Publishing the Underground launch

Last week, I was at Manchester's Anthony Burgess Foundation, at Dead Ink's new website launch. Their new initiative, Publishing The Underground, connects readers and authors by running on a subscription & membership model. You can become a Dead Ink member by pre-ordering one of the great books coming out this year, or by buying a Dead Ink tote bag or t-shirt. It's a pretty sweet way of running a modern publishing company, and you get to have a hardback book, from one of their exciting new authors, for £12 as well. What's not to like?

Here's the speech I gave at the launch.

"Many thanks to Nathan for inviting me to speak tonight.

My novel, Brick Mother, was published by Dead Ink Books last year as part of New Voices 2014. It has been described as 'a kitchen sink thriller', 'thought provoking and terrifying, a thrilling page turner' and 'one of the best novels ever written about work.' It was accepted for publication in June 2013, and was published a year later.

After being published, it was longlisted for the Guardian First Book Award, the Not the Booker Prize, and shortlisted for the Gladstone Writers in Residence Award. It was also, for one very exciting day, a number-one bestseller in the Amazon Literary Thriller subgenre.

Having my book published has allowed me to go 'out on the road' as a real author. I've been to book festivals, literary festivals, been a featured writer at live lit nights, and appeared at book groups where my novel has been discussed. I should stress that none of this would have been possible without Dead Ink.

My experience publishing with Dead Ink made a big difference to me. I didn't go to University to learn to write. A writer like me, completely self-taught, and without any access to editors or creative writing tutors, doesn't have any expert help to improve their work. Publishing with Dead Ink gave me the chance to work closely with Nathan, an experienced editor, who helped me improve my book. And in the run-up to the novel's publication, I also got to work closely with the graphic designer who made the book's cover, to say how I wanted the book to look. Many writers don't get the chance to be so intimately involved in a book's development, at every stage of the process, from start to finish. The experience was a very meaningful one, and one which may not have been possible with a larger publisher. 

So - why are publishers like Dead Ink important?

Tonight, you've heard three great new authors [Lochlan Bloom, Harry Gallon, and Wes Brown] read excerpts of their work. Well, big publishers take fewer and fewer risks all the time. You are not going to see a big publisher take a punt on new, great writers like these.

Independent publishing is important, because it dares to publish work nobody else dares to back. Work that is daring - work that breaks new ground. Work that is weird, and unconventional, and sometimes defiantly uncommercial. Independent presses blaze a trail that others later follow, and give authors that important first step in developing their work and getting it out into the world.

So, I hope you'll support this important work, and this new way of working for Dead Ink, by pre-ordering the books and becoming a Dead Ink member at tonight's event."

Currently reading

The Year of the Flood Margaret Attwood 

Switch off One-Click ordering

Last week, a kind person at work pointed out that there are only 6 weeks to go until Christmas. Crikey on a plate!

If you're anything like me, you prefer to do your Christmas shopping the non-hellish way; i.e., completely online. This way, you can shop in your pyjamas, and without needing to sharpen your elbows before attempting to go through any doorways.

For Christmas 2011, I took myself to Amazon.com. It was cheap and sold everything I could possibly want, and I got presents for everybody (including the cat) for less than £100. What a bargain, eh?

This year, knowing what I do now about their frankly shonky business practises and general global evilness, I won't be doing it again. The creeping reach of global corporate supervillains is bad for our economy, and will eventually come to be bad for writers and the literary scene in general. Let me explain.

Like other globalised corporations, Amazon is committed to aggressive expansion and market domination. Driven by a need to generate exponentially increasing dividends for its shareholders, it does whatever it takes to generate billions.

Everybody likes a bargain, myself included, and Amazon's bargain-basement prices attract shoppers by the million. Like the supermarkets, Amazon works with an endgame in mind. Driving prices down will eventually kill its competition - and after that, book-lovers' choices will become limited. You will only be able to buy from Amazon, and nowhere else. We have no way of knowing what this will do to prices, or to what kind of books you'll be able to buy.

For many publishers, deciding whether or not to deal with Amazon is a non-choice. It's the world's biggest bookstore, and many readers don't shop anywhere else. If your books aren't on Amazon, you miss out on selling to those who only shop there. One of the ways Amazon operates is to flatten the supply chain, buying at wholesale prices from publishers, and selling at retail price to customers. This generates a healthy profit for itself, and little for the publisher. It's no stretch to see that operating on such narrow margins could drive some indies out of business. A day may come when Amazon demands exclusivity from its publishers - that they sell only through its storefront, and not through their own. Little publishers, often the houses who publish the most exciting and innovative work, may be forced to the wall; and all will be left will be the big publishers, churning out the kinds of books they know will be a hit. Laugh now, while you may; you'll be crying into your library cards when all you can buy are Katie Price biographies and shit books about vampires.

There are many nefarious strings to Amazon's bow when it comes to cheap pricing. These include (but are not limited to) union-busting, using precarious or temporary employees to avoid providing employment rights, and bullying publishers into breaking anti-trust laws. These tactics alone are good enough reason to stop giving them your money.

But for British writers, the biggest reason to boycott Amazon must be for its tax-avoidance scheme. Last year, Amazon generated sales of more than 3.3 billion in the UK. It paid no corporation tax. Let me repeat: into the UK tax system, Amazon - despite having generated enough sales to build six hospitals and a dozen schools - paid not one penny.

With an austerity drive in full effect on our public services, and the axe swinging over our libraries, we should be concerned about this. The narrative in the mainstream media is that the UK is in debt, and that there's no alternative but to cut back. Yet single-issue protest group UK Uncut suggests that corporate tax avoidance has cost our state up to £95bn a year. In crude terms, you could say that if Amazon paid its taxes, our libraries wouldn't be closing their doors.

Writers working a day job in the public sector might find themselves doing the work of two people due to cuts in their departments, and coming home at night too exhausted to work; they may be appealing a benefits decision, for themselves or somebody else, with all the attendant stress and man-hours that such a thing takes; or they might find that local NHS or social care services have closed down, leaving them bearing the brunt of caring, and thus with less time to write.

These things aren't isolated from the tactics of corporations like Amazon. They're very much intertwined. Were Amazon to pay their taxes, perhaps we might be subject to fewer cuts and less stress. And for that reason, I'll be going independent this Christmas. Why not join me?

Currently reading
The Country of Last Things Paul Auster
The Quiet American Graham Greene

Assistant Wanted....

In recent weeks I've been vocal (or should I say, 'writey'?) about the advantages of winter for writers. It's cold, it's dark - perfect weather for staying in, and what better to do with your enforced time indoors than getting stuck into the latest project? I've got me a pair of fingerless gloves and a whole bag of mulled wine spices - so I'm all equipped for it.

At last, I've got a perfect routine going. Work is such that I get home early enough, and emotionally equipped and energetic enough to get a bit of work done most evenings. But you know what really grebs away at the time? Things. Stuff. Crap tasks, like going to the post office, and putting the washing in. It's not just that I resent housework for being an instrument of oppression to women (Emmeline Pankhurst didn't chain herself to the railings so I could waste my time vacuuming the stairs, that's what I always say), but also as a drudge, an idiotic waste of time, and worst of all, it keeps me away from writing. And do you know what the worst swizz of it all is? That you have to do it all again a few days later.

I dream of having a maid. Or even better than having a maid, having an assistant: somebody to pay my National Insurance Contributions at the Post Office. Somebody to go to Wilkinson's to buy cat litter. Somebody to cook my dinner! It's days like these when I exist entirely on pasta and noodles - not because I like either food, but because they take under ten minutes to cook. Alright, so it wouldn't be a very fulfilling job, but it'd free up my time to get more done. You ever wish there were 26 hours in a day? That's me.

You'll already know about Borders' financial troubles. They went into administration recently - a friend who works there told me that the branch he works in is staying open day by day on the basis of how much stock they sell each day. They don't know for certain when the store will close for good - could be any day.

Any way you look at it, Borders' closure is bad news for readers and writers alike. Most book fans are first attracted to books by their covers, and decide to buy on the basis of flicking through them in store. Yes, the prices are cheaper on Amazon, but who buys a book without first holding it in their hands and reading sections of the book to check they like the authors' style? Without bricks and mortar stores for people to wander into, to browse the titles, or to be tempted to buy more books than they intended to through 3 for 2 promotions, I can't see how book sales won't be impacted. The scary thing is, if a bit store like Borders can't survive in this climate, what hope is there for independent & locally owned bookstores?

But... onto the Good News. Mslexia's 2010 Short Story Competition is now open! Submissions of short stories by women authors are invited for the competition, closing in January 2010. The top prize is a day with an editor from Virago. This is a prize really worth winning - so good luck, those of you who enter it! There are more details in this quarter's issue of Mslexia.

Also, independent publishers Wild Wolf Publishing are accepting submissions of full length novels. Specialising in dark, brutal and edgy fiction, they accept submissions of any genre, so long as it's dark! [You can't miss their website. It has pictures of wolves all over it].

Until next time.... I'm putting the fingerless gloves back on and heading back up to my study.... x

November: writing season

It's been over a month since the clocks went back, and I've been wearing my fingerless gloves all around the house ever since. This is no pretension on my part: it really is that cold in our house. Most evenings I creep up to the attic to get to work wearing two shirts, two vests, a thin jumper, and a wonky home-knit aran sweater that I made two years ago, and which is too embarrassing to wear outside the house. Putting the heating on is cheating. Apparently, if one wants to write a great novel, one has to suffer like a character in a Dostoevsky novel. That's Ricky's excuse for not putting the heating on, anyway: it's all the interests of supporting my work.

Dark nights can be something of a productivity slayer. Crawling into hibernation after long days at a day job is perilously easy. However, the slide into torpor is even more depressing than 16-hour long nights, rendering the lazy writer a regretful quivering heap by February, when the snowdrops start to emerge.

A winter night is well suited to writing. It's dark, it's cold, there are few distractions. What else are you going to do? It's not like you can have a barbeque, for God's sake. And so, every night after tea, I waddle upstairs in my seventeen layers to do a couple of hours' work.

This November I have mostly been: still embroiled in the very exciting Secret Project I'm working on. At this rate, I'll have the first draft finished by February. Interspersed with this, I've been working on some short stories. I've had some good ideas lately and they've all made their way into the fiction.

For anyone looking for places to submit work this month (be quick, there are short dates on these) here are a couple of competitions I've unearthed lately:

The Willesden Herald runs an International Short Story competition, leading to publication by Pretend Genius Press, who are an independent publisher who run on a non-profit basis. They have about 15 titles to their name, and currently also publish 'zines. They seem like a publishers' with a unique ethos, so go check 'em out.

This is a good comp for anyone who's a bit wordy in their short stories, as the word limit is 8,000 words. Best of luck to anyone who enters this one.... I'm off to don my gloves and get back to work!

Currently Reading

When To Walk Rebecca Gowers
Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them Phillipe LeGrain
Before She Met Me Julian Barnes