If You've Ever Wondered...

...what reading slush for months on end does to your mind, then just read this.

It is a bloody brilliant blog and I wish I'd written it.

(I wish I'd discovered the blog, too, but have to admit that Janet Reid got to it first. Now I know what her competitors feel like.)

Trios: Devil's Gold, by Julie Korzenco

Congratulations to Eric Stallsworth, whose name has just been pulled out of a virtual hat over at Julie Korzenko's house. He'll soon be receiving a copy of Julie's novel Devil's Gold, which kicked off my Trios series a few weeks ago.

Commiserations to those of you who weren't lucky this time round: all is not lost, though, as there's still time to join in the rush for a copy of Tania Hershman's wonderful The White Road and Other Stories which you can read about here.

Bookselling: Chains vs Independents

As so many of our bookshops are now part of large chains, and the bulk of book buying for those chains is carried out by a central buying office, the stock you see on the shelves has become homogenous and neutral. Stock in an Edinburgh branch of Waterstones is almost identical to stock in the Exeter branch.

Most branches will have a small section for local interest books (by local authors, perhaps, or about local history) but the majority of the titles that they carry will be found in all of their branches.

While I don’t hold any grudges against Waterstones or any other chain (I’ll cheerfully admit that I’ve spent weeks of my life lurking in their stacks), I do worry about the impact that they’ve had on bookselling’s independent sector. While relatively few independent bookstores now remain, thirty years ago they were a feature of almost every high street: each one had its own personality, which was reflected in its stock, and the people who shopped in them. I fondly remember a bookshop in Ealing Broadway (opposite the train station: can anyone else remember it?) where I used to buy short story anthologies, poetry, and experimental fiction, much of which I still own; and another bookshop on Kentish Town high road where twenty years ago I bought all sorts of books from new writers, published by emerging presses. I doubt that any branch of Waterstones would even consider stocking half of those the titles: and yet they’re (almost!) all brilliantly written, and many contain work from newcomers who are now household names.

So now, when ever I go anywhere, I make an effort to find any independent bookshops that I can. Some are a little less organised than Waterstones or Borders; and they don’t usually have much in the way of three-for-twos; but they more than make up for those failings by having staff who can find you the perfect title out of their brilliant range of fascinating books.

Book Review Sites

There are all sorts of book review blogs on the internet, but some are better than others.

Dovegreyreader was one of the first and is still very well-regarded; I like her blog but it takes an age to load for me (yes, I'm still on dial-up...) so I don't read it as often as I would like to; and I am constantly amazed by the number of books that she works her way through.

My friend Sally Zigmond has her own book review blog which I do always read. Our tastes are so similar that I know that if she likes a book then I probably will too: in fact, her opinion is so reliable that I might just as well send her the keys to my Amazon account, and ask her to sort out my reading list in the future.

Tania Hershman, who has featured in my Trios series, runs The Short Review which showcases short story collections.

Smart Bitches, Trashy Books is huge fun, and the reviews are rock-solid; Random Jottings is always worth a look; I know a lot of people who like The Bookbag (but it's not a site I've spent much time on, I'll admit); and Juxtabook is just great.

There are a few book reviews on this blog, too: most are writing-related.

And here, thanks to Editor Unleashed, is a wonderful post which lists all sorts of wonderful book review blogs, as well as some great tips on how to best behave if you want to get your book reviewed. Brilliant.

There are plenty more book review sites: but which are your favourites? Post links, and your reason for liking them, and with any luck we'll end up with a useful list.

How Writers Improve

We know that most of the writing in the slush pile is dreadful; and that the less able writers are often simply unable to understand how their writing is bad, or precisely how bad it is.

We know that writers’ message boards and peer review sites can be of questionable value when the writers who populate them aren’t very good at their craft; and while some paid-for editorial and critique services can be useful, others are simply appalling and many writers just can’t afford to pay for them, regardless of the quality.

There are writing groups but the dynamics might not be right for everybody and here we are back to that problem of the general standard of talent and ability of the writers who attend. Writing MAs can be useful but aren’t without their issues either.

Self-help books might be the answer for some: there are plenty of books which offer advice on how to write more books—although you have to be careful here, too, as there are plenty of dubious value.

So how can writers really learn to write well? By reading other people’s books, and plenty of them. The classics, which show what endures; the big sellers, which help us understand storytelling, pacing and plot; and the books which win literary prizes which demonstrate subtlety and depth.

Reading is something that writers just can’t skimp on. While it’s nice to build up your own personal library if you can afford it, there’s no need to buy new books: use your local library, if it’s still open; buy your books second-hand; or use Book Crossing. Just write every day, and read more often than you write, and your writing will improve.

Authonomy, Blurb And Book Army

As I've discussed before, HarperCollins' manuscript display site, Authonomy, contacted a proportion of its members earlier this year to announce that it was adding a new service to its site: it had teamed up with Blurb.com, an American-based POD printer, in order to enable Authonomy members to download their books to Blurb directly from the Authonomy site and (the implication was) start selling copies of their book straight away.

Is this a good idea? Some people think not, and seem convinced that it's just a cynical ploy by HarperCollins to make money out of writers they have no intention of publishing. And when you link this idea to the worries I have about HarperCollins’ Book Army site you might begin to see the potential for problems here.

It is going to be easy for Authonomy authors to download their books to Blurb; hop over to Book Army and link their books to all sorts of other titles; and sit back and wait for sales to roll in (and your notice, here, more than a little touch of irony to my tone). Authonomy will, I'll bet, earn a commission on those sales, so what we have here is a grab at the Holy Grail of publishing: a way for a publisher to make money out of its slush pile. Funnily enough that doesn't outrage me as much as it does some: HarperCollins is a business, after all, and I have no problem with it making money in this way. What does trouble me is its choice of partner (because, as I've discussed elsewhere, Blurb isn't necessarily the best option for Authonomy authors planning to go POD), and its apparent endorsement of self-publishing as a realistic route into mainstream success. Because despite all the hype, sales of self-published books are notoriously low and very few ever make that leap into mainstream publication, let alone widespread mainstream success.

Pitch Party!

Pitch your blog in the comments section here, using no more than twenty five words. If you don't want to pitch your own blog then you can pitch another blog that you enjoy, so long as it might interest the readers here. You can write more than one pitch for the same blog, or you can pitch a number of different blogs: the only condition is that for every blog you pitch, you have to leave a comment on at least three of the other blogs pitched here.

To make it easy for everyone to click about, please include a live, clickable link with your comment. There are two ways to do this: if you're anxious about it, you can compose your comment as a new blog post, add the links in the usual way, then copy it, HTML and all, into the comments section here; or you can write it yourself like this, which links to my blog:

[a href="http://howpublishingreallyworks.blogspot.com/"]name your link here[/a]

Replace my blog's address with yours; add a name for your link; then replace those two pairs of square brackets [] with pointy ones <>, or the link won't work.

Get pitching.

Books That I Love

Sometimes I come across a book so wonderful that moving away from the printed page feels painful: the real world is dislocated from the reality that the book has provided for me, and it feels too cold and shallow compared to the richer, more nuanced and textured world the book creates.

The first time it happened to me was about thirty years ago, when I read Doris Lessing's Martha Quest series and realised that Lessing was speaking directly to me. I can still remember lying in bed reading the book late one summer evening, the windows open to the rustling chestnut trees, the light fading from the sky until a shimmering darkness blanketed the windows.

Then there was Margaret Drabble, whose earlier novels accompanied me through my teenage years; Penelope Lively's The Road To Lichfield; Sybille Bedford's Jigsaw; Janette Turner Hospital's Charades; The People Of The Black Mountains, by Raymond Williams; Ian McEwan's Saturday; Julia Leigh's Disquiet (ignore the Amazon reviews: this is a gorgeous book), and her earlier book, The Hunter; Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible and the fabulous non-fiction book The Snakebite Survivor's Club: Travels Among Serpents by Jeremy Seal which I read just before it, which added so much to the Kingsolver text.

And now it's happened again, with Sue Gee's Reading in Bed, a glorious book which Sally Zigmond likes just as much as I did. If you can’t get hold of a copy of this one then just buy any of Sue Gee’s books: she’s such a wonderful writer that I bet even her shopping lists are good; and tell me which books remain with you, years after you've read them. My bedside pile is down to just double figures now, and I feel a need to restock.

Book Army

HarperCollins' new website for readers, Book Army, is now open to all. Anyone can join and comment on the books that they've read, and add links between books. Working on the reasonable premise that someone who enjoyed reading Maggie O'Farrell might also like Sue Gee, it's hoped that Book Army's users will create an intricate network of links which they can then refer to in order to discover even more books to enjoy.

The problem is that there is no restriction on the links that can be made. Book Army isn't restricted to HarperCollins books and lists anything with an ISBN: I quickly found Atlanta Nights by Travis Tea, and Crack of Death by Sharla Tann (which are respectively the worst book and the second-worst book ever written) and linked them to one another. But while those two books fit beautifully together, I could just as easily have linked them to a car repair manual, A Brief History Of Time, or to Pride And Prejudice. It is very simple to link entirely inappropriate books to one another: it probably won't be too long before someone links the Satanic Verses to the Koran, because there don't appear to be any controls in place.

That lack of control means that anyone can join the site and create links between any books at all. That might not sound too bad, but I don't think it's going to be long before links start to be made between highly-successful commercially-published books and some of the truly dreadful unedited ravings that have been self-published over the years. There's nothing to stop people with grudges linking competent authors’ books to dreadful books: and if you don't think that's likely to happen, just think of the internet flame-wars which erupt out of nowhere every day.

At present there's little new on offer here for readers, who can find more information and lots of dense book-to-book linking on Amazon. Which means that in the short term at least, Book Army's main users are likely to be the less-successful writers, particularly those who are solely responsible for the promotion of their own books: the vanity-published and self-published writers. And while there are some excellent books in this category it has a larger share of dreadful books and a higher proportion of angry writers than you'll find in any other publishing sector.

So: is Book Army a good idea or a bad one? Anything which encourages people to read more, and more widely, has to have at least some good points: but the lack of monitoring and control in Book Army's system leads me to suspect that while the intentions behind it are good, it is unlikely to achieve that aim for some time yet.

Library Things

Oh, the joys of a librarian's life.

I quite like message number eleven.

Authonomy

In the spring of 2008, HarperCollins opened the doors to Authonomy, its new online manuscript display site. I was one of the first people to test it.

Authonomy allows writers to post their writing, and to comment on each other’s work. It’s possible to post anything from a single paragraph to a complete book, although extracts of under 10,000 words remain invisible to everyone but their authors.

I’m curious why HarperCollins started Authonomy, and in this form. HarperCollins has made a big investment in the design and development of the site; and by hiding all extracts under 10,000 words they’ve made certain that the site is going to be large and flabby. As it stands they’re making no money from Authonomy: might they introduce a joining fee in the future? Or is HarperCollins treating Authonomy as its own personal electronic slush-pile? If so, I can see a few problems.

While HarperCollins claims that the best of the work posted will rise, cream like, to the surface, I’ve seen little evidence of that happening. While some of the work there is good, the work which is the most commented-upon is the work from the most active writers, regardless of its quality.

I’m not sure that it’s a good thing for writers, as the only way to get your work noticed there is to spend a great deal of time networking and promoting yourself there: and for most aspiring writers, that’s going to cut into their writing time quite hard.

There’s also the problem with its size: with new work being added to the site daily, Authonomy is soon going to start staggering under its own weight. It’s already slow, and makes for cumbersome browsing for people like me, who live in an area without broadband access.

Good old-fashioned slush-piles can be monsters, but at least they are subjected to periodic culls as work is rejected. Is HarperCollins planning on ever culling any of the work on Authonomy? Or does it intend to let Authonomy lumber on unchecked, eating up bandwidth until it collapses under its own weight?

Andrew Lownie, Literary Agent

If you’re keen to discover exactly what a literary agent does, take a look at Andrew Lownie’s website.

He’s a fabulous agent and has written several very candid articles about his work, in which he discusses his reasons for rejecting submissions, details his daily routines, and reveals his submissions statistics. It’s funny as well as informative: I laughed out loud as I read his descriptions of his slush pile. He regularly invites other publishing professionals to contribute (although quite what he was thinking of when he requested this piece I cannot imagine); and if you subscribe to his newsletter you don’t even have to visit his website to read all of this wondrous information as he’ll send it straight to your inbox.

Just remember to come back here when you’re done with him, because I do want you back.

On Criticism

1) Criticism of work is not criticism of self. So try to never take it personally.

2) When you’re offered criticism, consider how well-qualified the person making the offer is to criticise your work, and adjust your response accordingly.

3) While you’re not obliged to make any changes to your unpublished work as a result of any criticism it might receive, you’d be wise to consider doing so—especially if several readers have made the same suggestions.

4) Remember that your levels of reading comprehension drop dramatically when reading a criticism of your own work: you filter out the good stuff and magnify the bad, so that you translate “this is good but you need to work a little on your characterisation” into “I hate all your characters!”

5) Once your book is published, remember that people are entitled to their opinions and the only professional response to a review is to say thank you.

Right. Does anyone have any other points they would like to add to the list?

Reading Comprehension

If you want to succeed as a writer you have to read widely, read frequently, and read well. Not only do you have to read across many genres; you also have to understand what you’re reading.

Those first few points are often discussed: but I’ve rarely heard anyone mention that last one and just lately, it’s been bothering me. Because almost every day I see writers get horribly upset by things that other people have not actually said.

I’ve seen people take offence when no offence was intended; I’ve seen people misinterpret statements which are completely unambiguous. I’ve seen statistics, laws and quotes dismissed without care; and I’ve seen, as a direct result, perfectly reasonable people get terribly, terribly hurt.

Most of the meltdowns have been on internet message-boards and blogs while the rest have been via e-mail and, while I strongly believe that as writers we have a responsibility to choose our words with care, I also strongly believe that we should read with care to.

Leaving aside for a moment the hurt and anger that this all causes (which feels to me, as I write this, a dangerous thing to do: it’s corrosive and wounding and really should not be dismissed), I wonder what this implies about the writers concerned. Do they not realise just how badly they are getting things wrong? Do they make the same basic misunderstandings when they read books and newspapers? And if so, do they have any hope at all of ever writing a coherent text of their own?

The Street-Smart Writer, by Jenna Glatzer

Jenna Glatzer is a skilled, knowledgeable writer, and is the founder of AbsoluteWrite, which supports the best writers’ message board on the internet.

In 2006, the Nomad Press published The Street-Smart Writer, which Jenna co-wrote with Daniel Steven, a noted publishing attorney. I’ve bought several copies of this book since, and dished it out to my writing friends. It’s informative, accessible and endlessly useful, and I refer to it almost daily.

If you live in America, you can now download The Street-Smart Writer for free. If you live anywhere else you’re going to have to buy it for yourself.

If you’re a writer, get hold of a copy even if, like me, you have to hand over some hard cash to get it. It’s invaluable (although I wish they'd had the vision to put a shark-bite on the cover).

Essential Reading

Are there any books about publishing, writing, or creativity that you consider essential reading?

If so, post a comment on this thread containing details of the book. As a minimum I'd like you to include the book's title and author, but you could also add further publication details such as the publisher, date and country of publication, or the ISBN.

A brief outline of why you like the book(s) would be very useful, as would some indication of who you think would most benefit from the book, or what it covers. And if you really wanted to go to town, you could include an Amazon link, too. Now that would be really helpful.

What Have you Read Today?

Reading widely, and reading often, are essential habits to develop if you want to be a writer.

It's through reading that you really learn how writing works. If you've never read a book, you have no chance at all of writing one that can stand up for itself. Through reading you learn to understand grammar, punctuation, characterisation, dialogue, exposition—all the building-blocks of writing. And yet many people who want to write hardly read at all.

When you read, consider what you think the writer did well, and what you'd have done differently. Notice how the work is constructed, how the characters are exposed, and how the story is built. Think about the choices that the writer made, and how different choices would have resulted in a different book. Then go back and think about your own work, and how those points apply to it.