Vanity Publishing

I have just listened to a very interesting debate on the radio about self-publishing.

Years ago, self publishing used to be called Vanity publishing, and it was pretty much that - someone thought so much of themselves and their book that they would part with thousands of pounds to have it printed and then try to flog it themselves by hawking it round bookshops and calling in favours from polite friends and acquaintances. Apparently in these days of print-on-demand and Amazon things are very different and it is becoming quite acceptable to self publish, as well as much easier to marker your self-published book.

There was a contributor to the discussion who had self-published his book, had it fall into the hands of an influential journalist and subsequently been offered a £2.5 million deal for his next three books. Another had written a book called "The Father's Home Birth Handbook" which he had self-published; it sold very well and he was then offered royalties by a publisher who offered to reprint it. So I guess sometimes it can be OK. Sometimes. I still come down against it for several reasons.

1. I have always taken the view that if my manuscript isn't good enough for a reputable publisher to offer to pay me for it, then it isn't good enough. What's the point of trying, researching, working hard to hone my skill and perfect my craft if any rubbish I write could be published?
2. One of the contributors on the show - the managing director of a self-publishing company - admitted that they don't read the manuscripts they publish. I think that speaks volumes. Those books could be oscene, inflammatory, misleading or badly researched. There's enough of that on the internet without it appearing in print too.
3. The public only have a certain amount of money to spend on books, and self-published dross dilutes the market.
4. The book-buying public deserve the best; a book is an investment. As a teenager I bought a book by Rosemary Conley, my favourite fitness guru, only to discover when I read it that it was basically a rehash of her last book. Off I trotted to the shop to return it as unsuitable. Of course, I was told I couldn't return it. Innocently I asked why. "Because you might just have read it and be bringing it back," I was told. "I HAVE read it and it's no good," I replied. "That's why I'm bringing it back." That's when I learned the truth. If any other product or service is shoddy or substandard you can return it for a full refund. Not so books. That's why we need discerning agents and publishers to ensure that the books we buy are worth the price we pay for them.
5. Yes, it's very difficult to get published. Yes, it's tough to have a manuscript you've worked hard on rejected. I know, I've been there many times. Even the best authors have a box full of rejection letters. But it's partly the fact that so few people succeed that makes it worth aiming for. These days we seem to be getting rather too politically correct about not letting people experience rejection. It's part of life - get over it. What would be the point of an Olympics where everyone got a medal, or where the losers said, "Never mind, I'm going to pay someone to make me a nice shiny gold medal anyway and that'll be just as good."
6. Books enjoy a better reputation than the Internet. It used to be that in order to get a serious work of non-fiction published you had to show your publisher meticulous research and well-reasoned arguments. This, in turn, meant that books could, to some extent, be trusted to be accurate. I decry anything which leads to the printed work becoming untrustworthy and of less value.
7. Publishers do far more than simply edit a book. I don't yet know the title of my next book because my publishers are choosing it, and I trust them to do so. They know the market, they have been able to cast fresh eyes on my book and although in this case they didn't edit it, I know that the input of a professional editor is invaluable. They also take care of the marketing - generally the most difficult part of the process.
8. Call me old fashioned, but I like to be paid for my work. I don't pay someone for the privilege of sitting at my desk for five hours a day keeping databases up to date any more than I pay my neighbours to have Avon products or look through Avon brochures. If I do a good job, I expect to reap a financial reward, and writing is no different.

I understand what it is to have such pride in your work that you want to see it in print. But if you've watched "Britain's Got Talent" you'll know that not everyone who thinks they are the greatest singer since Freddie Mercury is correct. Humility involves accepting that your best is not as good as someone else's, and doesn't meet a required standard. It doesn't mean paying out to give your ego a boost.

In Praise of Book Clubs

I went to a book club last night with a friend who invited me along at the last minute. I met some great people, made some new friends, and got some tips about good books to look out for.The book club seems to be a relatively new social phenomenon.

Here in the UK it is largely connected with popular TV couple Richard Madeley and Judy Finnegan who added a book club spot to their daytime talk show, sending sales of the books they recommended into the stratosphere. But even before Richard and Judy picked up the baton and ran with it, book clubs were springing up all over the place.

When I was a student doing my degree in English literature book clubs didn't exist which was a pity because I'd have loved to meet up with others as enthused and eager about Vanity Fair and Tess of the D'Urbervilles as I was. Instead my appreciation of these books was tempered by dry tutorials, long lectures, and essays which analysed all the magic out of them.

The book assigned for September's meeting of the club I just joined is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger which is, I am told, on sale in Sainsbury's for £4. It probably helps that we don't have sales tax on books, but this is still a wonderful price when I factor in the hours of pleasure (assuming it's a good book) it will give me, not least of which will be the two hours spent eating cake and chatting about it at the book club. But despite a book club being a cheap form of entertainment (compared with, say, a restaurant meal or a cinema ticket) I don't think it's price alone which is making it such a popular social custom. For one thing, the rise of the book club predates the global recession even if it, annoyling, postdates my degree course.

Book clubs are great for authors too. If there are, say, ten people at a book club and they happen to choose your book for the reading list, you're going to sell ten extra copies. Just the fact that these clubs are getting people reading again, going into bookshops and recommending books to their friends is great news for those of us who scratch out a living writing those books.

My next book comes out later this year, and my publishers have asked that I include questions for book clubs to consider at the end of the book. I really enjoyed coming up with the questions; it gave me an opportunity to think analytically about the characters and plot, and I think it very much improved my understanding of my own manuscript.

I'm not really seeing any down side to a book club here. It sells more books, it gets people together to have fun and appreciate literature, it even helps writers with their craft. So if you're not a member of a book club already, I can highly recommend it, and if you are a member, I salute you!

Music - The Muse

It was the 25th Anniversary of Live Aid last month, and I remember it well. In 1985 a friend persuaded me that if I was going to watch any of it, Queen were the band I shouldn't miss. So (because my parents hate any non-classical music) I went upstairs to my parents' bedroom and watched it on the little portable TV in their room, lying on my stomach across their bed.

I was blown away, stunned by just how good rock music could be. And from that moment I was a Queen fan. I joined their fan club (I finally neglected to renew my membership 20 years later) and went to the local Woolworth's to buy every Queen album (vinyl) I could find. I could only get one - A Night at the Opera - but I played it so many times on my scratchy little record player it's amazing there was any of it left by the time I left it in the sun five years later and it warped.

In 1986, aged 17, I went to my first ever concert and saw Queen (supported by Status Quo and INXS) at Wembley Stadium in London. It turned out to be their last tour - Freddie Mercury died six years later. I'm so glad I persuaded my parents to let me go. For several years my entire wardrobe consisted only of Queen t-shirts and jeans, and my first husband, also a Queen fan, told me that I first caught his eye because of my choice of clothing.

Most important of all, I think, Queen's music inspired me to write. I still haven't finished it, but I started writing a fantasy novel called "Horses Born with Eagle Wings", based on many of the themes, characters and stories on the first two Queen albums. Even the title is a Queen lyric. (Should I mention that my tattoo is of a winged horse called Eagle? I'm a convert, remember...) That led to a general love of writing, and you know the rest.

I thought I'd never feel as inspired by music again as I was by Queen 25 years ago today, but recently my eldest daughter plugged her MP3 player into the car as we travelled together to go shopping, and I discovered Muse. They are well named. And yes, I've just gone out and bought every Muse album, and I'm going to see them at Wembley Stadium in September, with my daughter. I suspect some wardrobe changes are imminent.

As I write this I am listening to "Knights of Cydonia" and I've included lyrics from this, and from "Uprising" (my favourite Muse track) in my current fantasy novel, Emon and the Empire. I'm not the first writer to be inspired by Muse (I can't listen to "Supermassive Black Hole" without seeing vampires playing baseball) and like Sister Meyer I am finding that listening to their music whilst writing helps conjure up the required atmosphere and makes the words flow better.

So I would like to publicly honour the bands whose music has provided the soundtrack to my life, countless hours of pleasure, and the inspiration behind some of my books. Queen - Magnum - Def Leppard - Muse - Thank you for sharing your talent and helping me to share mine.

Relative Poverty

Sorry about the adverts now appearing on my blog. The recession has bitten, and having spent a month in America, had a new boiler, dishwasher and treadmill, we are now skint. The children all have birthdays before Christmas and then... well, Christmas. So a few pennies from a couple of ads seemed like a good idea.

I realised recently that I have three jobs - four if you include motherhood. I work from home five hours a day for a legal charity. I'm an Avon representative, and a writer. The pay I get for each job can also be rated in that order. Writing doesn't pay well.

If I really was desparate for money I could give up all my jobs (except motherhood) and take a better paid full time job in an office somewhere. But since I could never give up writing - or the time I spend doing it - I'll settle for some careful budgeting, putting ads on my blog and selling stuff on Ebay. I can live with being poor if it means I get to do what I love.

Roadshows

It's been such a long time since I've blogged that my blog address is no longer stored in my web browser. I need to do something about that.

One of the downsides of being a published author is that people assume you love writing (I do) and must be good at it (er...) and therefore you would love to write the roadshow this year. And having written it, obviously you have a vision for how it would look, so you should also direct it. Every Tuesday and Friday night, and Saturday mornings for the month leading up to it. And any problems with a costumes, sound, arguments between actors, are also yours to deal with. I have now written and directed four roadshows, all of them terrible, and I really don't want to do this year's. November is the date written in for our Stake. I'm going to try to protest that I'm really too busy with my latest book, but naturally this will just remind people that I am a published author, and therefore love writing and must be good at it.

I haven't read the book but Branden Bell (what an amazingly James Bond name) has received stellar reviews for The Road Show over on Anne Bradshaw's blog (annebradshaw.blogspot.com) so you might want to go over to Ann's place and enter her competition to win a copy. This blog gives me two entries, but as luck would have it the competition is open to USA and Canada residents only, so I'm not eligible. That's OK, I've had enough roadshow trauma in my life that I don't need any more.

Terrific Talent

I love writing. I have only recently come to realise quite how much I love it, and quite how grateful I am that writing is my talent.

I used to envy those people who could sing beautifully, or who were musically gifted. If I could sing and play the piano, my party piece would be singing "My Melancholy Blues" by Queen, a beautiful and haunting tune. But I can't sing. Well, not well. My friend, who never says a bad word about anyone and is musically gifted, charitably says I have a good choir voice. In other words, it might sound OK if 100 others were singing along with me to drown me out.

I can't dance either. I did ballet as a child but gave up because I didn't like all the French words and was sure I'd never learn them. Languages, you see, are something else I'm not good at. It took mew 17 years of living in Wales to get any kind of fluency in Welsh.

I have some artistic ability, but I think artistic ability is something that can be learned to a certain extent, and I had learned all I could and gone as far as I could go. I applied to study art at university but wasn't successful.

I'm pretty average at everything else. I have taken 15 exams in total - 10 O'levels (as GCSEs used to be called), 4 A levels and a degree. Never got an A in any of them, just a whole lot of Bs and Cs. The only test I have ever got an A in was my blood test, for which I got A+.

But I can write. You know when you read something in a book and it is just so perfectly and evocatively phrased that you have a real emotional response - fear, or love, or laughter, and then envy wishing you'd written it? I know pride is a bad thing, but reading over chapters of the fantasy novel I'm working on at the moment I am finding parts that I am really happy about. I love that. I love being able to use words to evoke a response, set a scene, create a mood and flesh out a character. I love being able to create worlds, people and adventures with nothing more than a keyboard. I've written more in the last three weeks than I wrote during the whole of 2009, and I'm remembering just what a thrill it is when the ideas, the lines and the scenes come faster than I can type them.

I may not be as talented as many - most - other writers, but I'm still learning my craft, and I know that I will improve with practice. However, I can write better than the average person on the street, and I wouldn't change that talent for any other - not even being able to sing, dance, play the piano and paint wonderful pictures all at the same time.

Inspiration

My last post on the V-Formation blog (www.vformation.blogspot.com) created quite a bit of controversy, but having now read almost all the Twilight saga, I stand by what I said. They inspire me. Stephenie Meyer, in turn, was inspired (appropriately) by Muse and various other rock bands. I haven't got into Muse yet; I suspect they may be a bit grungy and emo for my tastes.

This got me thinking about what inspires us. My books have come from various sources, but strangely, rarely my own head.

• Haven was suggested to me by my editor at Covenant, Valerie Holladay, who asked for a book set in Wales with a variety of different characters. A B&B was the obvious solution.
• A World Away was the sequel to Haven. I had never intended writing a sequel, but publishers like sequels to successful books by new authors; apparently they establish the name and the market.
• Christmas at Haven (as yet unpublished) is the third in the trilogy. More of the same, but with a difference in that Haven burns down in the opening pages.
• Easterfield came to me because I love Jane Austen (who doesn't?) and realised that she lived shortly before the gospel was restored in 1830. I wondered what would happen if a Mormon element were to crop up in the society she writes about. So I wrote about it.
• Landscape in Oils, my current effort, was inspired by a conversation I had with a drugs squad officer from Bangor police station many years ago. I have been writing this pesky book for fifteen years. But it is actually nearing the end, at last, after having been abandoned several times, sent in, sent back, lost, found, queried, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
• Horses Born With Eagle Wings is a fantasy novel I have been writing for even longer than I've been writing Landscape, and is inspired entirely by the first two Queen albums. The characters and even the title come from songs on those albums.
• Finders Keepers/Four Friends was the brainchild of a friend based on her own adventures of being middle aged and single. I've started it, and will write more when I finish one of the other books I'm working on.
• Emon, the fantasy novel I'm excited about at the moment, was the idea of Ryan Tench, who will be credited with me. Had a great meeting with him on Sunday, he just comes up with so many ideas, plot twists, character quirks and wonderful stuff that I can't write it fast enough. So perhaps Ryan is my muse.

What inspires you?