Michael Jecks's Blog, page 39

Smoking Rears its Head Again

It seems as though all my time just now is spend blogging about various legal or illegal substances. Last week it was illegal drugs – this week it's been announced that the UK doctors are asking that smoking in private cars should also become illegal.

There are good reasons why British doctors should feel that they have this right. They do, after all, possess the moral high ground. If something is dangerous, they have the obvious interest in trying to stop people from behaving badly. They are doctors. They have a duty in preventing illness and death. And smoking does undoubtedly cause disease and death.

Not all smokers end up here after their first puff, you know!

Their right to pontificate comes from their government-conferred responsibility towards the nation's health.

And that is where my anger starts to bubble.

I should state an interest here. I ain't a smoker. Once I was, and used to smoke heavily – pipes first, then cigarettes. I still miss the flavour of a good pipeful.

No, I don't smoke. I am, however, a firm libertarian.

There are two problems I have with this. First: the government has a very specific interest in our health. It's not to increase the sum of human happiness. It is because civil servants see the public as a large number. Literally. They do not see individuals and people or souls. They see a mass of numbers. This many males, this many females, this many children, who will grow to be adults one day. They see pensioners and workers, and the correlation which civil servants see is the one that shows Treasury income compared with expenses on welfare.

In Britain, there is no stated right to health, wealth and happiness. Subjects (I am a Royalist, but this is one aspect of our status I detest) are not there to have fun. They exist as minor cogs which must constantly turn over more tax revenue to the centre. That is one reason why nationalisation of the health of the nation was thought to be a good idea. Not to make people healthier for their own sake, but so that fewer days would be lost on production lines and in offices.

So, that's my dislike from the governmental side. They want us healthy so that we can be fleeced. There is also the other side that enrages me. That is the medical bully-boy aspect.

Charities all too often are successful. Many are created as single-issue campaign groups, which then win their issue and are left with a big hole at the centre of their existence. With their reason to exist gone, what else might they do? And all too often they do all they can simply to continue. They have to invent new issues to fight.

I know. I had to have a foxhunting photo to irritate any RSPCA officials. Besides. They're lovely hounds!

One such charity is the RSPCA, an organisation I will never support again. They existed to protect animals – but now they have taken on investigative and prosecutorial responsibilities. They perform "good" works, such as rescuing urban foxes from towns and cities, catching them humanely, and transporting them to the wild countryside where they can enjoy a more fulfilling existence. That, I suppose is the theory.

I used to meet some of these when I walked the countryside in Surrey. They were invariably in a bad way. Used to scrabbling through the garbage in the trash cans outside blocks of flats or houses, they were at a complete loss in the countryside, and many died from starvation.

A local free-range chicken farmer used to have to keep a look out for the RSPCA vans that would regularly deliver six or seven foxes at the fields adjoining his farm. Then he'd quickly despatch as many as he could before any damage could be done to his flocks.

But it made the RSPCA feel good to have intervened in the contented lives of those urban foxes, no doubt. Even though collecting vermin and moving them was illegal.

And now the RSPCA has turned to prosecuting cruelty. Three years ago a horrific case hit the press: at a place called Spindle's Farm. "…more than 100 horses, ponies and donkeys were removed from horrific conditions at Spindle Farm near Amersham, Buckinghamshire." they said – for more go to their website at http://www.rspca.org.uk/allaboutanimals/horses/rehoming/successstories/amershamappeal. A team of RSPCA inspectors arrived with others and liberated the animals. But this wasn't quite the truth.

I liked that last photo so much, I thought I ought to have another!

After a court order, the RSPCA agreed to return a number of the horses and ponies that were ordered to be returned to their owner were in "good condition". Look at http://grumpyoldarchive.co.uk/rspca.asp for more on this. The others had to go to auction.

It would seem (although you don't learn this from the RSPCA websites) that Spindles was not a Hell for horses. Many of the animals there had been rescued from bad owners and were being nursed back to health. As their vet confirmed in court.

And this is the problem. The RSPCA confiscated the animals, and took them away to secret locations. Why secret? Were hordes of violent, animal-hating vigilantes feared? Did they think that donkey-torturers would invade their stables?

The RSPCA has a rapidly growing reputation for bullying. There are stories appearing regularly now of independent vets who are threatened if they go to court to stand up for defendants against the RSPCA. And stories like that of Spindle's Farm leave a sour taste in the mouth.

For example, while they prosecuted the owners of the farm, they sought to sell off all his stock to new homes. Because the horses would be happier. But hold on, the RSPCA would benefit from donations. So they act to take the horses and ponies, they prosecute the owner to deprive him of his investment, and then they seek to profit overall both from the publicity and from the income from effectively selling the animals.

How many pressure groups (I will not refer to them as a charity) can aspire to such a delightful win-win situation? No doubt the Mafia would be proud of a racket like this.

Let's just think: if an unscrupulous officer at the RSPCA were to decide to maximise the revenue in a year by going to a stables, accusing the owners of cruelty, confiscating all the horses from the yard, taking them away to a secure location where no independent vet could inspect them, and then prosecuted the hapless owner with the full force of the millions of pounds of money held in the RSPCA's banks accounts, and sold off the owner's property for nothing, while taking in a donation to help the RSPCA fight another day – well, what would be the machinery for protecting the innocent against such overweening power?

That to me sounds like a perfect example of how prosecutions should not work. Making profit by prosecuting is an extremely dangerous concept. Innocents could be swept up in malicious prosecutions. After all, how many people could hope to fight a case against a charity with some £100 million of income each year?

And this is not one individual case. Look at http://the-shg.org/28th%20January%202008.pdf for more examples. There does seem to be a general historical theme here.

The hunt ready for the moors.

But let's return to that other delightful charity, the British Medical Association. This is a pressure group that wants only to see all individuals as healthy as they can be. Great.

But I don't want to be as healthy as I can be. I don't want to live to a superannuated existence like Bilbo Baggins – what did he say? "I feel stretched, like jam spread over too much toast" or something, wasn't it? Sorry. Lord of the Rings isn't at hand – I want to have a happy, fulfilling existence, and when my time comes, I'll fall off the twig knowing, hopefully, that I've had a pretty good life and entertained a lot of people. That's all I aspire to.

What I do not want is to see the BMA deciding that I must not smoke. I don't, but whether I do or not is none of their business. They are saying now that it's terribly dangerous to smoke in cars because of the build up of toxins.

Well, garbage. I used to smoke, and like all other smokers, tended always to have the window open.

But whether I did or not, the BMA can go boil its collective heads. We are adults. Subject I may be, but I'm not a bloody slave to be told exactly how I may live my life.

The trouble is, since health has been nationalised, now the doctors can call for any restriction on our freedoms in the campaign for better health. And they can use their favourite weapon. Since the health service is nationalised, we all pay for each other's health through taxes, and thus if we work to be less healthy, we are stealing the pounds from those who have illnesses not of their own making. Thus it is that obese people are being told that they aren't allowed surgery until they've lost weight, or smokers are told they may not have necessary procedures until they stop smoking.

I never asked for my taxes to be increased to pay for doctors, hospitals and nurses. I appreciate the NHS, and I am happy to have free (mostly) healthcare when I need it, but if the doctors want my tax money, they can stop lecturing me on how I live my life. They are either servants employed by me to look after me when I'm ill.

They are not arbiters on how I should live my life.

Tagged: ban smoking, BMA, charities, civil liberties, doctors, drugs, hunting, RSPCA, smoking, Templar series, writing

Drugs again

Drugs – Yet Again

Ach, I really, really dislike returning to this, but really, what is the point of the anti-drugs policy? I saw this today http://chapman.dailymail.co.uk/2011/1... and felt the irritation rising again.

A nice picture needed to calm me down now. Let's see. Ah, water. That's good.

Teign over the weir below Drogo Castle

Is there a purpose to our "War on Drugs"?

Let's see. It's there to save the poor people who'd be made crazy by drugs. It's to save lives. It's to protect the public. It's to save kids from seeing silly adults behaving like morons. After all, shouldn't our Members of Parliament have a right to interfere in any aspect of our lives.

They certainly seem to think so.

Sorry, none of them justifies the truly glorious failure that is western anti-drugs policy. And if there was ever a policy that had abjectly failed, this was it.

All the warnings were there from day one when people only had to look at alcohol prohibition in the US. It failed because it was authoritarian, seen to be an objectionable infringement on peoples' rights to get squiffy, and because there is no possibility of spending enough to detract from the joyous profits being made by those who are prepared to break the law.

There are several types of law breaker being punished here. Let's start at the bottom: kids.

For the naughty, criminal, awful acts of taking some pills that all your friends do and being found out, you will win a criminal record. It will affect your future life. It may lead to your being incarcerated. Not good.

I had a great meeting with the late Eddie Ellison once, who had been the head of the National Drug Squad for the UK. He was absolutely in favour of legalising drugs because he saw the effects on school age and slightly older children. He rejected the notion that to smoke a joint or two should lead to the expulsion of children from their school two weeks before their main examinations – which happened to the son of a friend of his at Whitgift School. It had a disastrous effect upon the boy's studying. Not because he was found smoking, but because there was an open discussion held at school about drugs in which he and other boys participated. They were encouraged to speak openly and honestly. Within a week all those who admitted to smoking pot were expelled.

There are those who commit perhaps fifty percent of the housebreakings in the country to support their habits. These are out of control. But then there are the dealers, too. And the smugglers. Lots and lots of lovely criminals.

We have introduced ever more draconian laws against these people. Police have won increasing power to stop the drugs. And yet Customs and Excise estimate that of all the drugs they catch each year, with all the investment in manpower and kit, they only ever remove ten percent from the market.

Meanwhile the profits go to support the drug lords in Colombia, Mexico and Afghanistan. The money spent supports murders across the world, with tens of thousands dying in Mexico. Colombia, a lovely country, with very delightful people, has been devastated and brutalized by drugs, because of the profits our drug users generate.

And in Afghanistan, where many farmers cannot grow anything else, when their crops are destroyed they resort to fighting our soldiers, to kick them out so that they can return to profitable farming again.

It is incredible that such a failed, ill-conceived policy could have survived so many years.

Every so often a few people stick their heads above the parapet and ask for more sense to be shown.

Most of the drugs being banned are less harmful than alcohol or tobacco. Heroin is not poisonous – it is once criminals have made it go further by cutting it with flour, rat poison and all the other goodies they throw in, but not when pure. Methadone, which is used to wean users off, is lethal in contrast. If too much is taken, the user will die.

So, not only do we consign our youths to criminal records, we are enthusiastically trying to poison them with the current policies.

It's interesting to see that before the "war" on drugs, we used to have a few thousands of heroin addicts. They were prescribed their drugs by their local doctors, all legally and above-board, and they remained happy, did not need to rob or break into houses, and stayed healthy with their medical-quality drugs. This was in the 1960s. It wasn't until the war was declared that this situation changed.

For more on this, and written by a far better scientist than me, look at Ben Goldacre's essay here: http://www.badscience.net/2006/11/met...

Since then, we have exploded the use of heroin to hundreds of thousands of users, with highly variable quality, with major international gangs earning billions from their smuggling and gang wars. We have increased murders from firearms of all sorts, because these same gangs are smuggling submachineguns and pistols with their drugs.

For God's sake, and more to the point, for the sake of all our youngsters who only want to use recreational drugs, we need to get realistic.

We should stop lying about the effects of drugs.

We should provide people with accurate data on the risks.

We should legalize all drugs, with health warnings on any packets sold.

We should allow drug sales from chemists under the control of participating pharmacists.

We should tax all such sales and ringfence the money to provide secure wards for those who do suffer from reactions or counter-effects of their habits.

If we did this, we would destroy the smuggling gangs overnight. The farmers in Venezuela and Colombia and all over the rest of the world would have reasonable incomes from their farming.

And it would stop youngsters gaining criminal records for the offence of trying a tab of E.

I should just like to add one rider. I have never in my life approached a drug dealer. I have never purchased drugs of any illegal type, and apart from smoking some dodgy, grassy cigarettes in my youth, have taken no illegal drugs.

This isn't a manifesto to protect my habit. This is the result of fifty years of watching my peers at school, at university, at work. Almost all participate, or have participated, in taking drugs. And I am heartily convinced that almost all our representatives in Parliament have also tried drugs of different types. And many still do.

For this issue to be swept under the carpet along with the ash, while so many lives are being unnecessarily ruined, is worse than criminal. Too many lives are being ruined unnecessarily.

Another calming photo, I think …

Tagged: author, blogosphere, books, crime, crime writing, drugs, Michael Jecks, novelist, police, templars, war on drugs, writing

Working – written with the active non-cooperation of HTC.

So, after a short interlude, I'm back. No, I didn't have a holiday. Just too many things on, particularly school holidays, for me to be able to sit down and type sensibly!

I said two weeks ago, I think, that I would write something about writing with the new tablet. So here it is.

There is a problem with this, though. Mainly, while I'm waiting to hear back from publishers about the modern thriller, it's hard to concentrate on a new project – well, that's always the way – but also it's hard to write when trying to read and edit.

I've had a busy few weeks. First, there was the book I had to finish. I did, thank God. Then there was the book I had to read for a friend, Colin Andrews, called A MATTER OF DEGREE, which I'm glad to say I found an absolute delight to read, very funny, light and fun. However I've also had six thrillers land on my in tray to judge for the International Thriller Writers, and then, because I can't laze around all day every day, I have an old manuscript, "HAWKWOOD" to reread and edit heavily.

Still, that is a good demarcation point.

As most of you know, I used to be a firm exponent of the Apple iPad. I still am. I love the clear screen, the ease of use, and the superb applications – especially iThoughtsHD, Evernote and Echofon. They made many tasks brilliantly easy.

But things are not so easy that you can have one box to perform every function. Some tasks are better performed on another device.

One of the great things about the tablet concept for a writer is that the machine replaces the old methods of working.

It cannot replace writing on a screen for me. To be able to put a novel on paper, I have to have an Apple computer and Scrivener. The two work so well for me that there is nothing else worth looking at. And as soon as it's written, of course there are other processes that must be completed.

One such is revising and editing. I cannot separate the two, really. It's the second stage (which is all too often mingled with the writing) in which I take chunks of text out and move them to earlier sections, or back into later ones, and delete, insert, replace and muck about with it generally to my heart's content.

I have usefully done this work on screen in the past, just as I have on paper. It's the period when you find yourself reading the text aloud, trying to make sense of the motivations of individual characters, and ensuring that the book has a natural flow.

Trouble is, all too often it's hard to see how this will work on the page of a novel. A computer Word document or a page of double-line spaced work just doesn't quite hack it. It looks and reads differently.

This is what I discovered to be a hidden feature of the Apple.

I exported from Scrivener, and after a certain amount of fiddle-arsing about, got it onto the iPad, and then, miracle of miracles, I could read the thing as though it was a book already.

There is something magically different about looking at your words on a tablet device. It's more like reading a book – whereas staring at a sheaf of A4 pages or a computer screen just isn't!

Phone and Flyer Tablet Side-by-Side

On my iPad I could touch a word and highlight it wherever the page didn't read quite right. I could add a note, and a sticky would appear next to the relevant highlighted words with a date to tell me when I'd added them, and I could type up the corrections.

And there, you see, is the problem.

It required me to type in the text. I couldn't quickly mark up the text with copywriter's notation or add a word or two without going into the sticky mode. And once I'd added fifteen or so comments, the whole thing slowed a lot.

Clearly there was a better way of doing things.

For a while I'd been watching HTC because I use an HTC phone which was almost a shrunken iPad. It had similar software, with a great mind-mapping app to replace iThoughtsHD, Evernote, Dolphin for a web browser. In short, just about everything I needed.

But HTC were offering a little son-of-iPad device called the "Flyer". It had two things that interested me a lot.

Size and a pen.

OK, size matters, doesn't it? I loved the iPad because it allowed me to replace my laptop. The keyboard wasn't ideal, and I couldn't type on it at extreme speed, but it was good enough for writing comments and adding bits and pieces while sitting on a train, which was all I needed. And it was so much lighter than the Powerbook.

But it wasn't ideal. It wouldn't slip into a pocket, and even if it did (I have one jacket that could accommodate it) it was damnably heavy! The Flyer, in comparison, is roughly half the size, and easily half the weight. It goes everywhere with me, and when I need to add notes, it's there.

The other thing, though, is the pen. It allows me to scribble notes wherever I need to. For example, when I'm reading the latest book, now I don't have to sit upright at my desk and stare at a screen, or peer at pages of A4. I can handle this light little device in one hand, reading, and wherever I have to add a note or copywriter's notation, I can do so with the pen. Like this:

A quick insert into the page of my MS

It is an incredibly flexible tool this, because it's not only in the "reader" application. The pen can be used on any screen, and it produces an overlay, such that I can scrawl a diagram or picture on my home screen, for example, and store it.

Or, and this I do love, I can read something in a book, or see a scene while out walking. I can take a photo of the item and store it in Evernote. So far, so iPad. However, with the Flyer I can then take the pen, and add any comments I want to that picture. The scribbles will be attached to the picture in Evernote as a pdf overlay, so that when I'm at my desk and call up the picture on my main computer, the Evernote file will be presented to my exactly as I saw it on the Flyer. Here's a simple example of an Evernote with some scribbles attached.

An Evernote note with appended scrawl from the Flyer displayed on my iMac.

But if I'm out and making some notes, sitting in a library, for example, to be able to take a quick photo and add comments can be incredibly useful.

Photo taken from Flyer, comments added, saved to Evernote, displayed on iMac.

And likewise, if I'm making notes while listening to someone talking, I can sync the voice recording with the writing and notes. Beautiful – and astonishingly useful if, like me, you're an inveterate note-taker.

A screen of notes taken on the Flyer. Some with notes written on that also link to my iMac via Evernote!

So, with enormous sadness, a couple of weeks ago I sold my iPad and used the money to acquire a Flyer.

It was a wrench, and as soon as I have funds (God knows when that will be) I'll be back to Apple to purchase a replacement. Those things aren't called "fondle slabs" for no reason. They are a delight to hold and work with. And with an Apple I would have replaced my Powerbook. They keyboard isn't perfect on a touchscreen, but let's face it, the keys on a standard laptop are crap anyway. I was soon getting reasonable typing speeds on the iPad. Which I won't manage on the Flyer.

But the Flyer is a different tool. And the work it does as a revision and editing machine more than justifies its continued existence amongst my other tools.

Some may be wondering why I said this was written with the active non-cooperation of HTC.

Much though I love the company for its products (such as the Flyer and my Desire HD phone), and particularly for their after-sales support, which is up there with the best in the industry, I was not impressed with their press and marketing teams. Out of five (I think) emails to their different teams asking for help and ideally the loan of a device to help me write a piece for a magazine about the use of these devices, I have yet to receive a reply. There are some companies in which the marketing units are seen as the "sales prevention teams" – I can only assume that HTC's marketing people must be viewed in that kind of light, because as an outsider trying to get their help to sell their own products, they were uniformly incompetent.

Still, that's their lookout and I won't denigrate their products just because of the dreadful lack of marketing.

Must pass a hat-tip to David Hewson for his help showing me what I could do with this marvellous device. Well worth following his blog at http://www.davidhewson.com/

Tagged: author, books, crime writing, ebooks, HTC Flyer, novelist, projects, publishing, Scrivener, tablet computers, Templar series, writing

Ebooks and Stuff!

Good news potentially, from the Frankfurt Book Fair.

Apparently agents are warning of a reckoning to come, because of the low royalties paid to authors. If you want to read more, go and look at The Bookseller for the full article here: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/age...

Many people have asked me in the last few months why so few of my books are available on Kindle or other ebook formats. Well, the answer's very simple. I am a firm believer in getting paid for what I do. I know that many agree with Michael Joseph's words: "Authors are easy to get on with – if you are fond of children." However authors tend to be rather serious-minded individuals who gamble their lives on the dream of a best seller that will repay years of poor income. Authors don't earn massive fortunes. Only a tiny percentage manage that.

The reason is easy. Publishers do not like to waste their hard-saved money on undeserving souls just because without the said undeserving souls they'd have no products.

So, thus it was that on ebooks, my old publisher originally tried to persuade me to accept a flat 10% royalty across my backlist. I was not keen. I said "no".

After some months telling me the offer could not be improved upon, they added 5%. A little – but not enough. So I refused again. And a third time, and a fourth. By this stage the publishers were finally up to the industry norm at 25%, but I wasn't keen to take it. Why?

Well, you may think I'm just a typical greedy author, but I think I was being rational for once. It doesn't come easy to me.

If I had accepted that deal, I would have to expect that my old publisher would put in exactly the same amount of effort as they always have to sell my books – as little as possible. They would do a little work to convert the book (and since it's held digitally already, that would take minimal effort), and then leave it sitting on a digital bookshelf until someone decides to buy it. No marketing, no effort, but the company value would be increased by the addition of almost thirty titles.

What I am pretty sure would not happen is that there would be any marketing or publicity to push the sales up. Mainly because there has never been any marketing or sales campaign to push the paper copies with my old publishers, so why should I expect them to try more from a digital version?

In order to try to persuade them to do some work around this, I suggested an advance on royalties which they would pay per book. That way I'd at least know they were investing some money in my backlist as a project – but I was told that this would set a precedent, and they'd not consider it.

So, as matters stand, all the backlist's in limbo. The publisher won't sell the books, and I won't give up the backlist for nothing.

I know authors can sound pretty boring when they talk about their work. I rather like D'Israeli's words: "an author who speaks about his own books is as bad as a mother who talks about her own children" – but there is something different about a businessman trying to get a reasonable return for his efforts. And that's the position I am in now.

I have seventeen years of my life invested in my thirty-two stories. I have not been able to enjoy the lifestyle of a millionaire – or even a bank clerk. The money earned per book is risible. That being so, the only investment I have for my future is those titles.

If I was to give them up to the publisher and agree that they could own them as ebooks, I would be giving away my entire career. That ain't going to happen.

So, for those who have asked why my books aren't yet on ebooks, there is your answer. I haven't been offered anything for them yet. As soon as a publisher makes me a serious offer for the electronic rights, I'll be happy to sell them. And the way things are, I think it may be better to sell them in the US rather than UK.

And I'll be very happy to watch what happens to the royalty payments as well.

I think that there could be a brave new world of publishing on its way. It's not here yet – too many authors are tied to infinitely restricted contracts that deprive them of any real income. If they bypass their publisher, they don't get the (usually miserly) advance up front, but then again, they can earn in excess of 50 pennies per sale. Compare that with the author who is privileged to be paid, say, £5,000, but has to repay that advance on royalties based on 7.5% of net receipts (the industry norm in the UK). Each book the writer sells is likely to win between 6 pence and perhaps 24, in the best possible case. So the best possible case is half that of the straight to eprint author.

There are downsides, sure. The biggest is that the author going straight to ebook will never have a marketing campaign behind the book. True. How many authors actually have the benefit of marketing? Not many. Most are expected to sink or swim. Only the ready supply of celebrity authors ever see adverts for their books.

Still, I know too many good authors who have to spend hours each day promoting their work: blogging, tweeting, facebooking and God alone knows what else, to be worried about that.

View over Thames walking back to my hotel

Of course some elements of marketing can be huge fun. Many thanks to my new publishers Simon and Schuster for allowing me to travel up to London to Goldsboro Books the week before last. Not only did I get the chance to mingle and chat with my friends in the Historical Writers' Association, Medieval Murderers and CWA, but also with readers. One lovely lady with her daughter had flown over especially from Ireland just to meet me that evening. It is massively head-expanding to meet such dedicated readers! Thanks to you both.

Thanks too, of course, to Goldsboro in Cecil Court, London. They do a huge amount for book collectors and readers, and have a growing international business, providing signed first editions.

However, I am tied up just now, with new projects.

There is an ever-expanding number which is growing to take over all my time. Meetings with companies about writing concepts, meetings with others to develop ideas for my own stories, and also planning for a series of creative writing courses. This last could be one of my biggest challenges so far. Not sure about it, but there is definite potential. Apart from anything else, it would do me a lot of good to get out and about in the real world occasionally.

And having said all that, it's probably about time I got back to book 31 and the copyedit of City of Fiends. I have to say, I'm enjoying it a great deal just now!

Tagged: blogosphere, blogs, books, crime writing, ebooks, electronic books, epublishing, marketing, Michael Jecks, novelist, projects, publishing, review, Templar series, writing [image error]

RIP Steve Jobs

OK. Steve Jobs.

Now, I have never met the man, and yes, I admire him. He took a pretty screwy idea, and set up a small company in his parents' home. He created the Apple computers.

I had some experience of them. The old Apple IIe used to grace a table in my parent's home, too. I got it to learn Visicalc which, I was assured, would earn me a fortune. It was so crucial to small businesses and departments. Just that one spreadsheet package, I was told, would earn me fortunes.

Well, perhaps due to my incompetence with computers, it didn't. In fact, I earned very little from those little boxes. All right, nothing. I sold none.

Some while later, I was tempted to work for Apple again, when they brought out the first Mackintosh. A tall box, with this time only one floppy disk drive, instead of the IIe's two, this had the brilliant concept of WIMP. Not something you hear about too often nowadays, WIMP at the time was revolutionary. That's what Apple said, anyway. You haven't heard of it? No? Can't have worked, then.

WIMP was the result of collaboration between Apple and Rank Xerox. Remember them? It stood for Windows, Icons, Menus, Pointing device. In other words, everything that is used on computers today. Yes, it was Apple who took it out as an idea and made it work.

(I used to try to sell the Xerox systems after leaving Wang. Nice, big screens, but the technology was so out of date by then, I had to quit the firm because of embarrassment in case I sold one).

And that was my last involvement with Apple. Except I am typing this on my third Apple iMac, while in front of my my iPad is charging, and the iPod is playing in the kitchen.

My latest iMac. Gosh, it's lovely!

My life is not Apple. I use the computers because I have far fewer fears about bugs and viruses infecting my work. And, of course, since I'm an author, I do depend upon the fabulous Scrivener software, which works best with Apple. It also integrates with my iPad. And my phone.

Ah, but that's where the problem lies. It integrates with my HTC phone. I don't need Apple.

Steve Jobs did a fabulous job of bringing new ideas and concepts to the market and selling them really hard.

BUT – he was a raging capitalist, red in tooth and claw.

For all the tear-streaked liberals and lefties, who even now are mourning their leader, all I can say is, he sold to you beautifully, folks.

He was no liberal. Apple under him sold high-value goods to people who could hardly afford them. But the aspirational sale worked. He got them spending their hard-earned funds on Pods, Pads and computers. He spawned cartoon strips about Apple users, he got debates going. But he was a fabulously successful businessman.

He didn't keep manufacturing in the US to maintain US jobs. He moved manufacturing to a far cheaper location in China. And the records appear to indicate that the staff there do not enjoy the benefits of a western lifestyle. Did he care about green issues? Of course, he may have done as a caring father, but as I understand it not one of his millions ever went towards a charity, nor towards planting a tree. Tell me if he did.

No, Jobs was a fabulous showman who could sell any new product. Videos of his sales presentations will no doubt be archived for future generations. But what he was also good at was sharp business practices, feasibly, in trying to block any other company competing. Look at the court cases all over the world against Samsung. Look at the arguments he had with the music industry, with the publishing industry.

Not because he was a socialist trying to bring computers to the masses for as little as possible. No, he was trying to make a monopoly of his business. The brand of Jobs and Apple were inextricably combined in that business.

And now he's gone, and the business, I foretell, will start to unravel.

Not because I think he was a super genius who could out think his successors. No, it's just that the world he created has changed almost everything. The iPods are already losing sales in competition with all the other devices coming available. The iPads are fighting against an eruption of vast numbers of different devices. God knows which will win that market. I have a feeling personally that the HTC will be my next purchase, because with that there is a pen. And it means I can stop printing to paper, and achieve much more on the tablet. I wouldn't have realised that without the Apple iPad, but already I know that my phone (also HTC) is probably better than an iPhone.

The great thing Jobs did was think outside the box and bring to market ideas which were of their time. iPods were an ingenious concept, superbly executed. iPads were positioned just at the time people were looking for easier, more fun access to their games and surfing. Without Jobs at the head of the company, what says Apple will be able to come up with these sorts of game-changing ideas in the future?

I am like so many people now – not brand loyal. Apple won many wars, but the little battles are wearing down every product line Apple has.

Which I think is sort of nice.

Steve Jobs created a wonderful company, in much the same way that Dr An Wang did when he built Wang Laboratories. Both companies thrived under their leaders' autocratic control, both were determined to built excellence and quality into their equipment, both were dedicated to vast profits. Both left their businesses early, both returned to take over again.

Wang collapsed – from 35,000 jobs worldwide, it went to fewer than twenty in one year. I have a suspicion it'll take a little longer than one year for Apple, but I wouldn't invest my money in the firm now.

Still, RIP Steve. You did a lot of good for computer users all over the world.

Even if I never could sell those bloody IIe machines …

Tagged: Apple, books, data processing, marketing, Michael Jecks, novelist, publishing, Scrivener, Steve Jobs, Templar series, writing

This really is the death knell for publishers

My apologies. This is a blog from an astonishingly angry author.

Why?

Today the Bookseller announced that Amazon is having a great new sales campaign. In an October Kindle promotion, they will be aiming to sell vast numbers of books.

This is brilliant news, isn't it?

Amazon will do what they do best, push huge numbers of books at a massive discount. Book sales will shoot up.

Not mine. Because I don't have many as ebooks yet. And do you know what? I am exceedingly glad.

Yes. I am glad to miss out on the opportunity of selling books.

Read this article: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/amazon-asks-90-discount-new-kindle-campaign.html – yes, the clue's in the title.

I have banged on a little in the past about the asinine pricing which publishers are agreeing to. When shops in the High Street were allowed books at a massive 30-40% discount, authors were allowed a 7.5% royalty. In effect this was a commission on each sale. The amount everyone felt the author should get was no a massive sum. I mean, on a paperback it equated to about 52 pence. Wow. For most authors, who sold about 15,000 books, that meant a moderate income. It also meant few authors could work full time.

A Ruin. Like Publishing's Future

The end of price-fixing meant that those little bookshops could not compete so easily. Whereas in the past supermarkets and retailers like Amazon were not allowed to buy at larger discounts than corner shops, now they could.

Beforehand we had a thriving book industry which allowed corner shops to make as much profit from a James Patterson or JK Rowling as the supermarket. And those little shops invested in the books they were interested in. So they would buy books on Medieval warfare, the building of Roman walls, or underwater basket-weaving – whatever it was that interested the shop owner. And as a result publishing flourished because small shops could buy the books that interested them.

As a result of the end of the Net Book Agreement that fixed prices, bigger stores like Waterstone's, Borders and others demanded bigger discounts. Publishers like Headline were delighted to offer discounts to push ever larger print runs. They could make money from economies of scale. That is why almost all the local shops have disappeared. They cannot compete in a market so heavily rigged against them.

Sadly, also many superb writers didn't sell in the vast numbers. Publishers ran to the easiest sales. Those authors who were lower mid-listers, usually because incompetent publishers decided not to invest in any marketing, were dropped. I know one publisher who bought up crime lists of more than thirty authors, only to discard more than half in the space of two years. Ever larger publishers bought up the smaller, specialist ones, and then disposed of all the authors they didn't think would become multi-national best-sellers.

So now we have a small number of massive publishers.

But with the bigger discounts, the authors learned that when publishers felt squeezed, they would share the pain. So it is that authors no longer have their incomes fixed on a book's price, but on net receipts to the publisher.

That means that when a book is sold, if the publisher discounted it by 40% to sell to the retailer, the author's income fell by 40% as well. The writer is now held hostage to the whim of the publisher's discount structure – or the current negotiation.

Take the example above – a paperback which was sold at £7, meant the author received some 50 pence. Now consider this wonderful Amazon demand. Under this promotion, the author will be paid 5 pence.

Five pence for a book that may have taken the author two years of sweat and effort. Two years of hardship. Probably in many case, several years of hardship.

I can remember starting writing in 1994 and getting my first publishing deal. With that, I was delighted to be paid £10,000. Except that was to be repaid by the royalties. At the time, that three book deal was not stunning. Terry Pratchett was offered £50,000 for each of his first three books, I believe, but I was glad to be able to call myself a writer. At least at 50 pence per book sold, I could hope to repay the money.

Now?

How the hell do publishers, or Amazon, expect authors to be able to write when there is no realistic income at the end of their endeavours?

The problem of finance for books has been caused by a ludicrously short-sighted ambition to chase ever higher sales at the expense of ever reducing margins. And now, one retailer with an effective monopoly seems to believe it can squeeze all publishers to destroy authors' incomes.

And not only authors. The sheer brilliance of this is, it kills off all areas of the business. Not only publishing, but agents will disappear. Because out of that generous five pence royalty, authors have to lose 15% to their agents.

Is this new discount permanent? No. It's a one-off for the month. But this is the second one-off this year already. So now, one sixth of all sales are discounted at this level. Next year, Amazon will no doubt have a need to push another few deals. And they will do it because it will sell books. So the majority of buyers will get used to waiting for these deals, and yes, the massive discounted promotion will become the norm.

Does this mean I hate all ebooks?

No. But what this does mean is that it is very hard to see how on earth I can ever consider selling books through a middle-man like a publisher on the internet. And I am not alone. Authors are independent businessmen. If we cannot earn anything, we have to look to newer business models. And just now, the only workable model is that of working direct to internet.

If anyone can tell me how the hell it's possible for authors to carry on working with publishers for a matter of pennies, please tell me. I would love to think that there could be a future.

But just now, I can see no possible way of the current publishing business model succeeding. Because publishers have very successfully cut off the incomes of their suppliers.

And without authors, folks, there will not be publishers.

Tagged: authors, blogs, books, crime writing, death of publishing, ebooks, electronic publishing, incomes, Michael Jecks, novelist, publishing, Templar series, writing

Writing – Tools and materials.

Time was, you'd write a book by buying a pencil and a lot of paper.

The Best Writing Device - A Michael Jecks Pen.

Not everyone, of course, would do it that way. Some folks went to steel nibbed pens and ink with their paper. That was a little new-fangled, of course. Then you got the modern habit of buying gizmos. People learned of pens with reservoirs, and then, ye Gods, there were typewriters.

I was lucky enough to grow up at the end of that age. And I still infinitely prefer to use a pencil or fountain pen than a biro or computer. I love the smooth feeling of the nib or lead against paper. In fact, I love both so much, I have a stockpile of notepads and jotters beside me even now. And very glad of them I am too. All the old notes I've taken up to eighteen years ago when I was visiting the British Library for research are still here.

I did transcribe a lot of notes onto computer. All those are lost. The computers died, the disks got corrupted – any number of little problemettes – and the records are lost for ever. Just as are three novels. I wrote them on computers that became corrupted.

One of them was on floppy disks. Unknown to me, the drive's arm became fouled at some point, and because of that, the disks were unreadable by another computer. That was irritating.

Another was carefully backed up to a Zip drive. A great innovation, that was. But the computer acquired a bug, and the bug deleted swathes of my work. I could see something was wrong, so I backed up everything, like a good boy, and duplicated the bug over all my back up disks. That lost me two novels.

All of them were printed – but one copy I lent to a friend because he expressed interest in this unpublished book. And it got – mislaid. He's still a friend, but I do miss that book. It was my very first, and really rather good.

Good, old fashioned work.

Anyway, nowadays all authors use computers. I bypassed typewriters. I've tried to use them, and would dearly like to be able to use them, because a good old manual requires no electricity, it makes a satisfying sound, and I think they're rather handsome devices. But can I write books on them? Nope.

I started writing after selling wordprocessors for years. The idea of working straight to paper just doesn't work. And I couldn't afford all that paper now, either.

I met Laurence Block many years ago when he happened to be travelling, and he mentioned then that he had been away with a portable typewriter, and found it quite freeing. He took it to a cottage in Ireland and spent some weeks in a place without electricity. The next holiday, he swore, he would have only a pencil and paper. Minimalist, you see.

Today I was talking to the delightful David Hewson (and if you haven't read his books, you should) and he told me of his latest gadget, a seven inch display tablet.

I'm jealous. I have an iPad, but it's just too big for my pocket. A slightly smaller tab would be better.

Why a tablet?

I don't have a need for a lump to carry around with me. The number of times in recent years when I've been travelling and needed a laptop could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

However, my iPad is with me (in the house) all the time. I check emails on it, I make notes, I tweet. More importantly, I plan and plot.

I use iThoughtsHD on the iPad to sketch out scenes I need, characters, plots – anything. The headings can be thrown at my computer and shoved straight into Scrivener. And of course I make huge use of Evernote, which allows me to take photos of scenes, copy maps, pictures or scanned paragraphs, and then reuse them on the Mac at home, on the iPad, or even on the phone. All these things make writing so much easier.

And finally, I use the iPad in the way I couldn't ever use the laptop.

When the book is drafted, instead of printing a copy, I epublish it to myself. The novel goes straight to the iPad, and there I can read it pretty much as though it was a book. It feels more like a book than a laptop screen, anyway. And I can make notes, add comments, highlight text to be changed or deleted.

David's latest tablet has two advantages over my iPad: it's small enough to fit in a pocket. That, I like. It'd mean I'd have it with me even more than the iPad. The second item is one I wasn't sure about at first. A pen.

Instead of typing everything as I do now on the iPad, this means you can ring text, scrub through it, add comments. Almost anything. It sounds like a really good idea. But I wonder how long it would be before I lost the damn thing.

I have often said that with two books a year which I have to write, and not Agatha Christie, 70,000 word books, either, but carefully researched books of 140-150,000 words, if I didn't have such a good working knowledge of my period and didn't make use of actual murders and events, I'd find it very hard to think up new stories.

Well, if it weren't for the use of good equipment and software too, I'd find it even harder.

 

Tagged: author, books, crime writing, Dartmoor, David Hewson, HTC Flyer, iPad, iThoughtsHD, Michael Jecks, novelist, Scrivener, Templar, Templar series, writing

Inspirations

The cottage

I cannot read books while writing. It really is impossible. The way a writer writes gets into the rhythms of my mind, and his cadences and use of language, all influence what I try to write for myself. It's bad enough having to read quite so many historical books with each novel (by way of demonstration, I can count forty nine books which are scattered over my desk just now. That's not all the books I've read for this novel, just the ones I've referred to most of all. The others are all back on their shelves.

A short while ago, I was glancing through some twitter comments and learned that a woman I knew vaguely as a reviewer was boasting (sort of) about her reading. She was committing to reading three books per week, I think it was. And I commented that I wished I had time. Full of the pomposity of youth, she assured me that I had to 'make time'. Aha. Perhaps when she has children too, she will learn the sheer, ludicrous, wishful thinking of that comment.

Country scenes always inspire me

I used to read four books a week quite regularly. Not any more. My books take too much brain power, first with the planning (which seems pointless since the damn plot has to go out the window as soon as you start typing), then the research (which always sucks you in so that you lose another two weeks while searching for references to the quality of medieval floor tiles or glass-blowing in the 1300s) and finally, of course, there's the writing. And then the editing. And the copyedit and the proofing.

Writing two books a year, I'm pretty proud to be able to read one or two books a month.

Time was, I would get review books from Tangled Web and Shots Magazine. Sadly, that's had to end now, too. Just not enough hours in the day. However, I am this year helping to judge a thriller prize. I really am a twit on occasion.

There is another problem with reading.

I don't read medieval stories. No. Never. And I don't tend to read crime much either. 'WHY?' my brother asked recently, appalled by the fact I hadn't read Da Vinci or Girl With a Dragon Tattoo.

Simple. At some point in the future, I will be accused of plagiarising their works. There's no point denying it. I know my brain is pretty gormless at the best of times. If I read a really good story, excellent plot etc, I will log it. And in twenty odd years, when I'm even more gaga than now, I'll think up a fabulous plot and put it down, and the first critic to pick it up will declare me a plagiarist for duplicating the story of Robinson Crusoe or something.

Many of my friends state that they often receive story ideas from fans. I do too. Any such plots and ideas are always discarded, burnt, and unread. Because we like to think up our own stories, and not run the risk of someone later suing us for stealing their storylines (when the book's been sold to a million people, not before, of course. They want to sue for a reasonable amount).

What DOES inspire, is the idea of places. The feel, the smell, the light about them, the sounds. Everything.

Inspiring countryside

My first books were all based on two areas of Devon, really. One was the land from Fursdon over to Exeter and back to Crediton. There's an easy reason why. Once a month or so I'd visit, and my favourite place in the world just then was a beautiful cottage near Sandford, a few miles from Crediton.

It was a (perhaps) fourteenth century long house.  Once it had been twice as long, with the cattle held in one half, the people in the other. A screens passage separated the sitting room from the front door and hall. That screen itself must have been six hundred years old, perhaps more. The second half of the place had fallen, as so many did – their construction standards weren't too hot in those days – but the rest has survived remarkably well.

For many years it would have been a pretty well-off peasant's house. Then, sixty odd years ago, there were moves to break up the old landowner's estates and let the smaller farmers take their own land. Death duties, inheritance taxes, all did for the old families. The last owner of Creedy Hall outside Crediton, died in the Bahamas after selling off the estates that remained. He couldn't afford the place. His family had been there since William conquered England in 1066.

Before he left, the cottage had been home to one of his cattle men. Afterwards it was bought up by the Nott family. They were typical industrious Devon folk. Father Nott dug out the hill behind the house and made a garage. He erected an extension, and he farmed a good sized herd of beef and dairy cattle. He sold off the old house in the 1960s when he had a new house built. A modern, square, red-brick house with good metal window frames and running water.

I never liked that place.

The old Cattleman's house before new thatch, paint, and insides!

But the old house, that was different. I could sit at the window and watch the shadows of the clouds passing over the fields before it. I could see the different crops being planted, growing and being harvested. There was no road noise, no television. Even radio was dodgy. The mobile phones on two services might, occasionally, work if you stood in the field behind pointing roughly southwest. Elsewhere? forget it.

That was the house in which I wrote the beginnings of six or seven books, all but one consigned now to the litter bin. The one remaining survivor, of course, was Last Templar. Which was fitting, because I sort of stole the house to be Simon Puttock's first home.

To find a place that will give an author the mood, the feeling of place, and the desire to write, that is a very special thing. I've been inordinately lucky, and misfortunate, to have a mind that can effortlessly flutter from one perfectly sensible idea to another, without consciously noting any locations en route. So this morning, while driving to some woods to walk the dogs, I had a brilliant idea for a story. I think. It had gone by the time I parked.

Inspiring views

Walking is inspirational to me. In woods today, with the soft mulch of rotting leaves underfoot, the silence all around me, I was able to think more deeply about the current story (just finished the first pass, you'll be glad to hear) and also ramble through some outlines for newer plots and tales.

It is the same when I walk on Dartmoor. The peace gives my mind room to wander, and the views tend to give me a great sense of location for historical books, as well as a genuine respect for the weather. We do get a lot of it down here.

Colours can inspire, as can sounds. I cannot listen to modern music while writing medieval stories. It doesn't work. But stick on bransles or a saltarello, and I can write a thousand words an hour. Yes, I have the equivalent of verbal diarrhoea through my finger tips. An embarrassing condition, but one I can live with!

And friends inspire. I was delighted yesterday when a friend offered to read a book of mine with a view to putting a comment on the front, if it gets into print. It's enormously kind and generous of other writers to give their time for such things, and his kindness gave me a roll for several hours. In fact, it hasn't left me yet, twenty four hours later.

But the biggest influences must have been all those books I read when I was young. Conan-Doyle, Agatha Christie, HH Munro, Richmal Crompton, and all the others. They are what inspired me to write, after all.

Well, them and the cottage. I just wish I could afford it now – sadly it's being rented for holidays in Devon now. If I could, I'd buy it. It's lovely!

Tagged: author, books, crime writing, Devon, inspiration, medieval, Michael Jecks, novelist, writing

What is it about social media?

Right, I know I'm not the most reliable blogger or tweeter in the world, but there are times when you just have to get on with the day job, and writing a 1,000 word commentary doesn't always fit in with it.

Today, for example, I am immersed in the middle of an almost two month long battle. Coming up for air to think about the twenty-first century isn't so easy.

It was partly because of that that I began to investigate all these new social media gizmos. Well, it was the publisher, in fact. They told me that they wanted me to focus on things like Twitter and Facebook, and I trundled off into the middle distance to think hard about them.

How much good are they, though?

From the publisher's point of view, they're great. They need little publisher intervention (read for that, cost, expense, investment) and no staff involvement. The author is working hard at getting his or her ideas over, but the publisher can sit back and rake in the profits. That's the idea.

Good cover!

But does it work?

Well, the crucial bit is, getting your ideas across. If you're contacting lots of people, well, then you're risking success. Because the more people you contact as an author, the more may discover they like your work.

But how do authors use the social media available. I was thinking hard about this over the weekend. Why? Because I got really, really close to 800 followers on Twitter, and my Facebook users have almost reached 5,000 again. I say again, because eight months ago I went through an extensive process of trying to evict people. Did it work? Did it heck.

People keep on contacting me. They are writers, they say, and want to join and network. That's nice, but I don't anticipate selling too many books to people who contact me hoping to sell theirs. There are others, who use Facebook as blatant marketing. They ask to become a friend, and then post asking me (and my FB friends) to go to their site, buy a book and "like" their pages. Well, I'm afraid I don't stay friends with them for long. I chuck them off. I'm not working on my pages in order to sell other people's works. Genuine friends, yes. If I could help Paul Johnston, Stella Duffy, Ruth Edwards, Quintin Jardine, I would. They are real friends of mine. I like to help my friends.

But no, my FB pages are there for two reasons. One, the "author" page at www.facebook.com/pages/Michael.Jecks.... is purely to help sell books. Come on, you all know that really, if you've seen the page – and if you haven't, please go and "like" it!

The other page is my personal one. Yes, if you search for me, you'll find it. But this isn't really a direct selling page. It's the one I do use for friends, family and a select number of FB people who have become friends. Not friends I've met, but folks I'd genuinely like to meet (Tom, yes, and you too, Paul, and you, Loren, amongst many others).

So, I really do not want to have a load of people putting comments on which are purely to flog their own books. Nor, because I detest them, do I want invitations to join damn silly games on there. Which is why they get removed as soon as I find them. As are the increasing number of invitations to become over-friendly with extremely pretty young women who think my mugshot shows me to be particularly handsome. First, I am not that good looking, and second, I am not that gullible. So those messages too get removed.

Does Facebook sell books? I doubt it. Almost all the people I know on it have got to find the pages because they knew my work and enjoyed it. It brings no new readership.

But then there is Twitter. Now, this is a site I do like, because it's like knowing that there is a good conversation going on, into which I can dip when I get time. Like a dinner party, and I'm serving the food. I can't keep hold of every comment, but when I come in with each course, I can rejoin the chatter. It's fun. And does it sell books?

Maybe it does. But like I said earlier, I was up to nearly 800 users on Saturday, and I watched for some time to see when I would cross that barrier. But although I kept scoring more and more users, there were some dropping out all the time too, and I wondered why. There didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it.

In the end I did a quick search and found something called Twitter Unfollow Tracker. Weird. All of a sudden I learned of a huge number of odd followers whom I had wondered about when they said that they were following me, but who suddenly dropped me like a hot spud. So I began to look at them.

There were a surprising number of financial services people. Hmm. There were a lot of folks who sold themselves as internet media consultants and the like. Hmm again. Looking through, I realised that there were quite a lot of folks who were befriending me, and then stopping their following a few days later. Some were faster, others slower, but on average they'd go within four days.

That was when I had an email suggesting I try TweetBig. Aha, I thought, what is this?

It's a software firm that provides you with the potential to increase your followers. It asks you what sort of follower you are interested in, what sort of hashtags you want to emphasise, and then wanders off into cyberspace and sort of kicks over the bins and rootles around in order to find people you'd be interested in. Then it contacts them, friends them, and if they don't reciprocate, it drops them again.

This way, apparently, people can increase their followers rapidly.

Now, I looked at some of the folks who'd followed me and then dropped me. Many, I didn't follow back. Why? Well, if it's a firm selling media consultancy, I don't have the time to read their blogs or the money to hire them. There's no point. If it's a company selling Chryslers in Delaware, likewise, it's not of any interest to me here in Blighty. I like to drop in on pleasant folks who are interested in and talking about things which interest me.

However, if you look at the sort of folks who do this trolling, they end up with 30,000, 40, 000, or more followers. Well, I wonder how many sales they get from all those?

There are others, too. A strange number of people whose tweets I'd followed seemed to fall off the radar. Very peculiar, but a number seemed to link to me for a week or so, and then ditch me. Well, it was hurtful. So I reciprocated on that, too!

But what is the point of this social media. We are told by the firms concerned that they really want to bring people together in the internet age. They are companies with interest in people. They don't want people to become isolated.

So, how do they achieve this? They stop people talking face to face. They prevent normal dialogue. They sell the ability to use a telephone, yes, a device to allow you to talk, as a means of typing messages. This is not a way to increase communication except in the most non-human manner.

The companies want to help people. Then they allow other companies to link in and sell applications that take all human contact away. There are systems which store and forward your messages, so that when you're away, your followers still get their momentary fix of your comments. Theoretically. There are all too many which allow you to automatically follow someone, or send a message to people who have followed you. This isn't adding to the sum of human joy, is it, now?

But these kindly, humanitarian, social-based companies are there to help. They are the new businesses, not nasty old capitalist firms, but organisations which depend upon nice folks who only want to communicate.

And now they all take adverts.

So, let's get these things clear in our minds, eh?

Social media. What's it all about?

It's about huge businesses making money for themselves. Along the way the occasional author or alternative businessman may make a few dollars as well, but that is a fortuitous event, not a by-product.

Will I continue to use FB and Twitter? Yup. Twitter I find rather fun, although with adverts and sponsored trending, it'll become a great deal less so. FB is enjoyable, and can be useful for marketing, I think.

But let's not fool ourselves that either of them is a serious business medium for selling books. They are not!

Boy, was I young then. Those shelves are now full of my books!

Tagged: advertising, author, books, facebook, followers, friends, marketing, novelist, social media, twitter, writing

American tours.

When I started out, seventeen years and thirty two books ago, it seemed to me that the idea of being a writer was simply brilliant. I never expected to be a multi-millionaire, but to be fair, in those days, it was pretty easy to earn a fair living. Price protection on books meant that authors knew how much they would earn per book. If it was hardback, ten percent of the cover price, while paperbacks earned seven and a half percent. And they rose, if you sold lots.

Life was good.

Well, it would have been, if it wasn't for the fact that new authors like me earned a pittance. Still, I was happy with my three thousand spread over the next two years. I was a published author.

Sadly, the money's dried up still more since those halcyon days. For a Brit author, almost without exception, breaking into the US seems fabulous, until you look at the sums. Most publishers have to sell through distribution deals, which means massive discounts, and peanuts for the author.

The loss of so many bookshops means that the mid-list authors aren't producing as much as they used to. Once, publishers could expect this middle-of-the-road brand of author to generate almost all their profits. The large number meant the publisher's accounts were secure. So what if the mid-listers earned little as individuals – there was an actuarial certainty that the majority would sell, and sell moderately well. Those profits could be spent on the high-rollers, the celebs who wouldn't pay back their advances, but who added glitz to the imprints and generated tons of publicity.

Small bookshops helped because they had diversity. They could use the profits from the latest Jeffrey Archer to subsidise books that they wanted to stock and sell. Readers would wander in and find esoteric novels on underwater basket weaving in Norfolk, and walk out delighted to have found another niche of high street eccentricity. And they generated a lot of money. They didn't expect, or receive, massive discounts, so publishers kept more money. So did authors.

There was a spin-off to this. Authors could be sent off to pester readers.

Now, my last publisher, being new, but very old-fashioned in outlook, didn't believe in paying good money to have authors wandering around selling their books. My first marketing campaign was – well, mine. I found a friend of a friend (friend of a wife, really, but don't be picky) who owned a printers'. He agreed to shove pictures and words into the edges of his white card print runs. Result? Hundreds of bookmarks that were effectively free.

My publisher didn't want any.

With future books, I managed to pay minimal amounts for all the bookmarks I had produced. Wonderful resources. I learned in one store that they doubled my sales – but giving away my bookmarks with all the crime books they sold that I hadn't written! What, Graeme reasoned, was the point of preaching to the already converted? Hello, Graeme. A wonderful salesman shocking that he should have retired!

It was about then that I met a wonderful lady in the publishing house, who was actually interested in selling books. When I first met her, she expressed some shock that I had to pay for my bookmarks, and insisted on getting them done herself. She was a wonder.

Another thought I had was, America actually had quite a few people. Now, this may come as a surprise, but even I, as an author, could see that there might be a bit of mileage in trying to sell books in the US.

Sorry, I was told, but we as a major international publisher, don't send authors to America. Not unless you're famous.

So, by scrabbling around under the bed, in some drawers, and  in my wife's purse, I discovered almost enough to get me to America. I flew out, and attended Bouchercon. A great event, full of all the world's best crime writers, and I made a lot of friends very quickly. And came straight home (look, it was expensive, OK?).

Oggie, a great bookseller !

The next year, I proposed to the publisher that if they'd pay for part of it, I could afford to go again. And since I was making really good contacts out there amongst the book sellers of America, it would be worth their while. And Lo! and Behold! after some fairly persistent nagging, I got them to agree.

After that, my expenses started to reduce a bit. Thank God – I couldn't afford to take my wife for a holiday, and it was expensive getting to America. But at least in future I shared the expenses with the publisher – they never paid all the costs.

I had a lot of arduous travelling. Never so bad as the time when, after three weeks of solid meandering around America, I ended up on a Saturday night in Madison (I think) for one night, and was installed in a hotel with not many people. So few were staying that the barman had gone home for the night (this was 9 pm). I wasn't allowed any alcohol, not even with my meal.

Disgruntled, I went off next morning to stay one more night in a hotel. There, I was looking forward to a good meal and an appalling amount of drink. No. This hotel, I was told, didn't have a bar. It was dry.

So was I. My thoughts that night I did not note down. Probably lucky I didn't. They might have scorched the paper.

However, other trips stick in my mind. I remember with great fondness a wonderful week or two with Quintin Jardine, travelling from Boston to San Fransisco. It sticks in my memory because one morning we were taken by a voluble cabbie to a bookshop. It was a long ride, and our driver kept up a monologue for most of the way. At last, a few blocks from the shop, he dried up, and asked what we did.

Quintin said, 'We're pro's. We kill people for money.'

The cabbie didn't say another word.

Then there was the wonderful and hilarious road trip with Paul Johnston and John Connolly, driving from Austin (now that is a beautiful city, really loved that) to Houston.

Houston leaves me a little cold. Something to do with sitting in Houston airport waiting for the back-end of a hurricane to fly over me. Although I was five hours early for my flight, I ended up two hours late for my next engagement in North Carolina, and all the audience had gone by the time I arrived.

There was the time I was staying outside Chicago, and gaily asked where the local combat zone was, only to learn I'd walked through it that morning. I never  realised . Or the time I got lost in LA, and ended up in what looked like an ideal spot for the attempted filming of "Mortal Combat, Rise of the Murderous Mob". If there is such a film. I remember driving very quickly indeed out of that.

I distinctly recall the trip I made to Las Vegas. It convinced me that if there was one town I'd go back to, it wouldn't be that! Never have I seen money elevated to such a pedastal, and never have I seen prostitution so gloriously promoted. So many pretty girls' faces pasted on to visitors' cards and stuck in chain-link fences around these beacons to overindulgence.

But the trip which really sticks in my memory was the last one.

I wandered off all alone, as usual, and landed in Chicago. I had a day or two to kill, and spent it wisely, reading a friend's manuscript, which was a delight, and commenting on it. After that, it was off to the bookshops, and learning to my joy that all the bigger stores actually had my books. That was good.

Then, however, I had a convention. Another Bouchercon. And this time, it was in Anchorage.

View from the hotel room

I had no idea how far from Seattle Anchorage is. It is a very long flight, believe me!

Now many of my UK colleagues chose to back out of that one. I suppose they looked at the map and said 'All the way up there?' So did a lot of Americans. And I'm damn glad they did, because it meant lower-level authors like me could hog the limelight. But that wasn't why I liked it. No, I just fell in love with the city.

It's not beautiful. Picturesque it is not. But Anchorage is charming. If you like wildlife, it's spectacular. If you like wilderness, it's perfect. The city is like a Canadian one, in that the locals are all so busy fighting the elements they don't have time to fight each other. But to sit in a hotel room and be able to look at a ring of snow-capped mountains every night, to be able to watch a moose idling along a road in the main city, and of course to enjoy the company of some delightful, kind and friendly people, these made the whole trip worthwhile. And while I went on from there to Seattle, it is still the joy of Alaska that sticks in my memory.

But such trips have dried up. Publishers don't pay for authors to go abroad and sell books, because the majority of books are now sold cheaply on the internet, and at the profits made, the publishers don't see the point.

Which is a huge shame. It's important that writers should meet their readers, and it's good for readers to meet their favourite authors. But more key, too, is that authors need to travel. We have to get away from our homes, from our comfort zones, and see how other people live. Otherwise all we can do is rehash all our own thoughts and beliefs, and that is no benefit to anyone.

Well, I have promised myself that I will take my family out to Alaska and other parts of America. I'd dearly like to go fishing in the lakes, take them to see the great glaciers around Prince William Sound, or just go walking in the woods. Oh, and I'd need to go pistol shooting, too, if I could find an auto to rent. I really miss my Glock and the Colt. Sadly it'll not be possible to take my family there for quite a while. If incomes keep on reducing at the rate they are, I may have to wait until both children are gainfully employed and can take me with them! But it's something to aim for.

I have been invited to visit Alaska again next year. That one will probably be a solo trip, because it'll be in school time, but I do hope to manage to get out there, and if possible, fit in some talks on the way there and back as well. After all, if I can fill in the time a bit, so much the better!

So, if you want an itinerant author wandering around near you, let me know. You never know, I may get there next year!

 

Tagged: Alaska, American tours, author, Book tours, marketing, publicity, publisher, publishing, Signing, writing