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As of right now, Coffin Dodgers is number one in Amazon UK’s technothrillers chart. That’s quite good, isn’t it? Sales are currently sitting at 2,323. That’s quite good too. This is making up for a spectacularly crappy day. [more]
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Today’s the big protest against SOPA, the latest bit of dangerous anti-internet legislation. I’ve written a wee column suggesting that it won’t change much in the long term, because lobbyists are fighting a long war: Copyright industries want the net regulated, and they’re willing to spend huge sums to make it happen: SOPA is a… [more]
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Some interesting figures in this Guardian piece about new novelists: Kate Pool of the Society of Authors confirmed that new writers could expect an average advance of £10,000 around 20 years ago: “Now they’re lucky to get between £1,000 and £3,000.” Research by the society shows that 75% of writers earn less than £20,000 a… [more]
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I’ve been meaning to mention this for a while: The Guardian, the newspaper I’ve bought every day for more than twenty years, appears to be disappearing before my very eyes. I know why sections are being folded into the main paper, why pagination’s being cut and why some of the best columns are being killed… [more]
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The most excellent John Walker has written a wee bit of advice for aspiring games journalists, and I reckon much of it is relevant to all kinds of freelancing.  This job is a not a privilege. It’s something you got by being good at what you do – you earned it. Anyone who tells you… [more]
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iTunes Match, Apple’s music-in-the-cloud service, is very good – but it’s worth a look even if you don’t want or need cloud-based music. For your £21.99 you get two things: a backup of your entire music library (more than 10,000 songs, in my case, saving me the hassle of getting a bigger backup disk) and… [more]
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I spotted this little nugget yesterday: Barnes & Noble said Monday that it will offer discounts on its Nook devices to customers who buy a digital subscription to People magazine and The New York Times. For New York Times subscribers, it’ll offer a free Nook Simple Touch, a 6-inch e-reader that is priced at $99,… [more]
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At the risk of helping to perpetuate Amazon’s vice-like grip on electronic publishing, I’ve decided to enrol my books in its KDP Select programme. There are various upsides to that, but it does mean that the books must be exclusive to Amazon. I don’t think I’m going to upset too many people – of the… [more]
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Simon at No Rock’n’Roll Fun has written a typically excellent piece about the BPI’s latest sales figures. Despite all this “chronic” piracy going on, Adele’s album has sold more copies in a year than any album has ever sold. More than a Michael Jackson album managed in a year, even the good one. More than… [more]
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I sold my 1,500th ebook today – it wasn’t the 1,500th copy of Coffin Dodgers (that’ll happen later tonight), but I’m delighted all the same. [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.
