Why I’m a bit hacked off

It had to happen some time – the backlash against the self-publishing revolution. For the first time ever, ordinary Joes (like me) have had the chance to publish their work for free and let the world read their books and decide if they like them as an author. For me personally, I knew self publishing was never going to make me rich, but I write because I like telling stories, and I enjoy hearing other people’s interpretations of my weird thoughts. Hey! I even laughed at my 1 star review on Amazon for Summerset. It’s all feedback and I welcome it.

I guess if I was a punk, back in the day, I’d be the one in the band who always had their eye on the main prize. I’d moan about record companies and not wanting to do deals with the devil etc, but as soon as EMI came knocking with £25k I would have bit their hand off. For me, self-publishing has been a learning curve and I always knew, one day I would end up going down the traditional route and trying for an agent and ‘proper’ publisher. It saddens me that while I self-pub, I’ll never have the joy of walking into my local Asda or Waterstones or wherever and seeing my paperback book on the shelf. My sales are through e-books, and while this is a fantastically expanding market (up until now), I grew up reading paperbacks and long to see my own, readily available for anyone to buy. But companies like Lulu who print paperbacks charge so much it’s not in shops’ interest to buy them in and risk them not selling.

And this where I get hacked off. The front of The Daily Mail one day last week had one of their usual hysteria stories about children being in danger from the ‘disgusting’ self-published books for sale on the WH Smith site. As I know from experience, books that are published via sites like Amazon and Smashwords are not vetted for content; they’re vetted for formatting errors. I myself have had to turn the adult filter on whenever I go onto the Smashwords site because some of the book titles that come up are quite horrific (or cringeworthy – I’m not sure which), but I was horrified when I read that WH Smith (via Kobo) are now withdrawing all self-pubbed books until these books about paedophilia, incest or rape are withdrawn.

Now, am I being naïve, but hasn’t writing – since the Chatterley affair – been the last bastion of free speech? Isn’t Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert a paedophile – lusting after Lolita (who in the book is 12 years old)? Aren’t Angels and Insects and Bouquet of Barbed Wire both about incest? And there are not many Catherine Cookson books that don’t feature a rape?  Surely wouldn’t it be a better exercise to go after those people writing books that glamorize paedophilia rather than punishing people like myself and hundreds and thousands of others who are writing books about romance or wizards or vampires or teach yourself Esperanto or sexy billionaires who want sex slaves.....hang on...

 

Isn’t it ironic that the biggest selling British book of all time is pornographic? It’s also ironic that I was offended by Fifty Shades of Grey. Whilst Christian Psycho never raped Ana in the two hundred or so pages I managed to read; some of it was pretty near the knuckle. One of the things that offended me the most was when Christian - without checking her medical history – gets Ana on the pill (a potentially fatal drug if not monitored properly). As I always say, if your friend started dating someone like Christian Grey, you would tell her to get the hell out of there.

The conspiracy theorist in me wonders if this hoohah is down to the traditional publishers kicking off because they’re losing sales to the self-pubbed authors. Someone looking for a bit of smut is more likely to pay 99p for a self-pubbed book than £3.99 for something published by a traditional publisher.  I knew the time would come when the traditional publishers started putting pressure on booksellers to stop selling self-published books. Authors will always want to be heard and if they can find no audience from self-publishing, they will be forced to go back to begging agents for representation and appeasing publishers that always have one eye on the market – looking for the next bestseller, rather than new talent.

I have loved my experience of being a self-published author and will carry on doing so until I can find the right agent, and it’s not fair on me or my readers to be denied my books because booksellers have given in to media hysteria. It seems ridiculous that in any bookshop or  supermarket, someone browsing a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey, could accidentally put it down next to a Jacqueline Wilson or Roald Dahl, and a child could pick it up. But honestly, how many children have access to online bookstores? Surely their parents have to make the purchases for them if they have Kindles or Kobos? And adults should be wise enough to spot one of these horrible books and just not click ‘buy’.

And before anyone just thinks I’m being hysterical and whinging. Take a look at what happened to independent record companies during the 1990s. Seeing they were making big profits, especially at the high of Britpop, big companies bought them all up, so the bestselling acts would be on their rosters instead. It happened with music and now it’s happening in publishing, and I’m quite glad that my punk ethics are dubious and I’ve always had an eye on being a sell-out.

Bring Back the Bonkbuster!

Anyone who knows me knows I absolutely loathed Fifty Shades of Grey. It’s always awkward when you’re a writer and you admit to people you hate FSoG; you get that pitying smile and the knowing nod that says ‘you’re jealous aren’t you?’ I can honestly say I am not jealous of EL James (well, maybe her bank balance). It just shocks me that something so badly written, repetitive and quite frankly disturbing in places (I won’t go into the tampon episode) could become such a huge-selling novel. Women would strut around town this summer with it tucked under their arm like it was some sort of fashion accessory like a Chihuahua in a Gucci bag and it’s quite interesting to discover that it’s the only novel some women have read. Should I be glad that it’s got them into reading? Maybe. But I could say the same about the autobiography of someone from The Only Way is Essex (I have read one of those and it was better than FSoG!!). I’ve read a couple of Harry Potter books and I think JKR is a genius. I read the Da Vinci Code and whilst the ‘American saves the day as usual’ sentiment sticks in my throat, it was a good romp and I feel no resentment that it became a huge seller. What disturbs me most about FSoG is that the Ana/Christian relationship is verging on abusive and it worries me that in real life men could get confused about boundaries and what women want.

Anyway, enough free publicity for that book. Back to me! I have been on the dole for several months now after being made redundant and I have found myself whiling away many an hour watching, on Youtube, uploads of those glossy ‘rags to riches’ 1980s mini series, like Lace, We’ll Take Manhattan and Lucky Chances. Being on my uppers makes me yearn to know of people who make it from the gutter to unbelievable riches. All fantasy, but it gives me hope. For years now, literature has been dominated by misery-lit – woeful tales of abused children, battered wives and gypsy boys. This all coincided with a healthy economy, rising house-prices and unemployment of under one million. Well, things have changed, we’re living in tough times, money isn’t in abundance, so isn’t it time that we went back to having some fun and enjoying a bit of fantasy (that doesn’t involve handcuffs, love eggs and gray pants)? I want a return to the bonkbuster, the books that populated my youth in the 80s by people like Shirley Conran, Jackie Collins, Judith Krantz and Danielle Steel. I want to read about women who are down on their luck and through hard work and a smattering of good fortune, they become rich and powerful - bedding and marrying handsome men along the way. If you’re on the dole or in a poorly paid job, surely paying a couple of quid (dollars) for a 400 page book about a girl who goes from a Soho hostess to one of the most powerful businesswomen in the world, has surely got to be more appealing than reading about a child who was locked in a cupboard for six years before being found by a kindly social worker?

So, I am making it my mission for 2013 to be my year. 2012 has been quite frankly the most horrid year I’ve had in a long time. I never thought one of my highpoints would be the Olympics, but there you go. Those few weeks in the summer gave me light relief from worrying about money, crippling toothache and trying to find a job. But didn’t we all love the Olympics because it showed people reaping the rewards for years of hard work? It gave us all hope. I am determined to make 2013 the year of fun, and that’s why I’m busy writing and editing The Exciting Life, my latest free novella and its follow up (name to be revealed). A continuation of the Never Forget saga and the start of many novels to come, telling the story of a rich and dysfunctional family. I’d like to think this time next year I would be writing a blog telling you how well my books have done, but even if I don’t, I’ll sure have fun writing them.

Happy New Year everyone and I hope 2013 brings all that you wish for.

The thoughts of Mrs Scrooge

And so the year ends, and what a year it has been for me in my writing career (I use that word very loosely). I have joined the e-book revolution, publishing my own books, and even buying a Kindle, and I have to say I've read more in the 4 weeks I've had my Kindle than I've done in a long time. I leave 2012 with a thousand or so people who know my name who did not know it this time last year, but alas that does not mean I can afford a mammoth turkey and all the trimmings because most of those downloads have been freebies. But I have learnt some valuable lessons which will be shaping how I do things in 2012, and these are;

1. Don't believe the hype about 'Kindle Millionaires'.

I think Santa Clause is more genuine than the likes of Amanda Hocking and her pals who 'without any effort' have sold millions of Kindle books. Think about it. How are you going to sell millions of books if no-one knows your name? Readers are unreliable, we all are. We download books, we start them, we discard them, promising ourselves we'll go back, then life gets in the way and you've forgotten about it. But miraculously, all the people who bought Ms Hocking's books, have faithfully finished them, shared them with friends who've also spread the word blah blah blah. I'm sorry to be cynical but I suspect Ms Hocking and her cohorts have agents guiding them in the right direction, thinking up clever marketing plans and making the world think they're more popular than they actually are and it starts a snowball effect. It's been going on in the music industry for years, 'indie' bands who rocket to the top of the chart, who at first seem cool and self-guided but in reality it turns out they are backed by a massive major label who have carefully orchestrated their image and they're actually about as indie as Take That. Without doubt, I have certainly sold more e-books that I ever had hard copies, but my only chance of ever becoming a millionaire is by finding an agent and publisher who will lavish thousands of pounds worth of marketing on me. Which brings me onto;

2. Just because an agent reads your whole manuscript, it doesn't mean they're going to like it.

I was so excited when an agent (I'm not naming names) twice requested my new novel 'Never Forget' (out April 2012 folks), firstly for one of her readers to puruse and secondly for the lady herself. I spent a couple of months boring my friends, without getting carried away with myself, secretly planning what I would do with an advance, should I get one. Only for her to send me an email saying she wouldn't be taking it on because apparently the dialogue wasn't authentic. It's gone to another agent who has kindly ignored me completely, so I've given up the ghost and I'm going to publish it myself. If you're wondering what it's about, it's about two women who meet on the Titanic as it's sinking, and one steals the other's baby and keeps him, bringing him up as her own, and the other woman sets about trying to get her son back.

3. Don't rely on Twitter

As an indie author you're told to use social networking to promote your work, and I say that that's a complete load of nonsense. Like in point 1, you need a band of loyal followers who will retweet your tweets and share your information with their followers and so on and so forth. This is no disrespect to any of my author friends on Twitter, but not one of them have ever retweeted anything about one of my books, except for the writer Mhairi Simpson (@AMhairiSimpson) who kindly retweeted a tweet I did about my UK book store. Other than that, nothing. As usual, the traditional pubbed authors all stick together, promoting each other and ignoring those of us who need a helping hand. My advice is use Twitter by all means, but don't expect it to make you famous, you still need to actually persuade people to read your books and I've yet to figure that one out (as a way of making money anyway).

So as you can see 2011 hasn't been entirely successful for me, there have been a lot of ups and downs and even now, I am toying with the idea of giving up writing. So much rejection does make you question your abilities, then again, I did do my birth chart the other day and it did say that because my house is in something or the other, I am likely to acheive success posthumously. So that's it, I'm going to become famous when I'm dead. Typical!!

Anyway, on that light note. I'd like to wish everyone a lovely Christmas and I hope for all my struggling author friends, 2012 brings them success. As soon as I discover the secret to being discovered, I will share it with you.

It'ssssss Christmasssssssssssssssss