Giving away eBook copies of Plague

I'd love to read it Lisah.

I'd like to read it to lisah. I'll donate to wherever you say or chuck extra in the Railway Children charity at the next ABCtales night.

Ok.

B'Jazus. I've just looked at your Amazon account. You're one prolific writer, Lisa. I'm still firmly anti-Kindle so I can't enjoy your giveaway but that may have to change soon, noticing all the readers on trains and hols. A unit's a unit, and as long as something's read I don't suppose it matters how it arrived in the hand. I'll always like the smell of a book though.

Blighters, we need to talk ......

Sounds ominous, Karl. What's on your mind?

Hahahaha nothing, I just need to sell you on the future of the e-book, that's all. The benefits of having no print run (and no 9-month wait for a print run) and so being able to keep the price down, and the facility to have downloaded a book at reasonable price and be reading it in the time it takes to write this sentence. Not to mention being able to compete against established authors who are charging £9.99 for their books.

It's true ebooks tick a lot of boxes for many people and the trend is picking on its own wave now but I just love books, which are now known as physical copies. I'm an old rave organiser and used to having flyers stuffed in my pocket to hand out to people I meet in life. It's the same vibe with books for me; a tactile business, and while I've heard of the success stories of ebooks (mostly at 99p) at the top of lists in an instant,I'm not that stupid to believe that this is always on merit alone. There are mechanisms behind the scenes that annoy me and I won't be a part of it. While traditional publishers can be accused of deeply entrenched nepotism, I am finding that nepotism can develop amongst any group so long as they share the same values and understand the brazen advantages of aggressive marketing. I'm not in the publishing game to make miwwions. I'm in it to promote good work and have a laugh and if that means doing ebooks too then ebooks I'll do but physical copies is where my heart will always be, especially in the children's book market. A picture book can't really be digitised yet but I'm sure it will soon, once we have flip-top screens attached to our bellies. I say vive la revolution and do what feels right. I printed 4500 copies of A Hoxton Childhood with an established paperback printing house at an extremely reasonable rate per book and there's no waiting. I used a very reasonable typesetter and a mate did the cover for me. Everything was done in the UK too, which is important to me. Picture books are a different world and way more expensive to produce (about four times more). The real work starts when they're finished (in print or ebook or on demand). The trick is enjoying the ride and taking the lows with the highs. Lisa's body of work is astounding and she's won loads of awards along the way. That sort of devotion will always pay off in the end and the ultimate reward for any author is recognition from the big houses, but they seem to box authors into awful little categories nowadays, and renege on finer details (ie. marketing budgets) which invariably sours the author's imagination and their ensuing relationship. Publishers need to change but they won't. They are there for shareholders who are happy to see the ship sink so long as they get their whack on the way and know when to jump ship. Self-publishing will always be viewed as poor man's vanity publishing until people realise what's really going with the big houses. It's like government: we know it only really works for the few but we do shag all about it. I won't get into too many of these discussions because there are some (only a few, admittedly) who are intent on finding fault for the sake of it, but I will say that there's never been a better time to go it alone in publishing so long as one's aim is true and it's for the love and giving of the word.

Agree wholeheartedly. Isn’t it funny how the perspective changes with the point of view? Take a band, for instance. If they go out and record their first album themselves, sell a few copies to their mates, try and persuade a local record store to stock the album and promote it every time they do a live gig, then everyone gives them a pat on the back, congratulates them and generally blows smoke up their arse. They’re being proactive, right? They’re not hanging around, waiting for someone to discover them. They’re putting hard-earned pound notes behind their belief in their own ability to entertain. “Fair play to ‘em.” It’s a different story when an author does exactly the same though, isn’t it? When an author publishes his first book himself, he’s doing it simply because he’s on a big ego trip, right? He can’t find a publisher, or even a literary agent, to take him on board, so out of pure vanity he goes ahead and pays for the production of his own book himself. Ooops, we’ve both used a word we weren’t supposed to mention ….. ‘Vanity.’ Allow me to reiterate. When a band produces their own album they’re out there showing the marketplace what they’ve got. When a writer does the same it’s known as VANITY PUBLISHING! What is vanity publishing? Well, I don’t think that vanity publishing exists anymore. At least it shouldn’t. Vanity Publishing probably reached its heyday about 10-20 years ago. An aspiring writer, who had no doubt put hours and hours of work into his craft, had been unable to find a publisher for his book or even a literary agent to take him under their wing. He’d been through the usual routes of sending copies off to everyone he could find in The Writer’s and Artist’s Yearbook and had an old shoebox full of rejection slips that he promised himself once he became rich and famous he would decorate the walls of his office with. And meanwhile he was doing all he could to raise his profile by getting letters published in magazines and local newspapers. Building his portfolio, if you like. Believing that he has a story worth telling, a talent that deserves to be discovered or simply words that he wishes to leave for future generations of his family, he considers vanity publishing. In the same way that Time Share operations advertise their concept as holiday ownership, the vanity publisher has more than likely termed his own concept as joint venture publishing, co-operative publishing or even shared responsibility publishing. It’s unlikely they advertised their offer as vanity publishing. What is likely, however, is that regardless of quality or marketability they forward him an excessively flattering report on his typescript. Encouraged by this, he signs on the dotted line, maxing out his credit card or even taking out a second mortgage on his home, to the tune of anything between £3000 and £20,000 and pays for his book to be published. But that was a few years ago. So what’s happened recently to help talented but unknown writers get their book out there? Bearing in mind that it’s the ‘unknown’ part that’s the problem. Being talented has absolutely nothing to do with it. Being famous – or infamous even – will assure you of a book deal. Being talented will not. Is that fair? No, but that’s the way they do it. Or used to do it. Enter KDP, Goodreads, Smashwords and the world of digital e-publishing. Traditional publishers and literary agents have had things their own way far too long, and the only thing that keeps them from realising they're a dying breed is nothing but their own bloody arrogance! Their comeuppance is well overdue. There is a plethora of talent out there. There are writers who have outstanding, far-fetched, comical, sometimes brutal, often ludicrous and downright fab imaginations. So many writers (unfortunately I’m not one of them) allow their imaginations to fly, build a plot, build a sub-plot and continue to write superb story lines in that fashion. We’re not all good; some of us are crap, but a serious big RESPECT to all those writers who have a richer imagination than mine. I honestly wouldn’t know where to start, but there are a tremendous amount of people whose minds must be bubbling over with adventures, fantasies, potboilers and cliff-hangers. How dare these egotistical, autocratic agents and publishers, with their moth-eaten sense of their own self-importance, refuse a book nowadays? They’re an endangered species and they must surely be feeling it in their bones. If the dinosaurs like HMV had moved with the times they could have been as big as Amazon by now. But they didn’t and they’re not, and after 92 years they went bust, with the loss of 239 stores and 4350 jobs If HMV can go bust so can any of the big book stores, and bollocks to the publishers.

Lisah, we clashed! I see you posted whilst I was writing. Great points. The other thing about Indie publishing, as you mention above, is that we can keep the price down. At £0.79 people think, "Well, he/she is probably crap, but at that price I'll give it a bash." At £9.99 they have to be CERTAIN they want to spend that kind of money.

Hi Lisa, It's refreshing and interesting to hear from someone who started as an indie and is now under the wing of a big house. I really hope it works out for you and I'm sure it will if you keep on producing eggs for them. When you say 'sold the books' to them I hope you didn't mean you sold the copyright. I don't know what deals they offer in this heavily weighted buyers' market but watch out. They use small bait to catch those they hope will be big fish one day, but they're also aware that not a lot make it. I do believe that it's all about hard work and knowing what the public are after. The Plague sounds promising and reminds me in theme of a book I read by Laura Wilkinson, also an Abcer. About books/ebooks, we come from different angles. I prefer going to a charity shop for my books. Even if a secondhand book's 1p on amazon,it's really £2.81. If I hear of a book I want to get, this gives me a reason to trawl the charity shops. I'm in no hurry to find it and I like how it sometimes turns up by complete surprise and after I've given up. I don't keep books long so they either go back to a charity shop or I pass them on to people I think might enjoy them. I haven't even got a bookcase but I do need to get one. I am drawn to buying books from Waterstones when I can because they have been so supportive with my children's book. I still can't see myself with an ereader but things change. I never thought I'd get an iPad but here I am now. Open mind; that's all I need. I hope you enjoyed your walk with your little one along New Brighton. Hi Karl, I don't think there's much difference between a band and an author chasing his dreams and going for it, although there's comfort in numbers. If the author only has an ebook to sell, he can't very well approach bookshops as a band can a music store with a CD. That, for me, is the trouble with ebooks. It's only really wannabe authors that think self publishing is crass and vane, but they have their own reasons for thinking that way. It's fear-driven, stoked by resentment and fuelled by inferiority. While people who frequent bookshops instinctively know when a book's been self published, this doesn't deter them as one would imagine. Writers are biased and fickle for their own reasons, readers are too, but not so with books, which may be their pedestrian passion. If a self published author has a book to present to bookshops for appraisal, there's a chance it will be chosen as part of their core range. It's a small chance but it's there. An ebook may be good as a promotional tool but I can't see past the reality that it still doesn't actually exist unless it's printed. Amazon and publishers don't care whether there are bookshops in the future. All they care about is the folding stuff. Travel agents need holiday destinations but if the moguls could keep us all at home and sell us fabulous holidays in the comfort of our front room, they'd do it. When I see children bounding towards their section at Waterstones, I know we need bookshops. The look of urgency and excitement can never be replaced by a website however well presented it is. If bookshops disappear, they will disappear because we made them disappear, not Amazon, US, because we used Amazon. People go to Waterstones, find the book they want, get on Amazon (still in the shop), find out the price, buy it and walk out. If we all did that, there would be no Waterstones, but in the long run, we'd all suffer because sales would drop dramatically and the young may quickly lose the desire to read, further reducing sales for the future.

Blighters, million per cent agree regards children's books. There will ALWAYS be a place for them. My boy's 16 and currently in Nicaragua / Costa Rica for a month, so growing up fast, but I still can't bring myself to get rid of some of his favourite books from his childhood. They were GREAT! And I still love them! But apart from that you know my feelings, I'm convinced hard copy books are a thing of the past. A tip for you, and a useful one. If there's ever a particular book you're looking for go on http://www.greenmetropolis.com/ Every book costs £3.75 regardless of the state it's in, but the sellers have to honest about this. You simply register a search and wait. When that book arrives, they notify you. I wanted to read Jack London's 'People of the Abyss.' Out of print now, but although it took them over a year they eventually sourced a copy. I'd forgotten about it during that time but was delighted to receive the e-mail. Mind you, haha, I could probably find it on Amazon now :-)