Authors Electric

I'm now going to admit something. I used to be a publishing snob. By this I mean I used to believe if you couldn't get a publishing deal then there must be something wrong with your writing. My reasoning behind this was: One: When I sent in my first non-fiction book proposal it was accepted. When I sent in my first fiction title (a picture book) although the publisher didn't take it I was asked to write something else for them. So if I could achieve this then surely anyone else who could write would be offered a book deal. Two: I'd read some self-published work and it was awful. There were either huge holes in the plot, I didn't bond with the characters, there was spelling, grammatical errors etc. etc. This obviously backed up my first reason for my belief. However as time went on my views changed. I began to realise there are a hundred and one reasons why a publisher will turn down a book and a large percentage of the reasons have nothing to d...

The short list for the BBC National Short Story Award has just been announced and it's a shocker!  There are no men on it... ( David Gilmour take note)  At £15,000 this is one of the most valuable prizes in literature, and it emphasises the short story's status as a literary art form.  The high value we place on the short story is a big contrast with its lack of appeal as a commercial publishing prospect.  Fewer and fewer publishers are accepting them and then only as a gesture towards their best-selling authors.  Newspaper and magazine outlets have also dwindled. But, readers like short stories and writers like writing them.  The result is a flourishing Indie-publishing scene for short fiction - not just in book form, but also in E-zines and blogs and Facebook groups.  People are reading Flash fiction on their mobile phones and downloading stories onto their I-pads from sites where you can read any kind of fiction from erotic to murderous, ...

            The trouble with most academics is that they're all subtext in bed:  they'd rather read between the lines than ride between the sheets.  But we in EbookLandia are lucky to have nobler woes on our minds: 1)      The word as art is dying fast.  All books will be written by experts one day, published by experts at making them read as if they'd been expertly written. 2)      Nothing brings out the ax murderer in an agent's heart more quickly than an original talent.             We come here for the freedom to practice our art without having to bow to the Combine.  But survival here too can be bloody as hell.  And those most likely to succeed are those who somehow learn to mine Transatlantic Gold.  The gold is so rich that a handful of nuggets can help gild our odds on both sides of The Pond....