The Word Cloud

... but kind of funny.

The book "Understanding Women"
has finally arrived in book stores:

This article - which is too long - does nevertheless state a growingly important case in an emphatic and broadly convincing way.

It argues that most authors - anyone who isn't a bestselling author with an agent, in fact - are better off selling direct to Apple and Amazon, and simply skipping the whole business with agents & publishers. The US market is around 12 months ahead of the British market in its rush to e-books, but the logic is basically the same.

Now, as it happens, I still don't believe this. From what I've seen, it's still the case that agents & conventional publishers add masses of value. I've had a slew of international deals (and now probably a TV deal) for my detective book that I wouldn't plausibly have had without going through the normal channels. Mitch Feierstein, a WW client, is well on his way to accumulating a grab-bag full of international publishing deals which, again, would not have become his had he chosen to fly solo.

But it is changing. Kristine Rusch, the author of the article above, argues that writers have always been small business owners and they do need to 'bother their pretty little heads' about these business-type issues. She's right. We do. And the world is changing in a way which does bring more openness and more possibility to a whole range of new writers.

Congratulations to Sally Nilsson, whose book The Man Who Sank Titanic is out now from The History Press. The book tells the story of her great-grandfather, who was at the helm when the great ship went down.

Sally came to the Festival of Writing, got inspired, got plenty of help (including from the wonderful Louise Berridge, one of our most succesful ever clients) - and now has earned her very well deserved reward. She's been nice enough to tell us, 'I can't thank you enough for the excellent support services The Writer's Workshop provide to new authors.  If it hadn't been for you guys, I wouldn't have been able to write the book.'

Well, we're blushing here. Looking down at our toes and feeling as pink as a six-year-old at ballet class. But it's always a real privilege and pleasure to help out.

As for Sally's book, she could do very well indeed. As all you Titanic-heads know, the centenary of her sinking is coming up and it's going to be a year-long Titanathon. Good luck to Sally. We're keeping paws crossed for you.

Monsterly giant & humungously enormous congratulations to WW client, Dania el Kadi, whose book Summer Blast has become a number one bestseller in her native Lebanon.

We've had bestsellers and prizewinners before, but this is the first time that a client of ours has had a number 1 hit book. Debi Alper - yes, her again - was the editorial wizard who helped make this happen. Big fat congrats to her too.

The book was (as I remember it) a wonderful combination of women's fiction and gritty reality-war story. It's Bridget Jones meets the Middle East. Not just a fun book, as it happens, but an important one. The book is also available here on Amazon. If we can get Dania to come to the Getting Published event next month, we will.

In fact, Dania's success has inspired us. We'll give away a bottle of fizz to the best entry to Slushpile Live at the GP event. Writing is such a tough game that it deserves to be celebrated. If you can come, then please do. If not - well, we'll raise a glass to absent friends.

And almost-finally, and talking of friends, many of you will have met Tom Harper at the Festival of Writing. He's got a new thriller out right now and he's blogged about it here. Tom is absolutely brilliant - he's run the Crime Writers' Association and is devoted to both the genre and to writers generally. All power to his elbow (and other major joints too, of course. We have a strong diversity policy here at WW Towers.)

And finally-finally, I feel I have to bring you what is definitely the quote of the day. Laura Wilkins (who runs the office here) - 'If you have a really boring voice, it's like God stamping on your head.' Love it.

(Laura, btw, would like me to add that she meant this in a nice way - that some people try extra hard. And she did mean it nicely. She's nice like that.)

I'm horribly aware that I've been away from my beloved Cloud for far too long. It keeps bobbing on my thought-horizon like one of those cutsie litle tropical clouds they add to the blue sky to show you how blue it is.

But I have been very busy - with good things, I'm happy to say. Hence a couple of lovely things to announce (and one lovely reminder).

Lovely thing #1
Those delightful people at A&C Black (the folk who publish the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook) asked me to write a book for them on How To Write. So I said yes. Then I wrote it. And a few months after I wrote it, we agreed a contract. And then we signed it. And the book will come out in spring. It's going to be a real, proper, grown-up how to write book. No pretending that the game is easier than it really is. No dumbing down. Just the truth. I think you'll like it. But more about that in due course.

Lovely thing #2
I've also been working with an unbelievably interesting (if scary) chap called Mitch Feierstein. Mitch is a hedge-fund manager with some explosive views on the world economy - essentially that we're living in the dying days of a massive Ponzi Scheme. The basic idea is that in 2008-09 we nationalised a whole pile of crappy debts and those debts are about to collapse on us all.

He wrote a manuscript setting all this out. The manuscript was mind-blowing but needed some editorial work. We looked round the Writers' Workshop for someone who had (i) a degree in Economics, (ii) a strong financial background, and (iii) already written a book on finance and economics. Strange to say, that cupboard proved to be completely bare ... except for yours truly. So I've ended up working closely with Mitch (who's a terrific guy to work with, I have to say) - and the result of his hard work and my editorial labours is a book called Planet Ponzi. It's being published in the New Year by Transworld in the UK, by Random House in Germany and - I expect - by other publishers around the world in due course. I think the book is going to do very well indeed.

Lovely reminder #1 (or lovely thing #3 if you prefer to count that way)
And we do still have some places left for our Getting Published day in London on 15 Oct. Last year's event was good, but we learned quite a lot by doing it, so I'm near certain that this one will be better. If you can possibly come, then do. It's gonna be fun and productive, which sounds like a winning combo to me.

This excellent article asks the question whether books are dead and whether authors, in a professional sense, are dead. According to the article's author, Ewan Morrison, the answer is obvious: OF COURSE THEY'RE DEAD, YOU NUMPTY. Even if you loathe these questions, the article is worth looking at, as it's by far the best thing I've read on the topic.

I think Morrison is right. Not completely right, I'm sure. The JK Rowlings and Dan Browns will make money no matter what happens. But the idea of decent authors being able to make a career from writing is coming to an end. Authors could only ever make a modest living, but there's a heck of a different between living modestly and not living at all.

That outcome cuts two ways, however. For those like me who do currently make a living from writing, it's bad news. No ifs, no buts. Those making a living from the pen are like candle-sellers at the onset of electrification. We're going out of business. Not all of us, but most of us.

On the other hand, for committed 'amateurs' - for most Word Clouders, in other words - the horizon looks bright. Self-pub has gone from being a crazy cider-and-sandals option to perfectly normal. I suspect that it's now migrating again from normal to the default route for plenty of authors. There won't be much cash involved, but there's no reason why self-pubbers shouldn't gain real readerships, real followings, real acclaim, real success. We're not quite there yet - conventional publication is still the best route for those who can engineer it - but that future is getting ever closer.

(Oh, and if you're baffled by the incredibly pretentious title to this blog post, you'll find enlightenment here. Dunbar's poem, one of the earliest in English-English literature - as opposed to Anglo-Saxon English lit - is the best bit of gloom I kn0w. Makes George Osborne look like a crazy party-animal.)

(Oh, and I wear sandals and like cider. I'm not anti those things. Just, you know. The beards.)

Gosh, it's been a long time since I've posted on this site.

That's partly because I've been away on holiday - three weeks in the Caribbean and my first foreign holiday for 15 years. Somebody (see photo) seems quite excited about that.

But I've also been insanely busy doing some hands-on work for a WW client. The project is all a bit too confidential for me to actually tell you anything about it, but we already have a brilliant deal from a major UK publisher. Publication date: early next year. We're approaching US publishers in a couple of weeks time. Then the world. I've been working really hard on this, but things are looking very positive.

Also, shiver my timbers, we're planning a huge website overhaul. A totally new look - more modern, less fusty. It's amazing how fast fashions change in the web world, but the truth is those fashion changes do improve the ease of reading and using websites. So we're scurrying after the fashionistas and will have something that's just sooo 2012. Launch of the new site will probably be next month. I'm not sure yet whether we'll make huge changes to the Word Cloud site though. I mean, it's kind of cosy here, isn't it?

Meanwhile, I'm sure there's something I'm meant to be doing. Can't think what it is ... but I do have this weird recurring dream where I'm meant to be writing my second detective novel and there's a deadline fast approaching and I've only got 20,000 words actually written and ...

Gulp. Erm. Sorry, need to rush.

Laura has been busily creating this - it's a spreadsheet listing all agents in the UK, mentioning what kind of work is/is not accepted, with links to websites, notes of WW friends, etc.

If you're in the process of making submissions, this could be a perfect start for your submission planner. Just download the  spreadsheet, save it on your own PC, then make whatever changes you like. If you've got suggestions for improvements - os some content you'd like us to add - then just let us know. We're all ears. (*)


* - this is metaphorical. We also include eyes, nose, mouth, limbs, all the usual bones, common viscera &c &c.

More intriguing developments in the shifting frontier of publishing.

As many of you will have seen, John Locke (a living American writer, not the dead philosopher) has just breached the 1,000,000 ebook sales barrier on Amazon's Kindle platform. He's written a number of novels, each priced at 99c, and has also written the inevitable follow up How I Sold 1,000,000 eBooks in 5 Months.

What are we to make of this? Well, let me say that I haven't read any of Locke's work, so it's hard for me to comment on that side of things, but I'd bet a dollar to a dime, that:

• his books aren't good enough to have gained acceptance by a regular publisher
• no regular publisher would have priced them at 99c
• all regular publishers would have done a better job on jacket design, editoring and copy-editing.
• no regular publisher would have conducted remotely such a good marketing campaign as Locke mounted all on his own
• no regular publisher would have mounted such a digital-intensive campaign as Locke mounted
• no regular publisher - even had they taken his work - would have achieved Locke's level of sales
• no regular publisher would have made as much money for Locke

Taken together, these are an exciting and alarming set of facts. They should be exciting to any author who gets turned down by agents / publishers, because for the first time ever there is a genuinely viable alternative route. (And it isn't just Locke who's taking it.)

From the point of view of these indie authors, they can get a readership, fame, reviews and money, all in one lovely stroke.

From the point of view of conventional publishers, however, these facts are alarming in the extreme. Any market touched by digital technology seems to see a collapse in pricing, a race to the bottom. Penguin, Random House and the rest can defend themselves against Locke's pricing, only by strangling their own revenues. And if they do that, they'll simply have to lay off the four fifths of their staff that they won't be able to pay any more. By which point, will they be able to offer the excellence in editorial selection, jacket design, &c that they currently use to justify their existence? Presumably not. In which case, what are publishers for?

And from the point of view of existing authors - authors like me, f'rinstance - where is my income going to come from? Locke sold a massive number of books at 99c each. His take of that is 35%, so he's made $350,000 / £225,000, for a series of eight books. So for each book, he's earned himself £25,000.

Now £25,000 is a reasonable slice of cash - it's approximately equal to the median wage in the UK - but let's remember that we're talking about the world's most successful eBook author. £25K represents the very most that such an author can expect.

Faced with a similar alarming collapse in revenues, musicians have turned to live music and merchandising. That's been bad for the record companies, but profitable for the musicians. But what are authors meant to do? Musicians, by heading back to live performance, were returning to the essence of their art. But the essence of the writer's art IS the book. There's no way that lectures or book signings or whatever will make up the gap.

Me, I'm not worried. I'm quite close to completing my NVQ in Armed Robbery (including a dissertation on Bank Security: Finding the Weak Spots). But what about authors who aren't so happy with the whole balaclava 'n' crowbar shtick? What about them?

It's a new world, this one, and the future is royally uncertain.

Getting closer to the crime blog launch. We still need reviewers though. All we require is that

1. You write yourself. You don't need to have been published.
2. You have killed at least one person. It's fine if your only murder is a fictional one, though obviously real life, actual, convicted murderers will be given priority.
3. You like reading crime fiction and would be happy to review a book or two a month.

If you're interested, then contact nikki@writersworkshop.co.uk and we'll tell you more. We're getting closer and closer to a real live function site ... which is going to look a little bit like this: