that the newspapers weren't far out; they had only got the figure wrong by three noughts. But actually, of course, if you look at the figures (set out above), you will see that it was wrong by two noughts. So the Bookseller didn't get it right either.

Furthermore, if you think about it, you will realise that Magnus's contract was probably a pretty standard one, calling for the advance to be divided into two, half payable on signature and half on publication. So, far from being made a millionaire, Magnus had in fact received £5,000, less agent's commission, less tax, less expenses. Let's say enough for a week's holiday somewhere nice and a few nights out with the boys.

A couple of year's later, the Guardian ran a story about big advances in general. And in the course of that story it was claimed that the original 'million-pound advance' stuff about Magnus Mills had been cooked up by Magnus himself, with the aid of a journalist friend.

This little history, coupled with the fact that Magnus is now happily driving a bus again, demonstrates a number of points, all of which have been made here before but are worth repeating.

First, any stories about big advance payments for books should be treated with extreme caution, because they are probably the product of some publicist's fevered imagination. They are on a par with claims that we have to go to war with a foreign country because it possesses weapons of mass destruction.

Second, the glamour of the book world is not what it's cracked up to be. Gertrude Stein told Sam Steward that if he wanted to become a writer, he should get a day job as a butcher. Or driving a bus, she might have added.

And third, if you want to make your book famous, learn how to be creative with press releases. You could start by studying the working methods of Charles Faulkner, publisher of Emma Maree Urquhart and Libby Rees. See also the claim that Libby Rees is about to host a TV chat show.

Leopold McGinnis wears a red fez

Surprisingly often, these days, I come across a writer whom I have never previously heard of, and, as often as not, that writer turns out to be extremely active, energetic, and talented. All of which makes me wonder how many more there are out there of the same kind. Thousands, I suspect. Maybe tens of thousands.

Let's take the case of Leopold McGinnis. Leopold is a guy who seems to understand html and a lot more of the same kind, and this equips him to have an extensive web site. The front page features occasional thoughts in a blog-like manner, and the menu leads on to a wide variety of material, including the text of a complete novel, Game Quest.

Leopold seems a little shy of telling us much about his background, but he is young(ish), and operates in the modern, cutting-edge, underground-literature area. Having said that, he also offers us a version of Sophocles's Oedipus Rex, transformed into a modern comic parody, so he has some acquaintance with the more classical way of doing things.

Anyone who is young, keen, ambitious, and who is in tune with up-to-the-minute stuff should certainly take a close look at Leopold and all his works. For one thing, he offers some useful data on the relative effectiveness of following the traditional route to publication (or trying to) compared with the DIY version. He has sense of humour, and a refreshing way of seeing his own work in perspective -- try his rejection museum, for example.

More to the point, perhaps, for some of you, Leopold is the Founding Editor of an epublisher, Red Fez Publications. This is an outfit which makes much of its product available free, but it offers a useful platform on which a writer's work can at least become visible.

As I said at the beginning, active, energetic, and talented. Well worth a look.

Ain't it awful and what's to be done?

Galleycat has read the full text of Nicholas Clee's article in the Bookseller, about the death of the midlist in UK publishing, and, sadly, is not too impressed by it. We all know, says Galleycat, that the industry is a mess. Question is, what's to be done about it?

Well, as far as writers are concerned, I suggested one possible solution about this time last year, in my extended essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. My solution was greeted for the most part with loud raspberries and hoots of derisive laughter. A few enlightened souls, however, wrote and thanked me for it, and said that it had saved them a great deal of time and effort.

What I suggested in that essay is that no rational person, surveying the current publishing scene, would ever imagine that writing in general, and writing fiction in particular, is a sensible way to try to earn a living. For clear-headed writers (all three of them) there are therefore two alternatives: one, give up all this writing nonsense; or, two, adopt the pro-am approach.

The pro-am approach is that of the amateur who performs to professional standard. The pro-am does not expect to make any money from her activity; she does it for the pleasure and satisfaction of same. But she does the job to a fully professional standard, and therein lies much of the satisfaction. All dreams of large sums of money and international fame are recognised for what they are: namely, childish folly.

Pro-ams are readily found in any number of fields of activity. To mention two which are of interest to the GOB household: photography and flower arranging.

There are tens of thousands of people in the UK who are passionately interested in photography, and who work to obsessively high standards in terms of technique and achievement, but who have no illusions about generating serious income from it.

Ditto flower arranging. Anyone who takes the trouble to go round the UK national flower arrangers' gathering cannot fail to be impressed by the design skills, the use of colour, and the general ingenuity on show. And, within the circle of enthusiasts, reputations are made. But that's about it.

I don't think you can read the Clee article unless you're a Bookseller subscriber. But Galleycat gives a link to a similar piece in the US News, by Diane Cole, which ofers yet more doom and gloom. On the whole, however, I thought the Cole article was well written and informative; and if you're relatively new to working out how publishing firms operate, you should take a look at it.

MNW: first tranche of three

As stated on 7 March, the Macmillan New Writing imprint will launch its first six titles on 7 April 2006. The company has sent me copies of all six, and so I think it only right and proper that I should review them.

I say review, but, as I hope you will recall, the imprint will consider any genre of book, provided it's by a first-time novelist. So the six books are all different, and not all of them are books which I would select, either for personal reading or to review in full. What I have done, therefore, is to perform a 40-page test. That is to say, I have read the first 40 pages, or so, of each book, in order to get a flavour of it and to enable me to make some sort of judgement about the skills of the author. One or two of them, which happen to be my kind of thing, I will undoubtedly go back to.

I read the books in alphabetical order by author, and that is the way they are presented here. Three today, and the rest before long.

Conor Corderoy: Dark Rain

This is science fiction (for want of a better term), set in the UK at some point a few decades into the future. It's been raining for 35 years. At least in the UK it has; elsewhere there is no rain and no food. And we have had warning that the aliens are coming, but we're preparing for them by stock-piling nuclear weapons.

This is the slightly gloomy context, a semi-flooded London, in which our narrator, a police Inspector, makes his way down the mean streets.

The climate may have changed, but some things haven't: honest and incorruptible cops still have to bow under the weight of the rich and powerful, who don't want the truth to be revealed. And, by page 18, our man has found a dead body, wants to investigate the crime by the book, but is told that he is off the case. And, indeed, out of the force. Which is the equivalent of a death sentence. Whereupon a woman recruits him to investigate anyway.

The genre, then, is SF/private eye. Though there are hints, in the publisher's blurb, which suggest that this will develop into something a bit more than that towards the end.

In a sense this is a traditional PI book, with variations. And what's wrong with that? It's a highly honourable tradition: Raymond Chandler, Ross MacDonald, and so forth. I found it eminently readable.

Michael Stephen Fuchs: The Manuscript

By the second page of this book it is apparent that Mr Fuchs knows how to use viewpoint -- always a crucial test. (Or, in view of what I shall say about another MNW book, perhaps I ought to say that he employs viewpoint in the way in which I think it is best employed.) Another good sign is the division of the text into short chapters.

The plot, not surprisingly in view of the title, involves a lost manuscript which may, perhaps, reveal the meaning of life. It was written, or at any rate transcribed, by Sir Richard Burton. No, dear, not the one who was married to Wossname. The other one. The plot is therefore not terribly original, at least at the start, but since I am always saying that originality is a much-overrated virtue, I can hardly complain about that. The question is, can the author make his story entertaining?

He can, and he does. It rattles along at a fair old pace. My early notes record that the book is well written, thoughtful, competent and professional. Round about page 30, however, I began to get really interested. There's a chapter there which is definitely a notch above the run of the mill, and by page 35 I was convinced that Michael Fuchs really can write. He clearly knows a great deal about computing and is also highly literate: this is not a common combination.

So far so good then. Like the book mentioned above, this one seems to promise a little more than just a genre book as it goes along.

There are signs that this book may have been written a year or two ago, and failed to find a publisher in the orthodox way: the author thanks his sister for 'resurrecting a deceased project'. If so, that is further proof of the fact that, today, producing a first-class product is not sufficient to arouse publishers' interest on its own.

This book uses double quotes for dialogue, which is not standard UK practice (with most publishers). And that kind of reminds me that one of the features of MNW, if I recall correctly, is that it set out, from the beginning, to economise by using the authors' word-processor files for typesetting. Nothing unusual about that, but in my experience it is hard to use search and replace to change single quotes to double (for American publishers), and vice versa. Some of the other MNW books use single quotes, so the house style -- whatever it is -- has not been uniformly applied.

The author has a rather fancy web site which demonstrates that he is a multi-talented man. He has also developed another web site devoted entirely to The Manuscript. He himself describes the book as 'a philosophical cyberthriller – a novel of huge ideas disguised as a blow-your-hair-back thrill ride.'

Brian Martin: North

This one is quite different from the two books described above. Both the above are edgy, modern (or futuristic), slightly techno pieces of work. North, by contrast, is a literary novel. It belongs in its own noble tradition, like the other two, but it comes from a different part of the fiction continuum.

Brian Martin is publishing his first novel at the age of 68. However, he has taught literature both at a school in Oxford and at Oxford University. He has also reviewed contemporary novels for more than thirty years for all the leading UK literary journals. So he's not short of background.

It's a first-person story, narrated by an erudite teacher with ample financial means and an acute interest in human behaviour. And the chief subject of his interest, North, is an 18-year-old boy/youth/youngman who is still, technically, at school. Although no one could really regard him as a schoolboy.

When the narrator tells us that sixteen is an early age for a person like North to begin having sex, I think we can assume that he is being tactful with regard to UK laws on these matters. In fact, North seems to me to be the kind of young man who would have begun having sex far earlier than that. With whom, however -- that is to say, which gender got to him first -- is open to conjecture.

North, we soon learn, is a magnetic, charismatic figure. There is, perhaps literally, a dash of the devil in him. Our narrator, we must assume from the early pages, is gay. At any rate he is remarkably well informed about ladies' perfumes and gentlemen's choice of eau de toilette. And the pleasure of this book (for the attentive reader) lies in watching the narrator watch North.

One possible way to describe this book is to say that it is about human relationships. Plus a bit more. (Interesting, isn't it, that all three books mentioned so far fall into a reasonably well defined category but then rise somewhat above it. Or, to be less disparaging of perfectly sound genre books, we might say that the novels build an extension out the back.)

As you would expect from the author's background, North is elegant, polished, and extremely subtle. I found myself questioning, sometimes, how the narrator comes to know so much about other characters' feelings and thoughts, but he gives us an explanation which is, I think, convincing within its context.

In my review of Punjab Nights a while back, I made the point that it was the kind of book, based on personal experience, which many a man, at the end of his life, might have wanted to write. Had he the skill. And while it would be, I suspect, a serious mistake to assume that either Punjab Nights or North is autobiographical, both reflect a wealth of experience in the author.

North, I think, based on my 40-page test, is subtle, thought-provoking, carefully planned, and multi-layered. Its main subject seems to be the power of sexuality. If it's too literary for my taste, well, that's because I'm a vulgar fellow, and no reflection at all on the skills of the author. I prefer less analysis and more action, with dialogue to match. But those who stick with the book to the end will not, I think, be disappointed. (I sneaked a look at it.)

Oh, and by the way. A word of warning. It is possible that what we have here is that creature much beloved of modern literary theory, namely a narrator who is not entirely trustworthy. Hard to believe of a well educated English chap, I know, but I thought I should pass that on.

More about child prodigies

Back in January, I mentioned a couple of child prodigies. In doing so, I declared that I am not happy about such super-bright children.

Yes, I think that the future of the world depends very largely on intelligence as enlightened by education. And yes, I am always pleased to come across evidence of intelligence. But no, I am not at all happy when super-bright kids are put on public display and we are invited to be impressed. I don't think it's good for the kids and I don't think it's good for anyone else, and I question the judgement of the adults who are involved in arranging such exhibitions of precosity.

I have been reminded of my January post on this subject by an anonymous correspondent who yesterday added, by way of a comment on what I said, an extensive quotation from an Observer article of 19 February.

The Observer takes pleasure in informing us that eight-year-old Adora Sitvak is on her way over here to encourage British kids to read and write.

Needless to say, ten-year-old Libby Rees is dragged into the story. We are told that she is to host her own Trisha-style TV chat show later this year. Right. That's probably immediately after Hollywood have made the movie of her self-help book.

If you'll excuse me, I really don't think I want to give any further consideration to all this.

Scott Lynch: The Lies of Locke Lamora

The story so far:

On 5 April last year I reported that Simon Spanton, an editor at UK Orion/Gollancz, had read the early pages of a novel on the blog of one Scott Lynch, and had promptly signed him to a multi-book contract (Blogger hits big-time).

Then, on 10 November, we heard that the Lynch book, entitled The Lies of Locke Lamora, had not only sold to Orion, but that Orion had sold the rights in America, France, Germany, Russia and Holland.

And, finally, on 21 February this year, there came the news that the film rights in the novel had been sold to two serious Hollywood producers.

First publication of The Lies of Locke Lamora, hereinafter known as LLL, will occur via the UK edition from the Orion imprint Gollancz, on 15 June 2006. The book is intended as the first in a seven-volume series.

I should declare at this stage that, while I have some interest in fantasy/science fiction, I am by no means a diehard fan, and there must be many a 14-year-old who is better read in the genre than I am. So I did not rush to read LLL. However, in view of the book's modest origins, unusual route to contract, and subsequent sales success, I thought I had better have a look at an advance reading copy of same, to see what all the fuss is about.

Well, the first thing you notice is that this is a big fat book, running to 645 pages. The lines however, are nicely spaced, with the text left-justified only; in terms of layout on the page, it is easy to read.

LLL is subtitled Book One of the Gentleman Bastard Sequence, which I thought was a good start. And that subtitle gives us a clue to the character of Mr Lamora himself. He is to be, it seems, a well-mannered crook. One of nature's gentlemen, perhaps, but thoroughly bent (in the strictly non-sexual sense). Here's part of the blurb from the back of the book:

Locke Lamora... steals from the rich -- they're the only ones worth stealing from -- but the poor can go steal for themselves. What Locke cons, wheedles and tricks into his posesssion is strictly for him and his band of fellow con-artists and thieves: the Gentleman Bastards.

Now this is a difficult trick to pull off. Yes, in the past we have had E.W. Hornung's Raffles, and Donald Westlake's Parker. And doubtless many another likeable rogue. But I find myself resistant to the genre. Crooks are crooks, in the end. They are not nice people. And however much you make them steal from the villainous in order to protect and reward the innocent, they remain, at heart, nasty pieces of work. No matter how hard you labour to explain their background, to give them charm and wit, there must remain, in the heart of any thinking reader, at least a few reservations.

Locke Lamora, as the back of the book makes clear, is a confidence trickster. He pretends, in elaborate detail, to be someone he is not, in order to part a rich man from a substantial proportion of his wealth. And we are not, at first, given any particularly strong indications as to why this rich man should be cheated, beyond the fact that it will make Locke Lamora and his associates better off than they currently are.

Well, perhaps modern, and young, readers will be quite untroubled by all this. But I was never able to watch the film The Sting, for example, with total enthusiasm. I really didn't take to some of the people involved, never mind the overall concept, clever though it was. And the same is true of BBC TV's current Hustle. However much the writers strive to turn the con artists into a new version of Robin Hood and his merry men, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

So, in other words, Scott Lynch has set himself a steep hill to climb.

All of the action, by the way, takes place in another world and another time. The locale is the 'magical city of Camorr', which is built of Elderglass by a race no one remembers. 'It's a city of shifting revels, filthy canals, baroque palaces and crowded cemeteries.'

Here again, I suspect that the choice of such a locale may be at least as much a burden to a writer as an advantage. True, you can invent your own climate, legends, laws, geography, technology, and so forth. Which may not be a problem for someone with an efficient imagination, which Scott Lynch certainly seems to have. But you also have to explain it all to the reader -- either directly, or (preferably) indirectly -- and that takes time and effort. It also requires a good deal of laborious record-keeping, unless you want to get caught out by one of those 14-year-old fans. Don't underestimate the amount of sheer drudgery which is involved in writing a book of this kind. It's not just two hours a day of dazzling inspiration, followed by an afternoon on the golf course.

One way and another then, Scott Lynch has not made things easy for himself. Fantasy, long book, dodgy characters. And the question is, does he have the technique, in his first book, to pull it off?

Well, by page 24 my notes say 'this guy can write'. And I don't say that about everyone. He has fluency, speed, humour. Above all, he is entertaining. You can see why Simon Spanton was impressed.

The author begins with Locke's childhood. Which is a smart move. Because if we are going to sympathise with this potentially unattractive character, we are going to need some clear guidance as to how he came to be what he is. And we are going to need some convincing that his conditioning, if you will, left him with little alternative than to be what he is.

The childhood section, to my mind, ended too soon. But this turns out to be a bit of a tease. Because after jumping into the 'present' -- the timescale in which most of the real action takes place -- we return several times to a continuation of the childhood story.

As techniques go, this is very smart and sophisticated stuff indeed. Lynch seems to have a good feel for how much a reader will take without getting bored. Not an infallible feel, but a good one. And instead of giving us the childhood in one big dose, which might lead to us skipping, he gets into the main story and then goes back from time to time.

This is just as well, because, in addition to hearing all about Locke's biggest sting to date, we also have to absorb quite a lot of information about the city of glass, its customs, population, and so forth. I found myself thinking, round about page 68, that we were being asked to take in too much in one go, despite the flashbacks and variations.

And so the plot develops. In more ways than one.

Will it sell? Well, initial signs are promising: hard-core fans seem to like it. To me, an occasional fantasy reader, LLL is not an absolutely stunning book of the calibre of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell. Not remotely. And I suspect that some of the overseas rights sales in particular have resulted from a bandwagon effect. (If the Russians have bought it, it must be pretty good, right?) But it's a solid, highly talented start, and it seems to be hitting the target with its intended readership.

Random House and ASDA announce the saga winner

It got very little coverage last week, apart from one small paragraph in Publishing News, but Random House and ASDA (a UK supermarket) have announced the winner of their competition to find the 'next big saga author'. You can read the press release on booktrade.info.

The press release says that those who entered were invited to submit 4000 words, but actually, as we noted when the competition was originally publicised, they were asked for rather more: 'a synopsis for the rest of the book and ideas for other novels' were also required. A substantial amount of work, in other words.

The winner is Glenice Crossland, and her winning book, The Stanford Lasses, will be available in ASDA stores nationwide from November (presumably as an Arrow paperback original), supported by a feature in ASDA magazine. And, er, that seems to be it, as far as a 'prize' is concerned. Not much different from ordinary publication.

Glenice Crossland lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire. We are told that she has loved writing from an early age, only taking it seriously after early retirement from her job in a leisure centre. She has read one of her poems on BBC2, has had several read on Radio Sheffield, and more published in various anthologies.

Getting any further info from Random House was difficult, but they tell me that there were 'several hundred' entries for the saga competition. I asked how these were reduced to a short list for the principal judges to consider, and was told that 'a reader was employed'.

The judges included 'the editorial team at Arrow, author Rosie Harris and Toby Bourne of ASDA.' The overall standard of entries was said to be 'excellent'. But no sign of any of the runners-up being taken on yet, it seems. So being excellent is not enough, in and of itself, to get you a contract.

I asked Random House whether, on the strength of this exercise, they considered it a cost-effective way of finding new talent. I was told that it was something they might do again, and that they are 'evaluating' the idea. And, if they do run one, no doubt writers will evaluate whether it is worth entering.

I find this a bit of a puzzle, frankly. The whole thing was conducted in such a low key manner that one wonders why they bothered. Why not just read the slush pile, or remind agents that you're always interested in a good saga?

Anyway, good luck to Glenice Crossland and her new book. Google seems to regard her, if you will excuse me saying so, as an internet virgin. The first time I entered her name it came up with nothing about her except the PN report referred to above, plus the press release. But the second time it also found mention of a couple of her poems as well. But perhaps all that will change.

More on A Woman from Cairo

Regular readers will recall that Val Landi, author of the recently published A Woman from Cairo, is a true believer in the new publishing paradigm -- or the 'indie' model as he refers to it.

This weekend sees the launch of a marketing campaign on behalf of the book, with a revised web site, a blog which has some interesting stuff on it, and a targeted text-ad campaign on Google, with Yahoo's network soon to follow.

It will definitely be worth keeping an eye on this. Val Landi's novel has attracted some support from established writers (e.g. Philip Margolin), and he is well clued up on all things technical and digital. So if anyone can make this new, independently published, digitally marketed model work, as of today, Val Landi is a pretty good bet.

A Woman from Cairo has been as low as #188,000 on Amazon.com, but moved up to #48,000 on Monday last; and, as I write this, it stands at #16,921.

Giving it away worldwide

On 21 February we noted that the publishers of Paul Dorrell's non-fiction book Living the Artist's Life had decided to give away 250 copies of the book to bloggers, as part of a marketing drive.

At first the offer was limited to bloggers with a US postal address, but now it's gone global.

The publisher ticks me off on one point. This book is apparently nothing like The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron, which I suggested as a possible comparator. 'Dorrell is a renegade gallery owner and novelist known for his hard-won success, integrity, and compassion for artists. He suffers under few delusions in literature or art. He is also a columnist for The Artist's Magazine.'

Reviews of Living the Artist's Life (lots of them) are at www.livingtheartistslife.com.

Publish and be downloaded

Today's Times has a lengthy article about the 'latest venture [which] will revolutionise the book-publishing industry, turning us all into potential J.K. Rowlings.' Its main thrust is an interview with the founder of Lulu.com. Then there are links to a number of case studies of writers who went the Lulu.com route, and some data on costs and likely sales of self-publishing ventures.

Nothing very new here, I suspect, for most readers of this blog.

Seth Godin on video

Seth Godin is a marketing guru whose work has been noted here more than once. And now Michael Cader, who produces the Publishers Lunch newsletter, reports that you can watch a 48-minute video of Godin addressing the troops at Google. I haven't actually watched it myself, but Cader says it's worth the time.

Martin Goodman's blog

You know how it is: one thing leads to another. Martin Goodman started out just intending to make a comment on this blog, and ended up starting a blog of his own, So you want to be a writer. Well worth a look.

Biff Mitchell still doing it

We noted here last year that Biff Mitchell was a writer (retired IT man) who was doing his own thing. Well, he's still doing it. Rather well actually.

Blooker prize shortlist

The Blooker Prize shortlist has been announced. And the Grumpy Old Bookman's noble volume is not on it. But I'm not offended. Oh no. Just quietly seething. Hm! Belle de Jour indeed.

Passionate Affairs

Yesterday I wrote about the scene in H.F. Ellis's book where the elderly schoolteacher, Mr Wentworth, reaches the end of his final term at Burgrove House School. And I said how wonderfully evocative I found it of how empty and desolate a school can feel, immediately after the boys have departed for the holidays.

All of which reminds me that I once wrote a scene like that myself. It occurs in Passionate Affairs, a novel that I published under the pen-name Anne Moore.

The narrator of Passionate Affairs is a man of nearly 60 who looks back to a time when he was 14, a year in which he had a full-blooded, sexually active love affair with a French girl of 18. (Is this an autobiographical story, I hear you asking. No. It isn't. Dammit.)

By the way, the age of the male participant in this affair was found deeply worrying by one American editor, to the extent that she decided against publishing the book on that ground alone. But in the UK the publication was greeted with absolutely no consternation whatever.

'This is a fascinating account', said Kirkus Reviews UK, 'of the consuming power of sexual passion, and a remarkable insight into the claustrophobic world of traditional public-school life.'

Anyway, whatever you make of that, I rather like the end-of-term scene myself. I'm quite pleased with it, even several years later. So I'm going to reproduce it here. Well, why the hell not? It's my blog.

The house emptied rapidly. No other boy had any reason to stay. Most caught the train to London. A few caught trains in other directions. Some were driven home by parents, who had all had instructions to be there early.

Soon it seemed that I was the only one left.

Perhaps, somewhere on your bookshelf, you have a collection of poems by Swinburne. If so, take the volume out and read his description of ‘A forsaken garden.’ It conveys, better than I possibly could, the sense of desolation which is felt when you find yourself in an empty, wintry place which was once warm and filled with laughter and friends.

Such was the atmosphere in Daubeny House on that drab December morning. It was barely daylight. The rooms were cold and gloomy, lacking all human content. With the boys gone, the shabbiness of the surroundings suddenly became visible.

I went looking for Suzanne and found her in the corridor outside the prep room. She had, I think, been looking for me. I would like to think so.

‘Robair?’ she called. ‘’Ave you a moment?’

Oh yes. I had a moment.

‘I ’ave something for you.’

She took me into the Bannisters’ living-room. Forbidden territory for me really, but I didn’t care. She crossed to the far side of the room and picked up two things: a letter, and a copy of a gramophone record, an old-fashioned 78 in its brown-paper wrapper.

‘For you, Robair,’ she said shyly, and smiled, as if nervous that I might reject her gifts.

I took them from her.

‘The letter,’ she said, ‘is for you to read later. Not now. I say a little thank-you to you for being my friend.’

I must have looked embarrassed; I hope I did, for if any thanks were due it was the other way round.

‘And the record,’ she said, ‘I would like you to keep it. A little reminder of me.’

As if I would forget.

I thanked her kindly, and we both mumbled a bit. We wished each other well. We kissed, chastely.

The one thing we did not do was promise to write or see each other in the future. I think we both knew that any further contact would be fruitless. Suzanne certainly did.

And so we parted.

I kept Suzanne’s letter for a long time. It lived in my wallet, and it grew dog-eared and worn with time. I kept it until I got married, in fact, and then I threw it away because it seemed disloyal to hold on to it any longer. But I regret that now.

The record, Charles Trénet singing La Mer, I still have. I no longer have the means to play it, but when I began to write this book I went out and bought a new copy on CD, so I can play that if I wish. Which I do wish, now and then. It’s a very sad song. No wonder Suzanne cried when she heard it during the play rehearsal.

I never saw Suzanne again. Maman or Daphne may have known what happened to her, but if they heard anything they never said. And I never asked. If I had, I’m sure I would have been told to forget her.

Quite right.

Sometimes, when the newsreels show us a Parisian street, or a shot of some other town in France, I scan the faces of the women, hoping that I might catch a glimpse of her. But would I know her if she was there? Probably not.

If Suzanne is alive today – and I hope she is – she is probably a plump French housewife, cheerful and gregarious, with a mass of grandchildren. And when she turns on the radio and hears Charles Trénet singing La Mer, does she ever remember, do you think, an English boy called Robair and his passionate love for her?

I do hope so.

Macmillan New Writing nears take-off

Macmillan New Writing (MNW) is an imprint which, you may remember, was announced in the UK in the spring of last year. It was covered here several times, first on 3 May 2005, when I gave it a warm welcome.

A week or two later, I was obliged to note that many in the book world were much less enthusiastic. Some indeed called it a scam. Robert McCrum, bigwig at the Observer, was the most scathing. The general feeling was that writers were being exploited, it was all cheap and nasty, standards falling, world collapsing about our ears, and so forth.

Well, if you've never heard of MNW, perhaps you ought to get up to speed by reading those early posts. Or perhaps by going to the imprint's own web site. There you can find details of the first six books, which will be published together on 7 April 2006. From May onwards, MNW will do one book a month, and those scheduled for the rest of the year are also listed. Full details of how to submit, if you're interested, are available there too.

One of the striking things about MNW is that just about the only factor that the books will have in common is that they are by first-time novelists. Previous short stories et cetera will not do you any harm in attracting attention, and any genre -- whether literary, crime, science fiction, or other -- will be considered.

Macmillan have begun beating the drum for this new imprint's launch. First, some shortish extracts from the first six books were sent out to the trade, perhaps six weeks ago. Now, review copies of the hardback versions have also arrived.

Well, given that the company has been kind enough to send all six to me, the least I can do is write about them, which I shall be doing over the next week or so, probably in two groups of three, with some concluding remarks. Today, however, I just want to say something about the production values.

All the MNW books are the same size, which is about 5.5" x 8". To be precise, the company lists the size as 129 mm by 198 mm. This is about the size that novels used to be in the 1950s, though nowadays publishers often go for royal octavo, which is roughly 6" x 9". The number of pages varies a bit, but none is either very short or very long. The size of the type also varies, sometimes being a bit smaller than I would wish, but in no case outrageously so.

And -- this is something of a surprise -- the books are stitched, in the old-fashioned way, not perfect bound. This means that the books are printed in sections, which are then stitched, and the sections are assembled into the finished book. The alternative, which really is cheap and nasty, but often used, even in hardbacks, is 'perfect binding', a method in which single sheets are held together (or not) by glue. Finally, and this is a really nice touch, we have an old-fashioned ribbon in each book to enable you to mark your place.

Mike Barnard, the boss man of MNW, has a background in production and is an authority on printing technology, and his influence is clearly visible here. All in all, it seems to me that production values for the imprint are rather higher than anyone has any reasonable right to expect.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the MNW launch is that Mike Barnard has written a book about the genesis of the imprint. This will, it is said, give details about the terms and conditions offered to authors (a standard contract in each case), how the books were chosen, how they were produced cost-effectively, and so forth. Entitled Transparent Imprint, it will be available for review shortly, and I look forward to reading it.

H.F. Ellis: Swan Song of A.J. Wentworth

If the name A.J. Wentworth rings a bell, it's because I wrote about H.F. Ellis's books on 19 January 2006. I said then that I had enjoyed the first two in the A.J. Wentworth series, and that I would hunt down the third.

Well, now I've found it. Not without difficulty. Swan Song of A.J. Wentworth was published by Severn House, a UK firm which specialises in books for libraries, in 1982. It's a slim little book, only 116 pages. As before, it is the first-person account, as 'edited' by H.F. Ellis, of certain incidents in the life of Mr Wentworth, who has recently retired after some forty years of service in what in England is called a boys prep. school. Which means a private, fee-funded school for boys aged about 8 to 13.

The third Wentworth book is very similar to the others. In other words, as I said in my first post, what we have is very quiet, dry, English humour about a man who is self-important, a bit of a bumbler, and who, if one wishes to be kind, might generously be described as accident prone.

In this book the humour is spread very thin indeed, and no one would read it, I suspect, unless they had either taught in, or been educated in, a school such as Mr Wentworth's Burgrove House. In my case I taught. But even with the right background, I have to admit that the material is definitely weak. The book is not one that I can recommend to the general reader.

Why then do I bother to mention it at all? Well because it gives me an opportunity to pay a small tribute to all the A.J. Wentworths of this world.

Somewhere around the middle of the nineteenth century, it became pretty much standard practice for the aristocracy, and the wealthier middle classes, to send their sons to boarding schools. Often, boys left home at 8, for their prep. school, and at 13 went on to what in England are called public schools, which again means a private, fee-funded school. The 'best' public schools may reasonably be called world famous: Eton, Harrow, Winchester, Marlborough. But there are perhaps a couple of hundred of good ones, and, if you care to, you can find a list of them here.

Schools, of course, require teachers, and teaching is not to everyone's taste. But in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century -- and perhaps up to about 1975 -- it was possible to find in almost every school at least one man who conformed to a greater or lesser degree with the Wentworth template.

Of course, the fictional Wentworth is an exaggerated picture, particularly in relation to his clumsiness. But there he is: a bachelor (though certainly not gay); scholarly in his subject; serious, but not without a sense of fun; as a teacher he is often a source of amusement to the boys, but able to maintain discipline and keep their respect, despite that. Hard working. Loyal. Very, very English. Old-fashioned in his values and manners. A churchgoer, but not particularly devout. And, at the end of his forty years of service, just a little bit lonely; and, quite often, rather badly off financially.

Perhaps the archetypal Wentworth figure is the one created by James Hilton in his 1934 novel, Goodbye Mr Chips. This was filmed, with great success, with Robert Donat in the lead. And curiously enough it was also the subject of a television version in 2002, starring Martin Clunes. Slightly surprising, perhaps, that a modern producer should have chosen to revive this old piece, but that in itself is testimony to the lasting power of the story, and the appeal of the Chips/Wentworth archetype in English life.

In real life the Wentworths often had quite a difficult time. They would have done their bit in the war (World War I or II); then they returned to the school and took up where they left off, hoping that everything would be just the same as before. But of course it never was. They were resistant to change. They preferred formality in all things. If they were extremely lucky, they would be taken in hand, in their fifties perhaps, by a warm-hearted widow who could see that it was not too late, even now, to make something of them. And thereafter they would often blossom (as Mr Chips did).

As the years passed, the world changed, and the Wentworths' time had gone. They began to appear dinosaurs. Out of time and out of place. And they either changed to conform with the world, with very great reluctance, or they retired. Now I doubt whether they are to be found at all -- or, if they are found, they have undertaken some sort of genetic modification.

I myself have known many a Wentworth and I have good memories of them. And so when I read the passage, towards the end of Swan Song, in which Mr Wentworth, at the very end of his very last term at Burgrove House, goes and has one last look at his classroom, it quite brought a tear to my eye. For in the classroom he meets one of the small boys who has been something of a trial to him. Here is an abbreviated version of the conversation which then ensues:

Whom should I see ferreting about in his desk but young Mason of all people.

'Not gone yet then?' I asked him.

'No, sir. My father can't get here much before three.... I say, sir, I'm sorry if I've been rather, well, a bit tiresome at times, sir.'

'I've known worse,' I said gruffly.

'It's been fun, sir, hasn't it, all the same?' he said.

'It has indeed, young fellow,' I agreed. 'It has indeed.'

Publishing and digital change: what's next?

Mike Shatzkin has been identified here before (April 21 2005) as one of the smartest brains in the book world. He is the Founder & CEO of The Idea Logical Company and of BaseballLibrary.com. He has four decades of experience as a published writer and working in all aspects of the publishing industry -- writing, editing, agenting, selling, marketing, and managing production. This makes him well positioned to look into the crystal ball.

Fortunately for the rest of us, Shatzkin occasionally gives presentations in which he sets out his conclusions about the book world as it now as, and as he sees it developing. The perspective is mainly North American, but he certainly has a good feel for the UK market; and, as the book business is in any case global these days (one of his points), the nationality of the thinker is not as important as it once was.

Shatzkin's latest thoughts -- Publishing and digital change: what's next? -- were presented in a speech to the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia. They are available online (link from Publishers Lunch), and for anyone with any serious interest, or ambitions, in the book business, they well repay study. Be aware, however, that when printed out the speech runs to 15 single-spaced A4 pages and takes a good half hour to absorb.

I'm not going to attempt to precis the Shatzkin piece. You are recommended, as I say, to absorb the thrust of it yourself. But here are a few comments on the thoughts of Chairman Mike.

He points out that, in the late 1990s, the idea that Publishers Lunch might become more important than Publishers Weekly would have seemed laughable. Well not to me it wouldn't. As an Englishman I subscribed to the US Publishers Weekly for many years, and at great expense. To begin with I learnt a lot, but I came to see it as terrified of offending anybody, lacking any hint of humour, and politically correct beyond endurance. It was typical, I thought, of an industry which seemed determined to avoid change at all costs. Even death.

The thing that really killed PW for me was its report of the Joan Collins case. During this 1996 hearing, a number of publishing bigwigs made themselves look extremely foolish, and I was hoping that PW would have a little fun with it, running to two or three pages, including some backstage scuttlebutt. But no. What we got was about a column of absolutely po-faced factual reporting, dull as you-know-what (careful avoidance of cliche). God forbid that they should ever offend, criticise, or make fun of an advertiser.

Well fuck you, PW, I thought, and I did not renew my extremely expensive subscription. I doubt if matters have improved any in the last ten years, but you can try your luck on the web site if you wish.

The reason why I go on about this at some length is that PW is the flagship journal of the book industry in the US, the world's biggest and richest book market. You can tell a lot about the tone of an industry from what such a journal is like. And at least the Bookseller, the UK equivalent, has a sense of humour.

Shatzkin is honest enough to admit that he is not always right. In particular, he was wrong to think that ebooks were going to take off in a big way; although he remains confident that the take-off will occur one day. Others made similar mistakes. In the 1995-2000 period, a number of digital or web-based book-marketing initiatives were launched, and they virtually all lost money: sometimes millions. This experience explains, but does not, in my opinion, excuse, the book world's current caution about all things digital.

Another thing which is often overlooked by the as-yet-unpublished writers of fiction, and by readers of same, is that most of publishing is non-fiction. Furthermore, it is the deadly dull bits of publishing which tend to make serious money: textbooks, hymn books, how-to, reference books which need to be bought each year, and so forth. It's worth remembering that the up-front, in-your-face stuff which fills the glossy magazines is often the side of publishing which is bleeding money.

A further point to bear in mind is that publishing tends to conform with the 'power-law distribution'. Power law says that the top titles get a bigger and bigger share of total sales. This tendency has ceased to grow, so to speak, in 2005, but this may be a temporary phenomenon.

One of Shatzkin's major conclusions is that the market for traditional books is declining, and the only way for publishers to make profits will be to become more efficient. Well, you can interpret the phrase 'greater efficiency' in many ways, and possibly bring it about in many ways. But my guess is that one popular way of achieving it will be to pay writers less.

When I say 'writers' I have in mind the little guys, because they have the least clout in the marketplace. There are, after all, quite a few perfectly competent novelists paying good money to get their books into print, so why pay very much for the 'long-tail' fiction?

As for the really big fiction writers, Shatzkin has some interesting comments. He implies that publishers are currently overpaying them. And goodness knows, he is one of the few people in a position to know. (See Tess Gerritsen's remarks in my earlier post today.) If this practice ceases, he says, the big names will find it more profitable to 'do it themselves'. He adds: 'If publishers respond to changing circumstances sensibly -- and cutting advances from current levels could well be very sensible -- then we can expect a few big authors to take matters into their own hands in the next few years.'

Once you've absorbed the Shatzkin wisdom, you will probably feel a little battle-weary. But when you get your breath back, here are a couple of links to articles which tie up with the Shatzkin world-view rather neatly.

First, Andrew Gowers in the Sunday Times explains why Hollywood is about to repeat all the mistakes made by the music business in the past five years. This is an old and familiar story now, but it seems to be taking rather a long time to sink in. It's what's known in the business world as 'marketing myopia': i.e. an industry thinks it can dictate to customers how the industry will deign to deliver the product, rather than concentrate on delivering the product to customers in a form which they are clamouring for.

Gowers, by the way, doesn't even mention the book business. But that's because books generate so little profit, or even turnover, by comparison with serious businesses, that hardly anyone bothers to notice what the book world is up to.

Next, the UK publisher Laurence Orbach bemoans what he describes as the UK book retailers 'collective death wish'. (Remember what I said above, about an industry preferring death to change?)

And third, Nigel Newton, the chief executive of Bloomsbury, proposes in The Guardian (link from booktrade.info) that we should all boycott Google in protest against its plans to scan books. In the UK, this is what passes for cutting-edge thinking. What do we need with Shatzkin, when we have visionaries of this quality in the UK? Oh, and by the way, if anyone from Google should read this, Please scan in all my books. Please?

Finally, what are the implications of all this for writers?

Well, it seems to me that anyone who sees writing books as a 'career' should think again. This seems to me to be true whether you're interested in fiction or non-fiction, but particularly fiction. Writing can be fun -- if approached in the right way -- and also rewarding. But don't look to it to pay the rent.

Fifty movers and shakers of the book world (UK version)

If you want a bit of a giggle, and feel in need of having your eyebrows raised, go take a look at Robert McCrum's Observer article on the 50 most influential people in the UK book trade (link from Galleycat).

It is not, I would suggest, to be taken too seriously. But, if nothing else, it gives us an interesting insight into the thinking of the team that was assembled to draw up the list. For the record, they were 'bestselling novelist and Orange Prize founder Kate Mosse, the literary agent Elizabeth Sheinkman of Curtis Brown, the deputy editor of the Bookseller Joel Rickett, the publisher Margaret Busby, our own deputy literary editor Alex Clark and myself', i.e. McCrum.

Personally I will only say that I find the choice of writers to be markedly eccentric. Benjamin Zephaniah in and Terry Pratchett out? I really don't think so.

More on work for hire v. royalties

Last week I drew attention to a comment by Lynn W. Scanlon in which she recommended that writers should give serious consideration to negotiating a flat payment for a book (work for hire), rather than sign the traditional contract which provides for an advance against royalties plus, if you're lucky, a flow of further payments over the next few years.

Well, it turns out that the day after making her comment here, Lynne wrote a longer piece about this topic on her own blog, the Publishing Contrarian. It's a very, very interesting piece of work. If nothing else, look at the sentences in bold. E.g. 'There is no money in publishing for the vast majority of authors.'

It's worth remembering in this context what I said in my book The Truth about Writing, namely that an advance isn't really an advance at all: it's a retrospective. As often as not, you've written the novel, or done the research for the non-fiction book, before you sign the contract.

Anyway, Lynne's discussion of this topic generated a fair bit of debate on her blog and was subsequently picked up and chewed over at Galleycat, where the good and the great congregate and put in their two pennorth on these matters. See the post of 1 March, and 2 March (1) and 2 March (2). There may be more by the time you read this.

I don't have much to add. But one thing is for sure. When I first started thinking about 'being a writer', and approaching publishers, which is about fifty years ago now, there was absolutely no way in the world that I could ever have found the kind of inside information which this sort of post and discussion generates. Ab-so-lutely unthinkable. In those days, we (wannabe writers) were all groping in the dark.

Tess Gerritsen also makes a point which strikes me as being slightly -- well, let's just say that she has a different view of publishing economics from mine. She says that 'many, if not most, top-selling authors never earn out their advances -- and they have absolutely no problems negotiating their next contracts.'

No indeed. And you know why? Because, as stated here more than once, the unit cost of printing vast numbers of a particular book is so massively reduced that the standard royalty rates become virtually meaningless. So the advance is really in the nature of a fee for services anyway.

Furthermore, if the publisher is prepared to offer the same sort of deal again, i.e. an advance which is unlikely to be 'earned out', in terms of old-fashioned royalty calculations, then this can only mean one thing: namely that the publisher made a big fat profit on the last deal and looks forward to doing the same again.

Ah me.

Another grimly amusing comment comes from a publisher. 'In my experience, most writers don't try to live on their writing income... They are not "in business" in the same way a publisher is.'

And in one sense he's right. If writers had a good clear business head on their shoulders, most of them wouldn't be writers in the first place. However, most writers would love to be rich and famous; and, in the hope of becoming so, many and many a writer would, and does, pay to get a first book into print. Or, even if our writer manages to get a book published by a mainstream firm, she will use her own money to help market the thing. I had an email a while back from a writer whose advance was $7,500 and who had spent, when she wrote to me, $14,000 of her own money to help it to take off.

Technically this is known as a self-inflicted wound.

Some people take hyphens seriously

In the first, and possibly second, edition of Fowler's Modern English Usage (I no longer possess either), he quoted another authority to the effect that, if you take hyphens seriously, you will surely go mad.

Here, if you care to, you can find an example of a man to whom it seems to have happened. (Link from Maud Newton.)

And, if we're picking nits, I don't like 'carburetor' much. It looks wrong, even if it is US practice.

Finding readers

Speaking of finding readers for your book(s), which we were on Friday, there is a new site up which you might, perhaps, wish to take a look at if you have a book to publicise.

It's called Penstripes.com, and it offers a free service for 45 days. After 45 days it will cost you $365 to remain on the site for four years.

Well, $365 isn't a lot by advertising standards, and at least you have a chance to assess the value of the service before you shell out. But in the early days, if not the long run, this site, like all sites, is going to struggle to find readers.

The gift economy can prove expensive

Over at the Pundy House, Bill Liversidge has been doing a cost-benefit analysis of his efforts to find readers for his novel A Half Life of One.

He has two conclusions. First, A Half Life of One is the most expensive book ever written. Second, he is beginning to think that if he attracts any more readers he will rapidly go bankrupt.

If only all writers were able to talk about their frustrations and failures with as much good humour as Bill. How much better off we would all be.

Eat your Greenes

I watched the movie Donnie Darko last night. Well, most of it. Fast-forwarded from time to time. It's supposed to be something of a cult classic and it's certainly confusing enough to give the coffee-cup rattlers something to talk about.

Despite my overall lack of enthusiasm, there was, however, one line in it which I enjoyed.

At one point we have an uptight, born-again Christian type woman complaining bitterly that a high-school teacher is asking teenage children to read a short story by Graham Greene -- a story which she describes as 'filth'.

Someone tries to change her mind. 'I don't think you even know who Graham Greene is,' the character says.

Our Christian woman gives a haughty sniff. 'Well,' she says, 'I think we've all seen Bonanza.'

But you probably have to be quite old to laugh.

Mary Archer gets treated nicely

In my piece about Jeffrey Archer on Tuesday (Jeffrey Archer gets beaten up), I quite forgot to mention his charming wife Mary.

Well one does forget, one does. And that, I suspect, is entirely the way she wants it. Mary Archer does not like public attention, and goes to a great deal of trouble to avoid it. She likes to pose as the loyal and long-suffering wife (and mother), keeping the house clean and tidy while Jeffrey does whatever mysterious things he does do. But that, in my opinion, is a grossly over-simplified view of things.

Mary and Jeffrey complement each other rather well. Jeffrey, as we all know by now, is a bit of a rough diamond. He came from a modest background, and at school acquired few formal qualifications. After various jobs he signed up for a one-year diploma in education at Brasenose College, Oxford, stayed there for three years, and likes to claim that he is an Oxford graduate. Which he isn't, in the accepted sense of the term.

With Jeffrey, the truth, even when it is a credit to him, always has to be embroidered and embellished. There are doubtless a thousand examples, but one which sticks in my memory is a newspaper interview which he gave in connection with one of his books.

During this interview, he 'gave the impression', shall we say, that he not only owned the impressive Thames-side penthouse in which the interview took place, but that he also owned the whole block of flats. Afterwards, the reporter checked up to see if this 'impression' was correct. It wasn't.

Mary, on the other hand, has real brains and a real touch of class. She read Chemistry at Oxford, physical chemistry at Imperial College, London (another prestigious institution), and then became a lecturer at Cambridge. She is interested in solar power, and from 1988 to 2000 was Chairman of the National Energy Foundation, which promotes renewable energy. She has also served on a number of other public bodies and commercial companies, including a spell as a non-executive director of Anglia Television; she is currently Chairman of Addenbrooke's National Health Service (NHS) Trust, in Cambridge.

Mary, as I say, much prefers to be out of the limelight. But occasionally she is obliged to come forward to act as her husband's defender.

The most famous such occasion was in 1987. Jeffrey sued the Daily Star for libel, because they claimed that he had consorted with a prostitute. Mary was required to testify as to what a wonderful man he really was.

No one is quite sure what perfume she was wearing that day, but whatever it was it had a powerful effect on the Judge. In his summing up, Mr Justice Caulfield was so impressed by her demeanour that he mused why any husband would seek the company of a prostitute when he had Mrs Archer at home.

'Remember Mary Archer in the witness-box', he urged the jury. 'Your vision of her probably will never disappear. Has she elegance? Has she fragrance? Would she have, without the strain of this trial, radiance?'

The Judge went on to ask why a man would pay for 'cold, unloving, rubber-insulated sex' with a prostitute when he had such a paragon at home. Jeffrey won the case, with £500,000 paid in damages.

Jeffrey also had an alibi for the night in question. Or thought he had. It turned out later that he had cooked up the alibi with an old friend, Ted Francis. At the time, Francis thought he was just helping Jeffrey to save his marriage -- another of those 'gave the impression' things. Unfortunately, a few years later Jeffrey ran for the office of Mayor of London. Francis, so appalled at the thought that Archer might actually get elected, spilt the beans. It also emerged that Jeffrey had, in any case, got the date wrong.

The Daily Star naturally wanted its money back. Jeffrey refused, which eventually led to a charge of perjury, which eventually resulted in a prison sentence. He had to repay the £500,000, plus over a million for the paper's costs.

Mary and Jeffrey live, incidentally, in the Old Vicarage at Grantchester, near Cambridge. This is a building which was made famous by the World War I poet, Rupert Brooke:

Stands the church clock at ten to three?
And is there honey still for tea?

Should you wish to know more about this lovely couple, there are a pair of books which I also forgot to mention on Tuesday. The best biography of Jeffrey is that by Michael Crick, a journalist who has observed the Archer antics for many years.

There is also a biography of Mary by Margaret Crick, the wife of Jeffrey's biographer -- a nice symmetry there, don't you think? As I noted on May 16 2005, Mary did her level best to prevent this book being published, but failed. In the event, however, it proved to be a bit of a disappointment. No real skeletons were exposed to the public gaze.

All of these thoughts came to mind when I opened this week's issue of Private Eye and read the story which I quote below. Private Eye, by the way, is absolutely essential reading if you want to know what is going on in British public life, as opposed to what the spin doctors want you to think. Here's the story:

Much is written about the failings of NHS hospitals -- long waits for appointments, delayed operations and so on, but the Eye has been told of one lady's recent treatment at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridge which gives the lie to such nonsense.

Bitten on the hand by one of her cats last month, the lady drove to the hospital where she was told she could be admitted for debridement of the wound later the same day.

When she returned, rather than enduring the gauntlet of the hospital car park, she was allowed to leave her car outside the entrance. A friendly porter then parked it for her while she was whisked straight into theatre for the cleaning of her small but perfectly-formed puncture wound under general anaesthetic. She was then discharged.

Excellent service all round! Does anyone at the hospital wish to contact the Eye to give us more details of this exemplary treatment? Congratulations are surely in order to the hospital and its Chairman, Lady Archer.

Robert Elwood Burns: Punjab Nights

Punjab Nights is a novel which the author says might appeal more to Brits than to Americans; and he's right, though the Brits have to be of a certain age and class. In any event, it is a very fine piece of work, and I for one found it an absorbing and enjoyable read.

In my youth it was commonplace to hear the following remark: They say that everyone has one good novel in them.

I suppose the meaning of that is fairly obvious, but it's worth explaining a little of the background. At that time -- it was fifty years ago, remember -- English novels were often leisurely, discursive, and mannered. They were elegant slices of life. And usually upper-class life at that. True, there was some out-and-out commercial writing. But when educated people spoke of 'the novel' they were often thinking of a semi-autobiographical account of either a career, life in one of the colonies, a marriage, or military adventures. In other words, a novel was thought of as the embodiment of a life. And the first requirement for a novelist, therefore, was to get a life: to acquire experience.

Robert Elwood Burns's Punjab Nights reminds me of all the various people who spoke in those terms when I was a lad. It may or may not be autobiographical, in terms of the events which befall the lead character. I neither know nor care very much. What is clear is that the novel is based on the author's experience of Pakistan.

Burns has a web site which is full of good stuff, and it provides a brief biography, from which we learn that he is an American who once served as an advisor to the government of Pakistan. And Punjab Nights, he says, takes placed in a fictional Pakistan. Well, not as fictional as all that, I suspect. The time is the late 1960s, and here is the author's own description of the plot:

Attempts at representative government had faded and the military and police were moving into permanent dominance amidst a debilitating brew of tribal strife, the heroin trade, a flourishing black market, and a corruption-inducing system of central planning and controls. The looming demise of the faltering military leader heightens uncertainty and tensions to the point where ever more desperate individuals must break the law to survive, and otherwise decent people are prone to deception and violence.

Enter Karl Pedersen, honest, self-confident, straightforward advisor from the American Midwest -- more culturally ignorant than ugly -- fleeing a broken marriage and seeking a year of quiet healing in a South Asian backwater that, unbeknownst to him, is about to explode. What follows is a fast-moving tale of intercultural love, adventure, revenge and betrayal -- from Lahore in the Punjab to Karachi on the Arabian Sea, from the flesh trade to the basmati rice trade, and from high seriousness to low comedy as the sometimes hapless, sometimes sympathetic, anti-hero is bruised and buffeted into a reluctant understanding of the rules of a different and more dangerous game.

Well, that all seems clear enough. This is not exactly a thriller, but neither is it one of those navel-gazing literary things. It's an old-fashioned novel, of the kind that English people were thinking of when they said that everyone has one good novel in them. It clearly speaks from personal experience, and one of its chief virtues is the picture it paints of the people of that time and era.

The British are different from Americans in many ways, not least in that we all have, either first-hand or second-hand, some experience of Empire. We have friends and relations who are either in foreign parts now, or were, often for extended periods. We know people who lived and served in India, Kenya, Malaya, and a thousand other outposts of Empire.

Take my father, for instance. In 1942, his army unit was sent into what was then India and is now Pakistan. He didn't come back to England until 1945. He saw neither wife nor son in that time.

My father was in a regiment called the Royal Signals, and he seems to have spent the war monitoring morse-code traffic on the short wave. What on earth was the purpose of that? While he was alive I never had the wit to ask him. But when I read in Punjab Nights of places like Hyderabad, Quetta, Lahore, and Karachi, they are familiar to me, because I know that my father was there. I have a box of faded photographs.

Of course, the British 'owned' India at the time, so there was certainly a need for a number of British troops in that vast country, just to remind the inhabitants of who was in charge. But Royal Signals? Were they listening to the Russians? Or the Japanese?

Then there's my Uncle Frank. He was an officer in the Gurkhas, which is a brigade recruited, in the main, from the hill tribes of Nepal. They are small in stature, but fierce fighters, and you do not mess with them if you value your health. 'Bravest of the brave, most generous of the generous, never had country more faithful friends than you.' So said Professor Sir Ralph Turner, MC, who served with the Gurkha Rifles in the First World War. And in the second world war my Uncle Frank too was in India. Again, what his regiment was doing I have no idea.

In any event, the point is that many, many English families have similar connections with India, Malaya, Kenya, and a hundred other exotic places. And therefore, although Punjab Nights is written by an American, with an American hero, it is one which many English readers are going to find rewarding. If nothing else, it will give them some additional insight into all those stories told by Grandad.

On his web site, Burns gives an account of how the book came to be written in its present form. He makes it clear that, after a false start, he made a conscious effort to entertain the reader. And he has succeeded.

For a first-time novelist, he has managed surprisingly well, and from a technical point of view there isn't much to criticise here. As something of a viewpoint perfectionist, I wrinkled my nose once or twice when the viewpoint of the story shifted; but most readers won't notice.

The opening chapter (which you can also read on Burns's web site) sets the scene very well. And before long we become aware that he is intimately familiar with the complicated castes, tribes, classes, and other social divisions of this crowded part of the world. He is skilful at describing the nuances of social class and conduct which were (and probably still are) so important there; though mercifully they have ceased to be quite so overpowering in the UK.

If you insist on some 'fine writing' (whatever that may mean) in your novels, try chapter nineteen, in which our main character takes a couple of weeks off to participate in kite-flying competitions with the neighbourhood street urchins. And, in the end, he comes up against an old and disabled lady. This is a truly evocative section of the book, because it describes something that one cannot conceive of happening anywhere else.

The publisher for this book is Llumina Press, which makes no secret of the fact that it exists to provide services for 'self-publishers'. By and large they seem to have done a good job for this author. The typeface is a decent size, though the page is a little overcrowded for my taste. The cover is no great shakes either, but it looks as if the author chose the illustrations.

There are the usual extracts, on the cover, from pre-publication reviews, or early readers' comments, though they are unidentified. And it is amusing, in my eyes at any rate, that the author has the courage to quote one reader who describes Punjab Nights as 'an outrageous whitewash of immoral and unethical behavior.' Can't say I got that impression myself, but there you are.

I'm not surprised that the author resorted to a a firm like Llumina to get this book into print. I can imagine this book being published by an 'orthodox' publisher, particularly a UK one, forty years ago. But not today. Today an editor would look at it, purse his lips, and say, Yes, well, this is all quite professional in its way. But... But it isn't a thriller. It's about a foreign country. It's got a bit of sex in it but it isn't... well, it isn't sexy. So he wouldn't buy it.

Anyone planning to write a novel would do well to pay an extended visit to Burns's web site, where you will find a good deal of useful information and thought-provoking comment on the art of writing and the state of modern publishing. And Burns is kind enough to say there that he has been influenced by some of my own ideas, notably those set out in my extended essay, On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile.

Finally, I've been racking my brains, while writing this, trying to remember the name of a British novelist who wrote books about India and other parts of the Empire. And at last I have remembered. It was John Masters.

I was going to describe Masters as a long-forgotten author, widely read between about 1950 and 1970. But I find that he is not forgotten at all. Not, at any rate, by his agent. And some of his stuff seems to be still in print.

Masters was an Englishman. Like my Uncle, he was an officer in the Gurkhas and had extensive experience of the north-west frontier area. In World War II he served with great distinction in Burma. On one occasion, while defending a position behind Japanese lines, he and his men were attacked with great intensity for seventeen days. He was obliged to give orders to shoot nineteen of his own men, who were wounded beyond any hope of recovery or rescue. So, he was a man who 'got a life' and then some.

After the war, Masters turned his hand to writing novels, making use of his extensive experience, and he proved to be a popular author. His agent's page provides a useful summary of his subject matter. Perhaps the most famous of his books was Bhowani Junction (1954), which was later filmed.

John Masters's books are not without their critics, many of whom think his work to be too generous to the role of the British in governing their Empire. (Every form of empire is, of course, deeply exploitative, as any politically correct person knows full well; though who, precisely, exploits whom is sometimes overlooked.) The critic Ronald Brydon described one Masters book as 'political pornography'.

Well, God forbid, of course, that anyone should paint a favourable picture of British influence in India or anywhere else. The very thought is enough to make one clutch one's heart and stagger backwards. But, when John Masters's books first came out, most readers lacked the perception to see what dreadful lies he was telling. (Do I need to label any of this as irony. Yes, judging by previous reactions to some of my stuff, I probably do.)

Anyway, R. Elwood Burns's Punjab Nights belongs in the John Masters tradition, and is a worthy successor, if not quite so obviously popular in its appeal.

Da Vinci goes to court

You will have heard, no doubt, that the court case relating to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has just started in the High Court in London. Two authors of a 1982 non-fiction book, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, are accusing Dan Brown of breaching their copyright. He done stole their ideas, man, and it ain't right. Especially as he made lots of money, and they want some.

The general feeling seems to be that this case, to quote the Scotsman, 'will either make publishing history or be dismissed as a storm in a teacup.' (Link from Bookslut.) I don't think it will do either, though mercifully I know little of the law.

What little I do know suggests to me that, whichever way the case goes, no writer or publisher is henceforth going to be able to look at the outcome and say Aha -- that means that I can definitely do this. Or, That means I definitely can't do that.

No, the English law that we all know and love so well just isn't that straightforward. If it were, we wouldn't need all those highly paid lawyers, would we? And that would never do.

Neither is the case going to be dismissed as a storm in a teacup. It will be gleefully reported at length, by every newspaper in the world which is keen to fill up white space, i.e. all of them. Try the Times, for instance, both yesterday, and today for an account of day two.

I find it all a bit tedious, frankly. I will just repeat here what I said on 17 September 2004, namely that the basic idea behind The Da Vinci Code, that Jesus Christ fathered a child by Mary Magdalene, is not an original idea. Yes, it is to be found in The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. But it's probably found in lots of other sources as well, dating back centuries. I can't substantiate that claim because I haven't done the research, and I haven't done the research because I can't be arsed, and I can't be arsed because I'm not being paid £500 an hour, like Dan Brown's lawyers. But I bet you it is so. And if the Brown legal team can't prove it then they're not earning their money.

I also had more to say about this on 24 September 2004, when I predicted that the authors of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail would lose their case; a prediction which I see no reason to change.

In short, the only really interesting aspect of the whole affair is this: The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail had three authors. But only two are suing. Why?

My guess is that the third, Henry Lincoln, had a think about the situation, noted the vagaries of English law, and the prodiigiously high cost of trying to rectify wrongs through same, and said to his friends something like this:

Well guys, if you want to pay the enormous school fees (£25,000 a year nowadays) for the numerous children of several already more than comfortably placed English lawyers, feel free. But include me out.

Thus proving that he is just about the only sensible person in the whole business.

The Times today also has an article about the fact that every great writer seems to have borrowed plots wholesale from previous writers: Goethe, Marlowe, Chaucer, and Shakespeare are mentioned.

In the case of Shakespeare it wasn't just plots. It was whole passages which he copied out and turned into speeches. Consider, for instance Shakespeare's famous speech about Cleopatra's progress down the Nile:

The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne,
Burnt on the water. The poop was beaten gold;
Purple the sails, and so perfumed that
The winds were lovesick with them...

If you compare that with the relevant passage in Holinshed's Chronicles, you will find that Shakespeare stole it, almost word for word. he simply converted it into blank verse. And Holinshed, in turn, presumably got his information from some classical source.

So much for originality. As I have said before, it is a virtue much over-rated.

(Later note. Actually, as one scholarly commenter informed me, Shakespeare didn't steal the barge speech from Holinshed. He cribbed it from Thomas North's translation of Plutarch. Mind you, it is fifty years since I studied the text, but nevertheless there's a lesson for us all. 'You will find it a very good practice always to verify your references, sir.' Martin Routh, president of Magdalen College, Oxford, 1791-1854.)

Titbits

There used to be an English magazine called Titbits. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century, as I recall. I don't think it exists any longer, but you can still buy past issues on ebay. The title sounds rather rude now, doesn't it? But somehow they got away with it.

Anyway, here are a few titbits from the twenty-first century.

John Baker is an established crime writer with an informative web site and also a blog. Here is some of his advice for writers:

Don't listen to other writers. Plough your own furrow. Oh, yes, and make sure there's nothing else you'd rather do. Being a writer has its compensations but you'll be very lucky to make much money out of it, so make sure you've tried everything else first. And read. Read everything you can find.

Next, Joseph Wambaugh. Former cop and formidable novelist. Publishers Lunch reports that 'Among projects to be shopped at London, Joseph Wambaugh has taken on representation for the first time, and just delivered the manuscript for HOLLYWOOD STATION, his first new novel in 10 years, to agent Nat Sobel.'

Does this mean what it appears to mean? Joseph Wambaugh has never previously had an agent? Of course he did start out a long time ago, when it may have been possible to gain the attention of an editor without actually having a heavy puncher to press your case. And, preferably, a large number of incriminating photographs of said editor, taken at a drunken orgy.

In a recent comment, Lynne W. Scanlon has an interesting take on royalties and contracts. To hell with IP, she says. Consider me a gun for hire. Pay me some money, I do the job, and that's it.

This is not a new idea. Thirty years ago I knew a man called Kenneth Hudson. He was an academic when I knew him, though I see that he is described in one online document as 'an anti-academic intellectual', and he was chiefly interested in industrial archaeology, museums, and the preservation of historical sites. He wrote a whole pile of books, but as I recall he didn't bother with royalties either. He negotiated a set price for a book, wrote it, and forgot it. Not, in my opinion, a bad deal in the majority of instances. Particularly non-fiction.

Meanwhile, should you be thinking that all your problems will be solved if you can just have one bestselling book, go see what Tess Gerritsen has to say over at M.J. Rose's Buzz Balls & Hype. Tess, it seems, is a Chinese American, and because she consciously chose to write about mainstream characters and mainstream themes, rather than stick to Asian American plots, she got attacked in public by the Association of Asian American Journalists -- a group of people who really ought to know better. As with Jeffrey Archer, here we have an avowedly commercial writer being criticised for making sure that her books are commercial. But then, as we all know, the book world is full to the brim with fuzzy thinkers.