Tag Archives: self-publishing writing

If you haven’t got anything nice to say…

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Here’s a word or two of sobering warning regarding the whole self-publishing malarkey.

One can write a terrific book (in one’s own opinion); get some wonderful cover art done; work out all the ins and outs of formatting one’s novel for the e-book market; get it all together and offer it to the world, then sit back and watch some arsehole torpedo you.

When one looks at downloading a particular title from the Amazon Kindle ebook catalogue one has the opportunity to view some of the reviews given it by those who have read it and taken the time and trouble to pen their opinion for others to peruse and be influenced by. RJ Ellroy – a now infamous as well as popular, award winning and best-seller writer – has recently been exposed and vilified for assuming identities and ‘bigging-up’ some of his own books with five-star reviews while simultaneously panning the writing of some of his peers (allegedly). I’m not the first to say shame on him. I now use his books for bog paper, if I can get them for free.

In the name of research and because I am more than a little interested to see what others have made of some of the books that I’ve read and formed a strong opinion of I checked out some of the reviews of a couple of titles…and I learned something else. People can be arseholes. Actually, I knew that already. I’m a teacher after all.

The personal opinion of readers is as wide-ranging, baffling and difficult to understand as religious faith. Take a favourite author of mine, CJ Sansom. I think that his Shardlake series is outstandingly researched and written. I love them all. And it’s not just me. He is critically acclaimed and an award winner. And yet, there are people giving his books one-star reviews on Amazon!!! And they are idiots (you can tell from the way they write) with idiotic opinions and stupid world views. Read some of them if you don’t believe me. Some of his critics can barely string a sentence together.

Another example is Hilary Mantel the double Booker prize winner. She has must have some talent to win that twice (or some bloody good connections or some bloody good photos of the judges involved in practices that they’d rather not have plastered all over the www and would do anything to make that not happen like award her the Booker – twice) but she gets lots of negative reviews alongside her scores of five-star ones.

Mind you, it’s not just Joe Public who are guilty of this. Even judges in literary competitions are prone to bouts of literary blindness (or blackmail/corruption). A couple of years back one of the Shardlake books was beaten in the CWA historical thriller (I think) competition by a book by Rory Clements in his John Shakespeare series. I’ve read the first two in Clements’ series and if you ask me he isn’t fit to sharpen Sansom’s pencils. I only read the second because I couldn’t believe that it would be as bad as the first. It was worse. They lack the qualities that the Shardlakes have in spades: substance and depth. They are shallow and obvious in comparison. The characters are just too stereo-typical and the dialogue isn’t in the same league as Sansom. If I had them on my kindle they would be in my ‘shite’ folder. But they’re not free to download – yet.

The point I’m labouring to make is that these negative reviews that any Tom, Dick and Harry can post on the internet can hurt an author’s reputation and sales immensely. They go up on the website forever and for all to see. Alan Cambell the fantasy writer says on his blog that one of his books was doing quite well on Amazon’s Kindle until he got a one star review. And that, he bemoaned the fact quite justifiably, was from someone complaining about something that was nothing to do with his writing. People are arseholes. Did I mention that?

I’m also reminded of another berk who gave an author a one star review because when he was reading his book on his Kindle he dropped the device and broke it. Cock. What was the author’s fault there?

Why am I concerning myself with all this? Well, when I’m in my deepest of sleeps I dream of people downloading and reading and then reviewing my books on the Amazon Kindle page and I’m afraid that idiots will pan me for nothing to do with my writing, which I’m quite sure is excellent and in so doing will scupper my literary ambitions to get rich and famous and quit work and live in the sun off movie deal options.

As a bibliophile the acid test for me is how the book collecting world judge a book. That’s not by its cover but by its price in the second-hand market. Actually, the cover is very important, but not in the way that you might think. Fine condition Sansoms command good prices and in my opinion represent a sound investment for the future. Signed copies can double the price at least. Copies of Rory Clements John Shakespeare series can be picked up relatively cheaply, even signed and lined.

Just saying, this is my blog where I can speak my mind, but I wouldn’t dream of writing so candidly about another author’s work where people will see it (I’ve already established that no one reads this). It would be very unfair and churlish. After all, who am I? Who are you? Who are any of us to piss on dreams and creativity? As my dear old nan used to say, if you haven’t got anything nice to say button it.

Is it just me?

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Is it just me or do other/all writers find that after they’ve gone through the drawn-out process/slog/torture/life-altering experience of writing a novel and then editing/correcting/proof-reading it over and over again they develop a nose for (shouldn’t that be an eye for?) and heightened intolerance of shite writing?

I’ve got a Kindle. I think that I should have, really. Last week, in preparation for a flight and a week away, I downloaded some free books (I expect people to buy mine when the time comes, but I’m not spending my money on other people’s plop). In the past I’d have stuck with some of them and hoped that they might buck up. In the past I wouldn’t have been so critical. In the past I probably wouldn’t have paid so much attention to grammar, syntax, semantics, punctuation, plot development and layout. Now I do. And it’s refining my reading experience to the point of ruining it.

I tried three books put up on Kindle by wanna-bes like me and after a couple of chapters all three ended up being filed away in my Kindle shite folder. And then I unwittingly found that I’d done the same with an author who had a real publisher and hard-copies of his books out there. All the time that I was reading these I was thinking, ‘my books are better than this rubbish’. They were appalling; painful and depressing (owing to the quality or rather the lack of it). The guy with the publisher had a plot development that made no sense and saved his hero from drowning. I went back and read the build up four times and was still none the wiser. He just copped out and waved a magic wand and up to then it hadn’t been that bad, actually.

But that’s not good enough. The book has got to be very good in every respect and without flaws in the plot or it’s sunk.

I suppose that I’ve been learning from all this too, but, man, it’s sure sullying my reading for pleasure. One of my few.

So, what to do to get over it? What’s the antidote? Download a free classic. Enter The Thirty-Nine Steps. I’m two chapters in and finally I can relax and immerse myself in the reading experience. It might be dated, but, like Conan-Doyle for example, Mr Buchan’s writing has a timeless quality. No complaints here. Sometimes it’s true that the old’ns are the best. That’s him up the top by the way.

Mind you, now that’s reminded me of that awful BBC adaptation of the book a few years ago starring Rupert Penry-Jones, who I rather fancy for the lead in my Patrick Sansom books when they are optioned by Hollywood. Alas, so much to do.

Every cloud has a silver lining.

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Actually, I have the silver linings of two clouds to report to myself and celebrate and neither is the result of detonations of atomic weapons.

Cloud One:

Four days ago I posted on here severely criticizing the writing of Clive Cussler. I was a good hundred pages into one of his books and not impressed would put it mildly. I wondered whether I should persevere. In the end I decided not to. I like reading too much and don’t seem to have enough time for it to waste cherished hours on books where the prose regularly grates and irritates with its banality.

Serendipitously, I stumbled across a copy of a book by Gerald Seymour called ‘Field of Blood’. I was waiting for a meeting to start and to kill a few minutes snatched it off the members’ lending shelf in the staffroom of Istanbul City Zoo, where I work part-time in the monkey house.  The book is about the troubles in Northern Ireland and dates from the eighties. Within a couple of pages I was gripped and hooked and it was all because of the quality of the man’s writing.

One of the big differences that I noticed – or perhaps I should qualify that by saying the difference that had the greatest impact on me as a writer – between Cussler’s and Seymour’s writing is how they report the dialogue. Reading Seymour reminded me of one of the ten rules of writing from one of the masters of writing dialogue: Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard. Leonard says that one should never use anything other than ‘said’ to qualify what a character has spoken. And only use ‘said’ if you have to use something. (I don’t know if he added that last bit or that’s me, but it sounds like him.) Seymour hardly uses any words to qualify the speech in this book. It’s just raw dialogue and he doesn’t inflict himself on the reading, or insult the reader’s intelligence, by dictating to the reader how every utterance must be interpreted and making it painfully obvious who it is speaking (see Cussler). In consequence the writing – and reading – flows so much better, as it bloody well should.

The silver lining of cloud one that was the Cussler reading experience is that I had the lesson about qualifying speech repeated and reinforced, paradoxically, by an example of how not to write. We all need refreshers, reminders of what to do and what not to do, no matter how sorted we think we are in whatever we are turning our creative hands to.

Cloud Two:

As I know because I’ve been following my blog closely I recently claimed to have completed my final, final proof-reading of the first Romney and Marsh File that I intend to launch my literary career with (eyebrows raised, as SN1 would say). Well, I effing well effing hadn’t.

Because of the logistics of my writing I work on three different computers when I write my books (it’s a long story about work and home). What I do is email myself the latest version/work that I’ve managed to spend an hour or two on wherever it happens to be. The plan is that, so long as I have internet access, I always have the latest version at my fingertips wherever I’m being forced to write.

When I get to finishing the first draft of the book I print it off, get it fitted with spiral thingy up the spine and plastic covers at the local stationers for a couple of Turkish lira and then I go to work with red pen on creating the next draft. I might do this three or four times until I’m happy with it. Now, because I’m going to go the e-book self-publishing route I now have to return to the computerised form of the book to update it with the editing that I did on the latest and final hard-copy. With me?

Well I did this with Enough Rope the first Romney and Marsh File and then discovered that the computerised copy that I had spent two days updating from the hard-copy revisions was not the latest computerised copy of the book that I thought it was. It was not the computerised copy of the hard-copy that I’d printed off and been working on. If I haven’t lost myself here that means that I understand that I swore a fucking lot when I twigged. And then I fucking swore a-fucking-gain. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! (Elmore also says don’t use exclamation marks. He doesn’t mind profanity.)

So, I had to go back to the latest updated-computerised-edited-version and edit that again by reading the whole effing book again thoroughly and with full effing attention on the effing computer. Not my favourite effing thing to read on. I was so effing cross with myself.

But now I’m not. I’m not cross now because it gave me another run through on the final, final, final, draft that I’m glad to have had the opportunity of despite the anguish that the realisation of it cost me. This is because of the lesson that I got from Cussler and Seymour. I had neglected to adhere strictly to Elmore’s writing rule – something that I believe strongly in – and I had let myself get involved in the reader’s interpretation of my writing.

The silver lining from cloud two is that this extra work that I gave myself has made me much, much happier with the finished article in which I found myself editing out phrases like …said Romney, enigmatically, and …answered Sergeant Marsh and …replied Romney and … questioned Marsh. All unnecessary because it was so obvious from the writing that they were replying, answering, questioning and being enigmatic.

I also learnt a really good lesson about dialogue writing and something that I am going to stick to religiously. In future drafts and writings I will only use ‘said’ to establish at the beginning of a stream of dialogue who is speaking and then, providing it’s obvious that those speakers carry on, don’t use any qualifying words at all. They get in the way and they are unnecessary. Thank you Mr Seymour.

This is how my final draft of Enough Rope is now and it’s so much better for it. It’s made such a difference. I was dreading that unnecessary extra draft that I’d created for myself with my mistake but I so enjoyed the paring down of the writing and getting myself out of the reader’s face. I enjoyed it because every single word that I ditched made me happy and the book better. I’ll say it again because I want to and it’s my blog – the book is so much better for it.

So two clouds, but valuable lessons learned, as they always seem to say after another terrible and costly tragedy – not that I’m considering the forthcoming e-publishing of my book ‘another terrible and costly tragedy’.

As for the Seymour book, I tucked it under my jumper when the meeting was over – I don’t have a library card – I’m half-way through and I think Mr Seymour is bloody good. So, I have more good news for myself: I now have another fine writer to ferret around for the output of. Bonus.

Self-publish and be damned.

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I never was intending to self-publish. I was adamant that I would not. I really was not even considering ‘vanity-publishing’. I was going to hang out for as long as it took until I could get a literary agent who would recognise the possibilities in my writing and launch me. Then I experienced a dose of reality.

I wrote my first book and liked it well enough.  Even after giving it a few months locked away in the darkness of my desk drawer I liked it. Two of my friends read it and they liked it. My mum liked it, too. I tried a few literary agents. They didn’t like it. Or rather they didn’t even bother to read it. That was the genuine impression that I got from my rejection emails. But I still liked it.

I wrote another book and liked that too. So did my mum. I tried a few literary agents – some different ones. Guess what? They didn’t like it, or rather…you know what.

I don’t live in the UK. The number of literary agents who will accept submissions by email – I really can’t afford to keep sending out the first three chapters in hard copy at international postage rates – is surprisingly small, I found. Coupled with this was the impression that I was getting that they weren’t even reading my submissions. And, from my research of literary agents, I was getting the picture that getting published – actually make that just generating some interest in the submission – was next to impossible. Typically, agents’ submissions pages mention that they receive hundreds of submissions every week from which, perhaps, they might actually take on two or three new authors a year. Not great odds. Certainly not odds that I was prepared to settle for. Maybe mum knew what she was talking about after all.

I looked into self-publishing an e-book through Amazon’s Kindle. The idea appealed to me. Still does. I read stories of authors who had gone the Kindle route and done well. The more that I read the more I understood that even this route is not as simple as convert your text to an acceptable format, download it and sit back and wait to get rich and famous. The successful e-book authors who had come from obscurity had often had long-games that they were playing. This was a business and like every successful business it needed a business plan. So, I thought about it some more and continued to write and formed a business plan.

When I finished my fourth book (two in one series and two in another) I was beginning to feel that I should start doing something pro-active about kick-starting and furthering my ambitions. Above everything – even the fame and fortune – I really just want people to read my stuff and let me know what they think.

Having looked into e-publishing more deeply and put my I-must-get-published-in-the-proper-way-vanity aside, I can see that self-publishing through the internet as an e-book isn’t really vanity publishing in the traditional sense of the term. I’m not going to invest thousands of pounds getting a few dozen copies of my book(s) published only to have them sit in my garage (if I had one) sprouting mould. It’s not like that at all. Depending on one’s motives it can be a form of literary entrepreneurship; a shot at a small business and like all small businesses it would need a good business plan and a good product.

One argument from the self-interested traditionalists of publishing that will never go away is that because e-publishing has no gate-keepers and is unpoliced it is therefore an unworthy mode of publishing. But, be that as it may, that doesn’t automatically mean that everything that is self-e-published is rubbish. Some of it is. I’ve wasted some of my valuable reading time on stuff that was e-published and was, in my humble opinion, dire. And some of it is very good.

So, I set my sights on e-publishing and I etched out a long-game plan – I don’t really like the term business plan for this, even if that is, essentially, what it is. One of the fundamental requirements – other than that my writing must convince me that it’s good enough to make a positive impression on readers of the genres that I’m writing in – was that I have three books in one of my series all finished to varying degrees. This was stage one and is now completed. The first two are just awaiting final, final, proof-readings and then formatting, jacket-designs and downloading to Kindle and the third has been completed in a first draft. No rush on that one.

There is still much to do, but for the purposes of my – what to call it? – literary adventure? the back of it is broken. The books are written. It’s exciting. It’s interesting. It’s going to be a lot of learning and work – a labour of love. But I’m looking forward to the journey with relish and enthusiasm. Whatever happens, my writing will not sit slowly evaporating off the pages trapped in my desk and on my hard-drive only to be incinerated and wiped when I’m dead. And at least I’ll have tried. I’ll know.