This really is the death knell for publishers
My apologies. This is a blog from an astonishingly angry author. Why? Today the Bookseller announced that Amazon is having a great new sales campaign. In an October Kindle promotion, they will be aiming to sell vast numbers of books. This is brilliant news, isn’t it? Amazon will do what they do best, push huge … Continue reading
Writing – Tools and materials.
Time was, you’d write a book by buying a pencil and a lot of paper. Not everyone, of course, would do it that way. Some folks went to steel nibbed pens and ink with their paper. That was a little new-fangled, of course. Then you got the modern habit of buying gizmos. People learned of … Continue reading
Inspirations
I cannot read books while writing. It really is impossible. The way a writer writes gets into the rhythms of my mind, and his cadences and use of language, all influence what I try to write for myself. It’s bad enough having to read quite so many historical books with each novel (by way of … Continue reading
What is it about social media?
Right, I know I’m not the most reliable blogger or tweeter in the world, but there are times when you just have to get on with the day job, and writing a 1,000 word commentary doesn’t always fit in with it. Today, for example, I am immersed in the middle of an almost two month … Continue reading
American tours.
When I started out, seventeen years and thirty two books ago, it seemed to me that the idea of being a writer was simply brilliant. I never expected to be a multi-millionaire, but to be fair, in those days, it was pretty easy to earn a fair living. Price protection on books meant that authors … Continue reading
Crime and punishment revisited
I find it really sad to listen to the radio sometimes. Today I heard so much twaddle, I had to turn it off. Again. There are politicians who are honourable and quite bright, but they do appear to be few and far between. Some, like Ken Clarke, are pretty unambiguous in their opinions, and he … Continue reading
Language
Ach, it’s a tough one, but I got three comments about anachronisms in my language this week, so got to make a comment, I guess. This is a hard one to comment on, because no matter what I say, I will be wrong in the eyes of some. Some years ago, I was contacted by … Continue reading
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