Self Service

In the olden days things were simple. A writer wrote something that they though other people might be interested in reading and they sent it off to as many agents and publishers as they could thing of (or find listed in The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook). Then they sat back, bit their nails and waited for the rejection letters to pour in, which they inevitably did.

If they were very, very lucky someone would print their book and promote it, they would get a small advance and manage to pay their food and lodgings just long enough to see them through the writing of their next manuscript. And the cycle would start again.

These days things are different.

The best thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.
The worst thing about the internet is that anyone can now see his or her work in print.

It’s an oft-used cliché but it’s true. Everyone who feels that they have a book inside them can now log on to one of the many online publishers and make an e-book available for sale within minutes. With just a little more effort they can produce a proper paperback, or even a hardback – which puts them on a par with that Dickens fellow, doesn’t it?

Many would argue that self-publishing is basically worthless, that no author of any value would have to resort to self-publishing as the quality of their work will shine through the dross in the slush pile at a publishing house.

I’m not so sure. There’s some truth in that but surely luck and timing play their part? And won’t some writers always prefer to have full artistic control of their work? Self-publishing is certainly a way to keep that, but the price is that you then have to do all the promotion and publicity yourself as well.

And of course self-publishing is nothing new. It’s been going on since the Catholic Church got their buddy Johannes Gutenberg to knock up some bibles for them, a small vanity press project that brought printed material to (the) masses.

Way back when I was young and dinosaurs walked the earth I self-published my own magazine called ‘Cult Movies’. I was fourteen and didn’t know that there was any other way. I wrote it, printed it – after negotiating a bulk business rate on the photocopier at my local Post Office – and made it available to the masses via the small ads in the back of the NME and other youth-culture magazines of the day.

I learned about sales and what to do when you don’t have any. I learned how to meet deadlines and I learned how to self-promote. Truthfully I wasn’t much good at any of these things – ‘Cult Movies’ folded after just five issues – but the theory was sound.

I now have five self-published titles available and copies of them sell every single day. I can’t tell you how gratifying that is, that people who I don’t know are spending their hard-earned cash on something that I’ve created.

Now, if only it was as financially gratifying as the work of a guy called John Locke. He’s sold over a million copies of his self-published books.

Good luck to him. I think I need him to teach me the art of self-promotion.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

Categorically Speaking

I’m fat. I’m grey haired. I’m in my forties. I’m English. I’m a Sheffield United fan.

Does any of the above make you automatically like me any less? (I’ll excuse you if it’s the Sheffield United part. Some things can’t be helped) I hope not. In these so-called enlightened days I’d hope that most of us would be able to see past the superficial and make our own judgements (unless we’ve brainwashed by some ‘religion’ into thinking that all people who think differently to us are evil – I still can’t get my head round that one).

Still with me? Good. So you can think for yourself. And you read stuff. I know you do, you’ve made it this far.

But what kind of books do you read? What sections of a bookshop do you automatically walk towards? What if a book has a pink cover bearing a cartoon of a young woman walking a poodle. Or a rocket ship blasting off into space. Or a couple making use of some bondage gear. Would you even take it from the shelf or would you just dismiss it automatically because you already know that kind of thing isn’t for you?

Book covers are designed to tempt us into thinking ‘I’ve read and enjoyed something that looked similar before, therefore I will probably like this book too’. But it’s all too easy to fall into their idle trap and become complacent. We see certain types of books as being aimed specifically at a particular demographic and sometimes find it difficult to think outside of this box. But why should that be? We’re smart folks aren’t we? We can think for ourselves? Why can’t we enjoy writing that ‘they’ won’t aim at us?

And isn’t automatically dismissing a particular genre of book (and even, by extension, giving books any genre label) a form of discrimination? Enlightened people don’t do discrimination. Suggest that war stories or sci-fi are just for men and love stories are solely the domain for women and you really should be slapped with a sexist label quicker than you can say ‘Caitlin Moran’.

So why do many of us pull our noses up and say ‘Fantasy books? Urgh, no. I can’t be doing with trolls and such’ or ‘crime fiction? It’s all clichés isn’t it?’ even though we’ve never actually read any of the objects of our derision? Apparently we just know we won’t like it so we don’t even try.

I thought I’d left all that behind in my teenage years – ‘I can’t listen to that stuff, it’s Mod music. Look – there’s a kid wearing a parka on the cover, so I definitely won’t like it’. I never understood that kind of argument any more than the one that that haughtily says ‘of course, the finest science fiction is allegorical in nature’. Huh? That’s as idiotic as saying that the erotica works at its best when it has something to say about the socio-economic condition of Eastern Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Where’s the difference between an ignorant person saying ‘I don’t like westerns’ and ‘I don’t like ginger haired people’?

Book readers are supposedly intelligent people so act like one. Don’t take pride in your total rejection of a particular style of writing. That’s prejudice, pure and simple. Have an open mind. Expand your horizons. Read a different kind of book or better still, get out of the mind-set of pigeonholing literature and just think of all books as just, well, books. There are so many authors whose work deserves at least a look.

Graham Green and Günter  Grass. Jasper Fforde or Katie Fforde. HP Lovecraft and MC Beaton. Even the wildly differing political views of Ayn Rand and George Orwell. They’re all classics if you’re prepared to step outside your normal reading habits and give them a go. That’s why reading groups are such a great idea. They force their members out of their comfort zones. Sometimes it works, sometimes it backfires horribly. But at least it exposes the reader to something new, and that’s always a good thing.

It’s International Book week. Go on. Try something new.

© Shaun Finnie 2012

“mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”

There are some phrases guaranteed to strike fear into the human heart.  “The tax inspector will see you now” is one, as are “should it really be that colour?” and “We need to talk”. And also there’s the one that I’ve been forced to say this week; “It’s no good, I’ll have to go to the dentist”.

Kit Kat Chunky has to be the best chocolate bar in the world. It does exactly what it says on the label – it’s a Kit Kat but it’s chunky. Fantastic. They’re especially tasty straight from the fridge. Unfortunately that makes them a little more like yummy concrete than normal, so my usual “mmmm” of pleasure became “mmmm….” (crunch) “ow!”  The chocolaty deliciousness melted away, leaving jagged pain behind as I found the remnants of my broken tooth.

I’ve since had it fixed but the dentist made it quite clear that my days of biting through hard things are over. I’m to be careful what I nibble on for the rest of my life. Chomping through a hard pear (or indeed a cool Kit Kat) is a pleasure that is now in my past.

I’d heard it said of old people many times – “A nightly tot of whiskey is one of his few remaining pleasures” – but this was the first time that I can remember one of my own personal pleasures being placed firmly in my past. I have never before noticed something that I like becoming something from my past. It has happened though, obviously. Things slip in and out of your pleasure zone as age and fashion dictate. For example, I no longer actively seek out the pleasures of sucking my thumb, skateboarding or lusting after Susan Stranks from ‘Magpie’. Well, she is seventy-three now.

I guess the moral of this story is, if you like doing something then do it now. Don’t wait until tomorrow because you never know what tomorrow may bring.

For me, it brings the small change of cutting up my Chunky Kit Kats from now on. I’m nothing if not adaptable.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie 

A Fresh Start

I don’t know about where you live but the children around here went back to school this week. I saw some of the younger ones trooping past my house, clutching tightly to their mums’ hands. Some seemed excited, some a bit nervous; all were on the verge of a new start.

It was a same at the bus stop around the corner with the older kids. Pushing, jostling, fighting, texting, doing what kids in or approaching their teens do. Every one of their young lives had changed in the last few weeks of summer. All were advancing a school year or in many cases moving up to a brand new school. Some were starting formal education for the first time. They all had different histories and different things to look forwards to but the were all the same in one crucial respect: they’d all grown up a little.

On the same day that I saw this our national news showed images of people in Belfast hurling missiles and abuse at police and other people who have different views to their own – mostly religious ones. Then they showed images of people in the Middle East doing pretty much the same thing.

So in the twenty-first century we’re still playing the ‘my god’s better than your god’ game? And the people involved think that they’re showing the world how great their god is by attacking anyone who thinks differently? I’m shaking my head in genuine bewilderment as I type this.

I’m no history student but it seems to me that religious intolerance has been the cause of more wars than any sneaky land grabs or political assassinations. And we all know who to blame, don’t we? It’s ‘the other guy’, the one who looks strange or has customs that seem entirely alien to us. It’s easy to look at a ranting fanatic and think that he’s an idiot who should simply take a chill pill. But isn’t that thought in itself a kind of religious intolerance? And aren’t supposedly-enlightened atheists and agnostics just as guilty of this thought crime? Casting my mind way back to my own schooldays, I was taught that The Crusades supposedly ended around seven hundred years ago. Looking at the state of the world today I’m not so sure.

Those children walking down my street showed signs of growing up. It seems that many alleged grown-ups are yet to follow suit.

© Shaun Finnie 2012  –  follow Shaun on Twitter  @ShaunFinnie

Shaun Finnie is the author of ‘Make Easy Money from Writing’ and several other books – available from Amazon now.