World Book Day, 2020

The more eagle-eyed among CAP’s three regular readers will have noticed that I’ve recently changed the format of this blog ever-so-slightly. It’s not a particularly radical move; it simply involved moving the book covers (pictured left) up the blog from where they were previously buried away. The object of the exercise is to give people the opportunity, if they’re so inclined, and haven’t done so already, to buy one of my books – if you click on any of the pics, you’ll find yourself in the wunnerful world of Amazon.com, where copies of all three books can be found for no more than a dollar or so.
  Obviously, if you’re buying a copy of EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, say, for a dollar, my return on your investment is going to be minimal, to say the least. But making money isn’t the point. The idea is simply to get the stories to the maximum number of people possible, because – and this is something that has been exercising me lately – the whole point of writing a story is that it’s read. Certainly, there follows from that issues of ego, self-esteem, remuneration both financial and emotional, etc., but fundamentally, any and every story is written first and foremost to be read, regardless of how it is published or in what format it comes.
  Being ludicrously disorganised, I can’t claim that I reformatted the blog in anticipation of World Book Day; but while I was doing so, it occurred to me the extent to which, in the seven short years since I published EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, the publishing world has changed dramatically. EIGHTBALL was published in an entirely conventional manner, being pitched by an agent to a publisher, who paid an advance for the privilege of publishing it, and lo!, out it came on a shelf, as if by magic. THE BIG O, by way of contrast, was co-published with Hag’s Head a few years later, the co-publishing aspect involving me paying half the costs of getting the book to the shelf, and claiming half the profits (which, I should say, provided a return of roughly 500% on my initial investment). The third book, CRIME ALWAYS PAYS, was last year self-published as an e-book, an option virtually unimaginable to all but the most romantic idealists when EIGHTBALL BOOGIE first came out.
  So here’s the Big Q on this World Book Day, 2010: given the way the industry has changed so quickly in such a short space of time, how are things likely to look in 2020? What will have changed? What will remain in place? What in the current model of publishing is indispensable? What is utterly useless? Will books even resemble the books on your shelf right now?
  The floor is open, people …

  In other news, Variety is reporting that Robert De Niro has signed on to star opposite Bradley Cooper in the movie of Alan Glynn’s THE DARK FIELDS. Alan? I’ll be around later on for my tincture of Pimms …

“No, I’m Spartacus.”

Many thanks to all who responded, publicly or privately, to last week’s post on the idea of a writers’ co-op. Most if not all writers who contributed gave it a thumbs-up, whereas those in the publishing industry were far more negative, and more likely to declare the concept simply another publishing company. Which may well be the case, given that I was only spitballing, and that my research on the subject hovers perilously close to nil. Still, if the very idea of writers banding together to put books on shelves (electronic or otherwise) without recourse to the traditional publishing model evokes a near uniform disapproval from the establishment, you’d have to believe you’re on to something they consider to be at least potentially dangerous.
  The big issues appear to be marketing and distribution, the presumption here being that the writers involved are good enough to be published traditionally, but can’t or won’t go the traditional route for a variety of reasons, the commercial potential (or lack of same) of their books being the main stumbling block. Editorial input (or lack of same) is also mooted as a potential problem, although for my own part, I can only say that the two novels I’ve had published traditionally, or semi-traditionally, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE and THE BIG O, had minimal editorial input. Aha, says you, but we’ve never heard of your books, so maybe you should have insisted on more editorial input. Perhaps that’s true, although I’d argue that both books got pretty decent reviews (see below, left-hand side), and that the stumbling block was a lack of joined-up thinking in terms of marketing and distribution.
  Rigorous proofreading and / or copy editing is also required, of course, but such can be achieved by sending the m/s out to a number of the co-op writers, a process that would also embrace editorial input. If three or four writers proof and edit my m/s this time out, say, then I’ll be one of three or four writers who proof and edit another writer’s m/s next month, etc.
  Who is financing the actual publication costs? That’ll be the writer whose book it is, and who decides the extent of the print-run, etc. Minimal research notwithstanding, it seems that €1,500 would be sufficient to go the POD route, while e-publishing alone is a fraction of that cost. Distribution is taken care of by the POD company, or by Amazon. Marketing is done by the co-op writers’ maximising their own on-line resources, and cross-pollinating said resources to create a word-of-mouth buzz.
  Certainly, there’ll be few books, if any, published in this fashion that will achieve NYT bestseller status; but that’s hardly the point. What is the point? That there are good writers out there ill-served by the current model of publishing, and good readers too, for that matter; and that there are books being written that may not have the commercial appeal to justify a large publisher taking a risk on them, given their economies of scale, but which may very well appeal to 50 or a 100 or even a thousand readers.
  The question for writers, in the theoretical co-op model, is whether they have the courage of their convictions, and are prepared to put their money where their mouth is, and take a financial hit to see their books reach readers. That remains to be seen, especially as €1,500 or its equivalent is no small pile of cash to most writers scrabbling around the base of the pyramid.
  Personally, I have no great desire to take on the publishing industry; I’d be happy as a pig in the proverbial if someone was to pay me a decent wage for writing good books, and I’d imagine most writers, even those fired up to evangelical heights by the potential of the new technologies, would be the same. But even if that were to happen, that still leaves us with an elephant in the room: that the current model of publishing is being outpaced by technological developments, much in the same way as the monks who wrote with quill on vellum were outstripped by the printing press, as Dan Agin points out over at the Huffington Post. The gist of his piece runs thusly:

“The subtext of the story is the impact of technology on culture and commerce, and the unfailing collapse of any industry that allows itself to be blinded by sloth, short term greed, and general mediocrity of attitudes.
  “Anyone with an imagination about the future of technology and commerce knows that the printed book on paper is already on its way to obsolescence. The wrangling and beefing and whining about prices and protecting demand for printed books by publishing executives is both amusing and tragic.”

  For the full piece, clickety-click here …

For Those About To Write, We Salute You

Over at the Guardian blog, AL Kennedy has a word or two of advice for her creative writing students – and wannabe writers of all hues, your humble correspondent included – during the course of which she hammers quite a number of nails just above the cuticle. To wit:

“They want to write, they have application and vigour, they’ve all come on since I read them last and yet ... it would be unfair not to remind them of how horrible their futures may become. If they’re unsuccessful, they’ll be clattering through a global Depression with a skill no one requires, a writing demon gnawing at their spine to be expressed and a delicately-nurtured sensitivity that will only make their predicaments seem worse – and yet somehow of no interest to anyone else. If they’re successful, they still may not make a living, will travel more than a drug mule, may be so emotionally preoccupied that they fail to notice entire relationships, will have to deal with media demands no sane person would want to understand and may well wear far too much black …
  “Naturally, I don’t believe anyone will be deterred by my mad-eyed rantings. Once somebody wants to write it’s almost impossible to stop them without also killing them to some significant degree … And if you think you might actually be doing some good, amusing someone other than yourself – making them less lonely, more alive, more informed – well, you’re just not going to chuck that over in favour of crafting, long walks and a quiet life. Hence the number of regimes and leaders who have discovered that killing writers until they are entirely dead is a highly effective method of slowing literary output. And may angels and ministers of grace preserve the students and indeed myself from any shades of that. We may feel hard done by, but we’re not doing that badly – for individuals trapped in a society intent upon eating its own tongue.”

  With two books published, a sequel to the second novel declined, and a fourth novel currently under consideration – which is a lot like sending your child along to an audition for Perverts on Ice – I’m about half-a-rung up from the average creative writing student. Which is pretty close to the floor, on a ladder half-inched from the Seven Dwarves.
  Will I stop writing? Well, right now I’m getting up at 5.30 am to get 90 minutes worth of genius prose written, this so my head doesn’t explode during the rest of the day while I rush about trying to fend off the Hydra-headed monster of Recession. At this point I so badly need the escapism that I’m about 30,000 words into a story set on the south coast of Crete, tentatively working-titled THE GODMAN OF LOUTRO, during the course of which the hero – who is, in fact, your humble correspondent – goes to Crete to research a novel and becomes said godman. About five thousand words ago, accepting the reality that there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell of the story ever being published, I decided to give the hero – YHC – amnesia, just so he can forget a few salient details, the most relevant one being how dire are the straits in which the publishing industry finds itself, so that YHC can continue scuffling about the Cretan mountains in search of a story, despite the fact that there’s a good chance it will never be published.
  In effect, I’m reduced to writing a novel about the fact that the novel I’m writing will never see the light of day.
  Will I stop writing it? Can I stop writing it? And what would it matter in the grand scheme of things if the answer to both questions was yes?
  At 5.30 am, “crafting, long walks and a quiet life” – perhaps even an extra 45 minutes of comatose oblivion – is a very tempting alternative to what amounts to shouting down a well. I’ll keep you posted.

“This Business Was Never Meant To Sustain Limousines”

Two interesting pieces for your perusal today, folks, which appear to send mixed messages but actually dovetail depressingly well. First, the Wall Street Journal on why publishers can’t afford to break out of the ‘blockbuster trap’:

When a publisher spends an inordinate amount on an acquisition, it will do everything in its power to make that project a market success. Most importantly, this means supporting the book with higher-than-average marketing, advertising and distribution support … With such high stakes and money tied up in a few big projects in the pipeline, the need to score big with a next project becomes more pressing, and the process repeats itself. The result is a spiral of ever-increasing bets on the most promising concepts, creating a “blockbuster trap.”

  And then there’s the New York Times on ‘the new austerity rippling through the industry’. To wit:

Amid a relentless string of layoffs and pay-freeze announcements, book publishers are clamping down on some of the business’s most glittery and cozy traditions. Austerity measures are rippling throughout the industry as it confronts the worst retailing landscape in memory. “This business was never meant to sustain limousines,” said Amanda Urban, a literary agent who represents Cormac McCarthy and Toni Morrison, among other authors …
  For authors it means the prospect of smaller advances and fewer books being acquired.

And The Award For ‘Most Endearing Blind Optimism’ Goes To … Salon.com!

“The conventional wisdom in publishing holds that tough economic times are good for books, because books provide more hours of entertainment per dollar, more life-enhancing education and more grist for post-materialistic soul-searching than any other form of purchasable culture …
  “There’s no doubt that escapism pays, especially when there’s plenty to escape from, but great books continue to be published and read, and many of these also provide welcome respite for jittery readers. Remember what it was like to slow down, take the phone off the hook and immerse yourself in a story, true or invented, that made the world around you disappear for hours on end? Or to give yourself the time to understand some important aspect of this world in a deeper and more comprehensive way than any newspaper or magazine can offer?”

  For the rest, clickety-click here …