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Here’s one for anyone who doesn’t like ebooks: Coffin Dodgers, the dead-tree edition.  I’ve published the book via Lulu.com, and I’ve tried to make it as cheap as possible: it’s £5.24 plus delivery, and I’ll get a whole 21p of that. I’m on track to deliver my 15,000th ebook tomorrow, and I’ll write a post sharing… [more]
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Most of the debate over digital music business models is about the record companies and their digital successors, but what about the musicians? David Lowery of Cracker argues that for them, things are much worse: at least some pre-digital musicians actually got paid. The full thing is long but worth your time: Â Things are worse.… [more]
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If you’re keeping your hands under the table because you don’t want to wave your arms around or send knocks through the table into the microphone, make sure you keep your hands utterly, utterly still. If you don’t, it really looks like you’re having a wank. [more]
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Me, piracy, PC Plus: When I was young, a truck full of chocolate bars lost its load a few streets from my house. By the time the police turned up – which was, annoyingly, long before I found out about it – the cargo had gone. People didn’t take the chocolate because they were forced to;… [more]
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A wee column I wrote for PC Plus has made its way online: Buying a PC online often feels like you’re playing the world’s worst text adventure. Do you want the new Argonomicon 15, or the Mongrolodian F2? Would you sacrifice a half-gig of RAM if it meant getting the F9321A processor instead of the… [more]
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Whether you’re selling ebooks or giving away MP3s, designing T-shirts or creating iPhone apps, if you’re creating something for public consumption then sooner or later somebody’s going to criticise it. How you feel about that will depend on the mood you’re in at the time, the way it’s expressed and the critic’s grip on reality… [more]
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Andy Ihnatko has published a great post about piracy. He’s no fan of the studios, as he makes clear in his post, but the idea that everybody who pirates is a freedom fighter is risible. Here’s part of an imaginary conversation about torrenting Game of Thrones: What’s wrong, Scrumpkin? Oh. You want it right now.… [more]
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Somebody bought the 10,000th copy of Coffin Dodgers last night, and I thought I’d provide a breakdown of the numbers for those of you interested in the whole self-publishing thing. As you’ll see from the figures, it’s clear that giving copies away for free is a brilliant marketing strategy, except when it isn’t, and that… [more]
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A true story: when I used to have a day job, I’d listen to BBC Radio Scotland during my morning commute. I’d listen to the people on comedian Fred MacAulay’s programme and think “that must be a laugh to do. Imagine if that was your job.” These days, I’m one of the people going on… [more]
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From time to time I get a wee panic about Coffin Dodgers and I have to go and check that I took the U2 lyrics out: there’s a scene that revolves around a U2 song, and in the first few drafts of the book I quoted a couple of lines from it. That’s a no-no,… [more]
Read me in books
My debut memoir, Carrie Kills A Man, was a Scotsman book of the year and Damian Barr’s Literary Salon book of the week, and it was shortlisted for the 2023 British Book Awards book of the year in the Discover category.
My latest book, Small Town Joy, is a celebration of queer influences on and queer artists in Scots music and is out now.
I’m also a contributor to the excellent anthology Fierce Salvage, which is also out now.
