Well Read?

Nick Daws, who runs my favourite writers forum, My Writers Circle recently posted on the forum asking members to come forward to be tagged on a meme (a kind of chain blog from what I understand) regarding what bloggers have and have not read. The list came originally from the US Big Reads Survey, the results of which are as expected, somewhat different to the UK equivalent. This is to be expected since they are different markets and Americans do have different tastes. It also helps to explain why so many US titles are listed, which were not necessarily as successful here. The list though seems to be sweeping rapidly through cyber space. I am not sure who to tag myself to pass it on, since most of my writing friends do not have blogs, so I hope the meme does not stop with me.

Here is what you are supposed to do:

1) Bold the titles you have read
2) Italicise those you intend to read
3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list on your own blog

Here then is my version:

1) Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5) To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11) Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13) Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare
15) Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit - JR Tolkien
17) Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20) Middlemarch - George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23) Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26) Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29) Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32) David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33) (Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis)
34) Emma - Jane Austen
35) Persuasion - Jane Austen
36) (The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis)
37) (The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini)
38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39) Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40) Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne
41) Animal Farm - George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45) The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49) Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50) Atonement - Ian McEwan
51) MISSING
52) Dune - Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56) (The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon)
57) A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58) Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62) Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69) Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70) Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
71) Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72) Dracula - Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses - James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal - Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession - A. S. Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83) (The Color Purple - Alice Walker)
84) The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte's Web - EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94) Watership Down - Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I make this a rather sad 16, which is a bit pathetic really. I am almost ashamed to say that I have seen more of these books as films, than read the books themselves. I am though a non fiction writer, so most of my reading in the last few years at least, has been non fiction, mostly alternative history and the like. I included The Bible in my list, since although I have not read the whole lot, I have read large chunks of it. I had to for my own book, although it is interesting in its right. Not enough to be included in the 'love it' category though.

Ditch the fat cats !

Job cuts seem to be being spoken of everywhere though, across all sectors of retailing. We often forget that publishing is retail as well, as it is ultimately not about printing, but selling books. It seems that all over the world, in both Britain and the United States, companies are struggling to come to terms with an extremely awkward and challenging environment, one that with a bit of foresight could have been foreseen and quite possibly prevented.

The regular Bookhitch newsletter that I receive says that there is an interesting story floating around that 50 or so years ago a mechanic somewhere in the western United States designed a carburetor that could get 60 miles to the half gallon while powering an 8 cylinder car. Rumour has it that a large oil company found out about this, bought the rights and paid to not only silence the mechanic but also made him sign a piece of paper stating that he would never design anything like this again, for the rest of his life. It wouldn't surprise me, as I have heard similar rumours about drug companies when cures for diseases are found.

This though just goes to underline the point that the solutions have been there all along, the problem is as Bookhitch put it, fat cats with chubby hands in the cookie jar.

The motor industry may on the surface look different to publishing, or for that matter the market that I work in, yet retail when it comes down to it, is retail, and no matter what you are selling, the problems and therefore the solutions, are the same. The problems though start at the top and trickle down. It is inevitably the case that those at the bottom who did not make the mistakes that led to the dire situation that so many retailers now find themselves in, are the first to lose their jobs. We are the ones who pay for our company's mistakes, and not those who actually made those mistakes, meaning that they do not learn from these mistakes.

Every year tens of thousands of books are wasted and pulped. Even though the technology is there to prevent this from happening (print on demand) it both abused and underused. Companies continue to use wasteful and outdated methods, paying lip service to the environment, until they are forced to make changes. This to me is pure nonsense and just does not make sense. Print costs are rising to such an extent that is now almost cheaper to use print on demand, and when it comes to quality the differences are negligible. Yet the publishing industry continues to rubbish this method, concentrating on the negatives instead of the positives.

It seems that in many cases, companies are unwilling to act until they are forced to do so. This would be after all be far too difficult, as it would entail the fat cat CEO's actually doing some work, to earn their obscene salaries. This would never do, as they would miss their round of golf and champagne breakfasts. I acknowledge though that not all companies are like this, and pressure from the public is making changes. I cannot speak for the company I work for, since I do not read the city news (far too depressing) and know what the CEO or MD earns, I do know though that my Store Manager has not had a pay rise that is actually worth anything in 3 years, and that the rise I have been awarded (3 percent, and bear in mind that we earn only 1 penny more than the minimum wage, although this is also set to change, no doubt after I have left) is less than the rate of inflation.

What is the solution? I cannot speak for my sector, which I fear is doomed, unless you work in a superstore, but publishers have to stop printing such high runs and remember that it is only the minority of books that become best sellers. Some books written by well known authors may well need high print runs and even second and third runs, but the majority do not. When you see the amount of books on sale in the bargain bins and in remainder shops such as the Speaking Tree, how much did these cost the publisher and author in terms of lost revenue? How much money, ink and paper has been wasted in the last year that could have been put to better use in actually promoting the books and helping them to sell, and also in paying staff and authors decent royalties, not to mention supporting new authors and giving their work a voice. Could those savings have saved or even created jobs? Maybe it is time to re-think what Bookhitch refer to as the three letter word - print on demand. Maybe it is also time to re-think the absurdly outdated notion that books must be returnable.

People in positions of power think that they are invincible (think Amazon) and resist resolutely anything that they perceive as challenging their position, keeping everyone else down. It is though in times of hardship that those who are at the bottom have the chance to excel and show their mettle, as when the going gets tough, the tough get going. I have proven this ten times over with my own attitude these last 12 months. We should then look to the bottom rather than the top as to how to improve things, going back to the floor, as this is where the action takes place. We are the ones who do the jobs and the real work, so we are the ones whose ideas should be implemented and put into place, or at the very least, looked at. We cannot do a worse job than those who are already in charge.

Perhaps we should also take a leaf from Michael Garibaldi's book, a character from Babylon Five. When he inherited a large research company and sacked the Board of Directors for plotting to kill both him and his wife, and embezzling the company, he replaced them with a team of individuals who had done nothing but complain about how awful the company was, figuring that they were the ones who should be listened to. Mr Garibaldi sounds like my kind of boss, and if some of mine had been more like this, then by now I would be one very happy and fat cat!

Wish me luck!

It has been a week now since I got back from Lundy, and somehow I have not felt like blogging at all. Neither can I be bothered to keep looking to see what is happening in the book world, the impetus to do these things just seems to have gone. It just doesn't seem important.

For the first two days after I got back, it felt like I was on cloud nine. I was bursting with energy and confidence, and got some really good sales at work. Then Wednesday came, and with it my day off, and something seemed to shift. It seemed like there was so much to do - go the gym, get the food shopping, go to Edenbridge to get the books that my friend Sue had not sold at the Winchester Book Festival. It was chucking down with rain as well which didn't help. I found myself loitering on the computer just to fill in the time, and using it as a distraction, which is a bad habit of mine, and one that I need to break. When I went back to work on Thursday then the sense of melancholy and disquiet had returned with a vengeance, and most of my get up and go had well, got up and gone.

At lunch time today I had the strangest feeling that I needed to go to Waterstones. So I trotted up there, not really knowing why, as I had no intention of buying books, only to see a sign in the window, full time book seller wanted. My evenings task then is to fill it in and take it back again tomorrow.

How wonderful that would be from both an authors and book lovers point of view, to work for Britain's largest and most influential book seller. Wish me luck !

Amazon in meltdown?

The great Amazon debate has at long last made it on the pages of one of our national dailies, in this instance, The Daily Telegraph. An article on the online edition, written by Nick Allen says the online retailer could be facing a strike by authors and publishers as it becomes embroiled in an increasingly bitter dispute with publisher Hachette Livre.

All the groups titles have seen their buy buttons removed in a dispute over terms. These books are still available via Amazon marketplace through re-sellers and third parties, but as the article states, the publisher does not earn a bean from these sales.

Actually this is not strictly true. It is true that they earn nothing from the sale of second hand books, but not true when it comes to third party sellers, since these have to buy the books from somewhere, and it is not other retailers. No, they get their stock direct from the publisher, or through the usual wholesalers, whose terms are just as high as Amazon's. Amazon has been singled out not because of what they have done, but because of the dishonest way in which they have done it, by going from one publisher to the next, lying about the terms negotiated with rival publishers and using this as a battering ram to get others to comply. This is not something that wholesalers do, as their terms are equal across the board and totally transparent.

This move then is aimed at forcing Hachette to sell to Amazon on terms which are simply put, unacceptable. As CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson said: "In Britain the terms publishers give to retailers are the highest in the world and more than half of the price of a book goes to the retailer. We have collectively been too soft in our negotiations and we are trying to make a stand. "Amazon put pressure on us and took the 'buy' button off a number of prominent authors' books on their website. We don't like it and our authors don't like it."

As Amazon continues to grow, Mr Hely Hutchinson warned that independent book sellers, as well as authors, would be the victims. Given their current state of growth, it is entirely possible that within five years readers outside the major city centres may face the prospect of having no choice but to either buy online, or obtain books from supermarkets, which do not exactly carry deep range.

While it is true that Amazon has helped authors, in particularly the self published and independent ones whose books are not stocked by the larger chains, this dispute has the potential to seriously undermine their sales and credibility.

To punish the authors, without whom Amazon would have no business, is seriously not on, and they would be wise to remember that without us to write the books, there would be no business. There is after all, only so much we can and will take, and Amazon have pushed just that little too far. It is heartening then to see such support for Hachette, with authors standing firm alongside and backing them all the way, even if it does affect their sales.

Of course none of this is really new though, since like I have said, so many times on this blog, the British publishing trade does sell their wares at much higher discount than any other country in the world. I never have thought it fair or reasonable that 40 percent of the cover price from my own book goes to the retailers who sell it, when all they do is press a few buttons and place it on the shelves. In contrast to this, in return for my five years of work writing this book, I earn the princely sum of £1.39 per copy. This is why I had to return to work, and this is why I am no longer around to help promote it, by telephoning book stores and being there to drive business. This is also why in February, those 71 books arrived back on my doorstep from Gardners.

That though is hopefully about to change, as at the time of writing they have just 18 copies in stock. Since they re-order when the level drops to 15, I am hoping and praying for 3 more orders before Thursday, so that I can despatch the 40 remaining copies that are still in my loft on to them before I depart for Lundy on Friday morning. So, if you wish to buy a copy then you know what to do - get down to your nearest friendly bookstore (or Amazon if you really must) and get ordering!

This will be an incredibly busy week for me, since I also have a missing parcel to track down, which was inadvertently sent to our old address (don't ask me how), and the village newsletter to finish. In between all of this I have to work every day between Monday and Thursday, go to the gym, get all my laundry done ready for the off, back up my computer files, fill up the car with petrol, check my tyres, lights, oil and water, pack my bags and collapse in a heap of exhaustion. It is just as well that I am owed five hours from work, as at least it means (with any luck) that I can go home early some days and make a start on all this 'stuff'. By the time I do get the island, at this rate, I will be fit to drop. Still, it will be worth it when I see her sailing into view.

I am so looking forward to this holiday, as it has been one hell of a stressful year. A year that has seen my hopes and dreams come crumbling down, as I have finally had to concede that despite my best efforts, I will probably never achieve the level of success of which I have dreamt. Still, I have achieved an awful lot, far more perhaps than most POD authors, since the books are stocked in an increasingly high number of Waterstones stores and independents, where they are selling very well indeed. Somehow though it has never felt enough, and so this year, I have had to learn to be happy with what I have got and stop beating myself up quite so hard.

This has entailed facing many demons and destructive belief systems, but with Corans help and support, and some good books written by some very talented authors, I am getting there.

What do horses and Amazon have in common?

The Hachette Livre versus Amazon debate continues apace, with it featured on the Radio Four programme Today earlier on, from what I have been told. I did not hear the progamme myself, since I only listen to local radio, but I will try and find the link later on on the BBC website, since it is bound to still be there.

The author and agent community appears to be backing Hachette's stance, no doubt to the chagrin of Amazon, with leading agents leading the backlash against the online retailer.

It was reported earlier this week that Hachette CEO Tim Hely Hutchinson had sent a letter to authors affected by the dispute, whose books have been removed from Amazon's site, asking for their patience and understanding. According to The Bookseller online, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. In his letter, Hely Hutchinson said that he would stand firm against conceding any additional trading terms, adding that Amazon's sanctions were creating a breach of trust between the online retailer and its customers, which could prove to be a catalyst for them starting to lose their popularity with book buyers.

Despite advantageous terms, far better than most chain stores get (when buying direct from publishers anyway), Amazon seems to go from one publisher to the next year on year, making increasingly high demands in order to get rich at everyone else's expense.

Of course the cynic in me says that all retailers do this, and this is not confined to the publishing industry. Amazon though are by far the worst example of this that I have come across, and from what I have seen and heard in recent months, will stop at nothing to gain almost total control of the marketplace until they are the dominant book retailer and traditional book stores are driven out of business. This is then the thin end of a very long wedge, and is exactly why the publishing industry needs to make a stand. If we are not careful then given its current rate of growth, Amazon could become the largest bookseller in Britain within the next three years, and if they are not stopped now, then they will be able to dictate any terms that they like.

Curtis Brown MD Jonathan Lloyd commented that the entire industry is 100 percent behind what Hachette are doing, and that someone somewhere has to draw the line as using authors as what he terms 'a financial football' is disgraceful.

Clare Alexander of Aitken Alexander added that 'this is a disturbing glimpse of the iron in Amazon’s soul. I think its ruthlessness in bargaining is extremely disturbing'.

The MD of a unnamed rival publication said that removing buy buttons is akin to walking into a High Street bookstore and asking to buy a book, only to be told no. The irony of course is that until quite recently, this is exactly what did happen with some POD books, since inexperienced booksellers were unaware of how the system works. When they saw that the POD book was not in stock at the wholesaler from where they obtained their stock, they assumed that it was not available at all, unaware that there was such a thing as special orders. This though is changing, as the publishing industry wises up to what POD is about and how it works.

An spokesperson for Amazon said that they continue to be committed to offering the broadest range of titles possible, through both their own retail offering and re-sellers (Amazon Marketplace - where Hachette titles are still available). Amazon.co.uk is also committed to ensuring we offer our customers the lowest possible prices.

What they fail to understand is that by making this move, and alienating the largest book publishing group in the UK, they are failing to honour those principals and cutting off their nose to spite their face, as they are not offering the broadest range possible at all. All that will happen is that readers wishing to buy these books will go elsewhere to bricks and mortar stores, or to other online retailers such as Play.com, Book Depository or Bookrabbit.

The online community upon which Amazon's business is built will turn against them, and ultimately prove to be their undoing. This is I think, the beginning of the end, and one never knows, the backlash against discounting and ever increasing terms may also be applied to traditional book stores as well, with firm sale, on back list titles at least, becoming the norm. How this would affect the indepedent and print on demand author is very much open to debate.

In the meantime, if we are not careful, then in the US at least, Amazon may soon be invading the High Street as well. Associated Press reports that Pershing Capital Management's William Ackerman, a major stakeholder in Borders Group in the US, said that the troubled book chain should consider approaching Amazon about a possible acquisition.

Borders, which was put up for sale in March has around 500 stores throughout the US. One possible incentive to Amazon to buy the Borders stores may be the some 18 states are considering the introduction of sales tax to online businesses. Once Amazon lose this tax advantage, then they may be keen to move into bricks and mortar book selling.

In an interview with the Wallstreet Journal earlier this week, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos compared books to horses, stating that the industry faced the challenge of improving something which like the horse, had been around for many years and was difficult if not impossible to improve. From my perspective, there is one more thing that Amazon and horses have in common - their ability to produce s*** in copious quantities !

A big can of wiggly worms

The picture in tonight post pretty much sums up my present state of mind and so it seemed a highly appropriate choice.

What a can of worms the self publishing thread that I mentioned a day or so ago seems to have caused. It is amazing how quickly these things degenerate and how they seem to bring out the worst in human nature, triggering everyone's defence mechanisms into overdrive, including I hasten to add, my own.

I got home from work yesterday to find 2 messages from the site administrator informing me that some of my comments had caused offence, and that because of the comments that had been posted by certain other members, the thread had now been closed. I cannot speak for anyone else or their motivations, but my publishing insider radar was going off left right and centre, after what I interpreted as some rather personal comments which seemed to be criticising both my work and this blog, and after a link was posted back to here, inviting other readers to see for themselves what I had written on here.

In all fairness though, as the poster of these comments did say to me, the fact that I did actually post links to this site in my signature was an invitation to members to come and visit. It was not so much what was said though, as the way in which it was said. We have made our peace now though and all is forgiven, so all is well that ends well.

It is always difficult to see your work being criticised in such a public manner. Writers have large egos, and over active pain bodies, as much of what we write is very personal to us. The ego reacts so strongly to what it sees as criticism, as it views an attack on what we write as an attack on self. It does not know the difference. Self published authors such as myself seem to face an almost endless barrage of criticism from all quarters, and constant prejudice from the publishing industry in general. It may have been the case 10 years ago that print on demand books were dreadful quality, but things have changed, and their views have not kept pace with this change.

When you have to face this seemingly endless onslaught, and continually justify your reasons for choosing the POD route, it does get very, very tiresome indeed, and to be quite honest, I think that almost everyone would have reacted in the same way - with outrage and anger. It is difficult to face criticism from those who know nothing about your work other than the free chapter posted on your site, which you do not have to provide, and have them making negative comments about a book which they have not even read, let alone seen, simply because it is self published.

It did not help that I have had an awful couple of days at work - since Tuesday we have had just 2 members of staff in all day, running a busy store, for up to 9 1/2 hours with no break. The 2 of us that were in were running around like tits in trances trying to get the store looking good - don't ask me why when they are probably about to close it anyway! All this because some other Managers were coming to the store to do an inspection, and of course, they cannot possibly see it as it is. Well, when one of them asked me what I thought of the company, I told them the truth, and said we were not paid nearly what we are worth. I was utterly surprised to find that he actually agreed with me.

So, to say it has not been the easiest week is an understatement. Tomorrow though is another day, and it is also the first of my three regular days off (I only work four days a week). One week from now I shall be packing my bags and heading for Lundy via the M3.

I don't have to be right, just happy

It was so hot in the shop today that by the time I got home I felt like my uniform was sticking to every inch of my body. It must have been the hottest day of the year, with temperatures at what felt like at least 80 degrees and customers tempers fraying in the heat.

Everyone is on edge at the moment, since there is still no news of when or if we are to close. Our Area Manager had a meeting with the lease holder a week ago, and was supposed to let us know the outcome, but there is still no news.

In the midst of all this, and looking forward to Lundy, I am trying to figure out why the thread on self publishing that I spoke of yesterday is pressing my buttons so much. I am aware that much of the time, like the rest of humanity, I am driven by what has happened in my past, and this is bringing up all my issues to to do with rejection and the general unfairness of how I still perceive to a large extent, the publishing industry is run.

I said yesterday that many authors who are anti POD use the fact that they are commercially published in order to make themselves look and feel superior at our expense, and I am beginning to wonder whether there is an element of me doing the same thing, but in reverse. By painting everyone else to be the bad guys because of their inability to understand and agree with my point of view, I make myself into a victim, and therefore make them wrong. I then use the fact they I believe they are wrong to make myself feel better because I know something that they don't. It is a twisted kind of logic, but unfortunately true; the fact that I feel this I mean, not the fact that it is right.

It is not right for the simple reason that I am not a victim. I chose this route willingly. I may not have known everything that it would entail, but I had enough of an idea to know that it would not be the easiest of rides. The key is though as always, acceptance of what is, and so this only serves to make me aware that I still have work to do here. This gives my pain body much sustenance for it to sink its teeth into, but the fact I at least now recognise this pattern means that there is hope for m yet, and makes the acceptance that much easier. The painas alway comes from resistance, and so I will resist no more and accept that there is room for these views, and that I don't have to be right, just happy.