Authors Electric

Illustration from 'Alice and Sparkle' by... ??? Who   wrote that latest celebrity title piled high in every bookshop? And why does it matter? In his article 'Star Power' ( The Author,  spring 2023), Irish writer and illustrator Oisin McGann warns that celebrity books are in danger of taking over children's fiction. Experienced authors like him are often employed to ghostwrite such books, or at best collaborate with the celebrity, and yet their contribution is sometimes not even acknowledged; they simply get paid a fee for their work. You might think this is fine. Both authors - celebrity and ghostwriter - get paid. The celebrity gets their name featured prominently on the cover, the publisher gets a book they can sell easily, bookshops are delighted since they get commission on every sale, and the young reader gets a decent enough book for their money. Everyone is happy, everyone wins. But where is this heading? I'm old enough to remember when children's boo...

Don't get excited about the title, it's pure clickbait, I've not met an agent to discuss my work but rather I’ve just returned from a “meet the agent” event at the local uni. Although my friend did make me sit on the front row with her and it felt very up close and personal, there were probably a hundred other people sat behind us. The talk was informative but the leaflet handed out was copied from the website and I’d done my homework and already looked up the agent and her agency. Doing your homework and researching where to send a manuscript is just one of the pieces of advice she gave us. In fact much of what she said I would consider common sense - maybe I’ve just heard it all before – write, edit, research, query. Only I’ve never really got much further than the writing bit – at least as far as a longer piece of writing is concerned. Perhaps I just get bored too quickly, or I expect to be miraculously found on blogger and offered a lucrative book deal, because ...

  As part of my day job, I was recently on a panel about improving diversity and during a break I was chatting with one of the delegates who mentioned writing. Of course, my ears pricked up at this, and we ended up having a chat about books in general. She asked if I’d seen the latest spat on Twitter about diversity on books. Now, I’m not really a follower of any social media – I have a FaceBook page that I suspect needs the cobwebs blowing off, and a Twitter account that I might glance at once or twice a month – as I’ve never really understand it. I know I should engage with it more, especially from a marketing perspective, but I always manage to find something better to do. (The garden won’t weed itself.) Still, this piqued my interest enough to go have a look, so that evening I logged into Twitter and did a wee search. Sure enough, there was a series of tweets along a similar theme. Almost all of them started with a photograph of a Waterstones store window, captioned with some v...

  ‘Compassionate, warm, moving and so VERY funny.’ ‘This is properly brilliant. The pages fly by and I just can’t stop smiling.’ ‘A charming, clever, debut.’ No, these aren’t mine. Not written by me, and sadly not written about my books either. I am in the process of getting people to endorse my soon to be published novel. It involves asking people very nicely to read a PDF manuscript, only partially edited, and give me their views on it. In a line or two. Words that they won’t mind being attributed to them and printed within the front cover of said book. I find the whole business uncomfortable, and positively terrifying. Especially as they are among the few people to have actually read the thing. What if they don’t like it, and cannot in all good conscience recommend it? It’s a possibility after all. Thankfully, the people I have approached have so far been generous and kind. I am already so encouraged to be in receipt of some lovely words of endorsement for The Pilgrim . Th...

I've been a blogger for a dozen years now--I started blogging in 2008, as a daily writing practice. Daily (w)rite has grown since then--from the initial days of crickets to the more than thirty thousand followers today. That sounds like a half-decent number, but engagement is always much lower than the number of followers. It took years of blogging to build the small community I have today-- of all my followers, I possibly have about 200 bloggers who I regularly/ semi-regularly interact with on the blog and over social media. Others drop by less often, and my interactions with them is sporadic at best. The best thing about blogging was the amount of information exchange. The guidance on book marketing and the writing life has also been invaluable. I follow blogs by other writers and publishing professionals, and the generosity of their sharing has made it possible for me to carve out a path for myself as best as I could, learning from others' mistakes, and hopefully, ...

It seems professional authors are an increasingly endangered species these days. The latest ALCS survey shows average incomes down by 42% in real terms since the first ALCS earnings survey in 2005. A writing income is never steady, which means these surveys can only provide a snapshot of authors' earnings, and for that reason I tend not to do them. It's like betting on the horses... you lose a bit, then you lose a bit more, and - goddammit - you lose again , and then you might win big-time, which makes it all worthwhile. Or I imagine it does. I don't squander my royalties on the horses these days (I stopped after my big win at Chepstow on a 40-1 long shot at £1 each way - no point tempting fate.) Assuming you're all back by now from that rather depressing earnings survey, let's forget about money for a few paragraphs, shall we? Let's pretend we are all living in Elfland, or whatever fantasy world takes your fancy, where all authors - no matter how humble o...

Yes, I know I'm about five years behind everyone else, but I've finally discovered the most addictive fantasy series to hit our screens this century - namely Game of Thrones , based on George R R Martin's series of best-selling fantasy novels "A Song of Ice and Fire". Briefly, for those of you who haven't come across this series yet, there is a scary looking THRONE made from the swords of enemies of the state, which powerful families known as HOUSES are fighting tooth and nail for the privilege of sitting on to become supreme ruler of a fantasy kingdom named WESTEROS. Needless to say, those who succeed don't tend to stay sitting there very long, which makes me wonder why they are all fighting so hard to sit there in the first place? Though I must admit the throne room with its stained glass windows is magnificent, and there must be a certain satisfaction in being able to order your fiercest rivals' heads sliced from their bodies so you can add t...

In some ways, we should be celebrating the rising pension age here in the UK. After all, it's official recognition that people over 65, including women, are still active and healthy enough to be working and earning a living. True, I can't quite imagine myself in my late sixties doing my old job of getting up at 6am, mucking out five stables and riding three racehorses each morning in all weathers, occasionally falling off them, cycling home for lunch and then back again to groom, feed and settle 'my' horses for the night, 13 days every fortnight, with maybe the 14th day spent travelling to some distant racecourse for overnight racing. I was in my thirties when I did that job, and already older than most of the other stable staff at the time. But writing books, managing various online activities from the comfort of my own sofa/bed/kitchen table, and the occasional excitement of a book signing tour with not too much danger of getting dumped in a hedge on a foggy winter...