Authors Electric

Standard advice for newbie writers seems to always be never pay to play . Generally speaking, that’s true – twenty years ago or so, you could confidently say that you should never, ever pay anyone to publish your books, that money always flows to the author and never in the other direction.  These days, it’s still good advice – although there are occasions when it’s ok for an author to put his hand in his pocket. I’m not here to discuss vanity or even ‘hybrid’ publishing, and for the new writer just getting to grips with it all, I’ll only say to do your homework. Google. Look at reviews. Check out ALLI  and Writers Beware before you part with a penny. And yes, it always has been perfectly ok to buy in editing and design skills if you don’t have them yourself. I’m a writer, not a designer, and while I can look at a bad cover and have an idea what doesn’t work and why, I couldn’t tell you what to do to fix it. My cover designer, on the other hand, can take my vague suggestions...

It's 3 years now since the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) first stormed the closed doors of the London Book Fair and since then the dust has begun to settle.  Although there still seems to be some bewilderment at the change, authors are now firmly a part of one of the biggest book events in Europe.  It seems incredible that it was ever otherwise.  How can you have books without authors? It's as though the mainstream publishing industry has got into the habit of regarding us at best as inconvenient amateurs, at worst just the chicken that lays the egg. Just one of the halls at Olympia. This year, for the first time, I was able to go along and I had the most incredible experience.  Held at Olympia, the Fair is absolutely vast.  So big that I got lost on a regular basis, despite having a map, and on Day One I had three attempts to find the right exit before being escorted out by a burly bloke in a Book Fair T-shirt.  All the major publishers (an...