The obsessions of the indie author

What have we done?! No, what have you done? Sitting at your desk, arms like eels sliming ego over your keyboard. The keyboard has become your feeder, encouraging you to keep tapping away because the next message you receive might make you feel alive again. A single piece of toast rests on your cheek, curiously blending in with the rest of your buttery skin.

The sun blazes through the window of the room; the kids are asking where has Daddy gone?

Daddy will be there in a minute, he’s just got to finish joining another Facebook group for independent writers, so he can pretend they are his friends, so they can all pretend to be his, so everyone can have wonderful five star reviews, so people who don’t know what’s going on will end up buying his books. He’s just got to tell them he loves them, again, and laugh at their terrible puns, again, and agree he loves the cover of another terrible cover, again, and pretend to care about the so called struggle of another writer asking help from others about what she should name the characters in her book, again. He knows she doesn’t really want his advice, because naming characters is a personal thing, but he joins in anyway, because he wants to play the game: because this is the game where every writer wins.

But, whisper it: literature is losing. And so are the children.

And so he throws names at the writer who needs help with something she doesn’t need help for; because if she can’t name her own characters what kind of writer is she? And the writer rubs her hands at all the Facebook comments, from the father and others; because the thing is, she thinks, she’s already named her characters, but this conversation is a completely free advertisement.

And everybody wins.

But, whisper it: literature is finding it hard to breathe. And so are the children.

The truth sometimes has an ugly face, but inside the bubble where everything’s fake, nothing changes. Everything is beautiful, and it doesn’t matter it’s not real, because when your head is in the trough with others, you can’t see the pig you’ve become. There are terrible writers and good writers, some fantastic books, and some terrible books. That’s the beauty of Kindle. So what is it with all these five star reviews? Some books are terrible, I’ve read some of them, but the reviews state repeatedly this is the best book I’ve ever read.

So what’s going on? Who is changing the rules?

Not the reader, readers have been around since the beginning. The people changing the rules are the people who should be governed by them…a percentage of the new dawn of Kindle authors. Adults wrapped in tin foil sitting on top of donkeys, preparing to fight a dragon, waiting to be called heroes. But the dragon is just a broom handle covered in socks puppets.

Some Kindle authors are rigging the game; acting as friends, but only for themselves, because the friendships aren’t real like everything else. But the line between pretend friends and real enemies is fine; the laughter fake, but the anger real. The moment a writer fails to return the favour of a review or Amazon “like” is the moment all hell breaks loose. The mask slips, and the selfish, egotistical, obsessed writer who will stop at anything to reach the top, revealed. A dog barking madness, chewing their own arm off to break the chains of the life they’ve wrapped around them.

I’ll explain…

We had a chance to create a world so amazing the publishing industry would be forced to change their approach to literature. We had a chance of building a city built from truth, a land where the best books get great reviews because the best books are simply the best books.

But, you fuckers, some of you have ruined it.

Instead we built a world where the books with the best people marketing them win, where the simple process of the amount of time someone can spend at a PC directly equates to how many books they sell. What has that got to do with writing, with the words on the page, with the substance and imagination and skill of the writer? Nothing, is the answer. Everyone is passing their books around in one big author circle, so up the Amazon rankings books soar, but nobody is reading the words on the page. And nobody cares, as long as the rankings tell others they’re more special than most.

What happened to artists? What happened to writing words that mean something? When did everything become about the Amazon ranking? What happened to not caring about reviews, about not caring what others think because the words mean something to you? What happened to waking up, and seeing the person you love, instead of reaching for your phone in hope your book has moved up in an irrelevant and easily fixed digital ranking?

Nice one, take a bow. Dip your hand deep into a bowl of grapes and pull out your soul. Put your soul through a blender, put it back into an idiot without integrity, zip the suit up at the back, and get on with being who you’ve become.

Writing the best book you could, and allowing readers the freedom to judge without the fear of reprisal or judgement, was all we had to do. People started with good intention, but now the market is flooded with terrible words, plastered over storylines we’ve all read a million times. Quantity has replaced quality. Books with over a thousand reviews, surely these have to be good?

And then after page ten, you realise: you are reading something shit.

Bad writing is now acceptable. Books literally copying and pasting other books, with terrible titles, shoved under our noses to see if we sniff. And if we do, we smell faecal matter, and pass out immediately from over expanding brain cells struggling to find a safe place to vomit. Some books have a great title and cover, and then when you look inside your eyes start bleeding and your brain turns around in your skull, and shuts down your central nervous system as a defence mechanism.

With indie publishing I thought we would get away from the bullshit of doing anything to get ahead, but this isn’t just cut-throat, people are cutting their own throats for the appearance of success.

I thought publishers would start publishing original books, and discover the dip in traditional paperback sales had nothing to do with the Kindle, and everything to do with their continuous insulting of the imagination of their audience. I was wrong. Instead, many of the books with the most reviews on Amazon today are often a reflection of the amount of time people have spent at their PC. We have become the promoters, the marketers, and the fake reviewers: we have become the article in The Guardian praising a book, which turns out to be the worst book ever read.

We are the reporters in the pockets of publishers, and the publishers in the pocket of fear.

We are the collaborators of the demise of the platform we sought for years, because a fake review is nothing more than a sabre tooth tiger with his teeth removed, his tiger passport taken away, chained to a wall by penguins. Told if he doesn’t dance like a monkey and pretend to like fish, he will be shot and his body moved to the back end of an elephant. And a rumour spread, after death, he enjoyed inserting his penis into the bum-ring of giants.

When did everything become guaranteed awesome? Every book is awesome, every author is awesome, every review is awesome, every cover is awesome, every book title is awesome, gumball machines are awesome, being fake is awesome, lies are awesome, war is awesome.

Actually, gumball machines might be awesome.

The books selling the most are not the best books, the writers climbing the charts are not even the best writers; some of them are not even good writers. If you know the name of every reviewer they aren’t reviewing your book, they are reviewing your friendship with them. And they are only reviewing you, so you review them too.

This doesn’t have a happy ending. This ends with people turning away from Kindle because the reviews can’t be trusted. This ends with people not reading books because they think they are rubbish before they begin. This ends with your five star reviews drying up and you wondering why. Unable to contemplate it’s because you used up all your credit with people who have given you fake reviews, and to get more fake reviews you need to sell yourself to more people by handing out more fake reviews.

The process sounds exhausting. And it doesn’t mean anything. If you continue to give fake reviews in return for fake reviews, eventually the only way to spot a good book will be because it has no reviews. I wrote a terrible book when I was starting out, and gave it to someone, and they said it was terrible and laughed in my face. That’s how it should be. Now a writer starting out can write something terrible and manipulate the people around them to tell the world their terrible book is in fact amazing. That is not success. That is failure: redefined.

And it gets worse…

Some authors are now afraid to speak out, because to openly criticise a book and give it a low review on Amazon means confronting a potential bullying herd of spiteful smaller authors who stick to the authors who sell in vast numbers like barnacles on a rusting ship. Leave an honest one star review as an author under your real name on Amazon, and live in fear one star reviews will start appearing on your books. The drive to succeed has driven us mad, the illusion of becoming a household name has taken the smile off the journey and turned it upside down.

So, authors just starting out, or authors long established – here’s my advice:

Promote your book, put your words under as many noses as you can, as writers we have the right to do that. As writers we do not have the right to manipulate how and when people read our work. We do not, or we should not, have the power to influence people into “liking” our book on Facebook or reviewing it favourably on Amazon before that person has read the first page. Turn your back on Amazon reviews exchanged for Amazon reviews.

Observe but do not judge – remember that despite all I am saying, there is no way anyone can truly know if a review is fake or real. The self appointed Kindle author police, the sad old folk who spend all day on the Kindle publishing forum because they have nothing better to do, are just as deluded in their pursuit of justice as some Kindle authors are in their pursuit of success.

Fake Amazon reviews are born from fear: the self appointed Kindle police are born from jealousy.

Remember that reviews are meant to enhance overall book quality for the reader. The whole point of a review is to make authors think they can’t release any old nonsense because strangers are going to read their books and review them honestly. That is quality control. If the review system is rigged, if most writers pretend to be best friends with most other writers, then we are creating a literary world where one day a writer can release a photograph of their left testicle, or vaginal flap, and receive great reviews. Eventually all books will be filled with a single photograph of a testicle or vaginal flap. And the people will gather around in awe at the new Shakespeare.

Remember some books are shit. Get over it.

If you get a bad review, guess what? Congratulations. You are on the path to becoming a better writer, instead of remaining a deluded idiot. One of the great things about Kindle as an author, is you can edit, and update your books. I’ve updated mine plenty. They are now the most complete they have ever been. But, it took years to get them to where they are. If you’ve penned something in a month, prepare to go back to it. You should want to go back to it. Great writers aren’t born: they are carved from thousands of hours of hard graft, and loneliness.

An author has to expect criticism, not run away from it. A writer won’t grow as a writer, won’t become the potential great writer they dreamt of being if they receive only five star reviews for a two star book.

Remember that there is a connection between how readers are expected to review and how hard it is to get reviews. Readers have become afraid to say what they really think. What happened to lots of reviews, with some people saying they like a book and others hating it; a debate with people divided: life, born from a book? Answer: we did – the kindle authors.

Stop asking for likes in exchange for likes, stop saying I’ll buy your book if you buy mine; because you are personally responsible for the death of indie publishing before it begins.

Remember when you had a life? When you wanted to write a book and release it for you? To see what fate had in store? When did you start taking yourself so seriously? When was the last time you went outside in the day, instead of sitting at your PC trying to generate fake reviews for your books? Well done, you wrote a book. You released it. Now keep your head high. Don’t get down in the gutter to look up at the stars, you don’t need to: stars shine brighter with your family and friends around you. Don’t become one of the authors changing what Kindle could still be. Resist the temptation to generate fake reviews because our brave new world of indie publishing is slowly becoming a world full of quite nice, educated, manipulating cowards, more than prepared to lie to themselves and others. And only you can save it.

For all the millions of us indie authors, very few are going to make it to the other side; to that place our words appear on paper, paid for by somebody else. Let that sink in. I’ve made it my life ambition to try, but not at the expense of my integrity. Not at the expense of my art, or my words. There is no point crossing a burning bridge.

Children who once told parents to go away because parents are boring and ruining their game are now hearing just another minute, almost finished. Remember to balance your drive, passion and all the obsessional hours spent at your PC with what you had before: your life.

Because your life might not wait forever for you to go back to it, and if it goes, all you’ll be left with is the pretend friends inside your machine. And a book, in the Amazon charts, with a handful of biased reviews, and old memories of who you used to be.