Stuff I’ve read or helped to write
Tracy from Booked Up says some nice things about my book.
This book was a really quick, fun read. I romped through it, amused by the antics of the threesome and curious to find out what was going on and whether justice would be served. It’s set in a world that’s not too hard to envisage and the three main characters are the sort of people I could happily sit and chat in the pub with.
I’ve bought an awful lot of books over the years, but there’s only one I’m really attached to: Blood’s a Rover by James Ellroy. It’s not my favourite book – it’s not even my favourite Ellroy book – but it stands out from all the others because Ellroy signed it for me.
Last night, I got another keeper: Killer Move, the new thriller by Michael Marshall, aka Michael Marshall Smith.
There’s something about getting an autograph that’s really powerful, I think. It’s not the signature itself – I’ve no interest in the impersonal “signed by the author” piles in bookshops, and I wouldn’t think of buying a signed book on eBay – but the whole ritual of the signing, whether it’s an ego-fest like Ellroy’s or something more inclusive and thoughtful like Marshall’s event last night.
For me at least, getting a book signed is a weird way of saying thanks, of letting an author know that they’ve had an effect or influence on you in some way, that their work isn’t just something that’s picked up and read and then forgotten about. Whether authors see it that way I have no idea, of course. It may just annoy them.
I’m a fairly recent convert to book signings, but I suspect that for all the ebook hype they’ll continue to be an important thing for writers – or at least, those writers whose publishers still put out hardcovers. Ebooks are great, and cheap, and convenient, but a signed hardback is magical.
Things that make me happy: Doug Johnstone reviewed Coffin Dodgers in the new issue of The Big Issue Scotland, which is on sale today. The good Mr Johnstone wrote this:
Marshall is a journalist turned novelist who has clearly been reading plenty of Chris Brookmyre and Colin Bateman, as his debut fictional outing shares with those authors a no-holds-barred thriller plot with a sense of the ridiculous, lacing nastiness with some delightfully black comedy… Told with a sureness of hand, it’s not exactly high art but Marshall does still manage some astute social commentary amongst the mayhem and gags.
This cracked me up. By Jen Campbell, via MetaFilter:
Customer: Hi, if I buy a book, read it, and bring it back, could I exchange it for another book?
Me: No… because then we wouldn’t make any money.
Customer: Oh.
It’s a safe bet that any book flogging a “marketing system” will contain a few nuggets of hard information surrounded by thousands of words of padding. John Locke’s how-to is no exception. It sticks closely to the business self-help template, which goes something like this:
Page 1
In this book, you’ll discover the secrets of X that made me a millionaire! You don’t need any special powers, or any money, or any talent! No! All you need is the secrets that I’ll reveal in this very book! Yes sirree, once you’ve finished this book you’ll know the marketing system that made me so much money!Page 37
We’re nearly ready to discover the secrets of X that will make you a millionaire! When you discover how simple my system is, you’ll slap your own head! “Man!” you’ll say. “I wish I’d had this book ten years ago!” Once you’re armed with the knowledge I’m offering in this book – knowledge that I’d pay $10,000 for, but I’m giving you for $4.99 ebook or $9.99 paperback! – you’ll be able to do what I did!Page 432
We’re just one step away from discovering the secrets of X, secrets so useful I’d happily pay $10,000 for them if I didn’t already know them! And you’re getting them for just $4.99 ebook or $9.99 paperback! Don’t skip forwards, though, because the steps only work if you know the context! And when you do, man! You’ll be blown away! So let’s talk about my first pet, Spot the dog. Man, I loved that dog!Page 999
Work out what lots of people want to buy. Make it, price it cheap, tweak the formula to make the most people happy and work really hard on direct marketing.
I’m being unfair, but only slightly. The book is a pamphlet padded out to book length, and most of the advice is Marketing 101. Locke does bring a few of his own ideas to the table, and they clearly worked for him (I’m not going to tell you the details, because that would be a cheap shot) but I’d personally be extremely uncomfortable following some of them. There was something about the process of blogging and promoting the blog posts that made me uneasy.
Most of it is classic “pile ’em high, sell ’em cheap” stuff: Locke compares his own work to McDonalds, and points out that William Shakespeare may be a better writer but Locke’s sold more ebooks on Amazon.
It is not, you’ll be amazed to discover, very well written. There are very many exclamation marks.
What Locke excels at isn’t writing. His skill is in working out exactly what his audience wants. That’s why his novels sell, and this book’s just as precision-targeted. Vanity publishing is a conspiracy perpetrated by the publishing industry, he argues, and books can’t be bad if the author’s spent so much time and effort on them. While that plays well to Locke’s buyers, a quick trawl through a day’s Smashwords uploads demonstrates that there are plenty of bad books out there.
Locke is absolutely right that some worthwhile books don’t get picked up by traditional publishing, but that doesn’t mean that every rejected book is worthwhile.
This isn’t a publishing-only phenomenon, of course. You see the same thing in music: one visit to a Tuesday night Battle of the Bands is enough to prove that most musicians aren’t geniuses cruelly snubbed by an uncaring music business.
What Locke’s system reminds me of most is search engine optimisation, which all too often leads to articles like this:
How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months by John Locke review. In this How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months by John Locke review I’ll review How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months by John Locke. John Locke’s book, How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months, is a new book from the author of [title here], [title here], [title here], but with How I sold 1 million ebooks in 5 months John Locke is going after a different audience.
It works, to a point, but it’s hellish to read. Locke’s system isn’t dramatically different (Incidentally I’m aware of the irony that by slagging SEO, I’m committing acts of SEO): he’s a human algorithm, tweaking the content of his books to maximise his readership and his income. It’s worked spectacularly well for him, but as with SEO, the more people who use the same tricks, the less effective those tricks will be.
I don’t have an axe to grind here. Locke is clearly a smart man, and his success is well deserved. This book, like everything else he’s written, is going to sell by the shedload. I’m just not sure the same will apply to the books of Locke’s disciples.
I decided to publish a short story in ebook format and give it away for free, partly because I think it’s fun and partly because it might help promote Coffin Dodgers.
Unfortunately Amazon won’t let you price books at zero any more (it’s apparently part of Amazon’s so far unsuccessful plan to stop book spam), so while the story’s free on Smashwords it’ll cost money when it goes online in the Kindle store in a few days from now.
The only way to cut the Amazon price below Amazon’s lower limit, which is currently 99 cents, is to sell it more cheaply on another site. Apparently Amazon’s price robot will spot that it’s cheaper and adjust the Amazon price accordingly.
You may think that’s a great big load of pointless faff. I couldn’t possibly comment.
Anyway: here’s a link to Malky’s Bottle of Christmas in as many formats as you could possibly wish for, for the princely sum of no pounds and no pence (unless you’re in America, where the price is no dollars and no cents). There’s a Kindle-friendly .mobi version, an ePub that works in iBooks, even PDF. I hope you like it. Oh, and if you’re the sensitive type, be aware that it’s quite sweary.
I’ve checked it on the Kindle app and it looks okay, but do let me know if the formatting’s gone to pot in your chosen format.
I’m told that ebook trailers are important, so I had a go at one. I’m easily amused.
Cheery news on the book front: Malachi at allmetaphor.com has given Coffin Dodgers a really good review, and Smashwords has published the book to both Barnes & Noble and iBooks. The latter is a bit cheaper than everywhere else, and I have no idea why. When I find out, I’ll let you know. For now, IBOOKS BARGAIN etc :)
Update: I know what’s happened now. iTunes has various pricing tiers, and when the price is converted from dollars to pounds you don’t always end up with the price you expect. In many cases it ups the price, but in my case it cut it quite dramatically. You’ve got 24 hours before the pricing error is fixed :)
Here’s a bit of the review:
There has been a catastrophic collapse in the birth rate and an ageing population is reacting badly.
Sound familiar? If so, don’t jump to conclusions. Gary Marshall’s entertaining dystopian thriller is no Children of Men. His senior citizens are not just old. They’re old and rich.
Malachi’s review is here, and the Barnes and Noble and iBooks links are on the Coffin Dodgers page over here.
I hope you don’t mind the odd book plug here: I’ve no intention of turning this blog into a “BUY BUY BUY” monstrosity, but it’s nice to jump around when somebody says something nice about your work.
A new study on behalf of KPMG suggests that the UK’s getting the hang of this ebook malarkey. Some interesting numbers:
consumption of e-books has doubled since September 2009 as people increasingly purchase these products to use on tablets and e-readers like the Amazon Kindle.
According to the research, monthly spend on these goods is almost equalling the amount of money splashed out on music via the internet.
The average shopper spends £4 per month on e-books, which is double what is spent on online games and four times as much as what people pay for streamed TV. On average, downloaded music accounts for £5 of consumers’ monthly disposable income.
This looks like fun: a free iPad app that lets you browse the British Library’s collection of 19th Century books. From the press release:
The app takes advantage of the form and function of iPad, bringing a renewed sense of wonder to the discovery and enjoyment of antiquarian and historical books.
Currently the app features over a thousand 19th Century books, but it will provide access to more than 60,000 titles by later this summer when details on pricing for the service will be announced. The 60,000 books, which are all in the public domain, are part of the British Library’s 19th Century Historical Collection and span numerous languages and subject areas including titles such as “Frankenstein” by Mary Shelley and “The Adventures of Oliver Twist” [with plates] by Charles Dickens.