The shows of yesteryear

A brief post to draw your attention to Radio Memories - Journeys Through Time Filled With Memories - of which a colleague has just made me aware. On this site you'll find podcasts of old radio shows (all American, it would appear) that include a number of classics. Enjoy!

FADE OUT

Making Millions

It's something we like to ask of BBC Directors and famous authors: Ooh, how much money do they make? There is a wealth of evidence that writing will not buy you the golden rocket car you deserve, but still the myth persists that published writers are wealthy people.

Ooh, are they? This article over at Guardian Unlimited, entitled 'Harry Potter and the stony broke authors', provides a nice antidote to the perception that children's authors - buoyed by the examples of J. K. Rowling, Mark Haddon, et al. - are diving, each night, into their swimmingful pools of gold bullion.

In case you're too busy to read the article, here is the nub of the matter. Of UK children's authors:

7%, all women, earned nothing last year

22% earned £1-£5,000

15% earned £5,000-£10,000

12% earned £10,000-£15,000

12% earned £15,000-£20,000

14% earned £20,000-£30,000

17% earned over £30,000

The top earner made £185,000.

And think about this: A third of these authors earn less than the national minimum wage of £8,827 a year.

I'm not going to talk about my own earnings (let's just say that I've so far earned far less than 1p per hour) because I didn't publish my book with any expectation of financial return, but I thought I'd draw your attention to the gap between the myth and the reality.

The Frontlist

One of the great frustrations for any writer, published or unpublished, is the difficulty of getting your work under the noses of those who matter. Only recently I sent a letter to an editor at a major publishing company and, though the letter was not a query about an unpublished manuscript, it was treated as such by this person's secretary. There are many people between you and your potential editor/agent, and anything that can help close that gap gets the thumbs up from me.

For a few months, I've been corresponding with an author who knows I don't yet have an agent. Yesterday he sent me a link to a new site called The Frontlist.

This is a writer's showcase site where would-be authors can upload their stuff and have it rated. What's the difference between that and the plethora of writing showcase sites (UKAuthors and Laura Hird's showcase spring to mind), I hear you cry? Well, each month the administrators of The Frontlist will forward those pieces with the highest review marks to agents actively seeking new authors in specific genres.

According to Tom Lodge, one of the people behind The Frontlist, the agents are all reputable (i.e. are listed in the W&A Yearbook) and have been engaged in the process since the beginning. If an agent likes an author's work, the author is free to pursue the relationship. The Frontlist doesn't ask for an 'introduction fee'; it's also free to upload your work.

What's the catch, I (also) hear you cry? Well, in order to upload your own stuff (synopsis and sample chapters) you must review the work of other authors. Such reviews are quite detailed and, if you'd like to see what people have been writing about your own stuff, The Frontlist will supply them for a small fee. That's how they make their money.

I think this site is definitely worth a go. Bear in mind that, at the moment, there are few pieces on the site. That means you've got a better chance of being the best-rated in a particular genre at the end of the month.

Perhaps I should finish by saying that I'm not involved with this site (though I've upload some stuff to it).

The best and worst of times

There is, of course, much going on in the world at present. All my London-based friends and acquaintances have checked in, so it only remains to extend sympathy to the relatives and friends of those who died and, equally, to extend contempt to the bombers. We can take heart in their incompetence; so many bombs and so few deaths, speaking in terms of what might have been. Ken MacLeod has an interesting post on the matter. (The blogosphere has been my first port of call for information about the event; the BBCi servers were often unreachable, understandably, but there's something about connecting directly to those blogging about the tragedy that makes the world seem a little smaller.)

Meanwhile - and this seems crashingly trivial in the shadow of such atrocity - freelance editor Rachel Hazelwood has returned a 12-page report on my latest novel, Proper Job. Rachel has been prompt, professional, intelligent and clear in her criticisms, which were invariably constructive. I can recommend her for anyone wishing to polish their manuscript before submitting it to a publisher or an agent. In my experience, publishers and agents do not see the potential in a work unless such potential in realised under their noses as they read.

I can breathe a sigh of relief because the report is generally positive, and Rachel thinks that the book is already quite good, which I find very encouraging because it's a first draft and I can't read even a page of it without wincing at missed opportunity, jokes in need of repair, and clumsy phrases. Still, the process of writing is 10% first draft and 90% buggering about with it.

Time to get buggering about.

Nil By Mouth - Please

Who is POD Girl? Nobody really knows. But, protected by this secret identity, POD Girl has been performing an heroic service over the past few months with her reviews of POD (Print-On-Demand) books, which she reads voraciously in her hunt for 'buried treasures'. Déjà Vu is a book supplied via POD, and I returned from Germany late last night to see that she has written an excellent review of it. 'Treasure' is a bit much; but she has discovered a book that she likes.

One element of her post that captured my attention was, surprisingly, the comments that followed it. These days, you see, far more heat is generated by discussion of a book's provenance than the substance of the book itself. People want to know whether a book is either:

Self-published (i.e., author-sponsored)

Or:

Published by a publisher (i.e., publisher-sponsored)

Now, I've left plenty of blank space on the screen because these two enterprises are quite separate. The author-/publisher- sponsored distinction is a valid one and, as a reader, you might find it useful because, in general, the quality of a author-sponsored work will be poorer than that of a publisher-sponsored work. Why? There are several reasons, but one of the most important is that a publisher-sponsored work will have been professionally and thoroughly edited.

We come now to the problem. Readers are so keen to figure out whether they are about to buy (or merely observing the passage of) a 'dodgy' book that they resort to short-cuts to help them figure out whether the work is author- or publisher-sponsored. Here is an example of a short-cut: "If the book is POD, then it is author-sponsored."

This short-cut is wrong.

Enough white space?

A book can still be POD (read a definition of POD if you wish) and yet be the product of a genuine publisher who has invested considerable time and effort into the book and the author. I will say this once and once only: Print-On-Demand is a business model that allows small presses (like my own publisher, The UKA Press) to produce books without the initial outlay required by a print-run. I have not paid the UKA Press one penny for the publication of Déjà Vu and the six-month editing process was so gruelling that I would have been a masochist to pay for it. True, my publisher does not have a publicity 'department', but it is no shabby purveyor of publishing services. If so, Déjà Vu would not have been reviewed in the Guardian. A few months back, I wrote two articles - one here and one here - about my experience of publication. This should clarify the honesty and effort of my publisher beyond the doubt of a reasonable person.