Fish on Friday

Some assorted items accumulated over the week. Given the way Blogger has been behaving this week, you are, frankly, lucky to get this at all. When Blogger works, it's just fine. When it doesn't work, it's a royal pain in the arse.

Shamblog

Steve Salerno doesn't like the self-help book business, and he's set up a blog to tell people why, warn 'em off, encourage them to stand on their own two feet, not pay good money to Dr Phil (as if I would), and all like that. (Link from Galleycat.)

In case you missed it (and I for one did), Steve is the author of SHAM, which is, by all accounts, a fairly full-blooded attack on the self-help business. (See, for instance, the Publishers Weekly review.)

Self-help is a big business, too. According to Galleycat, Americans spent $8.5 billion on self-help last year, out of which publishers got $650 million. I don't follow the arithmetic there, but presumably the bigger figure includes lots of things other than books, such as seminars and weekend retreats and the like.

Boring bits from booktrade.info

A French publisher is suing Google. For piracy. 'Over its controversial effort to digitise millions of books for online viewing.'

This is boring.

Someone else has decided that Dan Brown done them wrong. The July issue of the magazine Vanity Fair contains an article by Seth Mnookin revealing 'two new instances of possible plagiarism in Brown's past.' Two textual analysis experts also tell Mnookin that they believe Brown borrowed the plot for his Da Vinci book from Lewis Perdue's Daughter of God.

This is very boring.

Michael Cader, at Publishers Lunch, points out that Perdue has already taken his claim to Federal courts -- twice. And has lost -- twice.

Mnookin has a blog, by the way, should you care, and he is already getting beat up by the fans.

Meanwhile, Galleycat has had an email from Perdue in which... Oh I really can't be bothered.

Straczynski goes POD

Michael Straczynski is the author of one of the very best books on writing for the screen, either TV or movie. Entitled The Complete Book of Scriptwriting, it's available in various formats and editions, and if you're interested in that form of writing I recommend it.

That, however, is not the message for today. Unlike some pontificators, Straczynski is a man who's been there and done it: for example, he wrote 92 of the 110 scripts for the 1990s TV series Babylon 5. And now he's taken to selling copies of the scripts. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)

In an interview with USA Today, Straczynski says that he has sold over 18,000 copies of volumes of his scripts. Each volume contains seven scripts, with additional notes, and runs to about 450 pages. These he sells (on his own behalf) at $40 each through CafePress.

Straczynski projects he will generate $1.5 million in sales from 14 different volumes. This is turnover, of course, not profit. But Straczynski reckons it's a good return on the $500 that he spent to set up the babylon5scripts web site.

Down with Updike

Rebecca Jane, at Flash Fiction, didn't like John Updike's speech to the BEA either.

Abebooks is ten

Abebooks, which is an online conglomerate of secondhand-book dealers, is ten years old and is celebrating in various ways, one of which is to highlight the ten most expensive books sold through the site. Very interesting. As someone said about Moss Hart's garden, it shows what God could have done, if only he'd had the money.

Scott Byrnes: Revelations

It is a truth universally acknowledged that all self-publishers, with a novel to sell, are in need of a web site. Except that Scott Byrnes's Revelations don't got none. Or at least, if it does, it's beyond my finding.

All I can do is point you to Amazon.com.

Scott's publicist tells me that he spent a decade thinking about this book. (First he did a screenplay version. Then he spent five years saving enough money to take a year's sabbatical to write the book.) She doesn't say that it is self-published, but the publisher, Blue Stripe, seems to have done nothing else. And Scott has also invested money in marketing the book.

I wish him well.

Dibs

Dibs -- subtitled Earlybuzz on upcoming books -- does what it says on the label: i.e. tells you about books that will be published shortly. It's written by the literary editor of an American newspaper who gets lots of galley proofs, advance info sheets and the like.

In addition to describing books, Dibs also report book-related news items of a quirky nature -- e.g. that Danielle Steel's art gallery has closed its door after three years.

Maddox arrives

On 3 April this year, Maddox was described here as a name to watch. This did not impress everybody. Well, now he's arrived, and he appears at number four on the New York Times hardcover 'advice' bestseller list.

Whether 'advice' is quite the best word for what Maddox has to offer I'm not sure. I described it as 'robust humour'. Others were less polite. The NYT calls it 'ribald humor'.

Susan Hill blogs

Susan Hill is a distinguished and successful English novelist and dramatist, and has been mentioned here several times before. Now she has a blog, which has already attracted a considerable number of readers.

In yesterday's post, Susan describes a book about books by Gabriel Said. It contains the following thought, which Susan has understandably highlighted:

Time is by far the most expensive aspect of reading, excepting time spent in certain circumstances; in transit, ill-health, prison or retirement. In a wealthy economy time is worth more than things and it is easier to buy things than to find the time to enjoy them.

Warning. Well, not a warning, but a note. Susan's post of 7 June refers to the death of her baby, twenty-two years ago, which is very upsetting. But it contains a poem by Ben Jonson which may help those in a similar position.

The Book Depository

There is a new online book retailer in the UK: the Book Depository.

I must say that, when I first clicked on to the BD site, it was not immediately apparent to me what it was all about. But when you poke around a bit it gradually grows on you.

Mark Thwaite, of Ready Steady Blog (one of the Guardian's top ten literary blogs) is delighted to have been appointed as the BD's web-editor, and has an introductory piece about it.

Mark points out that the BD is good news for book lovers (both in the US and in the UK), as the site is making a lot of difficult-to-get-hold-of books available 'at great prices'. He is also pleased that the enterprise appointed a blogger as their managing editor. This, he modestly says, 'is -- in a very small way -- a success story about the blogosphere: they took on someone from the blogosphere because they think that the blogs are so important.'

Romance readers never had it so good

Romantic fiction is not what it was. It's better.

There are now (I am told -- not my field) all sorts of new sub-genres in romance: erotic, paranormal, Christian, Wayne Rooney, David Beckham.... Actually I made those last two up, but the others are real.

Jessica Inclan does the paranormal ones, and When You Believe (Kensington, 6 June) is the first of a trilogy. Jessica describes her books as 'Harry Potter for adults - with sex.' And they're inspired by the theory of quantum physics. So you don't need to take any shit from anyone. The next time someone curls their lip at you while you're reading one you can say, 'Hey, listen, smart-arse -- this is inspired by the theory of quantum physics. So shut it.'

Wodehouse Prize

Last year's winner of the Wodehouse Prize was A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, which was the start of its well deserved rise to fame. This year's winner is Christopher Brookmyre with his tenth book, All Fun and Games Until Somebody Loses an Eye.

The book is published by Abacus, which is part of Little, Brown, and I eventually managed to find an entry for the book on the Little, Brown web site. That web site, in my opinion, really sucks. The opening page was a complete blank, at least on my screen, and once I got in I had a hell of a time convincing the firm that it actually did publish Brookmyre. Looking at the URL for the book, which I have used for the hyperlink in this paragraph, I seriously doubt whether it will work. And no one saw fit to mention the Wodehouse Prize on the Titles in the News page.

Who was it said that the big publishers are not entirely at ease in the digital world?

Glubb Pasha on the Arabs

Glubb Pasha -- or, to give him his full title, Lieutenant-General Sir John Bagot Glubb -- was one of a long string of Englishmen who got involved in the complicated affairs of the Middle East: Lawrence of Arabia was perhaps the most famous. Pasha, by the way, is simply an honorary title in the Arab world, one that is typically granted to high-ranking soldiers or governors, and it means, more or less, 'Sir'.

Born in 1897, Glubb was a career soldier, and his career culminated in his role as commander of the Arab legion, from 1939 to 1956.

After his retirement, Glubb wrote a considerable number of books, which I have not read, but I have just read My Years with the Arabs, which is the text of a lecture that he gave to the Institute for Cultural Research in 1971. It's still in print, and if you are trying to make sense of the current nonsense in Iraq you could do worse than take a look at it. (ISBN 0 9500029 6 8)

Glubb begins by trying to give a historical definition of the term Arab. He points out that, in the seventh century, a handful of troops from the Arabian peninsula (perhaps 15,000 or 20,000 men) conquered vast areas of the Middle East. These soldiers were inspired by the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. Ultimately, the countries conquered by these troops adopted the Muslim religion and the Arabic language, but their populations were largely unchanged. The newly 'Arab' countries therefore retain marked differences in ethnic origin and customs, and they react very differently to the events and crises of life.

Having made that point, Glubb goes on to describe some common characteristics of those peoples who are today considered Arab. And we should note immediately that, writing in 1971, he was aware that the younger generation of Arabs were often being educated in western universities, and were bringing into their communities new ideas and new ways of doing things. However, Glubb seems to have held the view that most of the characteristics which he described were likely to remain at the core of Arab behaviour and thinking.

The first characteristic that he identifies is courtesy. He describes the elaborate politeness and formality with which even the poorest people greet friends and strangers.

His second trait is dignity, which he says is common to all Middle East cultures. In company, an Arab will not lounge about, yawn, or laugh uproariously with his mouth open. The behaviour of Europeans and Americans, says Glubb, often makes them seem like barbarians to the Arabs.

To the casual visitor, says Glubb, Arabs do not normally seem very pious. But whether or not they pray five times a day (as Muslims are supposed to), Glubb thinks it a safe generalisation to say that all but a handful of westernised Arabs believe in God. This, he feels, has a markedly stabilising effect on society. For example, there are no suicides among these people.

As for the common sneer that Arabs are fatalists, Glubb chooses to describe this rather as a calm acceptance of setbacks and defeats. It is their faith in God which enables Arabs to bear terrible misfortunes and hardships without nervous breakdowns and suicides.

Next, Glubb considers the Arab attitude to money. 'Most of the traditional Arabs among whom I lived presented a phenomenon entirely strange, perhaps incredible, to the modern Western mind -- they did not live for money.'

This has various consequences, one of which is that the poor do not envy the rich; the elderly are cared for in the family, and are not seen as a hindrance to the pursuit of money.

However, this is one area where, even in 1971, Glubb could see substantial changes. The western-educated young often returned with a very western enthusiasm for money. As a result, the old system of basing business transactions purely on trust was breaking down, and a wider gap was developing between rich and poor in the Arab world.

Under traditional Arab conditions, children naturally grew up as part of a family, and tended to continue in the family way of life. The sons of shepherds, farmers, and merchants became shepherds, farmers and merchants in turn. But by the time Glubb was writing, the introduction of western education methods had changed all that. A university degree is now considered the one essential to success; under the western influence, 'character, honesty, experience, courage are never enquired of, or even thought necessary.'

This development causes Glubb to consider the question of wisdom and knowledge. 'One of the most striking peculiarities of life in this country,' he says, 'which has impressed me since my return to Britain, is the loss of our appreciation of the difference between Wisdom and Knowledge.' These are, in Glubb's view, as different as chalk is from cheese.

Wisdom, according to Glubb, is the art of living and can only be acquired by experience; thus an old peasant may be wiser than the world's greatest scientist. 'I have known village headmen in Asia,' he declares, 'who were wiser than the president of the United States.'

No further comment is required on that.

Glubb considers politics in the Arab world. In politics, he says, we in the west are as narrow-minded as our ancestors were in terms of religion: i.e. convinced that our way is best. He gives an example drawn from two western comments on the state of Jordan in the 1940s. One western correspondent remarked to Glubb that the government of Jordan was 'entirely reactionary and feudalistic, and really an anachronism in the modern world.' A second correspondent, speaking separately from the first, remarked that 'This is the first country I have ever visited where everyone I have spoken to praises the government.'

Moral: we should not make the assumption that democracy is the most natural, or the 'best' form of government for every nation under the sun. Some might prefer a different arrangement.

The key to the traditional Arab form of government, Glubb says, was accessibility, at all levels. Everyone in the community had the opportunity to speak to the leader, without lawyers, legal fees or delay. Our own system, Glubb argues, has completely lost this vital asset. No single man is responsible for anything: individuals are concealed within committees, and the system is dehumanised and depersonalised. Glubb's conclusion is we are not justified in demanding that other nations should abandon their own traditions and adopt ours.

Finally, Glubb points out that the western code of chivalry has its origins in the Arab world. Before the preaching of Islam in the seventh century, the Arabs carried on endless wars; but these wars were governed by strict rules of honour. The object of war was not to conquer or subdue another tribe; it was to provide a means whereby men could win honour, rather than wealth or power.

It was these same warlike nomads who formed the spearhead of the Arab conquests, and in Spain and France they established their ideas of war for honour, and a chivalrous attitude toward women. (The Arabs, by the way, remained in Spain for nearly 800 years.) Glubb concludes his lecture by echoing the words of the great French scholar, Dr Levi-Provencal: 'Arabs taught Europe respect and courtesy to women.'

Should you wish to read Glubb Pasha's lecture, you can obtain it from the Institute for Cultural Research, along with much else.

Which way the wind blows

Introduction

Yesterday we looked at various pontifications about change -- change in the book world, and change as determined by the advent of the internet and all things digital.

We discovered, not surprisingly, that some people in the book world are deeply afraid of digital, and that some people think it's going to create a wonderful new environment in which everything will be lovely, and all writers will earn £100,000 a year (or the equivalent) for very little work.

If I have one self-criticism of this blog, it is that I spend too much time linking to other people's thoughts and not enough time thinking for myself. So here I am going to offer a few speculations about possible developments in the field of fiction. In doing so, I may thereby expose, even to myself, the poverty of my own ideas, and thus precipitate an immediate and permanent return to linking. But who knows.

Anyone who has read this blog regularly, over the last couple of years, will find here some ideas which have been floated before: but perhaps they may be somewhat refined, and in any case I think they are worth repeating. The argument will be based largely, but not entirely on UK experience; but the world is flat these days, and getting flatter by the minute.

Background

I have already argued, particularly in my discussion of the value of a novel compared with that of false teeth, that a novel is not a big deal. And I repeat that assertion now.

A novel, as we all know, is essentially a story. It is the extended version of an anecdote, told over the camp fire, or in the gentleman's club, or the women's institute. Its purpose is to create emotion in the listener/reader.

For all practical purposes, the novel came into existence 250 years ago. At first confined to the educated classes, the novel gradually became more popular with the advent of compulsory education, towards the end of the nineteenth century. In the early twentieth century the novel continued to grow in readership, and superficially it appears to be a common choice of entertainment today.

However, as the decades passed, the novel faced ever-increasing competition. In the nineteenth century there were theatres; then, in the twentieth century, there were films; radio; television (a real killer blow, potentially); and now every sort and kind of iPod, DVD, CD, video on demand, computer games, interactive this and that, and a dozen other media.

The novel still has things going for it. It's easily portable (usually); you can dip into it at odd moments; it's cheap (especially if you buy secondhand). And from the entertainment consumer's point of view, therefore, it has much to recommend it.

On the other hand, there are plenty of consumers for whom the novel is not attractive. It is intimidating: all those pages of solid prose. It requires of the reader intelligence, concentration, a large vocabulary, and a wide frame of reference. There are plenty of entertainment media today which call for none of these; and many of them are free. So the novel's future may not be as rosy as its past.

When we look at the novel from the author's point of view, we see that, over the past 200 years or so, it has been possible, at least in principle, for a novelist to make a living from the craft. But in practice this has been possible for only a small proportion of those who write novels. The rest have made little or nothing, in financial terms. Often they have not even achieved publication.

I do not subscribe to the view that those novelists who have 'succeeded' -- succeeded in getting published, and in achieving fame and fortune -- have been the 'best' novelists in terms of any reasonable set of criteria. This point has been dealt with at some length in my (free) ebook, On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, and I won't go into it again here. Let's just say that chance plays a large part.

The position today

So -- where do we stand today?

The position is that novels are sold and read reasonably widely, but in commercial and industrial terms the book market is a small one. It is demonstrably difficult for publishers to make fiction pay, and even harder for novelists to make a steady income. As was originally said about writing for the theatre: You can make a killing, but you can't make a living. To make a killing in publishing/writing, you have to be in the right place, at the right time, with the right book. And it may be a one-hit wonder.

Suppose the internet had never come along in the 1990s -- what would have been the prospects for the novel and for novelists then?

All the signs are that publishers would have had an increasingly difficult time, and writers a worse one.

More and more novels are being published, especially in the UK, but the retail trade is interested in only a tiny handful of them. These are pushed upon the book-reading public by every means at the trade's disposal, and the rest are soon forgotten.

Of course the reading public is by no means stupid, and not every book that is hyped sells in large numbers. Only recently Robert McCrum lamented the tale of Londonstani, a novel for which, he says, Fourth Estate paid £300,000. 'Alas,' says McCrum, 'everything about its short life has been a disaster.... Londonstani is already being airbrushed from history.' And the damn thing was only published in May; in the US it isn't even due out until 22 June.

So the pattern is clear, and has been remarked upon here, and elsewhere, many times. A novelist has to show promise of hitting the big time, first time out, to stand any chance of serious publication. You need a big-time agent (preferably Geller) to interest an editor; you need a huge advance to persuade the publisher to make meaningful efforts to sell your book; and if your book fails your career is effectively over.

One of the great mysteries of life is where the publishers think these first-time smash hits are going to come from. True, once in a while you get a Susanna Clarke, who emerges fully formed; but most even halfway normal writers need four or five books to develop their talents fully.

Fortunately for the orthodox book trade, as presently constituted, the internet does exist. I say that because, for all the frightening threat that it represents, the internet also offers a means whereby young, or new, writers can develop their skills, gain some exposure, find readers, and develop a fan base. Hence it provides a training ground for the publishers' great hopes of the future.

Publishers have done nothing whatever to encourage this training ground; rather the reverse. They have done nothing to deserve it; but there it is, none the less. A gift from whatever gods may be.

It is already perfectly possible for new writers to offer their books to internet users, for minimal cost (to the author), in any one of a dozen different formats, from free PDF to print-on-demand hardbacks in collector's editions, signed by the author. Whereas once you might have been published by a mainstream publisher and described as 'promising' by the Northamptonshire Echo, now you can publish your early and promising books yourself, until, with the third, or fifth, or tenth, you succeed in interesting an agent and a major publisher and go on from there.

It's worth noticing, in passing, that if you have a burning ambition to write a series of novels about something really obscure and of definitely minority interest, such as life in a Bedouin caravan in the fifteenth century, or some bizarre sexual peccadillo, then the internet and its search engines mean that the 15, or 150, or 1,500 people in the world who are actually interested in your own peculiar area of enthusiasm, can find your book and buy it.

However, it is an established fact, and one which I personally find somewhat distressing, that even those who do write books which are clearly going to be of minority interest are almost invariably consumed by wild ambition. No matter how limited their abilities, no matter how obscure their subject matter, most of them are convinced that they have a number-one bestseller on their hands. If only those deadbeat agents and publishers...

We are still dealing, at this point, with the impact of the internet, and digital technology, on the traditional book trade today. And having considered the situation for publishers we now need to think about retailers.

Last week we considered, even here on this blog, the possibility that the big book chains would kill off all the small independent booksellers -- and the precise reverse of that scenario: that the indies would be the only survivors. My own view, based on the digital-photography model, is that the high-street fiction-retailing scene is going to be transformed pretty damn quick.

Fiction, at least as we now know it, is pure text. It doesn't need pictures. Hence it can perfectly well be produced on a print-on-demand machine. I predict it will be. Let's say within ten years. What I envisage is that even books published by the big-time firms will be sold to the public through small high-street boutiques, or over a counter in a supermarket, just as digital photos are today. The chains may well continue to exist, particularly for non-fiction, and they may choose to go on selling fiction, but they won't be needed.

Publishers will not use traditional printing methods (for novels). They will not have warehouses full of books; they will not transport them round the country in huge vans. They will generate publicity as now, but they will supply their retail outlets, big and small, with a digital file. The customers will place their order -- over the phone or over the internet -- and then they will call and collect the book when convenient; or have it sent, of course.

The pattern of success -- with big sales and big fame going to just a few books -- will be the same as now. And such 'success' will come easiest to those who are the beneficiaries of the big firms' marketing budgets. But it will also be possible for books put out by small publishers to take off via the internet, in just the same way that unknown bands can launch a new song, without benefit of a big recording company.

In statistical terms, therefore, we shall still have sales of novels forming a Zipf curve, but the long tail will be increasingly important to everyone: publishers and readers and writers alike.

You can see evidence of this already. Compare, for instance, three science-fiction novels such as Robert Charles Wilson's Spin, John Sundman's Acts of the Apostles, and Geoff Ryman's Air. One of these three novels is self-published; the other two are published by major firms and have won, or been shortlisted for, major prizes.

What is there to distinguish these three books, one from another? Essentially, nothing. They are all three highly competent, fully professional pieces of work. Two of them I enjoyed very much, the other I didn't fancy. If you have a keen eye, you might guess which is the self-published book just from the look of the thing, but from the content alone you would have no chance.

How does it happen that two of these books sold to big firms and one didn't? Pure chance. Or circumstance; or randomness. See my Rats essay for details.

Today the two books published by major firms will have sold more copies than the self-published one. But not many more, I suspect, because John Sundman has shifted quite a few on his own behalf, and the two professionally published books were, in any case, part of the long tail themselves.

As the digital world expands, I expect this levelling of the playing field to become more pronounced. The sales curve will never approach a 'normal' distribution, but in the long tail it will become much harder to distinguish between the books from big firms and those from various companies, such as Lulu.com, which service the small or the self-publisher. Readers won't care who publishes a book. They don't now! And in the future, if they find something that turns them on, they will send an enthusiastic email to their friends, who will order it from their favourite supplier. No matter who published it.

The longer term

So far so good then. The immediate digital future seems to offer some hope for novelists, and even for big publishers of fiction -- if only the latter can stop living in the past, and cure themselves of the delusion that literary fiction is somehow 'better' than any other kind. For one thing, the print-on-demand model eliminates the nonsense of returns.

In the longer term -- say the next fifty or one hundred years -- I am less hopeful about the novel. In the sense that I think it is a medium in trouble.

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago at that, the poet was king. Byron was the movie star of his day. Swinburne was a household name. But poetry faded away. It didn't die (although various practitioners did their very best to kill it), but it was overtaken by everything else.

Poetry still exists. It's still written -- quite a lot of it. And it's still read -- mostly by people who think they are, or want to become, poets themselves. But it generates no income and brings no worldly fame. This, I suspect, is what may happen to the novel.

As a matter of fact it has already happened to the novel, to some extent. Various commentators have pointed out that, somewhere around the middle of the twentieth century, or slightly before, the world of fiction divided.

As soon as Eng Lit started to be taught in universities, those who made their living by teaching it decided, consciously or unconsciously, that you couldn't expect people to take the subject seriously if it was fun. So they made sure that it wasn't fun. They began to big up -- as the current phrase has it -- books of the most amazing tedium. The novel was split into two major divisions. There was 'serious literature' on the one hand, and popular, commercial fiction on the other.

By and large that's the way it is today. 'Serious literature' is occasionally hyped up, via the Booker and other devices, into a major source of income for publisher and writer, but for the most part it is a minority interest. Popular fiction is what pays the rent.

I suspect that, in decades to come, popular fiction will also continue to lose ground to the other media. The novel will then become, in time, the equivalent of poetry, black and white darkroom photography, the building of model steam engines, and flower arranging. In other words, it will be a minority interest. An interest which arouses deep passion in the hearts of a hard core of enthusiasts, but not one which really shifts the balance of power in the world. Not one which enables more than a handful of people to earn a living, in any capacity.

After perhaps three hundred years of life, the novel will quietly fade into obscurity. It will still be there, just as radio drama is still there, but no one will take any notice. And that really isn't terribly surprising.

What is surprising, when you think about it, is that anyone should ever have imagined that it could be otherwise. The novel was only able to flourish through absence of competition, not because of any great virtue of its own. And when you think about the interactive, virtual-reality entertainments which might soon be on offer, the novel's chances seem slim.

Writing a novel is, even now, a very bizarre enterprise. Why on earth should anyone ever bother to spend a couple of years slogging away at writing one?

The answer, at present, is for fame and fortune: the writer in search of identity. But even today, the statistical likelihood of achieving fame and fortune through writing a novel is so slim that you have to be more or less deranged to imagine that these (in any case questionable) blessings will fall upon you.

One thing is perhaps certain. Even if the novel does fade away, into a quiet state of decrepitude, there will still be writers around who are dumb enough to believe that -- if they just stick at it long enough -- fame and fortune must inevitably be theirs.

Updike, Sorrell, and change

Michael Cader, of Publishers Lunch, reports that a recording of John Updike's address to the assembled troops at Book Expo America has been posted by the BEA, so you can hear the great man's argument in full, should you wish.

As you might expect, given Michael Cader's previous comments about the BEA, he was not too impressed by Updike.

In my sadder and more cynical moments, [the speech] reminds me of the anachronistic bubble aspect of BEA, where lost causes can go to congratulate themselves and relive an idealized world of publishing that may never have existed....

Updike's concern and distaste in the speech isn't so much about technology, universal libraries, or even the potentially changing reading experience. It's about the changing economics of writing books....

Simply put, he doesn't want to let go of a world that has compensated him increasingly well for writing. What's grisly [to Updike] is the idea of the author 'as a kind of walking, talking advertisement for the book' and a world in which 'only the present, live person can make an impact and offer, as it were, value.'

Equally grisly [to Updike], though he's not honest enough to put it this way, is a wide-open electronic pipeline of often free written content that Updike must compete with, which this learned critic simplistically tars as 'egregiously unaccurate, unedited, unattributed,and juvenile.'

In other words, Updike doesn't like change, and he doesn't like competition, especially from those who give it away free (such as bloggers).

Cader reports that another commentator on the Updike speech (Sean Wilsey in Time) described Updike as 'a white-haired gentleman trying to halt something new because it runs against something established, urging the retrograde upon people who should know more than any others that retrogression is patently not in their interest.'

Well, we noted on 25 May that attendees at BEA divided mostly into three camps: those anxious for change, those who accept it, and those who resist. John Updike was among the resisters.

In reading all this, I was struck by the contrast between Updike's view, on the one hand, and the view of Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the WPP group, on the other. Sorrell founded WPP in 1986; since then, WPP has become one of the world's leading communications and advertising companies and is valued by the UK stockmarket at £7.5 billion. It is therefore reasonable to assume that, where advertising is concerned, Sorrell knows what he's talking about.

In the Times last Friday, Sorrell drew attention to certain parallels between the present concerns about all things digital and the advent of commercial television in the UK in 1955.

In 1955, advertising was almost entirely print-based, and there were many senior executives in the advertising agencies who had severe doubts about the viability of television advertising. For one thing, it was thought that the British public would never tolerate having their television programmes interrupted by adverts. And for another, these senior executives had no idea how to use film.

A similar situation arises, Sorrell argues, in newspapers and advertising agencies today. A new medium, with new technology, has made an appearance, in the shape of the internet. Senior executives, in established businesses, don't understand the technology; they are far from convinced that it can be made to generate a profit; and the internet (even today) still seems to be strange, expensive, and threatening.

What will happen next, Sorrell suggests, is similar to what happened in the late fifties. From the top, so to speak, the established companies will slowly, and reluctantly, get to grips with the new technology. And from the bottom, new companies will start up, run by bright, energetic young people with lots of technical know-how.

Gradually things will shake down until the new medium finds its place among the established media. In the process, some of new companies will fail, and some of the old companies will find themselves taken over by the bright young men.

Sorrell's comments are, I repeat, confined to advertising; but they seem to me to offer some obvious parallels in the world of publishing.

Meanwhile, in yesterday's New York Times, there was an article by Motoko Rich, entitled 'Digital Publishing is Scrambling the Industry's Rules'. (Link from booktrade.info.)

This is not, in my opinion, a very good article. For one thing the author seems to think that the standard royalty rate is 15% of the cover price of a book, and for another he rehashes a number of well known stories. But the article does contain a number of quotes which nicely illustrate the two attitudes which are commonly found in publishing today.

On the one hand we have the open dread and contempt for the new, as expressed by Updike and others. 'There's no substitute for the look and feel and smell of a real book -- the magic of the paper and thread and glue.' Not that you get much thread these days, but you see the point.

And then, by contrast, you have the wild enthusiasm for change. 'I think people who are sort of on the outside of the institutions and new voices entering will be a lot more excited about this technology. That's one of the effects that technology always has. It democratizes things and brings in new readers and authors.'

If you want a further dose of advocacy for the new, try today's Guardian (link from booktrade.info), where Jeff Jarvis seeks to put the book into perspective. Speaking mainly in terms of the non-fiction book, he argues that online, or at any rate digital, prose offers considerable advantages over the printed form.

Enough, for the moment, of what other people are thinking. What do I think about the glorious digital future that awaits us? For that you must wait until tomorrow. Contain yourselves.

Novels set in Venice

A few weeks ago, when I was writing my review of Michelle Lovric’s The Remedy, I thought I might start by mentioning that it was just one of many novels, by many different authors, set in the noble and beautiful city of Venice. And I thought I would list a few.

But then I realised that the list of novels set in Venice, even the ones known to me, is very long indeed. And in any case, I now discover, someone else has done the job for me.

The someone is Jeff Cotton, and if you go to his web site you can find an extensive list of Venice-based fiction, with lots of links -- enough novels, in short, to keep you busy for several years. Not to mention films, comics, and a lot more. And, as if that was not enough, Jeff has also done a similar job for Florence and London.

What set me thinking about this was coming across yet another novel set in Venice. This one is The Lion of St Mark, by Thomas Quinn.

Thomas Quinn is one of those rather tiring and alarming people who seem to be good at everything. In his case, he has had a lengthy and successful career in business, and is currently executive vice president of Swiss Medica, a firm described as 'the maker of several innovative over-the-counter medicines.'

Thomas has no formal training in history (as far as I can see), his degree being in Industrial and Labor Relations (Cornell). But somewhere along the line he acquired a passion for history in general and Venice in particular.

The Lion of St Mark is described on the title page as being Book One of The Venetians, so evidently there is more to come. It is set in the fifteenth century, and Kirkus Reviews tells us to 'Think Tom Clancy channeled for those thrilled by galleons and exploding minarets.'

More details on the author's web site.

Derek Wilson: The Nature of Rare Things

Derek Wilson is the author of over fifty books, and while I haven't actually added them up I suspect that the majority are non-fiction. You can study his output in more detail at his web site.

The Nature of Rare Things is a crime novel, and it is the second book in a series featuring Dr Nathaniel Guy. Guy is a lecturer in paranormal psychology at the University of Cambridge, and occasionally -- as one does -- he finds himself investigating crimes which involve the paranormal. In this book it is a case where a painting goes missing in apparently impossible circumstances, and the man who is accused of stealing it commits suicide. Some time later, the dead man is sid to be attempting to prove his innocence by communicating through a medium.

The book is carefully researched, professionally put together, and is written in a traditional style; younger readers may find it a trifle old-fashioned and staid. It's not a book that will make much impression as a mass-market paperback (if it ever appears in that form), but it will be often borrowed through the public libraries.

Monday morning

Just in case you missed them, here are a few bits that cropped up over the weekend.

Sarah Waters

The Guardian had an interview with Sarah Waters (link from Bookslut). This is a longish piece, and if you don't know Sarah's work it's a good introduction; and it acted as a reminder to me to get hold of her latest, The Night Watch. Interview by Lisa Allardice, by the way, who clearly knows what she's doing.

The future of bookshops

The Waterstone's/Ottakar's thingy has prompted all sorts of think pieces in the press.

There's an article by Iain Dale, on the Guardian comment-is-free page, which predicts the closure of virtually all independent bookshops. 'I foresee that within 10 years, apart from a very few run by retired individuals with money to throw down the drain, the independent bookshop will have disappeared from our town centres.'

This has generated lots and lots of comments, including one from Andy Laties which is definitely worth reading.

Another article appeared in the Independent. Perhaps because of the paper's name, this was a bit more hopeful, and it at least offered a few reasons as to why small bookshops might survive.

The Guardian piece really annoyed Clive Keeble, who reckons that the indies are the only assured survivors on the UK high streets. Clive also sent me a link to an American article, in the Village Voice, which suggests that the battle between big and small bookshops is not new. And at the end of a longish, thoughtful, and well researched article we get the following: 'Strange to say, someday superstores may be the historical curiosity that indies are now in danger of becoming.'

Tip of the week

Here's a useful tip. If you are thinking of starting a new career as a novelist, at the age of 70, as Mary Wesley did, you should equip yourself with two things: (1) a full life, particularly on the sexual side; and (2) a son who is a literary agent. In Wesley's case, the son was Toby Eady, of (not surprisingly) Toby Eady Associates. It never hurts for an embryo novelist to have a close relative who is a known name in the book business.

I was reminded of this by an article by Toby Eady in yesterday's Sunday Times. The article was a short profile of his mother, who is written about at book length in a biography of Mary Wesley, just out: Wild Mary, by Patrick Marnham.

Investing in books

The Sunday Times also had an article, in the Money section, about investing in books. I'm not going to dwell on that, because I would never advise anyone to buy a book for investment purposes. Buy a book because you want to read it, and possibly keep it, by all means; but if you're buying in the hope that you can sell it in n years' time for a profit, you deserve all the trouble you get.

Only one point caught my attention in this article: it was a statement that the print run for the very first Harry Potter book (hardback) was 500 copies. (Such was the confidence of the publisher.) Hence copies of that first edition are in short supply, and sell for a small fortune.

I also remember, though you'd have to dig into the archives of the Bookseller to find the details, a complaint which was made soon after Harry started to become really popular. It was a complaint made in connection with, I think, the third book in the series.

A bookseller wrote in to say that she had been collecting first editions of the Harry Potter books from the beginning. And so she had wanted to have a first edition of this latest book. But when she opened the packages with supplies of the book for her own shop, she found that none of the books was a true first edition: they were all marked Reprinted, or Second Impression, or some such. I forget the exact phrase.

Someone, the bookseller sourly remarked, had evidently realised that there was going to be money in these things, and had ensured that true first editions weren't even available to booksellers who opened the packages straight from the printers, in advance of the publication date.

All of which is another reason for not buying books for investment purposes. Not to mention the fact that there is a cottage industry in forging J.K. Rowling's signature and selling the 'signed' books on ebay.

Graze anatomy

Before we leave the weekend's papers, it's worth noting that Saturday's Times had a review of a book translated from the German: Three Bags Full, by Leonie Swann. It's been a bestseller in Germany, and foreign rights have been sold all over the place.

Three Bags Full is a detective story with a twist. The twist being that the murder victim was a shepherd, and the detectives are his sheep. It's set in Ireland.

Well, some very odd things happen in Ireland, and this book sounds as if it might be fun. Then again, it might be all postmodern and lit'ry.

Breakfast with Pandora

At the Breakfast with Pandora blog, DF concentrates mostly on ancient and modern mythology, but he also covers the craft of writing. He recently took time out to disagree with my assessment of To Kill a Mockingbird, and to demonstrate that it genuinely communicates with young people (his post of 31 May). Well, yes, indeed, I don't doubt it. It just didn't do a lot for me.

Kipp Fenn

You won't remember, but back in November last I mentioned Paul K. Lyons, who was running the Diary Junction and other things, and plugging a novel in the process.

Well, he's still at it, and now his novel Kipp Fenn is available online, in full.

Sand Storm offer

As I have said before, many and various are the ways in which writers seek to get themselves into print. For example, the ever-energetic Steve Clackson is trying a new offer to interest publishers in his novel Sand Storm. Steve says that they can have it royalty-free, provided they make a donation, for each copy sold, to the International Red Cross. Meanwhile he is working on the next one.

Death of 'Connie Sachs'

Most people who have read John le Carre's thrillers will know that he worked, at one time, for the UK's intelligences services, MI5 and MI6. Hence it was not surprising that, when he came to write espionage stories, Le Carre based some of his characters on real people.

One of Le Carre's minor characters in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was Connie Sachs, a woman with an encyclopaedic memory for information about even the most obscure corners of Communism. In the 1979 TV adaptation, Connie was played by Beryl Reid.

This character was widely believed to be based on Milicent Bagot, a spinster who was something of a legend in MI5. Well, now Milicent has died, at the age of 99, and the Times has an obituary of her.

Weekend roundup

Tim Coates on libraries

Tim Coates is an increasingly well known critic of the UK public-library system. See, for instance, his 2004 report, Who's in Charge? Well, now he's got a blog, on which he can berate the Mr Grimsdykes of this world for their overall cluelessness, if not downright malice. (Thanks to Maxine at Petrona for the link.)

Poems in the dark

Vincent Spada, whose Auntie lists were mentioned here last week, has a more serious side. He's a poet; and if you go to Poems in the Dark you can find examples. I rather line this one, if he will forgive me for quoting it:

Reality

One always thinks when one is young
that they are a song yet to be sung
Fame and fortune are just a matter of time
No mountain is too high for them to climb

But the years roll by, too quickly, it seems
and, one by one, end all of your dreams
The truth prevails, and you finally see
that what never was can never be
For that is life
Reality.

Vin is looking for a publisher for his poetry and stories, so if you like that example you could go take a look.

More Mitzi

Mitzi Szereto, as has been noted here a few times, is an erotic writer who gives talks and courses on how to do it. Write erotic fiction, that is. And she's in London:
Date: Wednesday 14 June 2006
Time: 6.30 for 7 p.m.
Venue: The Boardroom (3rd Floor, off the music section), Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0EB
Nearest Tube: Tottenham Court Road
Admission: free to members; £3.00 non-members
The event is sponsored by Women in Publishing, a non-profit organisation devoted to promoting the status of women in publishing.

Abebooks 10th anniversary

Abebooks is possibly the most successful online conglomerate for secondhand-book dealers, though I gather, from various mutterings, that not all such dealers are happy with abebooks's current arrangements for dividing the loot. However, if you are looking for something obscure, published in 1923, or even 1973, abebooks is in my view a pretty good place to start.

Currently abebooks.com is celebrating its tenth anniversary in business, an occasion which has led to the invention of certain non-books, such as Henry VIII's Making Marriage Work. Henry made his marriages work, as you will doubtless recall, by chopping the heads off some of his various wives. Drastic, but certainly effective.

Judgement Day for McCrum

Nobody likes McCrum much. I didn't have anything nice to say about his Observer article on Tuesday; Roger Morris wasn't too impressed; and Francis Ellen wrote a lengthy crit as a comment on another post of mine (you can find it here). Bournemouth Runner at the Art of Fiction was confused by it, even after two readings. But at the very similar-sounding Tart of Fiction it got a somewhat warmer reception.

Actually I'm not sure the damn thing deserved all that attention.

Digitally dubious

From time to time we have noted, you and I, that the internet has sometimes been used to catapult people to fame and fortune without their having to go through the tedious process of finding an intermediary, to market their work to the general public.

Thus, for instance, we had the musical group Arctic Monkeys, finding an audience, selling lots of records, and recently getting themselves a US tour, all without benefit of a contract with one of the big-time recording companies. This was a process which deeply impressed Val Landi, for example, since it appeared to offer hope that he, and others, could achieve similar things with fiction.

Well, maybe. As for me, I sat here sighing and thinking to myself that it would not be long before someone took this apparent route to success and -- shall we say -- added a few creative wrinkles to it.

Hence I was not altogether surprised to open my Times on Wednesday and find a headline which said: Singer denies rise to fame was result of internet scam.

Seems that Sandi Thom became famous by webcasting concerts from her basement flat. But now Sandi has had to deny that her success is the result of 'music's most ambitious internet scam.' It's a longish story, but there's a professional publicist involved, and when asked to verify the claimed audience figures he replied that 'his expertise was generating publicity, not technology.'

Now, it seems, 'Chart companies are on the lookout for internet hype. The Modern were removed from the Top 40 when the Official UK Charts Company noticed a pattern of multiple download purchases of their track. The band blamed overzealous fans for ordering too many copies.'

And all like that.

Calamity Physics

While reading the Scotsman, earlier this week, in connection with the Troup/Hanso Corporation business, I chanced across a link to a web site plugging the novel Special Topics in Calamity Physics, by Marisha Pessl.

I don't go much on hi-tek web sites, being a relatively recent convert to broadband, and this one is, I think, the fanciest I've ever come across. I certainly wouldn't advise going there unless you have got broadband, because I think it would take fifteen minutes to get from page to page.

That said, the site is reasonably interesting and inviting, and certainly very clever. It also has a sense of humour. And music.

I was doing quite well with it, and quite looking forward to reading Marisha's novel, until I came across the following endorsement from Jonathan Frantzen: 'Beneath the foam of this exuberant debut is a dark, strong drink.'

Oh dear. That is not a good sign. There I was, thinking that this might be some really clued-up writer who has not only written a skiffy thing but bolted together, with some very clever friends, this elaborate plug for it. Seems not. The book is going to be published by Viking in August. And, given the time and trouble taken over this web site, we are assuredly going to hear a lot more about it before then.

Publishers Weekly have given Special Topics in Calamity Physics a starred review, saying about it (among other things): 'This novel is many things at once—it's a campy, knowing take on the themes that made The Secret History and Prep such massive bestsellers, a wry sendup of most of the Western canon and, most importantly, a sincere and uniquely twisted look at love, coming of age and identity.'

Hmm. This isn't encouraging either. The Secret History I never finished; just couldn't see what the hell everyone was on about. Prep I've never even heard of.

And for a minute there it all looked so promising.

Blogroll

Three additions to the blogroll this week, all of them by Brits. Roger's Plog is by Roger Morris, author of the MNW-published Taking Comfort. Then there's The Art of Fiction, the author of which, as far as I can see, wishes to remain anonymous. And finally the wonderfully titled The Tart of Fiction, who is also a shy lady.

Booksellers deeply hurt and upset

On Monday last we noted the Sunday Times 'revelation' that booksellers were charging publishers for putting their books in prominent piles, including them in 3 for 2 promotions, and all like that. And the booksellers, it seems, considered all this a wicked slur upon their integrity.

Publishing News has the story (link from booktrade.info). And we do actually learn something from it. We learn, for instance, that Nicholas Clee (nor surprisingly) got it right when he said that the booksellers choose which books they think will go, and then approach the publishers to launch a joint effort (hence the term co-op).

We also have Jon Howells, of Ottakar's, wondering aloud why the Sunday Times was 'revisiting such an old story'. It's because they haven't the wit to go out and find a new one, that's why. He also adds: 'The supermarkets don’t get a mention, or Amazon, and the extra discount the publishers give them is far more expensive than paying a few quid for a bookstore promotion.'

And there's more. Worth looking at.

Joe Wikert's view from the top

Finally this morning, here's another top publishing man who has a blog. Joe Wikert is Vice President and Executive Publisher in the Professional/Trade division of John Wiley & Sons. His primary responsibilities are for books for software developers and IT people, so he knows a thing or two about digital. (Link from Publishers Lunch.)

If you scroll down the right-hand side of Joe's blog, you will find that he has highlighted a number of previous posts under various headings (excellent idea -- must try to find time myself). Lots and lots of good stuff here, such as A skeptic's view of authoring; Agents: do you need one?; Self-publishing; and more.

This blog is mainly for non-fiction writers, but is also of general interest.

Ghostwriting for beginners

If I was forty years younger, still in my twenties, and if I was afflicted by that absurd ambition to write books for a living, I hope I would have enough good sense to realise that the only practical way forward would be to become a ghostwriter.

And, since this post is headed Ghostwriting for beginners, let me explain that a ghostwriter is someone who writes a book which has someone else's name on the cover -- usually someone who is already well known to the public. Such books are normally but not exclusively non-fiction.

Ghostwriting goes back a long way, chiefly in terms of autobiography. Many and many a celebrity has written their life story through the simple expedient of spending three days in a hotel with a writer and a tape recorder. The writer then goes off and puts the book together, and the celebrity does the chat shows and the interviews.

In America it is sometimes the case that these books carry a formal acknowledgement of the ghost's work. So Joan Rivers's first-person Still Talking says that it was written 'with Richard Meryman' (who did a terrific job of capturing Joan's voice, by the way). But in the UK we tend not to do that: so Geri Halliwell's If Only does not give any clue that it was actually written by Michael Robotham. After doing some fourteeen high-profile autobiographies, Robotham later wrote a novel, The Suspect, under his own name.

Even in fiction, ghosting goes back a long way. One piece of entirely useless information which sticks in my mind is the fact that stripper Gypsy Rose Lee's The G-string Murders (1941) was actually written for her by Craig Rice. Craig has fans of her own, one of whom has told the story. She also ghosted a novel for the actor George Sanders: Crime on My Hands (1944).

Other ghosted novels from past decades include the Margaret Truman and Elliott Roosevelt mystery series; this phenomenon was fully and usefully discussed in 2002, by Jon Breen, in the Weekly Standard, where the morality of it was questioned.

I've been meaning to write about the process of ghosting for quite some time, and this may not be my last word on the subject. But for today I am prompted to comment by an article in Publishers Weekly (link from Galleycat).

The PW article makes it clear that the contemporary ghosting business is booming, and is here to stay. Unless you are a complete beginner in the book world, you cannot fail to have noticed that the current business is celebrity orientated. The industry lives and dies on publicity, and celebrities love that stuff. If they last any length of time they also get to be damn good at it. The only trouble is, many of them have difficulty signing their name, let alone writing anything longer. Hence the need for ghosts.

We now discover, courtesty of PW, that Madeleine Morel, an English expat based in New York, has set up a literary agency which handles ghost writers and naught else. Between them, Morel's clients have written seven New York Times non-fiction bestsellers in the past two years, three of which have reached number one. They have also produced scores of other books which haven't done quite so well but which have generated a very reasonable income.

Before you rush off to offer your services, you do need to remember that, to be successful, a ghost writer needs a remarkable range of skills.

First, you need to be able to write -- which is not a common accomplishment, though the belief that one has the talent is widespread indeed.

Next, you need to be able to work fast. And I mean fast. MFA princesses who spend the whole morning worrying over where to put a comma need not apply.

Third, you need to be able to adapt to the, shall we say, idiosyncratic ways of the average celebrity.

You need to be able to make some fine judgement calls as to how much you can embellish and expect to get away with, without generating a James Frey-type scandal.

You have to be genuinely and entirely satisfied with taking the money and none of the fame. You have to be willing to sit there calmly while Nicole Richie swears on a stack of bibles that she actually did write every word of her novel.

And finally, when things go wrong, you must expect to be blamed for everything. For example, Roy Keane, then captain of the Manchester United football team, 'wrote' an autobiography in which he described how he got his own back on another player who had earlier displeased him. Keane tackled the man with the deliberate intention of injuring him. In fact, when you watch the film of the incident, you might be forgiven for thinking that Keane intended to put the man into a wheelchair for life.

In the autobiography, Keane described his intentions thus: 'I'd waited almost 180 minutes for Alfie... I'd waited long enough. I fucking hit him hard. The ball was there, I think. Take that, you cunt.'

The autobiographical description of this infamous tackle generated a good deal of comment, and it became the subject of a formal inquiry by the Football Association. At that inquiry, the ghost writer claimed that he had made up all these direct quotations. Keane, for his part, said that he had never read the book. To the FA, however, and to everyone else, the ghosted description of the tackle sounded all too much like the authentic voice of Roy Keane, and they fined him £150,000. In my opinion, Keane was lucky not to face criminal charges.

Before we finish this short review of ghostwriting, for the present at least, let me say that I see no convincing objection to the arrangement, at least in principle, and at least in the field of non-fiction. There are plenty of people who have huge experience in certain fields, and who have a great deal of useful knowledge to impart, but who are either incapable of putting it down on paper themselves, or lack the time. The ghost writer therefore undertakes a valuable service.

The situation is less clear cut in fiction, and there are certainly those who consider it immoral for someone to pose as the author of a book which is not entirely theirs. However, provided the celebrity makes a contribution to the novel (and I emphasise that bit), I myself am in favour of it.

Why? Because I consider that all fiction is purely and simply a source of entertainment -- even the highbrow bits. Fiction, at its best, can make you laugh and make you cry. But that's it. It is not a good source of information on how to fry eggs or run a business. It does not offer a good guide on how to live your life, and those turning to it for philosophical or religious enlightenment are in the wrong place.

If you want an example of how fiction collaboration might work in practice, consider the case of Stella Rimington. Dame Stella, a former head of MI5, has massive experience of world affairs in general and of espionage in particular. What she doesn't have is any experience in writing a novel. Somewhere along the line, after her retirement, she either dreamed up the idea of writing a novel herself, or was talked into it by an agent. This led to the publication of a thriller called At Risk, in which she acknowledged the help of Luke Jennings, who is a thriller writer himself. In interviews Dame Stella described how their collaboration worked.

If you read the linked interview, you will see that Dame Stella claimed that she did the first drafting herself. But I can well imagine that, in other collaborations, the named author's input would mainly take the form of oral information about technical matters, anecdotes about incidents and characters, and general background colour. The celebrity and the professional writer would then agree on a plot outline, and the pro would do the actual writing. And in practice there would be many variations on the basic model.

Given the present state of big-time publishing, with its capitalist aim of generating profits (to which I do not object), such a division of labour seems to me to be logical. And those who consider that the person whose name is on the cover should write every word of the text might bear in mind that any printed book, even the most literary, is already a joint effort.

Writers do not, by and large, do their own cover design or typesetting: certainly not when published by the big firms, anyway; and both of those factors play a part in a book's success. Neither do the named authors drive the van that delivers the book to Waterstone's. So what's the big deal about using a celebrity to front the thing? In today's world it makes perfect sense.

Personally I have no problems with it, and I just wish I were young enough to give it a go. But I dare say there are those who take a different view. All I can say about the moral arguments is that the deception -- if deception there be -- is a very trivial one compared with, for example, the sins of food labelling. Or those adverts outside theatres which say 'Amazing -- Daily Express', when actually what the Express said was 'It is amazing that such a lousy play should ever have been put on.'

One could write a whole book about ghostwriting, and several people have. Type the word into the amazon search facility, and take your pick.

Online there is a variety of information, as suggested above, but for additional stuff you could start with Sarah Weinman's valuable case study from 2004: The Ballad of Michael Gruber.

Should you ever be offered a ghostwriting contract, remember that the small print here is even more vital than usual. But of that, perhaps, more another day.

The Open Society and its Enemies

Yesterday the Literary Saloon announced that the most recent addition to its 'complete review' series is their take on Karl Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. The Lit Saloon comments that, given the current Bush administration's pronounced closed-society tendencies, Popper's (originally two-volume) book is, once again, a highly pertinent text, even for American readers.

I don't know why they stuck that 'even for American readers' on the end. Popper was always a highly relevant book, for Americans, Brits, and anyone else concerned with the freedom of the individual as opposed to the demands of the almighty state.

First published in 1945, Popper's book is chiefly noteworthy, I suppose, for its intellectual demolition of Marxism. For ever after, it was difficuit -- well, actually impossible -- for any Marxist to claim, as they had hitherto, that Marxism was 'scientific'.

The Complete Review provides its own little introductory essay to Popper and his thinking. This essay is mercifully written in plain English -- and what a massive relief that is, when one contemplates the ghastly academic bullshit in which it might have been couched. Five stars to whoever wrote it.

The essay makes a number of very interesting points, one of them being that Marx's heart was in the right place. Given the times in which he lived, he was quite right to highlight the miserable condition of the working classes. And, I may add, it was really not surprising that he should take the view that revolution inevitable.

Here's the conclusion of the Complete Review's essay:

In a world where religious fundamentalism again manages to move the masses (and leads far too many to do the outrageous), and powerful democratic states like the United States move, under the jr. Bush administration, to limit the rights and voices of individuals, while arguing that they benevolently (yet untransparently) are working towards the greater good, The Open Society and its Enemies remains an essential work. And it's also an engaging and accessible read.

Highly recommended.

Well, the Complete Review essay is certainly recommended. Whether you feel strong enough to tackle Popper himself is up to you. I read him as a young man and was no doubt all the better for it.