Authors Electric

It's been a good bit since I went on a diatribe about dissing the self- and independently-published writer. Almost four years, in fact . I thought I had put it all behind me. I thought, naively, that I had won. I really did. I had hung up my shootin' irons, beaten my sword into a ploughshare, and turned my spear into a pruning hook. I was all ready to sip tea on my porch and reminisce with the young'uns about the ol' days fightin' the good fight for writer equality. Then I saw a social media post from a writer I respect (who shall remain nameless, partly to protect his privacy and  partly because he's a local poet, so you wouldn't know him anyway) that advised his followers not to take writing advice from self-published authors who think high word counts equal quality writing. I'd share a screen shot, but I can't find it now. It has either been edited, deleted, or is buried so far down his news feed that it finally hit China. It's just...

Almost three years ago, I wrote a post on when self-publishing might be inappropriate . In it, I discussed a recent project, a critical edition of H. P. Lovecraft's work, that had been passed over for publication by a university press and my reasons for not self-publishing it. Since that post, two of my fiction works, Guns of the Waste Land I & II , have been picked up by traditional (though small and independent) publishers and been released professionally. My collection of short stories remains self-published but continues to receive good reviews. But for the longest time, my Lovecraft book has remained in acceptance limbo. That is, until last year, when McFarland accepted my manuscript for publication. Yesterday, as I was surfing the digital aisles of Amazon, I stumbled across this offering . It was the first I have heard of an actual publication date and a nice start to my birthday weekend. It's been a long journey to get this book to publication, but I have l...

As prickly as William? A little while ago, I was asked to speak to a group of readers. One of them had spent many years as a professional editor with one of the big, prestigious publishing corporations. All of them had read the Physic Garden and were interested in talking about it and asking questions. I’ve done plenty of these sessions and you don’t expect everyone to like the book. Some of the questions can be challenging, so you have to be able to think on your feet. All of which is a good thing. But on this occasion something happened that brought me up short. ‘How on earth,’ said this ex-editor personage, ‘Did you manage to write in the first person voice of somebody so unlikeable ?’ There was one of those dismayed silences in the group, with everyone trying not to catch my eye. An uneasy stirring. A little murmur of protest. I’ll admit I was gobsmacked. It wasn’t that she was questioning my writing abilities. Not really. She was asking me how I could possibly have writ...

Jam tomorrow. Yum . Judging by the response, last month’s post urging caution before going all out to ‘find an agent’ struck a chord with a lot of writers. A number of people told me they felt that constantly responding to the advice of others had actually hampered them in their careers. Which is not to say that we don’t need good advice, because we do. The problem lies in judging when the advice is genuinely in the interests of you and your work, and when it’s given in order to make your project fit some other agenda, for reasons that may have nothing to do with the quality of the writing or with your own interests and obsessions. With the benefit of hindsight many people can see how rewriting the same novel countless times or trying to write an imitation of the current best seller on the promise of some hypothetical jam tomorrow has turned out to be a fruitless (or should that be jam-free?) exercise. To be fair, there used to be few other options. We were tied into the submissi...

As I packed for the move to Seattle this fall, I made decent progress on all but one front: a, mountain of personal papers. Imagine 3000-5000 pages--everything from old love letters to leases, poems, resumes, professional correspondence, contracts, published articles, ancient receipts...Okay, now imagine all of that thrown into a barrel with 600 rejection letters dating back 20 years--picture all of this shaken wildly, then removed in handfuls and tossed pell-mell into boxes. I faced something like that. And I suppose I could blame it on a half-dozen cross-country moves...or on a crushing divorce. But I think the truer answer may lie in the staggering number of rejections received over the course of two decades (after I'd published four novels preceded by twenty more years of rejection. Or to put that another way: twenty plus twenty years of failure with five years of success in between). I believe I numbed myself in ways I never knew. As I started to sift through the wreckag...

You may think it's a little odd that an author who has successfully self-published would still want to write for a publisher. I confess I'm one such author and I have three reasons why I still bother to submit to publishers. These are: One: For some reason people still believe if you've written a book that you are an authority on your subject. As a freelance tutor/teacher I'm often asked by new clients if I've written a book about the subject they want me to teach for them. I've found I get a better response if I can say I have had something published either in book form or as a magazine feature.   Two: I write craft books and these are highly illustrated with full colour photographs. Although I've tried I've not been satisfied with the way these look as an eBook. I'm sure over time this will change which means I may self-publish these titles in the future. Three: A percentage of my books are picture books and although I don't make a ...

In the past few months I've had some distressing emails from friends - successful writer friends published by big publishing houses here and abroad.  One of them was a Whitbread award-winner with his first novel and the others have also won awards, as well as being very commercial - one has regularly had books serialised by the Reader's Digest. But two in particular have really made me aware of the cruel and destructive power of the contemporary publishing industry, which cares more for its shareholders than the creative egos of the authors it depends on for its income. Recently two friends have told me stories which are very similar. Both are distressed, depressed and have had their lives, their confidence - and their writing careers - damaged by the very people supposed to nurture and support them.  It's difficult not to come to the conclusion that the supposedly 'traditional' model of the publishing industry has begun to cannibalise itself. One symptom...

I’ve just spent half an hour browsing through university and further education college creative writing courses across the UK. They made interesting reading, mainly because – with all the benefit of 20/20 hindsight – I can see one glaring omission in the middle of all the exciting promises that students will explore and develop their literary intentions, examine their creative practice, experiment with form and - just occasionally - ‘become employable.’ You can spend up to £9000 a year in fees and that’s without all the other expenses involved for three or four years in order to ‘improve your critical awareness' of how you can get your work published or produced.           I can dimly remember a time when – as a young arts graduate, struggling to make a career as a playwright, and then as a novelist – I might have welcomed the opportunity to study creative writing at postgraduate level. I can still see the attraction. No such courses wer...

A Himalayan, not a hybrid rose: my Paul's Himalayan Musk.  Hybrid is, apparently, the new buzz term. 'You're going to be hearing about hybrid writers a lot soon,' remarked a colleague gleefully. Actually, the term was first invented (I believe) by the excellent Bob Mayer , some time ago but my colleague was absolutely right, and I already had been reading about it here, there and everywhere. I noticed it because I rather like the idea. It's one I'm comfortable with for various reasons and not just because I love roses, hybrid or not! Now I know that a percentage of new authors self publish in the hope of being noticed by traditional publishing, big or small. Nothing wrong with that either if that's what you've decided you want. The slush pile has all but disappeared, having an agent no longer guarantees publication - nor has it for some time - and stories of traditional publishers trawling Amazon for successful novels are legion. Although if you...

Long tails: Cally's gorgeous but naughty Hector and Dude! It strikes me that now might be as good a time as any to summarize some of the more general conclusions I’ve reached over the past eighteen months, ever since I finally decided that the time had come to give up pursuing the impossible dream of a long term partnership with a publisher and go it alone.What follows are not writing tips. If you want those, there are courses and workshops in plenty, self help books and a million advice blogs. Just be careful that you don’t assume that everyone else knows more than you do. And while paying to be published is generally a Bad Thing, paying a demonstrably experienced editor, or paying for a dedicated course with like-minded people, especially if you’re a beginner, is often a very good idea. There’s plenty of practical advice about various forms of publishing out there as well, not least here on the Authors Electric blog. Do remember that there’s a difference between being ...

A very 'traditional' book. Among the many writing jobs I've undertaken in the course of a long career, I've sometimes reviewed books in a ‘professional’ capacity. I was writing for reputable magazines and newspapers and they paid me. Not a lot. But it was one more way of staving off penury.  Mind you, even there the times are a-changing. A well published (but by no means wealthy) writer friend told me how he was asked to review an autobiography of a Very Famous Person for a popular newspaper, on the understanding that no money would change hands. ‘We thought you’d be honoured!’ they said. He told them that the day Asda or Tesco were honoured to supply him with free food would be the day he’d work for a big commercial organisation for nothing. Most of the time, book editors would – and still occasionally do - ask me to review a particular book because they've seen something in my professional experience which lead them to think I might be interested in i...