Remember that book I was writing? I thought I’d post an update.

After a lot of work, eight drafts and two printers I’ve sent it out to some people, and I’ve had loads of feedback about it from agents and other publishing insiders. The dialogue is great. It’s really atmospheric. The characters are fun. The book is variously “quite funny”, “funny”, “very funny” and “extremely funny”.

Nobody wants to take it on.

Apparently it’s not the writing, but the genre*. It’s a comic thriller, and comic thrillers are the red-headed stepchild of the mainstream fiction business. Everyone knows they exist, but nobody wants them in their publishing house.

If I’d known that two years ago it might have saved me quite a bit of effort.

So here’s a top tip. If you want to write novels – that is, if you want to write novels that get published – then it might be an idea to do what Ian Rankin did before you start plotting. Rankin looked at what sold, and concluded that Books With Cops In was the genre for him.

As for me, I’m starting another one. I’ll tell you about it when there’s something worth saying.

* In most cases, anyway. A few agents told me that at 67,000 words it’s just too short; for mainstream fiction publishers apparently expect 80,000 words plus or they won’t even look at it. Unfortunately for me 67K is the right length for the story, and any more would make the story sag.

Update, June 2011: I decided to publish the book myself on Kindle, iBooks and so on. It’s called Coffin Dodgers, it’s doing quite well, and you can find out more about it here, if you like.

My friend Chris Mitchell runs Spike, a most excellent books-and-interesting-things site on the Internet. And now, he’s put together a most excellent ebook version with some of the best bits from Spike’s last 15 years. And a few things I’ve written too.

It’s a lovely thing to look at and and to read, and it’s free. Here’s who’s in it:

Chris Abani Peter Ackroyd Douglas Adams Scott Adams Keith Altham Paul Auster Tom Baker J.G. Ballard Iain Banks John Battelle John Baxter Samuel Beckett Bellow Thomas Bernhard Maurice Blanchot Jorge Luis Borges Angela Bourke Michael Bracewell Charlie Brooker Charles Bukowski Julie Burchill Jason Burke Bryan Burrough Albert Camus Paul Celan Bruce Chatwin Annabel Chong E.M. Cioran Diablo Cody Douglas Coupland Quentin Crisp Mark Danielewski Don De- Lillo John C Diamond Stephen Dorril Patricia Duncker Nic Dunlop The Fall Stefan Fatsis Tibor Fischer Mark Fisher Michael Foot Franz Ferdinand Athol Fugard Anna Funder Alex Garland Harry Gibson William Gibson Allen Ginsberg Graham Greene Peter Guralnick Half Man Half Biscuit Keith Haring Bill Hicks Tom Hodgkinson Gert Hofmann Nick Hornby Michel Houellebecq Gary Indiana Derek Jarman Linton Kwesi Johnson Ed Jones Gabriel Josipovici Kevin Kelly Naomi Klein Rem Koolhaas Kruder And Dorfmeister Andrey Kurkov Emma Larkin Abby Lee Wyndham Lewis Jack London Leo Marks David Markson Gabriel Garcia Marquez Bertie Marshall Cedric Mims Alan Moore Morrissey Patricia Morrisroe Cookie Mueller Ben Myers Jeff Noon Cees Nooteboom Angus Oblong Will Oldham P.J. O’Rourke Lawrence O’Toole Chuck Palahniuk Tim Parks Arvo Part Ulf Poschardt Richard Powers Thomas Pynchon Matthew Robertson Bruce Robinson Jacques Roubaud Robert Sabbag Peter Saville Alberto Sciamma WG Sebald Will Self Tupac Shakur Mark Simpson Iain Sinclair Michael Marshall Smith Sonic Youth Ralph Steadman Suicide Damo Suzuki Swans David Sylvian David Thomas Hunter S. Thompson Colm Toibin Amos Tutuola Stuart Walton Alan Warner Evelyn Waugh Belinda Webb Irvine Welsh The White Stripes Tony Wilson

If you download it — which you should — and you like it — which I think you will — Chris would be very happy if you could share the download link with others.

Jane Smith’s How Publishing Really Works is worth a read at the best of times (if you’re interested in publishing, of course), but her five-part demolition of a “self-publishing is the future” screed is particularly delicious. Part five has just gone up; here are parts one, two, three and four.

But the people that you perceive as barriers—agents, editors, publishers—are, in fact, there to help good writers get published well, and to ensure that the reading public has access to good books, professionally produced. There’s nothing stopping anyone from putting their work on the internet if they want, or from self-publishing in print or electronic format: the technology has been there for years. The real problem for writers who can’t get published isn’t that barriers to publication exist, but that their writing just isn’t good enough.

In the comments Dan Holloway quibbles with the word “good” – he reckons “saleable” would be better, and I think he’s right; whether it’s good isn’t as important as whether it’ll sell – but you get the idea, I’m sure.

A memorial library for Kurt Vonnegut opens in Indianapolis this November. Exhibits will include “boxes of rejection letters”.

I’d really like to see it.

Fancy a free book? Publishing firm Simon & Schuster is giving away a free ebook version of Loser’s Town, a Hollywood-set thriller by Daniel Depp. I’ve no idea what it’s like but it’s free, it’s a PDF so it should work on anything, and all you need to do is provide an email address, so you might as well get it while you can.

Here’s the link.

In other news, the new Tim Dorsey novel is much cheaper as an ebook than it is in print: the latter is £11 to £14 plus postage, while the Kindle edition is eleven dollars flat. That’s around seven quid.

This is great: six hours of work in a two-minute clip.

More here:

Over 6 hours of my onscreen compositing, retouching, color correction, type obsessing, all condensed down to a slim sexy one minute 55 seconds of cover design. Trust me, no one wants to watch it in real-time…and even then I left out the not-as-riveting-onscreen stages of my cover design process, such as reading the manuscript, sifting through Alexia photoshoot outtakes, background photo research, etc. And since this is a series look that has already been established for Soulless and Changeless, there weren’t the usual batches and rounds of versions of different designs that happen with standalone or first-in-a-new-series covers. That would be a weeklong video!