Authors Electric

I am nothing if not modest. In fact, modesty is the greatest amongst my many talents. I lay claim to an average level of proficiency in most physical pursuits, with the exception of gymnastics, ice-skating and throwing a ball, all of which I'm pretty crap at. But I can twirl several martial arts weapons with a worrying degree of almost efficiency. When it comes to tastes in music, I like a bit of everything – the latest tunes on the pop transistor radio station, classical pieces by people in suits, bluegrass by folks with no teeth, heavy rock by hairy ones. Stick a label on it and I've probably got examples in my music collection. I myself can play fairly averagely well on several musical instruments – guitar, piano, trumpet, anything that plucks or blows. Regarding TV, films – I'll watch Downton Abbey , Dr Who , Lillehammer , The Middle , almost anything. Reading – contemporary fiction, classics, crime, thrillers, science fiction, misery lit, I lap it all up. Not a big f...

          A few weeks ago I was giving a two hour talk in a local library on the wonders of e-publishing.           'So, there's no quality control?' one of the still-conscious attendees asked.           'That's right. Some restrictions on cover and content, but even those might not prevent initial publishing,' I said.           Another person woke, caught the thread of conversation and asked, 'How about title and author name? Any copyright or that sort of thing?'           'No. You can't copyright a title and you can call yourself whatever you want, within reason. If you use J.K. Rowling you might get into trouble. Let's take a look.'           I opened the Kindle Direct Publishing web page and proceeded to create ...