Comments on Grumpy Old Bookman: Short bits

No, Andrew, the Chelsea blog is not written by any...

2006-03-31T08:13:50.600+01:00

No, Andrew, the Chelsea blog is not written by anyone on the hotel payroll --just by two long time residents (and former neighbros of mine on the third floor) who love the place.

The truth is stranger than fiction at the chelsea -- probably everywhere, but most certainly at bhe chelsea hotel.

Obviously Andrew has never met the management of t...

2006-03-30T23:23:20.850+01:00

Obviously Andrew has never met the management of the Chelsea Hotel if he thinks that the bloggers are on the payroll. Management is not going to pay for bloggers to write about junkies shooting up in the bathroom.

WalterAs the owner of an independent (quality) boo...

2006-03-26T14:58:58.570+01:00

Walter

As the owner of an independent (quality) bookshop in rural Somerset my thoughts are that the cover price of £9.99 paperback is too high for most bookshops to take your book on spec. You might also care to note that Bertram's (the independent wholesalers) quote a lead time of 14 days from order placement and a probable discount of only 25%.

On an average month I scan lists of approx 4,000 new titles - I would never order more than 50 new titles each month. (I take all stock firm sale (my decision)this is mostly all non-fiction)

Its tough out there for everybody except the lucky 5% : authors, publishers, and yes even the terrestial bookshops.

My shop is open today : I work 7 days a week. Wages, you must be joking, I would make more collecting trolleys at the local Tesco : I do however have an occupation which would be the envy of most working people.

Walter, I read your comments and they almost broke...

2006-03-26T03:01:45.116+01:00

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. john

I have just read Seth Godin's advice to authors.He...

2006-03-24T22:11:35.176Z

I have just read Seth Godin's advice to authors.

He wishes us to know that writing non-fiction is, at best, a paid hobby and not a way to make serious money. No doubt he is right. But it is the illuminated sub-text of his piece that really interests me. This is where he says (without, of course, saying it) that there are exceptions to the rule – which is designed only for the 'little people' – and that he, Godin, is an exception as big as the Ritz.

For those of who are, as it were, un-exceptional, his words offer little comfort.

I have a new book on sale. It is a memoir, called The Beginning of the End – The Crippling Disadvantage of a Happy Irish Childhood, published by Mainstream of Edinburgh.

It's a strong story, full of sex and violence and down-home family values. I worked hard on it. So did my editor at Mainstream. My publisher then offered to pay for me to fly over from New York to promote sales in Ireland and the UK.

So far, so good. But there's more. The Beginning of the End (remember the title!) was serialised in the Sunday Times; it received splendid reviews in the Daily Mail and the Belfast Telegraph, and a good one in the Sunday Times (with others yet to come). I wrote articles for Scotland on Sunday and the Belfast Telegraph and was interviewed on Radio Ulster, Ulster Television and RTE in Dublin, as well as by radio stations in Hull, Glasgow and Bristol. Finally, I was a guest last Saturday on Ned Sherrin's Loose Ends.

Boy, was I good! My tour was a triumph.

Lots of promotion, then. Sadly, that was when I hit the wall. For the simple fact of the matter is that Waterstone's, Borders, Ottokars, W H Smith and Books Etc were not interested. They couldn't care less. I doubt that more than 100 copies of the book found their way onto the English market in the first two weeks after publication. Almost all of my sales have been restricted to Ireland, whose population, though more literary minded on the whole than that of England, is a mere five million.

Why is this? I could go on about the need to "pay" for space. If you want to get your book onto the Big Tables these days, you have to shell out a small fortune – which for a company like Mainstream is financially prohobitive.

But it is in fact a lot simpler than that. There are far too many books published these days in the UK – 159,000 last year alone, against 75,000 in the US. Most might as well go straight from the printers to the pulping room.

British bookshops cannot hope to give houseroom to more than a tenth of the country's annual book production. If they did, bookshops would have to swell to the size of cathedrals. The result is that the bigger publishers pay a hefty premium for space (as much as £50,000), while almost everyone else goes to the wall.

If you have been paid a big advance, your book becomes an investment that has to be protected. If you haven't, the publisher has nothing to lose. Booksellers, meanwhile, expect to be paid at both ends – first when the books come in, second when they are sold to the punters. It is the retailers who effectively control both supply and demand.

It is not a happy situation. What's a chap to do?

All that can save me now is word of mouth. I therefore appeal to the readers of England. Get out there and demand my book. I have done my bit. The publishers have done theirs. Now it's up to you.

In the name of God!

Walter Ellis

I followed the Chelsea blog for a time and find it...

2006-03-24T19:13:40.476Z

I followed the Chelsea blog for a time and find it a bit transparently promotional and probably put out by someone on the hotel payroll--which then leaves me a bit skeptical of its elaborate stories. Much like what one would read on the back of a dinner menu. In that sense, nice work.

As far as the suicide list, it's obvious that one is much safer to have a name that starts with "N." If, on the other hand, a publisher thinks a front-page suicide will help promotions, they should pull the B's, C's and P's out of the slush pile.

I suspect it's me that needs to get out more. Many...

2006-03-24T10:31:38.366Z

I suspect it's me that needs to get out more. Many thanks for the mention.