New writers

Funny boy! Forget about patmac for a moment, (I know it's hard because he's so great,) but consider for a moment any good authors out there who have written great books and are publishing them themselves. Now, just for a moment, consider that they've been marvellously written, well laid out, their covers are excellent, they've been well edited and are superb books to read. What should happen to those books? (If you need to, use Jill Paton Walsh's and Marc Blaney's as examples.) ** For people who can't think all that deeply, and would rather throw childish comments at patmac, let me pose an easier problem: What did the leopard say after eating his owner? My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

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Tastes like sausage? I’m reading a Jill Patton book right now, there’s nothing ‘wrong’ with self publishing, nobody said that.

It's not a moral question. So the words right and wrong are irrelevant. The range of books of that type is wide. Most people know almost nothing about the subject and can speak of only the bottom of its range and even then often not about specific books either, only of stereotypes. But at the top end, if you happen to be Jill Paton Walsh, your formally self-published book, Knowledge of Angels, will have been short listed for the Mann Booker Prize. If you're Marc Blaney you'll have won a Somerset Maugm prize. If you're the Reverend GP Taylor your self-published book, Shadowmancer, will have become a worldwide bestseller, and if you're James Redfield, your formally self-published book, The Celestine Prophesy, will have sold over twenty million copies. If you'd been Olaudah Equiano you'd have seen your self-published book help to bring about attitudes which saw an anti slavery bill introduced in the House of Commons and if you were Tom Peters you'd have gone In Search of Excellence with one. That's a tiny sample of some of the world's most outstanding books of that type. It's not a particularly widely understood discipline. But the words right and wrong do not apply to it, that's for certain. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

"Now, just for a moment, consider that they've been marvellously written, well laid out, their covers are excellent, they've been well edited and are superb books to read. What should happen to those books?" Well, good books that people want to read should be published. In terms of the 'top end' you mention, they have been eventually. Publishers, like all other business people, have to make decisions about what they think will sell and how much effort and finance it will cost them to sell those things. Sometimes they make mistakes. The famous mistakes you list are obviously the lucky ones because their stuff did get published in the end. Acknowledging that mistakes are and will always be made doesn't tell us anything about the publishing industry in a general sense and doesn't alter the fact that the main reason why most books that don't get published don't get published is that they're no good. Of course publishing in a capitalist economic system is subject to the same commercial pressures as any other part of that system but, even taking Jordan into account, it's still more resistant to these pressures than most industries. There are both positive and negative effects of both commercial pressures and some publishers resistance to them. This is a long thread but I'm still no closer to understanding what you'd actually like to happen to make things better.

So, we have the proposition that: Not all books published by mainstream publishers are of merit, and not all self-published books are without merit. Can't really disagree with that. We also have the proposition that: There are a lot of factors involved in why someone buys a particular book rather than another particular book. Can't disagree with that either. We also have the proposition that: People self-publish books because they cannot get other people to publish them for them. Again, can't quibble with that either. There is also another proposition: Mainstream publishers publish books that no one reads all the time. Why can't they publish different books that no one wants to read instead of the books that no one wants to read that they currently publish? And also: Mainstream publishers already publish lots of books of a particular type. Why can't they publish more of that type so that people wouldn't need to self-publish them. Cheers, Mark

I don't think anybody wants to try to tell publishers what to publish. These are economic decisions often made in companies which have been publishing for generations, sometimes for hundreds of years. The cost of changing their output is likely to be ruinous. (No change there.) We shouldn't confuse good books with popular books. Popular books such as Equiano's went through nine editions. Tom Peters' book became a core curriculum text. GP Taylor's book and James Redfield's had achieved notable sales in their self-published form and attracted publishers for that reason. It's not unreasonable for a publisher to want to publish a book which is already selling well. The Walsh book in England and The Blaney book, on the other hand were not selling well but were praised. Their subsequent publication is unlike that of the British book by Taylor. Over time it will become clearer that running a business for profit (and remaining solvent in publishing,) is not the same thing as professing about attributes of aesthetic merit. ie what's published is what's profitable not necessarily what's good. So the first thing which needs to happen is we the reading public have to get used to the idea that what is published is what's profitable not necessarily what's good. (It may be and it may not.) And then we have to get used to the idea that what's unpublished is not necessarily bad. (It may be and it may not.) At the moment these ideas are not understood by most people. And further more they are misunderstood by most people. They may never be widely understood. But it is incumbent upon people who profess a knowledge of publishing and writing to understand these things. That's the first thing that needs to change. People who feel able to speak about publishing and especially self-publishing should actually know about the subjects. And the next thing that needs to change is that a greater number of British people should be willing to assess formally unpublished full-length work. At the moment almost no-one is. I assess it. And I know of one other British organisation that does. In the light of the fact that what is not formally published may yet be good the assessment of full-length work which has not been formally published should have been undertaken routinely a long time ago. It is a mistake that is has not been. The Americans have made a lot more progress in that regard. In Britain this is an error and an omission and it should be both acknowledged and rectified. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

... we the reading public have to get used to the idea that what is published is what's profitable not necessarily what's good. You may be the only person here who has the remotest problem with that idea. ... a greater number of British people should be willing to assess formally unpublished full-length work. If enough of them read it, it wouldn't be unpopular, therefore it wouldn't be unpublished. The great British public is spoiled for choice with novels that have already been vetted and sorted for them by publishing houses, why should they waste their time trawling Lulu. I'm confused. I don't get what your beef is. If it's that publishers run their businesses for a profit then Big Whoop! that's hardly news - and hardly fair either because most of them still run smaller enterprises publishing what they think are worthy and good books that don't stand a chance of making them a fortune. If it's that publishers sometimes get things wrong the also Big Whoop! Nobody in any consumer industry is doing more than making marginally educated guesses at what the public will like. Look at New Coke, Decca passing over The Beatles, the stacks and stacks and STACKS of books that *do* get published but never make their advance back.

I'm referring specifically to British people who profess a knowledge of publishing and writing. (The ordinary reader will continue to do what he has always done.) The point about new full-length writers, particularly in Britain, is that they are not necessarily visible because too few of their works are being examined. Making that point isn't a beef. It's simply a point. So, to put the same point more clearly, in order to ascertain the number of good new full-length writers in Britain more of their books need to be examined. Too few Britons who profess a knowledge of publishing and writing are willing to examine new not-formally published full-length works and are therefore unable to give a true account of what is being written in Britain because it is information that they do not possess. The situation in America is better because such commentators who examine both formally published and not-formally published new works are far more numerous. And therefore the picture that they are giving of what new work is being produced is a far more accurate one than its British counterpart. That is a point. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

Oh right. So who are these people who ought to be 'examining' (I take it that means 'reading'?) not-formally published full-length works?

So really, your point is that there are diamonds in the rough and that nobody in the publishing world finds them? But the examples you give of people who have self-published have all been picked up by major publishers, meaning that those particular diamonds have been found. Or are we talking about other diamonds and other roughs? If you want to self-publish, go ahead. It's you that's taking the risk and I'd presume you would do whatever you could to minimise the risk to your finances. If someone else wants to publish you, they will and they will do whatever they can to minimise the risk to their finances. If they're trying to turn your book into a best seller, they will risk a lot by investing of money and activity into it, in the hope it will make a return. Would you publish a book you weren't sure of, with your own money? Risking your own cash investment? If you did want to do that with your own money you would do these things: 1. make sure the text is good, or at least not full of errors, typos and other possible clangers 2. make sure that it looks as good as other things in a similar market 3. make sure that you had money for repping to get it into shops 4. make sure you had money for review copies and a proper PR mechanism 5. make sure the author fully behind the process 6. make sure that there was either something novel about your intended publishing venture, that it came from someone with a track record or that it was a good enough example of something for a specific market This is what publishers do. What reviewers do is look for interesting things to review. The agenda here is underpinned effective PR vs. personal interest: 1. Publications need to know a publication exists and why it might be of interest 2. They need to be able to get review copies quickly and painlessly. For example, I review books of short stories for a website (www.theshortreview.com). I am interested in reviewing books from independent publishers because that's where new writers come from. I would be interested in reviewing these books more but it sometimes takes ages to get a review copy from a small publisher. Bigger publishers are much quicker at getting review copies out. 3. They need to have a personal interest in the book to be reviewed 4. They need to want to review it. It's up to an enterprising small publisher or self-publisher to work out the best way of overcoming these obstacles. You have to work with, not work against. Cheers, Mark

Oh, and you need to know how to write proper press releases, not ones like this: http://lostintheshowbiz.blogspot.com/ Cheers, Mark

Anybody who claims to know what's being written in Britain should systematically examine the top of the not-formally published range. Authorities, literary pundits, claimants, anyone who professes such knowledge should seek it before making their claims. Or alternatively should admit that they do not have the necessary information and nor do they wish to seek it, but they'd like to make their claims regardless of whether they possess the relevant knowledge or not. That disclaimer would be satisfactory. (I have met pundits in Britain who claim only formally published work is meritorious.) Pundits do not need to examine the entire range, they can turn to [*non-profitmaking] organisations which already do that and simply take recommendations from them. In America this work is already underway. This is not the case in Britain. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

Mark, an excellent list. I can't disagree with anything on it. Yes, other diamonds and other roughs. Full length work, not shorts. But in brief, yes. I agree with everything you've said there. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

But won't the organisations that provide the recommendations just end up working on the same basis as you accuse the bigger publishers of working on, or indeed the critical establishment? Presumably they'd be even more of a closed clique because they wouldn't have a financial stake in what they were promoting? And who would pay them to do this? The Arts Council pays lots of money to small publishers to do work to sell more copies and develop their audiences, some of whom piss it up the wall and others of who make it go a long way and do some really good things with it. And are you really claiming that no one can review anything with any authority until they have read everything that is being published everywhere? Cheers, Mark

Mostly, people with influential opinions on books get sent the sort of books they are likely to like by PR people. I don't think anybody systematically checks books, however they are published.

The organisations are non-profitmaking. Nobody pays them. In America there are lots of them in Britain I know of only two. Will the non-profitmaking organisations be biased and have subjective views? Yes they will. (They won't all have the same ones though.) Profit won't be a factor in their bias, so their recommendations already do look different from publishers' recommendations for that reason alone. The organisations may (or may not be) internally cliquey but will probably not be in cliques together, since they're separate entities and currently all work for different (and their own reasons.) It can be expected that if they recommend a book then it has at least the features that they claim it has. (Of course the book can freely be examined by any other person or group.) Since the initial non-profit organisation has nothing to gain it has no reason to recommend books as good which are not. Many existing, (and almost all British,) pundits will not examine books which are not formally published and to that extent they are already systematically checking how they are published. Other more thorough organisations take recommendations on books and will examine books of all types which show promise. Yet other organisations still will examine every book that comes their way. Preliminary samples can be offered online. The review process can be quite efficient, calling in those books which show promise early on. There are many efficiencies and many recommendations which are not being made use of in Britain. America on the other hand is far more advanced in these areas. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

I'm quite dubious about the idea and value of organisations existing to read books that no one else wants to read. I'm not clear who benefits from this. If you've written a book and you can't get a publisher to take it or you've self-published it and you can get a review in any of the thousands of small press publications and websites there out there, or you can't get enough of your friends and family to read it and pass it on to others to develop some sort of momentum behind it then as far as I can see, the only function of an organisation promising to read everything is to prolong your misery. That said, I'm not arguing against people with a general interest in writing beyond the mainstream reading some self-published work by choice and then writing about it. I'd quite like to do a bit of that myself but even if every novel I read was a self-published one, I wouldn't be able to read more than 20 or so a year - assuming I'm also allowed to hold down a job and have some friends and read books which are published by publishers, too. There's 18581 books just in the literature fiction section on Lulu as of today. Lulu is only one self-publishing company and would take me 929 years to read all of their fiction stuff, even if everyone stops writing now.

I think that's my point. There are only two British organisations which review non-formally published work that I know of. That's not thousands. If you have a list of British organisations which do do that please add it to the thread. That's fantastic news. Please don't add American organisations because I do know several tens, (perhaps not hundreds,) but many who are willing. In order to read the books people first must know that the books exist. The next thing that they need to know is that they're good books, (if indeed they are good books.) In order to establish whether or not they're good they first need to be read. So someone has to read and categorise them. (Lulu has an inbuilt review mechanism, a free voluntary one. So your 929 years are perfectly safe.) Some lulus recommend each others' work highly too. I've even seen one who advertises books she likes on her own storefront which is extremely good-neighbourly of her. It's an entirely voluntary type of behaviour, (unless someone or some pundit professes to know what's inside books that he or she hasn't read. Some do make claims of that sort and should not do so.) It's not all that complicated really. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

"In order to read the books people first must know that the books exist. The next thing that they need to know is that they're good books, (if indeed they are good books.) In order to establish whether or not they're good they first need to be read. So someone has to read and categorise them." Well, yeah, that's what a publisher does. What you're essentially arguing for is a parallel not-for-profit industry to do the boring, frustrating bits of publishing and receive none of the potential benefits for doing so. I can understand why some people might want to dip into self-published writing to see what's going on but I can't see why any large number of people would choose to do this on a large scale. "I think that's my point. There are only two British organisations which review non-formally published work that I know of. That's not thousands. If you have a list of British organisations which do do that please add it to the thread. That's fantastic news." Well, I've been involved in an editorial or writing roles with at least ten very small to small to medium sized magazines or newspapers over the last ten years. Most of them have published some reviews, none of them have an explicit policy in terms of not reviewing self-published books. If we were sent copies of self-published books (I think I've received three or four over that period), they'd be judged in the same way as any other which will always be a subjective judgment on whether readers would be interested in a review of the book.

There's an obvious difference between a non-profit and a publisher doing it in that the publisher says a book is good partly because he wants to profit from it. Whereas a non-profit reviewer doesn't. It's likely that he says it's good solely and only because he believes that it is. The boring bits, not really. The non-profit reviewer doesn't have to edit the book or negotiate with suppliers. He only has to read it and look at it. In my operation I have samples uploaded online. So I can already tell in advance which books are likely to have been well written. So far most of the books that I've received have been a joy to read. (I don't accept ones which have errors in the online samples.) One, about the life of Mary Magdalene, was outstanding. One was a space spoof of the Hitchhikers Guide variety. I really enjoyed that one. Another was part Japanese folk tale, part science fiction and part fantasy. Those have been my favourites and I can't praise them enough. And about other people being interested in reading them, I've found no trouble at all in interesting other people in my favourites. All that's required is that I tell them about them. It's no different from what normally happens when you talk about a book you've enjoyed reading. I reviewed a chess book with diagrams of its instructions. That was a great book too. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

"There's an obvious difference between a non-profit and a publisher doing it in that the publisher says a book is good partly because he wants to profit from it." Well, in the case of most publishers and most books, that's only part of the reason but whether the book can sell some copies to some people clearly is usually part of the publisher's decision-making process. I think the point of disagreement is that compared to the opposite - most publishers taking most decisions on the basis of abstract idea about what should and shouldn't be published - I think a commercial element in publishing decisions is good thing not a bad thing. Not sure what point you're making with the rest. I don't think anyone's disputing that are some decent self-published books available or saying that it's a bad thing for people to set-up websites or magazines to review some of them. The question is whether it's likely or desirable for people to review all of them. I'm not really clearly how your decision not to review books that have errors in their online samples is a fairer basis for a reviewing decision than a decision by a magazine not to review a book because no publisher wants to publish it.

Good and bad do not come into question in regard to publishers needing to profit from their operations because publishing is not a moral question; it's a commercial operation. Therefore it's neither good nor bad. It merely is. The point with the rest is that, (contrary to your suggestion,) it's not boring. Reading well-written books doesn't bore me, anyway. Anyone who maintains that good books do not exist outside mainstream publishing is wrong. Some people do maintain that and they are wrong. The books don't have to be self-published; they can be unpublished galleys. They can be short stories. My own view is that the priority is to search for the best ones first. Once they have all been found whoever wants to can start to look for others. The best method that I know of is to attract samples and pick the best of those. As to your question of fairness in selecting from samples, I don't know, you may be right. Not accepting books based on faulty samples might be equally unfair. But if the author can submit a faultless sample I will accept his book, whereas an author is unlikely to be able to reclassify his publisher at the whim of a magazine editor. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

When a publisher reckons a book is 'good' enough for publishing they are basically thinking 'I think lots of people will so want to read this book that they will pay money for the priviledge' When one of your wonderful magnanimous non-profit book reviewers recommends a book to their readership, are they really thinking anything all that different? As for the priority of searching for the best books. Searching for good books is not a priority at all for me. I have a shelf of books I am dying to read, and when it runs low it only ever seems to take fifteen minutes in the nearest Oxfam to refill it - and that's without recommendations from friends, Amazon, Booktribes etc.

My seven published books sell regularly ... I sell at least one a month! I don't see my retirement from the sex shop coming any time soon, Now, would you like that butt plug wrapping, or are you going to wear it, Sir? Then again, my books may just not be worth buying.

My own personal view of the word good in relation to publishing books is that it's probably misleading. No doubt it very true in relation to books like Sir David Attenborough's Living Planet and a host of other books, but not in regard to OJ Simpson's 'did I kill my wife?' book and various other crass bits of celebrity tat which come out more and more regularly these days. The words good, book, and publishing may go together but they do not necessarily do so. And my own personal view is that some people put themselves forward as book reviewers to pre-read books which have been published and to say whether, in their opinions, these are good books or not. (Fair enough.) Some of these reviewers are prepared to review only mainstream books. Some book-pundits comment publicly that nothing else is worth reviewing. As it becomes clearer that this is far from true such ignorance will become less and less acceptable. Do non-profit reviewers want to review books that they suspect nobody wants to read? Probably not. But what they often do is review books which were not formally published - because they suspect that people do in fact want to read them. This happens to be true in the case of many of the books that they choose. Individuals will get book recommendations from a range of places. The more the merrier: Amazon, Booktribes, Oxfam, anywhere, great, all good- Great! My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

"Some of these reviewers are prepared to review only mainstream books. Some book-pundits comment publicly that nothing else is worth reviewing. As it becomes clearer that this is far from true such ignorance will become less and less acceptable." Well, in the mainstream press, reviewers review what they're paid to review. How will this become less and less acceptable? Why don't you publish a magazine or newspaper reviewing self-published books and see if anyone wants to buy it?

Sooz, I can't understand your point. Isn't value relative? I don't know anything about your books, but suppose, just for the sake of argument, they are satires about British middle class, urban angst. Then perhaps they don't mean much to American Midwest car plant workers. But that doesn't mean they don't make great presents for British parents to give sons or daughters leaving for university, perhaps especially those ones with interests in English and Sociology. Isn't value a question of: What is valuable to whom? My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

Reviewing whatever you like won't become less acceptable. Anyone can review whatever they want to. What will become less acceptable is the ignorance of some pundits who claim that nothing outside mainstream publishing is good. There always have been and there always will be good books outside. And knowledge of that fact will become increasingly widespread. People expect pundits to know more than them and not less than them about a subject. Ignorant pundits will become less acceptable. People can continue to review whatever they like. Editors wait until a book crosses over into the mainstream and then they review it. So The Celestine Prophesy, Shadowmancer, etc, etc will all have been reviewed plenty of times. That type of reviewing isn't reviewing a book to tell whether or not it's good it's reviewing books which are already popular to increase the circulation figures of your magazine. So you can review self-published books and sell copies. *You just pick all the successful self-published books. But that's only one version of book reviewing. (The opportunist version.) My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

“There always have been and there always will be good books outside." True “And knowledge of that fact will become increasingly widespread." Not necessarily, you only hope so. Because reviewers gravitate to un-reviewed self published books that people are buying by the thousands, they are "opportunistic". What a frame of mind. How do you go on? Whenever the words right/wrong are used in a context any reasonable person would understand as correct/incorrect you extrapolate this as a moral statement. Are you married? If so, can I send this poor woman some flowers in sympathy for the mentality she is dealing with? I’ve read some of your work and think your dialog and expository skills are impressive. If you snapped out of this professorial trance a bit and sanded off a few layers of intellectual varnish to get at the heart of things, who knows, actual human beings might just start buying your books like crazy. Real genius is more likely to squat down and take a crap on your parlor room floor than anything.

'This soup is good,' is a qualitative statement. 'Honour killings are good,' is a moral statement. The words good and bad have both types of use. People often use them interchangeably and incorrectly. I don't think it's unreasonable for people to expect pundits to know what they're talking about. And yes, you're correct that I do hope that when people understand that good writing exists in large measure beyond the confines of traditional publishing they will expect information from so-called experts to reflect that fact. To that extent I hope so, yes. I cannot foretell the future but I expect this will turn out to be the case. As far as my own writing is concerned I don't know. But since I do not review my own books for the purposes of reviewing books it makes no difference one way or the other. What I do know is that book reviewing has more than one purpose. It can be done to give attention to popular books or mainstream books in the expectation of enticing readers and buyers to purchase the reviewer's paper or magazine. Or it can be done for the purpose of ascertaining whether or not the book is good to read in the opinion of the reviewer. It may have no other motive than that and perhaps it may not be opportunistic behaviour for that reason. The Americans have done far more work in the latter regard. The British have done almost none. My latest killing is: http://www.bookscape.co.uk/short_stories/human_sacrifice.php

For a second there, Den, I thought you were talking about my books .. but then we got to the intelectual bit and I realised .. nah, that's never me. ;-) My books have had all manner of critiscism .. but never that they're too intelectual. You can send me some flowers if you like, purple ones please.