Allen Michael

A Writer's Guide To Everything Important: The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

EVERYTHING IMPORTANT

The Omnibus Edition of Seven Essential Guides for Fiction Writers

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

This book contains the complete text of all seven books in Michael Allen’s series of practical guides for writers. The seven books are available for purchase separately, but by buying the omnibus edition you get the whole series, unabridged, for less than half the cost of buying them as individual items. This book contains over 125,000 words in total.

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OVERALL INTRODUCTION

This book is primarily intended to provide valuable information for any young or inexperienced writer who wishes to write full-length fiction. Much of it may well be helpful to those who write short stories or non-fiction.

You can start at the beginning and read through to the end; but if you prefer you can jump immediately to the section which most interests you. See the Table of Contents, immediately below.

Each of the seven guides has been reproduced here in full; you will therefore find that there is some degree of duplication. For instance, each book contains a section which provides some biographical information about the author. Occasionally, the same information will be used to illustrate the same point, if it crops up in two different books. In most cases, it will do you no harm whatever to be reminded of relevant facts and examples.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history

Part 3: Final thoughts – will traditional publishing survive? And do writers really need it anyway?

2. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO LITERARY AGENTS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: A short history of literary agents

Part 3: Disagreements and disputes

Part 4: The impact of the digital age

Part 5: Do you really need an agent?

3. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO EMOTION

4. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO VIEWPOINT

5.  A WRITER’S GUIDE TO STYLE

Part 1: Introduction to the subject

Part 2: Identifying your strengths and weaknesses

Part 3: Improving your style

Part 4: Using style to reveal character

6. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The three principal elements

Part 3: Why do we seek it?

Part 4: How do we achieve it?

Part 5: The price we pay

7. A WRITER’S GUIDE TO CAREER PLANNING

Part 1: An introduction to the subject

Part 2: The traditional way of finding readers

Part 3: The new way of finding readers

Part 4: Getting your career under control

Part 5: Final thoughts

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING

Some writers still want to do things the old-fashioned way.

But is that a smart move? (Clue: No. It isn’t.)

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

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‘There are people in the publishing world – more than a few, actually – who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes.’

Stephen King

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PART 1: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING – An introduction to the subject

1.1 Why did I bother to write this ebook?

Answer: Because for the last few years I’ve been writing a series of books which are intended to be helpful to young and inexperienced writers – especially those who are interested in writing fiction. This book is another in that series.

Although it is fifty years since my first novel was published (1963), all my writing was fitted in at the end of a working day as a professional educator. And since I spent so long as a teacher and educational administrator, my instinct is to try to pass on to younger people as much of my hard-earned knowledge as possible.

It seemed to me, when I began to put together material for this book, that it would be useful to write a short account of the massive changes in book publishing which have come about in my adult lifetime – particularly during the last ten years.

I would end the book (I thought) with a nicely balanced section which would point out that an as-yet-unpublished writer can choose to go one of two ways. Either she can try to get her work published in the traditional way – by approaching long-established book publishers who create printed books which are then sold in bricks-and-mortar bookshops – or she can publish her work independently, without any help from anyone, by self-publishing her novel in ebook form, principally via Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. I would leave it to the writer – I thought – to consider the balance of advantages in either way to find readers.

That’s what I thought I would do.

But now, having completed a first draft of this book, I find myself quite incapable of doing any such thing. So I’ve had to come back and rewrite this first section.

In preparation for writing this book I assembled a huge pile of press cuttings and blog posts printed off the internet. And having ploughed my way through all that material, reading it for a second and third time, it seems to me that I have no choice but to speak plainly, and to advise new writers accordingly.

Once, and only a few years ago at that, it was absolutely obvious that an ambitious new writer with any sense would (a) try to get a literary agent interested in their work, and then (b) leave it to the agent to find a publisher for them, and finally (c) work with that publisher for ever more – or at least for a good few books.

But now, I’m afraid, I have changed my mind entirely. Until I had completed re-reading all my research material, I had forgotten just how completely misguided that old way of doing things now is. It now appears to me that any clear-headed young writer, at least if she has taken the trouble to find out as much about modern publishing as possible, has no sensible choice other than to publish her own work by becoming what is often known as an indie publisher.

If you read through the rest of this book, you will at least see why I have come to that conclusion, even if you don’t agree with it.

In the academic circles in which I once made my living, it is customary to expect that books which discuss serious issues will try to present a balanced and calm assessment of various alternative courses of action, without indulging in sweeping generalisations. But that’s not actually very helpful, at least to those who are in a hurry. And in my experience, as-yet-unpublished writers are always in a hurry.

You will understand, I hope, that I am only trying to be helpful when I say that, over my working lifetime as a writer, the trade publishers of this world have proved themselves to be utterly clueless in almost everything that matters. I once used the phrase ‘amateur night’ to describe the performance of firms which should, in theory, have been operating both efficiently and profitably. Well, they weren’t. And some of them were near as dammit criminal.

But for at least forty-five of the last fifty years, we writers were stuck with that. We had to put up with – not to put too fine a point on it – being royally screwed by some very nice and friendly people, people who were so lacking in self-knowledge that they were convinced they were doing nothing that was not fair and honourable.

But now – now all has changed. The advent of the digital age – which we may reasonably say began on 19 November 2007, with the sale of the first Kindle ebook readers – has changed everything. Most traditional publishers, sadly, are too stupid, even now, to understand how deeply it has changed. And those who do understand have mostly responded by devising new ways to screw even more money out of ignorant writers who still think that a printed book and a slot on a Barnes and Noble shelf is the height of success.

So – be warned at the start. My view is that modern writers (and I’m writing in 2014) mix with traditional publishers at their own risk. The old way now seems to me to be utterly pointless, and, as a matter of fact, dangerous. Dangerous because if you go the agent-to-traditional publisher route, you will end up being asked (required?) to sign away many valuable rights for a period which is as long as your life plus seventy years. Probably longer than seventy years, actually, because there are a number of big-business intellectual-property holders which are very keen on extending the period of copyright far beyond seventy years. Such firms are working hard to persuade American politicians, in particular, to produced the necessary legislation. Some would say that said firms are doing this through bribery. But that, of course, is a wicked lie. In any event, the contract which is nowadays likely to be placed before you by a traditional publisher will certainly be a stinker. (See section 3.9 for details.)

No, the fact is that I could not suggest that there are two equally viable ways for a writer to proceed – not with a clear conscience. If you want more detail as to why not, please read on.

1.2 What is traditional publishing anyway?

Traditional publishing is a term which came into use perhaps ten or so years ago, to distinguish the publishing of old-fashioned books, on paper, from the publishing of ebooks, such as this Kindle ebook which you are reading at present.

Some people talk of ‘legacy publishing’ as an alternative to traditional publishing.

For a good many decades, book publishing for the general reading public – both of fiction and non-fiction – has often been referred to as trade publishing. Trade publishing means the kind of books that you find in bookshops, or in paperback form in supermarkets and similar stores.

There are also a good many other forms of book publishing, which the general public seldom hears about, such as academic publishing (textbooks and scholarly books), professional publishing (reference books for specialised trades and professions), scientific and technical books, and religious publishing (Bibles, hymn books, et cetera). Many of these relatively obscure forms of publishing are, curiously enough, the most profitable. The New International Version of the Bible, for instance, has sold 400 million copies.

In this book, however, we are going to concentrate on fiction and popular non-fiction. That is the side of publishing which attracts the most publicity, especially in the case of big hits, such as the Harry Potter series, or the various Fifty Shades of Grey.

1.3 Why should writers bother to read about traditional publishing?

Mainly for the reasons just mentioned: namely that, until recently, traditional publishing offered the only method for writers of fiction and general non-fiction to achieve high sales, big money, and literary reputation. And you need to know what the old way was, in order to distinguish it from the new way.

At the time of writing (2014), traditional publishing still does offer the principal means of selling books on a grand scale, in every possible market. Not everyone reads ebooks, and if you want to have your book on sale in paperback form in every supermarket, every news stand, and every petrol station, you still need the distribution network of a big traditional publishing company. That is why, even when writers achieve success as a self-published ebook author – having shifted a million or two ebooks simply by writing a book which large numbers of people really want to read – they often sign a contract with a traditional publisher to reach their maximum sales potential through paperbacks. (Examples, E.L. James, Amanda Hocking, Hugh Howey.)

1.4 What are the aims of this book?

This is the fifth book in my series of writer’s guides, and, as with all the others in the series, the aims are practical and down to earth. The book attempts to provide you with the bare minimum of knowledge which will give you an understanding of how things work in traditional publishing, and how you can make the best of your talents as a writer.

More specifically, the aims are as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of publishing, from the beginning of the trade in the late fifteenth century to the present day;

(ii) To enable you to understand how likely – or unlikely – it is that you will be able to interest a traditional publisher in your work;

(iii) To enable you make informed and realistic decisions on what sort of books to write, and how much time and effort you might sensibly devote to that work;

(iv) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.5, below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually ambitious, and therefore hard-working. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was. The aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think that couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

After the introductory sections (Part 1) the book is divided into two further parts.

Part 2 provides a short history of traditional publishing. The purpose of this is to give you a sense of perspective on an industry which has existed (one cannot sensibly say ‘flourished’) since 1450. As we approach the present day the impact of technology has been more and more crucial; in particular, the opportunities open to writers have multiplied many times over since 2007.

Part 3 considers whether traditional publishing can survive at all in the digital age. And even if it does survive (in some mutated form), do the new and as-yet-unpublished writers really need it? Or can they do better as independent self-publishers?

1.5 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

An expert has occasionally been described as someone who knows one more fact than you do. And, without being too immodest, I think I’m likely to be in that position when compared with most readers (though not all).

When you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who the author of said book is, and what makes him any sort of an authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am a couple of months short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 60 ebooks on sale as Kindle ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. These are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about ten non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence I have had experience of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s. For about ten years I was also the line manager of a small in-house printing unit, so I know about the technology of printing and book design.

In 2007 I was honoured to be invited to serve as one of the panel of three judges for the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association award of Romantic Novel of the Year.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing. Many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context; but you can be quite certain that the rest of the world, particularly the USA, does not behave any differently.

All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

I am not going to provide hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I am going to assume that you are quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about a person or subject that has been mentioned in the text. This not done to eat into your valuable writing time. It is done because, when you start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

PART 2: TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING – A short history

2.1 Books before printing

Ten thousand years ago, there were only about three million human beings on the entire planet; most of them were hunter-gatherers, and none of them could read or write. Today there are seven billion of us, and, at least in the western world, we are nearly all reasonably literate. (But book-reading is still confined, as one person put it, to an effete elite. Most people don’t read books.)

When the first tribes of hunter-gatherers began to settle down in the Mediterranean Fertile Crescent, civilisation (as we like to call it) was able to make substantial progress. And something like a book was an invention which occurred about two thousand years ago.

Those who settled beside the Nile discovered a common marsh plant which we now call papyrus. The stems of this plant could be split open and spread out into flat sheets which could be joined together on the left-hand side. You could then write numbers or letters on this material.

The trouble with papyrus, however, was that if removed from the dry climate of Egypt and Greece it soon deteriorated; and it was not until the invention of parchment that a more durable writing surface was available.

Parchment was made from the treated skins of soft-skinned animals such as sheep. And the best parchment was made from the carefully prepared skins of young calves.

The earliest book which I have personally been able to handle and study closely dates from 1343. It is handwritten, and three different men worked on it; you can tell by the shape of the letters. The language of the book is Latin, and it is entitled Regimen Animarum, meaning The Guarding of Souls. This book is a priest’s manual – it tells him how to conduct the mass, how to take confession, and so forth. There are only three copies known to exist, all of them slightly different.

The Regimen Animarum is written in black ink on calf-skin vellum, and it’s still in pretty good shape, with crisp black print and all its pages complete. It probably took the three scribes a year to complete the text, and perhaps forty animals were slaughtered to provide the necessary vellum.

In short, the making of books, before the invention of printing, was an expensive and laborious business.

2.2 The invention of printing

By the middle of the fifteenth century, book production had reached a peak, because there were only so many animals available for parchment. (And not a lot of skilled calligraphers, either.) But paper saved the day.

Paper was an invention of Eastern cultures, where it had  been used for centuries, but from the twelfth century onwards it spread into the west. At first, the raw material of paper was linen rags – it was only in the nineteenth century that wood pulp began to be used – and the manufacture of paper was complicated. But the raw material (linen) was surprisingly plentiful, and when printing was invented the production methods for paper rapidly improved.

Printing was not invented by scholars and gentlemen: it was invented by hard, practical men, often with little education but with a sharp eye for a quick buck. If you must have one name for the inventor of printing in Europe, that name is Gutenberg; and if you must have a precise date for the beginning of printing, 1450 is the best we can do.

If Gutenberg was the inventor of printing, he was also the first casualty of this new business, or art, or science. He died bankrupt and disappointed, thus demonstrating a vitally important point.

Gutenberg, and many others like him, had discovered the one unchangeable feature of the production and publication of books – it is a hard fact of life which has remained constant for over five hundred years.

The painful truth is this. It is one thing to write a book, though it takes a huge investment of time and labour. And it is another thing to print it; though that too requires ingenuity, persistence, and capital. But the real problem – the really tricky bit in the book business – is selling the books.

As we shall see shortly, almost every publisher, since the days of Gutenberg, has at one time or another seriously misjudged the potential market for a given book, and has ended the day with a warehouse full of unwanted goods. In England, not so many years ago, a firm known as Dorling Kindersley thought they had a little gold mine in the form of books linked to the Star Wars movies. Unfortunately they were wrong. They printed what proved to be 10 million copies too many, and the firm collapsed as a result. It was taken over by Pearson and became part of the Penguin Group.

In the early days, printing was a business which appealed to technology enthusiasts, and by 1500 they had seen to it that printing was well established, despite all the many problems associated with it.

In 1490, a wealthy young man by the name of Juliarius went on a visit to Venice. As he walked through the streets he was astonished to find the stalls of numerous booksellers, piled high with printed books. Several hours later, when his host came to look for him, Juliarius was still browsing, and was surround by piles of his purchases. He was perhaps the first serious book collector.

2.3 The first three hundred years

And so, by 1500, we were well embarked on the age of printed books.

Historians will tell you that there were no great technical advances in printing between 1500 and 1800. But there were certainly some important developments.

In the early days, there was hardly any such thing as a publisher. Yes, there were authors; and there were printers; and booksellers. But the printers and booksellers were often one and the same, the bookshop being just the front room of a house, opening on to the street, with a printing workshop in the back.

The financial arrangements between authors and these  printer/booksellers were doubtless numerous, and varied according to circumstance.

It so happens that I work as a volunteer guide in a library which has an important collection of early books (including the Regimen Animarum referred to above), and the collection can provide some useful examples for me to refer to.

We know, from centuries-old bookseller catalogues, that many early books were immensely practical – how to treat a lame cow, for example. But such ‘books’ were often more in the nature of pamphlets, which hung on a peg in the barn for fifty years, until they  eventually fell apart. The books which tend to have survived for hundreds of years are those which were long, scholarly, and expensively bound. These had longer working lives than the pamphlets, partly because they were well made, but also, I suspect, because they were seldom handled and read.

In a library containing many such books, you can see at a glance that many of them were large by modern standards. Some seventeenth-century volumes, containing the writings of the early church fathers, were made with pages some eighteen inches tall, 12 inches wide, and as much as a thousand pages thick. In some cases the covers were made of wooden boards! Just taking one of these books down from the shelf is a major effort.

These theological texts, written in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek, cannot have sold in large numbers and were presumably subsidised by the Church or by universities.

By contrast, some more commercial texts were small – five inches by three perhaps – in order to reduce costs and keep the price down.

In 1667, for example, one enterprising printer produced a small book entitled The City and Country Builder. This contained plans for building and rebuilding after the Great Fire of London (1666); it might well have benefited from a larger format, but the publisher evidently thought that a quick and cheap introduction to the subject would sell better.

It may well be that a book such as The City and Country Builder was commissioned by a printer after he had come up with the idea himself; or perhaps an enterprising journalist suggested the idea to the printer. We don’t know. But in 1650, in England,  a certain Dr Walton (later Bishop Walton) came up with a fresh idea for financing a major printing project.

Walton wished to print a scholarly version of the Bible. Given that there was much discussion in those days about the true word of God, Walton proposed to scour the great libraries of the world. His plan was to locate the earliest possible versions of the various books of the Bible, in whatever language he and his fifteen associates could find. The results of these searches were then to be printed in such a way as to allow comparisons of the text to be easily made, side by side on the same page. The resulting work is known as the Polyglot Bible.

Between 1653 and 1657 Walton and his team published their Bible in six volumes. Each page, which is about sixteen inches by eleven, contains the same short passage of the Bible in up to nine different languages.

Several of the middle-eastern languages, such as Syriac, Arabic, and Persian, had never before been printed in England, and the typefaces had to be created from scratch. Given that the shapes of the letters in these languages are so extraordinarily intricate, and are printed in such small sizes (despite the size of the page), the Polyglot Bible was an extraordinary achievement.

Walton’s six-volume Polyglot Bible is one of the great triumphs of English printing. Though it is worth noting, perhaps, that English paper was not considered adequate to the task; after a false start, better supplies were brought in from France.

Dr Walton’s method of financing the operation is, however, what caused me to mention this work in the first place. Walton raised the money by inviting rich men to subscribe. A subscriber who provided £10 in advance of the work was guaranteed one copy of the finished set of volumes; £50 gave him the right to six copies.

This method of raising capital for a printing and publishing project was later used by Dr Johnson, for his Dictionary of the English Language, published in 1755. And interestingly enough, this kind of approach to financing a book project is beginning to find favour again, in the twenty-first century. It’s now known as crowdsourcing.

The eighteenth century saw the emergence of publishers as we now understand the term. Some well known publishing houses were established at that time, Longman (1724) being a case in point: Longman is now owned by Pearson plc, a huge modern conglomerate.

The eighteenth century also saw the emergence of the modern novel. Professors of English Literature keep themselves well employed by debating, in print, the precise details of the history of the novel, but a few facts will serve to make the point. Whatever definition you choose to apply to the term ‘novel’, it is certainly true that the latter part of the eighteenth century saw the publication of some famous works of fiction.

Here’s a short list: Samuel Richardson’s Pamela (1741),  Henry Fielding’s Tom Jones (1749), and Laurence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy (1759); these are among the most famous. Neither must we forget, of course, John Cleland’s Fanny Hill (1766), a book which was, and perhaps still is in some quarters, considered blatantly pornographic.

2.4 The nineteenth century

It is reasonable to conclude, I think, that by 1800 the shape of publishing in our times had gradually begun to emerge.

In the first place, we now have recognisable writers of fiction. Second, we have recognisable publishers. These are individuals who find and sign up the authors (or select books from submitted works), commission the printers, and make arrangements for booksellers to sell the actual books.

We do not, as yet, have literary agents, who negotiate with publishers on behalf of writers (although there are occasionally fathers, brothers, and other advisers who write to publishers on behalf of female writers); and we do have some signs that the relationship between authors and publishers is not always going to be a comfortable one. Jane Austen, for example, one of the most famous writers of the early nineteenth century, reportedly sold an early book (Northanger Abbey) to a publisher, who did nothing with it for ten years, and then she bought it back again.

Consider too what a tedious and risky business even submitting a manuscript must have been in those days. An author would have to write the whole book out by hand – no typewriters in those days. She might, perhaps, have employed someone to copy the text for her. But then the pile of handwritten paper would have to be conveyed to the potential publisher. The mail services of the time cannot have been fast or reliable, and the whole process was fraught with risk. It’s a wonder anything ever got done.

Another important point which was well established by the early nineteenth century is that there was money in publishing (at least in those days; there’s not so much now, as we shall see).

Sir Walter Scott, while already famous as a novelist, was financially involved in a printing company which went bust. Scott could have declared himself bankrupt, or accepted the offers of rescue from his rich friends, but he made it a point of honour to pay off the debts through his writing; and, since his novels continued to prove very popular, he managed to do achieve his aim.

As the nineteenth century proceeded, the proportion of adults who could read steadily increased. And that is why writers some books, and even small pamphlets, were to sell in very large numbers.

In 1849, for example, a certain Frederick Manning and his wife Maria were put on trial for murder. The case was a sensational one, and their public execution attracted a huge crowd, the behaviour of which appalled and disgusted Charles Dickens, who wrote to The Times about it. One enterprising publisher issued a short but detailed pamphlet about this case; and although the publication was only 16 pages long, it is said by one modern authority to have sold 2.5 million copies.

Another significant development at this time was the introduction of lending libraries, which would rent out books for a much smaller fee than the cost of buying a copy. The two most famous of these libraries were run by a Mr Mudie and a Mr W.H. Smith. The latter’s name is still attached to a well established UK bookseller and stationer to this day.

Fiction was an almost unrivalled form of entertainment in the nineteenth century. There were certainly no cinemas, radio, or television. Fiction’s sole serious competitor was the theatre, which was to be found only in towns of some size. This made it possible for writers to earn very substantial sums of money.

It is at this point in history that the question of copyright becomes vitally important. Copyright is a legal concept, supported by most governments these days, which recognises that the creator of a story, or a fictional character (not to mention a photograph, a stage play, et cetera) deserves to have the exclusive rights to exploit that work, at least for a limited time. Publishers and others are normally obliged to respect copyright, subject to various penalties.

In the UK, copyright was certainly well understood by the 1660s. In 1663, the blind poet John Milton sold the copyright of Paradise Lost to a printer for the sum of £10.

In the US, copyright was also understood, but often ignored, at least as far as English authors were concerned. In fact, US publishers largely ignored the copyright in English books throughout the nineteenth century. Macaulay’s history of England sold 400,000 copies in the US market, but the publisher sent him not a penny. Charles Dickens also suffered from piracy of his books, but took the trouble to travel to the US to complain in person.

If you want to read the best short summary of the purpose of copyright, and a sensible period of time for it to apply, read Macaulay’s 1841 speech to the House of Commons. You can find my own comments on Macaulay’s views in an essay entitled ‘Macaulay on copyright’ on the blog Grumpy Old Bookman, 6 February 2006.

2.5 The twentieth century

Allow me to remind you at this point that the only reason for this short historical survey of traditional publishing is to allow us to see how writers were enabled, over a period of some 560 years, to find a way to market their novels (and other books) to the general public.

In the beginning, before books of any kind existed, a story could only be told orally. The storyteller would stand in the light of the fire, no doubt after as good a meal as could be provided, and tell his story aloud. Very often he would use rhyming verse to make the task of remembering it easier.

Then came the development of parchment, and vellum, materials which could make a book fit to last for a thousand years; but the process of writing a book out by hand, one copy at a time, was slow, labour-intensive, and expensive.

The invention of printing, about 1450, marked the beginning of a revolution: it provided a huge reduction in cost and speed of reproduction. And by the beginning of the twentieth century, with faster machines and better quality paper, plus a hugely increased pool of customers – the result of compulsory schooling – the publishing business was well placed to become very prosperous indeed; and the authors, one might think, would become more prosperous than most of those involved in the book business.

But it didn’t quite work out that way.

2.5.1 The first part of the twentieth century

For convenience, let us divide the twentieth century into two parts: first the years prior to World War II, and then the rest of the century.

Prior to 1939, publishing trundled along fairly quietly. In the UK, something called the Net Book Agreement came into force on 1 January 1900; it remained in force for almost a hundred years.

This Agreement was a law which decreed that no one could sell a book at a price lower than that set by the publisher, though public libraries got a discount. This meant that publishing was as gentlemanly a trade as could possibly be imagined. There was no provision for cost-cutters; aggressive businessmen and deal-makers were considered unacceptably vulgar. Small but regular profits became the order of the day.

Literary agents had begun to make an appearance in the late nineteenth century, but there were still few of them. A.P. Watt was the first, in 1875, but there were few firms of any note before 1950. In theory, such agents would be men (mostly) who knew the book trade well (which most authors certainly did not). Agents would therefore be well placed to know what constituted fair remuneration for authors, and, since they often knew the publishers personally and dealt with them on a regular basis, they would be far better placed to negotiate a contract than would the author herself – the author sometimes being a distressingly naïve lady in the provinces. That, at least, was the theory, and as the twentieth century proceeded, agents became more and more influential.

Publishing at this time was a comparatively easy business to get into, as it required relatively little capital; hence, at any given time, there were quite a number of small firms. In England, a writer of fiction could probably find at least 30 possible markets for a novel, with not a lot to choose between them. And, given that it was very difficult for an outsider to find out anything whatever about any of these publishers, picking a firm to approach was often a matter of using a pin.

Paperbacks just about made an appearance in the 1930s, with the founding of Allen Lane’s Penguin imprint, but most books were hardbacks. Printing was done in the old way, with manuscripts (usually typewritten) being set in lead type and printed off in minimum runs of several hundreds – or preferably thousands. Indeed, given that the time spent setting up the machine determined most of the cost, most printers would not dirty their machine for a print run of less than 1000 copies. And these, of course had to be warehoused somewhere before (it was hoped) being shipped to booksellers.

In the first part of the twentieth century, as in every decade that we shall examine from here on, there emerged a number of ‘big name’ authors in the fiction-publishing business. These names divided into the literary and the commercial. And while it is not surprising how often the commercial names were forgotten within a few years (Baroness Orczy and Dornford Yates), it is also the case that many writers who then had a high literary reputation are also now ignored (Gertrude Stein, Edwin Arlington Robinson).

Publishing during this period can be well described by the phrase ‘an occupation for gentlemen’; indeed, when the British publisher Fredric Warburg came to write his autobiography, that was the title he gave it.

This phrase reflects an important truth about publishing. Outsiders, particularly young people who have developed a love of books, often mistake glamour and press coverage for commercial success and economic importance. But the fact is that publishing has always been a piddling little business, tiny in size when compared to any other serious business sector, and never an arena in which any decent money has been made – at least when compared with truly big business. The atmosphere in publishing was, and still is, entirely suitable for the unworldly souls who think that profits are of minor importance compared with the need to publish ‘good books’. Not only that, but the most valuable possession that a writer or a publisher can possess is a sizable private income. If you notice that your publisher is wearing a Bentley Drivers Club tie, it is probably not because he bought one with last year’s bonus. It’s because he has inherited money.

2.5.2 The second half of the twentieth century

In the second half of the twentieth century we begin to draw closer to modern times, and to conditions which existed well within the working lives of some of us.

The trends which emerged during this period can be summarised as follows:

Trend (i): Unpublished authors continued to be as ignorant of trade-publishing practices as they had been throughout history.

Unless they took the trouble to subscribe to book-trade journals, such as The Bookseller (UK) and Publishers Weekly (US), there was almost nowhere for authors to acquire any working knowledge of publishing practice. (The internet was decades away.) Subscriptions to these journals were surprisingly expensive (I should know – I was a regular reader of both for a couple of decades).

This ignorance of the trade’s conventions and dangers left the writers wide open to exploitation by the publishers. Who were not slow to use the opportunity. Exploitation is, of course, a harsh word, but that is what it amounted to, as serious examination of any standard publishing contract will reveal. A good agent could prevent that worst of such exploitation. However… it always has to be remembered that an agent has to deal with a publisher next week as well as this week. An agent cannot therefore expect to be too difficult to negotiate with and then be invited back when he next submits a book. The agent sometimes has to bend to the publisher’s wishes, rather than the authors. (Oh, what crude cynicism, I hear you cry. Damn right I’m cynical.)

Trend (ii): Paperbacks became a vital factor in the incomes of publishers and individual writers.

As mentioned above, the Englishman Allen Lane created his Penguin line of paperbacks in 1936, but it was not until about 1950 that the sale of paperbacks really took off. And the most dramatic developments were in the US.

At first, paperbacks were limited to reprints of books which had already been a success in hardback. But, before long, some enterprising businessmen, particularly in the US, began to market paperback originals. What is more, these new books were sold outside the usual trade channels: they were distributed to petrol stations, news stands, and supermarkets.

These paperback originals were frequently aimed at the bottom end of the market, intellectually and socially speaking, and they were initially despised and feared by old-fashioned ‘respectable’ publishers. LeBaron R. Baker, of Doubleday, once claimed that paperbacks would ‘undermine the whole structure of publishing.’

This remark was nothing less than the truth, of course, but the way in which it was said illustrates rather nicely the mindset of publishers at the time. Such men (and they usually were men) were not looking for fresh markets, new readers, and new ways to make a profit. Far from it. They were happy with the old way of doing things, didn’t want it changed, and resented the vulgar upstarts who were taking books into places where they didn’t belong. This attitude persists to the present day, and it is as good a recipe for commercial disaster as could be devised.

At first, the new paperback publishers and the traditional book publishers were separate companies. And since the new guys were very keen to obtain the paperback rights to established big sellers, there was a brief period when traditional book publishers and their more successful authors were the beneficiaries of bidding wars.

In 1968, for example, Fawcett paid $410,000 for the paperback rights to Mario Puzo’s The Godfather. A decade later, in 1979, Bantam paid $3,200,000 for Judith Krantz’s Princess Daisy.

This last payment seems to have been something of a turning point. It finally dawned on the old-time publishers that, although they were doing pretty well out of these crude and vulgar new boys, they might do even better if they owned the paperback company outright.

From then on the thinking was that it was better for a publishing house to be ‘vertically organised’, i.e. to have its own in-house paperback division, rather than be ‘horizontally organised’, which allowed entirely separate firms to buy the paperback rights and take the full profit on paperback sales.

Today it is only the smaller fiction-publishing houses which would even think of selling paperback rights to some other company.

Trend (iii): Literary agents increased in number and influence.

By the time I began my own writing career, round about 1960, the existence of literary agents was widely known, but it was certainly still possible to submit a manuscript to a publisher yourself. Most of my books were sold through agents, but at least twice I did the job without help.

Perhaps this is as good a place as any to discuss how publishers find the books which they eventually sell to the public (via the booksellers, of course).

I have previously written at length about the book-selection process in publishing houses, and you can find a full description of it in Chapter 2 of my book The Truth about Writing (available as a Kindle ebook). Suffice it to say that, in the case of books submitted to publishers by their authors, the initial reading of manuscripts has always been conducted in just about as inefficient a way as could possibly be devised.

Numerous accounts have been written, by those who have done the job, of what typically happens to unsolicited manuscripts (the so-called slush pile). These eye-witness accounts do not make encouraging reading. Giles Gordon, for example, once stated that when he was the slush-pile reader at Gollancz, he learnt how to tell whether a manuscript was any good within 15 seconds. ‘It’s just a matter of practice,’ he said airily.

As the twentieth century moved towards its end, the bigger publishers lost whatever faith they might have had in the judgement of their own staff, and decided, in effect, to delegate to others the separation of the possibly publishable from the oh-my-god. Hence the increase in the number and influence of literary agents.

The current position (2014) is that very few publishers of fiction will consider an unpublished novel unless it is submitted through an established agent. So when a novel or non-fiction book is complete, the writer’s task becomes one of finding an agent, rather than a publisher – at least as a first step.

But don’t imagine that this task is an easy one either. Barry Turner, writing in The Writer’s Handbook, once mentioned  an agent who, in 14 years of reading 25-30 manuscripts a month, found 5 good ones. Another agent, at Curtis Brown, personally received 1,200 manuscripts in one year, and took on just two of the authors as clients.

Traditionally, a literary agent was rewarded by being paid 10 per cent of any contract which the agent negotiated on the writer’s behalf. But today you are much more likely to have to part with 15 per cent.

I have often remarked that being an agent is the toughest job of all in the book business, and my opinion has not changed. At the risk of being described as cynical, bitter and twisted (again), let me advise you to treat your agent (if you ever find one) as someone who is first and foremost a business person. In particular, exercise great caution if asked to sign a contract with an agent. Time was when we were all gentlemen in the publishing world, and a handshake between author and agent was enough. The parting of the ways, if either party felt it necessary, was effected in a well mannered way. But those days are gone. A literary agent is not your friend: he or she is someone you do business with.

Trend (iv): For the last fifty years, amalgamation cum conglomeration has been the name of the game.

Conglomeration means that big publishers take over small publishers, and if the original small publisher’s name survives at all, it does so as a sub-division, or marketing label, within the big publisher.

This process of big eating small has been widespread wherever publishers are found, and certainly so on both sides of the Atlantic.

In 1950 there were about 30 or 40 publishers of fiction in the UK. These ranged from firms which were small and unheard of by anyone, to major firms which were well known in the book trade if not to the general public. Over the next fifty years many of these small companies were swallowed up into bigger ones, and hence into even bigger ones, so that by the end of the century there were, both in the US and UK, only about six really powerful trade-publishing firms.

Let’s consider a few examples of how this amalgamation process worked. We’ll begin with the small English firm of Frederick Muller.

The British Library records 354 books published by Frederick Muller, the first being in 1932. In the 1950s, Muller must have been quite a successful company, because it published the UK edition of Grace Metalious’s Peyton Place, a book which was a big seller in the US on account of its ‘racy’ content. By today’s standards it was about as racy as a well controlled church picnic, but you get the idea.

I had a book published by Muller myself, in 1980: Counter-coup, written under the pen-name Michael Bradford. By that time the company was clearly in some difficulty. I visited the office at one point, and was somewhat shocked by the cramped conditions in which the staff worked. The firm’s HQ was not in a venerable Georgian building in a fashionable part of London; it was out in an industrial area in north London, and the staff seemed to be housed in former sheds.

Muller at that time was owned by the UK television company HTV. But HTV never managed to make a success of it, and Muller ran up debts. There was a man called Antony White associated with the company, and in the 1980s he bought the business for a nominal £1. He was obliged, however, to take on the company’s debt, which as I remember was £400,000.

I wrote another Michael Bradford book at about that time, and I was contractually obliged to offer it to Muller first. Antony White took me out to lunch to tell me that he didn’t want to publish the book, which didn’t distress me particularly because I’d made next to nothing out of the first one, and so far as I know it was never reviewed anywhere. But I thought it was odd to invite me to lunch to say no, when a letter would have sufficed.

Anyway, by 1984 Frederick Muller had merged with the firm of Blond and Briggs. And by 1985 there had been yet another desperate attempt to restructure and, no doubt, refinance the company, under the name Muller, Blond & White.

At some point, all attempts to breathe life into this failing enterprise came to an end, and the firm disappeared into Hutchinson. There all trace of the Muller name disappeared, even as some sort of in-house imprint.

Hutchinson, you may wonder – who they?

Hutchinson was founded in 1887, and made something of a name for itself by issuing cheap editions. The first Mr Hutchinson (George) was given a knighthood for his services to publishing.

On George’s retirement, his son Walter took over, and he also expanded the business by acquiring numerous smaller and once well known firms: such as Hurst & Blackett and Herbert Jenkins. Walter was also knighted. But eventually Hutchinson ended up being taken over by Random House UK.

As the twentieth century proceeded, Random House UK also took over about a dozen London-based companies which had once been considerable powers in the land all on their own: Chatto and Windus (founded 1855), William Heinemann, Jonathan Cape, Sinclair-Stevenson, and Century were among the firms gobbled up by Random House UK.

Speaking of Random House UK allows me to give you a quick summary of the history of that company in the US.

The original founders of Random House were two lively young Americans, Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, who set up business in New York in 1927. They chose the name of their firm because they were ‘just going to publish a few books on the side at random’.

By 1958 Random House had become a leading publisher of general-interest books, but it still had only a hundred or so employees. But it grew and grew, mostly by taking over and absorbing other firms, such as Alfred A. Knopf, and Pantheon Books. Today it occupies a substantial building at 1745 Broadway in New York City – which is all a bit different from the shabby sheds in north London which were once occupied by Frederick Muller.

Random House now employs more than 4,500 staff. In July 2013, Random House and Penguin completed a £2.4 billion merger to create the biggest publisher in the world.  But Random House is itself owned by Bertelsmann, which Wikipedia describes as a German multinational mass-media corporation based in Gutersloh. It is apparently a privately owned company, with a complicated share structure. It seems to me unlikely that anyone in the upper reaches of Bertelsmann knows anything much about books.

So now you know what I mean when I say that the history of publishing from 1950 has been one of constant amalgamations, mergers, and takeovers.

This process of growth by lumping together has led to considerable disadvantages for any writer trying to break into the business. When two companies merge, there is now one less market available. And that is one less chance for your novel to impress a publisher’s reader.

The reduced competition means it is less likely that two editors will feel wildly enthusiastic about your book, and will bid the price up in trying to persuade your agent to give it to them.

And these days, of course, you definitely will need an agent. Big-time editors in giant companies do not waste their time with out-and-out beginners, newbies, and (as they see it) time-wasters.

Trend (v): The relaxation of censorship in respect of sexual content.

Relaxation is not quite the word. In fact, what happened in the second half of the twentieth century is that censorship of sexual content in fiction was effectively abandoned. And if you are, say, twenty years old today, it’s very hard for you to appreciate just how massive a change this is.

In England, the Victorians in general are always considered to have been total prudes. There are apocryphal stories about Victorian hostesses covering up the legs of tables with something like trousers, because to leave them exposed would be indecent. These stories, though exaggerated, express a certain truth about Victorian fiction.

As mentioned above, the nineteenth-century subscription libraries were important sources of income for writers and publishers alike; and the two biggest such libraries were operated by men called Mudie and Smith – W.H. Smith. It so happens that both these men were hard-core non-conformist Christians, with very strict views about sex in general. Sex, they considered, was best never mentioned at all. In fact, if you could find a way to reproduce without having sex, it would be wise to use it.

These hugely influential men made it clear that they were never going to tolerate any sort of sexual hanky-panky in the books which were available in their libraries. And that circumstance, all on its own, was enough to guarantee that all commercial writers of the time fell into line and closed the bedroom door in the reader’s face.

Not only that, but there were various laws in force in England which were designed to prevent obscenity occurring in literature or anywhere else. The precise details of what constituted ‘obscenity’ were never revealed, thus leaving it open to local magistrates to make their own minds up. And if said magistrates were of the  Mudie and Smith school, this could result in some very odd decisions.

Some time in my teenage years, in the 1950s, a group of magistrates in Swindon, England, ruled that a bookseller was guilty of publishing an obscene article because he had in stock a copy of Boccaccio’s Decameron. This, in case you have never come across it, is a fourteenth-century work which includes some 100 short stories varying from the erotic to the tragic. Many of the stories satirise the idleness, corruption and sexual indulgence of the monks and nuns of the day. It is regarded by scholars as an important piece of literary history. But the Swindon magistrates were having none of that. It was a dirty book. End of.

Most newspapers regarded the Swindon decision as ludicrous; but, fatuous or not, it was the magistrates’ interpretation of the law; as such, hard to challenge.

A fraction more understandable were similar decisions to punish the booksellers of various lurid paperbacks. Lurid, that is, in the sense that the covers featured women in underwear or less, but the prose was still the same old restrained stuff, with none of the so-called four-letter words in use. Hank Janson was a pseudonym created in the 1940s, and was eventually used by a series of writers of these racy thrillers; at least one such writer was prosecuted for obscenity.

In England, in the 1950s, most reasonably mature writers, readers, and printers, were fed up with the uncertainty which surrounded sex in books. They had no clear idea of how far they could go in sexual matters. One thing was pretty clear, however: if writers used words such as fuck, cunt, prick, arse (ass) and all the usual vulgar synonyms for sexual organs, they were going to be in trouble. ‘Serious writers’ in particular found this situation intolerable.

It had been intolerable even in the 1920s, when D.H. Lawrence deliberately wrote a novel, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which broke various taboos. Lady C described in detail the sexual relationship between an uneducated working man and a high-born lady, and it made extensive use of all the forbidden words. A small private edition of this book was published in Paris, but no one, whether author, publisher or printer, imagined that it could then be published in England as it stood.

In 1959 a new Obscene Publications Act was passed by the British Parliament. This made it possible for a book to escape prosecution for obscenity if it was held to have ‘literary merit’. This was yet another vague phrase capable of more or less any interpretation, and the following year the English publisher Allen Lane decided that it was time to end the doubt and uncertainty. He therefore published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover as a Penguin paperback.

The publication of Lady C (as it was widely known) constituted an open challenge to the law. And the authorities responded by prosecuting the publishers for obscenity.

After a lengthy trial, in front of a jury, Lady C and its publishers were acquitted – much to the disgust of the judge and the prosecuting counsel. From then on, those who wrote sexual descriptions in novels felt safe in what they were doing, even if they used formerly forbidden words.

Much the same developments occurred in the US, though without, so far as I am aware, such a clear-cut landmark ruling. True, the Supreme Court had in 1933 declared that James Joyce’s Ulysses was not obscene, and this opened the door for publication of ‘serious works of literature’ which included sexual description and four-letter words. But for some time puritanism remained the dominant force in US fiction.

By way of example, some readers may remember Grace Metalious’s 1956 novel Peyton Place (already mentioned as being published by Muller in England). Peyton Place, Wikipedia tells us, was ‘reviled by clergy’ on its first publication. In 1958, when I visited the US, I was told by one respectable matron that she had tried reading the book, and after skimming through a few chapters she had inserted it into the furnace which drove the family’s central-heating system.

Despite such reactions, Peyton Place remained on the New York Times bestseller list for over a year. Some thirty years later, however, this wicked book was considered so tame that it was read aloud, in daily excerpts, on the BBC’s radio programme for middle-aged, middle-class housewives: Woman’s Hour.

Nevertheless, puritanism died hard, and nowhere was this more true than in the city of Boston, where the city officials had wide powers to ban anything that they considered ‘objectionable’. Among the twentieth-century works which fell foul of the Boston city fathers’ rulings were (inevitably) Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, Forever Amber by Kathleen Winsor, and Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs. (Boston also banned the Everly Brothers’ song ‘Wake up Little Susie’. Go figure.)

From the 1960s onwards, attitudes changed. And not only in relation to books, but also in terms of what was possible on stage and in films.

In London, stage plays had been subject to strict censorship, which was mostly carried out by ex-army officers of a puritanical turn of mind. Nearly everyone regarded this archaic system as farcical, and in 1968 it was finally abandoned. The musical Hair, which had earlier been refused a licence, was finally produced on an English stage.

In the cinema, the US Hays code made it difficult to portray anything which might reasonably be called normal sexual relations between men and women, not to mention anything abnormal.

But times also changed in Hollywood, and when they did they changed rapidly. By 1979, when I visited New York for the third time, I was able to pay a few dollars and watch people having uninhibited sexual intercourse on a wide screen and in full colour, right on Broadway; I was in no fear of the place being raided.

This experience was, I must confess, something of a novelty. Remember that only twenty years earlier it had been impossible in England, and probably in the US, to find even a nude photograph of a woman, in a magazine, which did not have the model’s pubic hair airbrushed out of existence. But in 1979 I could now see the woman’s vagina, projected to a massive size on a huge screen. Not only that, but the woman was holding her vagina wide open for an erect penis to enter her. The experience of watching this was, as I say, something of a novelty; but after about twenty minutes I did begin to wonder whether there might not be better ways to spend my time.

The point of this rather lengthy subsection of chapter 2.5.2 is to make it clear to you that, where sex is concerned, writers now have freedoms which were almost unimaginable barely fifty years ago. And it has all happened during my adult lifetime.

Yes, of course, the question of sexual descriptions in fiction is still controversial. In October 2013, there was a huge row about ‘offensive’ books being made available through… yes, you’ve guessed it, W.H. Smith’s online bookshop! What an irony. And you can expect similar rows to rumble on for ever more. There will always be those who regard sexual descriptions in books as the work of the devil, and if you write explicit fiction you should be prepared to have to answer for your actions from time to time.

As George R.R. Martin (author of the Game of Thrones series) recently put it: ‘I can write a detailed description of an axe entering a man’s head, and there is no outcry. But if I write a similarly detailed description of a penis entering a vagina, the world comes to an end.’

2.6 A snapshot of traditional publishing at the end of the twentieth century

2.6.1 The purpose of this book – a reminder

Please allow me to remind you, before we go any further, that the whole purpose of this book is to provide what its title says: A Writer’s Guide to Trade Publishing.

It is not an investor’s guide to publishing, or a history of publishing (except insofar as you need to have a bit of perspective on the business); and it is not a guide to copyright or the legal complications of publishing contracts (although, by whatever gods you hold dear, you will certainly need such a guide if you are ever offered a publishing deal).

No. This ebook is just one man’s view of the way things are, and how we got here. If I end up sounding thoroughly jaundiced about trade publishing, that’s because I’ve been dealing with publishing firms for fifty years, and have read more widely about the business than is good for me. I should have been writing instead.

As a result of that process, I have indeed ended up jaundiced, cynical, depressed, occasionally disgusted, and certainly disillusioned. Sorry about that, but that’s the way it’s gone for me. You may have better fortune if you ever dabble in trade publishing. Good luck with that.

So, that having been said, let’s take a quick snapshot of publishing at the end of the twentieth century.

2.6.2 The British publishing scene in perspective

Here is a summary of the UK publishing scene which I wrote for my book The Truth about Writing, published soon after the turn of the century. The position in America, or any other western nation, would be pretty much the same at that time; the American market is five or six times larger than the UK, but the proportions in every country would be about the same.

One of the problems that we face in getting an overview of British publishing (or any other country’s equivalent) is that there are lies, damned lies, and statistics about the book business. However, here is a broad-brush picture, drawn from reasonably reliable sources.

If we ignore academic/professional books and school textbooks, and just think about trade publishing, the consumer in 2000 was putting about £2 billion a year into the high-street tills.

That income from the consumer is, of course, divided. A largish chunk goes to the bookseller; he gets perhaps 35% of the retail price for a hardback, and more for a paperback. Another chunk, possibly 15%, may go to the wholesaler who supplied the bookseller. As a result, a publishing firm would be doing well if it managed to lay its hands on 50% of the money spent by the high-street book-buyer. In many companies they would be pleased to get 45%.

We may therefore assume that UK trade publishers were re earning about £1 billion a year.

At first sight this looks to be a huge sum. But, if you compare this figure with the income of companies in other industries, you will immediately see that, in commercial and industrial terms, publishing is a small business.

For example: the income of all the firms of solicitors (lawyers) in the UK is £11 billion a year; the Shell oil company has an income of about £100 billion, i.e. one hundred times as large as all UK trade publishers put together; and, in its 2000 published report, Barclays Bank recorded a profit of nearly £4 billion. And Barclays wasn’t even the biggest UK bank – it was the fourth biggest.

In addition to being a relatively small earner, publishing is also a small employer. Faber, one of the most famous names in the book world, at that time employed only 125 people. Even Hodder Headline, one of the top half-dozen firms, employed less than 800.

Compare these figures with almost any other industry and you will see that the numbers are tiny. In Wiltshire, where I was living in 2000, there is a small town called Trowbridge. The biggest employer in Trowbridge is a manufacturer of beds, called Airsprung. This firm employs 1,000 people, and you will certainly never have heard of it; in fact you probably haven’t even heard of Trowbridge.

In financial terms, trade publishing is not a rewarding business to work in. A Bookseller survey in 2001 established that the average salary paid to those aged between 19 and 23, who had been in their publishing jobs for less than a year, was £14,416. (Nearly all these firms are based in London, remember.)

In one medium-sized trade publisher, the overall average salary was just under £20,000, with the highest-paid director taking home some £45,000. By way of comparison, a train driver on the London underground was then earning about £31,000 a year. There are some publishing bosses who earn over £100,000 a year, but not many.

Because of its low earning power, and pathetic profit margins, publishing is of little interest to the City of London. Generally speaking, the industry provides a poor return on capital. A report published in 1999 stated that only 32% of publishers made an ‘acceptable’ return of 10% on their investment, and that about one third of publishers were ‘grossly inefficient’ in their use of capital.

In short, when we consider the financial data, coupled with employment statistics, we discover that publishing is a piddling little business of very little consequence to anyone. When compared with the oil industry, banking, or insurance, it is minuscule.

Publishing is, however, a business which is plays an absolutely vital part in what might be called the nation’s culture, and it has a central role in education. It also attracts a disproportionate amount of newspaper space; this misleads almost everyone into thinking that a well publicised book makes its author rich. Ah, if only!

2.6.2 A quick overview of how the new big firms were doing in the year 2000. These new big boys were going to make much bigger profits, you remember, than the multitude of smaller companies whom they had gobbled up. At least, that was the theory. (Excuse me while I have a quiet snigger.)

We noted above that, by the late 1990s, the process of amalgamation among publishing companies was well advanced, both in the UK and in the US.

In London, there were seven or eight companies which could each claim about 3 per cent or more of the general retail market. The biggest of these were Random House, Penguin, and HarperCollins. Companies which had once been owned by their eponymous founders (Gollancz, Deutsch, Weidenfeld), were now controlled by a curious mixture of ‘hard-headed’ businessmen. Of the largest companies, two were traded directly or indirectly on the London stock exchange, two were German-owned, one US-owned, one Australian, and one was the subsidiary of a French arms manufacturer.

In the US, the situation was perhaps even more obviously centralised. While there were many small publishers remaining – some of them started up because of the reduced costs associated with new printing methods (see below) – six big companies dominated the scene. For a decade or so these companies were referred to, with dazzling originality, as the Big Six.

The situation changes rapidly, and in 2013 the Big Six became the Big Five, through the merger of Penguin and Random House. So in order to avoid confusion I am going to describe the US Big Five/Six as they are at the time of writing (early 2014).

The firms concerned are Random House plus Penguin (now combined), Simon and Schuster, HarperCollins, Macmillan, and Hachette. Only two of the Big Six are US companies: Simon and Schuster, and HarperCollins. The others are foreign: two are German, one is British and the other is French.

Some of these companies are quoted on the stock exchange, but it is an indication of the poor profit records of big-time publishers that most stock-market observers feel that the share prices of the parent companies of these firms would rise nicely if the parents dumped their children.

Simon & Schuster, a name to inspire ecstasy in the book world, is actually a drag on the share price of CBS. And Wall Street would like News Corp a whole lot better if it just sold HarperCollins.

Random House, once a proudly American company, is now owned by Bertelsmann, a firm which was once the largest publisher of Nazi propaganda; and, furthermore, the firm’s profits benefited from the slave labour provided to them by the Nazi party. But that was all a long time age, and in another country, so we won’t make a fuss about it now, will we? Wouldn’t quite be fair, would it?

From the point of view of would-be writers, none of this is good news. Once, well within my adult lifetime, a writer could reasonably send off her manuscript to as many as 30 publishers; and only if she was rejected by all of them would she need to question her faith that her wonderful book would definitely find a home soon. Today, you need an agent to get any of the powerful firms to look at your stuff at all. And perhaps it would only take three or four rejection letters to settle the matter in your agent’s mind.

Within the Big Five, well educated and well read men and women no longer make decisions about the value of novels and biographies. Calculations are instead made by TV-watching bean counters, possessing about as much culture as a hot dog and a can of beer.

In 1990, Random House was now run not by a literary chap, but by a former banker named Alberto Vitale. He was a man who boasted to all and sundry that he was far too busy ever to read a book. In that year, Vitale decided that he wanted to get rid of Andre Schiffrin, a long-standing and much admired head of a Random House literary division. To achieve this, Vitale simply ‘rearranged’ some Random House costs, charging Schiffrin’s division for expenses which had actually been incurred elsewhere. Schiffrin’s backlist of books, potentially a great asset, was written off at zero value. Result: Schiffrin was identified as a hopeless loser of the firm’s money. He was kicked out.

If that is how the big firms of today treat their distinguished staff, how interested do you think they are in the career of an unpublished writer such as yourself?

Even their published writers get what might politely be called the dirty end of the stick. Consider the fate of science-fiction writer Mary Doria Russell. Mary began to be published by Random House in 1996. She did five novels with them, winning an Arthur C. Clarke award and an ALA Readers Choice award. Entertainment Weekly chose her book The Sparrow as one of the ten best books of the year.

Just as her new novel Doc was released in 2011, Mary received word that Random House was not interested in any more books from her.

There had been no previous indication that this decision was forthcoming.

Fortunately, Doc was well reviewed and was chosen as one of the Washington Post’s top five novels of 2011. Now she is published by an imprint of HarperCollins. So all’s well – after a fashion. But after the Random House experience it took her, she says, about three months to breathe right. ‘I’d been so happy there. The sales people were great with me. But there was a lot of churning with editors. I’d had nine editors for my five novels.’ And what a lot of fun that must have been.

Moral of all this: In today’s world of the Big Five (or the Big One and four others, as some people think of it – it’s no good being a distinguished practitioner in a small-selling niche genre. Today you have to deliver blockbusters, on which everything depends, or else you’re out on your ear.

Mary Doria Russell has a web site with an ‘advice for aspiring authors’ section. It is essential reading for anyone reading this book.

And then there are those sneaky clauses in the big firm’s contract that you haven’t really noticed. In the very week that I wrote this section, a traditionally published author wrote a blog post under the title ‘Honesty post: an average traditionally published author’s pay.’

In this post, the author set out the full details of what she had earned over the previous three years with HarperCollins.

Within four hours, this post  was taken down. Publishers, you see, don’t like it when an author reveals how pitifully small their earnings often are. It upsets the suckers who might otherwise offer them books.

The author later revealed that she had to take the post down for ‘contract disclosure reasons’.

Some publishers (probably all, come to think of it), insert a non-disclosure agreement into their contract. They don’t want authors talking about the money.

By 2000, the old publishing system was pretty much broke(n) anyway, and writers were not happy about it.

Luke Johnson, a former Chairman of Channel 4 television in the UK, had previously been a publisher. He described his time in that job as ‘a painful experience.’ Generally, he said, publishing is a ‘terrible business… a barely rational industry.’ And he was dead right, of course.

Across the Atlantic, experienced writers were feeling distinctly unhappy with the results of publishing’s travails over the previous decades. Warren Murphy, a well-known American writer who had written dozens of books and had won two Edgars (crime fiction’s Oscars), described how he had yet to be paid for his latest book (which was then in the shops). ‘In the old world of publishing,’ said Murphy, ‘writers always come last.’ And he wasn’t talking about sex. He was talking about getting paid.

Murphy went on to forecast the death of publishing, as currently constituted. ‘Editors who can’t edit... bookkeeping practices that would befuddle Stephen Hawking... an industry whose business practices were old a hundred years ago and dumb even earlier than that.’

And it wasn’t just the commercially minded writers who were fed up. In 2001 V.S. Naipaul was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. But a few years earlier he has given an interview in which he said, ‘My grief is that the publishing world, the book writing world, is an extraordinarily shoddy, dirty, dingy world. There are probably only three or four publishers in London that one has any regard for. The others have the morality and the culture of barrow boys – street sellers, people pushing rotten apples.’

But, round about the end of the twentieth century, change was in the air. Whether publishers knew it or not it, change was rolling inexorably along.

2.6.3 Two aspects of the coming change

In late 1999, publishing stood on the edge of two revolutions. Both of them were essentially technological.

On the one hand, it was readily apparent, at least to anyone who was paying any serious attention, that a major change in printing technology, as opposed to, say, book distribution and retailing, was already under way.

Printing had remained more or less the same process since Gutenberg in 1450. In 1810, the use of steam to power the presses had been introduced; ;this enabled them to work much faster and thus reduce costs.  But since then, nothing new. Type was still set in lead, and after the first edition of the book was printed you still had to decide whether to store the trays of lead (expensive), or to allow the metal to be melted down.

But now… In the late 1990s, a technique known as Print on Demand (POD) was already widely available, and about to become more so.

POD was a computer-based technique. Text was entered on to a computer’s hard drive, along with a thousand or two other books, and when you wanted a copy – yes, even a single copy – you just pressed a key and a glorified Xerox machine printed one off for you.

Time: about fifteen minutes.

Result: massive reduction in printing costs. Less investment required, less risk. For a book which needed a first printing of a million copies in paperback, the old way of printing was still cheaper; but the approach of massive change was nevertheless readily apparent.

Apparent, that is, and as I said earlier, to anyone who was paying attention. Most people in publishing weren’t doing that. And even if they sensed the coming of change they were determined to prevent it.

Around the turn of the century, Jason Epstein wrote a book entitled Book Business; it was published 2001 in the US. This book was an examination of present practice in publishing, and a far-sighted glimpse into the future. Epstein was unusually well qualified to write such a book, because he had been editorial director of Random House, in New York, for forty years.

It was also around the turn of the century that I myself, in England, was setting up small company of my own, mainly to publish my own books, under a variety of pen-names; I intended to take full advantage of the new POD technology. This project involved me talking to wholesalers, printers, booksellers, other publishers, library staff, and, not least, readers. Wherever I went I asked as many people as I could whether they had read Epstein’s Book Business. I never found anyone who had.

This did not surprise me, because by then I had concluded that the people who worked in the book business were, as individuals, a pleasure to know, people whom you would welcome as neighbours, and perhaps even as suitors for your daughter’s hand. But as professionals, profit-makers, long-term business strategists – absolutely hopeless. Clueless  beyond redemption.

Even when his book was published, Epstein had already concluded that successful writers didn’t need publishers at all. People like Stephen King and Danielle Steel, with massively successful track records, could quite easily have cut free from agents and publishers, and could have bought in such talent as they needed, in terms of editors, book designers, printers, book distributors, and so forth. By doing so they would probably have earned a great deal more at the end of the day. In practice, however, at that stage, they all chose to continue doing things the old way – but that was presumably because it suited their convenience to do so. (Either that or they weren’t paying any attention either.)

Epstein was a big POD fan, and he predicted a situation whereby a simple coffee shop on your local high street might have a printing machine parked at the back. You would come in the door, order a coffee of your choice, and then order the latest J.K. Rowling to take out with you fifteen minutes later. That arrangement has not quite come to fruition yet, but there is now a contract in force between Xerox and Kodak to run such a facility through the Kodak photographic printing shops.

2.6.3 The beginning of ebooks

A second game-changing development was already being thought about by the few enterprising publishers who were not totally ignorant of computer technology. This was the prospect of reading books on a computer screen rather than on paper. It was the coming of electronic books, or ebooks as we now think of them.

Consider, by way of example, the US firm Renaissance E Books, which was founded in 1997. This firm was undoubtedly one of the earliest publishers of ebooks on the web. In 2003, shortly before his death, the original founder of the company sold the business to a consortium which appointed a well known publishing editor named Jean Marie Stine to run the show. And run it she did, very well.

Shortly after Jean Marie took charge, I signed a number of contracts with Renaissance to publish some of my own books in digital formats (long before the Kindle, please notice); these contracts were models of their kind.

In the early days, ebooks were mostly sold in pdf format. But you didn’t have to be very bright to see that, as soon as a really efficient and easily portable ebook reader was developed, something that you could carry around in your pocket or handbag, the sale of ebooks would really take off. More of that later.

2.6.4 Summary

The purpose of section 2.6 has been to gain an overview of trade publishing at the very end of the twentieth century.

Publishing firms are first and foremost businesses. That is to say, their purpose is to make money for the shareholders. As such, their performance has always been somewhere between awful and pitiful. For an examination of British publishers, seen from this perspective, please see Eric de Bellaigue’s 2004 book, British Book Publishing as a Business since the 1960s.

The brutal truth is that twentieth-century trade publishing’s business model was so weak that it was always going to have trouble in avoiding collapse; and, in the early years of the twenty-first century, change began to come about at an amazing speed. Traditional book publishing, which had barely been able to stagger along financially even without much challenge, was now going to find it very hard to cope.

The final outcome of the battle between traditional and digital is not yet known (see Part Three, which follows). But one thing is certain. You could hardly find a group of people less well qualified to cope with rapid technological developments than those who worked in book publishing in the year 2000.

PART 3: FINAL THOUGHTS – Will traditional publishing survive? And do writers really need it anyway?

3.1 The impact of the digital age

This book is being written in 2014, roughly fifteen years since the turn of the century, a period which we dealt with in Part Two. Part Three therefore looks at the impact of technology on the publishing business during the crucial years since 2000.

Like it or not – and some people hate it – the last ten years in particular have seen massive changes in the publishing industry, and it is instructive to compare what has happened there to what happened in other industries which were transformed by digital techniques.

Consider the business of photography. You can hardly fail to have noticed that these days everyone from the age of six upwards has a digital camera. And you’ve probably noticed that old-fashioned film has almost vanished from the shops. Grandma no longer carries a boasting book full of snapshots of her grandchildren: instead she has an iPad or a tablet, and she whizzes through the piccies by swiping her fingers across a screen.

What you may not have noticed, unless you’re very keen on photography, is that all this changed within just a very few years. More to the point, some hugely famous photographic firms simply went out of business – they were swept away by the surge of digital change. Legendary companies such as Polaroid, Bronica, Contax, Agfa, Konica, Minolta and Ilford all withered and died.

Christian Sandstrom did some research into what caused this commercial catastrophe; and he established that it wasn’t because the companies ignored digital developments. Far from it. They tried to get in the game. But they failed because their hard-won skills and business experience became irrelevant in the new market. One Hasselblad employee told Sandstrom that he could never have imagined that the shift would happen so fast and with such implications. Fundamentally, the older photographic companies failed because their core competence was not related to electronics, and because they were overtaken by the speed of events.

Plenty of other industries have been struggling to deal with digital change, and some research on this phenomenon has been done in academia, notably by Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen.

A major example, in an industry which is vastly greater in size and importance than book publishing, is the crisis which hit the manufacturers of mainframe computers, when the manufacturers of minicomputers came on the scene. And these manufacturers of minicomputers were in turn threatened by the manufacturers of personal computers; and tablets, and smartphones, and all like that.

The principal problem is that digital developments make everything cheaper. Consumers love this, but it creates serious problems for those who were doing things the old way, and would really like to go on doing things the old way, thank you very much.

The existing firms have to be really, really smart to survive. And do big publishers strike you as being really, really smart? Come on now, it’s a serious question.

The researchers tell us that almost nobody from the old order is able to undertake the necessary changes to survive in the new order. When the world changes and the industry doesn’t, the industry tends to disappear.

So, where does that leave traditional book publishing?

In trouble, that’s where. Anything further away from electronic competence than a modern publishing company would be pretty hard to find; and, as we all know, they are not exactly quick on their feet either. So, as the years went by, many observers, such as myself, began to feel that old-fashioned trade publishing might soon die the death. To tell the truth, we weren’t too bothered by that thought.

Well, disaster for the Big Five (and others) hasn’t quite happened. Not yet. But the dinosaurs in publishing are doing their best to help it along. It took them a long time to work out how to send emails, not so very long ago, and surely a web page wasn’t really necessary, was it? Just a fad. Would never catch on.

Watch this space.

3.2 How to sell a book to a traditional publisher

Here’s how the business worked at the end of the twentieth century, from a writer’s point of view.  And this is how it still works. Sort of. ‘Works’ is a relative term.

Writer spends hundreds of hours working on a novel. Possibly from 1990 to 1995, let’s say. Then, in 1996, the author tries to approach publishers – only to find that they mostly don’t consider books sent in by nobodies. Even those firms which do accept submissions resort to some interesting dodges.

The Galleycat blog reported that some firms invent fake editors, who send out rejection letters on the firm’s behalf. One editor reported that, ‘A company that I worked at in the ’90s not only sent out rejection letters under a fake editor’s name, but this fake editor also had a voicemail box and an e-mail address.’ If a writer complains about her treatment, she can be told that Mr Smith has left the company.

So, not getting anywhere with a direct approach, our writer sets out to find a literary agent who can approach one of publishing’s gatekeepers without said gatekeeper collapsing into tears of laughter. Agent, once found, and once convinced that he has something which might, with luck, prove acceptable, sends the book to his bestest best pal. Pal accepts. Book published! Reviewers love it! Bookshops stack it on the front desk. Fame and fortune follow! Hurrah. Nobel prize and any others of note are awarded without argument. No contest. Big interviews on TV and in major newspapers. Your neighbours beg you to come to dinner. In your chauffeured Rolls Royce

And, again, all like that.

That’s what you imagine. But of course, that isn’t the way it goes.

The search for an agent can take years.  Even when found, the agent suggests changes. These take months, if not years. Despair sets in, but you struggle through.

Revised book is sent out. Gets rejected. Often takes years to find an editor who is interested.

When found, the editor wants changes. Funnily enough, she wants our writer to change things back to the way they were in the first version (though the editor doesn’t know that). After more tears, break-up with boyfriend because he never sees you, you do the changes. Agent sends off new version. Editor sends a note to say she is leaving the company and her replacement doesn’t like the book. Sorry.

After two or three iterations of this, hardly ever taking more than about a decade, you actually get offered a contract. Wow! At last! Virtue, hard work and obsession are finally rewarded. Terms of contract seem a bit harsh, but you decide not to argue. You yearn to be published.

Months pass. No one talks to you about anything – agent and editor all too busy. Then one day, you receive a set of proofs. To be read, corrected and returned overnight please. You struggle to comply. Send back proofs. Further months pass. A printed copy of the book arrives. You hate the cover. Wasn’t there something in the contract about cover approval? Yes, says agent, but no one takes that seriously, and in any case the dust jackets are all printed now.

Publication day arrives. Nothing happens. No launch party, no reviews for months, the bookshop near your home has never heard of your book and doesn’t want to stock it when you describe it.

Contract calls for another book. You repeat the process. Same thing happens: i.e. nothing. One day agent sends an email to say that sales have been disappointing and publisher doesn’t want you any more. Given this, says agent, and the general state of the market, the agent doesn’t want you any more either.

End of ‘career’. But it’s all been such fun, hasn’t it? You wouldn’t have missed it for the worlds, would you?

You think I exaggerate, don’t you? Ah, if you only knew. That’s the optimistic version.

At the moment you think this is just me, being nasty and cynical and bitter. Well, one day you may find out. The hard way. Or maybe not, if you’re smart.

3.3 How the Kindle changed everything

On 19 November 2007, Amazon released the Kindle. The Kindle was the first little computer thingy which was designed principally for reading ebooks, and there must have been a bunch of people out there waiting for it because it sold out in five and a half hours. Even at $399. The device remained out of stock for the next five months.

But how did this affect writers? Dramatically is the answer.

Prior to 2007 it had always been possible for a writer to publish a book herself, in traditional printed form. It was very easy, provided you were prepared to throw lots of money around. The difficult thing was selling your book to readers.

Bookshops would not want it, even if you could get access to some reliable distribution system. So as often as not you gave away 100 copies to your family and friends and stored the other 9,900 in your garage. Where they stayed for the next ten years, until you finally accepted the inevitable and paid to have them carted away for pulping.

But now, with the advent of the Kindle, Amazon made it possible for anyone – literally anyone – to publish their own ebook. And how much did it cost? Nothing. Oh yes, you could spend money on professional editing and proof-reading if you wished, pay for it to be formatted and for a fancypants cover design, but you didn’t have to pay for any of that. You could do it all yourself. And how much did a DIY job cost you? Nothing. Not a penny.

Furthermore – and this is the almost incredible part – Amazon actually want you to publish your book through their facilities. There are no editors asking you to rewrite the end, and while you’re at it, cut 20,000 words out of the whole thing. Instead, you can publish anything you damn well please, and welcome, from a one-page poem to a 250,000-word literary masterpiece in the style of James Joyce.

Yes, it is true that a book about perverts having sex with children and dogs will probably get you unpublished by Amazon. And too much scatological libel about much loved public figures will likewise raise a few eyebrows in the Amazon office. But anything that is within reason, and a good deal that isn’t, will generally be accepted.

Just by way of example, some two or three years ago I came across an author who was publishing short novellas of about 10,000 words. These were selling about 2,500 copies a month – despite the fact that the lady could not spell or punctuate to save her life. No traditional publisher’s reader would have read more than one paragraph of her work. But on Kindle she could publish and sell.

And who, you might reasonably ask, was buying such semi-literate rubbish? Answer, people who were semi-literate themselves, but liked to be told a good story. And they were reading these books on their smartphones. These readers didn’t care about the spelling and the punctuation, because they were never much good at that stuff at school, and they aren’t about to start being fussy about it now. Just tell us a story, please Miss, and we’ll be very grateful.

In a space of about five years, it became obvious to even the slowest-witted readers, writers and publishers, that the advent of the Kindle (and similar devices) meant that  publishing had just undergone the most massive change since the invention of printing.

I’m not going to try to give you any precise idea of the numbers of published books these days, because the data on book output are now unreliable. I will merely point out that in January 2012 David Houle told a conference that: ‘There were more books published this week than there were in all of 1950.’ He may not have been dead right, even to the nearest 10, but he was in the right ball park.

In 1990, there were some 25,000 books published in the US, and the only certain thing is that numbers since then have increased enormously. The growth has been powered mainly by the fact that new printing technology has made it possible for authors to publish their own books at vastly reduced cost.

According to Bowker, which is the firm that handles ISBN numbers and other bibliographical data, about 344,000 printed book were published in 2011, and 43 per cent of these were self-published. In addition, at least 87,000 ebooks were self-published. These numbers are probably lower than the true figures.

Formerly, the gates to publication had been locked tight. You needed a triple password, an endorsement from a multiple bestseller and a note from your Mum before anyone would even listen to your plea for admission. But now – Amazon has opened a new set of gates round the back. These gates are kept permanently open. And there is a big sign over the top which says, ‘Come on in, the water’s lovely. We don’t care if you’re not much cop at spelling, and there are certainly readers out there who don’t know a semi-colon from a cold in the head. All you need, to find readers, is a bit of a story – try it out, at our expense, and see if anyone likes it.’

Incidentally, when it comes to bestsellers in ebooks, the most successful publishers, in 2013, were unsurprisingly drawn from the Big Five. Using appearances on the Digital Book World ebook bestseller list as our criterion, Hachette, Penguin, and Random House did best. But, if we imagine self-published authors as forming one indie publishing firm, the indie authors beat everyone else. Beat HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, et al.

Unless you have spent the past fifty years struggling through the treacle fields which defended the old system, as I have, new writers cannot possibly imagine what a gift from the gods has been vouchsafed to you in this, the digital age. The best advice I can give to any writer is this: for your own sake, make the most of this breathtaking opportunity; and as you do so, give thanks to whatever gods you fancy that you live in such blessed times.

3.4 The coffee-shop printing machine

And what, you may be wondering, of that other digital development which was forecast by Jason Epstein around the turn of the century?

Epstein, you may recall, predicted that before long there would be machines on every High Street (possibly in coffee shops, hence the name Espresso Book Machine) which would print you a copy of almost any book within a few minutes. Well, we’re nearly there.

In September 2012 it was announced that the Espresso Book Machine developers would be co-operating with Eastman Kodak to incorporate these machines in Kodak Picture Kiosks in up to 105,000 locations worldwide.

And if you haven’t actually seen such a machine yet, neither have I. So it’s no good pretending that this innovation has had the massive impact of the Kindle. Neither do I think it ever will. It may never prove to be a viable business model. But the idea isn’t dead yet, and there are still quite a few people around who like the concept.

Suppose you’ve just read a cracking good novel and you think your Aunty Jane would love a printed copy for her birthday. Or, more precisely, when you meet her later on today. It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if you could get one printed in your lunch hour?

3.5 Success stories of the digital age

When you join the self-publishing community (the indie-publishers), you will be joining some eminent company. In 2010, the marketing guru Seth Godin, author of 12 print bestsellers which have been translated into 33 languages, announced that in future he will no longer work through traditional publishers. He argues that, in an ebook world, there are viable ways of cutting publishers out of the loop out (a process known as disintermediation). Now he can reach people just as effectively, if not more so, without traditional publishers, and end up making more money.

Prior to coming to this conclusion, Seth had been talking to many established print publishers and he was unimpressed by what he found. ‘Most of them looked at me like I was nuts for being an optimist. One CEO worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken at the fear I saw.’

But there’s no need for writers to be afraid. Quite the reverse. As I shall now demonstrate.

Before I move on to describe some success stories, let me say that successful writers have always been the exception. By a huge margin. And this is true however you care to define the word ‘successful’.

Success for some people simply means getting an article printed in a magazine. Or winning the local writers’ group monthly competition for a ten-line poem. For others, it means selling more copies than Stephen King and Danielle Steel combined. Either way, success is unusual. And it must not be considered inevitable. It is not a case of just do this, followed by that, and plug it on Twitter and Facebook, and you are bound to hit the big time. Never was, never will be.

Nevertheless, it is an established fact that some talented writers have not only managed to use their talent in the digital age, but have also had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time with the right book.

The runaway successes of the digital age have been widely publicised, and I am not going to do much more here than mention some of their names, just in case you are a newbie to this game and have not come across them before. You might like to look at these writers’ web sites and other blog posts et cetera about them.

To begin with, it’s worth noting that Amazon itself often publicises the self-publishing successes, in order to encourage others to use their Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. In early 2012, for instance, Amazon published a list of the top ten bestsellers on its site in 2011, combining the sales of both print and ebook versions. Of these ten books, two were novels which were available in ebook form only. And – vital point – both these books were self-published. I’d never heard of either of them until I saw the Amazon list. One was The Mill River Recluse, at number four, and the other was The Abbey, at number nine.

The Mill River Recluse is by Darcie Chan. And when you look this lady up you find that hers is an absolutely classic story of the digital age. It took her three years to complete the book, after which she tested it out on her family and friends, polished it up, and sent it out to traditional publishers. Got absolutely nowhere. Scores of rejections. Sent it out to dozens of agents, with the same result. Then one top-class agent took her on (Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord). Laurie sent the book to all her best contacts, over a further two-year period. But still no sale.

By that time Darcie had become aware of this new-fangled digital self-publishing business. So she gave it a try. Edited the book herself, did her own formatting, designed her own cover, and handled her own publicity.

The book was published in May 2011. In June, she was thrilled when 100 copies had been sold. After that, aided by some hard work on marketing, and a little bit of advertising, things began to snowball, until in the latter part of the year the book was selling several thousand copies a day.

This book was, it’s worth repeating, the fourth biggest-selling book on the whole of Amazon in 2011, with no paper edition at all.

Other famous self-publishers include Amanda Hocking, John Locke (the eighth author, and the first self-published one, to sell over 1 million ebooks on Amazon), and Hugh Howey.

What distinguishes these books and their authors from ten thousand others? Ah, if only we knew. All we can say, with any confidence, is that sometimes a book will find its readers and really take off. But mostly it won’t.

3.6 Two-way traffic in the digital age

An interesting phenomenon in the digital age is the two-way traffic between traditional publishing and indie publishing.

At a certain point, some indie publishers who do absolutely everything themselves have come to the conclusion that they will never have any free time, never live a normal life, until they find someone to help out with the everyday stuff.

Amanda Hocking, for example, was eventually offered $2 million by St Martin’s Press, to enter into a conventional publishing arrangement with them. And why did she sign?

‘I want to be a writer,’ said Amanda. ‘I do not want to spend 40 hours a week handling emails, formatting covers, finding editors, etc.’ In other words, she wants someone to do the manual labour for her.

Conversely, some famous writers have finally accepted the point made by Jason Epstein in Book Business, namely that they don’t really need a publisher at all. If they already have experience of the publishing process, they can hire in the help as necessary. Barry Eisler, a thriller writer whose track record includes a Gumshoe Award for Best Thriller of the Year, actually turned down a new contract with St Martin’s Press, worth $500,000, and decided to control his own fate thereafter, as an indie.

Further down the famous and successful list, consider the experience of Elisabeth Naughton

Elisabeth is a really interesting case-study, because she began her career in traditional publishing, working through well-known mass-market firms such as Dorchester and Sourcebooks. Elisabeth was never a big seller. She was what’s known as a mid-list author; or even lower on the chain. Her contracts were, as she puts it, crappy, but hey – she was a published writer, OK? Respect! Prestige! Money! She had all the accolades of being a published author – her books were on bookstore shelves and in airports, she was getting rave reviews, she was a top seller in romance for Sourcebooks, and she even hit the USA Today bestsellers list.

But actually Elisabeth found that she was spending more money on promoting her books than she was earning in royalties. She used to go to romance readers’ conferences and mix with the fans, spending money on air fares and hotels. And she spent money on promotional materials. So, after careful thought, she backed away from traditional publishing. She got her rights back from Dorchester and became an indie publisher.

Tucked away on her hard drive Elisabeth had an unpublished book called Wait for Me. This novel had been rejected by several literary agents because, as they put it, it straddled genres. But Elisabeth believed in it, and published it herself in ebook form. Wait for Me then proceeded to hit every major ebook bestseller list, and it continues to sell very well.

In 2011, Elisabeth’s tax return showed negative income: in other words, her expenses as a writer amounted to more than she earned. In 2012, as a self-publisher, she reported six figures on the positive side; in 2013 she was approaching the seven-figure mark. But remember – she wrote for ten years without making a penny when expenses were taken into account.

In the UK, another writer, Janet MacLeod Trotter, has done much the same thing. In 2012, Janet’s novel The Tea Planter’s Daughter was one of the top ten bestselling Kindle ebooks on Amazon.co.uk. And it’s particularly interesting because this book has history.

The clue to its history was provided by a statement, on the Amazon page for the book, that it was long-listed for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award in 2008. So it obviously wasn’t a new book in 2012.

I wanted to know more, and my first research stop was the catalogue of my local library. A search here reveals that this book was first published by Headline in 2007, when it had the title The Tea Planter’s Lass; a paperback came from Headline a year later. (Just in case you’re new to this business, let me say that Headline is a major UK publisher of commercial fiction, and many authors would give a couple of teeth to be put on their list.) In addition to the hardback and paperback editions, there are also CD and cassette versions of a talking-book edition, and a large-print edition from Magna.

If you move on to Janet MacLeod Trotter’s own web site, it turns out that she is the author of 16 books which were published through Headline, beginning in 1993; most of these fall into the family saga or women’s fiction category. She also writes crime fiction under the name J.M. MacLeod.

Furthermore – and this is where it begins to get really interesting – Janet’s web site tells us that she now runs a ‘micro publishing business, specialising in paperbacks and ebooks.’ Its name is MacLeod Trotter Books (MTB).

Back to Amazon again, and we find that MTB has 34 books on its list, including the ones previously published by Headline. And Headline, for its part, no longer lists Janet’s name on its list of authors.

So. The 2012 list of Amazon indie-author successes contains an author who has now seen the digital light, dropped all connection with old-time publishing, and reissued a ‘dead’ book five years later. By giving it a new title and a new cover (using a family photograph), Janet has turned the novel into a top-ten ebook bestseller. In addition, she’s self-publishing new editions of all her old output, in both digital and paperback versions, through her own imprint.

3.7 The future of traditional publishing

Today, every blog and every book-world discussion forum is full of speculation about the book-publishing world. Will the Big Five publishers (as they are now) go the way of the famous names in photography, and collapse into insolvency? And if so, when?

I am not going to add to this speculation. If you seek evidence, to argue for survival and continued prosperity on the one hand, or an early demise on the other, it is difficult to find anything really convincing. The Big Five put out profit reports which indicate continued success. But then they would do that, wouldn’t they? Immediately prior to collapse, and the demand for government bailouts, all the big banks were very optimistic in their public statements. And likewise you can find analysts who see nothing but decline in the Big Five figures – such of them as they believe. We shall see.

What I will say is that fiction, in particular, lends itself beautifully to the ebook medium. And if you are a novelist you would be unwise, in my opinion, to bother with anything other than self-publication. On the other hand, if you are an academic historian and wish to publish a learned volume embodying the results of your ten years of research into the causes of the first world war, then your best plan is undoubtedly to woo one of the long-established university presses, and to seek publication in printed form (probably with maps and photographs, which ebooks really can’t cope with).

The only other thing I will add is that writers are assuredly noticing that publishers are behaving as if they need to conserve money. Faced with the possibility of economic disaster, publishers are offering much reduced advances against royalties. Furthermore, the blogger and novelist M.J. Rose reports from New York that publishers are now looking to writers to provide their own marketing budget! This is being dressed up as an investment in their own talent. And are the publishers offering a larger royalty as compensation for this investment? Are they heck. Instead they’re complaining that authors always got too much of the money anyway. This proposed financial ‘investment’, please note, is on top of the investment of time and energy which writers are already expected to put in by giving interviews and lectures, attending signing sessions, and so forth.

For insight into the future, take a look at what such big names in publishing consultancy as Clay Shirky, Jason Epstein, and Mike Shatzkin have been saying recently (Google will help). What you will find is that they offer a bewildering variety of forecasts. But one thing they are agreed on: the traditional book-publishing model is broken. Says Shatzkin, with reference to firms such as Random House and Hachette, ‘That kind of publishing can’t exist a lot longer.’ Certainly, no group of businesses which currently stand between an author and her readers can afford to be complacent; that includes agents, publishers, printers, wholesalers, and bookshops.

Why are publishing strategists gathering together in forums such as the annual Tools of Change for Publishing conference? Answer, because vast sums of money will shortly be made or lost, depending on how smart you are. All you have to do is figure out how to create a new internet-based entity which will provide a really efficient service for readers, writers and digital publishers. Fortunes will be earned by the smart thinkers; bankruptcy will be the lot of those who miscalculate.

3.8 What’s a poor writer to do?

If you’ve read as far as this, you are presumably a writer of some sort, and you’re probably interested in full-length fiction. You’ve been brought up to feel that you really won’t be able to hold your head up in polite society unless you’re published in printed-book form, preferably hardback, and visibly on sale in every bookshop that your family and friends are ever likely to go into.

Well, fair enough. It’s a point of view. It was mine once. And if that’s the way you want to go, buy yourself a copy of the Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (UK) or Writer’s Market (US) and plunge in.

But there is an alternative, and the alternative is to become a self-publisher, or indie publisher. Start with Kindle, read up all the advice that Amazon offers you (and there’s a lot of it), and go your own way.

If you’re smart enough to have written a novel, or even if you’ve just idly found this present ebook on someone’s tablet, you are certainly smart enough to figure out how to format an ebook. You’ve got the hang of email and Word, haven’t you? You know about RSS feeds, Paypal, stuff like that? OK, so you can format an ebook, if you apply your mind to it.

You can design your own cover too. Amazon offers you a fairly simply way to do it. Or you can make your own. Just download some free photo-editing software (GIMP will do nicely), or pay for Photoshop Elements, which is what I use. Yes, it does take time to learn how to use such a program, and you need to practise, but the more you do the easier it becomes. Nothing new about that. Same with the main part of the enterprise, which is writing a novel.

Then… when you’ve done all that, when your indie book is out before the admiring public, you sit back and wait.

If nothing much happens, you write some more and do it again. In fact you should write some more anyway, while you’re waiting. But if, by the grace of whatever gods may be, you find a million or two readers, and attract a little bit of attention, then maybe an agent, or even a publisher, will approach you. And that’s much the best way round.

3.9 Contracts are nasty… (insert rude noun of choice)

It is a fact that, for well over a hundred years, book publishers have been blessed by the existence of a huge number of mugs, suckers, and assorted fuzzy thinkers, who have been willing to work for a year or two, to produce a full-length manuscript on spec, without a penny piece to show for it. These would-be authors then dispatch their manuscript to a publisher, or an agent, who in a noticeable number of cases proceeds to lose it; but even when the recipient keeps track of it, it is only to send the thing back, after a modest delay of six months or so, with a scrappy piece of paper saying ‘Sorry – not quite what we are looking for.’

So shabby and disgraceful is the industry’s treatment of its authors that it is a small miracle, if truth be told, that publishers (and agents) are not daily visited by a small gang of infuriated slush-pile rejects, brandishing iron bars and sawn-off shotguns, demanding to see ‘that son of a bitch who wrote this letter.’

However, let us assume, for a paragraph or two, that at some stage you are actually offered a contract with a ‘reputable’ publisher.

Contracts require a whole book of their own, and there are a few such books available if you poke around in the bibliographies and search engines. I could have written one myself once – in fact, with my publisher’s hat on, I wrote a few actual contracts in times past – but I’m not going to go into great detail on contracts here because I feel I am out of date.

I will, however, offer a few broad-brush remarks.

In the US there is a lawyer who specialises in contracts for the entertainment media, and whose wife is an indie publisher. The lawyer’s name is David Vandagriff, and he writes a blog called The Passive Voice. Here’s what he has to say about book contracts: ‘After having reviewed many, many agreements and proposed agreements between traditional publishers and authors, [I am] prepared to say these contracts, as a group, stand apart from the general run of business agreements as conscience-shocking monstrosities. They’re simply designed to screw authors and to give publishers control over their work that is far beyond what is regarded as reasonable in the rest of American business.’ (The UK is no different, by the way.)

You should also read what experienced authors such as Dean Wesley Smith and his wife Kristine Kathryn Rusch have to say on this issue. Both of them run blogs (see Appendix at the end of this book).

You should certainly keep an eye on a web site called Writer Beware. This is run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, and we all owe them a great debt. They have much to say on contracts with traditional publishers, and little of it is complimentary.

Here are a few small pointers to the kind of problems you might encounter. Just examples.

At some time, perhaps even twenty years after signing a contract, you might want to bring the contract to an end, and reclaim rights which you once granted. But, in the present state of things, you won’t be able to do that unless the publisher is sick to death of you, in which case you will have been dumped years ago.

Modern publishers, as I have repeatedly said, are pretty damn clueless at running a business efficiently. But one point I will grant them: they are remarkably good at writing contracts which lock you to their bosom for ever – if they actually want to keep you.

The reversion clause, as it’s called, will be well-nigh unbreakable. You won’t be able to get your rights back.

Then there’s a clause which prevents you from offering anything to another publisher which might compete with the book you’ve sold to them (sold it for ever, as you now know). So, if you’re a big success as a romance writer, you may not be able to write any more romances for another publisher because the contract forbids it. It’s usually called a non-competition clause, or something similar.

And then, at some point, you might receive notice of an addendum to the contract, sent to you through the post, or by email. You will be asked to sign it.

One thing can be guaranteed: this addendum won’t make the contract any more favourable to you. Beware of addenda.

And then, of course, because big publishing is finding it increasingly difficult to make profits in the old way, or even in the new way, they have begun to dabble in cunning plans. If it’s hard to get customers to buy their books, why not scrounge money out of the writers? After all, if they’re dumb enough to spend years writing a book and are desperate to get into print under the name of a famous and once reputable company, offer them the chance to do so! For a fee, of course.

In 2012, Penguin bought a firm called Author Solutions. This firm was well known for providing self-publishing services to writers – services for which they charged large sums of money. Want a ‘web-optimised press release’ for your book? Certainly, sir or madam: that will be $1,199 please.

Prior to the Penguin purchase, the 150,000 customers of Author Solutions were charged an average of $5,000 and on average sold 150 books.

In the same year, Simon & Schuster set up a subsidiary called Archway Publishing, which they planned to run in conjunction with… yes, you guessed it, our old familiar friends Author Solutions. With prices starting at $1600, Archway would do for authors that which they could perfectly well do for themselves for nothing, namely publish an ebook edition.

Book-trade commentators were unimpressed. One such, Nate Hoffelder, wrote as follows:

‘Author Solutions might be currently owned by Penguin, a detail which does not speak well for Penguin’s business ethics, but there is no sign that they have cleaned up their act. All we are seeing today is that Author Solutions is merely offering the same scammy deals as they always have, only this time they get to do so under the formerly good name of Simon & Schuster.’

Frankly, I grow weary of listing even a sample of the pitfalls of mixing with traditional publishers. So let me end by telling you that I once wrote a book called The Truth about Writing. The first paragraph of that book ran as follows:

‘Writing is an activity which can seriously damage your health. It can consume huge amounts of time and energy, and it can lead to frustration, rage, and bitterness.’ The overall purpose of The Truth about Writing was, I said, ‘to protect and preserve the sanity of anyone who is unfortunate enough to be afflicted with the ambition to write.’

What was true of my earlier book is true of this one – the one that you’re reading right now.

Above all, folks, try to have fun when you’re writing. If it isn’t fun, write something else. Or do something else, such as taking long walks in the country.

And while we all like a little success from time to time, success can be modest and yet rewarding. Read my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile, and learn how to work to professional standards while remaining an amateur. You will be an amateur only in the sense that you please yourself what you write, you control your own work in every detail, and you don’t have to deal with traditional publishers. Or try to decode their disgusting contracts.

You can be the mistress of your own fate now, and you couldn’t once. Not until very recently, in fact. So make the most of your new-found freedom.

Hugh Howey, a digital self-publishing winner, estimates that when the Kindle was first sold there might have been (generous estimate) about 1,000 people in the US making a good living out of their fiction. Self-publishing, he thinks, has tripled or quadrupled that figure.

You might even be one of them, one day.

Good luck along the way.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

It’s not easy to explain to you how lucky you are to be working as a writer in an era when this sort of information is readily available. It certainly wasn’t when I started out. Dozens of experienced writers, agents, lawyers, and – yes – even publishers, are making their knowledge and judgements available to you entirely free of charge.

That having been said, some of the bloggers are not too proud to ask you to leave a cash tip if you find a post of theirs particularly helpful. I have done so more than once, even after fifty years in the business, and so should you.

If you are flush with cash, you might care to subscribe to the two main trade journals of the book-publishing world. In the UK, you need The Bookseller. Current subscription rates are £196 p.a. if you live in the UK, £264 if you live elsewhere. In the US, the equivalent is Publishers Weekly, which will set you back $249 for a one-year print + digital subscription, and $399 if you live outside the US. (Digital-only rates for PW are cheaper.)

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes their copy available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs listed below are not in any particular order.

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Grumpy Old Bookman. Finally, this one is my own. Between 2004 and 2007 I wrote about 1.25 million words on this blog: reviews, news, comment, advice. There’s a lot of good stuff there if you search for it. Since 2007, I have been only an occasional blogger, mainly to let you know of the publication of a new book.

AFTERWORD

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing.

See Michael’s thoughtful essay on the pro-am approach to writing: On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile.

There are also four other books, so far, in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

A Writer’s Guide to Success

More will follow soon.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has written, please visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

LITERARY AGENTS

They used to be essential. But now they’re struggling for survival. Do today’s writers really need them?

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

***

PART 1: An introduction to the subject

1.1 What is a literary agent?

A literary agent is someone who represents a writer in negotiating with publishers, film producers, and indeed anyone who wants to make any sort of deal with that writer.

The theory is that the agent, who spends all his life negotiating deals and knows the business inside out, will get a much better result than would the poor ignorant writer if she tried to negotiate on her own behalf. Hence the writer will, in the long run, earn a lot more money through an agent.

True, the writer has to pay the agent commission, and nowadays this is likely to be 15% or 20% of the money paid. But even so, with a good agent, the writer will still be better off.

Here’s an example.

About 35 years ago (time flies when you’re having fun), I wrote some TV scripts for an American film and TV producer named Sheldon Reynolds. And Sheldon told me a story about a (then) famous agent called Swifty Lazar.

Sheldon’s wife read a novel by Irwin Shaw, and she nagged her husband repeatedly about buying the film rights. So Sheldon rang up Irwin and asked who his agent was.

‘Swifty,’ said Irwin.

‘Oh shit,’ said Sheldon, because Swifty was a notoriously difficult and demanding man to deal with.

However, Sheldon then rang Swifty, at his Hollywood office, and declared that he was interested, in principle, in buying the film rights to Irwin’s novel.

Whereupon Swifty instantly named a price which was somewhere up in the stratosphere.

Sheldon tried to negotiate. ‘Hold on a minute, Swifty,’ he said, in his most reasonable tones. ‘This isn’t a new book, it’s been out a few years. And I would never have bothered with it if my wife didn’t like it – so we’re not in a competitive situation here.’

‘I don’t need a competitive situation,’ said Swifty. ‘All I need is some jerk who wants to buy.’

1.2 What are the aims of this book?

This is the sixth book in my series of writer’s guides. All of them are intended to provide useful information for writers who are either young, or lacking experience in the publishing world, or both.

I am going to assume that most of the people reading this book are primarily interested in writing (and selling) full-length fiction.

However, some of what I have to say will definitely be of value to anyone planning a non-fiction book, particularly one aimed at the popular market (i.e. not a textbook or the results of ten years of academic research). But I shan’t have much to say which will be worth the time of playwrights (stage) or screenwriters (TV and film).

This book attempts to provide you with the bare minimum of knowledge which will help you to decide whether it would be a good idea to try to interest an agent in your work – or not.

And, in order to be realistic about trading conditions in the publishing world, I need also to show you how things can go badly wrong between a writer and an agent. I need to demonstrate to you that some agents are less than 100% honest; indeed some people, by declaring themselves to be agents, set out to steal money from you. And they quite often succeed.

If nothing else then, this book might help you to avoid wasting considerable sums of money.

More specifically, the aims of this book are as follows:

(i) To provide you with a short history of how agents first made their appearance, in the late nineteenth century, and how their role has changed and developed right up to the present day.

(ii) To provide you with examples of how relationships between agents and authors have sometimes gone badly wrong, to no one’s advantage, least of all that of the writers concerned.

(iii) And, finally, to show you that there are now more ways than one to make your work available to the reading public. By making use of such opportunities, you may eventually get to the point where it would be useful yo have an agent, if only to exploit to the maximum the success which you have earned without one.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.3 below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually very ambitious. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was, when I started out. The background aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them (a) getting ripped off, and (b) wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think those things couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

1.3 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

When you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who the author of said book is, and what makes him any sort of an authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am a couple of months short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 60 ebooks on sale as Kindle ebooks, both fiction and non-fiction. These are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers.

See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence I have had experience of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s. For about ten years I was also the line manager of a small in-house printing unit, so I know about the technology of printing and book design. And I have, in my time, sold other people’s books to publishers, thus acting as an informal agent; though as the writers concerned were friends, I never charged any commission.

As far as my own agents are concerned, here is a brief history. In all, I have had dealings with half a dozen different firms (and their overseas associates) over a period of forty years.

After forty years, in 1999, I lost interest in traditional publishing and published my own books thereafter. Today I operate exclusively as an ‘indie’ or self-publisher through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. Some, though not all, of my traditionally published novels have been reprinted as ebooks.

The English writer Ted Willis used to say that a writer should change his agent every seven years – otherwise you always remain the kid who wandered in off the street. And there is something in that.

For my part, I was dumped by an agent at least once. On another occasion, when I was with a big firm, the individual in that agency who looked after me resigned to start a business of his own; and I went with him. This is often done, but in this case the arrangement was not a success.

The final fifteen years of my connections with traditional publishing were dealt with very amicably through leading agencies in New York and London.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; but I have had extensive dealings with both American agents and publishers.

PART 2: A short history of literary agents

2.1 Early days

By the late nineteenth century it was obvious that there was quite a lot of money to be made in publishing. And writers were beginning to feel that they weren’t getting their fair share of it. In fact some of them suspected, with good reason, that they were simply being cheated. (Funnily enough, that attitude persists to this day.)

In 1895, for instance, it became known in London that a novel sold outright to a publisher for £500 had, in the following seventeen years, made a profit of £19,000; which would be a tidy sum even today. Writers weren’t happy about that sort of thing.

This general atmosphere of distrust between publishers and writers made it possible for a new breed of middlemen to step into the angry space between the disgruntled parties. Of course, writers had often had friends, fathers (particularly where ladies were involved), and occasionally lawyers, who had given writers a helping hand in the dealings with publishers. But now a specific type of sharp-eyed entrepreneur could see an opportunity for profit.

Literary scholars tell us that the term ‘literary agent’ was in use from the 1870s onwards, and by the 1890s the existence and function of such agents was well known in publishing.

In 1893, William Heinemann (a publisher) published an article in the magazine Athenaeum in which he said: ‘This is the age of the middleman. He is generally a parasite. He always flourishes…. He calls himself the literary agent.’

Heinemann was, in fact, referring to one particular individual: A.P. Watt; and the agency established by Watt is still in existence.

Watt seems to have been a forceful character, because by the time Heinemann was complaining about him, and any others of the same ilk, Watt was listing among his clients such famous names as Wilkie Collins, Arthur Conan Doyle, Thomas Hardy, and Rudyard Kipling.

It is worth noting that, at about that point in time, Watt and a few others operated by sending out circulars to upcoming writers, setting out what services they could offer, and touting for business. Compare and contrast that situation with that of the present day, when it is the writers who have to approach the agents and describe (in effect) what they can do for the agent.

It is also clear that, by around the turn of the century, the system of remunerating agents by allowing them to take a percentage of the total royalties was also in place. Watt apparently began his agency by charging an hourly rate, much like a lawyer; but he found that all too often his clients ‘forgot’ to pay him, and he switched to the arrangement whereby all royalties were first paid to him; he then deducted his commission and passed on the rest to the writer.

As to the rate of commission… Well, even then the figure of 10% had come to be recognised as the standard rate for agents to charge. Precisely how this came about is impossible to say, but my guess is that it was probably a nice round figure which was already being charged by theatrical agents and similar professionals. And it made the arithmetic so much simpler, didn’t it? Anyone could understand 10% and work it out in their head. Whereas if the figure was 8.5% it would all get so much more complicated. No, no: 10% it was.

Oh but surely, I hear you say, if there were lots of start-up agents touting for business and sending out circulars and such, surely they would be in competition with each other, and would be offering lower percentages in order to attract custom. Weren’t they?

No.

And why not?

Because the fix was in, that’s why not. Competition of that sort was not welcome, and any new agent who tried that particular dodge would be taken on one side and have the facts of life explained to him.

This kind of price-fixing by mutual agreement was almost certainly illegal then and definitely is now. Capitalist countries have laws which try to ensure that the consumer gets a product at a fair price – that price being found by competition. But in practice manufacturers tend to make secret deals to keep the prices up.

An example of this kind of chicanery can be found in the auction business. In a decision adopted on 30 October 2002, the European Commission found that Christie’s and Sotheby’s, the world’s two leading fine-arts auction houses, had breached European Union competition rules by colluding to fix commission fees and other trading terms between 1993 and early 2000.

In publishing, the US Department of Justice recently (2012/13) accused Apple and five major publishers of price-fixing, and won. Most of the publishers just admitted the obvious truth, struck a deal, and paid a whopping fine. Penguin, for instance, paid $75 million to settle the matter. Apple did not cave in because they’re different, right? Not exactly above the law, but, well… You know Apple.

So, you ask, why doesn’t the Department of Justice, or the European Commission, or someone, take a look at why literary agents somehow or other all charge the same commission? Answer, because literary agents constitute a pathetically tiny piece of world business, and nobody in authority would worry their head for two minutes about what agents do. They’re too small to fuss about, and if writers are dumb enough to put up with it that’s their problem.

But, nevertheless, the fix was in almost from the beginning, and it still is. Agents do not compete on price. A rate of 10% was standard, in the UK and the US, until around 1970, when the business began to hot up. As we shall see. And by 1970 the number of literary agents operating in London had risen to 70. There were plenty of them in New York, too.

2.2 The nature of the writer/agent relationship

We have reached (roughly) the year 1970 in our short historical survey of literary agents, so this is a good point to pause and consider a number of aspects of this trade (I don’t think it can qualify as a profession).

From the beginning, the practitioners of the trade defined themselves as ‘agents’. And most countries, or US states, have laws about the relationship between agents (in a general, commercial context) and their principals; they also have a backlog of actual legal disputes which provide legal precedents for guidance. For example, Wikipedia has an article on Agency in English Law.

Few states, however, have laws relating to literary agents in particular.

A principal, by the way, is the person in charge. A principal is the person, or perhaps a company, who commissions the agent to act on his or her behalf in certain circumstances.

And the first thing that strikes me about the paragraph immediately above is that, for at least the last fifty years, the principal/agent relationship which operates in the book world has been precisely the reverse of what is considered normal in the rest of the business world.

A.P. Watt, you recall, touted for business. He went out of his way to advertise his services, and, if contacted by a writer, he undoubtedly did his best to convince the writer to commission him. He was the one in the weak position: the supplicant.

By 1970, that sort of attitude had already become a historic relic. It was now very much the writer’s task – and an extremely difficult one at that – to persuade the powerful and famous agent to accept the miserable unknown writer as a possible client.

The agent was the person (it was thought) who knew all the right people in publishing. She knew the editors, knew what they were looking for, had incriminating photographs of key personnel, et cetera. So the agent held all the cards. It was the writer who went along, cap in hand, tugging his forelock if male, and giving multiple curtseys if female, and tried to get the agent to give them the time of day.

Furthermore, it was commonly the case that, even if the writer was (grudgingly) taken on, the relationship might not last long. Unless some considerable success (in the shape of money) was soon forthcoming, the agent would send the writer a brief note saying, in effect, thanks but don’t bother sending me any more of your stuff because it obviously isn’t up to scratch.

Writers, if they somehow managed to get taken on to an agent’s books, would put up with considerable delay and even humiliation from their agent, because they knew full well how hard it would be to find another one. And, wisely or otherwise, writers were of the view that an agent was essential to get your foot in the door of publishing – from which, of course, limitless wealth and fame would result.

There are few occasions when this role of applicant is reversed to the normal agent/principal relationship: and one such is when the writer is a former US President.

In his recent memoirs, the New York agent Sterling Lord recalls that the first President Bush (George H.W.) interviewed at least one agent before he decided not to proceed with writing the traditional memoir of his years in office.

An earlier President, Lyndon Johnson, deputed a lawyer, Arthur Krim, to do the spade work for him in selecting a suitable agent; Sterling Lord was invited to attend an interview.

During the course of the interview, it was suggested that, for the honour of representing President Johnson, Lord should reduce his commission from the usual 10%. Lord politely declined to do so; it would, he said, be unfair to his other clients.

Having reviewed the situation, Lord decided that, given Johnson’s close association with the unpopular war in Vietnam, his memoirs would be tough to sell, particularly for the kind of advance that the President apparently expected. Furthermore, Lord already represented  several clients who were strongly opposed to Johnson’s policies. So Lord withdrew his name from consideration as Johnson’s agent. This did not go down very well.

Another point worth making here is that agents are essentially salesmen. And sales are confirmed in written contracts. So to strike the best deal for a writer, an agent needs to have at least a passing familiarity with the drafting of contracts as they pertain to book publishing, movie rights, subsidiary rights, foreign rights, audio rights, and so forth.

As the years have gone by, publishers’ contracts have become ever more complicated and, yes, devious. Here is David Vandagriff, a US media lawyer (now retired) speaking about book contracts:

‘After having reviewed many, many agreements and proposed agreements between traditional publishers and authors, [I am] prepared to say these contracts, as a group, stand apart from the general run of business agreements as conscience-shocking monstrosities. They’re simply designed to screw authors and to give publishers control over their work that is far beyond what is regarded as reasonable in the rest of American business.’ (The UK is no different, by the way.)

So, that is the situation that agents have to deal with. They need to understand the dangers which are present in any modern contract with a book publisher; and, in my opinion, they have a duty to protect their clients against signing a contract which will actually cost them money through lost royalties and other valuable rights.

It is possible, of course, for an agent to argue that such is not his responsibility at all – that every writer is a big boy or girl, and that they should learn to understand contracts all on their own. This latter approach is actually something that I tried to adopt myself. For years I ran a self-instruction course in English law as it applies to the media, particularly publishing.

One useful book to read, if you’re thinking of doing the same, and if you live in the UK, is Clark’s Publishing Agreements by Lynette Owen. The ninth edition was published on 9 December 2013, and it will cost you £130. Which is undeniably expensive. But it could save you a much larger sum if it enables you to question a dodgy clause.

About 25 years ago, I was interested in adapting a fairly well known novel as a television series. My agent and I agreed that the best way forward was for me to buy an option on the TV rights before pitching the idea to any producers. In that way I could control the operation, whereas if I pitched the idea to a producer without having an option on the rights, the producer could just pick up the idea, leave me out of it, and commission her son-in-law to write the thing instead.

So, I was discussing with my agent the form that this option contract should take.

‘If it was up to me,’ I said, ‘I would just use the model contract for an option in Clark’s Publishing Agreements.’

It turned out that the agent had never heard of the book, despite the fact that it has been the standard text on the subject for several decades.

At least one US copyright lawyer (C.E. Petit) believes that, while agents are not lawyers, they are engaged in the practice of law. This is one reason, he argues, why literary agents should be regulated and licensed – which they are not. In many jurisdictions this distinguishes them from, for instance, agents in insurance and real estate. California, home of the movie industry, has laws governing ‘talent agents’, but says nothing about the literary kind.

Nowadays, as we shall see, the formal relationship between an agent and his clients is likely to be governed by a formal written agreement; this document is drafted by the agent and his lawyer. The terms of it are not determined by the writer, thus endorsing my point that the agent is, in practice the principle.

That being the case, you should not be surprised to hear that modern agent-writer agreements are seldom advantageous to the writer. The days when two gentlemen could just shake hands on an agreement are long since over.

2.3 The gentlemen retire

Sterling Lord, mentioned above, reminds us that, from about 1960 on, publishing underwent a change (and it was not to be the last). It all became a lot less gentlemanly and a lot more money-orientated.

The people who founded publishing businesses in the early part of the twentieth century had often been very literary fellows (they were nearly all men), and the firms often bore the names of their founders (Victor Gollancz; Farrar, Straus & Giroux). But now the income-generating power of paperbacks began to be obvious, and the publishing business began to attract a different sort of person.

In the second half of the twentieth century, publishing was characterised by a constant stream of mergers. Big companies bought little companies – sometimes by the dozen. Some of the bigger firms then went public, i.e. their shares were traded on various stock exchanges. And when that happened, the money men threw out all the well-read guys and substituted hard-nosed businessmen in their place.

By 1990, the formerly genteel Random House was now being run by a former banker named Alberto Vitale. He was a man who boasted to all and sundry that he was far too busy ever to read a book. In 1990, Vitale decided that he wanted to get rid of Andre Schiffrin, a long-standing and much admired head of a Random House literary division. To achieve this, Vitale simply ‘rearranged’ some Random House costs, charging Schiffrin’s division for expenses which had actually been incurred elsewhere. Schiffrin’s backlist of books, potentially a great asset, was written off at zero value. Result: Schiffrin was identified as a hopeless loser of the firm’s money. He was kicked out.

As far as the agents were concerned, a much tougher breed of operator now made an appearance. Swifty Lazar, with whom we began this book, was clearly not a gentleman. He was a ruthless, hard-nosed bastard.

One of Swifty’s techniques was to offer a deal to a publisher which involved a Hollywood star or a famous politician as the ‘author’ of a book (which would, in due course, be ghosted). He would do this without bothering to ask the star or the politician if he was interested. Only later, when Swifty had a substantial deal agreed in principle, would he approach the big name in question, and suggest that this individual should become his client. If there was enough money dangled, he was seldom refused.

Swifty used this technique was in relation to Henry Kissinger. In that deal, Simon & Schuster were so keen to publish the proposed book that they agreed to pay two commissions, Swifty’s and a commission to Kissinger’s regular agent, to keep them happy.

Another ungentlemanly feature which began to emerge in the 1980s and ’90s was the practice of poaching clients. In the old days, agent A would never have dreamed of going to a writer who was already represented by agent B, and whispering in his ear about how much more money he would make if he shifted his allegiance. It simply wasn’t done. Now it began to be done in a fairly shameless manner.

The most famous poacher was, and is, the Harvard-educated Andrew Wylie. Craig Wylie, Andrew’s father, was at one time editor-in-chief at Houghton Mifflin, so Andrew grew up with books; and presumably he was taught how gentlemen are expected to behave. However, all you need to know now is that, for a good many years, Andrew Wylie has been known in the business as the Jackal.

Wylie’s most publicised poach was that of the English writer, Martin Amis. For 22 years Amis had been represented by the English agent Pat Kavanagh. But the Jackal got his teeth into him and lured him away. This upset a great many people in London literary circles, not least the writer Julian Barnes, who had thought himself a close friend of Amis, and who was also married to Pat Kavanagh.

Such is the power of a £500,000 contract, which is what Wylie negotiated for Amis. (About £495,000 more than Amis was worth, in my opinion.)

Just to give you an idea of the scale upon which a big-time agent operates, Wylie’s agency now handles more than 700 clients. These include, as you would expect, some seriously big names, such as Al Gore and Elmore Leonard, but also the estates of some major literary figures, such as Saul Bellow and Norman Mailer. The estates of dead writers can still generate huge sums of money.

By the way, if you are thinking that Andrew Wylie sounds like just the chap to represent you, let me warn you that you are right out of luck. The Wylie Agency web site has a page headed Submissions, and at the time of writing it reads as follows:

‘The Wylie Agency does not currently accept unsolicited submissions. So eff off.’

Actually I invited the second sentence, but you get the general idea. If Mr Wylie’s web site does not convince you that the agent is now the man in charge, then I don’t know what will.

In modern publishing, writers are mere nobodies: they are just the mugs, suckers, and fuzzy thinkers who work for years, in return for no money at all, in the hope that one day (if only because of the law of averages) an agent somewhere will decide that they have talent, and that after that everything will go smoothly until, in a very short time, the writer ends up as famous as… fill in name of choice.

Good luck with that idea.

2.4 The position at the end of the twentieth century

As the twentieth century progressed, the numbers of agents increased. For a certain sort of person – perhaps someone with a few years of experience in publishing, or even in an agent’s office – the prospect of setting up in business as an independent agent was an attractive one. By the year 2000 there were 161 agents in the UK. Of these, 37% had been set up since 1990.

By the end of the century, the relationship between writers, agents, and publishers was pretty well defined.

It was hard, though not impossible, for a writer to get anywhere without an agent to help her.

Publishers had merged and merged again to the point where there were now only six major markets for writers and agents to aim for; there are now five, following the merger of Penguin and Random House in 2013. (For further details of this merger mania, see my earlier ebook, A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing.)

Agents had done a bit of merging too. It dawned on people that if 15 agents, each with one or two big names on their books, rolled themselves into one firm, then the Big Six publishers would have to take that new agency a bit more seriously than they took the little guys. Better terms would be negotiable. Or at any rate, bigger money.

Speaking of money, it was in the 1980s that the general practice of charging clients a basic commission of 10% was shifted markedly upwards to 15%.

Once again, it is interesting – but probably futile – to speculate as to how this came about. We have already noted that if there was deliberate collusion to fix a price, this would probably be an illegal act. So it was not the case, one assumes, that the various bodies representing agents collectively (of which more in a moment) sat around discussing the issue in formal session, and passed a motion, recorded in the minutes, that as from next Tuesday the basic commission rate would go up from 10% to 15%. Dear me no.

No, it is much more likely that things were done in the same way that the leader of the UK Conservative Party used to be ‘selected’. What happened was that a few senior chaps got together, had a few drinks, kicked the can around a bit, and then they each went out and talked to a few other chaps, and got a general, sort of, you know, feeling for the general atmosphere. After which, in the case of the Conservatives, the name of the future leader would sort of… emerge. Nothing so vulgar as an election.

So, somewhere in the 1980s, a general sort of, you know, feeling kind of… emerged among agents. The feeling was that life would be a could deal more comfortable if writers were paying a lot more for the agents’ services than they had been so far.

Then, over a period of a few months or so, the leading agencies upped their rates; and the smaller agencies said to themselves, Well, if they need the extra 5% to function effectively, we certainly do. And so forth.

You will have noticed, perhaps, that it seems so much more tactful to refer to the increase as ‘an extra 5%’ rather than a 50% increase on the earlier rate, which is what it was.

For the benefit of any newbies, perhaps it needs to be pointed out that the 15% would be charged as the rate on book contracts in the home market. Higher rates would apply if, for instance, the UK rights were sold by a UK agent, acting on behalf of the US agent, or vice versa. And higher rates would often apply to film rights, which might involve paying commission to a Hollywood-based specialist.

None of which means, to be fair, that the client was necessarily being ripped off. Far from it. Sometimes an agent’s skills are worth a lot of money.

Sterling Lord quotes a case of an agent meeting a film producer. The producer opened proceedings by stating that he was willing to offer $100,000 for the film rights. The agent, slightly stunned perhaps, said nothing. And then, after a nervous silent pause, the producer promptly doubled his initial offer.

Before we leave the subject of commission, perhaps it is worth noting that the question of a basic rate of 20% is now being talked of in some quarters. For a discussion of this kind of issue, see the Writer Beware pages of the SWFA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America). These pages are in fact absolutely essential for anyone contemplating a search for an agent.

For several decades, agents in both the UK and the US (and probably in many other countries too) have established various ‘professional’ societies or associations. These give the agency business an air of respectability. Or at least, that was the intention.

In the UK, there is the Association of Authors’ Agents. This body’s web site provides a code of practice, a members directory, and various other bits and pieces. About 100 firms are listed as members.

In the US, the equivalent body is the Association of Authors’ Representatives, which has 400 members. The AAR’s web site is somewhat more informative than the AAA’s.

At the time of writing, a search of the two web sites reveals that neither body has much to say about the commission charged by members. That is presumably left for each individual firm to discuss with a potential client. But don’t expect any cut-price offers.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you need to be aware that, in most agencies, the end of the century had witnessed a passing of the handshake deal forming the contract between agent and writer. Because a contract is that is what it always was, in law, even if it was not written down.

In the 1980s, the practice arose of asking writers to sign an agency agreement. Some writers probably signed this without thinking very hard. After all, what was the alternative? Offending the agent? Unthinkable! But it would always have been wise, and today it is absolutely essential, to take a very close look at the small print of such an agreement.

It is not unknown for them to contain clauses such as ‘You may not write in any other genre for at least three years.’ And you might very well want to.

Most agents are honest, but in today’s market all are hard-pressed, and the need to survive financially may come to outweigh considerations of friendship. On close examination the provisions of the agent/writer agreement may be seen to have some sharp edges. You have been warned.

PART 3: Disagreements and disputes

When money is involved, it is often the case that even families fall out among themselves, so it will hardly come as a surprise to be told that disputes between agents and their clients can be bitter and protracted.

In this part of the book I am going to describe a number of well known cases. I do so not just because of the juicy scandalous nature of the stories but because they provide instructive examples for the inexperienced writer of just how badly things can go wrong. You really do want to avoid similar disasters if you possibly can.

3.1 Villainy begins early

Writers and agents, we may safely assume, began to have disputes and disagreements pretty much from the beginning, but the first recorded thief in this area was a certain A.A. Bright.

Bright specialised in drama rather than books, and J.M. Barrie was an enormously successful playwright (most famous today for the character Peter Pan). In 1906, perhaps overwhelmed by his financial problems, Bright committed suicide. And shortly before his agent’s death Barrie was privately informed that Bright had defrauded him of £18,000; other clients had lost similar sums.

In 1906, £18,000 was a huge sum of money. In 1939, my parents were able to by a perfectly good family house for £800. Barrie, however, must have been a forgiving soul, for when Bright died he wrote a generous eulogy in The Times. He was, wrote Barrie, ‘a man of the mind most catholic and cultured… of so beautiful and modest a nature… For many years he was my most loved friend.’

But then, of course, Barrie was definitely a bit peculiar.

3.2 The case of Harper Lee

It is easy for someone my age to assume that you are bound to know who Harper Lee was, but of course you may not. I will be as brief as possible.

Harper Lee wrote one novel, and one novel only. Its title was To Kill a Mockingbird. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961, and was turned into an Oscar-winning film, one which earned $20 million on a $2 million budget. In short, To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic of modern American literature.

From the point of view of the book’s income-generating power, it is important to note that it has been widely used as a set book in schools and colleges. Thus it has continued to sell in huge numbers for over fifty years: usually about 750,000 copies a year.

We now know, because of the data provided in court papers, that in one typical six-month period, ending in December 2009, Harper Lee’s royalties amounted to $1,688,064 and change. And the agent, we may reasonably assume, was on 15% of that.

Ms Lee had a number of agents over the years, but she was principally represented by McIntosh and Otis. Eventually, the man she dealt with there was one Samuel Pinkus. Lee seems to have trusted him totally.

About ten years ago, Pinkus left M&O to found his own agency, and Lee went with him. Harper Lee is now in her late eighties and in 2007 suffered a stroke.

To cut a long story short, Lee’s family and friends began to suspect that Pinkus had taken advantage of her age and her absolute trust in him. They discovered that, knowingly or not, she had signed a document which gave the entire copyright in her famous work to her agent. He owned the entire book, and therefore much of the income from it (depending on previous contracts).

Not surprisingly, the friends and family set about hitting Mr Pinkus with as heavy a legal brick as they could find, and one can hardly blame them.

If you want to read the full details of this case go to To Steal a Mockingbird? by Mark Seal. This is an article which appeared in Vanity Fair in 2013, and it is still available online.

The article is, I believe, well worth your attention, because it fully demonstrates that, because of the workings of randomness, not to mention their own devious scheming, some agents end up representing gold mines. And if they are not fully honest and reliable, the situation can get very messy and stressful; not to mention expensive in legal fees.

In September 2013, a lawyer for Pinkus announced that the warring parties (Lee and Pinkus) had reached an agreement in principle to settle the dispute between them. So let us hope that the wrongs have been put right, and that this frail old lady can live out the rest of her days in peace.

In her prime, Harper Lee certainly had no doubts about the way things were going. Her first agent was Maurice Crain, and when Crain died, in 1970, Lee realised that the old way of agenting had gone with him.

By the late 1980s, she was complaining that the literary business was a whole new ball game. Agents like Crain had been replaced by whippersnappers, whose only concern, she said, was their commission. Pity she wasn’t a bit quicker to spot what Pinkus was up to, but by then she had had a stroke.

3.3 Martha Grimes

Martha Grimes is not as big a name as Harper Lee, but she is the author of 22 mystery novels, plus a number of other books. In 2012 she won the Grand Master Award from the Mystery Writers of America.

In 2010, Martha found herself being sued by her former agent, Peter Lampack. Note the word former.

Lampack stated that he had negotiated a contract for Grimes which contained an ‘option’ clause. This kind of clause is very common – almost universal – and it gave Grimes’s publisher, Penguin, the right to have the first opportunity to publish her next book. As it happened, they did want to publish her next one. Lampack argued that he was therefore entitled to his commission on the second book, even though he was no longer Martha Grimes’s agent when Penguin actually bought the book.

In November 2010 Lampack lost the argument. A New York Supreme Court Judge dismissed most of his lawsuit. And I should hope so too. Cheeky bugger, that Lampack.

Ms Grimes no longer uses an agent, as such. Instead, her lawyer negotiates for her.

‘I’m sure there are some good agents out there,’ says Grimes. ‘I just don’t know who they are.’

Yup, they can be hard to find, that’s true.

Grimes has got her own back by writing a novel which takes the piss (as we say in the UK) out of the publishing industry in general and agents in particular. It’s called The Way of All Fish, and it sounds like fun.

3.4 The Asimov affair

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) is another well known name, at least if you’re of a certain age and are interested in science fiction. I, Robot is perhaps his most famous work: the film starred Will Smith and made a lot of money.

By any standards, Asimov was a remarkably prolific writer. He wrote, or edited, some 500 books on a wide variety of subjects, though concentrating on science. It is said that his books are listed in libraries under nine out of the ten major subject categories in the Dewey decimal system.

While he was alive, Asimov seems to have acted as his own agent, and according to come sources he was an absolute pushover in negotiations. When he sold what was to be his 262nd book to Doubleday, he accepted terms which any midlist author could have improved upon, and the firm had to more or less bully him into taking a $50,000 advance. He wanted $5,000. Well, maybe there were tax reasons; on both sides.

Anyway, with a track record like that it is obvious that after his death the estate would require some professional handling, and the family (daughter Robyn and widow Janet) appointed the Trident Media Group as agents.

Early in 2013 the relationship went sour, and the family tried to terminate the contract. The estate wanted a judge to declare the relationship over, and to require the trident Media Group to pay $1 million in damages for its ‘deceptive business practices’.

Four days later, they got a letter from TMG’s lawyer, which rejected the estate’s assertions and declared that the agreement was not terminated. So there, see.

Watch this space. At he time of writing this is not resolved.

Strange how reluctant these agent guys are to let you go when you’re making money, isn’t it? Whereas, if you’re just starting out, you’re lucky if you can get them to read a three-line letter.

Robert Gottlieb, by the way, the co-founder and Chairman of TMG, started the agency in 2000 after 24 years at the William Morris Agency, which is about as big a name as any. His clients have included Tom Clancy and Dean Koontz.

When this situation was reported on the Passive Voice blog, one comment came from a writer who said that he had recently been offered representation by a large NY agency, and the contract between writer and agent wasn’t terminable at all, once signed. Not ever. Not even for unsold rights. Needless to say, the commenter added, he did not sign, ‘but there are plenty of authors who have.’

3.5 The Agent as White Knight

So far in Part 3 I have presented a portrait of various agents as hard-nosed bastards who were, if not exactly crooks, then very definitely a bit on the dodgy side. They were, to quote Stephen King, the kind of people ‘who would steal the pennies off a dead man’s eyes’.

However, let us lean over backwards to be fair. Can we, do you think, find an agent who went out of his way to help an innocent lady client? An agent who saw all too clearly how his client had been given the old run-around, to her very definite disadvantage, and who went to some trouble to put things right?

Yes, indeed we can. His name is Arthur Klebanoff, and the incident is described in his 2002 book The Agent.

Once upon a time there was a very successful English romantic novelist named Anne Hampson. In the early part of her career, Anne was published by the English firm which was then known as Mills & Boon. In the UK, the name Mills & Boon is virtually synonymous with popular romantic fiction.

From 1971, however, Mills & Boon had technically been a subsidiary of Harlequin, a powerful North-American company which had its head office in Canada and another subsidiary in the United States.

In the early part of her career, Anne Hampson had operated without the benefit of an agent, but in the 1980s, with 100 novels behind her, she thought it was time to appoint one. So she chose the powerful New York firm of Morton Janklow Associates. The agent within that firm who looked after her interests was Arthur Klebanoff.

Given that Anne was a well established writer in the romance field, and was particularly popular in America, Klebanoff soon negotiated a new contract for her. The deal was done with Silhouette, an American firm, and the contract was for more than twenty books and $1 million.

Having arranged a very satisfactory contract for Anne’s future books, Klebanoff then began to look at her previous work, which had all been published by the London subsidiary of Harlequin, i.e. Mills & Boon – a firm which I shall refer to from here on as M&B.

When Klebanoff looked at Anne’s previous contracts with M&B he was shocked by what he saw. To cut a long story short, he found that this original publisher had offered his writer a series of contracts which were, shall we say, less favourable to the author than they might have been.

What was happening was that M&B had offered Anne a contract for world rights – a very common practice. M&B had then sold the rights to her books to their parent company, in Canada, which then sold the US rights to their American subsidiary.

At each stage of this transfer process, the companies had taken a slice of the action. In other words, for every dollar which Anne earned on royalties in the US, 75 cents were removed and retained by the two companies outside London. And, since the average print run for an Anne Hampson novel, in the US market, was 750,000, this amounted to a considerable sum. On each book. And she had published 100 of them.

This practice of passing the rights from company to company was, in Klebanoff’s view, entirely unnecessary. (That’s my view too.) It was certainly damaging to his client’s financial interests.

Clearly, the sole purpose of this elaborate game of pass-the-parcel was to increase the amount of income from Anne Hampson’s books which could be retained within the Harlequin group of companies, instead of being paid to the author. There was nothing illegal about it, but some observers might feel that it was the moral equivalent of stealing money from an old lady. It certainly wasn’t a gentlemanly approach.

None of this arrangement, needless to say, had ever been explained Anne Hampson herself. It took an experienced man, with a good head for figures, to go through the contracts and the royalty statements and work out the figures.

Once Klebanoff had a clear picture of what had been going on, he took action to obtain compensation for his client.

In his book, Klebanoff does not give us much detail of his discussions with M&B and its parent company. However, my guess is that, being a New Yorker, he used some pretty blunt language.

First, he would have told M&B that he was wise to what they were up to. Second, he would have pointed out that the contracts gave the author the right to examine the publisher’s books in respect of her royalties. Third, he would have made it clear that, unless they came up with a considerable sum of money by way of compensation, he would not only send in a team of auditors, but would also make it generally known in the book trade that he was having the books examined, and why. If the word of that spread, it would not be long before other agents in London also wised up to the situation, and sent in their own teams of accountants to pore over the figures for their authors as well.

This was not a happy prospect for M&B, or Harlequin. It’s never nice being caught being nasty to old ladies.

Harlequin refused to meet Mr Klebanoff in New York, to discuss this situation. They refused, he believes, in order ‘to protect themselves, they hoped, from jurisdiction in the United States.’  So he flew to London to negotiate the details.

When he arrived, he found that the Harlequin representatives had been doing some fast thinking. They now claimed that they had ‘misunderstood’ his earlier conversations with them.

The meeting was over in no time and a face-saving deal was done. Anne Hampson would receive a large sum of money, but its purpose would be disguised. This was certainly not compensation for being cheated, and it definitely wasn’t hush money. Dear me no. No, this payment was dressed up as the purchase price for the copyright of 92 of Anne Hampson’s books which had been published by M&B. The price paid was in seven figures. i.e. in excess of $1 million.

Through this deal, as Klebanoff explains, ‘Harlequin avoided the accounting issue and the risk that other authors would focus on these practices.’

In other words, it was tacitly understood that Klebanoff would not make it his business to inform every other M&B author  of what he had managed to negotiate, and why. (Not until he came to write his memoirs, anyway. Further details of these negotiations can be found in The Agent.)

This story leaves a particularly unpleasant taste in my mouth because I know that M&B went out of its way to make its most popular authors feel that they were highly valued and well treated.

Every Christmas the bestselling ladies would be sent a couple of bottles of something bubbly. Once a year they would receive a first-class return train ticket to London. On arrival, they would be warmly welcomed and taken to lunch at the Savoy Grill, or somewhere equally fashionable – a place where you might find Elizabeth Taylor at the next table. And then, as they were put back on the train home, they would have an enormous bunch of flowers thrust into their arms.

The ladies treated in this way would settle back in their seats with a nice warm feeling inside.

What perfect gentleman those lovely publishers are, she would say to herself.

Yeah, right.

PART 4: The impact of the digital age

4.1 POD

About fifteen years ago, if you were paying attention (and I for one certainly was), it was fairly easy to see that there were two pieces of digital technology which were going to have dramatic effects on the book-publishing business. The first of these was a process known as print-on-demand (POD).

Up to about the year 2000, printing was done on big heavy machines which went clank and smelt of hot oil. If you wanted something printed, the text had to be set up in lead type, clamped on to the machine, and then run off in as many copies as you required. Given the complexity of the process, and the time involved, few printers would dirty their machine for less than 500 copies and preferably 1,000.

Digital technology changed all that. I am old enough to remember that my first acquaintance with a Xerox copier was in 1972. Thereafter, that kind of technology improved steadily, until, round about the turn of the century, it was even possible to print paperback books on such a machine; and soon after that, you could do full-colour hardback books.

This process is now known as POD, or print on demand. Not surprisingly, it has offered amazing new opportunities. True, if you want a print-run of 750,000 paperbacks, it is still cheaper to use the old machines; but for short runs POD is ideal.

What this means, in practice, is that small publishers can, if they wish, take a risk with an obscure book, or a first-time novelist, at a much reduced cost.

More to the point, perhaps, a book need never go out of print. In the old days, if you sold your first printing of 2,000 copies, you then had to decide whether to keep the lead type in store (expensive), and if you did decide to do a reprint you would then have to store perhaps 1,000 new copies and wait for them to sell out – slowly. Meanwhile you were paying warehouse costs for them.

Today, you just make a digital file, and place an order for a single book, or half a dozen, as and when needed for a paying customer.

It is worth noticing, in passing, that in the old days it was common for a contract specify that if a book went out of print the contract would come to an end, and all rights would revert to the author. But now – happily for publishers but perhaps not so wonderfully for authors – a book need never go out of print.

Consequently a publisher can hang on to the rights for ever. And he will. Unless, of course, he is sick of the sight of you, in which case you will be dumped in short order.

Another point worth noticing is that POD opened the doors to tens of thousands of self-publishers. In fact, the figure is probably hundreds of thousands.

Technically, it had always been possible for an author to publish his own book. You could do it almost from the beginning of printing: all you needed was lots of money. You might also need a garage (or two) to store the books in while you tried to sell them. Which you never would.

As stated above, your printer would not take on the job without printing a substantial number, which had the benefit of reducing the unit cost to a level at which you might reasonably expect to sell some. But you would probably be left with 9,800 out of a print run of 10,000. People have gone bankrupt and been divorced by their spouses for lesser offences than that.

But today, POD offers truly amazing facilities at astonishingly low cost.

For example. Suppose you are some sort of eccentric weirdo, and you want to publish a full-colour hardback book, 12 inches square, 160 pages long, on top quality paper, consisting of nothing but photographs of various doors in Venice. The cost, 20 years ago, would have been unthinkable for anyone but a millionaire. Today you can do it for well under £100.

I know this for a fact, because that’s exactly what I did myself, four years ago. If you go to blurb.com and search for The Doors of Ancient Venice, you can have a look at my book on the preview page. As a matter of fact you can even buy a copy, because technically this book is ‘published’ in the sense that it’s on sale to the public. But no one ever has bought a copy, and I don’t expect them to. I created it purely for myself and a few friends who are keen on Venice.

If you want to print, say, 20 copies of a short story, to hand out to your local writers’ group, or a booklet about the history of your church, in simple black and white, then you can do that too, for perhaps a pound or two per copy.

If you have not yet grasped the point, it is this: anyone who wishes to publish their own book, in old-fashioned print form, can do so. All they have to do is learn the software and prepare the text for digital printing, or get a sixteen-year-old grandson to do it for them.

Should you feel terrified at the thought of anything more complicated than writing a letter in Word, then there are, of course, many firms which will do the job for you. These firms began to come to the fore about ten years ago, and now there are dozens of them.

The most famous provider of self-publishing services is perhaps a company called Author Solutions. It has many subsidiaries – some would say disguises. Over the past few years, companies of this type have ‘helped’ tens of thousands of writers to publish their novel, or their memoirs, or a book of favourite recipes – whatever. And no doubt there are, somewhere, some satisfied customers.

I have to say, however, that I have never used one of those services myself, because I don’t trust them and consider them far too expensive. And, from those who have used these services, there arises a never-ending stream of complaint – often couched in the bitterest terms.

If you google “Author Solutions”, and ignore the top returns because they often lead to the firm’s own pages, you will soon get a feeling for the attitude of many customers. Phrases such as ‘market leader in author exploitation’ and ‘universally reviled’ soon come to your attention.

In 2012, Author Solutions was purchased by Penguin for $116 million, which gives you some idea of the perceived scale of potential customers and the estimated profit which can be made from them. But three former clients of Author Solutions feel so strongly that they have been cheated that they are going much further than the usual litany of complaints on internet forums. These three are trying to launch a class-action lawsuit against Penguin, alleging that Author Solutions misrepresents itself with the intention of attracting authors, makes false claims, fails to pay royalties, and so on and so forth. The three authors claim $5 million in damages.

Some observers are watching Author Solutions very carefully. And they don’t like what they see. They believe that the firm exploits over-ambitious writers who are prepared to spend their life savings, or somebody else’s, on publicising a book in the mistaken belief that, once publicised, it will rise to the top of the bestseller lists.

David Gaughran, for example, recently noted that, for some years, Author-Solutions reps have been attending the prestigious literary festival known as the LA Times Book Fair.

In 2013, Author Solutions set up 80 book signings for their clients, at this one Fair, and in addition they ‘showcased’ some 1,100 titles.

And how much, do you think, did that raise for the company?

Gaughran says that the company’s own price lists states that they charge $3,999 to run a book signing, and $599 for a showcase. Total at one Book Fair: $319,920.

But those rates are cheap. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that you want to give your book a whole-page ad in the book-industry must-read trade journal, Publishers Weekly. Cost? $16,499. And a whole-page ad page in the Readers’ Digest? $72,499.

It’s a lot of money. But then the entire world would know of your book and it would sell like crazy, right?

Hmmm…

And if you do sign up with this firm, or one of its associate companies, be prepared for the hard sell via a constant stream of phone calls and emails.

Certainly, whichever way you look at it, providing services to self-publishers is now a massive business. Of course, the POD side of the business is only part of it – more about the ebook version in the next section – but estimates of numbers of books and authors involved are pretty staggering for old-timers like me.

In 2013, a media technology company called New Publisher House published a report which suggested that the self-publishing market is worth $52 billion a year, which is twice that of traditional publishing.

The report also estimates (and they can only be estimates) that the number of aspiring authors who have completed manuscripts of books is more than 100 times the number of actual published authors. And self-published titles currently going on sale are 8 times the number of new titles in mainstream publishing.

Even if you divide these figures by two (or ten?), they still amount to a huge amount of authors, books, and money.

4.2 Here come the ebooks

Ebooks have been around for well over ten years, but in the early days they were mostly made available in pdf form, or as Word files. Most people didn’t seem to care for reading fiction – or long-form non-fiction – on a computer; and in those days computers were all desktop models. So most ordinary members of the public didn’t really expect ebooks to take off.

Except, that is, for a few far-sighted souls. Consider the US firm Renaissance E Books, which was founded in 1997. This firm was undoubtedly one of the earliest publishers of ebooks on the web. In 2003 I signed a number of contracts with Renaissance to republish some of my own books in new digital formats; these contracts were models of their kind. In 2013, when I wanted to concentrate all my ebooks in one place, I was able to claim back the rights with no problems, and I republished the books again via Kindle.

The ebook revolution can be said, for all practical purposes, to have begun on 19 November 2007, when Amazon first offered the Kindle for sale. The Kindle was the first little computer thingy which was designed principally for reading ebooks, and there must have been a bunch of people out there waiting for it because it sold out in five and a half hours. Even at $399. The device remained out of stock for the next five months.

This event was the catalyst for another vast change in the book-publishing universe.

It took a while for the Kindle to catch on. Lots of people swore that they really didn’t want to read books on some weird little gadget. Nothing like the feel of paper, et cetera, et cetera. But as soon as they got one they were on it day and night.

Ditto the writers. At first it was, Oh, I really want the validation of a traditional publisher. Any fool can shove things up on Kindle, there are no standards, full of rubbish, who would offer anything at 99 cents if it was any good? And so forth.

Well, let’s have a look at how popular the Kindle is now (and of course there are other devices which do the same thing).

Amazon itself doesn’t issue any sales figures, but Morgan Stanley (a merchant bank with its ear close to the ground) estimates that Amazon sold $3.57 billion worth of Kindle ereaders and tablets in 2012, and $4.5 billion worth of Kindle devices in 2013. Best guess for 2014 is $5 billion.

And how many books do you think the average Kindle owner buys, and at what average price? Take a look at your own device. Even allowing for those freebies that you’ve got on there, it’s still going to be quite a lot of money.

By the summer of 2010, Amazon was telling us that, in the previous three-month period, it had sold 143 Kindle ebooks for every 100 hardcover books. So much for all those readers who swore that they much preferred the feel of a book, would never switch to Kindle, can’t see the attraction, blah, blah, umpety blah.

The writers were, as I say, a bit slow to catch on. I wasn’t exactly lightning fast myself. But before long I became a passionate advocate. In my monthly column for the UK’s Writing Magazine I have been pointing out, over and over again, that this is (useful cliché) a golden age for writers.

We are in the early morning (dawn has gone by) of a new age of limitless digital opportunity. And unless you have lived through several decades of doing things the old way, and have experienced the pain and heartache which accompany such efforts, you just can’t imagine how lucky you are.

Today it is no longer necessary for writers to slave away for years, knocking on countless doors of agents and publishers, only to face continual rejection. Today – right now – writers no longer need to bother about agents and publishers. They can do it all themselves. They can write a book and publish it in ebook or paperback form without having to persuade a single soul to help them, or spend a penny piece on the process. What is more they can sometimes go from frequently rejected unknown to big-selling superstar in just a few months – using exactly the same book!

Here is just one example.

The Mill River Recluse is a novel by Darcie Chan. And when you look this lady up you find that hers is an absolutely classic story of the digital age.

It took her three years to complete the book, after which she tested it out on her family and friends, polished it up, and sent it out to traditional publishers. Got absolutely nowhere. Scores of rejections. Sent it out to dozens of agents, with the same result. Then one top-class agent took her on (Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord). Laurie sent it to all her best contacts, over a further two-year period. But still no sale.

By that time Darcie had become aware of this new-fangled digital self-publishing business. So she gave it a try. She edited the book herself, did her own formatting, designed her own cover, and handled her own publicity.

The book was published as a Kindle ebook in May 2011. In June, she was thrilled when 100 copies had been sold. After that, aided by some hard work on marketing, and a little bit of advertising, things began to snowball, until in the latter part of the year the book was selling several thousand copies a day.

At the end of 2011, when the figures were added up, The Mill River Recluse turned out to be the fourth biggest-selling book on the whole of Amazon in 2011. These figures were achieved with no paper edition at all. It was ‘just’ an ebook. And one that had been repeatedly rejected by the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.

What distinguished this book from ten thousand others? Ah, if only we knew. All we can say, with any confidence, is that sometimes a book will find its readers and really take off. But mostly it won’t.

If you really aren’t familiar with any other big-time self-published successes, google the names Anne Hocking, John Locke, Hugh Howey, and Joe Konrath. There are plenty of others.

4.3 The effects of ecommerce on publishers

Just to remind you, this is a book about literary agents. And in Part 4 we are primarily considering the impact on agents of the recent digital developments in printing and publishing.

Sections 4.1 and 4.2 outlined the far-reaching effects of print-on-demand and ebook technology respectively. So now it’s time to look more directly at the impact that these events have had on publishers, because the publishers are the group of firms with which the agents interact most closely. Perhaps even more closely than they work with authors. Thus the impact of change on publishers has powerful effects on agents too.

Let’s see what has happened to publishers in the last 15 years, and how they have responded. Then we’ll look at the knock-on effects on agents, and what changes they have made, simply in order to survive.

Historically speaking, publishers were themselves jumped-up little interlopers. In the early days of printed books there were simply authors and printers. The author wrote a book and then took it along to his local printer, where he struck some sort of a deal. Before long the printers found it convenient to become printer-booksellers. The printing machine was in the back room of a house on a busy street, and the front room was turned into a shop to sell the products.

It was only later that some unscrupulous fellows who called themselves publishers wormed their way into this perfectly satisfactory existing arrangement. Mind you, the memory of how they’d done that didn’t stop the publishers from complaining bitterly about a new set of middlemen, the agents, when the agents likewise slid themselves artfully in between the writers and the publishers.

Now the really fascinating thing about the twenty-first century book scene is this. Within 15 years it has been demonstrated beyond doubt that, for narrative fiction and non-fiction (the sort which does not require any pictures or complicated footnotes), ebooks are an ideal medium. And, where ebooks are concerned, neither the agents nor the publishers are required at all. For ebooks there are authors, and the printer-bookseller (let’s say Kindle-Amazon). And then there’s the reader. That’s the bare minimum; all else is distraction.

This reduction in the number of parties involved (and hence in those taking a slice of the money) even has a fancypants name: it’s called disintermediation.

The possibility of disintermediation has come as a nasty shock to some publishers and agents. And some of us, I’m sorry to say, find it hard to resist having a damn good laugh. But the agents and publishers can’t say they weren’t warned.

Around the turn of the century, Jason Epstein wrote a book entitled Book Business; in the US it was published 2001. This book was an examination of present practice in publishing, and also provided a far-sighted glimpse into the future. Epstein was unusually well qualified to write such a book, because he had been editorial director of Random House, in New York, for forty years.

It was also around the turn of the century that I myself, in England, was setting up small publishing company, mainly to publish my own books, under a variety of pen-names; I intended to take full advantage of the new POD technology. This project involved me talking to wholesalers, printers, booksellers, other publishers, library staff, and, not least, readers. Wherever I went I asked as many people as I could whether they had read Epstein’s Book Business. I never found anyone who had.

This did not surprise me, because by then I had concluded that the people who worked in the book business were, as individuals, a pleasure to know; they were people whom you would welcome as neighbours, and perhaps even as suitors for your daughter’s hand. But as professionals, profit-makers, long-term business strategists… Hopeless. Clueless  beyond redemption.

Even when his book was published, Epstein had already concluded that successful writers didn’t need really publishers at all. People like Stephen King and Danielle Steel, with massively successful track records, they could quite easily have cut free from agents and publishers, and could have bought in such talent as they needed, in terms of editors, book designers, printers, book distributors, and so forth. By doing so they would probably have earned a great deal more at the end of the day. In practice, however, at that stage, they all chose to continue doing things the old way – but that was presumably because it suited their convenience to do so. (Either that or they weren’t paying any attention either.)

Epstein was a big POD fan, and he predicted a situation whereby a simple coffee shop on your local high street might have a printing machine parked at the back. You would come in the door, order a coffee of your choice, and then order the latest J.K. Rowling to take out with you fifteen minutes later.

That arrangement has not quite come to fruition yet, but there is now a contract in force between Xerox and Kodak to run such a facility through the Kodak photographic printing shops.

Summary: Since 2000, developments in digital technology have given writers, agents, publishers, printers, and – not least – readers, plenty to think about.

Writers are, I repeat (because it bears repeating) no longer obliged to go knocking on agents’ doors if they don’t want to; they don’t have to sign less than generous publishers’ contracts if they don’t want to; publishers have tried hard to make truckloads of money by illegally conspiring to fix the prices of ebooks, and have failed, resulting in multi-million dollar fines from the US department of Justice; and readers have discovered that digital ebook readers are a very convenient way to carry around books, and that they can buy lots of good reading at modest prices, or even get ebooks free.

4.3.1 Some real-life examples of how life has become difficult for publishers

In 2010, Jason Epstein’s statement, that writers don’t really need publishers at all, was validated, at least in respect of popular non-fiction.

It was in that year that the marketing guru Seth Godin, author of 12 print bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages, announced that in future he will no longer work through traditional publishers. Godin argues that, in an ebook world, there are viable ways of cutting publishers out of the loop. (Thus disintermediation ceases to be a concept and now becomes a fact.) In future, Godin and others like him will be able to reach people just as effectively, if not more so, without traditional publishers, and will end up making more money.

Prior to coming to this conclusion, Godin had been talking to many established print publishers, and he was unimpressed by what he found. ‘Most of them looked at me like I was nuts for being an optimist. One CEO worked as hard as she could to restrain herself, but failed and almost threw me out of her office by the end. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t heartbroken at the fear I saw.’

In the three or four years since that time, there have been numerous lesser known authors who have come to the same conclusion as Seth Godin. They have decided to go their own way, without benefit of agent or traditional  publisher.

Here’s a minor example from the UK. In 2012, Janet MacLeod Trotter’s novel The Tea Planter’s Daughter was one of the top ten bestselling Kindle ebooks on Amazon.co.uk.

This book was first published in the UK, in hardback, by Headline in 2007, when it had the title The Tea Planter’s Lass; a paperback came a year later. (Just in case you’re new to this business, let me say that Headline is a major UK publisher of commercial fiction, and many authors would give a couple of teeth to be put on their list.) In addition to the hardback and paperback editions, there were also CD and cassette versions of a talking-book edition, and a large-print edition from Magna.

What Janet MacLeod Trotter had done was republish an old book in ebook form, given it a new cover and a slightly different title, and had made it into a big hit.

Today, if you look at Janet MacLeod Trotter’s own web site, you will see that she is the author of 16 books which were originally published through Headline, beginning in 1993; most of these fall into the family saga or women’s fiction category. She also writes crime fiction under the name J.M. MacLeod.

Furthermore – and this is where it begins to get really interesting – Janet’s web site tells us that she now runs a ‘micro publishing business, specialising in paperbacks and ebooks.’ Its name is MacLeod Trotter Books (MTB).

Back to Amazon again, and we find that MTB has 34 books on its list, including the ones previously published by Headline. And Headline, for its part, no longer lists Janet’s name on its list of authors.

So – one traditionally published author, with a successful if minor career, has gone indie.

This trend seems to be catching on. Or at any rate, writers are now well aware of the possibilities, if not actually choosing to go that route.

The 2014 Digital Book World and Writer’s Digest Author Survey provides the best data we have so far. More than 9,000 writers were asked to describe their experiences and intentions.

Of the aspiring writers who had completed a manuscript and submitted it to either agents or editors, only one third were determined to pursue the traditional route and no other. Roughly two thirds of the authors were open to digital possibilities.

Self-published authors represented nearly two thirds of those in the survey who had achieved publication by one means or another. So, using the new technology, these particular writers had found a way to reach readers with stories which might otherwise never have been published. Thank you publishers (perhaps), but goodbye.

To be fair, we have to note that there was traffic in both directions. Some traditionally published writers had gone indie, and some indies had signed traditional contracts if offered.

The message is surely clear. Traditional publishers can no longer depend on writers assuming that the traditional route to readers is the only one.

Outcome: Traditional publishers are deeply worried about their profits and are seeking more or less any means, however dubious, to improve the situation. In other industries, even some household names have been swept away by digital change, and publishers, with the rarest of exceptions, are not household names.

4.4 The nature of the publishers’ responses

How did publishers respond to all this? The comments set out here are those of an external observer, of course. Insiders might give you a different perspective, if they were prepared to speak frankly.

4.4.1 Denial

As far as I can see, the publishers’ response began with denial. Can’t possibly happen here. Then it moved to a mood of concern, bordering upon panic, as exhibited by those publishers who were interviewed by Seth Godin in 2010.

4.4.2 Collude with other publishers not to cut each other’s throats

Next came a sense of being overtaken by the inevitable, plus a truly ludicrous attempt to fix the prices of ebooks. If we must have these ghastly ebook editions, they seem to have said to themselves, let’s make sure they really pull in the cash.

Experienced media lawyers such as C.E. Petit could hardly believe that publishers could be so stupid. In their blind rush to grab every penny going, they as good as stuck up a placard saying, Look at us, aren’t we clever? The fix is in, but you’ll never prove it.

Oops. The Department of Justice didn’t have much trouble with that one.

4.4.3. In the case of existing contracts: grab all the rights possible

Next move, grab all the rights you can. Many publishers began to issued addendums to existing contracts (or addenda if you were taught Latin). These addendums, all too often, seize rights which the publisher did not own before, and, even if they did own the rights, take a bigger percentage of the income.

4.4.4 Make new contracts less favourable to writers

Bright idea by several publishers simultaneously – they would have us  believe. Do not offer advances on the scale of former times. Avoid holding auctions, which make a publisher bid against other publishers and thus pushes the price up.

Another move: Tighten up all new contracts offered to new writers. In particular, fix the new clauses so that no writer ever gets her rights back; the contract will last for the author’s life plus 70 years. (Or until the politicians are bribed enough to extend the term of copyright even further. It will have to be bribery because there aren’t any good arguments for making copyright last any longer than it does already.)

Dazzle the writers with contract complexity so that the fact that they are signing for the full period of copyright might not be noticed. The newbies are going to be so delighted by being offered a contract by the famous Bootsie & Snudge that they won’t care. And their agent, in the circumstances, might not notice it either. Or might notice it and choose not to mention it. (Agents are desperate for income too, you know.)

The thing is, you see, a publisher never knows when a book might succeed against all expectations, so their present view is that it is best to lock up the book, and the author, for ever. Makes it so much easier to cover all the possibilities.

‘Make no mistake,’ said Jason Epstein of publishing, ‘this is gambling.’ Which is why the prospect of low prices for ebooks is so scary to publishers: if they are the gambler placing scores of bets, and hoping that one occasional big-time winner will more than cover their losses, low prices are bad news. That is why they want to pay authors barely a third of the royalty offered to indies by Amazon. So it becomes more and more essential to have that author tightly bound in an unbreakable contract.

Harry Potter, for example, was absolutely not recognised as a hit when he first appeared. The famous J.K. Rowling’s vast money-earning machine was rejected by every publisher in London bar one, and was bought eventually for a mere £2,500.

And you never know how many years might go by before even a small and obscure book starts to earn serious money.

Example: The Gently novels by Alan Hunter. In 1955, the English writer Alan Hunter published his first crime novel featuring Inspector Gently. He went on to produce 46 of them in all, the last one appearing in 1999.

Alan Hunter, it is fair to say, was never more than a journeyman writer. His books were never big hits on the Inspector Morse scale, and Constable, his final publisher, used to print about 2,000 copies of books like that; they mostly sold to libraries.

In 2007, BBC TV started to serialise the Gently books, but it was all a bit late in the day for Alan because he died in 2005. And now, in 2014, the TV detective has just begun his sixth series, and it is being shown in 16 other countries. Not a huge pot of gold but a nice little earner, long after the author has gone.

Still on contracts: Publishers are now making quite sure to include a non-compete clause. This makes it impossible for a writer to sell anything elsewhere which might compete with the book offered for sale by Bootsie & Snudge. In fact, a carefully drafted non-compete clause can prevent you from ever writing in the same genre during the term of your publishing contract – which, as we have noted above, is likely to be your life plus 70 years.

According to media lawyer David Vandagriff, ‘some publishers attempt to disguise their non-compete clauses by burying them back in the contract boilerplate that inexperienced authors and some agents don’t read.’

At this point, pause for breath.

What else can a poor-but-honest big-time publisher do to pull in some income?

Ah yes. Get the writer to pay. Pay for a lot more than she does already. Persuade the writer to pay her own way on book-signing sessions and sales gimmicks of that sort.

And – now this is a really good one – set up digital-only imprints under the traditional-publisher framework!

4.4.5 In-house digital imprints

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em!

Somebody somewhere had a Eureka moment, and decided to develop a cunning plan. Instead of losing potential winners to the self-published arena, why not give the reasonably competent writers an opportunity to be published by the famous Bootsie & Snudge, but make them pay for it! And go on paying for it.

Once devised this scheme caught on.

Consider, for instance, the once noble and respected Random House. In my youth, to be published by Random House was a dream seldom accomplished by all but a select few. However, in 2013 RH announced four new digital imprints for various genres: Hydra, Alibi, Loveswept, and Flirt. In order to publicise their innovation, and to attract writers to the scheme, they felt obliged to make public certain aspects of their contracts.

I think it is fair to say that the terms of these contracts were greeted by experienced writers with utter disgust and contempt.

For example, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America issued a public letter to RH which said, among other uncomplimentary things, ‘Your attempt to shift to the author costs customarily borne by the publisher is, simply, outrageous and egregious…. Hydra intends to act in a predatory manner towards authors, and in particular toward newer authors who may not have the experience to recognize the extent to which your contract is beyond the pale of standard publishing practices.’

I hope I don’t need to say more.

If you are initially attracted to the idea of being published on a digital imprint organised and run by a big-time publisher, do yourself a favour and google widely on the nature of that contract in particular, and similar contracts in general.

The conclusion that you are likely to come to is, in my opinion, that the digital imprint will do nothing for you that you couldn’t do for yourself via Kindle Direct Publishing, or something similar, and the royalty earned on any sales which do result through the big-time publisher will be lower than for a do-it-yourself enterprise.

4.4.4 Yet more cunning plans

Oh. And offer a few other cunning ways to get authors to pay.

Such as offering writers a chance to learn to write.

Once upon a time there was a famous UK publisher known as Faber & Faber – usually abbreviated to the one Faber.  Founded in the 1920s, the firm gradually acquired a reputation as the home of literary quality. Since I am a vulgarian with no interest in literary fiction, I personally only used to read the crime fiction which they occasionally published; they went slumming in that area presumably to avoid bankruptcy, because the other stuff certainly didn’t sell.

An early director of Faber was the poet T.S. Eliot. And if you haven’t heard of Eliot, you have almost certainly heard of the famous stage musical Cats. This was based on Eliot’s 1939 book light verse, Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It is said – and I do not doubt it – that the royalties from Cats are the only source of income, in recent years, which has kept Faber afloat.

Recently, however, things must have been getting really tight. To increase income, the company has therefore established the Faber Academy. This occupies the fourth floor of the Faber building and purports to teach writers how to write.

And it works! Allegedly. ‘Faber Academy courses have started careers for bestsellers like SJ Watson and Rachel Joyce,’ says the web site, ‘and helped many more find agents.’

Details of fees are not easy to find on the web site, but the online novel-writing six-month course offers fortnightly sessions, one to one feedback, and peer-review sessions. The cost is £2500.

In early 2014, Random House UK has announced ‘its first online writing course, Creative Writing for Beginners.’ Cost: £499.

4.5 The effect of ecommerce on agents

4.5.1 The toughest job in the business

The impact of the digital revolution on publishers has had similar effects on agents: and the nature of the problem for agents is essentially the same: it’s money.

The money is not flowing in as promptly as it used to, and when it does arrive the payment has shrunk.

I have often said, and if I haven’t said it before in this book I will say it now, that being a literary agent has always been the toughest job in the book business.

For one thing, the job is inevitably demanding on time. Someone has to read the submissions from aspiring writers. And even if you employ a team of interns (more suckers prepared to work for no pay in order to ‘gain experience’), you have absolutely no guarantee that they can tell Stork from butter (or shit from Shinola, if you’re American). So in the end the agent just has to read some stuff herself. Which takes time, if you do the job properly.

Then you may get involved in rewrites with the author. Maybe.

Historically speaking, some of the very best agents have been willing to work closely with their writers to get the work into ideal shape for submission. The best plan has always been to submit a book to the right publisher at a point where not a word needs to be changed.

(Incidentally, the comment above is in danger of ignoring survivorship bias. Yes, it is true that some very successful agents have worked closely with their authors. But what of the agents who conscientiously committed endless time to their clients, but who happened, through no fault of their own, to have some Mafia books ready to submit at precisely the moment when the fashion for godfather books faded? Such agents failed and went out of business, despite their best efforts.)

So, before we proceed to be somewhat critical of agents, in terms of their responses to digital challenges, let us remember that theirs is always a demanding and exhausting calling. You need both physical and emotional resilience. A private income wouldn’t hurt, either.

4.5.2 The specific difficulties of the digital era

As we have seen, publishers who are suffering from digital difficulties tend to (i) reduce the size of advances paid to midlist authors; (ii) try to reduce or eliminate their need to compete with other publishers for the books with obvious commercial potential; (iii) increase their share of the proceeds by varying the terms of in both past contracts and new ones; and (iv) concentrate on celebrity books, or books with some sort of ‘platform’, while ignoring the aspiring nobodies.

All of these manoeuvres impact upon agents’ cash flow, and agents tend to have much smaller reserves than publishers. If things turn bad they are unlikely to be able to survive for five lean years and then bounce back.

Agents are supposed to understand contracts and be in a position to judge whether they are ‘fair’ or not. But, in these more difficult times, they may think twice before they complain about harsher contractual terms. For one thing, writers come and go, but publishers tend to live forever – in one form or another. So, complaining too hard may mean that an agent becomes known as a pain in a sensitive place, and future submissions are ignored, or put at the bottom of the pile.

Furthermore, however well intentioned agents may be, it becomes difficult for them to work with authors whose work is not quite there yet. They can’t afford the time. If they do submit such work to publishers, it may well be turned away. Sterling Lord remarks, in his memoirs, that in recent years, publishers have taken to flatly rejecting books which they might once have been willing to sign up and wait while the polish was applied.

Some experienced writers, while sympathising with the agents’ predicament to some extent, feel that agents have recently become all too pally with the publishers.

For example: In 2012, the Association of Authors’ Representatives wrote an open letter asking all agents and writers to write to the US Department of Justice, saying that they objected to the lawsuit which the DOJ had filed against the major publishers. You will remember that the DOJ was pursuing the top publishers for conspiring to fix the prices of ebooks at an unfairly high level, in a way which was contrary to consumers’ interests (and contrary to antitrust laws).

This letter from the AAR generated immediate and angry responses from quite a number of experienced writers. What the agents should have been doing, many writers claimed, was looking after the interests of their clients, not speaking up for ‘the enemy’.

Dean Wesley Smith, for example, is a writer who has published 100 popular novels and well over 100 short stories. Smith said of the AAR letter: ‘Now agents have gone so far as to flat out represent publishers. Right out in public. No more hiding their true intent now.’ Result, said Smith: ‘Smart writers are running in droves from agents.’

The US lawyer C.E. Petit, who specialises in copyright law and authors’ issues, was brutal. The AAR, he said, ‘demonstrates its inability to understand law – despite its members’ obligation to look out for the legal interests of its clients…. The letter is not just nonsense. It reflects disdain for the AAR’s clients, to whom each AAR member owes a duty of loyalty.’

C.E. Petit also pointed out that it was ironic that the AAR’s predecessor ‘got smacked – hard, and deservedly – for antitrust violations, resulting eventually in its demise.’

Where does this leave agents? It certainly leaves them feeling less interested in aspiring authors than in years gone by. Instead they are scratching around for really commercial projects. Another example offered by Sterling Lord: he describes phoning an editor and beginning to pitch a book to her. But before he had got very far she interrupted him. ‘What’s the platform?’ she wanted to know.

In other words, is this author a TV soap actress? Or a world-class expert in his field (if it’s non-fiction). Can we guarantee an interview on Oprah? (Or whatever the new Oprah may be.) If not, thanks, but no thanks. If you’re a provincial nobody, you’re not even worth a long phone call. We’re busy people, here at Bootsie & Snudge.

Faced with these kind of problems, agents may well begin to wish they had the balls of Swifty Lazar. He, you may recall, used to put together big-platform books without actually consulting the star name until the deal was agreed in principle. Few agents of today can do that.

4.6 The nature of the agents’ responses

4.6.1 Desperate doings: rogues, villains, and improvisers

From the very beginning there have been agents with sticky fingers. Remember J.M. Barrie being parted from £18,000? But in recent years there have grown up a series of entrepreneurs who have abandoned all serious pretence of actually doing any serious agenting. Instead they make a living from suckers.

At this point I have to say, as tactfully as possible, that young and inexperienced writers are all too often their own worst enemies. The idea of signing up with an agent, any agent, offers them (they think) a wonderful opportunity to impress their family and friends.

Fortunately, a remedy is at hand.

For a good many years, the writers’ organisation known as Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America has operated a web site named Writer Beware. Go to this web site and read what it has to say about the multiplicity of crooked schemes and proposals which are floated temptingly under the noses of aspiring writers.

For your own health, it is absolutely essential to read all the Writer Beware pages on agents, and on publishers too, for that matter. I am not going to reinvent the wheel by listing all the various scams here. But just one paragraph from Writer Beware will act as a taster:

‘Dishonest agents prey on writers by charging fees, promoting their own paid services, engaging in kickback schemes, shilling for vanity publishers, and misrepresenting their knowledge and expertise. These agents’ income doesn’t derive from selling manuscripts to publishers, but from extracting money from clients.’

This paragraph comes from a site which, in my opinion, leans over backwards to be fair to those it criticises.

4.6.2 Writers’ contracts with agents

In the old days, at least in the UK, there was no written contract between an agent and his clients. I never exchanged letters or signed any other formal document binding me to an agent, and no one ever suggested that I should. It was all done informally. And when it came time to say goodbye, which it does, surprisingly frequently, it was again done in a polite and friendly manner, with good wishes expressed (sincerely) on both sides.

Which is not to say that the ‘informal’ agreement might not have been viewed as a contract in a court of law, but I never heard of a such a case going to court. For one thing, the money involved would frequently have been so small as to make it insane to run up vast lawyers’ bills.

Frequently, but not always. We will come to Harry Potter in a moment.

However… Times change, and the US is a far more litigious country than the UK. So you may not be too surprised to hear that, in today’s market, formal contracts between agents and writers are often the norm. It is now common practice for authors who do strike lucky (?) and find an agent who is willing to represent them, to be faced with signing on the dotted line.

And perhaps the most useful thing I can say at this point is, Hold! Pause! Do not sign! At least not yet. Not till you know exactly what you are signing. And perhaps not even then.

If you google around, as I have on your behalf, you can find reference to one big-name agency which has a five-page agreement for the intending author to sign.

Five pages. And on one of them it says that the agency is entitled to commissions earned by, paid to, or credited to the author (or, incidentally, any entity owned by or controlled by the author), ‘in perpetuity.’

Note that, this is not some fly-by-night elementary scam. This is a serious legal document drawn up and offered by highly paid lawyers representing a major firm of agents with major writers on their books. And they want your money – or some of it – in perpetuity.

Sounds like a long time to me.

The best advice I have seen offered by highly experienced writers, with decades of experience, is that before you sign any such agreement you should seek out a well qualified media lawyer (sometimes known as an intellectual-property, or IP,  lawyer). And get him to check it over. Twice. I can only agree.

There are, reportedly, a few agents (probably small ones) who still operate on the handshake model. You may be able to find one. But the attraction of being linked to a household name (in publishing circles) is a strong one.

An experienced observer (and I like to think I am one such) can visualise so many potential complications in the author-agent relationship that mine eyes glaze over.

But one such complication is surely obvious to everyone. What happens at the parting of the ways?

The luckiest agent of all time was Christopher Little, in the UK. His office was one of those which received a submission from a person by the name of J.K. Rowling.

Rowling’s book was some sort of weirdo magic spells kids’ story, and it had already been rejected by numerous other agencies. However, according to a long-ago article in Publishing News (a UK weekly long since deceased), young Harry Porter caught the eye of Little’s secretary. (You know how it is on a slow day – you look around for anything to read.) She got interested in the ms and shoved it in front of her boss.

The rest is history. And indeed it is history now. Little took on Ms Rowling, with no great faith, and his lack of real interest was soon echoed by publishers. But one eccentric liked the book and published it. Small time.

It was the kids wot done it. About a year after HP first appeared, I was in a bookshop with my wife, looking for a birthday present for a nephew aged about 11. Down in the children’s section, two small boys of the right age group were flicking through the books on a table.

I outlined the problem. ‘What would you recommend?’

Both boys put their finger on Harry Potter. Which I bought.

So did millions of others, acting on playground word of mouth, and it would be interesting to speculate how many millions Mr Little made as a result. The word on the street is that it was a normal-terms deal, 15% for the UK and 20% of everything else.

Obviously, that sort of arrangement could not last for ever, not with all those millions sloshing around, and after about 15 years (1996-2011) the agent was ‘dumped’. That’s the way it was put in the Daily Telegraph in 2012, so it must be true.

The Telegraph report went on to describe Mr Little as ‘the enigmatic agent who spotted the potential of her first manuscript.’

Ms Rowling, the report said, had managed to avoid going to court with her ex-agent. Instead, the two parties had reached an amicable agreement to separate, ‘the details of which are confidential.’

Well, I dare say Ms Rowling can afford this settlement, whatever it cost. But it would be nice to foresee such a possibility, and to forestall it if possible. Wouldn’t it?

4.6.3 Contracts with publishers as negotiated by agents

Given the hard times we live in, agents are obliged to pay close attention to their position in the long term as well as the short term.

Should an agent ever negotiate a contract with a publisher, while acting on your behalf, you can be quite sure that the contract will recognise the fact that the agent has been appointed as your representative, and that all royalties due under the contract will be paid to him; and then, we hope, to you.

Such a clause will probably also specify that this arrangement applies for the life of the contract. So, even if, in the course of time, you replace agent 1 with agent 2, this arrangement will probably still apply. I say probably because media lawyers are adept at counting the angels on the head of a pin, and they get paid by the hour, you know. So there well be much debate about the precise meaning of such a clause, both in court and on the courtroom steps.

Suppose your new agent, agent 2, sells the film rights of a book which was first published under a contract written by agent 1. How does that work out?

I’ve never been in that happy position, but I suspect that, if you’re not careful, you will end up like one of those not-too-bright heavyweight boxers, some of whom sold 110% of themselves over a period of time – boxing not being an occupation which improves the memory.

I wonder how the clause about receiving commission for the life of the contract was interpreted in the case of the contracts written by UK agent Christopher Little.

There are other complications. What happens if you self-publish a book that the agent couldn’t sell for you. Who, if anyone, gets a commission then?

Oh, I tell you, it’s no end of fun being a writer.

4.6.4 Offer courses

Publishers such as Faber are not the only people to have noticed that writers are willing to pay large sums to be taught how to write.

There are, of course, countless universities and colleges which offer degrees in ‘creative writing’. And now the UK literary agency Curtis Brown has joined the club.

‘At London's leading literary agency, authors agents and industry professionals are teaching a new generation of writers.’

Well, there’s an interesting variation on being a boring old agent, plain and simple.

As usual, it’s hard to find a mention of fees for the Curtis Brown academy, but, in internet reports, £2,400 has been suggested as the price.

4.6.5 Conferences: the pay-a-fee-to-find-an-agent circus

L.J. Sellers, a well established full-time novelist, recently blogged that she was no longer going to attend Thrillerfest, which is an annual conference for thriller fans and writers.

Thrillerfest is in any case an expensive conference to attend, and may involve an expensive flight to get there. But what makes L.J. Sellers unwilling to make an appearance there is Agentfest, which is a sub-conference within the larger gathering.

Agentfest, as the name suggests, enables writers to have one-to-one pitching sessions with agents. Well, I say agents. Some disenchanted attendees have noted that those representing the agencies are mostly junior members of staff. Such junior staff are delighted to go to the conference to represent their employers, because they get free room and board and everyone treats them like a goddess. Some newbie writers are thrilled if the agent hands them a business card. However, do I need to add that an enthusiastic response from an agent on the conference floor may later lead to a disappointing letter?

Even more to the point, however, L.J. Sellers has come to the conclusion that anything which encourages new authors to sign with an agent – any agent – is counterproductive. ‘I don’t have anything against agents personally. But their role in publishing has become mostly obsolete… This practice [agents recruiting at conferences] seems unscrupulous.’

4.6.6 Agents turn publisher

We have already noted that some publishers – even the biggest names of all – have gone into business as publishers of ebooks. For a consideration, of course.

And guess what? Quite a few agents have done the same.

First into the act, as far as I can see, was the gentleman from Harvard, Andrew ‘The Jackal’ Wylie.

Whatever else he may be, Wylie is no sort of fool, and as early as 2010 he launched his own ebook publishing initiative, Odyssey Editions. The plan was to work through Amazon to release digital editions of major books by big-time writers who were already represented by the Wylie agency. Vladimir Nabokov’s controversial novel from the 1950s, Lolita, was among the first.

The Odyssey Editions arrangement was intended to bypass the publishers of the print editions entirely. It would secure (one assumes) a higher royalty for the writer (or the writer’s estate) than would be available if the print publisher owned the digital rights, and published an ebook version. And of course, it would result in a substantially increased share of the proceeds going to the Wylie agency.

I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a spreadsheet analysing the various figures and proving the point about the distribution of income, but, from the outside, that appears to be the way the thinking went.

There were two major problems with this initiative, both of which could have been anticipated.

First, the big publishers were always going to argue that, under the original contracts (sometimes written decades earlier) they already owned and controlled the digital rights, even though the contract didn’t spell that point out in detail because no one had ever heard of digital at that point in time.

Second, the big and powerful publishers are definitely bigger and more powerful than any agency, even a fairly forceful one such as Wylie.

Result? Random House told Wylie, in short order, that unless he stopped playing silly buggers they were not going to do any further business with him. Full stop.

Given that Wylie has 700 clients with books to sell, and given that Random House (now merged with Penguin to form the biggest publisher in the world) was threatening to refuse to consider any new product from said clients, Wylie really had no choice but to back down.

If you look up Vladimir Nabokov’s famous novel Lolita on Amazon.co.uk, you will find that the ebook edition is now published by Penguin.

Odyssey Editions still publishes about 20 ebooks, some of them by famous names. But, given that there are 700 clients, most of whom have a number of books in their  backlist, the ebook side of the Wylie agency appears to be, for all practical purposes, defunct.

The Wylie experiment was the first cunning plan to try to rescue the finances of literary agencies, but it was not to be the last.

Other agencies were also experiencing lower sales figures for previously published books (because of the ebook competition); and they simultaneously found that lower advances were being offered for contracts with new writers. So those agencies also began to look at digital publishing.

To cut along story short, at the time of writing (early 2014), about 25 agents have arranged to offer ebook publication to their clients through an arrangement with a canny group of entrepreneurs operating under the name Argo Navis.

Argo Navis is a company which enables agencies to insert themselves, in true agently fashion, in between the writer who wants to self-publish, and the reader. And thereby claim their 15%.

Argo Navis works only with agents. An individual writer cannot approach them himself (should he be foolish enough to want to). However, if an agent has a client who wishes, in effect, to self-publish a book (probably because it can’t be sold as a print book), then the agent can propose the book to Argo Navis.

Subject, one assumes, to some quality checks, Argo Navis will then create an ebook, suitably formatted, and will act as a distributor of that book to various ebook retailers, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple.

Should the book require some professional polish before being ready for market (and instinct tells me that it probably will), Argo Navis can offer editing, cover designs, and formatting services. For a price.

In return for the distribution service for the finished ebook, Argo Navis takes 30% of what’s left after the retailer has taken the first slice (which is often 30% of the sale price). Agents will then take 15% of the remainder. For ever. Which of course they have fully earned simply by contacting Argo Navis in the first place, with the suggestion that the book might fit the bill.

That, at any rate, is the way this system seems to work at the time of writing. It is being marketed as ‘agent-curated self-publishing’, and some of the biggest names in the agency business are publicly associated with it.

I dare say that there are, somewhere, some professional writers who think that this is a wonderful scheme, fair to everybody, and an effective way to connect writers with readers. But I must add that most of the professional writers who have made their views known in public media, such as blogs, have greeted this scheme with contempt and suspicion. Furthermore, sales through Argo Navis are reportedly poor: perhaps one copy a month.

I note, in closing this section, that there are experienced observers who think that any attempt on the part of agents to get into the publishing business at all constitutes a breach of agency law. The agents’ job is to represent writers in negotiations with third parties, not to publish the stuff themselves, even through Argo Navis, and especially not if it’s all done on germs which leave only a slim cut to the writers.

It may save you time if I say once again that, so far as I am aware, none of these agent-operated ebook publishing arrangements do anything for you that you cannot do for yourself, free of charge; you just have to take a few hours to train yourself in how to do it.

I have published over 60 ebooks so far, and the more you do the easier it gets. I design all my own covers and act as my own editor. So the cost to me of 60+ ebooks, so far, has been zero.

4.6.7 Geese for plucking

There may have been times, while reading this fascinating saga, when you came to the conclusion that I might, just possibly, be a tad cynical.

Ha! If only you knew. The great irony of my life is that I have always been considered a cynic, from schooldays onwards. But the truth is that I have always been naïve. I have seldom been able to see through the dishonest ploys of others. And so it remains today. If I seem to be laying on the dark warnings with a heavy hand, try reading what some others have to say. Experienced judges at that.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch: ‘Agents are trying to save their jobs, and, unfortunately, many of them are willing to do so on the back of the writers they represent.’

David Vandagriff, explaining why vanity publishers are not noticeably worse than traditional publishers: ‘Each side reflects the same attitude toward authors – geese to be plucked.’

PART 5: Do you really need an agent?

5.1 The problem of finding readers

In the twenty-first century, a writer’s problem is this: How can I best find readers? And preferably, of course, readers who will pay a sensible sum for reading my work. Do I really need an agent to achieve that?

Generally speaking, I would say you don’t.

If you’ve read religiously through this ebook – or even if you’ve just scanned it – you will have noticed that there are plenty of writers who have had bad experiences with agents. We tend to hear from them. The satisfied clients (and there must be some, somewhere) tend to be too busy writing books to say anything in public.

But just consider: Twenty years ago, it was well nigh impossible to get a traditional publisher to take any notice of you unless your work was submitted through an agent. A covering letter from an agent meant that the publisher had some vague guarantee that the book was of broadly publishable standard.

Then, there was no other way to get to readers. Either you went through a traditional publisher or, realistically, you had no chance of connecting with readers.

And then, along came the internet, digital printing technology, ecommerce, and all like hat. Everything changed.

Today there are clear and well defined ways for a novelist to find readers – readers, moreover, who will pay money for reading your book, provided it is sensibly presented and priced.

So you don’t, you really, really don’t, need an agent to get started as a writer.

Or to continue, actually.

But it is conceivable that, at a certain point in your writerly progress through life, you might find it useful and profitable to use an agent to sell foreign-language rights and audio rights; and, yes, even film rights. Maybe.

And I don’t think I’m going to say much more than that. But I will quote some other people’s views on the matter.

5.2 Some forthright views

I do think I need to stress to you that there are some experienced professional writers around, people with successful track records in traditional publishing, who are absolutely adamant that new writers should not go anywhere near an agent’s office. Cross the street and hurry on by, lest they drag you inside.

You don’t have to travel far on the internet to meet the anti-agents. Here, for a start, is Dean Wesley Smith. In a recent blog post he wrote as follows:

‘Are there reasons to have an agent in 2014? Nope. Not a one…. They will only get in your way.’

However, says Dean, if you insist on ignoring what he thinks, here are some further bits of advice, which you ignore at you peril.

‘Never sign an agency agreement…Never allow them to touch one penny of your money before you do…. Make sure that you can fire the agent on 30 days notice….’ And so on. And this, remember, from a man with 100 novels under his belt.

To balance up the genders, let me introduce Laura Resnick. Writing in 2013, Laura tells us that she has been making her living as a full-time novelist for 25 years. She is a hybrid – that is to say she currently self-publishes her backlist but continues to have a very satisfactory relationship with a traditional publisher for her new books.

On the question of agents, this is Laura’s view:

‘One of the common misconceptions still circulating… is that you need a literary agent for a career in traditional publishing. In my own experience (and in the experience of a growing number of other writers, too) this is a completely false, erroneous, and inaccurate assumption (though one heartily encouraged by most literary agents, for obvious reasons.’

She goes on to point out that she has sold 30 books in her career, mostly to major houses. Of those, she made all but 7 of the sales herself.

Laura then describes some of the tribulations of working with agents, some of who would ‘give up’ after 1-4 rejections, and retire a book for ever, refusing to discuss it or send it out again. Of her many agentless sales, 9 were of books which agents had declined to handle at all, or had refused to send out again after 1-2-3 of their pals turned it down.

5.3 How to make life difficult

If you’re still determined to go your own way, and find yourself an agent, then by all means start to enquire. Buy a copy of The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook (in the UK) or The Writers’ Market (US) and draw up a list. Write to the most likely prospect. And then another one. Followed by another one, and another one, possibly for years on end. Agents who are suitably professional and well known are not easily persuaded to take on an as-yet unknown and unpublished writer.

But do beware. In the course of this book I have set out a number of ways in which the relationship between a good agent and a good a writer can go badly rwong. Which is a little joke, of sorts. But things going wrong are not a joke. Not at all. Tread carefully. In the course of this book ebook I have, I hope, given ample indication of the risks and dangers

For the record, and just to leave you in no doubt, I hold no qualification as a career counsellor. Furthermore, I am not in any way, shape or form a lawyer; and a lot of the issues dealt with in this book are essentially legal matters. To get a book published by a traditional publisher you will need, one way or another, to sign a contract. Possibly two: agent, then publisher. And of course you might be so pleased to be offered such a contract that you sign it immediately, without reading any of it.

I consider that to be very unwise. But you should not regard me as any sort of authority on the wisdom or otherwise of doing so. I have a view, but the decisions are ultimately your own, and I’m not responsible for any consequences of your actions.

5.4 Acting as your own agent

If you really do want to be published in ‘proper’ printed form, by a well known traditional firm, then it is perfectly possible, despite what it says on the web sites, and despite what I’ve said earlier, to send in a submission yourself; Laura Resnick demonstrated this point. And, if this submission is drafted and targeted properly, it will stand every bit as much chance of  being accepted as will an agented submission.

To repeat: Yes, I know that contradicts what I said earlier, but that’s because I wanted to lead you through this quagmire one step at a time.

If you read the trade magazines in whatever country you live in, and if you read things like Publishers Lunch, and read the reviews in Publishers Weekly, and generally keep your eyes open, you will gradually discover two things.

First, you will learn what kind of books a particular publisher, or imprint, specialises in. For example, Harlequin do romances. Then, you will get to know the names of editors working for that imprint. Some of them are legends in their own lunchtime. And you will discover which editor worked on which book, and which other authors she has on her list.

Gradually, you can build up a small list of editors who might be receptive to your particular book. And then, by one means or another, you can find a way to meet said editor at a conference, perhaps; or get to know someone who knows the editor (never hurts to know someone who is connected); and so on. Writing letters is a last resort.

If you can’t draw up a list of editors like this (which is exactly what an agent would do), then you are in trouble; you are just firing your shotgun into the darkness, whereas what you really need to do is aim a rifle at a very small target.

If you try to submit unsolicited manuscripts to a traditional publisher, without a careful and targeted approach, your parcel will just bounce back. In Hollywood they won’t even open it.

If anyone in traditional publishing nibbles, or preferably long before, you should also read my ebook A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing, so that you know what you are letting yourself in for.

And, should a contract appear in the post, find yourself an experienced lawyer who specialises in intellectual property, and have the contract checked. Carefully.

If you’ve done your homework, you will know that the contract has good points and bad points. But don’t rush to sign it unless you understand the thing properly.

5.6 Digital self-publishing

My general view, as of 2014, is that the smart writer is not thinking about traditional publishers at all (apart from watching bemused as they slowly slide down the drain). The smart writer is looking at being an indie publisher, working through Kindle and similar outlets.

I started with Smashwords, but I soon changed to Amazon and the Kindle. And there are now hundreds, possibly thousands, of books advising you how to publish through  Kindle Direct Publishing. This isn’t one of them.

Start with Amazon’s own guides on how to format and publish your book(s), because, as far as I can figure out, they really do want you to publish your book with them. They are trying to make it easy.

Do I need to point out that you don’t have to start with a full-length novel? Perhaps I do. Personally I have published a couple of dozen single short stories or novellas (say 10,000 to 15,000 words), with more to follow. I think it unlikely that at my age I shall ever again write a full-length novel. It would be too tiring.

5.6 For goodness’ sake enjoy it

And who is my agent, you may be wondering. Why don’t I recommend him or her?

For the record, and as mentioned in section 1.3, I gave up working through an agent in 1999. I have nothing but respect and admiration for the agents who laboured on my behalf during the previous forty years or so. And I didn’t cease to use an agent because of dissatisfaction with agents as such.

I gave up using an agent because I was fed up with the whole of traditional publishing.

The English agent George Greenfield tells us in his book A Smattering of Monsters that Walter Harrap once actually remarked to him, ‘Ours would be a wonderful job if it weren’t for the authors.’ And that just about sums up the attitude.

As things are, the traditional publishing world is so constructed that, to repeat the distressingly crude words of one anonymous complainant in the UK magazine Publishing News, writers are ‘pissed on from start to finish.’

Since 1999 I have published about 15 paperback and hardback books through various POD facilities, and nearly 70 ebooks. Oh, and I also wrote 1.25 million words about the book business on my blog, the Grumpy Old Bookman. It’s still online, and all free. You can search it for particular topics.

As a result of all that work, have I become rich and famous?

No.

I’m tempted to write ‘Of course not’, because hardly any writers become rich and famous; and, for those that do, it is often a temporary situation and one that brings all kinds of problems in its wake. (If you doubt that, read my earlier ebook,  A Writer’s Guide to Success.)

Have I had fun as an indie self-publisher? You bet. Lots of it. I can write exactly what I feel like writing; I can do my own covers (you may think they’re crap, but then so are a lot of those on traditional books); and I run my own marketing (actually I usually do zero marketing because it bores me).

No, I remain largely anonymous, unmobbed in the street, and I face only a modest tax bill at the end of the year. But I have a lot of fun and I answer to no one except my own judgement. After forty years of dealing with traditional publishers, that is, I assure you, a great relief.

The best advice I can give you, in closing, is that if you don’t find writing enjoyable, give it up and start doing something else instead.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books and the book world. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

It’s not easy to explain to you how lucky you are to be working as a writer in an era when this sort of information is readily available. It certainly wasn’t when I started out. Dozens of experienced writers, agents, lawyers, and – yes – even publishers, are making their knowledge and judgements available to you entirely free of charge.

That having been said, some of the bloggers are not too proud to ask you to leave a cash tip if you find a post of theirs particularly helpful. I have done so more than once, even after fifty years in the business, and so should you.

If you are flush with cash, you might care to subscribe to the two main trade journals of the book-publishing world. In the UK, you need The Bookseller. Current subscription rates are £196 p.a. if you live in the UK, £264 if you live elsewhere. In the US, the equivalent is Publishers Weekly, which will set you back $249 for a one-year print + digital subscription, and $399 if you live outside the US. (Digital-only rates for PW are cheaper.)

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes the magazine available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs listed below are not in any particular order.

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it. And beats up any agents and publishers who say silly things online.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Jennifer Jackson. Blog by a US agent. Queries received in 2103: 6,152. New clients taken on in 2013: 2.

Pub Rants. ‘A very nice literary agent indulges in polite rants.’

Janet Reid. Agent.

Dystel & Goderich.  Jane Dystel has had a distinguished career in publishing. Now an agent, and by the sound of it one of the more sensible ones.

Grumpy Old Bookman. Finally, this one is my own. Between 2004 and 2007 I wrote about 1.25 million words on this blog: reviews, news, comment, advice. There’s a lot of good stuff there if you search for it. Since 2007, I have been only an occasional blogger, mainly to let you know of the publication of one of my own new books.

You may have noticed that I have not provided hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I have assumed that you quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about something that has been mentioned in the text. And in any case, when you do start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Over the years, literary agents have written some interesting books of memoirs, and some have written books on literary technique. Here are a few which are still in print, or available in ebook form.

Blake, Carole. From Pitch to Publication. An important book for those who write for the women’s market.

Lord, Sterling. Lord of Publishing. An overview of US publishing in the latter part of the twentieth century, as seen from a literary agent’s point of view.

Zuckerman, Albert. Writing the Blockbuster Novel. Al was the founder of the Writers House agency, and worked closely with some major bestsellers. This book describes a typical working relationship with Ken Follett. Probably the best single book on fiction writing that you can find. (Apart from my own, of course. Modesty gets you nowhere in the writing business.)

AFTERWORD

May I respectfully inform you that I (Michael Allen, in case you’ve forgotten the name) have written several other ebooks (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in The Truth about Writing.

On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile is an essay on the pro-am approach to writing. A pro-am is an amateur who works to a professional standard. In other words, not a full-timer, but someone who, in the old days, would have been published in printed form, but who is now far too sensible to doing anything except self-publish via digital outlets.

There are also several other books in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

A Writer’s Guide to Success

A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing

All the above are readily available via Amazon, but only as Kindle ebooks at the time of writing. POD versions may follow.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that I have written in the past, please visit my author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon. Just searching for my name alone will just result in confusion, because it is so common. Hundreds of books by various Michaels and Allens will not help you.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO EMOTION:

Here’s the Key to Selling More Fiction

Michael Allen

Copyright 2013 by Michael Allen

***

1. About this book

There is a story told about the nineteenth-century actor, Edmund Kean.

Kean was standing in the wings one night, watching his troupe of actors performing a Shakespearian tragedy. Standing beside him was his son, Charlie. Peeking through the curtains, Kean could see that the audience was absolutely rapt, their attention focused on the action; some of them had tears in their eyes.

‘We’re doing the trick, Charlie,’ Kean whispered to his son. ‘We’re doing the trick.’

What Kean meant by this was that he and his fellow actors were achieving their aim: they were making the audience feel a powerful emotion. And as a consequence of that, they were making themselves better known and in greater demand as actors.

Making readers feel such emotions is the most important aspect of a fiction-writer’s craft. Emotion is what holds the reader to the page (‘I couldn’t put the book down’), and it is the emotion conveyed by the final few pages that prompts the reader to recommend a book to their friends. In short, if you want to succeed as a fiction writer, learn how to generate emotion in your readers.

What you are reading now is a book that will help you to do just that. The principal aim of this present ebook is to make you aware of the central role of emotion in anything that might reasonably be called creative writing. Understanding what emotion is, how it is generated in life, and, above all, how to generate emotion in your readers is absolutely essential if a writer is to achieve success – and this is true however you choose to define the word success.

Who is likely to benefit from reading this book?

Anyone with an interest in writing fiction, whether it’s a short story or a multi-volume saga. In addition, anyone who writes for the theatre, television, or film will find here much food for thought.

2. About the author

If you are presented with a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who is the author of said book, and what makes him any sort of authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am 74 years old. I was first paid for writing for a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963, exactly 50 years ago this year, since when I have written at least 25 others (under my own name and several pen names).

I have written half a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. In related fields, I have written various drama scripts which have been professionally produced on the stage, radio, and television.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence saw something of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s.

As of today I have about 60 separate publications available in Kindle format, under various names.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context (though the rest of the world doesn’t behave any differently). All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

I was never a full-time writer, and my working life was spent in education; as a result, my instinct is always to pass on useful information. In addition to that, I have never forgotten that in 1958, a Professor at Cambridge University remarked to me that, if you ever do any research, you should always publish your results – otherwise your efforts are wasted. I agree. That’s why I’ve taken the trouble to write this book.

3. The need for clear thinking

If you have clicked on Amazon’s Look Inside facility, and read as far as this, you are clearly someone with an ambition to write something. You may well have embarked on, and even completed, several projects already.

Excellent. You have done quite a lot of hard work already. I am now going to ask you to do one very small piece of additional work.

I am really not going to ask you to do anything very difficult. Honest. But I do believe that thirty seconds of thinking, at this stage, and another thirty seconds later on, might possibly prove beneficial.

I suggest that you now write down on a piece of paper an answer to the following question:

When I write a novel (or a short story, or a script), what exactly am I trying to do? What is my main purpose?

And it’s perfectly all right, at this stage, to write down ‘Haven’t a clue.’ Lots of writers go through an entire lifetime without having much clue about they’re really trying to do, and some of them are quite successful.

4. Why is this man talking about emotion anyway?

My own interest in emotion began, I am surprised to remember, when I was still a teenager. No doubt, like most teenagers, I was a seething mass of emotions anyway, but when I think back I believe that my interest in researching this subject was aroused by two things.

First, I was at that time being taught about Aristotle’s theory of tragedy as part of my English ‘A’ level studies; and, second, I was very interested in jazz.

Aristotle, you may recall, had a theory that tragedy in the drama brings about the purification (catharsis) of such emotions as pity and fear.  However, I probably did a lot more reading about jazz than about Aristotle. One of the ideas about jazz which was current when I was a teenager was that, since jazz is a musical form which can accommodate almost unlimited improvisation by a solo musician, it is possible for such a musician to express his emotions instantaneously.

At that time (and I was very young, remember) I took the view that the expression of emotions as felt by the ‘artist’ was an important matter. I was, in short, a pompous twit. (‘And you still are,’ I hear a chorus of voices cry.)

Well, when we’re young we all do and believe silly things, and if it’s any help I can say that I now hold the precise opposite of my teenage view. In other words, I now think that it doesn’t matter a damn what the ‘artist’, or writer, or performer, or actor, is feeling when she writes or performs; what matters, above all, is what the audience feels.

But more of that later. For the moment, please note that what I am trying to do in this ebook is explain to you what I believe constitutes a sound and sensible principle on which to base your writing career – seeing as how you seem hell-bent on having one. I am trying to give you an idea of what you should – in my opinion – be trying to do. If you choose to carry out some of the suggestions that I am going to make, you will, in my view, substantially improve your chances of achieving whatever it is you want to achieve through your writing career.

Of course, you are entirely free to ignore what I say. If so, good luck to you. But don’t blame me if you end up wasting several years of your life.

5. Sources of ideas on emotion

I cannot claim that there is much in this chapter which I can describe as original thought. I have relied heavily upon the research and ideas of other writers, scientists, and thinkers.

Given my long-standing interest in emotion, I have made it my business, every ten years or so, to do a brief survey of what science has learnt about emotion in the period since I last researched the subject. As we shall see, this has usually been precious little, because emotions do not readily lend themselves to scientific analysis; as a consequence, few academic researchers have bothered to go down what was obviously a dead end in career terms. Nevertheless, I have occasionally found a useful book on the subject, and I shall refer to these below.

Furthermore, it may be that everything I have to say on this subject strikes you as being perfectly obvious. If so, I can only say that the truths expounded here were once far from obvious to me.

The one virtue which I can perhaps claim is that, so far as I am aware, there have been very few previous attempts to relate the scientific findings about emotion to the craft of writing; and none of them have been recent.

The main previous attempt was that undertaken by an American, Thomas H. Uzzell. In my early twenties I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Uzzell’s book Narrative Technique, which was first published in 1923 and revised in 1934. Uzzell himself was heavily influenced by Professor Walter B. Pitkin of Columbia University, and Pitkin in turn drew on the critical writings of Edgar Allan Poe.

Narrative Technique was at one time quite a well-known work but is now forgotten. However, Uzzell also wrote Writing as a Career (1938) and The Technique of the Novel (1947, revised 1959). And, courtesy of some digital entrepreneur, you can now buy a Kindle reprint of the Technique of the Novel. If you’re a novelist, I advise you to read it.

6. What does the punter want?

The word ‘punter’ is, perhaps, a rather vulgar term, but then I’m a vulgar fellow, and I prefer plain words to fancy ones on the whole. The primary meanings of punter (I have just looked it up) are: one who gambles or places a bet; and a customer or client (often of a prostitute). Earlier dictionary definitions used to include a member of an audience.

For our purposes the word ‘punter’ will serve very well, because it covers both readers of novels and the audiences for dramatic productions. And, since all readers and audience members are gamblers, in the sense that they are laying down money in the hope that the book or play will deliver what they want, the word is doubly appropriate.

So, what does the punter want? When she buys a novel, or a ticket to the opera, what does she hope to get for her money?

What she wants, in my opinion, is a dose of emotion. To be precise, a satisfying emotion.

If you’ve lived as long as I have, you will have noted the massive growth of the entertainment media in parallel with the industrialisation of society and the alienation of the individual members of society. Oh dear, that sentence is, I fear, excessively sesquipedalian. What I am trying to say, in plain English, is that lots of people who live and work in the modern world are thoroughly browned off, and they are desperate for a bit of entertainment. They turn to novels, plays, films, TV programmes, music, and various other media and art forms, in the hope that one or more of these things will help them to feel a little better.

There is nothing new or original about this idea that art is used to overcome alienation. For example, I have on my bookshelf a collection of essays first published in America in 1928 and entitled The Art of Playwriting. One of the contributors to this book had an acquaintance called Jennie, who worked long hours in a beauty parlour. In the 1920s Jennie had this to say:

‘When I go home at night I’m too tired for anything. I can’t sleep, I can’t read, I can’t speak, and I don’t want nobody to speak to me. But for five cents I can go to the movies and sit and rest and see things I never could see any other way – grand people, wild animals, foreign cities, wonderful houses and strange beautiful things. And I forget about myself and go home all made over. And the things I have to stand from him [her husband] don’t seem half so hard.’

Not exactly difficult to understand, is it?

The punter wants to be made to feel emotion. She wants to come out of the cinema, or finish reading a novel, feeling in some sense stronger than before; uplifted, if you will; moved.

This desire is reflected in our everyday conversations. A colleague at work tells us that last night she saw the latest movie that everyone is talking about. ‘Oh,’ we say, ‘and was it good?’ What we mean by that question is, Did the movie  deliver a satisfying emotion? Did you come out feeling better than when you went in, or did you think it was all a waste of time?

This emotional effect is, perhaps, more obvious in the communal arts, such as the theatre, cinema, and the concert hall, than it is in the case of the short story or the novel; but fiction, of course, is capable of doing exactly the same job.

Given what we now know about what the punter wants, what can we say about the definition of a sensible purpose – a sensible set of intentions – for the working writer?

Once again, we find that other thinkers are well ahead of us. Here is Edgar Allan Poe (1809-49) writing about the art of the short story:

‘A skilful literary artist has constructed a tale. If he is wise, he has not fashioned his thoughts to accommodate his incidents; but having conceived, with deliberate care, a certain unique or single effect to be wrought out, he then invents such incidents – he then combines such events as may best aid him in establishing this preconceived effect. If his very initial sentence tends not to the outbringing of this effect, then he has failed in his first step. In the whole composition there should be no word written of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. As by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art a sense of the fullest satisfaction.’ (Poe’s italics.)

You will discover, as we proceed, that in this one paragraph Poe has condensed almost every important truth about the writer’s task and the role of emotion in art generally.

To paraphrase Poe in more modern English: The writer’s job is to decide what emotion to create in the punter, and to write a novel (or short story, or play) which generates that emotion.

You might now have a look back at what you wrote on that piece of paper, about what you thought you personally were trying to do as a writer.

The odds are that you will have written down something like this: I feel the urge to express myself. Or, There is a story inside me and I want to put it on paper. Or, I want to satisfy a longing.

If what you wrote comes anywhere near to matching what I have stated in my paraphrase of Poe, then you have my congratulations.

If you have written down something else entirely, that’s fair enough. But let’s have a look at some of the possible statements that I listed above.

I feel the urge to express myself. What this usually means is something like, I want to pose as an author and appear on TV and have everyone admire me. Oh, and I want to earn lots of money. Thanks.

Unfortunately, as I discovered at an early age, no one cares about what a writer wants. When our sample punter comes out of the movie she doesn’t give a damn about whether the scriptwriter has expressed herself or not. All she cares about is whether the movie made her laugh or cry.

There is a story inside me and I want to put it on paper. Fair enough, but remember that the whole point of putting the story on paper is to produce an emotional affect in the reader. How you feel when you’re writing the story is irrelevant.

I want to satisfy a longing. Yup, but it’s the reader’s longing you need to concentrate on, and not your own. Again, nobody cares very much what you want. If the book-buyer or theatre-goer is going to pay full whack for your book or play, they expect you to pay close attention to their needs, not your own. It’s the customer who is supposed to feel better after a steam bath, not the man who stokes the boiler.

7. Turning principle into practice

In principle, as we have seen, the matter is simple. A writer’s job is to create emotion in the reader, or the audience for a play. But, in practice, this is pretty darned tricky.

One of the factors which makes it tricky will be revealed if we contemplate that final phrase of Poe’s: a sense of the fullest satisfaction.

That sense, or feeling, is what us punters want to be left with at the end of a book, or when we come out of the theatre. But just a minute – does that mean that all books and plays must have a happy ending?

Obviously not. There is a well-known phenomenon in the cinema known as the weepie, or the three-handkerchief movie. This is a sad film which the audiences (usually female in this case) somehow think is absolutely wonderful. And then, of course, there are all those tragedies by William Shakespeare, which seem to have lasted pretty well despite the fact that the leading characters often end up dead.

You will also have noticed that it is not always necessary to have nice guys as your heroes. It is possible, if you get the alchemy right, to write about people who are thoroughly unpleasant characters. They may even be out and out criminals, as Donald Westlake’s famous books about Parker demonstrated forty years ago; some of those books are still in print.

Another circumstance which must be faced, of course, is that there is no such thing as a book, or a play, that everyone enjoys. Some people come out of a cinema raving about a movie, and others just can’t wait to get to bed and forget it. What some people find deeply moving, others find boring, or worse.

A good many years ago there was a famous cartoon of a couple coming out of a theatre which was showing Death of a Salesman. This play was, at the time, a smash hit on Broadway and was widely held in intellectual circles to be a hugely important Comment On Our Times. In the cartoon, the man says to the woman, ‘I’ll get you for this.’

In other words, the man obviously thought that he was going out for a bit of harmless entertainment, a few laughs, and maybe the odd dancing girl with nice legs. And what did he get? He got Willy Loman committing suicide.

Or so I understand. I’ve never actually seen Death of a Salesman myself, and I’m not about to. I’ve read about it, of course. Endlessly. It’s one of the most significant pieces of serious theatre in the entire twentieth century. Or some such.

I am not very keen on serious stuff myself. My daughter the doctor asks me, ‘Dad why do you read trash all the time?’ And the answer to that is, because I like trash, that’s why. I find it more fun, and most of the time I find it better written too.

Which reminds of me seeing a play called Tolstoy, by James Goldman. This was a serious play – a deadly serious play – about one of the Most Important Writers in History. Or so they tell me. Anyway, this play featured about two and a half hours of Tolstoy being anguished; apparently the poor fellow had a really miserable time being a rich man in feudal Russia. He felt so guilty, do you see.

Towards the end of the play the author brought on a beautiful dancing girl who hopped about the stage for a few minutes, swinging her skirt and showing us her legs. Very nice legs too. The point of this, apparently, was that Tolstoy had been tortured by sexual thoughts and dreams all his life, and this girl symbolised his lifelong struggle, OK?

Now, the thought that occurred to me was this. If only the playwright had brought on this lovely dancing girl about 90 minutes earlier, and had her accompanied by about eleven others, and then brought them back on periodically throughout the play, wearing different costumes, or, preferably, no costumes at all, then we might all have had an enjoyable evening.

As it was, what we did have was a bone-achingly boring couple of hours about an extremely self-centred man. The play went to London, where, not surprisingly, it died a horrible death.

See, there’re a lot of people out there who just don’t like serious, and no amount of telling them that they should will make any difference.

Even a moment’s reflection, then, will demonstrate that the writer’s task, simple in principle, is mighty complicated in practice. Walt Disney was known to remark that making movies is a little bit less scientific than Russian roulette. So, if we, as writers, are going to have any chance of completing our task successfully, we are going to need to know rather more about emotion than we have learnt so far.

8. What can science tell us about emotion?

Not a lot.

In 2001 Dylan Evans published a short survey of scientific research in this area; its title was Emotion – the Science of Sentiment. Evans tells us that scientific interest in the emotions is currently growing, but the growth starts from a very low base.

In 1997, Candace Pert wrote a book called The Molecules of Emotion. In it, she says that emotion is ‘one of those words that mainstream science likes to spit out at the very first taste.... Unless we can measure something, science won’t concede it exists, which is why science refuses to deal with such “non-things” as the emotions.’

Emotions are rather like a bar of soap in the bath: they’re difficult to get hold of, and most scientists don’t even bother to try. Evans comments that ‘a really good theory of emotion may remain forever beyond our grasp.’ A recent book review in The Times says that an average psychology textbook gives about twenty competing theories of emotion. And as a matter of fact we don’t even have an accepted theory of what consciousness is.

We do, however, know a few facts which can help us to understand human emotions.

Recent research suggests that the present six billion human beings are all descended from a few thousand ancestors who lived in a small region of East Africa, a hundred thousand years ago. The current theory, based on analysis of genetic material, is that the last migration out of Africa, a mere 50,000 years ago, wiped out all previous human inhabitants in Europe and Asia.

Not surprisingly, given the common origin of human beings, there are half a dozen facial expressions which can be recognised and understood by members of all races and all cultures. These expressions are related to the emotions fear, surprise, anger, happiness, disgust, and sadness.

If you show a member of a remote jungle tribe a picture of a Frenchman crying over the death of a child, the tribesman will know that the Frenchman is feeling grief. The experiments have been done by Paul Ekman.

Can we even define the term emotion? Er, no, not really.

In his book on emotion, Dylan Evans doesn’t try to define the term until the last chapter. Then he tells us: ‘Most contemporary philosophers and psychologists who write about emotion reject any simple definitions of emotion in terms of a single criterion.’ (Evans’s book is, however, a useful starting point if you want to learn more about scientific research into emotion.)

For the moment, then, it looks as if us writer guys are just going to have to struggle along as best we can without the benefit of hard science to help us on the question of emotions. But that is by no means the disaster which it might at first appear.

To begin with, while we may not be able to define an emotion very well (or at all) most of us can recognise one when we feel one, or when we see someone else experiencing one. And, fortunately for us, some of the disputed points in emotion theory don’t actually matter very much as far as writers are concerned. Bill Shakespeare didn’t know anything about peptides and receptors and other biochemical mysteries, but he did understand the need for comic relief in a tragedy.

9. An unscientific theory of emotion for writers

In this section, and the two following, I give you the benefit of my own ideas about emotion, as it affects the craft of writing. This theory is based on my readings of various authorities over the last sixty years or so (yes, really sixty).

My theory is essentially unscientific, but I believe it has useful applications despite that. Newtonian physics is not, I understand, sufficiently precise to send a man to the moon, but it will serve very well for building a bridge. The same principle holds good for the theory of emotion which is presented here; it will not meet the rigid criteria laid down by scientific method, but it will help you to write a better novel or play.

Let us begin.

An emotion starts with a stimulus. Something happens to somebody.

As a result of this stimulus, there may or may not be conscious thought on the part of the individual concerned. If there is no conscious thought, there will certainly be unconscious thought.

There is then a physical response to the thought, such as trembling, or blushing.

And there may subsequently be conscious thought which leads to further action.

This process will be easier to understand if we consider a few examples.

Suppose a gun goes off, unexpectedly. You jump! Your heart starts to beat faster, your eyes open wide, and you stare around, wondering what the hell is going on. You feel an emotion called alarm, possibly fear. You may tremble and shake, even weep.

In this case, there is no conscious thought until after you feel the emotion, and there may not be much conscious thought even then; you may rush around in a panic.

Among scientists and philosophers, there is an unresolved debate about what the emotion actually is, and where it is located.

Is the emotion that we call fear contained in the physical symptoms – in the gasp, the trembling, the dry mouth, the staring eyes – or does it exist in the mind, as a thought? And which comes first? Does the mind experience emotion, which then brings about physical responses which may help to preserve and protect the organism (as when a frightened person prepares to run away)? Or do the automatic physical reflexes somehow cause an emotion in the mind?

This debate about what emotion is and its link with physical responses in the body has been going on for at least a hundred years.

In the early twentieth century, William James suggested that emotions are a feedback to the brain from an increased heart-rate, sweaty palms, and other physical phenomena. Carl Georg Lange developed a similar theory. These ideas were opposed by Walter Cannon, who argued that emotions originated in the brain and trickled down to the body.

These are, as I say, unresolved issues; nevertheless, it is possible to put together a hypothetical theory of emotion which provides writers with a working basis for doing their job.

Here is another example of how emotions are created. The simplest form of narrative is the anecdote, or joke, and these stories frequently generate emotion, usually amusement. Curiously enough, there has been some serious research done on jokes; a study was set up by the British Association for the Advancement of Science in 2001.

Here is a joke which is widely thought to be funny:

Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are going camping. They pitch their tent under the stars and go to sleep. Sometime in the night, Holmes wakes Watson up.

‘Watson, look up at the stars and tell me what you deduce.’

Watson says: ‘I see millions of stars, and even if a few of those have planets, it’s quite likely that there are some planets like Earth, and if there are a few planets like Earth out there, there might also be life.’

Holmes replies: ‘Watson, you idiot, somebody stole our tent!’

Ho ho ho.

Well now, let’s see what we can learn from this.

First, if you did indeed find this joke funny, then you will have experienced an emotion called amusement. Usually, this emotion is accompanied by a physical response called laughter (which itself is a very odd phenomenon, but we won’t go into that now). When a theatre audience really roars with laughter, it rocks backwards and forwards.

Second point: there is not much conscious thought involved in laughing at a joke. Usually, you either ‘get’ the joke more or less instantaneously or you don’t.

Third: please note that, in order to ‘get’ the joke, the audience needs to be able to understand the language in which it is written – in this case, English. If you couldn’t speak English, you wouldn’t be able to read the four paragraphs above which contain the joke, and you couldn’t possibly find them funny.

You may think this is too obvious to need stating, but lots of books and plays depend for their appreciation on being able to speak the language – so to speak. More on that later.

Fourth point: even if you do speak English, you really need to have the right frame of reference in order to appreciate the humour.

What that means is that you need to know a few pieces of background information; you need to have a particular kind of general knowledge, to enable you to assess the joke. In this case, you need to know something about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in order to appreciate this particular piece of humour in full.

You might, possibly, find the story funny even if you had never heard of Holmes, the brilliant detective, and even if you had never seen one of those 1940s films in which Watson, the bumbling idiot, trails pathetically in Holmes’s wake. But you are much more likely to get the joke, and you are much more likely to laugh, if you know, already, that Watson is usually a clown.

(Incidentally, I once wrote some scripts for a television series of Holmes stories, and the producer specifically instructed me to make Watson a good deal smarter than usual. The actor was most grateful. This TV series, even more incidentally, was filmed in Warsaw. This was because of the then favourable exchange rate as between the Polish zloty and the Italian lira. Or so I was led to believe.)

Fifth, please note that a given stimulus does not generate the same emotional response over and over again; and few examples demonstrate this point better than a joke.

The Holmes story was apparently one of Michael Portillo’s favourites for beginning an after-dinner speech; and it was reportedly very successful for him. Mr Portillo was once a leading politician, now a TV personality.) Suppose that Portillo, having told the joke to an audience once, proceeded to tell it again. This time there might be nervous, puzzled laughter. He tells it again. And then again, and again, and again. Faced with such peculiar behaviour, an audience would eventually creep away in embarrassment, leaving the speaker alone in the dining-room.

This rapid fall-off in the capacity of a given stimulus to evoke a given emotional response is the reason why we have to write new novels and plays. If the old ones went on working, time after time, we wouldn’t have needed any new writers for at least the last hundred years. But this, fortunately for us writers, does not happen. Yes, there are some plays which can bear repeated viewing; but you really can’t attend a performance of Hamlet on every night of your whole life. Not while continuing to enjoy it.

We should not end this brief description of how emotion is created, both in life and in writing, without going a little further into the interaction which occurs between mind and body.

Candace Pert is a distinguished American scientist who has done research on the biochemistry of emotion. Modern technological developments have enabled us to examine the molecular basis of emotions, and Pert’s conclusion is that the molecules of emotion run every system in our body.

Pert was once asked where she stood on the James/Cannon controversy. In other words (as you will doubtless remember fro the discussion above), she was asked whether emotions begin in the body or in the mind. Pert replied that James and Cannon were both right – and yet neither of them was quite right.

In Pert’s view, there is a constant two-way traffic between the realms of mind and body; emotions exist as peptides and receptors in the body, i.e. as molecules, cells, and real pieces of flesh and blood, and they also exist as feelings which we experience in our minds.

If this seems a little complicated, don’t worry. It is simply common sense given the dignity of scientific backing. We all know perfectly well that there is an interaction between body and mind. When we feel ill we feel miserably unhappy; and when we feel miserably unhappy we can easily fall ill. There is clear evidence that stress suppresses the immune function.

If you’re feeling depressed, it would a smart move to go for a walk in the fresh air. Your Grandma told you this, and Grandma was right. Even better than a walk is a run. Allegedly. Haven’t tested the hypothesis myself.

Humour is particularly valuable in releasing endorphins and enkephalins into the body – and these substances are natural painkillers. Laughter results in biological changes which are the reverse of those occurring during an episode of stress.

Since this interaction between body and mind is taking place all the time, Pert believes that the biochemicals of emotion are stored in the body, thereafter affecting us quite extensively; emotions may, for instance, affect our ability to move a part of our body, or even feel it. Memories and the record of our experiences are located not only in the brain, she believes, but also throughout our physical selves.

These ideas have important implications for writers, as I shall continue to explain. Emotions can and do transform the body; they work for better or for worse, creating disease or healing it. Given that this is true, and given that writers have the means to create emotions in their readers and audiences, then it follows that the writer has at least a potential role as a healer.

10. The range of emotions

If it is true, as I believe, that writers need to understand how emotions are created, and that writers need to develop the skills which will enable them to create emotions in others, then it follows that writers need to be aware of the possible range of emotions.

How many emotions are there?

And are they all equally useful to the writer?

Those were the kind of questions which I began to ask myself some forty years ago, and gradually, over the succeeding years, I have put together some answers.

What I needed, I eventually decided, was a sort of emotional equivalent of Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. (A taxonomy is simply a classified list or catalogue. However, no self-respecting social scientist will ever use a short and familiar word when a longer one can be used instead.)

About twenty-five years ago, I picked the brains of my friendly neighbourhood psychologists, searched the databases in a good library, and found that there was only a modest amount of scientific literature to help me.

The best book that I could then find on emotion was The Language of Emotion by Joel R. Davitz, and, with the aid of one or two other sources, I put together a list of all possible emotions. That list is reproduced below.

I say ‘all possible emotions’ with some trepidation, because naturally anyone who looks at my list is going to say, But what about so-and-so?

Well, what about so-and-so? You should understand that the list which follows was originally drawn up for my benefit alone. As far as I am concerned the list is complete, but if you wish to add to it, or delete from it, for your own purposes, then feel free to do so.

I appreciate that some people will argue that there are omissions from the list, and that some ‘emotions’ are included which should not be there. For example: cowardice and bravery are not listed.

Personally I don’t think that cowardice is an emotion; it’s a character trait. Cowardice is what you display, or reveal, when you are placed in a situation which creates fear, and then you run away, rather than deciding to face up to the danger.

The same can be said about courage, or bravery.  If, in the face of danger, you make a conscious and deliberate decision that you will stand firm and fight the enemy, then you display bravery.

On the other hand, one ‘emotion’ which is listed is gaiety; and some might argue that it should not be. It could be argued that gaiety is a mood, or a manner of behaviour, rather than an emotion. There are many more questions and quibbles which we could discuss, and you are welcome to debate these matters in your own mind or with your friends if you wish.

You will also note that I have placed the named emotions in a particular order. I decided, correctly or otherwise, that emotions can conveniently be divided into two kinds: positive and negative, which broadly means pleasant and unpleasant. Within those two categories, emotions can again be ranged from mildly unpleasant to absolutely horrible and intolerable; and ditto on the other side of the divide. Whether I am right to place elation above enjoyment, for instance, is a nicety which we could debate all night. But it would not, I suggest, be particularly profitable.

Here then is my list of emotions, beginning with the pleasant ones:

Positive emotions (ranged from the most powerful and pleasant to the mildest in strength)

Ecstasy

Rapture

Happiness

Hope

Exultation

Delight

Gaiety

Elation

Contentment

Serenity

Enjoyment

Amusement

Confidence

Relief

Love

Lust

Passion

Affection

Excitement

Cheerfulness

Friendliness

Gratitude

Determination

Admiration

Inspiration

Pride

Amazement

Astonishment

Curiosity

Awe

Reverence

Solemnity

Satisfaction

Negative emotions (ranged from the least powerful and unpleasant to the most intolerable and unwelcome)

Apathy

Boredom

Reflection

Puzzlement

Surprise

Resignation

Disappointment

Indignation

Concern

Dejection

Impatience

Irritation

Frustration

Dislike

Embarrassment

Resentment

Discontent

Pity

Exasperation

Scorn

Jealousy

Contempt

Sadness

Nervousness

Dismay

Disgust

Shame

Guilt

Repentance

Humiliation

Alarm

Distress

Remorse

Melancholy

Sorrow

Grief

Anxiety

Loathing

Depression

Anger (rage, fury)

Dread

Hate

Fear

Panic

Horror

Terror

Despair

11. The creative writer’s task

I don’t much care for the term ‘creative writer’. However, rather than follow in the social-science tradition and invent a new term (and thus give my work an entirely spurious air of originality and profundity) I will use it on this occasion.

A creative writer is (I am going to assume) someone who invents or creates fictional material, as opposed to someone who relates the facts, such as a historian or a news reporter. The term ‘creative writer’ therefore covers all those who write fiction or drama.

I suggested above that the creative writer’s purpose, properly understood, is to produce a piece of work which will fulfil the punter’s desire to experience a satisfying emotion.

Again, please note that I am talking here about the purpose of fiction, not non-fiction. In non-fiction the purpose is to explain, or convince, or describe. These processes may well involve or generate some emotion, but the creation of emotion is not their prime purpose.

The punter’s desire is not just a desire for any emotion. It is a desire to be made to feel what Poe called ‘a sense of the fullest satisfaction.’ In my own mind, I define this process as entertaining the reader, though I appreciate that ‘entertainment’ has a rather superficial ring to it, and the effect that is being sought is often far from trivial or superficial. In any event, the writer’s task is to leave the reader with a strongly positive emotion, even if the subject matter is dark and tragic.

As an aside, perhaps I should mention that I have never yet met, or heard of, a publisher’s editor who understood that this is the proper and most sensible intention for a writer to have. But I have, happily, met a film producer (the late Sheldon Reynolds) who understood it perfectly.

The short story, which was Poe’s speciality, is so constituted that there is only time and space to convey one major emotion to the reader: which is why Poe spoke of ‘a single effect to be wrought out.’ In the course of a novel, or a 90-minute film, however, it is possible to create in the punter a whole variety of emotions: anxiety, surprise, amusement, sadness.

If you are at all serious about improving your writing skills, it would be a smart move, at this stage, to find a copy of your favourite novel (or movie) and study it in some detail.

Read, or skim through, the book again. It will be divided, probably, into chapters or divisions of some sort. Consider each of these. If the book held your attention (and if it’s your favourite it must have done), what was it in each section that fascinated you? What emotion did you feel? Name the emotion and write it down. And then, when you had completed the book, what was the major, overall emotional effect on you? Did you end the book laughing? Or did it leave you sad and reflective?

What you will realise, if you do this exercise, is that, deliberately or otherwise, the author created in you a series of emotions which kept you reading. You did not, in this case, chuck the book aside with a cry of Boring! or Revolting! You were held.

Once you have identified your emotions, you might then care to look back and try to decide how these emotions were created. What was it in the story which caused you to feel anxiety about whether the heroine would survive? Why did you feel so angry about the way she was treated? Why were your hopes raised when she met that nice man in the dark suit?

Reading a novel, or studying a movie, in this way will give you a new insight into what you are trying to do when you yourself write fiction. Or what you should be trying to do, in my opinion.

On the assumption that you are prepared to agree with me, at least for the present, about what constitutes a sound purpose, you now have a plan of action; of sorts.

You have decided, perhaps, to write a novel. Let’s say a piece of romantic fiction.

You will have read, presumably, dozens if not thousands of romantic novels before you start. (If you haven’t read widely in your chosen field then I would suggest that you rethink what you are doing from stage one.)

Following my suggestions, you will have analysed at least one or two novels, to identify, with the aid of my list, the typical emotions which popular and successful romantic novels generate. You have written down those emotions and you have the list in front of you.

First, choose the key emotion – the overall effect which you are trying to achieve, at the end of the book.

Personally I have never written a truly romantic novel, and I don’t read many in that genre, but I guess that the intended emotion of most of them could be expressed more or less as follows:

A sense of great satisfaction and happiness, tinged with relief, that Jane (your heroine) has at last found a man with whom she can look forward to a lifelong love relationship.

Then, having determined your overall aim, you need to look at the list of emotions which (you have decided) the body of your book needs to contain, and then you proceed to invent or devise incidents which will produce these emotions. In the words of Poe, ‘such incidents... as may best aid... in establishing this preconceived effect....’

This is not a book about the technique of fiction, so I am not going to say very much more about plotting here. However, the vital point for you to understand is that all plotting must be conducted with the creation of emotion in mind. That is what must colour and control your selection of plot events. (Otherwise you are likely to be wasting your tine.)

There is room here, however, for me give you one or two tips on technique.

Don’t be too concerned about originality. This is, in my opinion, a much over-rated virtue in fiction and the arts generally. Most punters don’t like originality. It upsets them. They don’t know what the hell is going on. A hoary old plot device is often perfectly acceptable if you dress it up in new clothes.

For example, when I saw the film Titanic it seemed to me that some of the plot twists were so old and grey that they had probably been used in stories which the crew of Noah’s ark told to each other. But there were, as a newspaper report which I have just read remarked, ‘crowds of teenagers queuing up to see the film again, excitedly telling each other how much they were going to cry.’ For these teenagers, the tried and tested plot devices were new, fresh, and profoundly effective.

Another important point, for novelists particularly, is that it does no good at all to name an emotion in the text. If, for instance, your heroine is all alone at home on a dark night when a murderer has escaped from jail, and the lights go out, it is no use telling the reader that ‘fear gripped Jane’s heart.’ That will achieve nothing.

What you have to do, with your heroine in such a perilous circumstance, is describe to the reader the physical response to the emotion which Jane and the reader (you hope) are experiencing. ‘Jane’s heart began to pound so hard that it threatened to burst out of her chest. Her hands went cold and she found it hard to breathe.’

Yes, I know that’s terribly hackneyed, and I’m sure you can do so much better. And that’s what a writer has to do, you see; she has to find new, fresh ways to inject life into what is often very familiar and hackneyed material.

Fortunately for all of us, new punters are coming along all the time. The orchestra may be playing that Beethoven symphony for the four-hundredth time – but somebody in the audience is hearing it for the first time, and they are absolutely entranced.

Another useful piece of technique, which was emphasised by Thomas Uzzell, is that the only interesting response to a stimulus is the considered response.

Suppose you are writing a thriller, and you have followed Raymond Chandler’s useful advice: when in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.

In real life, a bank clerk faced with this problem might freeze. She might stand there, paralysed, like a rabbit caught in the headlights of a car. This reaction is not really interesting; neither does it reveal character. It might, of course, be acceptable for a minor character to behave in this way, but not one of your major players.

Another uninteresting and uninvolving reaction to danger is the panic response. The gunman comes in and the bank clerk starts to scream; she falls on the floor, and has a hysterical fit. Sorry, the punter isn’t interested. In real life we would all, I hope, be sympathetic, but in a book, forget it.

The only response which will interest the reader is the considered response. The gunman appears, and our heroine the bank clerk is horrified and frightened. But we don’t just say that she is horrified and frightened. What we do is describe her shortness of breath, the sudden lack of blood supply to her cheeks, the trembling of her knees. And then we describe how she starts to think. Can she reach that alarm button? If the gunman sees her will he shoot? She feels fear, which we describe through her physical reactions, and she thinks about what is the right thing to do – and, although it’s dangerous, she does it.

Write that scene in the right way, and your punter will be held, will feel sympathetic emotion, and will be impressed by your heroine’s character.

Analysts of drama often insist that there must be conflict in every scene. Unfortunately, this all too often leads to scenes in which two characters stand toe to toe and shout at each other. To my mind, that is not very interesting either.

Playwrights and screenwriters would be much better advised, in my opinion, to concentrate on writing dialogue which reflects, as fully as possible, the thinking and the internal struggle which is going on in the mind of the characters who are involved in the action of the play.

To summarise: Uzzell advises that, if a writer wishes to produce emotion in a reader of fiction, she should do the following:

1. Describe the stimulus which kicks off the whole emotion; in this case, describe the man coming through the door with a gun in his hand.

2. Describe the clash of desires going on in the head of the sympathetic character, who in this case is the bank clerk. She wants to save her own skin, but she also wants to protect the bank’s assets, because she’s a really good employee. The period of time during which the character reviews the options and decides (naturally) to be a heroine may be quite short, but it involves conscious thought and Uzzell refers to it as the reflective delay.

3. Describe the physical responses which result from the thought processes, and the action which follows. If there is time, for instance, our heroine may imagine the gunman’s bullet tearing through her, and she may start to tremble violently. Then she decides to take the gun off him; or duck for cover; or whatever.

If you want to know any more about Uzzell’s theories you’ll just have to hunt down a copy of one of his two books on technique.

I have, incidentally, chosen to illustrate my description of theory and practice with a rather down-market, commercial-fiction example. But all the principles hold good, of course, however intellectual and literary your purpose and your ambitions may be.

It is worth noting, in passing, that Uzzell took the view that the James-Lange theory of emotion was, so to speak, good enough for practical purposes. He argued that the internal clash of desires, occurring in the mind of the individual, led to action, which led to physical sensations, and that these physical sensations constituted the actual emotion. To Uzzell, the very  essence of emotion seemed to be an awareness of bodily changes and sensations, and he emphasised the need to describe these sensations and changes fully if the reader is to become enthralled by a work of fiction.

12. There are no Great Novels

The theory of emotion which is expounded in the previous sections has a number of interesting implications. Here is a discussion of the first of them.

Almost every teacher and lecturer in the field of English literature will seek to convince you that there is something called a Great Novel.

The alleged great novel may be, for instance, James Joyce’s Ulysses, a book which, it so happens, I much admire; or it may be D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, a book which, it so happens, I find unreadable.

According to the professors and opinion-setters of our time, the great novel somehow has a stature all of its own; it remains a great book whether you happen to enjoy it or not. In fact if you, as an individual, happen to consider the great novel excruciatingly dull and boring, then it is you, the moron, who is at fault. The novel in question allegedly remains a great novel, regardless of whether or not you – the individual reader – have the good taste and intellectual equipment to recognise it as such.

Nonsense, is my view. I know of no argument which constitutes grounds for believing these ideas to be true, and I can put forward a strong case for believing the opposite.

Consider what we know so far about the novel.

If the novel is anything at all, it is a machine for creating emotion in the reader. Reading a novel may, conceivably, leave you better informed about hotel management or fetishistic sex, but readers do not, on the whole, buy and borrow novels in order to enhance their stock of general knowledge; consciously or unconsciously, they read novels in order to be made to feel. The main function of a novel – any novel – may therefore be said to be the generation of emotion in the reader. This is true whether the reader understands what is happening to her or not.

And what have we learnt about the generation of emotion?

We know that, in order for us to ‘get the joke’ – if we are to feel amusement, and if we are to laugh – we have to be able to speak the right language; furthermore, we need to have the right frame of reference. To understand a joke which is told in English, we need to speak English. To understand a joke told in English about Holmes and Watson, we need to know who Holmes and Watson are.

If we are German, or Japanese, and if we are Nobel-prizewinning chemists, are we necessarily intellectually inferior because we don’t speak English, and because we have never heard of Holmes and Watson? I don’t think so. We may, in fact be extremely bright and well educated.

Those persons who do not ‘get’ the joke about Holmes and Watson – and I have no doubt that there are many millions of them – cannot be said in any meaningful way to be stupid, ignorant, or lacking in taste. They are simply people who do not speak the necessary language and who do not possess the necessary frame of reference in order to appreciate the joke.

Exactly the same can be said, of course, about the communication of emotion via Ulysses, Sons and Lovers, and any other book which is held by the so-called authorities to be a great novel.

13. A brief excursion for ammunition

At this point we need to make a brief excursion into the fields of quantum mechanics and information theory. But fear not. It’s all quite simple really.

In 1927, Werner Heisenberg pointed out a particular limitation of science. Heisenberg realised that if you wanted to know the precise location of an electron, you had to make it visible, so to speak, by bombarding it with electromagnetic radiation.

Unfortunately, when you bombarded the electron in this way, you also shifted its position. Hence you could find out where it was after you had ‘shone a light’ on it, but you could never know where the elusive thing had been while it remained in darkness, so to speak. This circumstance is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Please note that the observer who examines an electron does not give ‘reality’ to that entity; but the act of observing does change the system.

In itself, the uncertainty principle does not seem to be all that big a deal, at least to the layman; it doesn’t seem to have much to do with the price of fish. But it turns out that the principle has some profound implications in philosophy and science.

For example, Karl Marx and his communist colleagues had argued that a number of political developments were absolutely certain to occur in capitalist societies. Certain to occur, please notice, without any mights and maybes. Armed revolution by the working classes, for instance, was historically inevitable, at least according to Marx; you couldn’t do anything to prevent it even if you wanted to.

However, when armed with the uncertainty principle, a number of critics of communism, notably Karl Popper, were able to demonstrate that the Marxists’ claims were fundamentally unsound. Marxism, it turned out, was no more scientific than any other set of preferences or ideas about how things might happen in the future.

Popper was also able to show that Freud’s ideas on psychoanalysis were distinctly less scientific and ‘certain’ than some enthusiasts had claimed. For a long time, Freud’s supporters had managed the neat dodge of labelling any sort of criticism of their theories as being motivated by neurosis; hence, they argued, criticism of Freud’s theories merely constituted further proof of how right those theories had been all along. In the end, this argument was recognised as specious.

To summarise: the important thing to note, from a writer’s point of view, is that, in quantum mechanics, the observer has an effect on reality.

Next we need to have a brief look at information theory.

Information can be described as ‘the difference’. For example, there is a difference, to most observers, between (a) the sky and (b) the grass in a field below the sky. A scientist and a cow can both see this difference.

To the scientist, however, the grass might represent something to be taken to the laboratory and tested for chemical content. To the cow, the grass would probably represent food.

Same stuff, grass, but two observers and two interpretations of the same information. In other words, in modern information theory, the observer becomes part of the equation.

Quantum mechanics and information theory both demonstrate that in any assessment of reality, the observer has to be taken into consideration. This contrasts with the view of nineteenth century scientists, to whom the observer was irrelevant; reality was thought to exist independent of any subjective viewer. But in the twenty-first century we are obliged to accept that the observer’s participation makes a difference.

14. Back to the Great Novels argument

When we consider fiction, we find an exactly analogous position to that which exists in quantum mechanics and information theory.

A novel exists as a physical object, a book. But the emotion which a novel creates is not of a fixed quantity or quality. The emotion varies according to language spoken by, and the frame of reference possessed by, each individual reader. The case for there being any such thing as a great novel is therefore fundamentally unsound.

This is not a secret. We already know this. We have seen it demonstrated many times over. When we come across a book which we ourselves find entrancing, we often recommend it warmly to a close friend whose tastes, we know, largely coincide with ours. But even then the friend may remain unmoved and unimpressed; the magic doesn’t always work.

And why doesn’t the magic doesn’t always work? Because of the way in which emotion is generated. We know (because it was explained earlier in this book) that, in real life, the series of events for creating emotion is: stimulus; conscious or unconscious thought; physical response.

The same mechanism operates, or fails to operate, when we read fiction. A stimulus is provided by the printed word; this creates conscious or unconscious thoughts, and stirs up memories; and a physical response may or may not arise.

Each reader (observer) brings to this interaction of stimulus, thought, and physical response, her own set of experiences, memories, hopes and fears. The contribution from the reader may or may not interact with the stimulus provided by the writer in the ways which the writer intended and hoped. The precise opposite of what was intended may occur. The intensely serious play by an intensely serious young man may play like a farce which has the audience folded up with laughter.

There is not, literally, a two-way exchange of traffic between the novel and the reader; the words on the printed page do not change. But there is certainly an interchange, and there is certainly two-way traffic, metaphorically speaking. The reader invests the book, temporarily, with her own biochemistry and receptivity, and the novel succeeds, or fails, accordingly.

It follows, therefore, that great novels do not exist as entities in their own right. A novel only has the power to generate emotion when a reader of the right kind comes across it. And this is true whether we are talking about D.H. Lawrence or a Mills and Boon romance.

15. There is no hierarchy of fiction

Most professors of English literature, and most of the highbrow literary critics of this world, would have you believe that there is, metaphorically speaking, a hierarchical tower of fiction. This tower is something like a block of flats. At the top, in the exclusive penthouse, is a small amount of ‘literature’, i.e. Great Novels. In the basement is a large heap of trash.

Now, I am not much impressed by some of the more extreme feminist arguments about dead white European males, but I do have to admit that all this hierarchy malarkey has a distinctly masculine feel to it. The idea is almost phallic. Furthermore, it is a theory which is for the most part advanced by men, and curiously enough it embodies the belief that most of the good stuff, at the top of the tower, is written by men. The ‘generalised rubbish’ at the bottom of the fiction pile is often identified, when push comes to shove, as romantic fiction, or women’s fiction.

The truth, however, is that there is not a top-to-bottom hierarchy of fiction, with great books at the glorious summit and ‘trash’ or ‘pulp’ at the unspeakably vulgar bottom. If we must think of the range of available fiction in visual terms, it is best to think of a broad spectrum of books, which runs horizontally. You might care to imagine a street in which every building is a bookshop containing a particular kind of fiction.

This range, or spectrum, of fiction consists of a variety of types of novels which are accessible at different points to different kinds of readers.

Not every book appeals to every reader, in the sense that each and every reader will inevitably feel its emotional impact. It has never been so, and it never can be so. A novel will only ‘speak to’, and generate emotion in, those readers who are capable of understanding its language, and who possess the relevant frame of reference.

Let me remind you of what Edgar Allan Poe said, in that paragraph which I quoted earlier in. He spoke of a short story being appreciated ‘in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art.’ (Italics added.)  ‘With a kindred art’ is Poe’s way of saying that you need to speak the right language and possess the right frame of reference.

As we grow older, and learn more, our knowledge of ‘languages’ usually expands, as does our frame of reference. We do not usually read and enjoy the same novels at age seventy-five as at age fifteen. At different stages of our lives we may very well access the spectrum of fiction at different points.

We know instinctively what we want from fiction, just as an animal knows when it needs salt, or water, and we seek it out. We read reviews, we ask our friends for advice, we question librarians and booksellers. But the point is that we move sideways on the available menu, not upwards – or even, occasionally, downwards.

This visual image of the range of fiction is, I suspect, a softer and more feminine view than the one which is offered to us by males.

And do you want to know why men are so keen on the hierarchy idea? Because it permits those who hold power in this particular arena to impress the opposite sex.

You think I’m joking? Try attending a party given by one of the leading literary publishers and watch the young lions (male writers) being surrounded by gullible young women. Seems to work every time.

Then again, consider the vested interest of all those who teach the subject of English literature. They are all doing pretty nicely, thank you, preaching the 1947 party line, and they’re not too keen on having any revisionists question it.

The facts are really very simple. A book either works in terms of producing the intended emotion in a target reader, or it does not.

For instance, a literary work by, say, Salman Rushdie either fascinates and enthrals and ‘delivers’ to those who normally enjoy contemporary literary fiction, or it does not. Similarly, a Mills & Boon hospital romance either works for regular hospital-romance readers, or it doesn’t. If a particular novel does satisfy most readers in the target audience, it may be said to be successful. To insist on calling it a ‘good’ book or a ‘great novel’ really doesn’t help much.

Personally I do not believe that a book can be said to be good or bad in any absolute sense – it is only successful or unsuccessful in terms of its intended audience. And its intended audience, to repeat a point made earlier, is a group of people who speak a particular language, either literally or metaphorically; it is a group of people who share a set of interests and a common frame of reference.

Some books continue to produce the intended emotion in readers over a long period of time. There are still plenty of people who can read Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice with pleasure, even though it was written in 1813. On the other hand, Fergus Hume’s The Mystery of a Hansom Cab does not satisfy many readers today, despite the fact that it was a huge hit in the years immediately following its publication in 1886.

Books which continue to be enjoyed for long periods of time tend to become known as ‘classics’. This is a convenient shorthand term, but again, you should not be misled into assuming that it implies some absolute quality. Sherlock Holmes is often thought of as ‘immortal’, and James Bond is still going strong at about fifty years of age. But were their creators, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ian Fleming respectively, any better writers than, say, Edgar Wallace or Margery Allingham, neither of whom is much read today? I don’t believe so.

Books which continue to work for a long period of time, say several decades, do so I suspect more by virtue of factors other than the inherent character of the books themselves. Not the least of these is adaptation into film and television series.

As for striving to achieve classic status yourself – forget it. Your first task, when writing a novel, is to make it work for your intended audience today. Let the future take care of itself.

16. I am not more sensitive than you, and I don’t mind admitting it

If there is no hierarchy of books, still less is there a hierarchy of sensitivity when it comes to appreciating and experiencing the emotions which are created by fiction. But there are certainly plenty of people around who think there is.

You would not have to go far, I suspect, in any university department of literature, to find a professor who argued that the genuinely enthusiastic admirer of Ulysses is in some sense a more sensitive person, in terms of her capacity to feel emotion, than is the reader of a confession magazine. But how can such a belief be justified? On what possible grounds can the argument be based?

Is there any evidence to show that the intensity of grief which is experienced on the death of a child varies according to culture, class, age, or education? Does the tribesman in the Amazon rain-forest mourn his dead child any less deeply than the Oxford don? Has anybody done any laboratory work on that? If so, it has escaped my notice.

Work has been done, however (and it was mentioned briefly above), which demonstrates that all human beings who are alive today come from a common stock. Given this circumstance, it is not surprising that Paul Ekman has been able to demonstrate that half a dozen basic emotions are the common experience of all humanity. (Others may well be common too, but that has not yet been demonstrated.)

When it comes to fiction, then, is the emotion which the aesthete feels when reading a ‘recognised masterpiece’ any more intense than the emotion experienced by the reader of a confession magazine?

Take the Girton-educated aristocrat who reads Jane Austen. Is she somehow a more sensitive instrument, capable of registering a broader range or finer gradations of feeling, than is her cleaning-lady when she reads Woman’s Weekly?

I wouldn’t care to argue that myself. If you cut a magazine reader, does she not bleed?

I have, as it happens, seen some of the correspondence from such ‘low-grade’ readers; specifically, correspondence which was sent to the editorial offices of a confession magazine.

You and I, of course, being sophisticated and educated persons, we understand that confession-magazine stories are (virtually all) fiction, though they may be based on a sliver of truth. But the readers of such stories – considered by some to be semi-literate Untermenschen – take the material seriously. They write in to the magazines, in a pathetic barely joined-up scrawl, to pass on their thoughts on the morality and wisdom of the actions portrayed.

You and I may snigger at these illiterate ramblings. Well, you may, but I wouldn’t, because they embody an intensity of feeling which I find quite humbling. And are you really going to stand up and tell me that the feelings experienced by these readers are somehow less powerful, less subtle, than those which I experience when reading Ulysses? If so, how are you going to demonstrate this?

Before you even try, perhaps you might care to remember that there was, in the mid-twentieth century, a group of people who did believe that certain classes and races of people were fundamentally inferior to the master race; so inferior, in fact, that the only sensible course of action was to eliminate them from the face of the earth. You may wish to align yourself with that group. I don’t.

My conclusion then is that there is no special virtue in speaking one particular language, and in possessing one particular frame of reference, as distinct from another. We may prefer to have, as our friends, people who share our own interests and tastes, but that’s a different matter entirely.

17. What is a work of art?

This is probably as good a place as any to give you a useful definition of a work of art.

The world is full of pompous prats. Sometimes, when you turn on the telly late at night, it’s quite hard to work out what it is you’re watching. Is it a genuine discussion group, peopled by distinguished academics and critics who are sounding off about ‘art forms’ and the like; or is it French and Saunders sending up the whole thing? It’s sometimes hard to know.

Any one of these late-night TV pundits, whether genuine ‘thinkers’ or satirists, could give you a thirty-minute lecture on what constitutes a work of art, but I shan’t detain you that long.

There exists in London a society called the Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Its full title is ‘The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce.’ This is a splendid organisation and I commend it to you; almost anyone of good standing can join.

One of the aims of the RSA, as its name suggests, is to encourage down-to-earth skills which have to do with business – skills which are involved in manufacturing and selling things. The Society gives prizes, for instance, to young designers who show signs of being able to create a better mousetrap.

And this, I think, gives us a pointer to the most useful interpretation of the word ‘arts’. In the RSA context, the word means ‘skills’.

A work of art is therefore a work which has been created through the exercise of skill, rather than by accident. The most common use of the term is in relation to works which have been devised primarily to create emotion, as opposed to works which seek to carry out some function, such as catching mice.

You and I, for instance, can probably not draw a horse. (Well I can’t, anyway.)  But there are people around who can, and those people can sensibly be called artists; they are people who possess skills. A painting of a horse is made primarily to impress us with the beauty of the animal; i.e., to arouse emotion.

Artistic skills are normally based on some sort of natural aptitude, which is then developed through training. And one of the big problems about being a writer is, of course, that there is almost nowhere to go to get trained – nowhere sensible, anyway. But that’s a subject for another book.

Applying this working definition of terms such as art, work of art, and artist, will enable you to sort out the nonsense from the worthwhile.

Some years ago, I heard the actor Zero Mostel tell a story about an ‘artist’ in New York. Mostel was genuinely interested in abstract art, and he made it his business to get to know any promising young painter. One day he went to see such a painter at work in his studio.

This particular individual belonged to the chuck-it-on-the-canvas-and-see-what-happens school. After the artist had done his thing for half an hour or so, he and Mostel sat down for a cup of coffee.

After a few minutes Mostel heard a pitter-patter sort of noise. He turned round to see what was causing it, and then he said, ‘Why John – you’ve put so much paint on the canvas that it’s dripping down on to the floor.’

‘Oh, that’s all right,’ said the ‘artist’ airily. ‘I mean it to do that.’

Yeah, yeah.

Whatever else you do, I implore you, do not fall into the trap of thinking that anything which you have written is automatically wonderful, just because you wrote it.

18. Down with expressionism

Expressionism is the word used to describe a theory which is perhaps as old as the Greeks, but which in modern times derives from the writings of Tolstoy and Croce; it was then developed by writers such as E.F. Carritt (Theories of Beauty, 1914) and R.G. Collingwood (The Principles of Art, 1938).

The central doctrine of expressionism is that a work of art is an expression of the artist’s emotion; this ‘expression’, in the form of a novel or painting or symphony, communicates the artist’s emotion to the public (the observer or punter).

At the heart of the theory of expressionism is a belief in the overwhelming importance of ‘genuineness’ in the emotion expressed. Superficial emotions (whatever they are), or mere frivolous entertainment, are frowned upon.

An artist might have, in life, a series of horrible experiences which generated numerous negative emotions – terror, despair, and anguish, perhaps. These experiences might leave the artist severely depressed, and even psychologically damaged beyond repair. It would then be considered perfectly in order, in terms of expressionist theory, for the artist to seek to recreate these horrible experiences, and to generate the deeply unpleasant and disturbing emotions, in the reader of a novel or the audience for a play. Not only would a work which did that be considered good art, by the expressionist believer, but it would also be considered the only kind of work which is worthy of being called art at all. Everything else is mere hackwork.

Expressionism, in short, is considered by its advocates to be a pretty good thing. More than that, any work of art which fails to conform with the tenets of expressionism is considered to be a bad thing.

I have some comments.

My first comment is that we must distinguish between a kind of writing which is therapy for a writer, and writing which is designed to do something valuable and helpful for the reader. Expressionism seems to me to be mainly the former. (And I note, in passing, that reliving unpleasant experiences very often slows down, or prevents, the very natural and desirable process of allowing the disturbing memories to fade away as quickly as possible.)

Second, expressionism seems to imply that, if a work of art is to be satisfactory and admirable, it must inevitably seek to convey to the observer the same emotion as that which the artist herself experiences. It also seems to be implied in expressionism that the artist can only create good art if she is experiencing a ‘genuine’ emotion while she is actually at work.

I disagree with both of these ideas. I think it is perfectly possible to create a work of art which generates, in the observer, an emotion quite different from that which is being, or has been, experienced by the artist.

There is a story from the early part of the nineteenth-century which illustrates this point. At that time there was a well-known English music-hall performer called Grimaldi. He is often described as a clown, but in our terms ‘comic entertainer’ might be a better description. He did acrobatics and tumbles, and was famous for his comic songs.

The story goes that one day a middle-aged man went to see his doctor. He looked exhausted, thoroughly run down, and was clearly at the end of his physical tether. He complained of all the usual stress-related symptoms: couldn’t sleep, had indigestion, felt depressed....

The doctor examined him and then said: ‘You know, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with you, old chap. You’ve just let things get a bit on top of you. What you need to do is relax more. I tell you what – why don’t you go and see this man Grimaldi at the Empire Theatre? He’s terrific fun. When people come out of that theatre you can see from their faces that they’re feeling so much better than when they went in. That Grimaldi fellow is a tonic in himself.’

‘Ah yes,’ said the patient with a sad smile. ‘But you see, I am Grimaldi.’

In fact, poor Grimaldi paid a high price for making other people laugh. He retired at the age of forty-five, worn out and almost crippled from the strain of his highly physical performances.

Actors, of course, and notably those trained in the method school of acting, are notoriously keen on the idea that it is important for the actor to feel genuine emotion as he works. However, experienced directors take a different view of the matter. Ingrid Bergman related, at a tribute to Alfred Hitchcock, how she had once been discussing a scene with him. Hitchcock told her what he wanted, but Ingrid hesitated; she told him that she wasn’t sure that she could deliver that particular emotion.

Hitchcock gave her a beady look and said firmly: ‘Ingrid – just fake it.’

Third comment. Expressionism can be interpreted, and often is, as implying that the very fact that the artist herself has experienced a particular emotion makes it, in some unspecified way, emotion of a more important and valuable kind than that experienced by mere mortals.

This is another version of the idea which I have attempted to demolish earlier in the chapter, namely the idea that there is a hierarchy of sensitivity. All too often, the expressionists would have us believe that the artist is some sort of special being, more worthy of our admiration, sympathy and respect than is the old woman across the road. And this idea is, of course, warmly embraced by those who consider themselves to be ‘artists’ and therefore somebody special.

I now ask again, as I did earlier, to be shown the evidence to support this contention. Why is your (the artist’s) emotion any more important than mine? Even if I am a street-sweeper and you are a Booker prizewinner, I submit that we both feel the same emotions. If you believe otherwise, kindly show me the evidence.

Next comment, which is really an expansion of the previous one. The doctrine of expressionism can all too easily be perverted into a chant of ‘me-me-me, aren’t I wonderful?’ by the infantile and the self-centred – of whom there are great numbers in the writing community. (Actors are the only group I know of who are quicker than writers at converting any given state of affairs into a service of worship which centres upon themselves.)

But we do not admire selfish and self-centred individuals in the world at large. At best they are merely tiresome; at worst they are psychopaths and criminals. So why should we admire such people in the arts?

An artist is a creature driven by demons, said William Faulkner. And many an immature mind has replied, Yes, and I am a creature driven by demons, and therefore I am an artist; and therefore I must be taken seriously and judged at my own evaluation; here endeth the lesson.

In this book I have pointed out that a cry commonly heard among those writers who consider themselves acutely sensitive, incredibly talented, and wholly unappreciated, is: I want to express myself!

What they usually mean by this is something along the following lines: I am a natural-born genius (because I say so). It is the duty of all right-thinking publishers to accept, immediately and without question, anything that I condescend to permit them to publish. All discerning critics will heap unstinting praise upon my head. Suitably fawning sycophants may be allowed to present me with the enormous cheques which are undoubtedly my due, on Thursdays at four p.m., provided they don’t take too long about it.

Oh, and in the case of men: Presentable young ladies with bust measurements in excess of 34 DD should form an orderly queue outside my bedroom door from nine p.m. onwards.

Those who suffer from this kind of delusion seize upon expressionism to ‘justify’ their foolishness. For that reason alone, the theory is to be discouraged.

It is a remarkable fact that many of the consumers of all art forms have been successfully brainwashed by selfish and self-centred writers, actors, and other artists, over a long a period of time. Many members of the public are so bemused by the expressionist propaganda that they can be bullied into buying, and even admiring – albeit grudgingly – works of art which actually bore them stiff.

Deeply embedded into our puritanical, prudish little minds is the idea that there is something wrong with us if we do not appreciate a particular work which has been praised by ‘good judges’. And, conversely, we feel almost ashamed of ourselves if we happen to find something funny and moving when it is clearly popular and vulgar.

Professional critics and opinion-formers have largely encouraged the writers, musicians, and artists of all kinds to indulge their selfish and childish natures at our expense. As if they needed any encouragement!

I mentioned earlier my own teenage interest in jazz; and in the 1950s, in the tiny, inbred world of jazz, there was no greater insult than to say of a musician that he had ‘gone commercial’. Going commercial meant playing music which was specifically designed to entertain the general public, as opposed to playing music which expressed the torment of the performer’s soul – music which was appreciated, after a fashion, only by a minute clique. The sin of ‘going commercial’ was, in my view, entirely illusory.

I would like to encourage you, in your role as a consumer of art, to have a little more confidence in your own powers of appreciation, and to care a little less about the judgement of experts. And I speak as someone whose all-time favourite television programme is Nearest and Dearest, starring Hylda Baker and Jimmy Jewel. (This was, for the record, about as down-market a sitcom as could be imagined.)

I hope I have also persuaded you that a mature writer, with a properly modest view of her own importance in the scale of things, should concentrate upon the emotions and feelings of her readers, rather than spend her time fiddling about with her own obsessions.

The writer’s personal emotions are, of course, a data bank upon which she can draw. But it is not a guarantee of quality to be told that the writer, when working on her latest opus, wept tears so copious that the keyboard blew a fuse. Neither are we certain to laugh at something which the writer, herself, found so hilarious that she nearly fell off her chair.

Edith Wharton – once a famous writer but now largely forgotten – tells us in her book The Writing of Fiction that as she worked she constantly tried to bear in mind that her characters must be ‘living’ to her readers but not to herself. Precisely. Uzzell, in quoting this passage, adds that, unless a writer can remember this advice, ‘he will be the slave of his characters and not their master.’ In other words, if the writer is to be in control, then the preconceived emotional effect is what must determine the nature of the characters and the events which befall them. As Edgar Allan Poe pointed out 170 years ago.

In other books, and on my blog (the Grumpy Old Bookman) I have repeatedly made the point that a writer is most unlikely to make any serious money, and that those who seek literary reputation or fame are chasing worthless illusions. Given that state of affairs, all that remains as a benefit of writing is the satisfaction of doing the job well.

For that reason, many writers will choose to use material which is personal, which derives from their own experience, and which seeks to create in the reader the same sort of emotion as that experienced in life by the writer. That is one thing. But to go further, and to argue that expressionism of that kind is the only worthwhile and morally acceptable form of art, is quite another.

Which brings us, rather neatly, to the question of the morality of the novel, and, for that matter, of art generally.

19. The morality of the novel

To young readers, the morality of the novel may seem an odd topic. For a start, one seldom sees, these days, any sort of discussion of morality in the arts; it seems to be far too tricky a subject. This is probably the result of moral/value relativism – or some such. I seem to have heard something about this topic once or twice – younger chaps talking in a far corner of the common room, don’t you know.

Newspaper columnists and other guardians of public morality are, however, always ready to discuss one aspect of the novel: whether it’s too sexy for its own good, or anyone else’s. And on this topic, a little historical perspective will not be out of place.

In the nineteenth century, novels, like actresses, were often assumed to be wicked by definition. The poet Swinburne once gave a novel to a friend of his, Lady Trevelyan. And – Lord preserve us! – this book was not only a piece of fiction but it was a French novel at that! When the lady’s husband heard about this gift, he ran to the drawing room, picked up the offensive object with a pair of fire-tongs, and deposited it on the blazing coals.

Quite right too. Filthy chaps, those Frogs. You only have to think of French kissing, French letters, and so forth, to understand that the bounders are up to no good. I understand they eat snails as well.

A deep-seated belief that fiction was likely to deprave and corrupt, particularly in respect of sexual morals, persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century.

In the 1950s, English magistrates competed with each other for the title of twit of the year: works such as Boccaccio’s Decameron (written in the fourteenth century and famous ever since) were seized as obscene and destroyed. Even quite respectable publishers lived in genuine fear of going to prison.

The situation was perhaps worse in the United States. Younger readers of this book may be unaware that, fifty years ago, novels which now seem utterly harmless were then condemned as virulently dangerous: Peyton Place, for instance, caused an uproar when it first appeared in 1956. It was then labelled as sordid and cheap. But in the year 2002, this unspeakable novel was dramatised on BBC Radio’s Woman’s Hour.

Until 1960, the so-called four-letter words were not permitted to appear in print in England, and descriptions of sexual activity had to be shrouded in obscurity. In the cinema, no young Englishman so much as glimpsed a female nipple until... when? The late 1950s at least.

Eventually, however, attitudes changed. And I suppose it could be said that they changed quite quickly. For example, the city of Boston, in the USA, was at one time notoriously prudish. In the 1950s and ’60s, the proud boast ‘Banned in Boston’ was one which could be guaranteed to add to the sales of any book. But, by 1986, when I visited Boston, all had changed. There was one city block, known as the Combat Zone, on which were located a whole parade of hard-core porno bookshops, blue-movie houses, and strip clubs. All were extremely explicit. (Or so I was told. I never went in them myself, you understand. Well, only the once. And that was just for research. And I certainly didn’t enjoy it.)

If I have couched this discussion of morality in terms of sexual content, that is for the sake of simplicity. The point I am trying to make is that, in the quite recent past, novels (and many other forms of art or entertainment) were regarded with deep suspicion by the political, social and religious leaders of society.

Today, by comparison, almost anything goes. The broadsheet newspapers still tend to print f*** and s***, despite the fact that the uncensored versions of these words are now in the dictionary; and the tabloids have so far not ventured to show us any pubic hair. But no novelist any longer feels much constrained by the law on sexual content, or fears the wrath of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Such constraints as exist are imposed by publishers, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they know what their customers will tolerate at any given time.

This being the case, why mention morality at all? Particularly when this is a chapter about emotion.

Well, I mention it because this is a chapter about emotion. If I am right in arguing that the novel (which, for the purposes of this discussion, may be regarded as a surrogate for all art forms) is best regarded as a machine for generating emotion, then we writers need to consider the morality of that process, if only for our own peace of mind.

The question is, can a writer feel assured that the process of creating positive emotions in readers is a moral one?

Sooner or later, even the least sensitive of us is going to wonder whether to include a particular scene or not. Is this scene going to do our chosen audience any harm? Is it going to do any good? Either way, is it something we would care to have our name associated with?

The subject could, I dare say, make a book in itself, but it may save a great deal of time if I admit, without equivocation, that the novel is, in principle, capable of doing harm. So is a bottle of aspirin, if you take the contents all at once.

On the other hand, a bottle of aspirin is capable of doing good. Given a sensible attitude on the part of the aspirin user, the drug’s potential for good far outweighs the harm, and life would get awfully complicated if we were to ban everything that is capable of being misused. Cars and carving-knives can be used to kill people, but I don’t think we are likely to forbid any one to possess them as a result.

The risk of the novel, or any other art form, doing any serious harm to adults seems to me to be minimal. Children, of course, will require guidance in their access to the arts, just as no child should sensibly be allowed to drink a bottle of whisky.

To my mind, an involvement in writing fiction is consequently not something that you need to be ashamed of. Quite the reverse: knowing what we do about the effects of emotion, I suggest that writing fiction can be viewed, in a modest way, as the equivalent of practising medicine. Alternative medicine, perhaps, rather than full-scale surgery. Fiction helps people to feel better emotionally; and, given the interaction of mind and body, it may therefore help them to feel better physically.

If writers can be regarded as potential healers, and I believe they can, then it follows, in my thinking at least, that creating a novel is not only a moral activity but also – dammit – an honourable one.

20. Summary

This ebook has dealt with the role of emotion in writing – and, by extension, with the role of emotion in art generally.

Art, you will recall, I define as any activity which involves skill and which consciously and deliberately directs that skill towards generating emotion in the observer.

We have discovered that emotion is an area of enquiry which has been grossly neglected by science. This neglect arises from the fact that emotion is hard to investigate, yields little by way of results, and therefore offers scant hope of career advancement. Ha! And you thought scientists were objective, clear-thinking chaps who followed a trail wherever it led, regardless of such mundane issues as career grades and salaries. Well, now you know better.

In the absence of much serious input from the men in white coats, I have provided you with a working theory of how emotion is generated in general; this theory can usefully be applied to writing the novel, or to pretty much any other form of writing.

Emotions can be thought of as falling into two groups, positive and negative, and I have provided you with a taxonomy – sorry, list – of these which you can use as a starting point for your own thinking.

And you are going to do some thinking of your own, aren’t you? I hope so.

I have suggested that there are a number of conclusions which follow logically from the idea that the main purpose of the novel – or any work of art – is to generate emotion. One conclusion is that there are no great novels, in the sense that the term is generally understood. Though there is, of course, a whole industry – nay, several industries, of which higher education and publishing are the chief – dedicated to the maintenance of the belief in great novels.

If there are no great novels, there is no hierarchy of fiction, with the good stuff at the top and the trash at the bottom. Indeed, only the briefest of considerations will demonstrate that the trash is every bit as effective in generating emotion as the so-called good stuff. Usually, in fact, a lot better.

Forget the idea that some chaps – and, yes, ladies too – are more sensitive than other chaps. We just have different frames of reference, that’s all. Different memory banks, different emotions, different collections of molecules stored in our receptors.

There is no particular virtue, we have decided, in the artist seeking to express only those ‘genuine’ and somehow ‘real’ emotions which she herself has experienced. And there is certainly no mileage in the idea that the artist must feel that emotion at the time of creating the work of art.

On the contrary, there are good reasons for supposing that the most effective works of art are created by those with a clear mind, uncluttered at the time of creation by what is often self-deluding emotion.

The idea that I, the Great Artist, am somehow a natural genius whose every spit and cough is of priceless value, is childish, selfish, ludicrous nonsense.

And, finally, I have suggested that those who dabble in the arts – provided they do it in a responsible and mature manner, as described – should hold their heads high and be proud of what they do.

21. Afterword

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are now ready to read more about how to apply what you have learnt about emotion to the down-to-earth business of actual writing, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing. Much of this present book on emotion can be found printed as Chapter 5 of that book.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has available, visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

Good luck!

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO VIEWPOINT:

How to Tell Your Story in the Most Effective Way

Michael Allen

Copyright 2013 by Michael Allen

***

1. About the author

If you are presented with a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who is the author of said book, and what makes him any sort of authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am 74 years old. I was first paid for writing for a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963, exactly 50 years ago this year, since when I have written at least 25 others (under my own name and several pen names).

I have written half a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers. For example, this is the second in my Writer’s Guide series, the first one being about emotion. In related fields, I have written various drama scripts which have been professionally produced on the stage, radio, and television.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence saw something of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s.

As of today I have about 60 separate publications available in Kindle format, under various names.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context (though the rest of the world doesn’t behave any differently). All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

I was never a full-time writer, and my working life was spent in education; as a result, my instinct is always to pass on useful information. In addition, a Professor at Cambridge University once remarked to me that, if you ever do any research, you should always publish your results – otherwise your efforts are wasted. I agree. That’s why I’ve taken the trouble to write this book.

2. Overview

It doesn’t sound very enticing, does it? A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint. (Also known as the point of view.) Sounds bloody boring. But actually viewpoint is one of the most important weapons in a writer’s armoury. It may be immodest to say so, but in my opinion this ebook is worth every penny of the asking price.

The way in which a writer handles the point of view from which the story is told is what sorts out the professionals from the amateurs. It has an amazingly powerful influence over the extent to which you can make your reader feel emotion. And, if you’ve read my ebook A Writer’s Guide to Emotion, you will know by now that emotion is what determines whether a short story or a novel works or not.

A story that works, by the way, is one that your target reader will pick up with a sense of anticipation, become interested in within a page or two, and will continue to read till the end (‘I could hardly put it down’). At the end, your reader will feel a deep sense of satisfaction. This feeling – indeed it is ideally a powerful emotion – will be so strong, in fact, that the reader will immediately go online to see what else you have to offer. Not only that, but the reader will tell all her friends what a terrific book she’s just read.

That’s what a story that works is. It may not be an international smash hit, but will appeal to readers of a particular genre, and it will leave them wanting more. And if you want to achieve that affect, take the trouble to study the use of viewpoint, because it will ensure that your material produces the maximum possible effect.

So, be told by one who learnt this lesson the hard way. Do not sigh and go back to watching the telly. Study this ebook till you have grasped its contents firmly, and feel comfortable that you know, at least in theory, how to make the various points of view work to your advantage.

Of course, if you are to become a fully effective fiction writer, you still need an enormous amount of practice. Thomas H. Uzzell, a man who, as we shall see, is a hero of mine when it comes to analysing the finer points of narrative technique, took the view that you need to write a million words of fiction before you are likely to acquire a facility for the job.

John D. McDonald, who was a successful thriller writer in his day, put it less politely: all writers, he said, have a million words of crap in them before they come to their first published word. Dean Wesley Smith, author of over 100 novels, recently quoted McDonald and agreed with him.

So, if you’re a newcomer to this fiction-writing business, you may well have some way to go before your first success – but if you’ve mastered the theory of viewpoint, the practice will come that much easier.

3. Sources of wisdom

Over the past fifty years or so I have read more or less every book that I could lay hands on which appeared to shed some light on how to write fiction (about 300 of them, all told). These analyses have varied from abstruse academic works at one end to crude ‘how to get rich quick by writing a bestseller’ manuals at the other. The books at either end of this spectrum tend to be useless. The valuable ones are somewhere in the middle.

As a result of this research I am in a position to give you the benefit of all that accumulated wisdom. What follows, in other words, is not so much the fruit of my own genius, but an amalgam of the thinking of all the great fictional theorists, expressed (I hope) in simple and clear language.

It may be useful if I mention here the names of some of the most valuable thinkers on this particular aspect of storytelling, so that you can read their discussions yourself, if you so wish.

First, I need to tell you about Thomas H. Uzzell, author of Narrative Technique (first published in 1923). In that book, Uzzell writes extensively about the various possible points of view for relating a story.

Uzzell’s early ideas were refined some thirty years later when he considered full-length fiction, in his book The Technique of the Novel. In the remainder of this chapter I shall make extensive use of the principles which Uzzell sets out in both his major works. By the way, it is now possible to buy a Kindle edition of the 1950 edition of The Technique of the Novel, and I recommend it to you.

A more recent viewpoint theorist is Albert Zuckerman, whose book Writing the Blockbuster Novel is essential reading for anyone who intends to tackle the longer form of fiction. Al Zuckerman (now more or less retired) is one of the most successful literary agents in New York, and as it happens he was my own agent for about fifteen years. In 1980/81 I worked very closely with Al when I was writing a thriller called No Holds Barred (well out of print) so I have personal experience of the insights that he can bring to a writer’s work.

Not surprisingly, many of the best books on fictional technique are those written by literary agents. I say not surprisingly because agents are (or were, before digital) the people who earn their living by actually selling books to publishers, and it is therefore very much in their interests to think hard about what makes a book tick. Agents who have written useful books on writing fiction include Paul R. Reynolds, Malcolm MacCampbell, Scott Meredith, and Carole Blake.

For completeness I suppose I must mention that I have also sought help from the academic writers on the subject of viewpoint – though the academics are, as usual, much less helpful than the more down-to-earth practitioners.

Academics, by and large, consider that they are letting themselves down if they write anything, which can be understood by the ordinary reader. They don’t feel they’re doing things right unless their prose is well nigh incomprehensible.

You might read, for example, a work by Gerard Genette, entitled Narrative Discourse. In that book, Genette identifies three types of prose, which he refers to as non-focalised, internally focalised, and externally focalised. The terminology is not what you might call instantly clear, is it? So, what is Genette actually talking about?

Well, when you dig down through the layers of obfuscation, you discover that what Genette calls non-focalised fiction is simply a story told from the point of view of the classic omniscient narrator (of whom more below). Internally focalised prose is a story told from the point of view of a particular character. And an externally focalised story is one which is told in the Hemingway manner, with an account of the events being given from the viewpoint of one of the characters, but without any comment or thoughts from that character.

The analysis which Genette gives us is interesting, up to a point, and useful, up to a point. But, for the record, it is an incomplete and faulty analysis. What is more, Genette offers us a discussion which is couched, like most academic discourse, in obscure language; reading the thing is damned hard work, and in the end you discover that it’s scarcely worth the trouble, because other writers have set out the same ideas with greater clarity.

Other academic writers who have dealt with the question of viewpoint include Wayne C. Booth (The Rhetoric of Fiction), and Tzvetan Todorov (The Poetics of Prose). Wade through these stodgy tomes if you wish, but you won’t find anything there which tells you more than is contained in the rest of this chapter. And you will find that my description – even if I do say so myself – is a great deal easier to follow than the output of the academic elite.

It is high time we got down to business.

4. The omniscient viewpoint

In the good (?) old days, writers on the art of fiction would limit themselves to advising you that there were two ways – and only two ways – in which you could tell a story. You could either write it in the first person, or in the third person. Either you wrote: I opened the door and walked into the room, where I fell over a dead body. Or you wrote: He opened the door and walked into the room, where he fell over a dead body.

It must have been nice to live in such simple, untroubled times. Today, of course, we know that things are not that straightforward. Dear me, no. So to begin with, let me say that there are three principal points of view from which a story may be told. The first of these three viewpoints is the omniscient.

A writer who adopts the omniscient viewpoint writes as if she is one of the gods. In other words, she looks down from above and sees everything with perfect clarity.

An omniscient author knows everything about everybody in the story. She knows what each and every character is thinking and feeling, at any given point in time, and she is free to tell her readers about those thoughts and feelings to whatever extent she wishes.

The omniscient viewpoint is sometimes called the novelist’s angle, and certainly it was much used by novelists in the nineteenth century. Such novelists, as often as not, commanded great armies of characters, and they told their readers, in enormous detail, about the characters’ upbringing, tastes, likes and dislikes, moral character, and family history. They also related the innermost thoughts and feelings of those characters.

The writer who adopts the omniscient viewpoint stands well outside the story, looking on. She is not a participant in the tale; she stands aloof.

Inevitably, and inescapably, the omniscient writer must write in the third person. She must say ‘He climbed the stairs’, and not ‘I climbed the stairs’, because if you write in the first person you are, of necessity, using one of the other two available viewpoints.

While it is possible, in theory, for the omniscient writer to enter the minds of all her characters, it is common for novelists to limit this practice to the half-dozen or so major characters. Minor characters may best be dealt with by describing their actions only, ignoring their internal reactions.

And by the way, if you are going to enter the heads of your leading characters, and convey their thoughts to the reader, you should preferably be consistent about it. In a murder story, for instance, it is no good telling us what everyone is thinking except the murderer. Not only is that aesthetically unbalanced, and a form of cheating, but it also tends to send a signal to the alert reader. It is the equivalent of putting a neon sign above the guilty party’s head, saying This Is The One Who Dun It!

The omniscient viewpoint has a long and honourable history; and for that reason it is, perhaps, just the tiniest bit old-fashioned. Don’t let me put you off – you can certainly breathe new life into the old girl. But, in adopting a technique which was widely used 150 years ago, you can easily slip into the habit of writing in the style which the old-timers used. And that may not go down too well with modern editors (if you trouble with such) and readers.

That having been said, some modern writers have used this viewpoint wonderfully well. I am indebted to Charlie Jane Anders for pointing out that Douglas Adams, in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, found it useful to tell us what Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and various other characters are thinking at any given moment.

If you want to see how one of the old masters handled the same viewpoint, Henry Fielding is apparently the go-to guy. He entertains us by letting us know what everyone is thinking, and how totally at cross-purposes they all are. Try Tom Jones.

4.1 Author comment

Before moving on to describe the second of the three possible viewpoints, I want to say something about the extent to which an author may, or should, comment on the action.

There are numerous variations which can be worked upon the three basic viewpoints, and one of those variations is the extent to which the author chooses to comment, or nudge the reader’s elbow.

As noted above, in relation to Douglas Adams and Henry Fielding, the omniscient viewpoint provides ample opportunity for the writer to say what she thinks about any of the characters, or about the unfolding events; and, if you are using this viewpoint, you really ought to decide, as consciously as possible, whether you are going to use this opportunity to comment, or not.

Not commenting means that you just tell the story. You simply relate what happens to the characters. You may, perhaps, take advantage of your godlike position and tell the reader what the major characters are thinking and feeling. And that would probably be a good idea; it helps to get the reader involved in the story.

However, the writer who chooses to comment can go considerably further than that. The writer may, if she wishes, give hints and tips about the unfolding action: she may choose to remind us readers of things we might have forgotten, and forewarn us of events yet to come. She may well tell us, for instance, that Mr Brown is a nasty piece of work, and that Mrs Green will one day be declared a saint. She may point out that Miss Jones is making a big mistake by agreeing to have dinner with that man from the sales department, and she may assure us that Mr Brown will one day be married and have four kids.

In the nineteenth century, particularly, writers took full advantage of their godlike status to bombard us with their own beliefs and moral judgements. Which is all very well. You can do that if you choose. But just remember that the modern reader is likely, on the whole, to be more interested in the unfolding events of the story than in hearing what you, the author, think about couples living together without being married, or the state of the modern Labour party. A writer can make herself the star of the show if she wishes, and inflict her opinions on the long-suffering reader. But be warned – even the star can be booed offstage.

My advice (to be ignored if you wish) is that, in the omniscient viewpoint, you should confine yourself to telling the story, entering the minds of the leading characters from time to time, and telling us what they are thinking and feeling. Apart from that, keep your mouth firmly shut. No one wants to know.

Even if you refrain from telling us directly that Miss Jones is making a big mistake, you may still colour the reader’s thinking by the way in which you present raw information. And here again, this may be done either consciously or unconsciously.

For example, you could write: He was a seedy, unpleasant-looking man. By writing such a sentence, you are conveying to the reader, deliberately or otherwise, what you think of this character. If you refer to him as seedy and unpleasant he doesn’t sound like much of a catch for a well brought-up young lady, now does he?

On the other hand, you could write, of the same individual: His shoes were down-at-heel and his raincoat was streaked with dirt. Which is more objective, and doesn’t ram home a moral judgement. It also leaves open the possibility that this character might turn out to be a perfect gentleman – one who, for entirely understandable reasons, is temporarily down on his luck. And the reader might well be more interested in continuing to read your story if she is left to wonder about that possibility, than she would be if you put up another neon sign above the character’s head, saying This One Is Up To No Good.

Some literary thinkers have referred to these two different ways of presenting the facts as writing subjectively and writing objectively. Nudging the reader’s elbow, by describing a character as seedy, may be thought of as writing subjectively. Writing objectively, by contrast, simply means telling the reader that the man’s clothes are shabby.

All too often a writer will fall into a subjective style of writing without being conscious of it. And that may be a perfectly satisfactory way of proceeding. But just try to be aware of what you are doing, and ask yourself whether that is really the best way to achieve the effect you are seeking. At the revision stage, try to recognise when you are falling into the commenting mode, and, if that is not what you really want to do, strike out the offending passage.

5. The major-character viewpoint

Now we come to the second of the three possible viewpoints for writing fiction.

A story which uses the major-character viewpoint is, rather obviously, one in which the events are related as seen by one of the most important participants in the events. A story told from this point of view is an account of the action as seen (or heard), by a character who is heavily involved in the story.

When using this viewpoint, you relate the events as the major character sees them, and you describe that one character’s thoughts and feelings. But you do not enter the heads of any of the other characters, or tell the reader what those characters are thinking and feeling.

Why not? Well, because your major character can’t be sure what the other characters are thinking. Unlike the omniscient author, he or she is not a god. The main character may guess what is running through the minds of the others, from the way they look and act – but he can’t know for sure.

Consider, for example, Maupassant’s short story The Beggar. The story tells us what happened to the only important character in it. Writing in the third person, the author describes the events precisely as they were experienced by the main character, the beggar himself.

In addition to recounting events, Maupassant describes the beggar’s thoughts and his feelings. He also tells us what other characters do in relation to the beggar, but he never tells us what those characters are thinking and feeling. We can definitely deduce that those characters are angry, and resentful, and that they dislike the beggar, but we are never told exactly what they are thinking or feeling internally.

Chekhov’s Old Age is another short story told from the major-character viewpoint, in the third person.

Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado uses the major-character, first-person viewpoint.

Free copies of all these stories should be easy to find online, by the way. And at the end of this book you will find four pieces of my own writing which demonstrate the use of various types of viewpoint.

So far so good. But hold on a minute, you say. There may be four or five major characters in a story, so how do you decide which of them to use as your pair of eyes?

Al Zuckerman’s opinion (with which I do not intend to argue) is that you should choose the character who is experiencing the biggest emotional load – the one who has the most to gain, or to lose, depending on how the events of the novel (or chapter) turn out. Maupassant’s choice of the beggar himself as the viewpoint character was a fairly obvious one!

The major-character viewpoint is ideal for stories in which the viewpoint character experiences strong inner conflicts, which you can describe in some detail. Your character may well sit and think for some time, rather than act as prompted by pure reflex.

As remarked above, a story told from the omniscient viewpoint has to be written in the third person. The major-character viewpoint story, however, can be written in either the third or the first person. The point is already demonstrated in relation to the short-story examples mentioned above. But… for the pedantic, please see the end of this section.

Uzzell maintained that it doesn’t make a scrap of difference which grammatical form you use, because both forms, first person and third person, convey exactly the same information. ‘I climbed the stairs’ tells us no more than ‘He climbed the stairs’. This is true, up to a point. But it is worth making a few comments.

To begin with, a first-person narrator must obviously be a reasonably articulate individual, if he is to be convincing. Having said that, you may, of course, want to convey an impression of an individual who is not particularly articulate, in which case the first-person mode conveys perfectly what a limited vocabulary the fellow has.

I sometimes feel, instinctively, when reading a story told in the first person, that such a story is probably more involving to the reader than it would be if it were told in the third person. That, however, is not a contention which I can prove. And I do have to accept the validity of a point made by Gerard Genette, namely that it is implicit in a first-person story that the narrator has survived the events which he is describing. When reading a first-person story we thus have some assurance (perhaps absorbed unconsciously) that our first-person character will come out on top in the end. So, if you want to maintain total suspense about the ultimate fate of the narrator, then the third person is the one to use. Maupassant, for instance, could not use the first person in The Beggar, because the beggar ends up dead!

I believe it is also true, at least in most cases, that stories which call for a great deal of psychological analysis and self-questioning are better handled in the third person. An individual who, on his own admission, spends a lot of time worrying about his own motives and reviewing his own past history can soon begin to seem rather self-centred.

5.1 More on author comment

When using the major-character viewpoint, in the third person, it is still possible to ‘colour’ your descriptions, or alternatively make them objective, in just the same way as was described in relation to the omniscient viewpoint.

Even when you are writing in the first person, your main character can either say ‘He was a seedy and unpleasant-looking man’, or, ‘His shoes were down-at-heel and his raincoat was streaked with dirt’.

It is worth noticing, however, that in the major-character first-person version, the writer’s choice of words will not only colour the reader’s attitude towards the other character who is being described, but the words will also colour the reader’s view of the major character himself.

For example, if a first-person narrator says of another character ‘He was a total shit-bag’, then you know that the narrator is not a man who pulls his punches. On the other hand, if the narrator says (of the same character), ‘He was far from a perfect gentleman’, then the narrator is revealing that he is probably an elderly fellow who was brought up in the age of understatement.

5.2 The unreliable narrator

Finally, before we leave this discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of the major-character point of view, I should not neglect to acquaint you with the concept of ‘the unreliable narrator’.

The term is pretty much self-explanatory, and at the risk of stating the obvious I will just say that it is at least possible that a character who gives you a first-person account of a series of events may, in fact, be lying through his teeth. The whole story may be a complete fabrication, intended either to entertain or to deceive. This possibility presents a number of interesting opportunities, but I will leave it to you to explore them.

The concept of the unreliable narrator is much discussed in literary circles. Indeed in the Eng. Lit. common rooms of the great universities they speak of little else. But don’t let that put you off.

Another possibility presented by first-person narration is not so much that the narrator is lying, as that he misunderstands completely the meaning of the events that he is witnessing. And, if you can somehow contrive to reveal to the reader that the narrator is drawing entirely the wrong conclusions from the events in which he is involved, then the result can be either comic or tragic, depending on how you handle the material.

This writing business, you will now realise, does tend to get a bit complicated at times. But therein lies the skill, and the interest; and by mastering these skills through practice you will gradually learn how to ensure that your short stories and novels have a bigger impact on the reader – an impact more in line with the one that you have intended.

5.3 The exception to the rule

Soon after drafting this section of the book, I came across an exception to the general rule that scenes written from a major-character viewpoint must of necessity be in the first or third person.

Charles Stross is the author of a number of hard SF books, as the genre seems to be labelled, and in one of them, Rule 34, he writes in the second-person singular. Here’s an example from the first page of the book:

‘You glance sideways across the desk. Sergeant Elvis – not his name, but the duck’s arse fits his hair-style – is either grooving to his iPod or he’s really customized his haptic interface. You wave at him, and he looks up. “I’ve got to head out, got a call,” you say.’

And so on. I can’t say that I like it, or that I would want to emulate it, but this example proves that something different is often possible.

The same technique could be used for a minor-character scene, discussion of which now follows.

6. The minor-character viewpoint

The third and final angle from which a story may be told is the minor-character viewpoint. It is sometimes referred to as the mystery angle – for reasons which will now be explained.

In a story told from the viewpoint of a minor character, the narrator is a participant in the action, but is more of an observer than a person who makes the key decisions in the story. And a story told from the minor-character viewpoint can be written in either the first or the third person.

Fortunately, we don’t have to go far to find an example of a whole series of stories which are told from the point of view of a minor character. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle provides us with the archetype in the Sherlock Holmes canon.

The Holmes stories, you will recall, are written in the first person by the great detective’s faithful assistant, Dr Watson. And, as Conan Doyle obviously realised at an early stage, the minor-character viewpoint is ideal when the author wishes to maintain a sense of mystery. We, the readers, know no more than Watson is able to tell us, and often that is not very much. Holmes sits and puffs his pipe, and comes to amazing conclusions, but we, like Watson, stumble along in Holmes’s wake, wondering what on earth he is up to now.

Countless other crime writers have adopted the same technique. S.S. Van Dine wrote a series of mystery novels which are related by the detective’s secretary. Rex Stout’s books about the eccentric detective Nero Wolfe are recounted by Wolfe’s faithful sidekick, Archie Goodwin. And so on.

The minor-character angle has other uses, however. Suppose you were to write a novel in which the main character is going to be driven insane, or commit suicide, as a result of the impact of certain tragic events. Such a story could possibly be told by a minor character. Through the eyes of such a minor character, the reader would share the impact of the events on the narrator, and would also be told of the much greater effect that they have on the major character.

6.1 Yet more on author comment

As with the other two viewpoints, the writer of a story told from the minor-character viewpoint can influence the reader’s attitudes towards all the characters in the story by the extent to which, in the third person, the author presents information objectively or subjectively.

A minor-character first-person narrator can similarly present his descriptions either subjectively or objectively, and can present his own conclusions about what is going on. This latter choice will tell the reader much about the minor character as well as the others who are being described.

At which point, you may well need to take note of the advice in the section 7, immediately below.

7. Don’t beat yourself up

In order to make this account of the various fictional viewpoints as complete and authoritative as possible, I have included in the section on each of the three principal viewpoints some account of ‘author comment’ (see sections 4.1, 5.1, and 6.1.)

This issue is certainly important and therefore worth consideration, but if you find that trying to get your head round it simply adds more confusion than it provides enlightenment, then I suggest that you stop worrying about it at least until you come to revising your first draft of a complete short story or novel.

If you concentrate on just making the right choice as between omniscient, major character, and minor character, and choosing the first or third person where necessary, then you will be 90 per cent there.

As for the rest, just let nature takes its course until you come to look at a complete story. And even then I shan’t be too hard on you if you decide to wait until you have written a million words of fiction before getting too fancy-pants about it.

8. Choice and consistency

I appreciate that by now you may have the impression that choosing the best viewpoint to use for a novel, or for a chapter within a novel, is a decidedly tricky business. But it isn’t really.

If you are planning to write fiction at all, then you will inevitably have some sort of an outline in mind. Have a look at that material, and as often as not you will find that the ‘best’ viewpoint pretty much suggests itself. The choice is frequently instinctive, and may well be dictated, or at least suggested, by the nature of the material and by what is common in the genre.

However, if you get really stuck, then here is a handy summary of the decisions that you need to make. In a novel, you can change the viewpoint every time you start a new chapter. In fact, if you do switch to a new viewpoint, you should almost certainly start a new chapter, to send a signal to the reader.

Here’s the list of things to consider, chapter by chapter, as you go through your book. I emphasise again, the choice of viewpoint can, and probably should, be made separately for each separate chapter.

1. Are you going to use the omniscient viewpoint, which enables you to enter the heads of any and all characters if you so wish – or are you going to write from the point of view of one major character, or one minor character?

2. If you are using the major-character viewpoint, or the minor-character viewpoint, are you going to write in the first person or the third person?

3. Whichever viewpoint you choose, are you going to describe external and visible events only, or are you going to describe the internal thoughts and feelings of any of the characters?

4. If you are writing in the third person, are you going to provide ‘author comment’? Are you going to give the reader strong indications of how she should react to the characters and events, and provide unlimited amounts of background information? Or are you going to let the events speak for themselves, with the reader coming to her own conclusions about who is good or bad, right or wrong?

5. If you are writing in the first person, is that narrator going to try to influence the reader about who is good or bad, right or wrong? Or, again, is the reader going to be given a neutral, objective account of events, and be left to form her own conclusions?

6. If you are writing a first-person account, is that going to be a truthful account of what happened, or not?

7. Does a first-person narrator come to correct and sensible conclusions about what he observes? Or does he come to false (and perhaps comic) conclusions?

The answers to the questions listed above will often be implicit in the material that you have already developed. Nevertheless, it can sometimes help you to strengthen what material you have by thinking about some of these possibilities.

As for consistency in the use of one viewpoint – well, that is a matter of personal choice and taste. I myself make it something of a point of honour to stick rigorously to the selected viewpoint, at least within a particular chapter. Genette, on the other hand, argues that strict observance of this rule is unnecessary.

Will anyone complain if you do vary the viewpoint? Suppose, for example, you are writing a chapter from the major-character viewpoint, in the third person. If, for a paragraph or two, you forget to be consistent and suddenly tell the reader what a minor character is thinking – are your readers going to feel upset?

Probably not, is the honest answer. Most readers won’t even notice. At least, not consciously. I am inclined to think, however, that readers will notice such a shift of viewpoint unconsciously, and that is why I avoid it.

My advice is that you should choose, consciously and deliberately, to write each short story, or each chapter of a novel, from one particular viewpoint and then stick to it.

9. The ideal (?) viewpoint for a novel

There’s no such thing as the ideal viewpoint, of course. Depends on the circumstances. Nevertheless, I think it is true that a large proportion of the most popular books of our time are written in the third person throughout, but with each chapter being told from the viewpoint of a leading character. I think you will also find, if you count up, that in such books there are usually only three or four major characters through whose eyes the action is seen and related.

This is a point which is discussed at length in Al Zuckerman’s book Writing the Blockbuster Novel. And I really can’t recommend that book too highly. Al worked closely with Ken Follett, in particular, and turned him into a star; no one knows more than Al about how to put together a gripping story.

And a gripping story is, after all, at the very heart of a novel that works.

I certainly learnt a great deal from Al on this point, both through his book on narrative technique and when, on his various visits to London, he and I would liaise on a crime novel that I was then writing.

To give you a idea of how this system of viewpoints works in practice, you might care to look at the Appendices which follow almost immediately.

10. Practice makes perfect?

Viewpoint, more than any other aspect of narrative technique, demonstrates two important points.

One: a short story, and even more so a novel, does not miraculously become effective simply by depending upon inspiration. It requires conscious and careful thought.

Two: practice may or may not make perfect. But, speaking as a reader, I quite often come across novels by professional writers in which the viewpoint control is uncertain, and the novel is thereby weakened. Practice, based on the principles set out in this ebook, will certainly effect improvement.

APPENDICES

The Appendices provide example of the use of some well-defined viewpoints. These examples are drawn from my own novels and short stories.

The examples that I have selected are as follows:

The Rescue of Bertie’s Mummy – a short story told from the omniscient, third-person point of view, with a good deal of author comment, offered subjectively.

Topp Family Secrets – a novel written in chapters which are all main-character, third person, with minimal author comment.

Daphne before She Died – a novel using the main-character first-person viewpoint. The main character spends quite a lot of time analysing his own motives and the behaviour of other main characters.

How Young Albert Escaped from the 500 Harem Girls – a short story told from a minor-character viewpoint, in the first person. In fact, two first-person narrators are involved, both of them minor characters. And you don’t have to read very far to see that the first character you meet is not terribly bright.

APPENDIX 1:

The Rescue of Bertie’s Mummy

Michael Allen

It was Christmas Day in the workhouse. Which was how Sergeant Perkins liked to think of the nick. Or the police station, to use its proper designation.

It was a small nick in a small town, and everything was quiet. Which was how Sergeant Perkins wanted it. There had been considerable competition among the three eligible Sergeants as to which of them should actually be on duty on Christmas Day, so they’d drawn lots. And Sergeant Perkins had won. Success! He would be on duty from 8.00 a.m. to 4 p.m., and with a bit of luck could stretch it to half past four.

Success meant that he didn’t have to sit through the full Christmas dinner, with dried-up, overcooked turkey. More importantly he had an incontestable reason for not having to sit down with his wife and mother-in-law afterwards, to watch that video of The Sound of Music. Again.

No doubt about it. Sergeant Perkins was a lucky man. And he wasn’t really expecting much to happen. Not on Christmas Day. But when it did, he was ready for it. Oh yes.

The phone rang. And it turned out to be the two constables who were driving around the town in the one police car which was actually out and about in the whole area. Sergeant Perkins had never quite mastered all the skills of the digital age, and he much preferred it, when on duty, if his staff would communicate with him via technology that he understood. And a phone on his desk was one such.

‘We had a 999 call Sarge.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘From Fred. In the town square. He’s found a little boy.’ Fred was the town drunk.

‘Fred’s found a what?’

‘A kid. A nipper.’

‘But it’s only half past eight. Bit early for Fred.’

‘I know, but he was sleeping it off in Goffins doorway, and he was woke up by this little kid prodding him.’

‘Have you got this lad?’

‘Oh yes. He’s pressing all the buttons in the car, and squirming about on Moreton’s knee. Looks a bit cold. Hasn’t got  coat on.’

‘No sign of Mum or Dad?’

‘No. Not so much as a stray dog.’

‘Oh, all right then. I suppose you’d better bring him in.’

Now already, even at this point, a little scheme was developing in Sergeant Perkins’s mind. It so happened that one of the inhabitants of the small town in which this lost child had appeared was a young lady named Emily. She worked for the local evening paper. Well, actually it was the evening paper in a larger town ten miles away, but it passed for a local rag. And Emily was ambitious. So ambitious that, on a recent visit to London, she had got herself appointed as the semi-official local reporter for the Sun. Actually, when she had first presented herself to the duty news editor for that day, he had assumed, on account of the fairly sensational bosom which was generously exposed for his benefit, that Emily was seeking an audition for page 3. But she wasn’t. No. Emily really did want to be a Fleet Street reporter. Well, in so far as Fleet Street still existed, she did. And by dint of giving the impression that, if she were to be appointed, Emily would offer the news editor free use of her body, Emily had succeeded in coming to an unofficial but potentially beneficial (to both parties) sort of arrangement. Come up with the right stuff, darling, the editor had said, and we will see you all right. And come up with enough of the right stuff, on a regular basis, and Fleet Street will queue up to lick your boots. Or some approximation thereof.

The man at the Sun was not the only person to whom this kind of quid pro quo had been offered by the rabidly ambitious Emily. By no means. Sergeant Perkins had been approached, one quiet moment in the Fish and Ferret, with something similar. Emily had explained the urgent need for her to be acquainted, at the earliest opportunity, with anything that loosely resembled Sun material, and had also made it plain that, if Sergeant Perkins tipped her off before even thinking about taking any other action, then, as she tactfully put it, ‘My body is at your disposal, Sergeant, to do with as you will.’

For about fifteen seconds, she added, without actually giving voice to that thought.

And thus it was that wheels were now turning in Sergeant Perkins’s brain. The train of thought was roughly as follows:

Christmas Day. Small boy lost. Found by the town drunk (a tortured soul, mourning a lost love, but still full of the milk of human kindness). And…

Yes, and what? That was the problem. Nevertheless it was worth a phone call, which he now made.

At what about the Chief Constable, Sergeant Perkins then thought. The Chief, it was well known, was also wildly ambitious, always keen on getting his picture in the paper.

So, what about giving him a ring?

Nah, thought Sergeant Perkins. Bit too early yet. But keep it in mind.

Sergeant Perkins had no sooner completed these deliberations than the squad car arrived in the station yard. He could hardly avoid noticing its arrival because it was sounding its siren as it approached, and continued to sound it for at least half a minute while stationary at its destination. Peep-parp, it went. Peep-parp, peep-parp, peep-parp. Rather loudly.

Sergeant Perkins frowned; but then, mercifully, the noise ceased and a few seconds later the station door opened. In came PC Hardcastle, followed by a small boy, followed by PC Moreton.

Sergeant Perkins emerged from behind the heavy barricades which served to protect him (it was theorised) from attacks by aggrieved members of the public. And, because he had two small grandchildren of his own – though he seldom saw them – Sergeant Perkins bent down to put himself on the same level as the small (apparently lost) boy.

‘Peep-parp,’ said the newcomer happily.

‘Nothing for it, Sarge,’ said Hardcastle apologetically. ‘He would insist we had the siren on.’

‘That’s all right,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Now then, son, what’s your name?’

‘I’ve got an iPod,’ came the proud reply.

‘Jolly good,’ said the Sergeant carefully. Because he wasn’t entirely sure what an iPod was. ‘So, you’ve got an iPod, have you?’

‘Es.’

‘And who does it belong to?’

‘Me.’

PCs Hardcastle and Moreton tried hard not to snigger. But they did smirk.

‘And what’s your name then, iPod boy?’

‘Bertie.’

Sergeant Perkins raised an eyebrow at the Doubting Thomases around him. See? The eyebrow said. Some of us know how to interrogate lost kids and some of us don’t.

‘And where do you live, Bertie?’

‘In a house.’

Sergeant Perkins sighed and tried a new tack.

‘How old are you, Bertie?’

‘Free.’

Sergeant Perkins stood up. His knees were beginning to ache.

‘Well he can’t have come far, can he?’ he said to his colleagues. ‘Half past eight on Christmas morning. No coat. Just wandered off, I guess. Frantic Mum is going to phone in any moment.’

‘You’re pleecemen, aren’t you?’ volunteered Bertie.

‘That’s right, son.’

‘Peep-parp, peep-parp, peep-parp.’

‘That’s right, son, that’s us.’

‘We had two bad men in our house this morning. Wiv guns. And masks on.’

The three police officers suddenly went very quiet. Sergeant Perkins knelt down again.

‘Guns, eh?’

Bertie nodded, and demonstrated. ‘Bang, bang, bang, bang.’

‘And did they actually make their guns go bang?’

‘No.’ Bertie shook his head sadly.

Sergeant Perkins had an inspiration. ‘Did your Mummy ever teach you your address, Bertie?’

‘Thirty-five Poplar Gardens,’ said Bertie. And for good measure he added the name of the town and post code.

“Tell me, son. Did these bad men notice you?’

‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘I hid.’

There followed what was, by the standards of this particular nick, a flurry of activity.

The two PCs were dispatched to the given address. Sergeant Perkins and Bertie retired to the staff canteen – well, actually it was a small room where they brewed up – and Bertie was fed with milk and chocolate digestives. Sergeant Perkins decided that now very definitely was the time to make a call to the Chief Constable, albeit one hedged around with many cautious admonitions about how it could well be a false alarm, sir, but we are taking the matter seriously, and if it is true that guns are involved we might well need to alert the Armed Response Section.

When dealing with the Chief Constable, Sergeant Perkins was very careful to pronounce the name of the Armed Response Section in full, because – as had immediately been recognised by the rank and file, but had been overlooked by the local Watch Committee when choosing a name for it – the acronymic version of this particular unit’s title could elicit a certain amount of ribald comment among those too immature to recognise the full seriousness of letting chaps loose with authority to go around shooting people if they gave them a funny look.

The Chief Constable was not at all upset about being rung up, because the alternative to taking such things seriously was (a) to go to church, (b) to have lunch at an old folks’ home, and (c) make an apparently endless tour of various other old people’s homes and listen to lots of carols and handbell ringings by cub scouts.

The Chief Constable also made it his business to make a number of phone calls himself. First on the list, naturally, was the ambitious Emily, who kept reminding him of how advantageous it could be – nay, how absolutely essential it was – for an up-and-coming Chief Constable to get his name known on a national basis.

Then, of course, the Chief had to ring the chief ARSe himself and get him rounding up his armed men. And, naturally, he also had to alert his own force’s Head of Press Relations, and get him thinking along the lines of press conferences, local TV stations, off-the-record briefings in return for favours to be returned at a later date, and so forth.

Meanwhile, PCs Hardcastle and Moreton went to Bertie’s home address and promptly reported back. On the desk phone, naturally.

‘Bit worrying, really, Sarge. Door wide open. No sign of anyone inside, and we did a thorough search, short of the loft. One broken window and signs of a pretty serious struggle.’

‘Sure it’s not an ordinary domestic?’ said the Sergeant. ‘Stressful time, Christmas Day.’ (And who would know better then he?) ‘Bertie’s Mum might have got out of bed the wrong side, taken offence at something, marched off into the distance. Dad might have gone after her, forgetting all about young Bertie.’

‘Doesn’t smell like that, Sarge. The way stuff has been thrown about doesn’t look like a domestic. More like a heavy-duty fight between two or three big men.’

‘The Sergeant scratched his head. Do we know what the family name is?’

‘Jackson. Moreton says to tell you, Sarge, he reckons Mr Jackson is the manager of UniBank in the Square. He reckons young Bertie might have wandered over there, looking for his Dad. It’s only about two hundred yards. And I’ve got another idea.’

‘Get back here with it then. And make the place secure before you leave.’

“Now then, Hardcastle,’ said the Sergeant, when the two PCs had returned. ‘What’s this idea of yours?’

‘Well Sarge, me and my girl friend were watching an old film the other night, Channel 4, and it was about this ruthless gang of criminals who kidnapped the wife of a bank manager, and then used that to force him to unlock the safe and hand over the cash. So we were wondering if someone might have borrowed the plot.’

‘Borrowed the plot?’ said the Sergeant. ‘Hmm, well I suppose it’s possible. But who do we know who would be dim enough to borrow the hackneyed plot of some completely unbelievable old movie?’

Pause. Then the three coppers spoke in unison: ‘Sid and Dick!’ they said.

Sid and Dick were the town’s nearest approach to professional criminals. But they were professional only in that they had been inside several times; in all other respects they were your average brain-dead morons.

Sergeant Perkins rang the Chief Constable and explained the position. Possible bank robbery in progress at Unibank, Town Square. The Chief Constable briefed his ARSes, the PR man organised the local TV crew, several people rang Emily, and events moved rapidly to a conclusion.

Sid and Dick were indeed found inside the local branch of Unibank. Bertie’s Dad, the manager, having being threatened with all kinds of shocking things in relation to his wife, had opened the rear door for them, but had then invented all sorts of delaying tactics. Forgotten code words. Time locks which would not open until the day after Boxing Day, and so forth.

Sid and Dick, it turned out, didn’t really have guns. Well, they did. They had replica pistols, the kind that used to be sold quite legitimately in the UK but now aren’t. And once Sid and Dick realised that the ARSes were outside, with real guns and live ammo, they wet themselves with panic, put their hands high in the air and promised to come quietly so long as nobody shot them.

This, of course, was no good at all for Emily, the Chief Constable, the local TV guys, and the force’s PR man. So, with a bit of negotiation, the abject surrender of Sid and Dick was miraculously parlayed into a tension-filled stand-off crisis situation, involving skilled negotiators, stun grenades, tear gas, and, finally, the arrest of two desperate men.

What with all the uproar, everyone forgot about Bertie’s Mummy. But fortunately PC Moreton was a thoughtful man. He was the one who realised that she had not been accounted for. And it was he who decided that Sid and Dick were quite thick enough to be keeping her on their own premises. So on his own initiative he went round to their terraced house in Railway Cuttings, and it was there that he found her.

Bertie’s Mummy had been tightly bound, hand and foot, and had been gagged with heavy black sticky tape wrapped repeatedly around her head. She been dumped on the floor of an old cellar cum coal store, dropped so hard that she thought her skull had cracked open, and had been left in the dark and the cold. She had twisted and squirmed against the ropes until she was exhausted, and had almost choked from the coal dust. She became convinced that she was going to die, and she gave up all hope of rescue; she wondered who would look after Bertie. But then PC Moreton broke open the cellar door and found her.

It was PC Moreton who cradled her head in his lap, and who tore off the black tape as gently as he could. It was he who held her and soothed her while she coughed and vomited up black muck from her lungs. And it was he who comforted her while she wailed and sobbed with relief. It was he who stroked her hair, and told her that everything would be all right again soon, it really would, he promised. And, just to begin with, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her out into the light. He sat with her in the ambulance. He rubbed her hands and wrists to restore the circulation.

The consequences of The Town’s Great Bank Robbery were numerous and, to most participants, advantageous.

The following day’s edition of the Sun was something of a classic. ‘XMAS KIDNAP PLOT FOILED BY BERTIE, 3’ sang the front page. And there was, inevitably, a cute picture of Bertie in a Santa hat and a champagne glass in his hand.

The front page was followed by 5 pages of ‘world-exclusive’ material, most of it dictated over the phone by ‘our new star reporter’. Yes, the pneumatic Emily had made it to Fleet Street in one bound. And, once there, it didn’t take her long to make her mark.

Emily soon displayed a widely admired facility for inventing interviews with ‘eyewitnesses’ which, while entirely spurious, were sufficiently flattering to those quoted to ensure that they weren’t going to complain. Within months she rose to be number two on the crime desk, and it was not long before she was spoken of as the new Rebekah. Saloon-bar gossip had it that she was thinking of dyeing her hair red. Which she wasn’t. Blonde, maybe.

The Chief Constable got an MBE. He was interviewed on Newsnight and got a profile in The Observer (‘A Policeman for the Modern Age’). Scotland Yard beckoned.

Mr Jackson, Bertie’s bank-manager father, received an award for bravery and was promoted to Area Manager. He then had even less time for his family than before.

Sergeant Perkins got a commendation.

Nobody said thank you to PC Moreton. Except Bertie’s Mummy, of course. She thought he was wonderful.

Bertie, for his part, soon overcame any trauma that might briefly have followed his separation from his Mummy. And in the following weeks he and Mummy received a large number of invitations to tea.

On arrival at such tea parties, Bertie took to announcing to the world, ‘I’m the little boy that woz kidnapped.’ Which was a blatant lie, but inevitably elicited numerous cries of, ‘Ah, bless him.’

What is more, Bertie soon learnt that a loud announcement about his victim status would often lead to Mummy being asked, ‘Do you think he could manage a piece of chocolate cake?’ And Bertie always could. Usually a second one too.

Much as she loved her son, Bertie’s Mummy soon began to resent this hero worship. ‘What about me?’ she wanted to shout. ‘I was the one who was really kidnapped! I was the one who was tied up and had tape round my mouth so that I was terrified of choking, I was the one who was dumped on a hard cellar floor and left in the dark and the cold, with rats scratching in the walls and felt as if the world had forgotten me and thought I was going to die. So why don’t you ask me how I feel? What about me, eh?

But she never did give voice to any such thoughts. She was much too well brought up.

So Bertie’s Mummy would sit there in posh living rooms, pinning a hard thin smile to her face while Bertie polished his chocolate-cake shtick, and wondering how long she could hold out before something inside her snapped.

Occasionally she would find her hostess and guests looking at her strangely, and she began to realise that, while Bertie was being worshipped, she was breathing fast and making odd whimpering noises. And she was going to have to watch that, she realised, because if people noticed that she wasn’t quite right in the head they would take her away to the bin, and put her in a strait-jacket and dump her in a cold dark place, and this time she would never get out.

Ever.

And then, one Tuesday morning, whatever it was that was holding Bertie’s Mummy together finally unravelled.

Bertie was at nursery school (or kindergarten, as he insisted on calling it) and his Mummy was out shopping. Then she noticed PC Moreton.

PC Moreton was in civilian dress, on his day off, and when she saw him Bertie’s Mummy suddenly found herself gasping for breath. The world began to spin on a different axis, and she reached out for something to hold on to, but failed to find it.

When PC Moreton finally glanced across the road, and caught sight of the young woman he had rescued, his face lit up with pleasure, and he immediately began to cross the road towards her. And at that point Bertie’s Mummy knew that whatever it was that she had been keeping battened down, somewhere deep inside her, had at last broken loose and would no longer be contained.

‘Hello!’ said PC Moreton with a smile. ‘How are you?’ And he said it with such genuine concern and affection that Bertie’s Mummy could no longer speak. But she didn’t need to speak, because he could see how she was. He could see that she was trembling from head to foot, and a tear was running down her left cheek.

And now Bertie’s Mummy abandoned all hope of resistance. She just covered her face with her hands and began to sob, violently and uncontrollably. She fell forward into PC Moreton’s arms.

PC Moreton hugged her tightly to him, and stroked her hair and kissed her cheek and shushed her, and he promised that everything was going to be all right soon, really it was, he promised. And at one point it seemed to her that he told her how beautiful she was, and how much he loved her. But that could only have been imagination, for it was what she had so much longed to hear these months past.

After that, when the shaking and the sobbing had subsided, and Bertie’s Mummy had returned to being at least a smudgy carbon copy of her normal self, PC Moreton took her into a nearby coffee shop and bought her a large black with an extra shot. Then they sat down at a small table, opposite each other, and PC Moreton held her hand in his while she told him all her troubles.

For every sentence she spoke there was a juddering sob and a generous eyeful of tears. And she told she told him how she couldn’t stop dreaming about the cellar floor and the ropes that bound her and the tape over her mouth. And now she was frightened of the dark and she couldn’t look at strangers and she couldn’t open the front door without peering through the spyhole, and not always then.

Her husband, she said, was a decent man and a brave one, and he had fought hard to defend her from Sid and Dick, but there were two of them and one of him, and they had clubbed him to the ground and then kicked him into submission. He had never touched her for months, even before she was kidnapped, and now they slept in separate rooms.

‘I think he’s gay really,’ she said, ‘but he just hasn’t faced up to it. So I’ve got no one to comfort me, no one to talk to. I feel as if I’m going mad,’ she told PC Moreton. ‘I feel as if one day I’m going to start screaming and tearing my hair out, right here in the High Street, and then they’ll take me away and lock me up again and this time I shall never get out.’

‘No, no, no,’ said PC Moreton. ‘I would never let them do that to you.’ And he held the back of her hand against his cheek and kissed it. ‘Everything will be all right again soon, I promise you. Really it will.’

And so it came about that PC Moreton spent the rest of that Tuesday being kind to Bertie’s Mummy. And he was kind to her every Tuesday, and she to him, for a long time afterwards, with no harm done to anyone.

After a while, with PC Moreton’s help, Bertie’s Mummy stopped being frightened of the dark. Mostly. And she learnt how to answer the front door again, because he put a security chain on it for her.

And then one day her husband asked her if he could have a divorce so that he could marry his friend George in IT. And Bertie’s Mummy said yes he could and welcome, because she was thinking of making other arrangements herself. Which she did, in due course. And it turned out that Bertie liked his new Daddy better than his old one because he played football. And drove a police car.

And from then on, every day when he came home from work, PC Moreton puts his arms around Bertie’s Mummy and held her tight and made her feel safe and happy.

So he really did make it all come right in the end. Just as he had promised.

***

Reminder: The Rescue of Bertie’s Mummy is told from the omniscient, third-person point of view, with a good deal of author comment, offered subjectively.

This story has already been published as a stand-alone ebook. It is also included in my collection of short stories, Four Pretty Good Ones.

APPENDIX 2:

Daphne before She Died

Michael Allen

Daphne before She Died is a novel about two passionate love affairs. It is set in the 1950s. Forty years after the events described in the novel, our narrator looks back at his own love affair with a French girl. Wisely or otherwise, the narrator’s widowed mother invited Suzanne to stay with them for a few weeks during the summer holidays.

Having Suzanne in the house, and for a whole month at that, was not quite as exciting as it sounds.

True, we were friends. And we were lovers also. I certainly was in love with her. I was fascinated by her physical appearance, and could gaze at her uninterruptably for half an hour at a time. I had to discipline myself not to grab her and kiss her at every opportunity.

I was easily aroused by her presence (fourteen-year-old boys can achieve an erection in a remarkably short time), and there were many occasions when I had to be careful how I went about standing up.

A partial solution to the erection problem was provided by one of Papa’s old army jackets. It was an item of tropical kit, I think – a light linen affair, with capacious pockets. I was big enough for it to fit me; it reached almost down to my groin, and certainly managed to make me a bit more respectable on a number of occasions.

I won’t go on about my physical urges – it would be tiresome – but at the same time I wouldn’t want you to underestimate their power or their persistence. Close acquaintance with Suzanne’s body did not lessen their intensity; rather the reverse.

And perhaps this is the place to record and consider the mystery of Suzanne’s attachment to me. Because mystery it is, in a sense. Why did she allow me such liberties?

Was she in love with me? Certainly not. Not in the way that she (presumably) had been in love with the bank manager; and not in the way that Daphne loved Pete.

No, Suzanne’s attachment (a word I have used twice because I think it best matches the facts of the case) was based upon a number of factors, some of which we have already identified. Such as loneliness, and the fact that she was an exile. But to my surprise, I found that she was also quite impressed with me as a person; she was actually flattered that someone of my distinction (as she perceived it, I hasten to say) was paying attention to her.

I am not, perhaps, the most suitable person to explain this, but since there is no one else around to undertake the task, I am obliged to advance this immodest explanation.

Physically, I was as big as she was. I may have been young, but in her eyes I was a young man, and not a young boy. Second, I was, I suppose, reasonably presentable in appearance; I was courteous and well-mannered, at least when I put my mind to it. Third, I had displayed a certain athletic prowess on the cricket field, with Suzanne as a spectator. Fourth, I obviously thought that Suzanne was fabulously beautiful, and never disguised the fact; and women are not usually discouraging to men who think that they are beautiful. And, finally, I was pretty good at doing what she wanted me to do to her in bed. I was a ready learner and a co-operative partner, not yet experienced enough to demand my own selfish satisfaction at the outset, and then roll over and go to sleep.

So there it is. Odd, but true. My relationship with Suzanne was one of those strange liaisons which one cannot quite understand but which are demonstrably there, in front of one’s very eyes.

Apart from our physical relationship, Suzanne and I did not have a great deal in common; she had more in common with Maman than with me. And so in the first two weeks of the holiday, the daily routine which developed in our house was centred at least as much around Suzanne and Maman as around Suzanne and me.

Suzanne, it emerged, had had some sort of formal training in needlework; she was a dab hand at dressmaking and the like. She told Maman that she did a great deal of mending and darning at Daubeny. Well, her parents were haberdashers, after all. And to tell the truth I think needlework was about the limit of Suzanne’s intellectual capacity. She was a nice girl, but she was never going to be any threat to Simone de Beauvoir.

She was also, lest I appear to criticise, a good-hearted soul who was prepared to work for her keep. She was absolutely no sort of a princess, and one morning I found her cleaning the loos. Not because anyone had set her to it, but because she thought they needed doing. Which they did, actually.

So, once Maman found out about the skills with the sewing-machine, and once Suzanne had volunteered to do any such work which Maman happened to have lying around, they set to work on a pair of curtains. In fact more than one pair, as I recall.

Each morning, after breakfast, Suzanne and Maman would set up shop. They used Maman’s study, which she had taken over from Papa. And they would talk as they sewed.

I, needless to say, did not hang around. I went into the town and met boys of my own age and background. We wandered in and out of shops and had coffee and messed about in the park. Come lunchtime, I went home.

In the afternoons, Maman, Suzanne, and I would go out somewhere. Do things together. This was hazardous because Maman was a terrible driver, but we survived. Once, for instance, we made it as far as Cambridge without mishap.

On several afternoons we went to Siston Ford, which is (or was) a local beauty spot on the river. The river at that point is about twenty yards across; it is still  a long way from the sea, slow-moving, and dark brown in colour. In those days you could swim in it quite safely; I don’t think you could now.

Suzanne and I changed into swimming costumes and swam. Maman did not. Though there was nothing wrong with her figure; in her late thirties she was still an attractive woman.

I changed first and ran in as quickly as possible. Otherwise the bulge in my pants might cause embarrassment. Suzanne followed. She liked swimming and was quite competent at it.

Later, I would go fishing, Suzanne would sunbathe, and Maman would read. We used to take a picnic tea. As often as not, on a weekday, we had the place to ourselves.

I have a memory of one such day. We parked the car just over the bridge (the ancient ford at Siston was replaced by a stone bridge sometime in the eighteenth century).

Suzanne was wearing a dress, a light summery affair, with a loose-fitting skirt. She was sitting on a rug beside the car, her knees together, her legs slightly bent, her feet flat on the ground; she was filing her nails.

I was lying on my side, on the ground, a little further away, towards the river.

As Suzanne sat there, a gentle breeze stirred.  It lifted her skirt and billowed it out, so that I could see right up it.

She was wearing knickers, what are now called French knickers, loose fitting in the leg. But I could see every detail of her thighs and groin, the white silk covering only the most private parts. Her legs were brown, smooth, curvaceous.

I thought I might very well have a spontaneous orgasm, right there on the spot.

Suzanne made no attempt to smooth down her skirt, and I was able to look at her without interference or objection from anyone.

After a moment, or perhaps a whole minute, Suzanne looked up at me, realised what I was gazing at, and smiled. It is a smile that I remember always. I knew as I looked at it that I would remember it all my life, and I’m sure that I shall.

I was very fond of Suzanne. Yes, as Maman said, I was just a stupid randy schoolboy. But even such low orders of humanity can feel tenderness and affection as well as lust.

***

Reminder: This extract from Daphne before She Died is told from the main-character, first-person point of view, with a good deal of author/character comment, offered subjectively.

This novel is available in Kindle ebook format.

APPENDIX 3:

Topp Family Secrets

Michael Allen

Topp Family Secrets is a novel set in the 1930s, and it centres around a young working-class woman by the name of Grace Topp.

Grace works in a factory owned by a Mr Marshwood – a man who had once made a living by conning old ladies out of their money. But in the 1930s most businesses ran into trouble, and Mr Marshwood’s factory was no exception.

But then, unexpectedly, a certain Mr Hitler provided a helping hand.

Ernest was as worried as anyone when war was declared, and it was not until the middle of September that he began to understand that the onset of armed conflict might have some unexpected benefits.

Mr Murgatroyd, the Company Secretary of Granborough Electrics, practically forced his way into the office very early one morning. Ernest could tell that something special had happened because Murgatroyd’s demeanour was normally gloomy and pessimistic, but today he was glowing with excitement. Ernest hardly recognised the man.

‘Yesterday afternoon, Mr Marshwood,’ Murgatroyd began, ‘while you were out, we had a visit from a civil servant.  A Mr Winterbourne, from the War Office. He had some very interesting news for us.’

Ernest managed to persuade Murgatroyd to sit down and to take his time over the rest of the story.

‘Well,’ said Murgatroyd, when he was settled in a chair, ‘it appears that the government is going to go flat out to produce arms – guns, tanks, planes and so forth.’

Ernest reflected that it was scarcely a surprise if a government which had declared war on another nation should decide to buy a few guns, but he allowed the man to continue without interruption.

‘Now, hitherto Granborough Electrics has not been involved in armaments, but it turns out that the War Office has been doing some tests, and our electric motors are absolutely ideal for a new tank they’re building. Part of the gun turret I believe, but Mr Winterbourne couldn’t be precise – Official Secrets Act, you know.’

Ernest nodded, as if he knew all about the Official Secrets Act, though in fact he had never heard of it.

‘Now, what this means, Mr Marshwood, is that our factory is going to be working flat out for as long as the war lasts, making electric motors for tanks!’ Murgatroyd’s eyes positively gleamed at the thought.

Ernest was less impressed. ‘That’s all very well,’ he said. ‘I’m pleased to hear that we shall be able to make a contribution to the war effort. But I suppose it means we shall make even less profit than before.’

‘No!’ burst out Murgatroyd. ‘That’s the whole point! It will be done on a cost-plus basis!’

‘Cost-plus?’ echoed Ernest.

‘Yes!’

Ah. Murgatroyd’s excitement began to make sense at last.

Cost-plus was a concept which Ernest understood very well. Cost-plus was the method which you applied when you were dealing with rich and elderly ladies.

What happened was, the old lady decided that she would like a new radio, or a suitcase, or a widget. Something that required time and effort to buy, and perhaps a little technical knowledge as well. And, if she trusted you, the old dear asked you to buy it for her. And she offered you money, cash in hand, to take with you to finance the purchase. And you, of course, demurred.

‘No, no, my dear Mrs Thingummy,’ you said. ‘I couldn’t possibly take money from you at this stage. After all, I might disappear with it! Ho, ho! You might never see me again, ho, ho, ho! You are too trusting by half, Mrs Thingummy. You just wait here and I will go out and buy one for you.’

And off you went. And you bought the radio, or the suitcase, or the widget, for, let us say, seven pounds. Which was the cost. And you duly brought it back and presented it to Mrs Thingummy, and after a bit of umming and ahing she would insist, absolutely insist, my dear boy, on paying you for it.

‘Now I demand to know,’ she would say, smiling happily, ‘precisely how much it cost, and I will repay you every penny.’ And she groped for her handbag and chequebook.

And then would follow a possibly quite prolonged sparring match, during which you, the purchaser, would assert most vociferously that the widget had really not been very expensive, and you would much rather she took it as a gift.

After which, the rancidly rich Mrs Thingummy would demand in louder and louder terms that you must, you absolutely must be reimbursed. And eventually, with great reluctance, you would admit that you had a receipt on you somewhere, now where was it, possibly it was upstairs in your other suit.

And Mrs Thingummy would say no, she was not going to insult you by asking for a receipt, that would be most offensive to a gentleman of your class.

And finally, after a further show of reluctance, you would allow a sum of money to be thrust into your hands. And that sum was always cost plus. The purchase of the widget had cost you seven pounds, but the price you quoted to Mrs Thingummy, and the sum that you received from her, could be seven pounds plus, let us say, two. Or five. Or even thirteen, if the circumstances permitted.

Hell’s teeth, Ernest had once bought a car for Mrs Armindale, and even after giving a generous cut to the salesman who provided the fraudulent papers, he had cleared enough to live on for six months. But that, of course, had led to the incident in which he had had to hit her and hit her and hit her, which was another matter altogether and one which he would much rather forget, so he didn’t burden Mr Murgatroyd, the Company Secretary of Granborough Electrics, with any part of it.

However, as a result of all those experiences, Ernest Marshwood understood the concept of cost-plus. He understood it very well indeed.

‘Ah,’ he said wonderingly. ‘I see!’

‘Yes!’  Murgatroyd was now practically wetting himself with excitement.

‘Well,’ said Ernest, ‘I think that you and I, Mr Murgatroyd, are going to have to put our heads together. You see, it is my belief that this company has been seriously underpricing its products for many years past.’

Murgatroyd nodded vigorously. As well he might: all thoughts of redundancy, of a jobless future and a pensionless retirement, were rapidly disappearing over the horizon.

‘We have been forced by the extremely competitive situation brought about by the slump of the early years of this decade to price our products at a level well below the true economic cost of production,’ said Ernest.

‘Absolutely true,’ Murgatroyd agreed.

‘We have, for example, been forced to ignore maintenance of the plant and equipment.’

‘Yes, yes!’

‘We have laid off workers. Imposed pay cuts. Waived dividends on the shares. We have cut corners and ignored research. Why, those who did not know the most difficult circumstances in which we were working might well have accused us of negligence and incompetence!’

‘They could have, they could, they could!’ sang Murgatroyd.

‘All of that is going to have to end immediately.’

‘Immediately!’

‘It is essential to the war effort, essential to the well-being, nay the very survival of the nation, that this company should produce high-quality products with the very best materials, so that the motors we send out to fit into the tanks that our brave lads are going to drive against the enemy will be reliable, will function efficiently and effectively, and will be a credit to us all.’

‘Credit to us all. That will be our motto.’

Ernest pointed at Murgatroyd with the stem of his pipe. ‘You, Mr Murgatroyd, will sit down today and work out the true cost of producing the best quality electric motors that this plant is capable of. A truly economic cost. One that fully reflects all the factors that go into the motor’s production. That will be our stated cost, one which can be fully justified of course, and that will be the figure on which the cost-plus element is based.’

Ernest paused and puffed smoke for a few moments reflectively.

‘Why,’ he said, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me, Mr Murgatroyd, if the true cost of our electric motors proved to be a figure some two or three times greater than that which we have hitherto been charging.’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Murgatroyd. ‘That kind of figure wouldn’t surprise me either, Mr Marshwood.’

Yes, thought Ernest, war was a shocking and terrible business. But, in this instance, it was clearly going to be a lot more terrible for some people than for others.

***

Reminder: This extract from Topp Family Secrets is told from the main-character, third-person point of view, with minimal author comment.

This novel is available in Kindle ebook format.

APPENDIX 4:

How Young Albert Escaped from the 500 Harem Girls

Michael Allen

There’s a bloke down our pub – name of Bernard – who reckons he’s got a time machine in his shed. If you buy him a pint, he’ll tell you about places he’s been to in it. And some of them are really weird.

Course, there’s other blokes who reckon that Bernard’s just making these stories up, so that blokes like me will buy him pints. But I’m not so sure. I’ve been and had a look at his shed. He keeps it locked, naturally, because they’d nick anything round here – but he’s definitely got something in there. It’s got dials and that. You can see it through the window.

Like I say, not everyone believes what Bernard says, and I once heard a bloke with red hair tell Bernard to his face that there’s no such thing as a time machine. But Bernard wasn’t having any.

‘Listen, smart-arse,’ he said. ‘If H.G. Wells could build a time machine in 1895, there’s no reason on earth why the Japanese can’t build one today. They just take a little while to catch up with western technology, that’s all. And as a matter of fact it isn’t just a time machine. It’s a time and space machine. It can visit parallel universes.’

Well, this bloke with red hair never said a word after that, because he didn’t know what a parallel universe was. I don’t either, of course. But Bernard’s mum told my mum that Bernard has a GCSE in physics, and he uses a computer at work, so I reckon he knows what he’s talking about.

‘This machine I’ve got is made by Sony,’ Bernard said. ‘I’m beta-testing it for them.’

Well, this bloke with red hair looked dead impressed when Bernard said he was beta-testing this machine. Because this bloke didn’t know what beta-testing meant. I don’t either, of course.

‘Yes,’ said Bernard. ‘It’s all very interesting really. I reckon it’ll transform society, once it becomes generally available. Bit like the internet. And of course I can go to all sorts of interesting times and places in it. Watch the French Revolution, visit Queen Cleopatra. All sorts. I had a really interesting experience just last night, as a matter of fact.’

‘Oh yes?’ said the bloke with red hair, who had stopped not believing in time travel. ‘Where did you go to?’

Bernard pushed his empty glass towards this bloke. ‘Buy us a pint,’ he said, ‘and I’ll tell you.’

Well, the bloke with red hair said sorry, but he’d run out of money, so I bought Bernard a pint instead. And this is the story he told us.

I thought it would be nice to go somewhere warm (said Bernard), seeing as how it’s so bloody cold here at the moment. So I sat down, and I dialled in a random choice of parallel universe, plus the factors warm, sunny, and lots of beautiful girls. I pressed the button, and after the usual two-minute whirring noises, there I was.

I opened the door and had a look out.

Just as I’d hoped, I was in a nice warm place. It was a bit like Benidorm really. I could smell the sea, there was a nice breeze blowing from the west, and there were a few palm trees to provide some shade. About half a mile away I could see what looked like a big white house with a dome for a roof. I couldn’t see any beautiful girls as yet, but I was sure there would be some somewhere.

So, I set off to walk towards the big house.

I hadn’t gone very far when I turned a corner and saw a bloke sitting on a wall. He had his head in his hands, as if he was really depressed, but as I got closer he looked up. And guess what – it was that Albert Coggins from Inkerman Street.

‘Morning, Albert,’ I said. ‘How’s things?’

Albert groaned. ‘Oh God. Don’t ask, lad, don’t ask.’

And then he did a bit of a double take.

‘Hang on a minute,’ he said. ‘It’s Bernard, isn’t it? Bernard from the Rose and Crown? Captain of the darts team?’

‘Yes, that’s me,’ I said.

‘Bloody hell, Bernard.’ Albert was astonished. ‘How did you get here?’

‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I came in my Sony Supertravel mark IV time/space bodily transportation machine. I’m beta-testing it for ’em – me and about three thousand others. How about you? How did you get here?’

Albert groaned again. ‘Oh, more or less the same way as you, I suppose. Only not quite so scientific. You see, I was cleaning out my granny’s loft for her – as you do. And I came across this old lamp, lying at the back like, as if nobody wanted it. So I picked it up, rubbed the dirt off it, and – guess what?’

‘A genie appeared.’

Albert looked even more astonished. ‘Yes. But how did you know?’

‘Well,’ I said, ‘since I’ve been beta-testing this Sony machine, I’ve come across places where genies are as common as muck. Some of these parallel universes are absolutely thick with them.’

‘Oh,’ said Albert. ‘Well, anyway, after I’d got over the shock of having this particular genie come pouring out of my granny’s lamp, he expressed his eternal gratitude to me for releasing him from bondage, and then he offered me three wishes. Said I could have anything I wanted. Go anywhere I wanted. Be anything I wanted. I only had to say.’

‘My word,’ I said. ‘The genies I’ve met haven’t been anywhere near as obliging as that, Albert. Grumpy lot most of them.’

‘Yes, well,’ said Albert, ‘I gather they only do the three wishes bit if they’ve been stuck in a lamp for a few thousand years. Anyway, that’s what this one said to me. So I thought for a bit, and then I said, Well, I’d like to be king of my own country for a start.’

‘OK,’ said the genie, ‘that’s one.’

‘And then, I’ve always been fond of nice-looking girls, so I want a harem of five hundred of the best.’

‘Two,’ said the genie.

‘And finally, I’d like a really good golf course next door to the palace, cos I’ve always fancied learning golf.’

‘That’s three, said the genie. Your wish is my command, o master. And with that there was a whirring noise, and everything went blank for a second or two – and then I ended up here.’

‘Well,’ I said, taking another look around. ‘I think you could have done a lot worse. It seems like a very nice place.’

Albert sighed. ‘Yes, well,’ he said. ‘It is and it isn’t. I’ve been here four years now, and the novelty has well and truly worn off on me, I can tell you....’ He suddenly looked alarmed. ‘What time is it?’

‘Ten o’clock.’

‘Oh, bloody hell. I’m late for the union meeting.’ He stood up. ‘You can come along with me if you like, Bernard. To tell you the truth I’d be glad of some moral support. Even though I am king.’

King Albert led the way to the fabulously white building nearby, which turned out to be the King’s palace.

When we got closer, I could see that it stretched for miles in every direction. All the walls were white, and there were no direction signs or labels on any of the doors. Albert reckoned he regularly got lost. Sometimes he had to walk miles to find a loo.

We eventually arrived at the council chamber, which was about the size of a football pitch, all on its own.

Seated at a table in the council chamber were two people. One turned out to be the Grand Vizier. He was a really ancient-looking bloke, slightly built, with a long white beard and a flowing red robe with lots of gold trimming on it.

The other person....

Well, the other person was Esmerelda.

Bloody hell. I mean, bloody hell!

Esmerelda was one of the five hundred girls from the harem. She was about average height, with blonde hair, blue eyes, long eyelashes, a creamy complexion, dark-red lips, all wet and inviting – and more curves than your average fairground roller coaster. In particular the, er, the upper part of her curves were approximately 38DD, and they were covered – or rather adorned – by two little bits of gold plate held up by gold chain. I mean, talk about firm. And pert. And all those other rather naughty words that are used to describe ladies with impressive chests. These particular chests were, believe me, unusually large and very well shaped. They were a pair of most distinguished bosoms. They would have won prizes at the county show. No problem.

I was a bit surprised, however, to find that Esmerelda was not too respectful towards her King.

‘You’re late!’ she told him when we appeared. And she wouldn’t even have bothered to stand up, I don’t think, if she hadn’t noticed that I was with him, and decided to give me a full-length view.

The bottom half of her body... Ooh, and what a bottom it was – never seen one like it – the bottom half of her body was loosely covered by a triangular piece of gold cloth, strategically positioned, and a few flimsy pieces of gauzy material. These gauzy leg-coverings might, in a very posh lingerie shop, have been sold as the lower section of a pair of honeymoon jim-jams. They looked a bit fragile to me, as if they wouldn’t take kindly to being pulled off in a hurry.

By heck, it makes me sweat just to think about her, even now.

Anyway, to get back to the business in hand. King Albert introduced me as his adviser, and said that I was going to sit in on the discussions.

The Grand Vizier umm-ed and ah-ed a bit, and wrung his hands, as if he wasn’t quite sure whether this was proper, but he soon gave way. And Esmerelda clearly didn’t give a bugger who was there.

‘Let’s get on!’ she snarled.

So we did.

‘I wish to make an opening statement,’ said Esmerelda. In tones which suggested that it would be unwise to try to stop her. ‘I am here, as you know, King Albert, in my capacity as harem shop-steward of the Union of Palace Internal Slaves and Skivvies.’

‘Known as UPISS for short,’ King Albert whispered to me. ‘And they do take the piss, believe me. They draw blood, too.’

Esmerelda stared daggers at him.

‘Once again,’ she declared, ‘his majesty the King has fallen short in his husbandly duties. There are, if I may remind his majesty, five hundred beautiful girls in his majesty’s harem. Exactly as per specification. Now, if his majesty has specified five hundred beautiful girls, it is only reasonable to suppose that he felt himself capable of servicing five hundred beautiful girls. All of whom have perfectly normal appetites. And nothing much to do except think about satisfying those perfectly normal appetites.’

I could feel King Albert going a bit red beside me. ‘Ah well,’ he said. ‘You see – ’

Esmerelda cut him off.

‘In the four weeks which have elapsed since the last meeting of this joint union-management committee, his majesty has serviced only twenty of the harem girls. Of those twenty, thirteen have lodged formal complaints about the duration of the servicing, eight have complained about the size of his majesty’s equipment, and twelve have reported that his majesty got their name wrong. Even after he had been told what it was. Twice.’

King Albert was sweating quite a lot now.

‘Ah, well,’ he said, ‘you see I haven’t been feeling too lively this last month, Esmerelda.’

‘Ms Esmerelda to you – even if you are King.’

‘Sorry, sorry, Ms Esmerelda. You see, I’ve been feeling a bit peaky, what with it being so warm and everything, and I’m not really used to it, not long-term. Gets on me chest a bit, does the heat, and I’ve always been chesty, ever since I was a little boy. Ask my mum if you don’t believe me.’

Esmerelda would have none of this. She proceeded to recite a further list of charges. These included missing appointments without advance notice, developing a head-ache at vital moments, and falling asleep within two minutes of completing his husbandly duties.

Speaking of falling asleep, the Grand Vizier was now well away, and snoring with it. I nudged King Albert and pointed this out.

‘Oh, he always does that,’ whispered Albert. ‘Completely bloody useless. He’s supposed to keep things running for me, but he hasn’t a clue. I ask him to do something and it’s Oh yes, your wish is my command, o master. And then a week or two later he denies that I ever told him to do anything.’

Meanwhile Esmerelda was finishing off her speech.

‘To conclude: the Union demands immediate and full rectification of all these faults and shortcomings, and in the absence of such complete and total rectification of all management failures, will reserve the right to take strike action. Is that clear?’

‘Oh, totally,’ said King Albert. And to our relief, Esmerelda got up and marched off. Keeping her nose in the air as she went.

We watched her go.

‘By heck,’ said King Albert. ‘If she was nothing but tits and arse that girl would be an absolute marvel. But unfortunately she’s got a mouth as well.’

I was too stunned by the sight of Esmerelda walking away to say anything. Her behind in movement was something that I have not witnessed the like of, nay, not in any of the universes what I have visited.

The Grand Vizier chose that moment to wake up.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘Next item, complaints from the Union of Executioners and Torturers.’

King Albert became agitated. ‘What do they want this time?’

‘Much the same as before, your majesty. They went you to send them more customers. They are on piece-work, after all.’

King Albert groaned, even more pitifully than ever. ‘Go outside and tell them to wait a few minutes, Mr Vizier. Like, about twenty-four hours if you can manage it.’

‘Your wish is my command, o master,’ said the Grand Vizier. And he hobbled off towards the door, which was approximately two hundred yards away.

King Albert turned and looked at me. His expression was pitiful to behold. The poor fellow looked knackered.

‘You see what it’s like,’ he said. ‘Being King is absolutely no fun at all, Bernard! I’m now going to spend the next half-hour being bollocked by a gang of torturers and executioners – who are really frightening blokes, Bernard. And all because I don’t send them enough people to work on! But I don’t want to condemn anyone to death!’

And the poor chap began to sob, quite piteously.

‘I can’t play golf because although there’s a wonderful golf course, I didn’t think to ask for any clubs, you see. So there aren’t any.’

‘But there’s always the harem,’ I pointed out.

‘Harem? Don’t talk to me about the bloody harem.’ Tears streamed down King Albert’s cheeks. ‘I used to enjoy a really good shag. Nothing I enjoyed more, apart from my mum’s treacle tart. But now it’s just a horrible chore. You go in there, and you find there’s one on the bed, telling me to get on with it, and then there’s a whole bloody queue of them outside the door. And I get so worried that they’re going to lodge formal complaints that I can hardly get it up any more.’

Well, I could see that King Albert was in the most appalling mess, but he seemed to be unaware of the obvious solution.

‘But look here, Albert,’ I said. ‘There’s no need for all this gloom and doom. If you’re not having fun any longer, why don’t you just get up and leave?’

He turned to stare at me, his cheeks all wet with distress.

‘Leave? How could I possibly leave?’

‘Well,’ I said, in a most reasonable tone, ‘you could always come back with me.’

So he did.

Bernard had finished his story, and his pint, so I bought him another.

‘And that was that,’ he said. ‘Albert came back with me. Last Tuesday. Of course, he’d spent four years in the parallel universe where he was king, but in our universe he’d only been away ten days.’

‘But I saw Albert only yesterday,’ said the bloke with red hair. ‘And he told me he’d been away on holiday. In Benidorm.’

‘Ah, well, he would, wouldn’t he?’ said Bernard. ‘He’s a bit sensitive about the whole thing, is Albert. You would be too, in the circumstances.’

I don’t know about you, but I thought Bernard’s story about King Albert and the harem girls was really interesting. Of course, I didn’t believe all of it. I mean I didn’t believe that the Grand Vizier would have fallen asleep in the middle of an important meeting, for a start.

Anyway, I thought it would be quite interesting to have a word with King Albert, when I next saw him. I thought I might get him to tell me a bit more about Esmerelda and that. I think harem girls are really quite interesting. I wouldn’t mind meeting one or two myself. So, for the next couple of days, whenever I was going down Inkerman Street I kept my eyes open, and eventually I managed to bump into King Albert as he was walking towards the bus stop.

‘Morning,’ I said. I wasn’t sure if I should say ‘your majesty’ or not, but I thought not, on the whole, since he’s back in our universe now. ‘Did you have a good holiday?’

Albert shuddered, as if I had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. ‘Ooh! Don’t ask, lad. Don’t ask.’

‘Bad, was it?’

‘Ooh, terrible, terrible.’

I made sure that no one could overhear us. ‘I, er, I gather you had a bit of trouble with the harem girls. Do you think I could have a few harem girls, if I had a rub of that lamp? I wouldn’t need as many as you, though. A couple of hundred would do for me.’

Albert looked up and down the street, just as I had, to make sure that no one else was listening. ‘You’ve been talking to Bernard, haven’t you?’ he said.

‘Well, yes,’ I admitted.

Albert looked me up and down. ‘How old are you, lad?’

‘Eighteen. Nearly.’

Albert nodded. ‘Well, I reckon you could do with a bit of advice.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’ve got to catch a bus in five minutes, but we’ve just got time. Let’s nip into the Dog and Ferret.’

We went into the pub and Albert ordered two pints and a double Scotch. ‘My friend’s paying,’ he said. So I did.

I took a look at Albert while we were waiting for the drinks. He had a very good suntan, and he did look as if he might have spent four years in a hot climate.

When the drinks arrived, Albert drank the whisky almost in one go. I was very impressed. Whenever I try to drink whisky I cough, and it makes my eyes water. Then he sank half of the pint of best bitter, and after that he guided me over to a quiet corner of the bar.

‘Now then, lad,’ he said. ‘Have you got a granny?’

‘I’ve got two.’

‘Right. Well, the day will come when one of your grannies asks you to clear out her loft for her. As they do. And the thing is this, see. If, when you’re poking about in the loft there, you come across an old lamp, do you know what you definitely should not do?’

‘No, Albert.’

‘You shouldn’t rub it.’

‘Shouldn’t I?’

‘No. Definitely not. There’s quite a lot of things a lad your age shouldn’t rub, and a lamp’s one of them. And if, by any chance, you do inadvertently pass your arm over it, by mistake like, and a genie does happen to pop out of the lamp, you should be very, very careful what you say.’

‘Should I?’

‘Oh yes. And if this genie should offer you three wishes, and say that you can have whatever your heart desires, do you know what you should do then?’

‘No, Albert.’

‘You should say no, lad. That’s all. Just... say... no.’

He sank the second half of his pint and stood up. ‘What have I told you?’ he said.

‘Er, you’ve told me that if a genie ever offers to grant me three wishes, I should be very, very careful,’ I replied.

King Albert patted me on the shoulder. ‘That’s right, lad,’ he said. ‘Whenever you’re faced with temptation, just say no, and then you’ll come to no harm.’

And with that he rushed off to catch his bus.

***

Reminder: How Young Albert Escaped from the 500 Harem Girls is told from a minor-character viewpoint, in the first person. In fact, two first-person narrators are involved, both of them minor characters. And you don’t have to read very far to see that the first character you meet is not terribly bright.

This story has also been published as a stand-alone ebook.

Afterword

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward, practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are now ready to read more about how to apply what you have learnt about viewpoint to the down-to-earth business of actual writing, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has available, visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO STYLE:

How to Make Your Fiction Memorable

Michael Allen

Copyright 2013 by Michael Allen

***

PART 1: Introduction to the subject

1. Aims

The aims of this book are:

(i) To enable a writer to identify the strengths and weaknesses of her present writing style;

(ii) To suggest ways in which a writer’s style might be improved;

(iii) To show how style can be used to reveal character and thus heighten emotion.

A Writer’s Guide to Style is the third in my series of practical, down-to-earth guides for writers; the two previous ones deal with emotion and viewpoint. This one will be most relevant to those who write fiction, whether short stories or novels, but non-fiction writers will also find it useful.

2. About the author

If you are presented with a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who is the author of said book, and what makes him any sort of authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am 74 years old. I was first paid for writing for a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963, exactly 50 years ago this year, since when I have written at least 25 others (under my own name and several pen names).

I have written about ten non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers; and, in related fields, I have written various drama scripts that have been professionally produced on the stage, radio, and television.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence saw something of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s.

As of today I have about 60 separate publications available in Kindle format, under various names. See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages in Amazon sites.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context (though the rest of the world doesn’t behave any differently). All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

My principal career was in education; as a result, my instinct is always to pass on useful information. That’s why I’ve taken the trouble to write this book.

3. What do we mean by style?

When we speak of a writer’s style, we are using a shorthand term to describe her overall way of using words.

Does she use short sentences, or long ones? Lots of semi-colons or none? (A schoolmaster of mine, sixty years ago, used to maintain that to judge a writer’s quality of thinking you should count his semi-colons. He was talking about historians mainly.)

Is a writer’s work easy to read, or do you have to keep going back and trying to figure out what she meant? (If so, you won’t be reading her for long.) Is she amusing? Or totally po-faced – as we say in England – meaning humourless.

Quite frankly, if you start reading what the Eng. Lit. professors have to say about style, you will get hopelessly confused, as per usual when you try to read those fellows. So avoid that dreadful fate.

Just be aware that a writer’s style is a product of her nature and nurture. The way in which a writer uses words will depend upon how she was brought up, how she was educated, and what she has read. All of these factors combine to give every writer, at every point in her career, a particular ‘look’, or feel, or sound. If you read the prose aloud you will perhaps find it easier to recognise style than just going by the printed page.

One way and another, therefore, it seems that our old friend the Comte de Buffon, an eighteenth-century literary critic, just about put his thumb on it when he told us that ‘le style c’est l’homme meme.’ Translation: ‘Style is the man himself’; or woman, as the case may be.

In other words, what the Comte du Buffon meant is that style it is a reflection of your personality and experience. It will become easily recognisable after a reasonable degree of acquaintance – just like your face. And, in common with the way you dress and the way you walk and talk, your writing style is almost always going to tell the reader what sort of person you are.

Style is like your height: it’s not easy to change. If you’re five foot one, as an adult, you are never likely to be six feet tall. But you can make the best of yourself. In terms of appearance, you can buy glasses which match the shape of your face; and you can get your hair cut ditto. And that’s what this ebook is basically about. It’s about making the best of whatever literary gifts the gods may have given you.

4. The three key factors in a work of fiction

In the early twentieth century, Thomas H. Uzzell  suggested that, from a writer’s point of view, there are three key factors in writing a short story, a novel, or something in between.

The first element is content. You have to have something to write about – some fragment of an idea. I’m going to write a story about a deaf man, you say to yourself; or a cow with a sick calf; or an alien invasion.

Next comes the question of technique. How are you going to handle this material? Are you just going to sit down and write whatever comes into your head? Or are you going to plan your story carefully, inventing events that test your character’s courage and demonstrate what a hero (or coward) he is?

At this stage I may as well declare a strong preference for the latter: planning books and stories in some detail; but this is not a book about narrative technique. If you want one, try my earlier books, How to Write a Short Story that Works, and How to Write a Novel that Works.

The third and final element in writing fiction is the writer’s style: her manner of using words in the final version of the story.

Of these three elements, Uzzell believed – as I do – that content was more important than technique. And style is perhaps the least important factor, though by no means negligible in its contribution to the overall effect. But all three elements should be under the writer’s conscious control.

Yes, you can certainly write a story which depends on an idea which came to you out of the blue; I’ve had many such ideas come my way over the years – some of them excellent, some not so wonderful. And yes, you can certainly organise and manipulate your basic idea into a potentially effective story. And I have dealt with those issues in the books referred to above. But this book is about how to improve and polish your style.

PART 2: Identifying your strengths and weaknesses

5. Self-assessment

This section makes use of some material that I have previously included in my books on writing short stories and novels. But if you’ve read it before in that context, it will do no harm whatever to read it again here.

Let us consider what skills you need to be a reasonably good fiction writer. What are they?

Well, some experience of life wouldn’t hurt. Just having read thousands of books, as a teenager, is no substitute.

However, there is one overwhelming requirement. In times past it was an absolutely essential requirement, but in the digital age you may be able (just) to manage without it. But first let’s consider what it is.

The number-one requirement for a novelist, or any professional writer, is that you should be able to communicate fluently in writing, in the English language.

Could I, for instance, write a novel in French? Hell no. I might order a meal in French, but I certainly can’t write a novel.

So, the novelist needs an unusually good grasp of the English language. Ideally you need to be able to spell and punctuate correctly. Every time. Some knowledge of figures of speech is an asset. I’m not sure that I still know what zeugma and litotes are (though I once did, when I taught English), but I certainly know what similes and metaphors are, and their importance. I know the difference between a semi-colon and a colon, and between an adjective and an adverb.

Of course, of course, the impatient among you will be muttering. Everyone knows that sort of thing.

Well, they did, once upon a time. But not any more.

I wrote about this problem at length in my book How to Write a Short Story that Works. I can’t speak for other English-speaking countries, but in the UK a huge problem has developed over the last half century. The plain fact is that English teaching has deteriorated sharply in English schools, and the evidence is all around us.

What evidence? Well, here are two quotes from middle-aged ladies, both involved in the communications business.

On 17 November 2002, Minette Marrin wrote an article in The Times about British universities. ‘Over the past 15 years,’ she said, ‘I’ve listened to despairing accounts – from friends who teach even at good universities – of how bad things have become. Many students arrive unable to write essays, or even to construct a paragraph.’

The following day, in the same newspaper, the forthright Ann Widdecombe remarked that she lived in a world ‘in which linguistic anarchy prevails, where children are no longer taught the function of a verb, and where bright, enthusiastic graduates produce a jumble of words, randomly punctuated, and call it a letter.’

If you, dear Reader, live in England (home of the English language) and are of retirement age, and if you went to an old-fashioned grammar school, or an independent school, and if you were in the so-called ‘arts’ stream – then there is a fighting chance that you might have been taught sufficiently well to be able to write prose which will not make an experienced publisher’s editor wince because of its elementary errors.

But if you are 20 years old, and attended your local comprehensive, it is more than likely that you will have been taught English by someone who was, frankly, incapable of writing a respectable sentence himself. The result will show. Believe me, it will show.

None of this is your fault, of course, and your position is not altogether hopeless. But neither is it promising. For the moment, at least, you are a person who wants to be a champion high-jumper but is only four feet six inches tall and weighs twelve stone (168 lbs). You are like a trumpeter with one lung; a golfer with one arm; a pianist whose fingers got caught in the car door.

If you want to take a short test to see how well you actually have been educated (or have educated yourself), proceed to section 6 below. There you will find a few questions which allow you to assess the state of your vocabulary, spelling, grasp of punctuation, and elementary grammar. But here’s a short cut. You can find out how sensitive to nuance you are by reading the paragraphs below.

A UK newspaper recently ran the following headline:

CANNABIS GROWERS SAY POLICE MAKE BAD NEIGHBOURS

That headline might mean precisely what it says. It is possible that a group of cannabis growers made a public statement to the effect that, if you grow your own cannabis, it’s not a good idea to live next door to a police officer.

On the other hand, I think it more likely that the newspaper was reporting a warning, issued by the police, that if you suspect that your neighbours have a secret greenhouse up in their loft, it might be a good idea to tip off the forces of law and order.

And if you really can’t see how a couple of commas would make all the difference in conveying those two rather different ideas, then you are in trouble.

I accept – yes, yes, I really do accept – that all the above makes me sound like a ghastly intellectual snob. And I repeat: it’s not your fault that you’ve been badly taught. But at the end of the day, you can only have a halfway decent career as a writer if you can write at least halfway decent English. You need to know how to say what you mean to say, and how to say it in a way which will hold your reader to the page.

That having been said… this is probably the place to state that there are some ways to reduce the effect of your lack of knowledge. The first is to employ a professional editor to go through your book, when it’s finished. Professional editors who are really skilled at the job are not easy to find – for all the reasons referred to above – and when you find one she is likely to be expensive.

The other grain of hope lies in the fact that a new kind of reader has emerged in the digital age. Various surveys over the past few decades suggest that (in England) only about 50 per cent of adults ever read a novel anyway. The other 50 per cent, the non-book readers so to speak, they may read newspapers and magazines, but books…? Nah. Too long. Too complicated.

What these non-book readers do have, however, is an easily portable computer. And smartphones and tablets are increasingly being used for reading narrative. It is my conclusion that this is producing a new class of reader – what you might call the non-reading readers.

Such non-readers are really not at all fussy about spelling and punctuation because they were never taught much of that stuff at school, never got the hang of it anyway, and wouldn’t know a split infinitive if you opened a can of beer with it. And what the new readers are interested in is stories. They want to read stories which are reasonably short, not too demanding intellectually, and which grip the imagination.

There are some writers who pretty much fall into that class of person themselves, and they are writing for precisely that audience.

A couple of years ago I read a blog post which listed twenty self-published authors who had each sold over 2,500 copies of their books in the previous month. Each writer was probably earning about $5,000. Per month.

So I went on to Amazon and took a careful look at all twenty of these people. One in particular caught my eye. She had then published about ten books. But these were ‘books’ only in the sense that they were about 10,000 to 15,000 words long – novellas, perhaps. And they were written with what can only be described as a cheerful disregard for the normal niceties of spelling, punctuation and grammar.

When you looked at the readers’ reviews for this writer, on Amazon, they divided into two groups. There were those who raved about the story, and how exciting it was (five stars). And there were those who complained bitterly about the frankly illiterate nature of the prose (one star).

But… This woman was selling books! Above 2,500 copies a month.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this writer ever since. She is still churning out material, and the last time I looked she had over 200 separate publications listed on Kindle. Some of these were Spanish translations of her English originals, some were audio versions. And when I read the free samples of some of the earlier output, I could see that an editor had been through the stories and had largely put right all the more obvious mistakes.

You will note that I have not given the author’s name, and you may think that’s because I disapprove of her. Not at all. Quite the opposite. I just don’t want to appear to be picking her out as particularly bad.

Here is a lady who, ten years ago, or even five, would not have had a hope of hell in getting her 10,000-word fantasy stories published. First, because no one was publishing stories of that length. Second, because they failed the literacy test. No magazine editor would read more than the first page.

But then… Along came the digital revolution. And Kindle self-publishing. And the lady could publish whatever she pleased. An opportunity presented itself to her, and she seized it with both hands. And when she found out that some people were criticising her stuff, she fixed it.

Her prose is still far from polished – in my arrogant opinion. In fact it’s pretty rough old stuff. But this lady is living proof that content is King. And Queen too, for that matter. Content holds all the aces. In today’s fiction market, it’s the story that counts.

Far from disapproving of this writer, I take my hat off to her. Long may she flourish. She finds readers and entertains them. And she sells a lot more books than I do. Dammit.

Nevertheless, I do have to tell you that the unpolished writer is the exception that tests the rule. And the rule stands. The rule is that, to succeed as a writer – however you define the term succeed – you ideally need a good firm grasp of grammar, punctuation, and spelling. So here’s a short test. I first developed it for my earlier how-to book, How to Write a Short Story that Works.

Purpose of sections 6, 7, and 8 is to enable the writers who take it to gain a clearer understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of their present writing style.

6. Testing your skills

By now it is just conceivable that you may be wondering whether you yourself have any shortcomings in the spelling and grammar departments. And how is your vocabulary? Fully familiar, are we, with some of the more notorious pitfalls for the unwary?

I am not going to attempt the task of labelling your knowledge of English as good, bad, or indifferent. But if this book is to be of any practical value I have to make it plain to you that you are unlikely to make progress as a writer without having at least a rudimentary awareness of some of the more obvious potential errors. You need, above all, a feeling for the nuances of the English language. It is not for nothing that English possesses so many words of almost, but not exactly, the same meaning: it is to enable writers to communicate facts and feelings more precisely.

Here are a few test questions to enable you to discover whether you are 100 per cent on the ball in this department – or whether you might, perhaps, still have a few things to learn.

Vocabulary

Do you know the difference between the following pairs of words? Can you explain the difference, in each case, in a couple of brief sentences? If you can’t, check the meanings in a dictionary.

aural and oral

appraise and apprise

canvas and canvass

complement and compliment

discreet and discrete

loath and loathe

interment and internment

prescribe and proscribe

principal and principle

stationary and stationery

Why am I banging on about these similar but different words? Because the spell checker on your word processor won’t help you if you write complimentary when you mean complementary. For that matter, your spell checker won’t help you if you write see when you mean sea, or no when you mean know, or patients when you mean patience…. And on and on and on.

Spelling

Spelling is difficult to test in a printed book, but set out below are twenty commonly misspelt words. Half of them are correctly spelt, and half are not. Can you identify the wrong ones? (Answers in section 7.)

accommodate

agressive

appalling

aquire

benefitted

besiege

concensus

desparate

detatched

gauge

harassed

millennium

minuscule

momento

neccessary

niece

seperate

supercede

surprise

threshold

wilful

Grammar and punctuation

Finally, if you’re not already fed up with this game, here are a few sentences which contain some elementary errors of grammar or punctuation, or both. Can you see what is wrong? (Answers again in section 7.)

1. After inspecting a guard of honour, President Reagan’s motorcade moved into the centre of Moscow.

2. Its a long way from London to Wiltshire, the train toots it’s whistle with relief when it finally arrives.

3. She was the oldest of the two sisters.

4. Between you and I, he is quite wrong, and I would of told him so if he hadn’t been so big.

5. Through hard work the coach affected a considerable improvement in the teams performance.

Some old favourites

The English language does not stand still (though many of the older generation wish it would). It changes and develops: new words are added, old ones drop out of use, and even spellings can vary over the years, particularly where hyphens are concerned. In my youth, dining-room was a term which had a hyphen, as here; now it is more ‘correct’ to print it as two separate words. Fire-arm, hyphenated in Oxford dictionaries when I began to write crime fiction, is now firearm.

Despite all this flux, there are a number of traditionally controversial subjects on which you need to take a position. Where do you stand, for instance, on the question of split infinitives?

How do you decide whether to use that or which when a relative pronoun is called for?

When you need to use the past tense of learn, are you going to write learned or learnt? And spelled or spelt?

In the case of verbs ending in a syllable which sounds like eyes, do you spell the suffix -ize or -ise? In other words, is organize correct, or is organise better?

In order to form a view on these matters, you will need to establish a good working relationship with a number of standard reference books: these are listed in section 11, below. But if you’re remotely interested in my own views, they are as follows:

Split infinitives. As far as I’m concerned, you can split infinitives with impunity if it makes your meaning clearer. In other words, if you want to boldly go where no one has ever gone before, that’s OK by me. But beware; some readers may think you’re doing it out of ignorance.

The use of that or which is a tougher problem. Suppose we write: The government approved a law that will give free candy to all children under ten. Is the word that correct in that sentence, or would which be better? My view is that the choice is not so much between that and which as between that and comma-which. In other words, if you don’t need a comma before the word, then that is OK. If you do need a comma, which is the right choice. To demonstrate the point consider the following example: The consumption of chocolate, which some people consider unhealthy for children, rose again last year.

I prefer learnt and spelt because that’s the way I think the words should sound.

The -ize and -ise question. My choice is to end all eyes words in -ise and have done with it, but -ize has the support of the Oxford English dictionaries, which I normally accept as authoritative. (My preference, should anyone care, is aesthetic rather than etymological: I like the look of the soft round s better than that nasty angular z.)

Be your own prodnose

When it comes to spelling and points of grammar, those writers who are working for a major newspaper have the advantage over us ordinary mortals. The full-time journalists know that they have some back-up available to them in the form of sub-editors.

On major newspapers there is (or used to be) someone whose job it is to tidy up the careless errors of grammar and punctuation, and nothing else. Nowadays this person is known as the revise editor, or something similar, but years ago he was called the prodnose – presumably because his job was to prod his nose into all the copy going into the paper, and to check for mistakes in style and usage.

An article in The Times recently illustrated how useful such a revise editor can be. One of that paper’s most distinguished correspondents admitted that in drafting a recent column he had misspelt Mother Teresa (by including an h), Margaret Atwood (with an unnecessary second t in the surname), J.M. Coetzee (with an s), and Gutenberg (with two u’s). All of these errors, if left in, would have attracted criticism from readers who care about accuracy.

The article made the point that, even on The Times, correct usage is definitely a problem. For one thing, journalists work at speed; more importantly, ‘there are now two generations of journalists who were not taught any formal grammar at school.’ In other words even the leading UK newspaper is feeling the effects of our pathetic education system.

So, you have to be your own prodnose. But how do you do that?

Answer, by buying yourself a decent set of reference books. See section 11, below.

7. Answers to the tests

Spelling

In section 6 I set you a modest spelling test. The correct versions of ten of the words are set out below; the other ten are correct as printed.

acquire, not aquire

aggressive, not agressive

benefited, not benefitted

consensus, not concensus

desperate, not desparate

detached, not detatched

memento, not momento

necessary, not neccessary

separate, not seperate

supersede, not supercede

Yes, I do know that some sensible people argue for a double t in benefited; but not I.

Grammar and punctuation

1. The first sentence provides an example of what is technically an unattached, or dangling, participle. The motorcade did not inspect the guard of honour; President Reagan did.

2. Here we have two sentences separated by a comma. Ideally there should be a semi-colon after Wiltshire, but a full stop would do. Also, the first its should be it’s and the second it’s should be its.

3. She was the older of two sisters. If there had been three sisters, she might have been the oldest. In talking about persons who are closely related, elder and eldest are often used rather than older and oldest.

4. Between you and me, not I. This is a common error, but often debated; see the discussion in Fowler’s Modern English Usage. Also, I would have told him so; not would of. Half the British population seems to use ‘of’ in everyday speech.

5. The general sense of the sentence implies that the coach effected a considerable improvement. He might have affected a lack of dismay when the team lost, i.e. he might have pretended not to care. Teams requires an apostrophe before the s, unless he coached several teams successfully, in which case the apostrophe would go after the s.

8. Readability

There is one other aspect of your writing style which you might care to consider, and that is its readability. And it so happens that readability can be measured – after a fashion.

About thirty years ago I got to hear about something called the Gunning fog index, and I’ve used it occasionally ever since. Gunning, by the way, was an American businessman who invented the index in 1952; it has been modified somewhat since.

The fog index analyses a short sample of any given text and then produces a figure to indicate its readability. The figure quoted is said to represent the number of years of full-time education that are needed for a reader to understand the text on a first reading. So, for example, a fog index of 12 means that your prose can be read comfortably by the average American high-school senior. On the other hand, if you want to be understood by almost any English speaker, of whatever level of education, you’re going to need an index of 8 or below. If your readability figure is 24 or so, then you’re obviously far too clever for your own good. Either that or you will be understood only by people who have a PhD in your particular niche of academic research. And good luck with that.

Wikipedia will provide you with a concise and clear explanation of how to do the fog calculation manually, but fortunately there is a web site which does the job online. Just like that. Go to www.gunning-fog-index.com.

Just for fun, I used this web site to check two samples of text from this very book. The first sample gave an index of 12.67 and second 13.64; the average is 13.155. Since the figures after the decimal point give what is, in my view, an entirely spurious impression of accuracy, I would say that to read this book comfortably you will need a year or two of college.

I am entirely happy with that. It would be possible, with a huge effort and a large commitment of time, for me to go through the whole book and simplify it, chiefly by using shorter sentences and by using fewer multisyllabic words. But I don’t intend to try.

However… This book is non-fiction. Its primary purpose is to convey information. A work of fiction, on the other hand, seeks to create emotion in the reader. So again, just for fun, I have tested a few paragraphs of text from a short story of mine (one which will, incidentally, be reproduced at the end of this book). Results: 11.83 and 8.24, average 10.

This second test demonstrates two useful points. One is that my fiction style is easier to read than my non-fiction style. And the second is that two samples from a lengthy text can give different results; consequently, taking ten samples and averaging the figures would give a more reliable indication than just one sample.

Once again, I am happy with my fiction readability index. If I was consciously writing for a readership with a relatively low IQ, and/or too old to have received much education, then I would need to change my style considerably. But I’m not, so that’s OK. A fog index of 10 suggests to me that my fiction can be read by any reasonably bright person who stays at school for a year or two after the minimum leaving age.

9. Stylometry: science and style

It is probably worth saying just a little at this stage about the mysterious ‘science’ of stylometry. I put the word science in inverted commas because I am as yet somewhat sceptical about its validity; not to mention its practical value.

However, let us persevere. It seems that, just as the fog index measures readability, computers can be programmed to detect changes in style over time, and similarities (or absence of same) between two pieces of text, to determine whether or not they were written by the same person.

9.1 The Case of Iris Murdoch

In 2004, most of the UK’s up-market newspapers carried a report of some research carried out by Peter Garrard, of the institute of cognitive research at University College, London. Garrard and his colleagues compared the early novels of Iris Murdoch with her final work, and concluded that, towards the end of her life, her vocabulary had dwindled and her language had become simpler. This, they suggested, provided evidence of Alzheimer’s disease some time before the writer was actually diagnosed as suffering from that condition.

Well, there seems to be no doubt that Iris Murdoch did suffer from Alzheimer's disease, and I am quite prepared to believe that this showed up in the way she wrote. However, there are a couple of points that I would like to make in relation to Garrard’s research and in relation to Iris Murdoch’s writing generally.

First, it would come as no surprise to me if, over the course of a writing career lasting twenty or thirty years, a writer’s style did become simpler, using a larger proportion of short words. From casual, rather than scientific, observation, it seems to me that young writers, particularly in the literary genre, do tend to think it clever to use great long rambling sentences (the Faulkner influence) and to employ words with a multiplicity of syllables. Their style, in short, is consciously and deliberately sesquipedalian. And ten to one you've had to go to the dictionary to find out what that means. Young people think it’s clever to do that sort of thing, and it isn’t. It is entirely possible, I hope, that in the course of writing a few books, and listening to some wise advisers, a writer might learn to write in a more readily comprehensible manner.

After all, the whole point of fiction is to create emotion, and the whole point of non-fiction is to convey information. Neither objective is achieved by being long-winded and obscure. Faulkner once criticised Hemingway on the grounds that he never used a word which would oblige the reader to consult a dictionary. But Hemingway’s response, which I fully endorse, was that he was trying to produce emotion, and you don’t do that by using words that the reader can’t understand.

In non-fiction, exactly the same applies, of course. Some decades ago there was a famous American journalist called Ed Murrow. Towards the end of his career, Murrow was told by an eminent professor of English that the prof had identified the secret of Murrow’s success. It was short sentences. Murrow's comment was that he didn't think short sentences were much of a secret.

So, back to Iris Murdoch. Yes, Peter Garrard and his friends are probably right. Iris’s last book probably does reveal early signs of Alzheimer's. But it is at least possible, in theory, that she had decided to write in a way which could be understood by people who don’t actually have a PhD and an IQ of 175.

The second point I want to make relates to the actual examples of Iris Murdoch’s prose which Garrard quotes. Here’s one sentence from an early novel, The Sea, The Sea, followed by one from her last book, Jackson's Dilemma.

Quote 1: ‘The chagrin, the ferocious ambition which James I am sure quite unconsciously, prompted in me was something which came about gradually and raged intermittently.’

This, I repeat, is just one sentence, presumably chosen at random but intended to be fairly typical of Iris’s early style. It would be grossly unfair to read too much into one sentence, but what can we say about it?

Well, if I had read this sentence in isolation, not knowing who had written it, I would say that it seems thoroughly sloppy. It is a sentence written by someone who is writing on automatic pilot, putting down the thoughts pretty much as they popped into her head, and not bothering to rearrange them in a sensible order once they were set down on paper. Furthermore, the punctuation stinks. It is the kind of construction that you might expect to find in a letter dictated by a busy estate agent.

What on earth is the woman on about? Chagrin seems to me to have nothing to do with raging ambition, though the connection may be clear if you read the sentence in context. Even so, the whole thing screams out for an editor’s pencil, or, better still, a complete rewrite on the part of the author, who suddenly realises (as one does) that what she has written down in the full flood of inspiration doesn’t actually make much sense.

Let us now look at the sentence quoted from her last book, Jackson’s Dilemma.

Quote 2: ‘Owen had laid out a little table with whisky and red wine and orange juice and ham sandwiches and plums and cherry cake.

Dr Garrard tells us (and I believe him) that the sentence from The Sea, The Sea contains 24 tokens of 22 different word types, and that the second sentence contains 25 tokens of 20 word types; over the course of a large text these differences become highly significant.

Stylistically, however, the second sentence seems to me to be an improvement. Admittedly, all those ‘ands’ might be criticised, but they don’t bother me unduly. And at least the meaning is crystal clear. The difference between the two styles is, however, ascribed in this case to incipient Alzheimer’s, rather than a conscious decision to adopt a simpler style.

Unfortunately, Iris Murdoch had little incentive to change anything. Ever. She was told, by a host of sycophantic critics, early in her career, that she was a terrific writer, and was frequently described as ‘the most brilliant woman in England’; so why consider change? The fact that there were masses of people, like me, who tried to read one of her early books, found it impenetrable, and never bothered to try again, doesn’t seem to have disturbed Iris or anyone on her team.

So, at the end of her life Iris had become another of those well known literary figures (such as Sylvia Plath) who are talked and written about a great deal but are hardly ever read. Such is the fate of writers who believe their own publicity.

9.2 The Case of Agatha Christie

In 2010, Professor Ian Lancashire, an English prof at the University of Toronto, analysed 16 Agatha Christie novels, written over a 50-year period, and fed the text into a program called TACT (which you can reportedly download for free, should you be interested). Lancashire’s aim was to determine whether Agatha had changed her style over time.

Once again, the researcher claimed that the data supported the view that Agatha Christie had developed Alzheimer’s by the time she wrote her final novel.

Maybe so; although, unlike Iris Murdoch, Agatha was never reported, while she was alive, to be suffering from this condition. Furthermore, at least one commentator remarked of this research that it ‘may be reading something into the late Agatha Christie books that is barely there.’

I agree.

9.3 Unmasking anonymous authors

Another newsworthy aspect of the computerised analysis of text is its use in identifying the authorship of anonymous and pseudonymous texts.

In 2004 there was a flurry of excitement in some quarters over the identity of the author of a blog about a young woman who called herself Belle de Jour.

Belle de Jour was, or claimed to be, working as a high-class London call girl. Her diary, in blog form, attracted enough attention to interest a publisher, leading in due course to two books, and after that to a television drama.

Although it was absolutely none of anyone’s business, a big drive began to find out if Belle’s stories were true, and if so her real identity. In 2003, The Sunday Times ran a front-page story, based on textual analysis by an American academic, claiming that Belle was really a lady by the name of Sarah Champion.

Oops. That was incorrect. Much embarrassment all round. The less said the better.

Eventually Belle revealed her true identity herself, and if you really want to know more you can read all about it on… yes, of course, Wikipedia. And ten thousand other places.

In 2013 even more trees were wasted over the J.K. Rowling hooha. Ms Rowling chose to write and publish a crime novel under the pen-name Robert Galbraith. After a few months, a gentleman (?) in her lawyers’ office was foolish enough to reveal Galbraith’s identity to a friend ‘in strictest confidence’. The friend then leaked the news in a twitter. No, no, you mustn’t laugh. It all got very messy.

Anyway, having received a tip-off about this, The Sunday Times (yes, them again) commissioned a couple of academics to apply some science; the idea was to compare Rowling’s earlier work with the work of Robert Galbraith. Here again the academics used a free program for the job, this time the Java Authorship Attribution Program. In this case, the program demonstrated quite a number of ‘linguistic signatures’ which suggested that J.K. Rowling and Robert Galbraith were one and the same. There doesn’t seem to have been any proof – just a strong likelihood.

This time the newspaper did not splash the story all over the front page without checking it out. Instead they interviewed Ms Rowling, who decided to acknowledge that the Galbraith book was indeed hers.

9.4 Conclusion about science and style

My conclusion about the analysis of text by various computer programs is that, so far, nothing very useful has emerged. Useful, that is, for writers.

Unlike the fog index, which has a demonstrable practical value to writers, the various computer programs applied to the analysis of text do not seem to me to have yet produced anything useful. Apart from vaguely sensational newspaper stories.

There is also a program called Anonymouth, which will help you, should you wish to do so, to strip a piece of text of most of its ‘stylistic markers’. In other words, revising your text along the lines suggested by Anonymouth will make it near impossible for a computer scientist to prove that you are its author.

Unfortunately, as The New Republic pointed out, the resulting anonymised text lacks the very things that made it (potentially) interesting in the first place. When revised by Anonymouth, the works of Tolstoy, Dickens, George Eliot, and others, all begin to look about as interesting as the back of a cornflakes packet.

PART 3: Improving your style

10. Pause for thought

Let us see where we have got to.

The aims of this book were set out in section 1 as follows:

(i) To enable a writer to identify the strengths and weaknesses of her present writing style;

(ii) To suggest ways in which a writer’s style might be improved;

(iii) To show how style can be used to reveal character and thus heighten emotion.

The first aim of the book – to enable you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your writing style, was covered in sections 5, 6, and 7.

Nobody’s perfect, of course. Not many people would score 100% on the tests set out in those sections: I myself have trouble with remembering how to spell weird and niece, for example, and they’re not even long words. So don’t be too depressed if you missed a few points.

Please note that the tests do not even mention subjects such as hyphens. Sir Ernest Gowers (see below) quotes an American authority as saying that if you take hyphens seriously you will surely go mad. But it is worth pointing out that ‘a superfluous hair-remover’ can only be a hair-remover that no one wants. Yes, and I dare say you have been waxed, which makes it much easier to write about; you can probably do without hyphens to tell us that.

Section 8 dealt with readability, which is well worth paying attention to, in my opinion, and section 10, for the sake of completeness, gave an overview of the dubious science of stylometry.

So now, if you’ve paid some attention to all that, you have a sense of the strengths and weaknesses of your own style. It is time, therefore, to think about the second aim of this book, which is to suggest ways in which a writer’s style might be improved.

There are a few ways to improve your own style, and they will be dealt with in the following order:

(i) learning more about the English language;

(ii) improving your readability

(iii) making maximum use of style variations, particularly in the first person, to reveal more about character, and hence to increase the emotional impact of your work.

11. Do-it-yourself tuition: a basic library of reference books

‘Grammar,’ said Alice Thomas Ellis in 1989, ‘is like walking. You have to think about it when you start but if you have to go on thinking about it you fall over. It should come as second nature.’

Yes indeed. Most of us, however, need a little help from time to time, and I recommend that you buy copies of the latest edition of each of the following:

1. Concise Oxford Dictionary. I suspect that many readers never notice, but at the back of this dictionary there are a number of useful appendices. The most relevant of these, for present purposes, is a Guide to good English. If you didn’t do very well on the self-assessment test that I provided a few pages ago, this basic guide to grammar and punctuation is essential reading. It runs to about 25 pages in length, and if you read one page a day, and take notice of what is said there, I can pretty much guarantee that you – or any writer – will produce an improvement in your written English.

2. The Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors. Why do you need this as well as the Concise? Because it is what it says – a dictionary specifically for writers. It is sometimes much easier to find things here than in the Concise, especially when you’re checking terms like proofreading (which, it appears, is sometimes hyphenated).

3. The Oxford Guide to Style. This used to be known as Hart’s Rules, because the book was originally prepared by a Mr Hart as a guide for the typesetters of Oxford University Press. This is the book to go to when you want to know, for instance, whether to describe a character as a girl of 15 or a girl of fifteen. The answer is 15, according to Oxford; but, as the book says on page 166, ‘clarity for the reader is always more important than blind adherence to rule.’ And as I have already mentioned, I for one ignore Oxford’s suggested ending for verbs such as organise.

4. Fowler’s Modern English Usage: 3rd edition, edited by R.W. Burchfield. The title reminds us that Fowler wrote the first edition, back in 1926. This is the classic text to turn to for advice on correct grammar and construction. The discussion of the word ‘that’ occupies more than three pages, all on its own.

Another book which is well worth owning is Sir Ernest Gowers’s The Complete Plain Words. First published over fifty years ago, this is still as good a guide to writing prose as I have ever come across. It remains in print. The chapter on punctuation constitutes, in my opinion, the best guide of all to that subject.

Earlier in this section I wrote, in reference to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, that ‘there are a number of useful appendices’; and it may have occurred to you to wonder whether I should have written ‘there is a number’. If so, read Gowers’s discussion of the subject in his chapter on the handling of words.

There are many more books on the use of English that you could read, and possess, with advantage.

It pains me to say so, since I’m a Cambridge man, but it is generally held that the Oxford reference books constitute the highest authority on the use of the English language; which is why some Oxford reference books are listed above. But if you’re an American you may well prefer to use Webster’s dictionary, Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style, and so forth. I shan’t complain if you do. The point is, you need somewhere to go to if you aren’t quite sure.

There are also a couple of American books on language will are worth reading whatever your nationality. Bill Walsh’s Lapsing into a Comma comes from the world of newspapers; and Carol Fisher Saller’s The Subversive Copy Editor is an offshoot of the Chicago Manual of Style.

Lest you be in any doubt, let me say in conclusion that the whole purpose of writing something down is to communicate it to other people. And therefore you need always to bear in mind what people will understand best.

Amateur grammarians and pedants will often insist, for instance, that the word ‘aggravate’ means to make worse, as in ‘I aggravated my ankle injury by running for the bus.’ But during the whole of my life, loads of people have been using the verb aggravate to mean irritate or annoy. ‘I find him very aggravating,’ they might say, of a man who keeps harping on about spelling and punctuation.

There comes a point, I’m afraid, when it is no good ignoring common usage. Common usage is never wrong, even when it’s ‘incorrect’ according to grammarians. And the point of your choice of words, as can hardly be said too often, is to make sure that you say what you mean.

By the way, just in passing, I once wrote a short story about a pedantic retired schoolteacher. It is entitled Say What You Mean!, and it’s available as a Kindle ebook. It might entertain you. Click on the Look Inside facility to see how it begins.

12. Improving your readability

Section 8, on readability, reveals the fairly obvious point that readability, however calculated, depends basically upon the length of your sentences and the number of complex words that you use.

The way to make your style as effective as possible is therefore to match the readability of the text with the level of understanding that you expect to find among your target readership.

Duh, I hear someone muttering. But it’s not as duh as all that. Witness the following.

A good many years ago, a man called Harold Wilson was Prime Minister of the UK. He was the Leader of the Labour party, which has traditionally represented the working class in the UK. Coming from a modest background himself, he was the kind of man who polished his own shoes even when in 10 Downing Street. He also wrote his own speeches.

Wilson undoubtedly had a brilliant mind, and before becoming a Member of Parliament he was a lecturer at Oxford University. Not surprisingly, he wrote as you would expect an Oxford don to write, in long, complicated sentences, with clause piling upon clause.

In 1975 Wilson was leader of the Labour Party, and he naturally gave a key speech at the Party’s annual conference. I ran part of that speech through the online fog index, and the result was 15.17. In other words, Wilson was writing in a style which was not ideally suited to communicating with his party; the majority of members of the Labour party had left school at the age of 15 or 16.

Presumably, Wilson himself had never heard of the fog index, and presumably no one on his team had either. And if it had been put to him that his style should be made much simpler, in order to drive home the points that he wanted to make, then he might or might not have been receptive.

Today, I would hope and expect that the situation would be very different, particularly in the United States, where speech-writing seems to be a recognised job in the political sphere.

But let’s return to the consideration of fiction. There are, as you well know, quite a number of basic genres, and numerous sub-genres within the basic categories. In crime, for instance, you have police procedurals, private-eye books, cozy mysteries, and no doubt a couple of dozen others. You and I could probably sit down and do a rough calculation of the number of years of education that you would expect the average reader of a particular sub-genre to have. It wouldn’t be too difficult to find some anecdotal evidence, and with a bit of luck you might even be able to google up some actual survey data, produced  by a keen academic.

I hope you get the point. And at this juncture, please allow me to repeat here a conviction that I have put into print on numerous occasions. It is this.

In my opinion there is no hierarchy of fiction. Speaking metaphorically, there is no skyscraper of fiction, with the valuable, ever-to-be-preserved masterpieces of the literary genre at the top – and, of course, the trashy, vulgar, no-good pulp-fiction crap at the bottom.

In the hierarchy representation of the range of fiction, literary fiction is written and read mostly by men – because they possess all the brains and refined sensibilities in this world, don’t they? – and the basement-bound crap is written and read by women.

Such, at any rate, is implied by the hierarchy model. It is a phallic concept. And for the umpteenth time I hereby renounce and deny any sound sense in that model. It is an idea which, to forestall further discussion and stress to my peace of mind, I declare to be braindead. (First draft said full of shit, but I wouldn’t want to upset anyone.).

The best way to think of the range of fiction, with its multiplicity of readers of all ages and years of education, is as a street full of bookshops. Each bookshop offers a particular variety of fiction, and each bookshop, broadly speaking, will cater for a particular type of reader. Your job, as a writer, is to choose your genre and bookshop, and to find out, by one means or another, how to communicate with those readers through an appropriate style; preferably a style which you can write in fluently and without causing yourself any great effort.

Since the Harold Wilson example indicates that even quite smart people can still overlook this simple step, I’ll spell it out a bit further.

Given that we can get quite a good idea of the readability of text, through the Gunning fog index, the smart way to proceed is to test the fog-index rating of half a dozen of your favourite writers in whatever genre you intend to work in. Then you seek to match your own style to that target.

Let me remind you of Ed Murrow’s comment. Short sentences are not a secret. And I don’t think Ed Murrow was ever accused of dumbing down.

PART 4: Using style to reveal character

13. How not to do it – the stream of consciousness technique

Yes, it is certainly the case that sometimes you can enhance your writing by adopting a particular style, or by using what might be called a narrative technique. By ‘enhance’ I mean that, if you have found an appropriately receptive reader, a particular style will help to hold your reader’s attention to the narrative flow, and will intensify the emotion felt by the reader as the events unfold.

However,  I’m going to start by advising you to avoid some of the more extreme stylistic and/or technical devices of the literary fraternity.

The most famous such device is probably the stream-of-consciousness technique, also known as the interior monologue.

Forty years ago I owned a book about this subject, but I long since passed it on to someone. Should I ever wish to replace it, Amazon currently offers 72 books with ‘stream of consciousness’ in the title; so it’s still a hot topic in the Eng. Lit. departments. Meanwhile, If you want a shorter explanation of what’s involved, Wikipedia will provide one.

13.1 Ulysses

Perhaps the most famous use of the stream-of-conscious technique occurs towards the end of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses. Here the leading character’s wife, Molly Bloom, lies in bed and tries to go to sleep; as she does so, her mind wanders all over the day’s events, and, for that matter, the events of her whole life. Her thoughts are offered to us in an archetypical stream-of-consciousness manner: the text is presented almost entirely without punctuation, drifting aimlessly (it appears) as she hovers on the brink of sleep. Here is a passage to give you the flavour:

Yes because he never did a thing like that before as ask to get his breakfast in bed with a couple of eggs since the City Arms hotel when he used to be pretending to be laid up with a sick voice doing his highness to make himself interesting to that old faggot Mrs Riordan that he thought he had a great leg of and she never left us a farthing all for masses for herself

And so it continues for about 45 pages in most editions. It is said, if anyone cares, that Molly’s speech contains what was, for quite a while, the longest sentence in English literature at 4,391 words.

Well, as you can see, this is all pretty fancy-pants stuff, and you can understand how it has appealed to all the clever young men and women in the universities over the years. But it is not, I suggest, a style, or device, which is of much practical value to the average writer.

When I was a young man myself, I too experimented with the stream-of consciousness technique, and  I found it deceptively easy to write. You just sit there and let it all flow out. Most young men in that position, and at that stage of their life, consider themselves to be geniuses and are therefore convinced that everything they write is automatically good – well, actually, it’s brilliant. Or so they think. And it is just possible that, for a week or two, I was a young man who  believed that about himself too. But it wasn’t true for me, and it won’t be true for you.

The only question we really need to ask ourselves is this: does the stream-of-consciousness technique have any practical value in anything but the most obscure and experimental reaches of literary fiction? And the answer is: just occasionally, it might. But these occasions are exceptions to the rule, and my advice is to not to meddle with it.

13.2 Lie Down in Darkness

In a lifetime of reading fiction, I can think of only two uses of this technique in any novel which might reasonably be called a mainstream book.

In 1951, William Styron published Lie Down in Darkness. This is undoubtedly a literary novel, but I think it is fair to say that, in addition to being widely admired by the critics, it also appealed to a general readership.

The central figure is a young woman called Peyton, who eventually commits suicide, and the penultimate section of the novel is designed to reveal her deteriorating mental condition. Here’s a brief extract, taken at random:

Chimes in my drowning soul: oh, no, God, I thought, he’ll come back with me. And I thought, lifting the handbag to my ear, the clock ticking inside precise and steady as before: here all our guilt will disappear, among the ordered levers and wheels, in the aqueous ruby-glinting sun.

You will notice at once that, unlike James Joyce, William Styron does use punctuation, and the text is therefore relatively easy to read. Paragraph breaks, however, are not to be found. Length: 50 pages.

13.3 The Key to Rebecca

Finally, it is only fair that I should mention the one single instance that I can recall of the stream-of-consciousness technique being used in an out-and-out commercial novel. This is in a novel by Ken Follett, entitled The Key to Rebecca.

The Key to Rebecca was first published in 1978. Follett was by then a highly experienced writer, though his early work was published under a pseudonym. He had also worked as Deputy Managing Director of a publishing firm. So, by the time he came to write this novel, Follett knew his business, and The Key to Rebecca won an Edgar award for best crime novel of the year.

In genre terms, the novel is an absolutely orthodox thriller, set in World War II. It is written in a middlebrow, middle-class manner for the kind of readers who (at that time) were enjoying Ian Fleming, James Bond, Len Deighton, Frederick Forsyth, and similar British thriller writers. And yet, towards the end, Mr Follett indulges in a modernist literary device to heighten the suspense. And it works very well.

The hero is one Major Vandam. By the time we get to Chapter 26, the villain, Alex Wolff, has Vandam’s son in his control. Another leading character is a ‘beautiful courtesan’, Elene, who is on Vandam’s side.

Unexpectedly – well I didn’t expect it, anyway – Follett slips into the stream-of-consciousness technique, with interior monologues from some of the central characters. He begins with the bad guy, Alex Wolff.

I was afraid I might lose Elene and the boy on the platform, among all the hundreds of peasants, barefoot in their dirty galabiyas, carrying boxes tied with string, chickens in crates, sitting on the platform eating their breakfast, a fat mother in black handing out boiled eggs and pita bread and caked rice to her husband and sons, cousins and daughters and in-laws; smart idea of mine, to hold the boy’s hand – if I keep him close by, Elene will follow; smart idea, I have smart ideas, Christ I’m smart, smarter than Vandam, eat your heart out, Major Vandam, I’ve got your son.

And so on. As you can see, this is different from a normal third-person account. We are taken inside Wolff’s head, and are presented with his drifting thoughts. The punctuation is reasonably orthodox, but the sentences are longer than typical for a Follett novel.

After a page or two of this, we go into the head of Vandam’s son, for the same kind of interior monologue, but this time from a small boy:

I will not be sick, I will not be sick, I will not be sick. The train says it for me, rattling on the tracks. I’m too old to throw up on trains now, I used to do that when I was eight. Dad took me to Alexandria, bought me candy and oranges and lemonade, I ate too much, don’t think about it, it makes me ill to think about it, Dad said it wasn’t my fault it was his, but I always used to feel sick even if I didn’t eat, today Elene bought chocolate but I said no, thanks, I’m pretty grown-up to say no to chocolate…

And finally, of course, we learn what Elene is thinking:

Egypt is only thirty miles wide, really: the rest is desert. What am I going to do? That chill, deep in my chest, every time I look at Wolff. The way he stares at Billy. The gleam in his eye. His restlessness: the way he looks out of the window, then around the carriage, then at Billy, then at me, then at Billy again, always with that gleam in his eye, the look of triumph. I should comfort Billy. I wish I knew more about boys, I had four sisters.

This is all very fine in its way. As you read the book for the first time, you will take these passages in your stride, particularly as they come at a point when you already know the characters well.

Nevertheless, I stick to my advice. Do not try this at home. Not, at any rate, until you have written a million words of fiction, and have perhaps studied the technique in greater depth. Until then it remains a stylistic or narrative device (I don’t mind which you call it) which is best left to others. The others will include those who are determined to make a name for themselves in literary circles (and good luck with that, guys), and those with a sublime understanding of human psychology. Styron, I am pretty sure, was heavily influenced by Freud and had read widely in that field: see his interview in the Paris Review (available online).

14.  How you can do it

This section is going to be more positive. And about time too, you may think. I’m going to show you a number of ways in which you can vary your style, within an orthodox first-person narrative, to reveal a great deal about your leading character, and thus make him or her a more sympathetic figure. Alternatively, of course, you could use this technique to reveal what an out-and-out bastard your narrator is.

Being a shameless self-publicist, I am going to use my own fiction to illustrate most of the points made in this section. To begin with, however, I want to mention a classic short story (and later novel) which constitutes the most powerfully moving example of this technique that I have ever come across.

14.1 Flowers for Algernon

Flowers for Algernon, by Daniel Keyes, was first published in the April 1959 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; I think I read it at the time, or at any rate soon after. The short story, or novella, was later enlarged into a novel and there were subsequent film and stage adaptations.

To summarise: the story is presented in the form of a journal written in the first person by Charlie, a man with an IQ of 68. Charlie is selected to undergo experimental surgery to increase his IQ.

To begin with, Charlie’s journal naturally reveals a man who struggles with spelling and punctuation and is clearly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. Here’s a brief clip from ‘progris riport 1’:

I hope they use me becaus Miss Kinnian says maybe they can make me smart. I want to be smart. My name is Charlie Gordon and I werk in Donners bakery where Mr Donner gives me 11 dollars a week and bred or cake if I want.

The surgery succeeds, and Charlie begins to get smarter and smarter. As his intelligence increases, his writing style naturally reflects his powerful new intelligence

Eventually he becomes a man with a vast vocabulary and a clear understanding of the most difficult scientific concepts. Sadly, however, his new personality leaves him isolated and unpopular among the people previously were his friends.

In due course, the mouse (Algernon) who was first subjected to the techniques of intelligence enhancement, begins to fall ill and dies. Gradually, and painfully, Charlie realises that his own powers are fading too. His writing deteriorates in every way: spelling, punctuation, grammar. Eventually he returns to his original condition – a man capable only of the most menial work in a factory.

All of this is revealed to us by the author through the use of various writing styles – and it is, I repeat, the single most impressive piece of stylistic variation within one story that I have ever come across.

14.2 More mundane examples

I am going to do no more now that show you how any writer can achieve emotional effects by writing in a distinctive first-person style, one which is consistent with the kind of person who is telling the story.

Young and inexperienced writers are often attracted to the first person because they believe that it somehow feels more ‘natural’. This is complete bollocks, frankly, but young people, and young writers in particular, are often fuzzy thinkers. Even Norman Mailer, in the early part of his career, used to say that he could only write in the first person; and then, when he came to write a non-fiction account of his experiences during a political march on the Pentagon (The Armies of the Night), he used the third person. Go figure.

Personally I believe that the third person form is more flexible and useful in most cases – please see my book A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint for a fuller discussion – but I use the first person when I think it is more appropriate. In the next few sub-sections I’m going to give a few extracts from some of my recent work to illustrate the point.

14.3 Daphne before She Died

About ten years ago I wrote a novel that included quite a lot of autobiographical elements. Note please that I say elements. I don’t say that I wrote an autobiography.

If you’re going to write an autobiography, or a book of memoirs, for goodness’ sake have the grace to label it as what it is. Don’t try to kid yourself or anyone else.

Yes, I do know that vast numbers of novels have been written which were thinly veiled versions of the author’s life story. Somerset Maugham, to take a random example which pops into my head, wrote Cakes and Ale, which included a portrait of Hugh Walpole; A Dance to the Music of Time was twelve whole volumes of fiction based on the life of the author, Anthony Powell; and so on. But it is not a procedure to be recommended, not least because of the English law of libel, which definitely does not favour the writer.

Anyway, back to the point. The novel of mine to which I refer is now entitled Daphne before She Died, and it is published under my own name (Michael Allen) in Kindle format.

The novel, set in England, is narrated in the first person by Robert Duval, a widower in his mid fifties. He is a well educated man (public school and Cambridge) and he works as a solicitor. His background is therefore similar to my own, and in writing in Robert’s character I did not have to make any major variations from my own ‘normal’ style of writing and speaking.

Here is a short extract to illustrate how a typical page or two is presented to the reader. This passage comes from the prologue at the very beginning of the book. The readability index of this passage, by the way, is 10.64 – call it 11. I am perfectly happy with that.

Daphne, before she died, made me promise to tell you this story. It is the story of how, as a respectable married woman of nearly forty, she fell in love with a young man half her age. For the best part of a year, she conducted a secret but reckless affair with him – one which put her constantly on the edge of exposure, scandal, and disgrace.

You might think that this was simply an unfortunate episode of madness, something that happened a long time ago and is best forgotten. But that is not what Daphne wanted. She wanted her story to be put down on paper, for the benefit of the young, if you please.

The nature of the story is such that I have had to include an account of a separate but parallel love affair of my own. This was a juvenile infatuation, I suppose, but it was intense enough at the time, and it was consummated just as often, and with every bit as much passion, as was hers. These two affairs were in any case dangerously interlocked, each threatening to expose the other; and if I am confessing to Daphne’s sins, I can hardly shrink from confessing mine.

No harm can come from my telling you these stories now; but if it had not been for my promise, which I gave to a woman close to death, I would never have written a word.

14.4 How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be FAMOUS

A few years later I wrote another novel in the first person. This time the narrator is a 39-year-old man who works a carpenter. In other words, he probably left school at 16 and maybe received some part-time training in the woodworking business at a local technical college. Whereas Robert Duval, in Daphne before She Died, might be assumed to have an IQ which put him in the top 10% of the population, Harry would reach no more than 100 on a good day.

When writing in the voice of Harry, I consciously tried to change from my ‘natural’ style. I tried to make the sentences shorter and less complex; I tried not to let Harry use words which a man of his background, in real life, would not know.

This sample passage comes from quite early in the book. The readability index is 5.75 – call it 6 –, almost exactly half of the first example. So it seems I succeeded quite well, at least in that aspect of the writing.

I sometimes wonder how my life would have gone if I’d never met Con McDonald. Would it have been better, or worse?

One thing is sure: if I hadn’t met Con I would never have got around to asking Debbie to go out with me. For a start I thought she was too good for me. And she’s so beautiful that I was sure she would be living with someone else. So I suppose I owe Con a favour for that.

Con kind of introduced himself to me one horrible night in November, the year before last. The twenty-second it was. Twenty-second of November 2010. I’m not likely to forget it.

He’s a very determined man, is Con. Persistent, clever, and good with people. Well, he’s had a lot of practice. That particular night Con had one thing on his mind. And when Con sets his mind to something it usually gets done. As for me, all I wanted to do that night was get home, go to bed, and pull the blankets over my head.

I’d gone over to Bristol to see a specialist. It’s a fair old way to Bristol. When I came out of the clinic, I found it was raining, so I pulled a woolly cap down over my ears. And then I set off for the van.

I suppose I heard the clinic door bang for a second time as I was walking along, but I didn’t pay much attention to it. The doctor had given me a lot to think about.

And then this bloke appeared beside me. Short, and a bit tubby. Not much hair. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket.

‘Fancy a drink, Harry?’ he said. ‘I could do with one myself. I’ve been in the clinic too, like you.’

It never occurred to me to ask how he knew my name. As I said, I was a bit worried at the time, so I just assumed that he’d heard a nurse mention my name or something. Or perhaps we’d played darts and he remembered me from that.

Anyway, I certainly didn’t want a drink. ‘No thanks,’ I said. And kept walking.

Con, of course, didn’t give up. He never does. He just trotted along, keeping up with me, and went on prattling away. Can’t remember now what he said. But eventually he said, ‘Hard to take it all in really, isn’t it Harry?’

So I stopped and looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I was in the clinic too, you know. Been there lots of times. And when you’ve had bad news it’s a good idea to stop and have a drink. Let your mind settle for a bit – especially before you drive. That’s what I always think.’

And before I knew where I was he’d wheeled me into a pub.

14.5 Decent White Folk

My final example of stylistic variation in first-person narrative fiction is taken from a short story of mine with the title Decent White Folk.

For the benefit of readers who were not born and brought up in the UK, perhaps I had better say that this story is written in a north-country dialect, phonetically spelt. Just try reading what’s there, and you should be able to follow it. I may also need to explain that, in the past few decades, many of the great cities of the north of England have seen a huge influx of immigrants, many of them from Pakistan. Not all the original white inhabitants of these cities have been delighted by this development.

The story is related by an unnamed member of the CID department in the local police force.

Because of the peculiarities of rendering the strong dialect into print, the fog index cannot be regarded as having great validity, but for the record it is 6.56 – call it 7. Not bad, considering.

It would ave been all right if New Millennium Ripper ad stuck to killing Pakis. But e didn’t, see. E started killing decent white folk, and then we ad to do summat. Me and Inspector, like.

First two or three times we found victims – well, four actually – me and Inspector just stood there, like, and ad a bit of a laff.

‘Ee lad,’ said Inspector, when we found fust un. ‘If I didn’t know better, I’d say this one’s ad is throat cut.’

I looked at victim. Is eyes was wide open, and is throat was too, where someone ad slashed im with a carver. Or a razor, or summat. Course, e was black as the coal-ouse floor. Well, nearly black, any road. Like they are, them Asians.

‘My word,’ I says. ‘That’s a nasty accident is that, Inspector. What do you reckon it wa?’

‘Oo, I dunno,’ e says. ‘It and run, praps. You get some sharp edges ont front of cars these days. Another five mile an our and e’d ave took is ead off.’

So that’s what we put it down as, see. It and run. And carted Paki off tut mortuary, quick as you like.

And that’s what we did with next three, too. First wuz it and run. Then we ad, fell though plate-glass winder while drunk, and beheaded isself. Third woz – lemme see – industrial accident. Cos e was left round back of a factry was that one. And last one wuz trespassin on railway property. Cos we found him quite close tut railway and shifted im a few feet sideways so’s next train would finish off what New Millennium Ripper ad started.

That’s wot us detectives called im, see, the bloke what done these things. New Millennium Ripper. Course, they were all men, these victims, and original Rippers went in for lasses, as we all know, but we could see fromt start that this series of crimes were allt work of one bloke. Sort of trademark technique it wa. Right-anded slash from beyind – probly with a butcher’s knife. Bloody sharp, any road. Fookin took their eads off e did.

Like I say, fust four was Pakis. But then we ad Mr Wilberforce. Im as kept corner shop for about forty year. Corner of Shit-hole Alley (as we used to call it) and Parson’s-Nose Lane. Which is just Parson’s Lane ont maps o course. Me and Inspector found Mr Wilberforce int alley, after is missis rang in and said e adn’t come back from walkint dog.

‘By eck, lad,’ said Inspector. ‘It’s fookin dark out ere but I don’t think Ripper ud mistake Mr Wilberforce for a Paki. Do you?’

I ad to admit I didn’t think so neither.

‘So what the fookin ell is e doin then?’ Inspector asked me. ‘Things ave come to a pretty fookin pass if a bloke can’t tek is dog for a walk without some fooker tryin to cut is ead off. Breakdown of law and fookin order is wot that is.’

If I ave wun criticism of Inspector, it is that e do tend to take things personal. E were personally affrunted, you see, that Ripper ad done for a nice armless old bloke like Mr Wilberforce. Inspector ad bought sweeties off Mr Wilberforce when e were a kid, like.

‘Right then lad,’ says Inspector. ‘This meks it serious.’

14.6 Further reading?

Not that I wish to put ideas into your head, or anything like that – but if, having read the three short extracts from my work presented here, you should have any urge whatever to read more of same, then please note the following.

Daphne before She Died and How and why Lisa’s Dad got to be FAMOUS are full-length novels. They are published only as Kindle ebooks. Decent White Folk, a short story, is to be found in one of my short-story collections, Triumphs and Failures, which at present is also available only as a Kindle ebook.

16. Conclusion

And there we have it. You are now the beneficiary of any and all such wisdom as I possess on the subject of style in the writing of fiction.

If you look back briefly at section 4 of this book, you will see that I argued that three key elements in a work of fiction should always be kept under conscious control: those elements are the content (the basic idea for your story); the development and manipulation of that content; and the style in which the story is told.

The way in which you do control these elements is (in my judgement) invariably a reflection of your personality: your nature, nurture, and experience.

What do you choose to write about? What sort of people, what sort of events; what time period?

And once you’ve got some characters and a few events sketched out, to what extent do you develop this material? If you’re a literary sort of person, your short story will probably be one of those New Yorker pieces, in which pretty much nothing happens. (I really dislike those.) On the other hand, if you’re a  person with vulgar tastes, like me, and a thriller reader, or a fan of detective stories, you will probably start looking for motives for a good juicy murder, or a reason for stealing lots of money.

And, finally, to what extent are you going to consciously vary your style?

If we survey the average writer’s career, over a period of years, it will probably be the case that a lot of the output will be in the traditional third-person omniscient viewpoint. And in that case, your style can to a large extent be considered as a function of your personality.

If you take life awfully seriously (and you may well have good reason), that will be reflected in the way you write; and also, of course, in your choice of material and how you develop it.

Conversely, if you’re a happy-go-lucky sort of person, always optimistic, always in search of a good laugh, you will end up writing a book which reflects that attitude.

I mention this because one aspect of writing that troubles a number of writers of my acquaintance is that your output will inevitably reveal quite a lot about yourself.

A young man asked me about this point only recently. Is it true, he asked, that if you publish something, you reveal what sort of person you are? I had to tell him that this was indeed the case. I also pointed out – not that he took much comfort from it – that if you choose not to publish anything, for fear of revealing truths about yourself, you still reveal facts about yourself, at least to those who know the nature of your decision, and the reason for it. You show us that you are a cautious, nervous person, perhaps with something to hide. So there’s no escape.

A retired police officer, an old friend of mine, once read a whodunit that I wrote when I was in my thirties. ‘You reveal yourself to be a bit of ladies man,’ he told me afterwards, as if he thoroughly disapproved. I had to admit that, yes, on the whole I did prefer having sex with women to sex with men.

So. Your style tells us who you are. Not that we readers care, necessarily. Most of us just care about the story. If it’s a good-humoured story, we might think that you’d be a pretty good person to have a drink with. But mostly we just want to know whether the lovers get married, or the murderer gets caught, and whether we understand what you mean.

In any event, writing fiction can be a lot of fun to do.

Good luck. And please turn the page.

AFTERWORD

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are now ready to read more about how to apply what you have learnt about style to the down-to-earth business of actual writing, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing.

There are also two other books in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

More will follow soon.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has available, please visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

Thanks for reading this far. A little freebie follows.

The Rescue of Bertie’s Mummy

by

Michael Allen

If I had to choose one short story which epitomises my (current) style of writing, with accompanying, inevitable, self-revelation, it would probably be this one. In addition to being printed here, it is also available in Kindle as a stand-alone publication.

It was Christmas Day in the workhouse. Which was how Sergeant Perkins liked to think of the nick. Or the police station, to use its proper designation.

It was a small nick in a small town, and everything was quiet. Which was how Sergeant Perkins wanted it. There had been considerable competition among the three eligible Sergeants as to which of them should actually be on duty on Christmas Day, so they’d drawn lots. And Sergeant Perkins had won. Success! He would be on duty from 8.00 a.m. to 4 p.m., and with a bit of luck could stretch it to half past four.

Success meant that he didn’t have to sit through the full Christmas dinner, with dried-up, overcooked turkey. More importantly he had an incontestable reason for not having to sit down with his wife and mother-in-law afterwards, to watch that video of The Sound of Music. Again.

No doubt about it. Sergeant Perkins was a lucky man. And he wasn’t really expecting much to happen. Not on Christmas Day. But when it did, he was ready for it. Oh yes.

The phone rang. And it turned out to be the two constables who were driving around the town in the one police car which was actually out and about in the whole area. Sergeant Perkins had never quite mastered all the skills of the digital age, and he much preferred it, when on duty, if his staff would communicate with him via technology that he understood. And a phone on his desk was one such.

‘We had a 999 call Sarge.’

‘Oh yes?’

‘From Fred. In the town square. He’s found a little boy.’ Fred was the town drunk.

‘Fred’s found a what?’

‘A kid. A nipper.’

‘But it’s only half past eight. Bit early for Fred.’

‘I know, but he was sleeping it off in Goffins doorway, and he was woke up by this little kid prodding him.’

‘Have you got this lad?’

‘Oh yes. He’s pressing all the buttons in the car, and squirming about on Moreton’s knee. Looks a bit cold. Hasn’t got a coat on.’

‘No sign of Mum or Dad?’

‘No. Not so much as a stray dog.’

‘Oh, all right then. I suppose you’d better bring him in.’

Now already, even at this point, a little scheme was developing in Sergeant Perkins’s mind. It so happened that one of the inhabitants of the small town in which this lost child had appeared was a young lady named Emily. She worked for the local evening paper. Well, actually it was the evening paper in a larger town ten miles away, but it passed for a local rag. And Emily was ambitious. So ambitious that, on a recent visit to London, she had got herself appointed as the semi-official local reporter for the Sun. Actually, when she had first presented herself to the duty news editor for that day, he had assumed, on account of the fairly sensational bosom which was generously exposed for his benefit, that Emily was seeking an audition for page 3. But she wasn’t. No. Emily really did want to be a Fleet Street reporter. Well, in so far as Fleet Street still existed, she did. And by dint of giving the impression that, if she were to be appointed, Emily would offer the news editor free use of her body, Emily had succeeded in coming to an unofficial but potentially beneficial (to both parties) sort of arrangement. Come up with the right stuff, darling, the editor had said, and we will see you all right. And come up with enough of the right stuff, on a regular basis, and Fleet Street will queue up to lick your boots. Or some approximation thereof.

The man at the Sun was not the only person to whom this kind of quid pro quo had been offered by the rabidly ambitious Emily. By no means. Sergeant Perkins had been approached, one quiet moment in the Fish and Ferret, with something similar. Emily had explained the urgent need for her to be acquainted, at the earliest opportunity, with anything that loosely resembled Sun material, and had also made it plain that, if Sergeant Perkins tipped her off before even thinking about taking any other action, then, as she tactfully put it, ‘My body is at your disposal, Sergeant, to do with as you will.’

For about fifteen seconds, she added, without actually giving voice to that thought.

And thus it was that wheels were now turning in Sergeant Perkins’s brain. The train of thought was roughly as follows:

Christmas Day. Small boy lost. Found by the town drunk (a tortured soul, mourning a lost love, but still full of the milk of human kindness). And…

Yes, and what? That was the problem. Nevertheless it was worth a phone call, which he now made.

And what about the Chief Constable, Sergeant Perkins then thought. The Chief, it was well known, was also wildly ambitious, always keen on getting his picture in the paper.

So, what about giving him a ring?

Nah, thought Sergeant Perkins. Bit too early yet. But keep it in mind.

Sergeant Perkins had no sooner completed these deliberations than the squad car arrived in the station yard. He could hardly avoid noticing its arrival because it was sounding its siren as it approached, and continued to sound it for at least half a minute while stationary at its destination. Peep-parp, it went. Peep-parp, peep-parp, peep-parp. Rather loudly.

Sergeant Perkins frowned; but then, mercifully, the noise ceased and a few seconds later the station door opened. In came PC Hardcastle, followed by a small boy, followed by PC Moreton.

Sergeant Perkins emerged from behind the heavy barricades which served to protect him (it was theorised) from attacks by aggrieved members of the public. And, because he had two small grandchildren of his own – though he seldom saw them – Sergeant Perkins bent down to put himself on the same level as the small (apparently lost) boy.

‘Peep-parp,’ said the newcomer happily.

‘Nothing for it, Sarge,’ said Hardcastle apologetically. ‘He would insist we had the siren on.’

‘That’s all right,’ said the Sergeant. ‘Now then, son, what’s your name?’

‘I’ve got an iPod,’ came the proud reply.

‘Jolly good,’ said the Sergeant carefully. Because he wasn’t entirely sure what an iPod was. ‘So, you’ve got an iPod, have you?’

‘Es.’

‘And who does it belong to?’

‘Me.’

PCs Hardcastle and Moreton tried hard not to snigger. But they did smirk.

‘And what’s your name then, iPod boy?’

‘Bertie.’

Sergeant Perkins raised an eyebrow at the Doubting Thomases around him. See? The eyebrow said. Some of us know how to interrogate lost kids and some of us don’t.

‘And where do you live, Bertie?’

‘In a house.’

Sergeant Perkins sighed and tried a new tack.

‘How old are you, Bertie?’

‘Free.’

Sergeant Perkins stood up. His knees were beginning to ache.

‘Well he can’t have come far, can he?’ he said to his colleagues. ‘Half past eight on Christmas morning. No coat. Just wandered off, I guess. Frantic Mum is going to phone in any moment.’

‘You’re pleecemen, aren’t you?’ volunteered Bertie.

‘That’s right, son.’

‘Peep-parp, peep-parp, peep-parp.’

‘That’s right, son, that’s us.’

‘We had two bad men in our house this morning. Wiv guns. And masks on.’

The three police officers suddenly went very quiet. Sergeant Perkins knelt down again.

‘Guns, eh?’

Bertie nodded, and demonstrated. ‘Bang, bang, bang, bang.’

‘And did they actually make their guns go bang?’

‘No.’ Bertie shook his head sadly.

Sergeant Perkins had an inspiration. ‘Did your Mummy ever teach you your address, Bertie?’

‘Thirty-five Poplar Gardens,’ said Bertie. And for good measure he added the name of the town and post code.

“Tell me, son. Did these bad men notice you?’

‘No,’ said Bertie. ‘I hid.’

There followed what was, by the standards of this particular nick, a flurry of activity.

The two PCs were dispatched to the given address. Sergeant Perkins and Bertie retired to the staff canteen – well, actually it was a small room where they brewed up – and Bertie was fed with milk and chocolate digestives. Sergeant Perkins decided that now very definitely was the time to make a call to the Chief Constable, albeit one hedged around with many cautious admonitions about how it could well be a false alarm, sir, but we are taking the matter seriously, and if it is true that guns are involved we might well need to alert the Armed Response Section.

When dealing with the Chief Constable, Sergeant Perkins was very careful to pronounce the name of the Armed Response Section in full, because – as had immediately been recognised by the rank and file, but had been overlooked by the local Watch Committee when choosing a name for it – the acronymic version of this particular unit’s title could elicit a certain amount of ribald comment among those too immature to recognise the full seriousness of letting chaps loose with authority to go around shooting people if they gave them a funny look.

The Chief Constable was not at all upset about being rung up, because the alternative to taking such things seriously was (a) to go to church, (b) to have lunch at an old folks’ home, and (c) make an apparently endless tour of various other old people’s homes and listen to lots of carols and handbell ringings by cub scouts.

The Chief Constable also made it his business to make a number of phone calls himself. First on the list, naturally, was the ambitious Emily, who kept reminding him of how advantageous it could be – nay, how absolutely essential it was – for an up-and-coming Chief Constable to get his name known on a national basis.

Then, of course, the Chief had to ring the chief ARSe himself and get him rounding up his armed men. And, naturally, he also had to alert his own force’s Head of Press Relations, and get him thinking along the lines of press conferences, local TV stations, off-the-record briefings in return for favours to be returned at a later date, and so forth.

Meanwhile, PCs Hardcastle and Moreton went to Bertie’s home address and promptly reported back. On the desk phone, naturally.

‘Bit worrying, really, Sarge. Door wide open. No sign of anyone inside, and we did a thorough search, short of the loft. One broken window and signs of a pretty serious struggle.’

‘Sure it’s not an ordinary domestic?’ said the Sergeant. ‘Stressful time, Christmas Day.’ (And who would know better then he?) ‘Bertie’s Mum might have got out of bed the wrong side, taken offence at something, marched off into the distance. Dad might have gone after her, forgetting all about young Bertie.’

‘Doesn’t smell like that, Sarge. The way stuff has been thrown about doesn’t look like a domestic. More like a heavy-duty fight between two or three big men.’

‘The Sergeant scratched his head. Do we know what the family name is?’

‘Jackson. Moreton says to tell you, Sarge, he reckons Mr Jackson is the manager of UniBank in the Square. He reckons young Bertie might have wandered over there, looking for his Dad. It’s only about two hundred yards. And I’ve got another idea.’

‘Get back here with it then. And make the place secure before you leave.’

‘Now then, Hardcastle,’ said the Sergeant, when the two PCs had returned. ‘What’s this idea of yours?’

‘Well Sarge, me and my girl friend were watching an old film the other night, Channel 4, and it was about this ruthless gang of criminals who kidnapped the wife of a bank manager, and then used that to force him to unlock the safe and hand over the cash. So we were wondering if someone might have borrowed the plot.’

‘Borrowed the plot?’ said the Sergeant. ‘Hmm, well I suppose it’s possible. But who do we know who would be dim enough to borrow the hackneyed plot of some completely unbelievable old movie?’

Pause. Then the three coppers spoke in unison: ‘Sid and Dick!’ they said.

Sid and Dick were the town’s nearest approach to professional criminals. But they were professional only in that they had been inside several times; in all other respects they were your average brain-dead morons.

Sergeant Perkins rang the Chief Constable and explained the position. Possible bank robbery in progress at Unibank, Town Square. The Chief Constable briefed his ARSes, the PR man organised the local TV crew, several people rang Emily, and events moved rapidly to a conclusion.

Sid and Dick were indeed found inside the local branch of Unibank. Bertie’s Dad, the manager, having being threatened with all kinds of shocking things in relation to his wife, had opened the rear door for them, but had then invented all sorts of delaying tactics. Forgotten code words. Time locks which would not open until the day after Boxing Day, and so forth.

Sid and Dick, it turned out, didn’t really have guns. Well, they did. They had replica pistols, the kind that used to be sold quite legitimately in the UK but now aren’t. And once Sid and Dick realised that the ARSes were outside, with real guns and live ammo, they wet themselves with panic, put their hands high in the air and promised to come quietly so long as nobody shot them.

This, of course, was no good at all for Emily, the Chief Constable, the local TV guys, and the force’s PR man. So, with a bit of negotiation, the abject surrender of Sid and Dick was miraculously parlayed into a tension-filled stand-off crisis situation, involving skilled negotiators, stun grenades, tear gas, and, finally, the arrest of two desperate men.

What with all the uproar, everyone forgot about Bertie’s Mummy. But fortunately PC Moreton was a thoughtful man. He was the one who realised that she had not been accounted for. And it was he who decided that Sid and Dick were quite thick enough to be keeping her on their own premises. So on his own initiative he went round to their terraced house in Railway Cuttings, and it was there that he found her.

Bertie’s Mummy had been tightly bound, hand and foot, and had been gagged with heavy black sticky tape wrapped repeatedly around her head. She been dumped on the floor of an old cellar cum coal store, dropped so hard that she thought her skull had cracked open, and had been left in the dark and the cold. She had twisted and squirmed against the ropes until she was exhausted, and had almost choked from the coal dust. She became convinced that she was going to die, and she gave up all hope of rescue; she wondered who would look after Bertie. But then PC Moreton broke open the cellar door and found her.

It was PC Moreton who cradled her head in his lap, and who tore off the black tape as gently as he could. It was he who held her and soothed her while she coughed and vomited up black muck from her lungs. And it was he who comforted her while she wailed and sobbed with relief. It was he who stroked her hair, and told her that everything would be all right again soon, it really would, he promised. And, just to begin with, he lifted her up in his arms and carried her out into the light. He sat with her in the ambulance. He rubbed her hands and wrists to restore the circulation.

The consequences of The Town’s Great Bank Robbery were numerous and, to most participants, advantageous.

The following day’s edition of the Sun was something of a classic. ‘XMAS KIDNAP PLOT FOILED BY BERTIE, 3’ sang the front page. And there was, inevitably, a cute picture of Bertie in a Santa hat and a champagne glass in his hand.

The front page was followed by 5 pages of ‘world-exclusive’ material, most of it dictated over the phone by ‘our new star reporter’. Yes, the pneumatic Emily had made it to Fleet Street in one bound. And, once there, it didn’t take her long to make her mark.

Emily soon displayed a widely admired facility for inventing interviews with ‘eyewitnesses’ which, while entirely spurious, were sufficiently flattering to those quoted to ensure that they weren’t going to complain. Within months she rose to be number two on the crime desk, and it was not long before she was spoken of as the new Rebekah. Saloon-bar gossip had it that she was thinking of dyeing her hair red. Which she wasn’t. Blonde, maybe.

The Chief Constable got an MBE. He was interviewed on Newsnight and got a profile in The Observer (‘A Policeman for the Modern Age’). Scotland Yard beckoned.

Mr Jackson, Bertie’s bank-manager father, received an award for bravery and was promoted to Area Manager. He then had even less time for his family than before.

Sergeant Perkins got a commendation.

Nobody said thank you to PC Moreton. Except Bertie’s Mummy, of course. She thought he was wonderful.

Bertie, for his part, soon overcame any trauma that might briefly have followed his separation from his Mummy. And in the following weeks he and Mummy received a large number of invitations to tea.

On arrival at such tea parties, Bertie took to announcing to the world, ‘I’m the little boy that woz kidnapped.’ Which was a blatant lie, but inevitably elicited numerous cries of, ‘Ah, bless him.’

What is more, Bertie soon learnt that a loud announcement about his victim status would often lead to Mummy being asked, ‘Do you think he could manage a piece of chocolate cake?’ And Bertie always could. Usually a second one too.

Much as she loved her son, Bertie’s Mummy soon began to resent this hero worship. ‘What about me?’ she wanted to shout. ‘I was the one who was really kidnapped! I was the one who was tied up and had tape round my mouth so that I was terrified of choking, I was the one who was dumped on a hard cellar floor and left in the dark and the cold, with rats scratching in the walls and felt as if the world had forgotten me and thought I was going to die. So why don’t you ask me how I feel? What about me, eh?’

But she never did give voice to any such thoughts. She was much too well brought up.

So Bertie’s Mummy would sit there in posh living rooms, pinning a hard thin smile to her face while Bertie polished his chocolate-cake shtick, and wondering how long she could hold out before something inside her snapped.

Occasionally she would find her hostess and guests looking at her strangely, and she began to realise that, while Bertie was being worshipped, she was breathing fast and making odd whimpering noises. And she was going to have to watch that, she realised, because if people noticed that she wasn’t quite right in the head they would take her away to the bin, and put her in a straitjacket and dump her in a cold dark place, and this time she would never get out.

Ever.

And then, one Tuesday morning, whatever it was that was holding Bertie’s Mummy together finally unravelled.

Bertie was at nursery school (or kindergarten, as he insisted on calling it) and his Mummy was out shopping. Then she noticed PC Moreton.

PC Moreton was in civilian dress, on his day off, and when she saw him Bertie’s Mummy suddenly found herself gasping for breath. The world began to spin on a different axis, and she reached out for something to hold on to, but failed to find it.

When PC Moreton finally glanced across the road, and caught sight of the young woman he had rescued, his face lit up with pleasure, and he immediately began to cross the road towards her. And at that point Bertie’s Mummy knew that whatever it was that she had been keeping battened down, somewhere deep inside her, had at last broken loose and would no longer be contained.

‘Hello!’ said PC Moreton with a smile. ‘How are you?’ And he said it with such genuine concern and affection that Bertie’s Mummy could no longer speak. But she didn’t need to speak, because he could see how she was. He could see that she was trembling from head to foot, and a tear was running down her left cheek.

And now Bertie’s Mummy abandoned all hope of resistance. She just covered her face with her hands and began to sob, violently and uncontrollably. She fell forward into PC Moreton’s arms.

PC Moreton hugged her tightly to him, and stroked her hair and kissed her cheek and shushed her, and he promised that everything was going to be all right soon, really it was, he promised. And at one point it seemed to her that he told her how beautiful she was, and how much he loved her. But that could only have been imagination, for it was what she had so much longed to hear these months past.

After that, when the shaking and the sobbing had subsided, and Bertie’s Mummy had returned to being at least a smudgy carbon copy of her normal self, PC Moreton took her into a nearby coffee shop and bought her a large black with an extra shot. Then they sat down at a small table, opposite each other, and PC Moreton held her hand in his while she told him all her troubles.

For every sentence she spoke there was a juddering sob and a generous eyeful of tears. And she told she told him how she couldn’t stop dreaming about the cellar floor and the ropes that bound her and the tape over her mouth. And now she was frightened of the dark and she couldn’t look at strangers and she couldn’t open the front door without peering through the spyhole, and not always then.

Her husband, she said, was a decent man and a brave one, and he had fought hard to defend her from Sid and Dick, but there were two of them and one of him, and they had clubbed him to the ground and then kicked him into submission. He had never touched her for months, even before she was kidnapped, and now they slept in separate rooms.

‘I think he’s gay really,’ she said, ‘but he just hasn’t faced up to it. So I’ve got no one to comfort me, no one to talk to. I feel as if I’m going mad,’ she told PC Moreton. ‘I feel as if one day I’m going to start screaming and tearing my hair out, right here in the High Street, and then they’ll take me away and lock me up again and this time I shall never get out.’

‘No, no, no,’ said PC Moreton. ‘I would never let them do that to you.’ And he held the back of her hand against his cheek and kissed it. ‘Everything will be all right again soon, I promise you. Really it will.’

And so it came about that PC Moreton spent the rest of that Tuesday being kind to Bertie’s Mummy. And he was kind to her every Tuesday, and she to him, for a long time afterwards, with no harm done to anyone.

After a while, with PC Moreton’s help, Bertie’s Mummy stopped being frightened of the dark. Mostly. And she learnt how to answer the front door again, because he put a security chain on it for her.

And then one day her husband asked her if he could have a divorce so that he could marry his friend George in IT. And Bertie’s Mummy said yes he could and welcome, because she was thinking of making other arrangements herself. Which she did, in due course. And it turned out that Bertie liked his new Daddy better than his old one because he played football. And drove a police car.

And from then on, every day when he came home from work, PC Moreton puts his arms around Bertie’s Mummy and held her tight and made her feel safe and happy.

So he really did make it all come right in the end. Just as he had promised.

THE END

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO SUCCESS:

A Serious Look at a Serious Subject

Michael Allen

Copyright 2013 by Michael Allen

***

PART 1: SUCCESS – An introduction to the subject

1.1 Aims

For a while I did toy with the idea of giving this book a flippant subtitle. You know, something along the lines of How a Writer Can Become Rich and Famous and Have Fantastic Orgasms – Maybe; with a Little Bit of Luck Thrown In – Sometimes.

You won’t have to go far on Amazon to find books with titles which are nearly as ridiculous – books which offer to teach writers how to make $50,000 in three weeks on Amazon, how to Twitter your way to social-media fame in four easy lessons, and so on.

But the aims of this book are more realistic, sensible, and down to earth. They are as follows:

(i) To encourage you to think about the possible forms that success can take;

(ii) To enable you to understand how likely – or unlikely – it is that success will come to you at all, or at any rate in your desired quantities;

(iii) And thus to enable you make informed and realistic decisions on what sort of work to write, and how much time and effort to devote to that work.

In other words, this ebook is what the subtitle says: a serious look at a serious subject.

My own aim, as the author of this book, is to help the young and inexperienced writers among you to avoid some of the painful experiences which have been the lot of so many writers who have gone through the process before you.

Roughly ten years ago I wrote a book called The Truth about Writing. The first sentences of that book went as follows: ‘Writing is an activity which can seriously damage your health. It can consume huge amounts of time and energy, and it can lead to frustration, rage, and bitterness.’

All of that is still true – true with knobs on, as we say in England.

This book will help you to think clearly about what you want to achieve as a writer. It will give you a better idea of what you can realistically expect to achieve. And it may, literally, help you to stay healthy and sane.

And it’s all provided for the price of a cup of coffee (depending, of course, on where you buy your coffee).

After the introductory sections (Part 1) the book is divided into four further parts.

Part 2 considers the three principal elements of success, as it is usually defined. They are: money, fame, and literary reputation. In each case I demonstrate that, yes, success in these terms can come to writers: sometimes it arrives almost overnight, and almost by accident. But such exceptions are misleading. Most of the time success does not arrive at all.

Part 3 then considers what it is that drives us to want to become writers in the first place. Let’s face it, at least 50% of the population don’t even read books, let alone try to write them. So why do we start thinking about writing our way to success? Are we slightly mad to even think of it? In this part of the book we look at human psychology in general, and ambition in particular.

Part 4 offers you my analysis of ‘the secret of success’. Here I consider all the various factors which can, in principle, play a part in bringing about success, however you care to define it; and then I present you with a mathematical expression which reduces the facts of the case to a simple equation. This equation reveals a ‘secret’ which is not really a secret, but is nevertheless entirely unrecognised and misunderstood by the vast majority of writers, particularly the young, the inexperienced, and the unpublished.

Part 5 is entitled ‘The price we pay’, but it could usefully be labelled ‘Beware what you wish for’. This penultimate part of the book contains a number of cautionary tales, particularly the true story of two young men who were as successful as it is possible to be in the worlds of publishing, Broadway and Hollywood – and yet their success destroyed their lives.

1.2. About the Author

Before getting down to business, I present at this point the standard piece of biography which is provided throughout my series of writer’s guides.

If you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who is the author of said book, and what makes him any sort of authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing I am 74 years old. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963, exactly 50 years ago this year; since then I have written at least 25 others (under my own name and several pen names). My first radio play was broadcast in the same year.

I have written about ten non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers; and, in related fields, I have written various drama scripts that have been professionally produced on the stage, radio, and television.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence saw something of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s.

In 2007 I was honoured to be invited to serve as one of the panel of three judges for the UK Romantic Novelists’ Association award of Romantic Novel of the Year.

As of today I have about 60 separate publications available in Kindle format, under various names. See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on Amazon sites.

I am an Englishman, and most of my experience has been in UK publishing; many of the examples that I give will therefore be from an English context (though the rest of the world doesn’t behave any differently). All spelling follows English conventions: colour instead of color, for example.

My principal career was in education; as a result, my instinct is always to pass on useful information. That’s why I’ve taken the trouble to write this book.

PART 2: SUCCESS – The three principal elements

2.1 A foot in the door?

If you have been thinking and reading about being a writer for more than five minutes, you will know that getting published at all, through the traditional publishing industry, is not an easy process. In fact, for many writers it proves to be impossible.

For a full discussion of just how difficult a process it is, please see Chapter 2 of my Kindle ebook The Truth about Writing. All I will say here is that if you monitor some of the key book blogs in this world, you will soon come across examples of writers who have laboured for years to find an agent, and have waited for more years for said agent to find them a publisher. If ever.

Here I’m going to tell you just one story, because the lady in question wrote to me personally and thanked me for showing her a way forward in one of my books.

The lady concerned is Beverly C. Gray, and if you search on Amazon you’ll find that there is only one writer of that name (always a useful asset). She is now the author of a series of six novels with the overall title Black Knights of the Hudson.

Beverly’s search for publication began decades ago, and needless to say did not go smoothly. In the 1980s, when she had one book completed, an editor at a large publishing house showed an interest. But then the editor left, and the interest left with her. A year later, a smaller company signed a contract, but, after three years of ups and downs (but no published book), the company went out of business. A somewhat smaller company then offered a contract, but proceeded to expire two weeks after Beverly signed.

Meanwhile, Beverly was developing the first book into a longer series, and in 2008 an enthusiastic young agent nibbled at the bait. She gushed over the basic idea and adored Beverly’s writing style. But there was just one snag: ‘Could you rewrite the entire series from the perspective of the wives and sweethearts so that I can submit it as a historical romance which is easier to market than historical fiction?’

This tale of madness will be depressingly familiar to any writer who’s been knocking on publishers’ doors for any length of time. So, just a few years ago, Beverly C. Gray found herself needing to make a decision. She had a substantial body of completed work. This work had been repeatedly recognised as being of professional standard but had not so far found a reliable publisher. And now an agent wanted her to rewrite the whole thing! It was at that point, Beverly tells me, that she sat down and re-read my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. In fact, she read it several times. And having thought things through she decided to give up on traditional publishing and became her own publisher instead.

Such was the experience of one writer, and it’s a story that could be repeated several thousand times. However, in this section of this book I’m going to assume that a writer will eventually clear all the hurdles and will become that amazing creature, a Published Author! Published by a proper big-time publisher. Wow! Feels great, doesn’t it? I hope so, because your troubles have only just started.

Let us move on.

The three principal elements of success, as usually defined in a writer’s mind, are (i) money, (ii) fame, and (iii) literary reputation. Let’s take a look at them one by one.

2.2 Money

The earnings of the few

If you keep your eyes open you will regularly read press reports about writers who have been paid substantial sums of money for their latest books or scripts. Here are a few examples.

Every year Forbes magazine publishes a list of the top-earning authors in the world. The figures for 2012, published in August 2013, show E.L. James as the top earner, with an estimated $95 million (in one year). Ms James, you may recall, wrote 50 Shades of Grey.

James Patterson had to make do with $91 million, with other old hands such as Danielle Steel ($26 million) and J.K. Rowling ($19 million) trailing in as also-rans.

Even allowing for some exaggeration (and in publishing, believe me, you always need to allow for exaggeration), this is serious money.

Similarly impressive figures, even for brand-new writers, can be found every year. Back in 1977, for example, The Sunday Times reported that St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London had lost a trainee nurse. The paperback rights to Colleen McCullough’s second novel, The Thorn Birds, had just been sold for £1,117,000. The book had taken her eight weeks to write. Miss McCullough promptly resigned from her nursing post and became a full-time writer.

Twenty years or so after Colleen McCullough, we find that another young lady was doing something similar. Jenn Crowell was aged 17 when she wrote her debut novel, Necessary Madness. In 1997 Hodder and Stoughton paid her £500,000 pounds, just for the British rights. The American rights were bought separately.

Other novelists who received massive advance payments for novels in the late twentieth century include Douglas Adams, Michael Cordy, Robert Mawson, and Michael Hoeye.

Finally in this review of financial success stories, let me tell you a story about a man who made a lot of money as a writer without ever becoming well known. Some thirty-plus years ago, a schoolteacher friend of mine decided to co-operate with two colleagues in writing a series of textbooks, designed for use in secondary schools. After putting forward some proposals, the three men were offered a contract by a major publisher, but they weren’t quite convinced that there was any real money in the job.

To set their minds at rest, the publisher sent them to see his star author, a man who wrote books for foreign students who wanted to learn English.

One of the first questions that the three visitors asked this author was about the money he made.

‘Oh yes,’ said the unknown author, ‘writing textbooks does pay quite well.’

To prove the point, he showed them his income-tax bill for the previous half-year (and remember that this was more than thirty years ago). He was paying, in a half-year, over £100,000 pounds in tax. His pre-tax income was enormous.

My friend and his two colleagues went home and started work on their textbook that very night.

The earnings of the majority

So much for the earnings of the few. What about the average and below average writers?

It goes without saying that the press reports quoted above, revealing the substantial amounts of money earned by some writers, are unfortunately very much the exception. The truth is that most writers earn trivial sums from their books, even if they manage to break into print.

From time to time, various authors’ groups carry out surveys of their members’ earnings. Successive surveys by the UK Society of Authors show that there is always a big gap between the ‘golden nucleus of high earners’ and the majority of authors. Most authors receive ‘little more than a token income from their work.’

The Society of Authors survey published in June 2000 showed that 75% of its 7,000 members earned less than the national average wage.

A similar enquiry into writers’ incomes was carried out in the USA by the Authors Guild. The Guild’s conclusion was that ‘most book authors can’t begin to make ends meet from their writing alone.’

A quarter of the writers who responded to the Guild survey reported that they earned sums which can only be described as small change. Not surprisingly, only 5% of the respondents were able to write full-time; the rest depended on other jobs, such as teaching or journalism.

Not even winning a prestigious literary prize does much for your income. The Authors Guild found that 40% of award winners still earned less than a living wage.

The Hollywood Writers Guild once asked for details of its members’ income and found that two thirds of them were making less than 1,000 dollars a year. In fact, the top five executives in Hollywood earned more, in total, than the whole 9,000 members of the Writers Guild put together.

The California branch of the screenwriters’ union discovered that, over a ten-year period, more millionaires had been created by winning the state lottery than from screenwriting! To be precise, 1,333 people had won lottery jackpots of a million dollars or more, while only 393 people had made a million dollars from their film scripts.

In UK publishing, the simple fact is that many of the books which are published with such high hopes end up by selling well under a thousand copies.

I was recently involved in helping a distinguished civil servant to get his autobiography published. This was eventually achieved when the gentleman in question agreed to pay a publisher the full cost of printing and other production costs. The book eventually sold 400 copies, and the publisher regarded this as a success.

For a number of years I was the head of an academic publishing operation, and our most successful publication sold only 800 copies. One of our books sold less than 100, but here again we had fortunately arranged for a sponsor to cover the loss.

The conclusion to be drawn from the facts set out in this section could not be clearer or simpler. It is that, even if you do succeed in having your work presented to the public, by a well established firm, you are statistically unlikely to make any significant money out of it – significant in the sense that it will have a dramatic impact on your way of life. It’s not like winning the lottery, though a surprising number of your friends will think that it is.

2.3 Fame

This section examines the second possible form of success for a writer: becoming famous.

While I was writing this ebook, The Times published a profile of American novelist Sylvia Day. The article was published in the Times’s Saturday colour supplement. The cover of the supplement carried a full-page photo of Ms Day, looking very glamorous in an exotic setting, with a handsome young man lolling in a pool beside her.  The strapline read: ‘The new queen of Mummy porn – how to outstrip 50 Shades of Grey.’

Inside the magazine there was a second glamorous photo of our author, this time stretching over two full pages, and overleaf the actual interview occupied two further pages of text.

It turns out that Sylvia Day has signed an eight-figure deal (i.e. at last $10 million) for two further books in ‘her massively successful and very racy series of Crossfire novels.’ And there’s more, mostly about how brazenly erotic the sex scenes are.

This article will serve very well to demonstrate how fame comes (very occasionally) to writers of popular fiction. Write the right stuff, pull in enough cash, and you will be written up in the glossy magazines.

Such then is the nature of fame, for the purposes of this discussion. And, for some young writers, having the Sylvia Day type of newspaper article written about them seems to be intensely desirable. They imagine that fame is a benefit which is very much worth having.

Presumably fame is seen as desirable because people believe that the famous live better lives. Fame is associated in the public mind with wealth, comfort, glamour, and a release from the drudgery of life as it is lived by most of us.

Possibly. But absolute fame tends towards absolute destruction. Worldwide fame brings with it almost obscene levels of wealth, a circumstance which inevitably seems to involve the employment of large numbers of yes-men and women. You lose touch with reality, as the examples of Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson demonstrate.

This is a matter on which you must make up your own mind, but personally I really don’t recommend the single-minded pursuit of fame. Surely the beauty of writing is that you can be very successful, in the sense of making some money, and be recognised as a good solid performer within your particular genre, without the inconvenience of having your face recognised. You don’t even have to use your own name! In England, two of the most widely read women writers in the latter part of the twentieth century were both men: they were known professionally as Jessica Stirling and Emma Blair.

Perhaps the worst possible fate that can befall a writer is not that she fails to become famous, but that she does become famous without really understanding how the trick was done. This disastrous circumstance will be discussed further in Part 5, which is entitled ‘The price we pay’.

2.4 Literary reputation

Literary reputation is the third of the potential forms of success which can be obtained through a writing career.

But who in the world wants it? In my opinion, this is another perceived benefit which is actually more of a liability; still, it takes all sorts, so we must have a close look at literary reputation and all that it entails.

What is literary reputation?

Having a literary reputation means that you are known for writing Good Books, i.e. novels which are among The Most Important Books of Our Time (allegedly). Serious critics identify you as a Someone To Watch.

I apologise for all the capital letters, but people who live and work and have their being in this field always tend to sound as if their words are in UPPER CASE. We’re talking meaningful, career-moulding stuff here. So, let’s try to take all this nonsense as seriously as we possibly can.

Literary reputation turns upon the idea that there are two principal sorts of books: good books, and trash.

Back in your schooldays, when the English teacher found you reading a Jilly Cooper romance or one of Ian Fleming’s James Bond books, what did she say to you?

She said, ‘Why don’t you read a good book, Mary (or George)? Instead of that worthless rubbish.’

Well, teacher must be right, mustn’t she? If she says so, there surely must be a distinction between proper literature on the one hand and garbage on the other. Mustn’t there?

Actually, no. For the most part, the idea that there are good books and bad books, in any absolute sense, is total nonsense. (For a discussion of this point, see A Writer’s Guide to Emotion.)

For the present, let us just note that there are plenty of people around who think that there is such a thing as a ‘good book’ (or play), that a ‘good judge’ can identify such a piece of work. Furthermore, there is no denying that literary reputation is something, like fame, that many writers strive to achieve. They want their books (or plays) to be admired by highbrow reviewers and they believe that the achievement of literary reputation is something worth aiming for.

How do you acquire literary reputation?

You acquire a literary reputation when the critics on the staff of highbrow quality newspapers, such as The Times and The New York Times, review your work in glowing terms. And this, I can assure you, does not usually happen without somebody making it happen. Publishers of literary fiction spend a lot of time and energy in softening up the opinion-formers on these leading journals. They send them news of forthcoming masterpieces months in advance, building up a sense of expectation. They take the leading critics out to dinner and introduce them to the author.

Perhaps even more important in establishing a literary reputation are the key weekly or monthly journals which are read by the (largely self-appointed) literary elite.

At one time, a review in The Times Literary Supplement could make or break your reputation, and that weekly journal is still very influential today. There are also much less well-known publications which in any given year will be helpful in establishing your name – the London Review of Books and the Literary Review are two British examples. I am told that Granta also carries weight. In the USA, of course, we start with the New York Times Book Review.

The reviews of your book, when they appear, will be read by you and your publisher with great attention. Rave reviews in the right media provide instant literary reputation; respectful reviews provide a platform on which a reputation may gradually be built; and even negative reviews may be valuable if they are somehow ‘controversial’ and can be regarded as evidence of originality or daring on your part.

But you can’t have everything

Sorry, darlings, but you cannot reasonably expect to have your literary reputation and the money as well. Implacable rule of the universe.

Yes I know there are exceptions, and let us deal with the exceptions first. Ernest Hemingway, for example, won the Nobel prize for literature (which is as classy as you can get in the literary world). He also made a huge fortune, and he was photographed so often that he was recognised and lionised wherever he went. He had money, fame, and literary reputation. But you, dear Reader, are not going to achieve all that. Believe me.

Let me demonstrate the point about the incompatibility of literary reputation and money. Josephine Cox is a British lady who writes what is known in the book trade as ‘women’s fiction’ or sagas. Her novels usually tell the story of a young girl making her way through life against all kinds of adversity. For many years Ms Cox produced, on average, two books a year, and they almost invariably turned up in the list of the 100 bestselling paperbacks of the year. In 1996, for example, Living a Lie was placed 44th, and The Devil You Know came 48th. (Total sales 414,000 copies.)

These books obviously do very well financially, and Ms Cox’s bank manager no doubt knows her name and smiles at her warmly whenever she enters his premises. But what to do the reviewers in the ‘serious’ press think of her?

Not much. In fact, she has been publicly sneered at. The Times condescended to review Living a Lie by Josephine Cox on 16 September 1995. I say condescended because they don’t usually bother to review books of this kind at all.

Anyway, the review of Living a Lie was not kind. The heading was ‘Truth to tell, it stinks.’ The reviewer began by saying ‘I want to be nice. I want to say that it does not matter that the title is hammy, the characters mere ciphers and the writing laboured and superficial. I want to say that I quite enjoyed this book despite all that. But I cannot, because I did not.’

It gets worse.

‘Cox’s prose is simpering, wishy-washy and full of monstrous clichés…. All behaviour is motivated by simple emotions, like love and hate.’ (The reviewer might have been better advised to write ‘such as’ love and hate, but let us not quibble.)  Ms Cox, says the reviewer, has produced a ‘simplistic fairy-tale. That is fine if you like them, and thousands do; which makes it pretty irrelevant that I do not.’

Quite.

Let’s take an American example. One of the biggest fiction sellers in recent years was The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller. American reviewers generally hated it. It was, one said, ‘the worst book in living memory’, and another referred to Waller’s ‘abysmal prose’.

The book’s commercial success was due to word-of-mouth recommendation. People read it, enjoyed it, and told their friends about it.

‘I know people who bought 30 copies,’ says the author. ‘By February 1993 it was at number one in the bestsellers chart and it stayed there for 56 weeks until my second book came out. The New York literati went absolutely ballistic.’

If there’s one thing that the literary ‘experts’ cannot abide, it’s people buying and enjoying a ‘bad’ book. The author of The Bridges of Madison County is quite bitter about ‘the elitist, so-called intelligentsia who seem to think that they are the only intelligent people in the world.’ But he has some consolation. Readers have written to him to say, ‘Thank you for changing my life.’

To summarise: we have established that commercially successful books get sneered at and frequently have no literary reputation whatever.

We should now note that the reverse is also normally the case: that is to say, books which are much admired by the intelligentsia do not usually achieve big sales figures. Even Salman Rushdie’s first novel sold only 800 copies in hardback; all the unsold copies had to be pulped.

‘Literature?’ remarked the editor of one American journal, who had learnt the truth the hard way. ‘The stuff just don’t sell. Sometimes you can’t even give it away.’

The origins of literary snobbery

By now you will have gathered that I do not recommend that you aim to achieve literary reputation. To my mind, it is worthless in and of itself. Even if you succeed, all you end up with is the respect of a bunch of people whose opinions, in my view, are usually half-baked and invariably arrogant.

Nevertheless… Despite all that… It would be nice, wouldn’t it, if you could just earn a slice of that Success Cake? Have a nibble of it now and then, and decide for yourself whether you like the taste of it or not.

OK. I’ll grant you that. And I’ll do more. In Part 4 I will even reveal to you The Secret of Success. (This is worth the price of the book, all on its own.)

But first… In Part 3 we really ought to consider, for our own sakes, what it is that lies behind the motivation of so many writers.

PART 3: SUCCESS – Why do we seek it?

3.1 Human psychology in general

I think it’s worth reminding you that when I was a young man we were still in the 1950s. And that was a time when people still believed in Freud – which, by and large, I don’t think they do now. Anyway, since I had lots of ideas about becoming a writer, I thought I had better try to find out as much about human psychology as I could.

Fortunately, while I was still at school, and later at university, I had access to first-class libraries, and I suppose I picked up some useful knowledge of the workings of the human mind. That said, I was never convinced that Freud and Jung knew much about anything, frankly, and I continued to search for something a bit more down to earth. And at some point, possibly in the early 1960s, I discovered W. Beran Wolfe, author of How to Be Happy though Human.

When I tell you the publishing history of How To Be Happy Though Human, by W. Beran Wolfe, you will wonder why I bother to mention the book at all. The answer is twofold.

First, in a lifetime of reading, this is the best book that I have ever found about human psychology. If you want to know what makes people tick, this is the book for you. The second reason relates closely to the first: because of its insights into what drives human behaviour, I have found the book to be enormously helpful in creating credible characters for fiction and drama.

Of course, if you’ve ever read any of my fiction, you may think that I’ve never succeeded in creating convincing characters; nevertheless, I at least feel that I have understood their background and motivation, and I was therefore able to have sufficient sympathy with them to be able to write about them.

Now for the publishing history. How To Be Happy Though Human was first published in New York in 1931. Routledge did a UK edition in 1932, which was reprinted periodically. The book must slowly have come to be regarded as a minor classic, because twenty-five years later Penguin UK brought out a paperback version under the Pelican imprint; it was reprinted in 1959. And, finally, Routledge issued a hardback edition in the UK in 1999.

The Routledge edition of 1999 was aimed firmly at the academic-library market. How do I know that? Because it was originally priced at £135, and is now £200. Even Amazon want £160. What this 1999 edition (reprinted in 2013) suggests is that Beran Wolfe, and How To Be Happy Though Human, are now recognised as having a significant place in the history of psychology.

I can tell you little about Dr Beran Wolfe, beyond what is printed on the back of the Pelican edition. He was born in Vienna in 1900, but educated in the USA. He went back to Vienna for postgraduate study, and became an assistant to Alfred Adler. He must have been thoroughly bilingual, because his grasp of English is immaculate (few people can explain complicated issues so clearly) and he translated some of Adler's work.

After his time in Vienna, Wolfe returned to New York, where he practised psychiatry. His writing work was done between 11 p.m. and 3 a.m., and he always wrote to music on gramophone records (the neighbours must have loved him). He was apparently killed in an accident in 1935.

Alfred Adler, by the way, was one of the famous Viennese triumvirate of psychologists, the other two being Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung. All three men initially worked together but eventually fell out, and developed their own significantly different ideas. Of these three, Adler is by far the least known, but he was, for my money, the one who talked the most sense. Not surprisingly, having studied with him, Wolfe was heavily influenced by Adler.

How To Be Happy Though Human is designed for the lay reader – the title alone tells you that – and it is a model of clarity in its organisation and style. There are twelve chapters, with frequent sub-headings, and each chapter begins with a summary of what has been learnt so far, and a short account of the contents of the coming chapter.

The book runs to some 355 pages, and I am not about to try to summarise it. Any kind of precis would be bound to give a misleading impression. However, I think it is fair to say that Wolfe, like Adler (and, for that matter, the Jesuits), believed that early childhood experiences play a major part in developing a person’s character.

All children, in their earliest days, are weak and incapable of looking after themselves, and these early experiences of helplessness, or ‘inferiority’, are crucial. In particular, they lead to attempts to be strong, to be in control, and to put an end to emotional and physical discomfort.

Wolfe is a great believer in the purposive nature of human behaviour, even if the underlying purpose of the action is not always clearly understood by the person concerned, let alone anyone else. In his book, he argues that any person, other than those with severe mental incapacity, is capable of deciding what to do. There are sensible things to do, and stupid, antisocial, selfish things to do. But you can always choose. The smart thing to do is to think about why you favour action (a) over action (b), and to decide if it is truly sensible or not.

The author comes across as a fairly hard-line man. He is not one of the ‘pull-yourself-together’ school, but he certainly believes that no one is going to achieve happiness by pursuing exclusively selfish interests. This sometimes makes for uncomfortable reading (at least for me), because you find yourself realising that Wolfe would not be enthusiastic about many of the things that you wish to do, and in some cases have done for years.

As I say, I first read this book in about 1960, and it must have made a considerable impression on me, because when I came to read it again, in 2006, I found that certain passages were very familiar; it was as if I had read them yesterday.

The book’s principal virtue, for the average reader, is not so much that it is a self-help manual – though it is certainly a fine example of that – but that it provides an outstanding guide to human motivation.

I re-read Beran Wolfe in 2006 mainly because I wanted to remind myself of what he had to say about ambition. And of that, more in the next section.

3.2 Ambition in particular

Over a period that stretches back more than fifty years now, I have met a considerable number of writers; and I suppose I must have read books and articles about hundreds of others – possibly thousands. Most of these writers have specialised in ‘creative’ writing, i.e. fiction or drama.

The one outstanding characteristic which nearly all these writers have had in common is their immensely powerful ambition.

They are ambitious in that they yearn passionately for success. They long to be famous, to make lots of money, to be favourably reviewed in prestigious journals, to be interviewed on TV, to be asked for their autograph... and so forth. That’s why they put in enormous amounts of time and energy.

As an example of infection by the success bug, here is an extract from an email that I received from a reader who had read my essay On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile:

I suspect that you are right about everything [said my correspondent]. Nevertheless, I do expect my fifth or sixth novel (learning narrative technique being the slow job it is) to command an advance of $750,000 or so. I also expect the book to top the New York Times bestseller list for at least a year, during which time I will tour the United States at my publisher’s expense, fighting off beautiful graduate students at every airport. This analysis does not even include the royalties, or whatever you call them, from the movie deal – and considering that the movie Titanic grossed over a billion dollars, I think I can quite reasonably expect to quit my job and purchase the Mideast, which I intend to turn into a paradise of peace and plenty.

The tone of my correspondent’s email is jocular, but the sentiments are but little removed from those of many a young and naive writer; and I should know, because I have definitely been one of those.

In the days when I was blogging regularly (as the Grumpy Old Bookman), I sometimes made provocative statements about the prevalence of lunatic ambition; afterwards, I had emails from perhaps four or five writers who claimed that they were not ambitious at all. They said that they were in the writing business purely for the pleasure and satisfaction of it.

Since these people all seemed perfectly genuine, and did not appear to be delusional, then of course I accept what they say. But such people are, in my experience, in a tiny minority. To put their number at 1% of the writing community would, I think, be an overestimate. More like 0.1%.

And the thought which has often come into my mind is this: can this overwhelming ambition, which is present in almost every writer breathing, be entirely healthy?

It was with that question in mind that I re-read, after a gap of 45 years or so, W. Beran Wolfe’s book, which I have described above. And so, having done that, I thought I would share with you some of Wolfe’s comments on the subject of ambition, and see where we go from there.

Dr Wolfe, I have to say, is less than enthusiastic on this matter. He has quite a lot to say about ambition, hardly any of it positive. Here are just a few quotes to give you the taste of his thinking:

A word about ambition, which rates as a virtue in the copybooks, but on investigation, betrays itself as a vice in nearly every instance....

The ambitious man has very little time for the communal fellowship that is so necessary for true happiness....

Beware of ambitious men and women. They are usually more courageous than those who are patently vain and egoistic – but the unsocial nature of their striving is apparent the moment its goals are examined....

More often than not [ambitious individuals] ask a prestige which is entirely incommensurate with their actual contribution.... [Note that, oh ye writers.]

The ambitious are constantly in a state of tension....

The special difficulties that lie in the wake of ambition deserve further discussion. Nearly every neurotic is an individual whose ambition has been frustrated.* This is almost axiomatic. Just because ambition is so generally egoistic in form and meaning, its goal is one of personal superiority which runs counter to the commonweal and the logical laws of common sense.

Sooner or later the ambitious individual is forced to admit that he is beaten and frustrated..... He must either retreat, or shift the blame for his failure to some external circumstance over which he seems to have no control.**

If you pride yourself on your ambition, take a mental inventory of its ends, and ask yourself whether you desire to attain those personal ends and forego the opportunities of being happy, or whether you prefer to be happy, and forego some of the prestige that your unfulfilled inferiority complex seems to demand....

End of quotations from Dr Wolfe.

Some comments on the passages marked with asterisks:

*‘Nearly every neurotic is an individual whose ambition has been frustrated’ he declares. Oh dear. Was there ever a writer whose ambition was fulfilled in every respect? Or do we all yearn for a bigger advance, better reviews, the Pulitzer Prize, the – oh, you fill in the rest.

**Secondly, Wolfe believes that the frustrated individual is likely to blame his failure on external circumstance over which he seems to have no control. And yet, later on in this very book, when discussing the secret of success, I will maintain that what determines the level of your success – zero to unparalleled fame and fortune – depends on exactly that; i.e. circumstances which you cannot control.

I think it is fair to say that Wolfe despises ambition, at any rate in the form that most people experience it. He argues that the only normal goal for human ambition is to know more about the world we live in, to understand our neighbours better than we do, and to live so that life is richer and fuller because of the quality of our co-operation. All other ambitions end in death, insanity, or the tragic crippling of body and soul.

Not very encouraging, is it?

Of course, as you will quickly point out to me, and as I will readily agree, Dr Beran Wolfe is not the fount of all wisdom, whether on the question of ambition or anything else. Nevertheless, I think he talks much good sense about human psychology in general, and over the years I have borne his ideas in mind, even if I have not always acted in ways which he would consider wise.

In particular, over the last fifteen years or so, I have devoted some thought to my own literary ambitions, which as a young man were undoubtedly as powerful as anyone’s. And I have been interested to try to work out what lay behind that ambition in the first place.

As I hope I have indicated briefly but clearly above, Wolfe takes the view that ambition is motivated by a sense of inferiority.

Here we immediately run into an emotional reaction. People don’t like the suggestion that they might have an ‘inferiority complex’. It makes them feel insulted. (And therefore inferior!) And yet Wolfe (basing his ideas on Adler) would argue, I think, if he were here, that feelings of inferiority are perfectly normal and indeed inevitable. The human child demonstrably is inferior, physically and mentally, until quite a few years have gone by.

The trick of living a successful and happy life, if we are to believe Wolfe, is somehow to get a realistic and true picture of the nature of that inevitable sense of inferiority, and not to let mistaken and misunderstood ideas about its nature dominate your life and disrupt it.

Easier to say than to do.

For my part, after a certain amount of introspection, I have come to the conclusion that my own ambition was fuelled by a basically flawed interpretation of certain facts and events in my childhood and teenage years.

Am I going to share these details with you? No, I am not. I’m not going to let you stand in the bathroom door while I take a crap, either, because I think that some things are best kept private. What I am going to say is that now, in my seventies, I feel much more relaxed about those twin impostors, failure and success, than I did as young man. Which is just as well, otherwise their impact would have destroyed my sanity by now. (What do you mean, it already has?)

One other point that occurs to me is that most writers’ ambitions fly in the face of what Wolfe refers to as ‘the logical laws of common sense’.

Suppose that you are a young woman of sixteen or so, and you conceive the ambition to be a hairdresser. This is an ambition which is perfectly capable of achievement. Every small town has a technical college which will train you in hairdressing. Every village, almost, has a hairdressing salon in which you can gain employment. Your ambition is therefore sensible and realistic.

But suppose you are a highly intelligent young woman of sixteen – far too bright ever to contemplate anything so modest as a career in hairdressing – is it sensible to think of a career as a full-time writer? A career which might last a working lifetime?

It is possible, as anyone who has ever had contact with a university knows, to be, on the one hand, absolutely brilliant intellectually, and yet be, at one and the same time, a complete fool. And surely even the most rudimentary acquaintance with a few publishing statistics will demonstrate that achieving a career as a full-time writer, a career which lasts for more than a few books, is a rare achievement. One which is about as likely of fulfilment as becoming a member of the US Congress, or a member of the UK Parliament. It happens, but not often.

What then, if anything, is to be done? Are we to leave the young, and the not so young, to wallow in ambitious naivety and ignorance and do whatever they will with their life?

As an early employer of mine once said to me, everyone is free to ruin their own life in their own way. And indeed they are. But perhaps, just perhaps, the older and case-hardened among us might offer a little useful advice. Experience suggests that it will not be heeded, but never mind; our consciences will be clear.

For what it is worth, here is my twopennorth.

The young and ambitious writer should examine the motivation of her ambition carefully, and would be well advised to identify its cause.

Identifying the cause of ambition is certainly possible, at least in my own experience. Hint: consider your fantasies. And here I speak not of sexual fantasies, but of fantasies relating to success as a writer. Thinking about the situation which will arise from achieving your imagined success will, I believe, give you some guidance as to whom, or which group of people, you seek to impress.

Having identified the impressees, so to speak, you may then be able to work back and identify the events and circumstances which made you feel inferior to that individual or group. Those events and circumstances are likely to lie in childhood or adolescent memories. And then you can ask yourself, with the benefit of hindsight and some adult insight, whether the sense of inferiority which you then felt was actually justified or not. And even if it was justified, and not based on some misapprehension, does it really require that you should devote endless hours of time, money, and effort, sacrificing much else along the way, in order to ‘prove’, through achieving success as a writer, that you are no longer inferior?

Such self-analysis may prove valuable. It certainly did for me.

The completion of such analysis does not necessarily mean that you have to abandon all interest in writing. Far from it. You may now be able to undertake writing with a more relaxed attitude towards the outcome, taking a greater pleasure and satisfaction in the actual work. Who knows – your work may be all the better for it.

A final thought. I would not wish you to think that Beran Wolfe regarded all creative work as selfish, antisocial, and not conducive to long-term happiness. Not at all. He himself, for example, was a sculptor.

‘There is,’ Wolfe declared, ‘a certain quantum of creative energy in every human being which is not absorbed by the business of a work-a-day world. Even people who are engaged in some eminently satisfactory occupation have some creative energy left over.... We must all create something – or class ourselves as human vegetables. No one can be happy who does not find some channel for this creative energy.’

Well, there’s a glimmer of light for you.

It is, perhaps, reasonably human to feel a creative urge, and possibly a little bit of ambition to go with it. You just shouldn't let it get out of hand. That’s all.

PART 4: SUCCESS – How do we achieve it?

4.1 The secret formula for success

In my book The Truth about Writing, first published in 2003, I provided what every purchaser of a book on writing is looking for: the secret of success. What is more, I revealed the secret of success in precise mathematical terms! Wow! I gave my readers a scientific formula, no less, one which explained exactly what it is that makes a writer a success overnight! Hot damn. And here it is again, just in case you missed it the first time around.

We now know that there are several different benefits which can be derived from writing – the chief ones being money, fame, and literary reputation – and that different individuals will wish to achieve different combinations of these. So, feel free to do your own pick and mix for defining the term ‘success’. This won’t matter a bit, because the mathematical formulae, or expressions, that I shall be giving you, will hold good whatever particular definition of success you have chosen.

You will doubtless be familiar with the use of the equals sign, as in 2 + 2 = 4. But you may not, perhaps, be familiar with another mathematical symbol, written in the form of two colons, as in X :: Y. When used like that, the :: sign means ‘varies as to’. The :: symbol was introduced by William Oughtred in a book published in 1631.

How might we use this symbol in relation to writing and publishing? Well, we might say that the thickness of a book varies as to the number of pages; which means that the more pages there are, the thicker the book is. We could also express this statement as T :: N, where T stands for thickness and N is the number of pages.

Now let us turn our attention to success inasmuch as it concerns writers, and try to determine the factors which create success. In other words, we need to find the missing part of the expression S :: ?

We might begin by making a list of all possible factors that govern success, and these might include the following: talent; hard work; connections (i.e. knowing influential people); perseverance; good reviews; a powerful agent; a major publisher; and so on.

We might try out a number of combinations of these, and see how they look in the light of experience. So, for instance, we might say that

S (success) :: T (talent)

Which means that the more talented you are, the more successful you inevitably become.

This is nice and simple, but unfortunately it is complete nonsense. There are lots of talented people about who are not successful (many of them, no doubt, are reading this book); and, conversely, there are lots of published writers whose talent is barely discernible but who are very successful indeed. (You have your list; I have mine.)

Just in case you think I am being grumpy and graceless again, let me quote the actor John Nettles, from his autobiography Nudity in a Public Place. Nettles was in turn quoting a friend of his, whom he described as ‘a great literary figure and a major celebrity’. This unnamed individual remarked to Nettles: ‘Nothing is more common today than successful men with no talent.... Success and celebrity do not necessarily depend on talent in these dog days and it is a good thing you never ever believe they do, otherwise you might miss out on the joke of the century.’

So, to say that S :: T is clearly unacceptable, and we need to refine our formula a little further. We might try, for instance:

S :: T + HW (hard work)

Personally I don’t think that is satisfactory either. An issue of The Author carried an article by a man who had written ten complete novels between the ages of 18 and 34 without selling any of them. Then he took up meditation, which he claimed did wonders for clearing his mind, and finally he did manage to sell his eleventh book. This man evidently had some talent, and an enviable capacity for hard work, but the two together were not immediately effective.

One can continue with almost endless permutations, such as:

S :: T + HW + WYK (who you know)

And so on ad infinitum. But none of these is ultimately satisfactory, at least to me; they all seem to me to be based on false assumptions.

As far as I am concerned, there is only one formula which embodies the truth about the relationship between writers and success, and that is this:

S :: C

And what, you ask, is the mysterious C? Well, it isn’t the speed of light, as in Einstein’s famous equation. What C stands for, in this context, is Circumstance.

And what is the definition of Circumstance?

Circumstance is a factor which some might call chance, fate, luck, serendipity, or karma. But none of those words conveys the necessary flavour of the word Circumstance in relation to writing; they are not appropriate synonyms.

Take the word ‘luck’ for example. I am inclined to argue that, to some extent, you make your own luck. The golfer Gary Player was once told by a rival that he was always lucky. ‘Yes,’ said Player. ‘And you know what? The more I practise, the luckier I get.’

So luck won’t do, and neither will any of the other suggested synonyms.

The right and proper definition of the term Circumstance, in the context of our formula for success, is ‘everything that you cannot control, or even influence’.

Allow me to present an example, drawn from another field of activity. William Goldman, in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, tells us that, in the 1950s, the actor Montgomery Clift turned down the lead parts in four films. He declined (1) the part in Sunset Boulevard which was later played by William Holden; (2) the part that James Dean later played in East of Eden; (3) the Paul Newman part in Somebody Up There Likes Me; and (4) the Marlon Brando part in On the Waterfront.

As you will already have noticed if you know anything about the history of the cinema, each of the actors who picked up a part which had been rejected by Montgomery Clift used that part to establish his own name; each of the four actors who accepted what Clift had declined became a famous star as a result.

None of which would have happened if Clift had decided to play any of the parts himself. And the point is, of course, that the four unknown young actors who benefited from these decisions could in no way have influenced what Clift did.

That is Circumstance at work.

In the next section I shall reproduce an essay which I first published in 2004, about the outstanding success of The Life of Pi, and that will serve as well as anything to demonstrate how Circumstance operates in the world of publishing.

For the present, let me simply suggest that there are not only good reasons for supposing that our formula for success (S :: C) is valid and true, but that there are also substantial benefits to be gained from keeping it ever in mind. Becoming a writer involves considerable wear and tear on the emotions; indeed more than once I have mentioned that writing can literally damage your health. But you will, I believe, find it much easier to cope with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune if, when you next receive a particularly stupid letter from a particularly stupid publisher, you repeat the following mantra:

Success varies according to Circumstance....

Success varies according to Circumstance....

Success varies according to Circumstance....

Repeat this phrase over and over again, until a sense of calm is restored to your bosom.

There is no point in getting yourself into an uproar over matters that you cannot control. Or even influence.

Next, and before moving on to some case studies of how success was achieved, I need to tell you a little about Nassim Nicholas Taleb.

4.2 Randomness and black swans

In 2001 Nassim Nicholas Taleb published a book entitled Fooled by Randomness, with a revised edition appearing in 2004. The subtitle was ‘The hidden role of chance in life and in the markets.

It turns out, when you study the history of publishing that chance is a major factor in the business; and, for that matter, in the arts generally. Fooled by Randomness therefore constitutes essential reading for any writer who wishes to proceed in a rational manner – as opposed to believing in fairies and the inevitable triumph of talent (which, of course, you have in abundance).

In 2007, Professor Taleb came up with another book, The Black Swan. The subtitle of this book was ‘the impact of the highly improbable’, and in due course it was described in The Sunday Times as one of the twelve most influential books since World War II.

This second book of Taleb’s again contains much material which is highly relevant to the arts in general. Black swans, you see, in Taleb’s terms, are unexpected events which have enormous impact, either for good or evil. The key point here is the unpredictable aspect. After a black swan has occurred, all the smart-arses in the world will claim that they saw it coming – it was all perfectly obvious. But actually they didn’t, and it wasn’t.

Examples of black swans include: the attacks on the twin towers, in New York, in September 2001 (bad, negative impact); the massive sales of Harry Potter books (good, positive impact, particularly if your name is J.K. Rowling); the rise of Christianity; the rise of Islam; the first and second world wars. And so on. In short, black swans are some of the most important and influential events in the history of the human race.

In the years leading up to the publication of The Black Swan, Taleb published on the internet some chapters of the book as ‘work in progress’. I wrote a lengthy essay on some of his draft chapters under the title On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile. That essay considers how Taleb’s ideas might apply specifically to the world of publishing; and subsequently Professor Taleb and I had some correspondence.

When the final version of The Black Swan appeared in print, I was pleasantly surprised, and flattered, to find myself referred to in the acknowledgements section as follows:

‘Michael Allen wrote a monograph [a reference to my Rats essay], for writers looking to get published based on the ideas of Chapter 8 – I subsequently rewrote Chapter 8 through the eyes of a writer looking at his lot in life.’

I have to say that this little paragraph is both flattering and alarming. It is flattering because it is easily the greatest compliment that has been paid to me in an intellectual context (and this, if I may modestly say so, in a life not entirely without  academic distinction). And it’s alarming because, as you may already have concluded, I do not belong in the same company as the others listed in Taleb’s acknowledgements section. I am not any sort of philosopher, much less a mathematician. I do not belong in the same part of a book as such famous dead names as Hegel and Montaigne, nor even alongside famous living names such as (to pick a few at random) Chris Anderson, Daniel Kahneman (a Nobel laureate), and Benoit Mandelbrot.

If you have not read yet The Black Swan, you might usefully do so. As with its predecessor, Fooled by Randomness, it is, in my estimation, a fascinating read in itself; but you will also find in it much to support my view that Circumstance plays a huge part in any writer’s success, or lack of it.

That point having been made, let us examine a few case studies to demonstrate the point in practice.

4.3 Some case studies

The best example of a novel that became a huge hit – a black swan, in Taleb’s terminology – is, of course the first in the Harry Potter series.

Just in case you don’t know the much-told story, it is worth recording that the first Harry Potter book was rejected by every major publisher in London (some sources say as many as 20). The only publisher to show the smallest degree of interest was Bloomsbury; and, when they finally offered a contract, the firm paid only a small sum of money for it (sources say between £2,000 and £3,000).

Clearly, none of the ‘experts’ who read the book in manuscript, and rejected it, had the slightest inkling of the massive money-making machine which they held in their hands.

However, a less familiar case of Circumstance playing a huge part in a book’s success is the 2002 winner of the Booker Prize: Life of Pi by Yann Martel. The publisher was a small Scottish firm, Canongate.

Many newspapers reports at the time told us that this book had previously been rejected by Faber, the firm which had published Martel’s earlier work; the book had also been turned down by at least five other major publishers. So if Canongate had not taken the book, it is likely that the manuscript would have remained in the author’s filing cabinet. Furthermore, if the book had been accepted by one of the bigger firms, it would not even have been entered for the Booker Prize in the first place, because the big firms are only allowed two nominations and they have to enter their most famous authors; if they don’t, the famous authors are likely to go elsewhere.

The Life of Pi saga provides a beautifully clear demonstration of the random nature of decision-making in publishing. Here we have a book which was turned down for publication by numerous ‘good judges’. It was entered for the Booker Prize by a small firm which had no stronger candidates. And it so happened that the particular set of judges who were reading in 2002 happened to like it best. Or a majority of them did.

All rational observers will agree that Life of Pi, or any other Booker winner, cannot sensibly be described as the best book of the year in any absolute sense. The Life of Pi episode shows us, undeniably, that there might have been other books that year which were either not published at all or were published by big firms which were not able to submit them – books which could, quite possibly, have found favour with the judges if they had been submitted. The most that can be said of the book which wins the Booker Prize is that it is the one which (of those presented for consideration) the judges liked the best.

But observe, please, what happens when the winner of the Booker Prize is announced (in any year). What happens is that the media, the critics, and the public, all behave as if there is some absolute sense in which the winner is the best book of the year. They act as if the book has been held up against a ruler, a universally agreed scale, and has been found, indisputably, and scientifically, to be ‘better’ than any other. Clearly this is nonsense.

A friend once passed on to me a copy of the New York Review of Books, in which there was a lengthy review of the most recent Booker winner; the article ran to 108 column inches. Similar things no doubt happen every year. And this ‘star treatment’ will be repeated in newspapers and magazines throughout the English-speaking world.

It is the winning novel, please note, which is treated in this way – not the runners-up; and certainly not the good books which were not submitted by their publishers; and definitely not the books which didn’t even make it into print. It is the winning author who will be interviewed on television, invited to writers’ conferences, and made the subject, in due course, of earnest PhD theses by bespectacled young people who can think of nothing better to do with their time than waste it by deconstructing a novelist’s prose. This is the winner-take-all mechanism of publishing in its most unforgiving form.

The runners-up, the non-shortlisted books, and the unpublished books, all those are losers who disappear from our sight, never to be heard of again. And yet we know, beyond doubt, that but for the workings of randomness, which favoured the winner and disfavoured the others, there might be one, ten, or a hundred other books which could, in different circumstances, have proved to be more enticing to the judges than did the eventual winner.

The winner-take-all mechanism in the book world is thus shown to be brutal, vicious, and deadly.

There is no point in complaining about it: it is just the way things happen; the world in general, and the book trade in particular, is unfair, unjust, and patently absurd in its workings. But all those who work in the book trade, in particular those who write and sell novels, need to be aware of this situation. And they need to ask themselves whether a business in which randomness is so powerful a factor in the distribution of rewards (success!!!) is a business which sensible people should allow themselves to be involved in.

A few more thoughts on Life of Pi. If you search online you can find a review of the book by Dan Schneider. It turns out that he wasn’t too impressed by it.

Schneider points out that the book ‘comes in at 354 pages, yet is, at best, a solid-good short story of perhaps 25-30 pages, consisting of perhaps five of its first part’s 103 pages, twelve or so of its 215-page second part, and eight pages in its final 36 pages. Add in a few pages to connect and there you’d have it.’

Now that is a very cogent criticism. One can see the force of the argument. Dan has done his homework on Life of Pi, and done it thoroughly.

‘It took,’ he tells us, ‘just a quick online search to find out that Martel ripped off his plot from a South American novelist named Moacyr Scliar, who wrote a book about a boy on a lifeboat with a jaguar, called Max and the Cats. Martel acknowledged this steal by claiming he hadn’t read the book, but said he got the idea from a negative New York Times book review by John Updike; in fact, this ‘negative review’ never appeared. Yet, oddly, almost all the blurbs for the book [Life of Pi] declaim its ‘stunning originality’. Stunning, that is, unless you’ve done your homework.

In 2012, a film version of Life of Pi was released. This was reportedly both a critical and commercial success, thus generating more fame and money for the author, both directly and indirectly.

A final thought on the general unfairness of publishing and life in general. After I had published a similar article to the one you are now reading, an American reader kindly sent me a huge poster. On it are printed three words, in letters about four inches high.

Nobody Promised Fair

That’s what the poster says. As soon as it arrived I pinned it to the noticeboard in my office, as a constant reminder to me of an eternal truth.

PART 5: SUCCESS – The price we pay

5.1 A health warning

The world is not quite full of writers, but there are an awful lot of us about – and for the most part we are unpublished (in the traditional sense). For instance, without even trying hard, I can think of six friends and acquaintances who have each written a full-length novel; none of the six has succeeded in getting the book into print.

Writers tend to work individually, each in her own little room, typing away industriously; but collectively we do form a community. And while preparing this book I have been thinking about how best to characterise this community. Is it, in a sense, a bit like a football club, with a small team of professional players at the core, and a large mass of enthusiasts and spectators surrounding them? Well, possibly. That would be a nice, friendly, and inoffensive comparison to make. But it wouldn’t be true.

No, unfortunately the truth is a bit more painful. And the truth is that the community of writers is best compared with the crew and passengers of Das Narrenschiff – a sailing vessel of which you have probably never heard.

In 1494, the German writer Sebastian Brant wrote a poem about the Narrenschiff. Brant’s work was a satire on the vices and follies of his age. On board the Narrenschiff, the passengers and crew tell each other stories. Brant portrays these voyagers as a group of fuzzy thinkers, sailing out into an empty ocean in search of an unattainable paradise; and they all end up dead because of their misguided illusion. The Narrenschiff, in other words, is the Ship of Fools.

Brant’s poem inspired a number of other artists and writers to use the same idea. Hieronymous Bosch painted a picture of the ship. In modern times, Katherine Anne Porter, Richard Paul Russo, and Gregory Norminton, have all written novels called The Ship of Fools. Sutton Vane used the concept as the basis for his stage play Outward Bound.

And this, I’m afraid, is the most apt description that I can give you of all those nice friendly people who make up the writing community. We all believe that we’re really talented individuals, and that we’re going places fast, but in practice we’re not. The unwelcome truth is that many of us are not all that talented, and that most of us, talented or otherwise, have writing careers which are going nowhere.

By all means climb on board this Ship of Fools if you wish: her name is the good ship Nincompoop. Among the passengers you will find lots of agreeable companions (including the author of this very tome). But you should not, I suggest, mislead yourself. You should not imagine that, by climbing the gangplank of this particular ship, you are doing anything sensible, clever, or wise.

5.2 Cautionary tales

Or, Be careful what you wish for.

In this, the penultimate section of my consideration of success, I provide a small number of cautionary tales: a small number, that is, compared with the number I could supply.

It is just possible, you see, that achieving success might have disadvantages. Even trying to achieve success can prove disastrous.

One British writer who is exactly my own age (I won’t name him because he evidently has enough problems already) had a big success with a novel in the late 1960s. It was given five-star reviews in all the right places, described as ‘sensitive’, a ‘reflection of our troubled times’ and all the rest of it. A successful film version was made; it was adapted into a play for the stage; and the book was adopted as a text for teaching in schools. Unfortunately this author never seems to have written anything else, and thirty years or so after his initial success, The Times reported that he was bankrupt.

Many a writer has become clinically depressed by failing to get a book into print, which is unfortunate to say the least. The most famous case is that of the American novelist, John Kennedy Toole. In the early 1960s he became deeply disturbed by the frequent rejection of his book A Confederacy of Dunces, and in 1969 he committed suicide as a result.

Toole’s mother then took on the task of trying to find a publisher for the book on which her son had laboured so hard. She finally managed it, and in 1981 the novel was awarded the Pulitzer prize, which is the most prestigious of all literary awards in the USA. A Confederacy of Dunces was hailed by The New York Times as a ‘masterwork of comedy’. A bit late in the day for its author.

And finally, I noticed with some amusement that, on a day when I was actually working on this section, The Times made reference to the fact that Stephen King had ‘famously battled with drugs and alcohol after the first flush of fame struck.’ Famously battled, eh? First I’d heard of it, actually, but then I’m not a King fan. I admire enormously his industry and prolific story-telling, and he has written some interesting stuff on the art of fiction – but I’m not an enthusiast for his novels.

The principal story to be told in this section is, however, is the story of Ross and Tom, and how they were both destroyed by success. I have often maintained that the worst thing that can happen to a young writer is that she should achieve a massive success before she understands how it has been achieved, and without knowing how to do it again. Here is proof writ large.

5.3 Too much, too soon

Ross and Tom is the title of a book by John Leggett; its subtitle is ‘two American tragedies’, and for once the use of the word tragedy may be legitimate.

The Ross and Tom of the title were Ross Lockridge and Thomas Heggen. Leggett’s account of their lives, and deaths, first appeared in 1974, but was reissued in 2000.

In brief, Ross and Tom were two young novelists. They never met, but their careers ran on parallel lines.

In the few years which followed the second world war, both young men enjoyed enormous success with their first books: they became rich and famous. But neither man could cope with the fame and the fortune; worse, they were under constant pressure to write another book, and they didn’t know how to do it. In the end, Ross and Tom cracked under the strain, and they both committed suicide, though in each case their families, naturally, tried to convince themselves that the death was accidental.

Ross Lockridge grew up in Bloomington Indiana, and, although it was the seat of Indiana University, Bloomington seems to have bred a small-town mentality in its young people. Above all, it appears to me that Ross Lockridge’s educators failed him. He was a brilliant student at school, but his brilliance seems to have resided mainly in an ability to absorb facts and to regurgitate them in the form required by his teachers. No one, apparently, thought it important that he should learn to think for himself, or that he should question the received wisdom about anything. Despite all his ‘brilliance’, Ross seems to have been incapable of original thought.

In 1933, Ross was one of many University of Delaware students who went on a junior-year-abroad program. His group went to Paris. And what did Ross do in a year in Paris? He got drunk – once. He got laid – once, when an American girl dragged him off to bed. He did not visit any of the nude shows for which Paris was famous; he did not haunt the jazz clubs; and, curiously for a man who had already declared some intention of becoming a famous writer and producing the Great American Novel (God help us all), he made no attempt whatever to mix with any of the literary personalities who were then to be found hanging around Parisian cafes.

What Ross Lockridge mainly did in Paris was stay in his room and read his college books. And at the end of the year he came out top. He was the leading scholar among all the étudiants étrangers.

What did he do then? Did he set out to explore Europe, as any reasonably enterprising person would? No, he just got right back on the first available boat and went home to Mom.

It is no exaggeration to say that, by page 55 of Leggett’s 200-page account of Ross’s life, I could already see how this kid was doomed. He had absorbed every half-baked piece of nonsense about ‘great literature’ that the American liberal-arts education could provide. And he had decided that he too wanted to make a giant contribution to ‘literature’. This foolish and ill-judged ambition would eventually kill him.

Ross Lockridge went on earn his living as a college lecturer, and in his spare time he worked on his intended masterpiece, Raintree County.

The book was based very largely on his own family history; it was heavy with symbolism; and it was long. Boy, was it ever long. Even the published version runs to 1066 pages. The manuscript contained 600,000 words, which is approximately ten times the length of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond novel (which would be published just five years later).

Perhaps the worst thing that could have happened to Ross Lockridge was that this bizarre monster should find a publisher. But it did: Houghton Mifflin, a well respected Boston firm. The publisher wanted changes to the text – not surprisingly – and Ross was greatly anguished over ‘compromising his integrity’; but he did it.

Then, even before the book was published, he won a major and highly prestigious prize, offered by MGM, which involved sale of the film rights for a huge sum of money. But MGM also wanted changes – not surprisingly – and once again the young author had to face the enormous labour of reducing this vast manuscript to a more manageable shape.

And then thirdly the Book of the Month Club wanted his novel, but only if he would make further changes. And so on. And on, and on.

In short, over a period of many years, Ross Lockridge invested a massive amount of time and emotional energy in producing a huge book. This effort was rewarded, in a sense, when the novel was finally published. He became famous – at any rate insofar as any writer can be said to be truly famous. And he had buckets of money emptied over his head.

But there was just one problem. Everyone wanted him to do another book. His publisher expected it. The readers expected it. The critics expected it. And Ross Lockridge knew that a writer ought to go on writing. But he simply didn’t know what to do next.

Ross’s life at this time is exhausting just to read about. It must have been impossible for anyone to try to live that life. By the time Raintree County was published, Ross Lockridge was completely burnt out, mentally and physically, and he was damn near certifiably insane.

When published, on 5 January 1948, the book was a critical and commercial success. It became, inevitably in view of all the publicity, a ‘bestseller’; it was eventually filmed with Elizabeth Taylor in a starring role. But on 6 March of that year Ross Lockridge killed himself with the fumes from his car exhaust.

This is not a very cheerful story, is it? And there is more, if you can bear it: because we really ought to consider the parallel life of Tom Heggen. And after that we will see if any useful lessons can be learnt from these dreadful events.

Tom Heggen was, on the face of it, a much tougher and more street-wise character than Ross Lockridge. After college, where he did lots of journalism, Tom served in the Navy during the second world war, and you can’t spend a few years in the Navy without learning a little bit about life. (One former boss of mine told me that, during the war, he had been the only man on his ship who had never had a dose of the clap.)

With the war over, Tom began to put together some stories, based on his shipboard experiences, and he too found an enthusiastic publisher in Houghton Mifflin. The publisher came up with the title Mister Roberts, since Roberts was the character who linked the stories together.

Very early on in his relationship with Houghton Mifflin, however, Tom became aware of a circumstance which was to cause him endless trouble: the publisher viewed his first book as just that – the first in a series of novels. ‘Publishers are insatiable,’ Houghton’s editor-in-chief wrote to him, ‘and I am already beginning to think of the book that will follow Mister Roberts.’

Tom was thinking about it too, but he could not get started. ‘Honest to God,’ he told a friend, ‘I don’t know what to write.’

Mister Roberts was well received when it first came out, and before long the idea of adapting the book for the stage was raised. After a false start, Tom eventually formed a working partnership with Joshua Logan, who was then a highly prestigious and successful theatre director.

While Tom was trying to convert Mister Roberts into a stage play, in collaboration with Joshua Logan, he was still trying to write novel number two. But he couldn’t write and he couldn’t sleep, and was prescribed fast-acting barbiturates as a cure. However, even Seconal did not work and he tended to drink his way into unconsciousness. He was only five feet eight to begin with, and he soon lost weight.

When finished, the stage version of Mister Roberts proved to be smash hit on Broadway. There was so much laughter during the last rehearsal that it added twenty minutes to the running time. Emlyn Williams (of all people) was drafted in to make some cuts, which he managed to do without damage.

Being the author of a Broadway hit meant that, like Ross Lockridge before him, Tom Heggen became rich and famous. Attractive women were very pleased to have dinner with him. He was earning $2,000 a week from the play, at a time when that was serious money.

But there were still some huge creative problems. Tom found that, as a writer, he had become dependent on the collaboration with Joshua Logan. His creative juices just did not flow without help. ‘I don’t know how I wrote Mister Roberts,’ he told a friend. ‘It was spirit writing.’ And Joshua Logan, of course, had other fish to fry.

Tom tried psychoanalysis (our old friend Freud again, useless as usual) and he was by now addicted to barbiturates; he was popping twenty pills a day, on top of copious amounts of booze. He knew that he was doing himself irreversible damage.

On Wednesday 18 May 1949, Tom Heggen’s cleaning lady found him dead in the bath. The cause of death was described by the Medical Examiner as ‘Submersion in fresh water in bathtub. Probable suicide.’

As with Ross Lockridge, there really isn’t any doubt that Tom Heggen committed suicide. But even if we were to accept that either of these writers died by accident, the fact is that they were both dead men walking around like zombies. They had risen to dizzy heights. They each yearned to write another book. But neither of them knew how to do it. Success and all that goes with it had destroyed them completely.

What are we to make of these two grisly stories? They are such horrible case histories, so depressing to read about, that I wonder how and why I managed to stagger through John Leggett’s book about them. I suppose the answer to that conundrum is that the book confirms, with dramatic force, my long-held view that the ambition to be a writer can seriously damage your health. And in extreme cases it can even kill you. Hell, I even wrote a book about it: The Truth about Writing.

I defy anybody to read John Leggett’s Ross and Tom and tell me that they seriously want to be a famous writer. The dangers and disadvantages are great. And as for the rewards – well, they tend to be both brief and illusory.

Ah, you say, but if I was a big success I wouldn’t suffer the fate of Ross and Tom. I could cope better than they did.

Possibly. But I have to say that the recipe for disaster is a combination of factors which are really quite common.

To suffer the fate of Ross and Tom you need to be:

(i) wildly and absurdly ambitious;

(ii) the author of a first novel which makes heavy use of autobiographical material;

(ii) inexperienced in narrative technique, with a relatively small number of words under your belt (anything less than a million won’t do).

Ross Lockridge also had a head full of romantic nonsense about artistic integrity and writing the Great American Novel, which is again very common.

Those simple factors are all that’s required for you to become another book-world casualty.

If you are unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, you too could end up with a number-one bestseller, a Hollywood film contract, lots of new friends, and a score of people hammering on the door and demanding that you repeat the trick. And that you go on repeating it for the next twenty years. And yet you have no idea how you did it the first time, and certainly no idea how to do it again.

Oh, and one other thing is needed if you are to become an enormous success. You have to be the one person in a million or so whom the gods of the book world choose to honour with their favours. ‘As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.’

Let us hope that you escape that fate. The next time you get a rejection slip, try to think of it as a merciful release.

5.4 Final conclusions

My essay about Ross and Tom, which you have just finished reading, was first written in 2004, as a blog post. In checking it through for inclusion in this book, I wonder now if I was a bit too dramatic in trying to put you off any serious idea of becoming a successful writer.

Perhaps. But you must make a judgement.

There is, however, one important difference between the year 2004 and today (2013). That difference is the huge change in the publishing world which has come about through the digital revolution.

Throughout this book I have tended to write with reference to the traditional route to success. That is to say, I have assumed that, when you have completed a book (or some similarly substantial work), you will try to find an agent to represent you; you will expect the agent to try to get you a contract with one of the big publishers; and you will then expect to pursue an orthodox career, producing the expected new book every year (or so), and hoping for the occasional small prize, nibble of interest from film or TV companies; and so on.

In 2004 you really didn’t have any alternative way to find your readership.

But now, of course, you do. You can go down what is often referred to as the indie self-publishing route. Whole trainloads of writers are doing precisely that, and some of them are doing well at it.

I am not going to say anything further about self-publishing at this stage, in this book. I have said plenty about it in the past, with no doubt a lot more to come. In due course there may well be a Writer’s Guide to Indie Publishing, or something similar. But for the present, in the interest of balance, perhaps I ought to point out that Ross and Tom – poor fellows – were very much the victim of their time and place. And maybe – just maybe – in today’s digital world you can allow yourself a sensible measure of ambition and work towards success without endangering your health and sanity.

We’ll just have to see how things develop. In the meantime, I wish you luck.

AFTERWORD

The author of this book, Michael Allen, has written several other books (with more planned) that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in Michael Allen’s The Truth about Writing.

There are also three other books, so far, in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

More will follow soon.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that Michael Allen has available, please visit his author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

A WRITER’S GUIDE TO

CAREER PLANNING

Is it really possible for a writer to plan a career?

If so, how?

If not… what do you do instead?

Michael Allen

Copyright 2014 by Michael Allen

***

PART 1: An introduction to the subject

1.1 What is this book about?

Here’s a brief summary of the arguments set out in this book.

Can anyone sensibly plan a career as a writer?

No. You can’t. The idea is nonsense.

Where writers are concerned, ‘career planning’, as the concept is normally understood, is a contradiction in terms.

But if you can’t plan a career, what is the alternative?

There are two alternatives. One is to give up all thought of writing anything, ever, and to concentrate on enjoying other lifelong interests, such as growing roses or looking after your children and grandchildren.

The second alternative is to accept that writing can never be a ‘career’ in the normal sense of the term – but you can embrace wholeheartedly the idea that writing is an activity which can be pursued on a pro-am basis.

And what is a pro-am basis?

A pro-am is someone who produces work of professional standard, but who chooses to do such work on an amateur basis. That is to say she produces what she wishes, how she wishes, and answers to no one but herself. Unlike those who have signed contracts with traditional publishers, the pro-am has freedom.

During the last ten years, and particularly since the advent of the Kindle and other ebook readers, it has become possible for today’s writers to find readers without bothering with the former complications of finding a literary agent and signing contracts with publishers.

And believe me, unless you have lived through fifty years of the old system, as I have, you cannot possibly imagine how lucky you are.

In this book, career planning for writers will be thought of in terms of how to equip yourself to take advantage of the amazing new opportunities of the digital age, while working on a pro-am basis.

1.2 Who will benefit from reading this book?

In this book, the term writer is primarily used to refer to someone who wishes to write full-length fiction. There are, of course, writers of both sexes, but to simplify matters I shall always refer to the writer as ‘she’.

Anyone intending to write popular non-fiction will also benefit from many of the facts and ideas in the text; but the book is not likely to be of much help to playwrights (stage) or screenwriters (TV and film).

1.3 What are the aims of this book?

This is the seventh book in my series of writer’s guides. All of them are intended to provide useful information for writers who are either young, or lacking experience in the publishing world, or both.

More specifically, the aims of this book are as follows:

(i) To describe the traditional way for writers to find readers. Until about 2000, the traditional way was to find a commercial publisher who would accept your book for publication by his firm, at the firm’s expense.

(ii) To compare and contrast the old way of working with the new opportunities for writers which have become available through advances in digital technology.

(iii) To suggest a number of ways in which modern writers can seize at least partial control of their careers, and thus avoid many of the frustrations and disappointments of the past.

My experience of publishing goes back a long way now (see section 1.4, below), and I have often noticed that young and inexperienced writers are usually very ambitious. But they are also – excuse me if I sound rude – lacking in basic knowledge about the book trade, and are naïve about the hard-nosed ways of businessmen. I certainly was, when I started out. The background aims of this book are therefore to provide such writers with enough information to prevent them (a) getting ripped off, and (b) wasting vast amounts of time and effort, and thus making themselves ill with frustration. And if you think those things couldn’t possibly happen to you, you’re wrong.

1.4 What makes the author of this book (Michael Allen) think he’s an expert?

When you are looking at a book that calls itself a writer’s guide to something or other, you may reasonably wonder just who the author of said book is, and what makes him any sort of an authority. All I can do to answer that is tell you a little of my personal history.

At the time of writing (early 2014) I am just short of my 75th birthday. I was first paid for writing an article in a weekly magazine in 1955. My first novel was published in 1963; since then I have written at least 25 other novels (under my own name and several pen names). At present I have about 70 ebooks on sale through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing services, both fiction and non-fiction. These books are published under various pen-names in addition to my own, and they vary in length from 100,000-word novels to single short stories. I have written about a dozen non-fiction books, most of them intended to be of help to writers.

See the Afterword to this book for links to my author pages on the Amazon sites.

For about 25 years I was a director of two small publishing companies, and hence I have had experience of the book world from a publisher’s perspective as well as an author’s. For about ten years I was also the line manager of a small in-house printing unit, so I know about the technology of printing and book design. And I have, in my time, sold other people’s books to publishers, thus acting as an informal agent; though as the writers concerned were friends, I never charged any commission.

After some forty years as a published writer, in 1999, I lost interest in traditional publishing and published my own books thereafter. Today I operate exclusively as an ‘indie’ or self-publisher through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing facilities. Some, though not all, of my traditionally published novels have been reprinted as ebooks.

I am an Englishman, and my principal experience has been in UK publishing; but most of my fiction has also been published in the US, and I have had extensive dealings with American agents and publishers.

1.5 Assumptions

While writing this book, I am going to make certain assumptions about my readers.

I am going to assume that you have either had, or are in the process of getting, a pretty good general education. Some things are best learnt early, and one of them is a basic grasp of the English language.

I am going to assume that you have a useful working knowledge of modern computing techniques: word processing in particular. You know how to use google, and so I will not litter my text with hyperlinks; I want you to stay here and read my book, not get distracted by clicking on blue links.

I am going to assume (since you are reading this book) that somewhere along the line you acquired the ambition to write full-length fiction. You may already have completed one or more novels, and may well have had some experience of sending off your work to publishers or agents.

Just occasionally I have come across writers who claimed that they were only interested in writing for the pleasure of doing the job, and were not ambitious for money, fame, or literary reputation. I am sure they were not lying, but I am not at all sure that they were not fooling themselves. Most writers are rabidly ambitious. They yearn for success, in all its glorious forms, and they want it by next Tuesday. At the latest. I am going to assume that you are a member of that club.

PART 2: The traditional way of finding readers

2.1 The old days

I’m not going to go too far back in time – just to about 1950 or so.

And why go back at all?

Because in order to appreciate the changes which have occurred in the last ten years or so, you need to know how things were, well within the memory of writers living today.

Until about 2000, there was only one way for a novelist to find readers, and that was to persuade an established publisher to accept her work, and to print and publish it at the firm’s expense. The traditional way of rewarding an author for a novel was to pay her a royalty, perhaps 10% of the list price of the hardback edition.

Big sales equalled big money. Modest sales, after two or three books, meant that a publisher would probably wave you goodbye.

Sales will naturally vary according to the size of the home market. In the UK, 2,000 copies of a hardback would be a reasonable start; in the US, 3 or 4 times that figure.

Of course, you could self-publish a book, in days gone by, if you had a lot of money to spare. But bookshops would never stock it because they would regard it as rubbish. Your friends might buy a few, out of loyalty, but you’d end up with a vast unsold stock. So, it was find a publisher or nothing.

Here’s how it used to be – and still can be if you wish to go down that route.

2.2 Finishing the manuscript

Once upon a time, in fact until about 1990, there weren’t any word processors and printers. Just typewriters.

As often as not, writers wrote their books in the old-fashioned way, using a pen and paper. (John le Carré still does use that method.) But publishers would not consider even reading a novel unless it was typewritten. So writers either typed out their own fair copy (time-consuming and tedious), or paid a copy typist to do it (expensive).

That was the way I operated myself until I acquired an early word processor in 1990.

By the way, I once heard of a writer who had read somewhere that a manuscript intended for a publisher’s eyes should be double-spaced. So he typed out the manuscript with a space after each letter, and two spaces after each word.

No, no, you mustn’t laugh. If you lived in the English provinces, or out in the wilds of Wyoming, it was very hard to find out what the smart fellers in New York or London actually wanted.

I shall try to protect you from similar misunderstandings.

It is a curiosity of the book trade that the finished typescript of a novel continues to be known in the business as a manuscript; or ms for short. Which it once had been. The Jane Austens of this world had no typewriters.

2.3 Sending it off

Once you had a tidy manuscript, fit to submit in the required format, you then had to choose a publisher to send it to. And how could you do that?

It was, believe it or not, a difficult problem. In England, forty or fifty years ago, there was only one reference book for the book trade, and that was The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook. It still exists, and fortunately it is now a great deal more informative than it was in, say, 1960.

In 1960, the W&A did indeed provide the names and addresses of publishers. But little else. It might tell you that the firm published fiction and non-fiction. And occasionally it might add, belles-lettres. And you wouldn’t be much wiser about that even after a trip to the dictionary.

As to what type of fiction was required – well, that was a mystery. True, you could poke about in your local library and see who published what; but it was all a bit hit or miss. Result: romances were sent to serious-minded publishers of theology, and works on theology were sent to Mills & Boon.

Yes I know you think that’s ridiculous, but it happens all the time. Nearly did it myself once.

And what you were sending, please note, was your one and only typewritten manuscript. What if it got lost? And manuscripts did get lost, believe me. Either the post office or the publisher might lose it. And you might well have a smudgy carbon copy as a backup, but it wasn’t fit to offer to anyone, and all it would do was provide you with the basis to make another clean copy.

However, after various trials and tribulations, let us suppose that you got the thing into the post, and that you had managed to dispatch it to a reasonably sensible and appropriate firm. Then what?

Then you waited. And waited. And waited.

2.4 The slush pile

In times past, every publisher’s office would have some kind of postal delivery guy, who would stagger in with a sackful of typescript-shaped parcels. Every day. In fact sometimes twice a day. And these would be plonked down on the desk of whoever was in charge of logging them in. (If they ever were logged in, and my experience suggests that they sometimes were not.)

This pile, and the similar ones in all publishers’ offices, were known throughout the English-speaking world as the slush pile.

That is, you might think, a rather rude and dismissive term; and you would be right. But long years of experience had demonstrated to the publishers, beyond reasonable doubt, that very little of it was likely to be of any interest whatever.

First, there were the solemn treatises on theology, which could be discarded. And the mss which were literally mss, written in green ink on lined paper. Then there was the one from the man who had double-spaced everything, and he could be immediately discarded too, especially as he made the girls in the office cry, at the thought of all that wasted effort.

And as for the rest…

Well, let’s take some proper evidence.

In 1989, The Times reported that the well-known British imprint Hutchinson was receiving about 1,000 manuscripts a year. One of these unsolicited manuscripts might be published every couple of years or so. Maybe.

A similar story was told at Jonathan Cape. ‘We get dozens of typescripts in an average week. More or less all of them are rejected.’

At Chatto and Windus the Times reporter was told that about 10 manuscripts arrived every day. Were they all read? Long pause. ‘Yes.’ Were any ever taken on? Long pause. ‘No.’

At Faber, no less than 15,000 manuscripts a year were being dumped on the doormat. But those fine fellows (and ladies) at Faber apparently sweated through the whole 15,000 in search of the unknown genius. It was reported by The Times that six people at Faber used to meet every Tuesday afternoon to discuss about 100 of the offerings. ‘Most of it is just terrible,’ said the fiction editor, ‘but at the moment I have got an unknown writer doing the third rewrite of a novel. If it comes out right, I feel we just might publish it.’

(Note to potential novelists: In my humble opinion, no one in her right mind does even one rewrite at a publisher’s request without a contract and some money.)

The largest publisher of romantic novels in the UK is Mills & Boon, or Harlequin Mills & Boon, to give the firm its full name. A few years ago the Mills & Boon editorial director stated that the firm receives 6,000 manuscripts a year from hopeful and so-far-unpublished writers. Out of these submissions, the company takes on, in a good year, about 10 new writers. Those who are taken on tend to do quite well financially (or that’s the publisher’s story, anyway); though they do not, of course, get short-listed for prestigious literary awards such as the Booker prize.

These figures, revealing masses of submissions and very few acceptances, could be replicated in any western country. In 1995, the owner of two small publishing firms in the USA reported in Publishers Weekly that he had received nearly 7,000 offers of books in the previous twelve months, and had decided to accept 12 of these submissions.

A much larger and more prestigious American firm, Viking, agreed to publish only one unsolicited manuscript in 26 years; that was Ordinary People, by Judith Guest. The book went on to become a bestseller as well as the basis for a successful film.

I rest my case. Your manuscript might well be a red-hot commercial property, or a wonderfully sensitive and brilliantly original literary novel with Pulitzer Prize written all over it – but the chances of the book being recognised as such are close to nil.

There are two reasons for that. The first is that your masterpiece will be surrounded by so much unsatisfactory material that it can easily be missed, even by an experienced judge.

And the second reason is that, by and large, publishers do not employ experienced judges for reading the slush pile. Never did do, and are much less likely to do so now, because they can’t afford it.

Traditionally, the job of slush-pile reader was allocated to the youngest and most junior member of the firm – the one who was in no position to say no. And even they soon learnt that, in order to stay sane, you had to reach a decision quickly and move on to the next one.

If an author is very lucky, the product of her many hundreds of hours of labour might be read by somebody with a little more experience and judgement than the newest member of staff. (But don’t rely on it.)  Hear what one publishing professional, Andrew Taylor, had to say about the task, writing in The Bookseller in 1996:  ‘In an average day’s work at a publisher’s office, I aim to assess 7 to 10 submissions and write reports on each of them which vary in length from 2 to 500 words.’

Mr Taylor is more generous with his time than some publishers’ readers. Giles Gordon once stated that when he was the slush-pile reader at Gollancz, he learnt how to tell whether a manuscript was any good within 15 seconds. ‘It’s just a matter of practice,’ he said airily.

Literary agent Pat Kavanagh held much the same view. ‘Two pages will tell you if a book from the slush pile is worth pursuing.’ And when was the last time she found a book in the slush pile that was worth pursuing? ‘Never. I don’t believe it has ever happened to me at all.’

Barry Turner, in The Writer’s Handbook, once mentioned an agent who fared a little better than that, but not much. In 14 years of reading 25-30 manuscripts a month, the agent found 5 good ones. Another agent, at Curtis Brown, personally received 1,200 manuscripts in one year, and took on two of the authors as clients.

2.5 Enter the literary agent

Aha! You will note that, at the end of the previous section, there was reference to a couple of literary agents. And who, pray, are they?

I have written a whole book about literary agents, so if you want a detailed account that’s the place to go: A Writer’s Guide to Literary Agents by yours truly, Michael Allen.

For the moment, however, let us note a few facts.

A literary agent is someone who acts on behalf of a writer in submitting a book to suitable publishers, and in negotiating the details of the contract if the publisher wants to buy. The idea is, the agent lives in London or New York, regularly has lunch with big-time publishers’ editors, knows what they are looking for, and can see which book will fit into which slot with a minimum of trouble. The agent, nowadays, take 15% of a writer’s money by way of recompense.

Despite all the gloomy news about the slush pile in the section above, it was always possible to sell a book without benefit of an agent, and still is. I did it myself, several times.

In a 2013 blog post, Laura Resnick pointed out that she had been making her living as a full-time novelist for 25 years. She had sold 30 books in her career, mostly to major houses. And of those, she made all but 7 of the sales herself.

However, submitting your own books is a tricky process, not made any easier by the fact that in recent years most major publishers have given up reading unsolicited submissions from anyone except a recognised agent.

What this means, and has meant for a few decades now, is that your best chance of getting published by a traditional publisher is to get yourself taken on by a well known agent.

And I incline to the view, often heard, that it is in fact harder to get a good agent than it is to get a publisher. In fact some agents are so damn snobby and picky that they won’t consider unsolicited manuscripts either! Consider Andrew Wylie, an agent so warm-hearted and friendly that he is universally known as The Jackal. His corporate web site, under the heading Submissions, says simply: ‘The Wylie Agency does not currently accept unsolicited submissions.’

Yes, Wylie is a charming fellow all round. But if you win a major literary prize you can expect to hear from him. Poaching clients from other agencies is his forte.

If publication in traditional hardback form is what you yearn for, so that your Granny can hold an actual book of yours in her crippled old hands, then your best plan, for a good few years, has been to interest a good agent first.

2.6 Success – of a sort

It is not unknown for writers to labour for years before even a chink of light disturbs the gloom of continual rejection by agents and publishers.

If you want an example, here’s one: between 1987 and 1993, R.J. Ellory wrote 22 novels. Without success; he collected several hundred rejection slips. He then gave up writing until 2001, when he wrote three novels in five months. The second of these proved to be his ‘breakthrough book’, and he now has a number of books in print.

So, by ‘keeping going’, R.J. Ellory made it. However, I worry about this idea that persistence pays. I really do. The snag, you see, is this. It is true that some writers succeed after years of rejection. But how many writers are there who don’t succeed after years of rejection? (In statistics, confusing these two kinds of data is known as the error of the transposed conditional.) You could go on writing two good novels a year until you die of exhaustion, aged 103, and still not get into print. That’s the problem. And what you have to ask yourself is this: Is a business in which randomness plays such a large part a business which an intelligent clear-thinking person (such as yourself) should get involved in?

And, to repeat the point made at the very beginning of this book, the extent to which pure chance plays such a large part in publishing means that it is not – definitely not – a business in which a writer can sensibly plan a career. Sometimes careers happen. But mostly they don’t.

For the time being, however, let us just note that the delay in finding someone to publish your book may be painful.

Not nearly as painful, however, as instant success. And, as you might expect by now, I’ve written a book about that too: A Writer’s Guide to Success by Michael Allen. In that book, I describe in some detail the fate of two young American writers, unknown to each other, who achieved massive success with their first books. They then came under enormous pressure to write a second book, equally good. And neither of them had the faintest idea how to do it. In the end they both committed suicide.

But we are jumping ahead of ourselves.

Let us assume, just to avoid discouraging you too much, that the day comes when you receive an envelope through the post – as was the case with the English writer John Braine, one heady day back in the 1950s. John Braine has related that he could tell that the envelope contained a contract, just from the shape and thickness of this envelope.

So there’s the contract. From a real live publisher. All ready for you to sign, on the dotted line.

So naturally you take it out of the envelope and sign it, right there at the breakfast table, right? Because at last, after years of labour and bitter disappointment, during which your friends keep asking, with the best of intensions, how the writing is going – now, at long last, you have something to tell them. And so the next time someone asks that question, you can say, in the most modest and casual of tones, ‘Oh, well, actually I’ve just signed a contract with Bootsie & Snudge.’ Or Clapham & Irons. Or whoever.

So naturally you’re going to sign it. Aren’t you?

Well yes. Almost certainly you are. Especially if it comes via an agent – an agent who, heaven knows, it took you fifteen years to find, and in whom you had precious little confidence, because he was relatively new to the business. So you raise your pen, your heart beating so fast that you have to pause for a minute to let it settle down.

That pause is just as well. Because the likelihood is that the contract has certain drawbacks; as well as all the obvious advantages.

You see, for the two hundred years, at least, publishers have been in the happy position of having hundreds – indeed thousands – of keen and eager aspiring novelists, all queuing up to offer them books for publication.

The truth about this situation – as I have said several times before in other books, because it can’t be repeated too often – the truth about this situation is that all these wannabe writers are mugs, suckers, and fuzzy thinkers. From the employment point of view they are complete fools.

In what other industry, I ask, can an employer find staff who are willing to work hundreds of hours without receiving a penny in payment? These slaves, for that is essentially what they are, do not even get food and board. They work for years on end, giving up all their spare time to their writing project, alienating boyfriends, fiancés and husbands, abandoning even their favourite television programmes, all in the statistically ridiculous hope and expectation that one day, if they write enough words and knock on enough doors, they might, if only by accident, write a novel which makes it into print.

In order to justify to themselves the enormous sacrifices which have to be made, just to produce a finished manuscript of book length, most of these writers have to convince themselves that, once published, their book will inevitably be a massive hit. Hollywood beckons.

This is the basic situation in which writers and publishers find themselves.

The result is that, for many decades, publishers have known that a writer who is offered a contract will hardly be able to restrain themselves from signing the last page of it without even reading what has gone before.

Because what is the alternative? The alternative is to go back to the wearying search for a publisher. Starting again from scratch. And, if you were very lucky, and actually managed to find another interested publisher, there was always the possibility that the new publisher would offer you terms which were even more disadvantageous than the first one.

So naturally you sign. You’re a success. Of a sort. At last. Your mother will cry with happiness.

2.7 The publisher’s contract

I’m not going to go into detail. But I hope I have already made it clear to you that, in this particular game of poker, the publisher holds all the good cards. For decades – possibly over a hundred years in some cases – the publisher has become accustomed to having the writers sign any sort of contract, no matter how appallingly bad it may  be, because there is no practical alternative.

Here’s what one experienced American media lawyer has to say about publishers’ contracts in general. His name is David Vandagriff, and he runs a blog called The Passive Voice.

‘After having reviewed many, many agreements and proposed agreements between traditional publishers and authors, [I am] prepared to say these contracts, as a group, stand apart from the general run of business agreements as conscience-shocking monstrosities. They’re simply designed to screw authors and to give publishers control over their work that is far beyond what is regarded as reasonable in the rest of American business.’ (The UK is no different, by the way.)

I hope that’s clear enough for you.

Unless your name is Dean Koontz or Nora Roberts, you are going to get offered a contract which gives most of the money to the publisher, and gives you as little possible. And you will sign it and think yourself lucky.

I will mention just two dangerous clauses, in a contract which is full of them.

First is the non-compete clause. This prevents you from writing anything – probably anything at all – which might compete with and thus reduce the sales of the book referred to in the contract. In a worst-case scenario, if you’re a writer of romances, this could prevent you from writing any other romance for any other publisher for ever and ever amen.

Another key clause is the reversion clause. This specifies the ways in which you may, at some point in the future, ask for the rights licensed under the contract to be returned to you, so that you can sell them to someone else perhaps.

Well, let’s just say that, under a standard traditional publishing contract, in both the UK and the US, you are going to be licensing rights for the whole of your lifetime plus 70 years. So, if the company is making good money out of you, and wants to hang on to your rights, you are never going to get them back.

I’m just saying this so’s you know, that’s all. Not because I want to put you off. I’m just making sure that you realise that not everything is going to be sweetness and light for ever more, just because you’ve been offered your first contract.

And if you want to know more – and you should want to know more, go to the contracts section on David Vandagriff’s Passive Voice web site and read all the grisly details. It will take you quite a while.

Oh, and by the way. Here’s a late note, something I noticed the day after I thought I was finished with writing this section. David Vandagriff has just pointed out the following:

‘The standard warranties of almost all publishing contracts make the author liable to pay all costs arising from the publication of a book that violates the laws of any other country regardless of whether the author has any knowledge of the laws of another country.’

That is just one of the many joys which lie hidden in the small print of publishing contracts.

2.8 Waiting

So you’ve taken the plunge and signed. What next?

What comes next is, you wait. Again.

And wait, and wait and wait.

For you, selling your first book is a big deal. For the publisher, it’s just a piddling little contract, offered by a junior editor whose days in the firm may be numbered anyway, either because she’s not much good or because the firm has figured out a way to farm out the selection of manuscripts to freelances living in the country, and thus save costs on mid-Manhattan real estate. So you have to wait until the publisher can be bothered to actually schedule your book for publication.

A friend of mine, who in civilian life was a highly experienced and successful businessman, one sold a non-fiction book to the English firm of Faber & Faber. A year after the contract was signed he rang me up.

‘The contract calls for the book to be published within one year of the signing of the contract,’ he pointed out. ‘And so far we don’t even have a publication date scheduled, let alone books in bookshops. So they’re in breach of contract. What do I do now?’

‘Nothing,’ I told him. ‘Faber may be hopelessly inefficient by the standards of the people you normally deal with, but this kind of delay is common in publishing. Furthermore, they are what is laughingly called a prestigious publisher, and the book trade will take your book seriously when it finally does appear. So say nothing and smile gratefully when they get around to it to doing something. They have after all paid you a decent advance.’ (£15,000.)

In due course the book was indeed published and stayed in print for several years. But the time came when Faber felt they had got as much out of it as they could, and my friend was able to get his rights  back. I was then able to approach another firm and sell the book to them.

On Faber’s final royalty statement there was an unearned balance of £11,000 showing against the original advance. Because publishers make mistakes all the time, you see. Sometimes they reject a book which goes on to become a smash hit, and sometimes they pay too much for a book.

Meanwhile, you are learning the same lesson as my friend, as you sit and twiddle your thumbs and fend off questions from your mother about when your book is going to appear.

2.9 Publication and after

And then… Publication day!

Fanfare of trumpets.

In your mind. There won’t actually be a fanfare. There won’t be a launch party in New York or London, attended by fashionable celebrities. Your local evening paper might do an interview with you, but that’s going to be about it.

Years ago, publishers used to send their really promising authors on a book tour. Your expenses would be paid while you went the rounds of various major cities and allowed yourself to be interviewed on radio, or even local TV; you would also do book signings in any shops which could  be persuaded that you were an up-and-coming young star.

Not any more. Today it is much more likely that you will  be asked to pay your own way in travel and hotel expenses, and it is just possible, if you agree to do that, that the publisher might arrange a few dates for you, if you ask nicely. This process of paying all your own expenses for a publicity tour will be described by your publisher as ‘investing in your career’. I call it stealing your money.

Up to this point, please remember, you’ve put in years of unpaid work; when you signed the contract you were paid a modest advance (not enough to live on), and now you’re expected to pay for your own publicity. It’s a great life being a writer.

But not every writer finds the present state of affairs satisfactory. Here’s an example: Elisabeth Naughton.

Elisabeth began her career in traditional publishing, working through well-known mass-market firms such as Dorchester and Sourcebooks. She was never a big seller: she was what’s known as a mid-list author; or even lower on the chain. Her contracts were, as she puts it, crappy, but hey – she was a published writer, OK? Respect! Prestige! Money! She had all the accolades of being a published author – her books were on bookstore shelves and in airports, she was getting rave reviews, she was a top seller in romance for Sourcebooks, and she even hit the USA Today bestsellers list.

But actually Elisabeth found that she was spending more money on promoting her books than she was earning in royalties. She used to go to romance readers’ conferences and mix with the fans, spending money on air fares and hotels. And she spent money on promotional materials.

In 2011, Elisabeth’s tax return showed negative income: in other words, her expenses as a writer amounted to more than she earned. So, after careful thought, she backed away from traditional publishing. She got her rights back from Dorchester and became an indie publisher. (Of which, more in Part 3.)

In 2012, as a self-publisher, she reported six figures on the positive side; in 2013 she was approaching the seven-figure mark. But remember – she wrote for ten years in the old-fashioned way without making a penny after expenses were taken into account.

2.10 The next book

Never mind. All that is ahead of you. For the moment you are full of the joys because you’ve finally made it. And you’re already thinking of the next book.

Book number 2 can be a problem. You may be short of ideas, and the more literary a writer you are, the more likely this is to be the case. If you’re a genre writer – romance or crime, let us say – your job is much easier because genres follow well established patterns.

But things can still go wrong

Your editor may move to another firm, which leaves you without an ally in the in-house political uproar. Nasty.

You may produce a masterpiece, in your own estimation, only to find that no one likes it.

Worse, your first book may be a big disappointment to everyone concerned, and everyone wishes that you would just get discouraged and give up. It’s so much easier, for a sensitive editor, than having to tell you that you just aren’t worth the trouble.

In 2008 Emily Gould sold a paperback original novel for $200,000. Less agent’s commission, less tax, less expenses. It seemed like a lot of money at the time. But the book sold around 8,000 copies, which was about a fifth of what was needed for it to break even. Result? ‘This essentially guarantees,’ says Emily, ‘that no one will ever pay me that kind of money to write a book again. It took me a while to realise that my book had failed. No one ever told me point-blank that it had.’

But that won’t happen to you, of course. It’s like car crashes and breast cancer. They always happen to someone else. So your next book will be a huge hit.

However, even if it is a huge hit, you are not out of the woods yet. On the very day when I wrote this section, the Guardian published an article about the hardships being experienced by some well known names in the UK book world. And the US is just the same.

The sub-heading tells the story: ‘The credit crunch and the internet are making writing as a career harder than it has been for a generation. Robert McCrum talks to award-winning authors who are struggling to make ends meet.’

Most of the writers interviewed in the Guardian piece stated that the change began to be felt somewhere around 2008. (Possible causes: banking collapse, start of the Kindle?) Joanna Kavenna summed up the situation as follows: ‘Being a writer stopped being the way it had been for ages – the way I expected it to be – and became something different.’ Tougher.

2.11 The development of your ‘career’

The ambition of most writers is to do the job full-time, and to adopt the persona of a professional writer. You know the type of thing: appearing at literary festivals and making an appearance on the platform, saying a few fascinating words and then graciously answering questions from the eager beavers who are just desperate to follow in your footsteps.

That sort of a career seems so much more attractive than being a check-put girl in your local supermarket. Or a hairdresser (going anywhere nice this year?). It was my ambition to be a full-time writer too, once upon a time. And when it never happened I was disappointed. Not catastrophically, psychologically shattered, thank goodness, because I was always well aware that talent alone is not enough. You have to be in the right place at the right time, with the right book, and that isn’t something that you can arrange; there are too many factors outside your control.

However, in retrospect, I think that fate dealt me a fair hand. I am now quite pleased that I was never tempted to give up the day job. For one thing, serving nearly forty years in various educational jobs gave me a pension to fall back on. And I have lived long enough to have seen what happened to numerous writers who did appear, at one time, to have cracked the egg labeled success. They had one or two big hits, and they seemed to be set for life. But all too often it was an illusion.

I don’t think I’m going to name names here. Some of those people, who had very rickety lives, are still alive, and no doubt hitting the bottle pretty hard, because a failed career as a writer can do that to you.

No, I think I was much better off the way things turned out. I wrote for fun, in the evenings, as and when I had time to spare. I was under no contractual pressure to produce a big hit, or indeed any kind of book at all. Sometimes two or three years would go by, during which I was busy – a new job, a new baby, new house to get organised. It was not so much that I always made the right career choices: but in retrospect I think the publishing world made the right choices for me.

2.12 Changing horses

By now I think you will have got the point(s), but just for convenience, here’s a summary.

In any given year, many hundreds of thousands of people – some young, some old – find themselves possessed of the urge to write fiction.

An unknown percentage of these aspiring writers actually complete the text of a novel.

Having completed it, they decide to try to put it before readers, with the intention of becoming (a) famous, (b) rich, and (c) much admired by the literary establishment. Not everyone wants all three of these things, but most writers want a lot of at least one of them.

Until the year 2000, there was only one realistic way to present your book to the world, and that was to find a publisher who would take on the task of getting the book printed and shipped to bookshops, all at the firm’s expense.

With or without the aid of a literary agent, you would need to sign a contract with said publisher, setting out the terms on which you were doing business. (Nowadays you might well be required to sign a contract with your agent also.) The snag is that writers, even those who have agents, are in a very weak position when it comes to negotiating the terms of any publishing contract. Typically, those contracts are highly disadvantageous to all writers except those who have consistently been at the top of the bestseller lists for twenty years or so.

Even if you succeed in getting one or more books published via the traditional route, your future career path is likely to be very bumpy indeed. There is no sensible way in which you can ‘plan a career’ in this milieu. End of story. There are too many factors outside your control – or anyone else’s for that matter.

However… Round about the end of the twentieth century, the situation changed. And in Part 3 we shall examine that change and its implications for writers.

PART 3: The new way of finding readers

3.1 The dawn of the digital age

In my ebook A Writer’s Guide to Literary Agents, I write at some length about the impact that digital technology has had on the publishing industry. (Of course, other industries have been massively affected too: music, photography, television, movies.) In this book I am going to give you only a quick sketch of what has happened.

3.1.1 Print-on-demand (POD)

First, round about the year 2000, developments in digital technology meant that there were substantial changes in the way books could be printed.

Historically, printing a book was a laborious, expensive, and slow process. For the process to be economic, a publisher had to print, at the very least, several hundred copies of a book; normally the print run was measured in thousands.

By 2000, however, it had become possible to print books, especially paperbacks, quite cheaply, and if necessary one at a time.

In the old days, once the first printing had been sold out, a book would normally be declared ‘out of print’. But now a book need never go out of print, because the occasional order could be filled by printing one copy every month or so, on a digital machine.

There were two major implications of this development.

First, a publisher could hold on to the rights of a book pretty much for ever. In the twentieth century, a writer could normally reclaim her rights if a book went out of print and the publisher declined to reprint it. But now the publisher could reprint your book, one copy at a time, for as long as some slim demand existed. Or longer, if the publisher was feeling awkward. This was frequently disadvantageous to the writer.

Second, the invention of these print-on-demand machines meant that writers who had tried, and failed repeatedly, to find a traditional publisher, could now publish a book themselves; this would usually be done in paperback form, at minimal cost and, if necessary, one copy at a time. This meant that self-publishing was no longer a ruinously expensive process resulting in nothing but heartache.

As a spin-off from the print-on-demand machines, a whole new business opportunity opened up, and canny entrepreneurs were quick to exploit it. Most writers know nothing whatever about book design, choice of fonts, size of type, and a thousand other printing matters. But hundreds of small firms sprang up which offered to handle all these complicated details for those who wanted to self-publish – in return for a fee, of course.

There are some honest and reliable firms which provide self-publishing services, but there are many more which are adept in taking large sums of money from over-ambitious writers in return for doing nothing very much.

And perhaps this is the place to say it: if you are planning to self-publish a book, in the digital age, be careful who you deal with.

Start by scouring the pages on the Writer Beware web site, which is operated by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. What you will find is that self-publishing is a field in which scams are more or less standard operating procedure. I am sorry to say that some of these scams now shelter under the wings of publishing firms and literary agencies which were once regarded as honest and upright. (At least within the context of publishing, you understand.) Nowadays there are some surprisingly famous names involved in the business of parting inexperienced writers from hefty sums of money, mainly through the use of some hard-sell techniques by phone and email.

No one has any precise figures, but it seems that in any given year, there are many tens of thousands of self-published paperback books being launched on the market. Possibly hundreds of thousands. Many of these writers are being chiseled out of cash that they can ill afford.

Bear in mind: none of these firms providing ‘services for self-publishers’ are doing anything that you can’t do for yourself, at virtually zero cost, if you just take the trouble to learn how. But if you are too green and gullible for your own good, you may end up paying out tens of thousands of dollars.

3.1.2 The arrival of the ebook

Less than ten years after the introduction of POD machines, the digital age dreamed up another piece of technology which would have massive effects on publishing. In particular, it would set writers free from the necessity of dealing with traditional publishers at all, if they didn’t want to.

Once, as you will doubtless remember because I keep on hammering the point (and with good reason), writers who wanted to get a book published and into the hands of readers had no choice – none – but to go knocking on the doors of publishers.

Now they do.

What transformed the world of books and publishing was the advent of the electronic book, or ebook. Since you’re reading one now, you have at least some grasp of how ebooks and ereaders work.

For all practical purposes, the ebook revolution can be said to have begun on 19 November 2007, when Amazon first offered the Kindle for sale.

Amazon isn’t the only company which sells ereaders and ebooks, but it will serve to illustrate the enormous scale of the business being done here. Amazon doesn’t issue any sales figures itself, but Morgan Stanley estimates that Amazon sold $3.57 billion worth of Kindle ereaders and tablets in 2012, and $4.5 billion worth of Kindle devices in 2013. Best guess for 2014 is $5 billion.

And how many books do you think the average Kindle owner buys, and at what average price? Take a look at your own device. Even allowing for those freebies that you’ve got on there, it’s still going to be quite a lot of money.

By the summer of 2010, Amazon was telling us that, in the previous three-month period, it had sold 143 Kindle ebooks for every 100 hardcover books.

What all this means is that we are now in the early morning (dawn has gone by) of a new age of limitless digital opportunity for writers. And unless you have lived through several decades of doing things the old way, and have experienced the pain and heartache which normally accompany such efforts, you just can’t imagine how lucky you are.

Today it is no longer necessary for writers to slave away for years, knocking on countless doors of agents and publishers, only to face continual rejection. Today – right now – writers no longer need to bother about agents and publishers. They can do it all themselves. They can write a book and publish it in ebook or paperback form without having to persuade a single soul to help them, or spend a penny piece on the process. What is more they can sometimes go from frequently rejected unknown to big-selling superstar in just a few months – using exactly the same book!

Here is an example.

The Mill River Recluse is a novel by Darcie Chan. And when you look this lady up you find that hers is an absolutely classic story of the digital age.

It took her three years to complete the book, after which she tested it on her family and friends, polished it up, and sent it out to traditional publishers. Got absolutely nowhere. Scores of rejections. Sent it out to dozens of agents, with the same result. Then one top-class agent took her on (Laurie Liss at Sterling Lord). Laurie sent it to all her best contacts, over a further two-year period. But still no sale.

By that time Darcie had become aware of this new-fangled digital self-publishing business. So she gave it a try. She edited the book herself, did her own formatting, designed her own cover, and handled her own publicity.

The book was published as a Kindle ebook in May 2011. In June, she was thrilled when 100 copies had been sold. After that, aided by some hard work on marketing, and a little bit of advertising, things began to snowball, until in the latter part of the year the book was selling several thousand copies a day.

At the end of 2011, when the figures were added up, The Mill River Recluse turned out to be the fourth biggest-selling book on the whole of Amazon in 2011. These figures were achieved with no paper edition at all. It was ‘just’ an ebook. And one that had been repeatedly rejected by the gatekeepers of traditional publishing.

What distinguished this book from ten thousand others? Ah, if only we knew. All we can say, with any confidence, is that sometimes a book will find its readers and really take off. But mostly it won’t.

If you really aren’t familiar with any other big-time self-published successes, google the names Anne Hocking, John Locke, Hugh Howey, and Joe Konrath. There are plenty of others.

3.2 Free at last, free at last!

At the end of this book, in the Appendix, I am going to give you a list of blogs and web sites which, if you’re at all interested in writing fiction, you really ought to read on a regular basis. What is more, you can go back through the archives of these blogs and see how things have developed over the last few years.

After a year or two of reading about digital developments, and their impact on publishing, you will, I hope, have grasped the enormous importance of the choices which are now available to you.

Yes, if you want to, you can still follow the traditional route to readers. And the traditional route, to remind you, is finished manuscript to agent, agent to publisher, publisher to bookshops, bookshops to readers. And good luck to you.

But there’s a new way. Finished manuscript uploaded to Kindle, Kindle to readers. End of.

You don’t have to wait twelve months or more to see your finished book. You don’t have to wait six months for an incomprehensible royalty statement and maybe a payment if you’re lucky. Instead, with Amazon you get paid monthly, direct into your bank account. And you can publish anything you please, from a short story to a 250,000-word monster. It doesn’t have to be 55,000 words exactly, and you don’t have to rewrite chapter 13 just because your editor’s mother didn’t like it.

3.3 The secret of success

Unfortunately, while you may enjoy an unprecedented degree of freedom, as described above, freedom does not guarantee success – no matter how you define that word. It is possible to publish an ebook and struggle to sell a single copy. So why is it that some books sell in vast quantities and some hardly at all?

In my book The Truth about Writing, first published in 2003, I took a whole chapter to discuss the secret of success. And here’s a shorter version of my theory.

You will doubtless be familiar with the use of the equals sign, as in 2 + 2 = 4. But you may not, perhaps, be familiar with another mathematical symbol, written in the form of two colons, as in X :: Y. When used like that, the :: sign means ‘varies as to’. The :: symbol was introduced by William Oughtred in a book published in 1631.

How might we use this symbol in relation to writing and publishing? Well, we might say that the thickness of a book varies as to the number of pages; which means that the more pages there are, the thicker the book is. We could also express this statement as T :: N, where T stands for thickness and N is the number of pages.

Now let us turn our attention to success inasmuch as it concerns writers, and try to determine the factors which create success. In other words, we need to find the missing part of the expression S :: ?

We might begin by making a list of all possible factors which govern success, and these might include the following: talent; hard work; connections (i.e. knowing influential people); perseverance; good reviews; a powerful agent; a major publisher; and so on.

We might try out a number of combinations of these, and see how they look in the light of experience. So, for instance, we might say that

S (success) :: T (talent)

Which means that the more talented you are, the more successful you inevitably become.

This is nice and simple, but unfortunately it is complete nonsense. There are lots of talented people about who are not successful (some of them, I dare say, are reading this book); and, conversely, there are lots of writers whose talent is barely discernible but who are very successful indeed. (You have your list; I have mine.)

So, to say that S :: T is clearly unacceptable, and we need to refine our formula a little further. We might try, for instance:

S :: T + HW (hard work)

One can continue with almost endless permutations, such as:

S :: T + HW + WYK (who you know)

And so on ad infinitum. But none of these is ultimately satisfactory, at least to me; they all seem to me to be based on false assumptions.

As far as I am concerned, there is only one formula which embodies the truth about the relationship between writers and success, and that is this:

S :: C

Which means, to remind you, that success varies according to C. And what, you ask, is this mysterious C? Well, it isn’t the speed of light, as in Einstein’s equation E=mc2. What C stands for, in this context, is Circumstance.

And what is the definition of Circumstance?

Circumstance is a factor which some might call chance, fate, luck, serendipity, or karma. But none of those words conveys the necessary flavour of the word Circumstance in relation to writing.

The right and proper definition of the term Circumstance, in the context of our formula for success, is this: everything that you cannot control, or even influence.

Consider the case of Harry Potter. The first person of any consequence, in publishing terms, who read the name Harry Potter was the receptionist in the office of literary agent Christopher Little. But did J.K. Rowling know anything about that receptionist? Of course not. Did she even know much about the agency? I suspect not. But it was that receptionist who drew the book to her boss’s attention. Pure chance.

Christopher Little then submitted Harry Potter to every publisher in London. Only to find that no one wanted the book. Except one firm. And even they had no great faith in it, because they only paid £2,500 for it. And yet this please note, was the reception afforded to a book which has generated hundreds of millions -- whether you’re talking dollars or pounds doesn’t matter, because the income is so huge.

There are, I suggest, not only good reasons for supposing that our formula for success (S :: C) is valid and true, but there are also substantial benefits to be gained from keeping it ever in mind.

The main thing to understand is that there is no point in getting yourself into an uproar over matters that you cannot control. Or even influence.

As far as self-publishing in ebook form is concerned, you certainly cannot guarantee that your self-published ebook will be a massive success in terms of sales. Roughly speaking, 95% of the ebook sales in any given year come from 5% of the books. I’m pretty sure that some of my own short stories have never sold a single copy, but I don’t check on them obsessively. I just put stuff out there and let it go on its karmic way. I advise you to do the same.

I hope that the main message that you will take away from this ebook is that you can’t control the outcome of any writing endeavour, but you can control the process. And controlling the process is the matter to which we now turn our attention.

PART 4: Getting your career under control

This ebook concerns itself with career planning for writers – insofar as such a thing is possible.

As I said at the beginning, career planning – in the usual sense of the term – is not something that a fiction writer can sensibly undertake: there are two many variables which are totally out of your control. If you were in any doubt about that, I hope that the S :: C exposition in the previous section has made the point clear.

However… that does not mean that you can’t make some sort of loose plan of campaign which will help you to achieve your ambitions (or some of them) without making yourself ill in the process.

Sections 4.1 and 4.2, to begin with, provide some useful background. Later in Part 4 I shall turn to the business of setting goals and deciding how those goals can best be achieved.

4.1 The pro-am approach

Demos is an organisation which describes itself as Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank.

In 2004 Demos published a report entitled The Pro-Am Revolution. This can be downloaded free from the internet in pdf format.

And what exactly is a pro-am?

A pro-am, in Demos terms, is someone who works to professional standards, and may well get paid at a professional rate. But the pro-am is no one’s employee. She does whatever work she chooses, when she chooses, for the love of it, and for the satisfaction of doing a fascinating job. But she probably earns her living doing something else.

The Demos report showed that, even ten years ago, pro-ams were making significant contributions in a number of fields, as varied as astronomy, theatre, and open-source software. ‘The 20th century,’ said the report, ‘was shaped by the rise of professionals. But now a new breed of amateurs has emerged….’

I hope that the attraction and relevance of this approach to writing are immediately apparent to you. For myself, I can only say that I was operating as a pro-am for several years before the Demos report appeared.

In 1999 I decided, for a variety of reasons, that I had had enough of traditional publishing; and I could already see that POD techniques meant that I no longer needed either agent or publisher. Instead of treading the well worn traditional path, I started a small publishing company. This I used chiefly as a vehicle for my own work; the books were published in trade-paperback format, using various pen-names according to each novel’s genre.

As a result of long experience in writing, publishing, and printing, I was in a position to ensure that I could write, design, and oversee the printing of trade paperbacks to a fully professional standard.

Did I get rich or famous? No, of course not. But I had a lot of fun, and met some interesting people. I did succeed in selling a limited number of copies of each book, chiefly to the UK library trade. Because of the low set-up cost of modern POD technology, most books generated a modest profit. And I know that the books were read, because some of them were reviewed, and because I received income from the UK’s scheme for paying a small royalty every time a book is borrowed from a public library.

Since 2008 or so, I have abandoned the use of paper publication and have instead issued all my new work, and much of my old, in Kindle format. But it’s still a pro-am approach.

This pro-am attitude currently brings me a regular monthly payment from Amazon. Not a lot – usually in the low three figures – but it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. Last month I got 16 pence from the Japanese branch of Amazon (= about 27 cents US).  No idea how this money was earned, but I stuck it in my pocket quite cheerfully. And whatever publication of mine generated that amazing sum, it was, I can assure you, a professional piece of work.

4.2 Ambition: the dangerous motivator

Over a period which stretches back fifty years now, I have met a considerable number of writers; and the one outstanding characteristic which nearly all these writers have had in common is their immensely powerful ambition.

However, the thought which has been expressed more than once in my previous books for writers is this: Can this overwhelming ambition, which is present in almost every writer breathing, be entirely healthy?

It was with that question in mind that I recently re-read, after a gap of 45 years or so, W. Beran Wolfe’s classic book, How To Be Happy Though Human. Wolfe was a colleague of Alfred Adler, and is a respected figure in the history of psychology.

Having reread Wolfe, I thought I would share with you some of his comments on the subject of ambition, and see where we go from there.

Dr Wolfe, I have to say, was less than enthusiastic on this matter. Here are a few direct quotes:

‘A word about ambition, which rates as a virtue in the copybooks, but on investigation, betrays itself as a vice in nearly every instance....’

‘The ambitious man has very little time for the communal fellowship that is so necessary for true happiness....’

‘Beware of ambitious men and women… The unsocial nature of their striving is apparent the moment its goals are examined....’

‘More often than not [ambitious individuals] ask a prestige which is entirely incommensurate with their actual contribution....’

‘The ambitious are constantly in a state of tension....’

‘Nearly every neurotic is an individual whose ambition has been frustrated. This is almost axiomatic. Just because ambition is so generally egoistic in form and meaning, its goal is one of personal superiority which runs counter to the commonweal and the logical laws of common sense.’

‘Sooner or later the ambitious individual is forced to admit that he is beaten and frustrated..... He must either retreat, or shift the blame for his failure to some external circumstance over which he seems to have no control.’

‘If you pride yourself on your ambition, take a mental inventory of its ends, and ask yourself whether you desire to attain those personal ends and forego the opportunities of being happy, or whether you prefer to be happy, and forego some of the prestige that your unfulfilled inferiority complex seems to demand....’

‘The only normal goal for human ambition is to know more about the world we live in, to understand our neighbours better than we do, to live so that life is richer and fuller because of the quality of our co-operation. All other ambitions end in death, insanity, or the tragic crippling of body and soul.’

End of quotations from Dr Beran Wolfe.

So, not very encouraging about ambition, was he?

Wolfe took the view that ambition is motivated by a sense of inferiority. And here we immediately run into an emotional reaction. People don’t like the suggestion that they might have an ‘inferiority complex’. It makes them feel insulted. And yet Wolfe (basing his ideas on Adler) would argue, I think, if he were here, that feelings of inferiority are perfectly normal and indeed inevitable. The human child demonstrably is inferior, physically and mentally, until quite a few years have gone by.

The trick of living a successful and happy life, if we are to believe Wolfe, is somehow to get a realistic and true picture of the nature of that inevitable inferiority, and not to let mistaken and misunderstood ideas about its nature dominate your life and disrupt it.

Easier to say than to do.

For my part, after a certain amount of introspection, I have come to the conclusion that my own ambition was fuelled by a basically flawed interpretation of certain facts and events in my childhood.

Am I going to share these details with you? No, I’m not. What I am going to say is that now, in my seventies, I feel much more relaxed about those twin impostors, failure and success, than I did as young man.

As this book has demonstrated, I hope, even a brief acquaintance with a few publishing statistics will prove that achieving a career as a full-time writer is a rare achievement; it’s an ambition which is about as likely of fulfilment as becoming a member of the US Senate. It happens, but not often.

What then, if anything, is to be done? For what it’s worth, here is my two cents’ worth.

The ambitious writer should examine the motivation of her ambition carefully, and would be well advised to identify its cause.

Identifying the cause of ambition is certainly possible, at least in my own experience. Hint: consider your fantasies. And I’m not talking about sexual fantasies, but fantasies relating to success as a writer. Thinking about the situation which will arise from having achieved your imagined success will, I believe, give you some guidance as to whom, or which group of people, you seek to impress.

Having identified the impressees, so to speak, you may then be able to work back and identify the events and circumstances which made you feel inferior to that individual or group. Those events and circumstances are likely to lie in childhood or adolescent memories. And then you can ask yourself, with the benefit of hindsight and some adult insight, whether the sense of inferiority which you then felt was actually justified or not. And even if it was justified, and not based on some misapprehension, does it really require that you should devote endless hours of time, money, and effort, sacrificing much else along the way, in order to ‘prove’, through achieving success as a writer, that you are no longer inferior?

Such self-analysis may prove valuable. It certainly did for me.

The completion of such analysis does not necessarily mean that you have to abandon all interest in writing. Far from it. You may now be able to undertake writing with a more relaxed attitude towards the outcome, taking a greater pleasure and satisfaction in the actual work. And who knows – your work may be all the better for it.

A final thought. I would not wish you to think that Beran Wolfe regarded all creative work as selfish, antisocial, and not conducive to long-term happiness. Far from it; he himself, for example, was a sculptor.

Here’s his conclusion about the value of creative work:

‘There is a certain quantum of creative energy, in every human being, which is not absorbed by the business of a work-a-day world. Even people who are engaged in some eminently satisfactory occupation have some creative energy left over.... We must all create something – or class ourselves as human vegetables. No one can be happy who does not find some channel for this creative energy.’

I hope that’s clear enough. It’s perfectly OK to have some ambition – because it motivates hard work; and preferably you should understand its causes. And it’s perfectly OK to be ‘creative’. But you just shouldn’t let these things get out of hand. That’s all.

4.3 Clarifying your goals

In the second half of the twentieth century, it became almost the norm for organisations to clarify the reason for their existence, and to write down that purpose in the form of a ‘mission statement’.

One of the earliest and most famous thinkers behind this practice was Peter Drucker, who in 1954 published a book entitled The Practice of Management. It was this book which first popularised the concept of Management by Objectives – a buzzword phrase which soon became a cliché in the business world.

To oversimplify enormously, Drucker’s idea was that companies should sit down and work out in detail what their objectives actually were. Then they should list all the things they had to do to achieve those objectives; and finally they should check up periodically – perhaps once a month or once a year – and measure how they were actually doing in practice. Repeat as necessary until your company is a world leader.

For what it is worth, I once wrote a book about this kind of thing, insofar as it affects educational organisations. But the book is long out of print, and not available in ebook format, so you are spared any further reference to it.

What can be done in relation to multinational businesses, and huge universities, can also be done on an individual basis. And I suggest to you that this exercise is particularly relevant to writers.

About forty years ago, I was present in a meeting when a world-famous architect revealed, just in passing, that every year he reviewed his own personal goals in life, simply to check whether he was doing what he really wanted to do, and if so how far he was achieving his aims and ambitions.

What a funny thing to do, I thought. (I was younger then.) But the more I thought about it, and learnt about it, the more sense this made to me.

Here’s how it works.

Once a year, usually on my birthday, I write down a quick summary of my three most important goals in life generally. My number one goal this year, mundanely enough, is ‘To stay in good mental and physical health.’

Then I write down two more sentences which, equally briefly, summarise the next two most important goals in my life. I could, if I wished, extend this list to 22 more goals, or 32, but as far as I am concerned three major goals is enough to occupy my attention and energies.

Next, I write down the activities which I need to undertake to achieve each of my three goals.

For example, to remain in good physical and mental shape I aim to (i) walk a mile each day, (ii) go to the gym once a week, (iii) go dancing once a week. That, coupled with close attention to my diet, copes with the physical side of things. In order to keep my mind and brain in good working order, I write books (like this one), do crosswords and other puzzles.

And so on.

Decide a goal. Decide what action you need to take to achieve it. Get on with it. That’s the general idea.

I can only say that I have found this process extremely useful in my own life. For one thing, you may find, when you come to think about it, that writing doesn’t actually rate very highly in your overall scheme of things. Similarly, you may find that something you hadn’t consciously valued very highly might turn out to be vitally important to you – such as forming closer links with your family, or working for a higher degree.

The point is, you need to get to know yourself as well as possible, so that you can avoid waking up one morning five years from now and saying to yourself, Well, that was a bloody silly idea. What a waste of time!

There is little point, at last in my opinion, in setting goals which are unrealistic. I would not recommend, as a goal, ‘To write a novel which reaches the number 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.’ Because, like becoming a US Senator, that’s something that does happen, but not very often.

On the other hand, ‘To finish the novel I am currently working on, and to write one more complete novel in the next 12 months’ is something that might be capable of achievement if you put your mind to it.

And then of course you’ve got to list the actions that you need to take in order to achieve such a goal. And one such action might be, ‘To spend at least four hours a week on writing.’

That four hours a week target may strike you as too low. But if you are doing a full-time day job, I suggest that it’s a sensible figure.

For twenty years I kept detailed records of the amount of time I spent on writing, and over that twenty-year period, I averaged just over four hours a week on writing. Some weeks nothing, some weeks 10 hours. But the average was four.

If you can do better, fine.

PART 5: Final thoughts

I think I have pretty much said everything useful that I have to say on the subject of career planning for writers – specifically writers of fiction.

It is, however, worth adding that I have found writing to be a lifelong interest. I haven’t always achieved my ambitions, and the traditional world of publishing, while I was in it, often proved to be frustrating and tiresome. But throughout my writing career I always managed to have fun; and despite whole years at a time when I was not free to write, I always came back to it in the end.

And now, at the end of this book, and at the risk of sounding horribly pompous, I want to try to explain why it is that I have consistently found writing fiction to be rewarding. What follows is a slightly modified reprint of a chapter in my 2003 book The Truth about Writing

5.1 The morality of the novel

To young readers, the morality of the novel may seem an odd topic. For a start, one seldom sees, these days, any sort of discussion of morality in the arts; it seems to be far too tricky a subject. This is probably the result of moral/value relativism – or some such. I seem to have heard something about this topic once or twice.

In any event, anyone who brings up the topic of the morality of fiction is likely to be considered a suitable target for derision or hostility; so, naturally, most people avoid it. Not, I hasten to say, that I am in any hurry to start such a discussion myself. But there are a few points which might usefully be placed on record.

To begin with, a little historical perspective will not be out of place.

In the nineteenth century, novels, like actresses, were often assumed to be wicked by definition. The poet Swinburne once gave a novel to a friend of his, Lady Trevelyan. And – heaven preserve us! – this book was not only a piece of fiction but it was a French novel at that! When the lady’s husband heard about this gift, he ran to the drawing room, picked up the offensive object with a pair of fire-tongs, and deposited it on the blazing coals.

Quite right too. Filthy chaps, those Frogs. You only have to think of French kissing, French letters (rubber contraceptives), and so forth, to understand that the bounders are up to no good. I understand they eat snails as well.

A deep-seated belief that fiction was likely to deprave and corrupt, particularly in respect of sexual morals, persisted well into the second half of the twentieth century.

In the 1950s, English magistrates competed with each other for the title of twit of the year: works such as Boccaccio’s Decameron (written in the fourteenth century and famous ever since) were seized as obscene and destroyed. Even quite respectable publishers lived in genuine fear of going to prison.

The situation was perhaps worse in the United States. Younger readers of this book may be unaware that, fifty years ago, novels which now seem utterly harmless were then condemned as virulently dangerous: Peyton Place, for instance, caused an uproar when it first appeared in 1956. It was then labelled as sordid and cheap. In the year 2002, this unspeakable novel was read aloud, as a serial, on BBC Radio’s Woman’s Hour. And there is no more respectable radio programme on this planet than Woman’s Hour.

Until 1960, the so-called four-letter words were not permitted to appear in print in the UK or the US,  and descriptions of sexual activity had to be shrouded in obscurity. In the cinema, no young Englishman so much as glimpsed a female nipple until... when? The late 1950s at least. In American films, even married couples had to keep one foot on the floor when in bed.

Eventually, however, attitudes changed. And I suppose it could be said that they changed quite quickly. For example, the city of Boston, in the USA, was at one time notoriously prudish. In the 1950s and ’60s, the proud boast ‘Banned in Boston’ was one which could be guaranteed to add to the sales of any book. But, by 1986, when I visited Boston, all had changed. There was one city block, known as the Combat Zone, on which were located a whole parade of hard-core porno bookshops, blue-movie houses, and strip clubs. All were extremely explicit. (Or so I was told. I never went in them myself, you understand. Well, only the once. And that was just for research. And I certainly didn’t enjoy it.)

If I have couched this discussion of morality in terms of sexual content, that is for the sake of simplicity. The point I am trying to make is that, in the quite recent past, novels (and many other forms of art or entertainment) were regarded with deep suspicion by the political, social and religious leaders of society.

Today, by comparison, almost anything goes. In the UK, the broadsheet newspapers still tend to print f*** and s***, despite the fact that the uncensored versions of these words are now in the dictionary; and the tabloids have so far not ventured to show us any pubic hair. (I understand that many young ladies have it surgically removed these days, anyway.) But no novelist any longer feels much constrained by the law on sexual content, or fears the wrath of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Such constraints as exist are imposed by publishers, who believe, rightly or wrongly, that they know what their customers will tolerate at any given time.

This being the case, why mention morality at all?

Well, I mention it because, in my opinion, a novel is best understood to be a machine for generating emotion. (Furthermore, I would argue that the novel may be regarded as a surrogate for all art forms.)

If that is so, then we writers need to consider the morality of the process, if only for our own peace of mind. The question is, can a writer feel assured that the process of creating emotion in readers is a moral one?

Sooner or later, even the least sensitive of us is going to wonder whether to include a particular scene or not. Is this scene going to do our chosen audience any harm? Is it going to do any good? Either way, is it something we would care to have our name associated with?

The subject could, I dare say, make a book in itself, but it may save a great deal of time if I admit, without equivocation, that the novel is, in principle, capable of doing harm. So is a bottle of aspirin, if you take the contents all at once.

On the other hand, a bottle of aspirin is capable of doing good. Given a sensible attitude on the part of the aspirin user, the drug’s potential for good far outweighs the harm, and life would get awfully complicated if we were to ban everything that is capable of being misused. Cars and carving-knives can be used to kill people, but I don’t think we are likely to forbid anyone to possess them as a result.

The risk of the novel, or any other art form, doing any serious harm to adults seems to me to be minimal. People who are upset by something unpleasant will normally just stop reading. I do it all the time. Children, of course, will require guidance in their access to the arts, just as no child should sensibly be allowed to drink a bottle of whisky.

To my mind, an involvement in writing fiction is consequently not something that you need to be ashamed of. Quite the reverse: knowing what we do about the effects of emotion, I suggest that writing fiction can be viewed, in a modest way, as the equivalent of practising medicine. Alternative medicine, perhaps, rather than full-scale surgery.

Ideally, fiction helps people to feel better emotionally; and, given the interaction of mind and body, it may therefore help them to feel better physically.

If writers can be regarded as potential healers, and I believe they can, then it follows, in my thinking at least, that creating a novel is not only a moral activity but also – dammit – an honourable one.

APPENDIX

This appendix consists of a list of blogs about books and the book world. There are hundreds of such blogs, but if you start with the ones listed here, and read them on a regular basis, you will soon acquire a thorough knowledge of publishing in all its various forms.

It’s not easy to explain to you how lucky you are to be working as a writer in an era when this sort of information is readily available. It certainly wasn’t when I started out. Dozens of experienced writers, agents, lawyers, and – yes – even publishers, are today making their knowledge and judgements available to you entirely free of charge.

That having been said, some of the bloggers are not too proud to ask you to leave a cash tip if you find a post of theirs particularly helpful. I have left such a tip more than once, even after fifty years in the business, and so should you – now and then, if you can afford it.

If you are flush with cash, you might care to subscribe to the two main trade journals of the book-publishing world; both appear weekly. In the UK, you need The Bookseller. Current subscription rates are £196 p.a. if you live in the UK, £264 if you live elsewhere. In the US, the equivalent is Publishers Weekly, which will set you back $249 for a one-year print + digital subscription, and $399 if you live outside the US. (Digital-only rates for PW are cheaper.)

But wait. Before you rush off to subscribe to either of these two magazines, bear in mind that there may be a library near you which already subscribes, and makes the magazine available to the general public. So try that first; it’s a lot cheaper.

The blogs which are currently absolutely essential reading include the following:

The Passive Voice. David Vandagriff, media lawyer.

A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing. Joe Konrath, a big-time digital success, tells how he does it. And he cheerfully beats up any agents and publishers who say silly things online.

Dean Wesley Smith. Author of over 100 novels. A man who works unhealthily hard and tells it like it is.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Dean’s wife, and amazingly knowledgeable about contracts and other trade secrets.

Other useful blogs, in no particular order:

Books Inq. The thoughts of an old literary journalist and his friends.

Blog of a Bookslut. Pretty much what it says on the label.

Caustic Cover Critic. Ditto.

David Gaughran. Modern author with forthright views.

Digital Book World. Some very well informed commentators.

Mediabistro.com: EbookNewser.

Mediabistro.com: Galleycat. The bit that deals with traditional publishing.

The Digital Reader. The one really essential guide to the new digital universe.

Writer Beware: The Blog.

The Literary Saloon. Deals mainly with literary books, and those translated into English.

The Shatzkin files. Mike Shatzkin, experienced publishing consultant. His Dad was also a major figure in traditional publishing.

Jennifer Jackson. Blog by a US agent. Queries received in 2013: 6,152. New clients taken on in 2013: 2.

Pub Rants. ‘A very nice literary agent indulges in polite rants.’

Janet Reid. Agent.

Dystel & Goderich.  Jane Dystel has had a distinguished career in publishing. Now an agent, and by the sound of it one of the more sensible ones.

Grumpy Old Bookman. Finally, this one is my own. Between 2004 and 2007 I wrote about 1.25 million words on this blog: reviews, news, comment, advice. There’s a lot of good stuff there if you search for it. Since 2007, I have been only an occasional blogger, mainly to let you know of the publication of one of my own new books.

As stated at the beginning, I have not provided hyperlinks in the main body of this book. Instead, I have assumed that you quite capable of googling a name or a subject if you wish to know more about something that has been mentioned in the text. And in any case, when you do start googling a name or a subject, you may, serendipitously, come across something which is not only relevant and fascinating, but also so obscure that not even I know about it.

AFTERWORD

May I respectfully inform you that I (Michael Allen, in case you’ve forgotten the name) have written several other ebooks that are designed to provide straightforward and practical advice for writers at all stages of their careers.

If you are keen to learn more about the technique of writing fiction, try the following:

How to Write a Short Story that Works

How to Write a Novel that Works

In addition, much useful background on the worlds of book publishing, theatre, and screenwriting can be found in The Truth about Writing.

On the Survival of Rats in the Slush Pile is an essay on the pro-am approach to writing.

There are also several other books in the Writer’s Guide series:

A Writer’s Guide to Emotion

A Writer’s Guide to Viewpoint

A Writer’s Guide to Style

A Writer’s Guide to Success

A Writer’s Guide to Traditional Publishing

All the above are readily available via Amazon, but only as Kindle ebooks at the time of writing. POD versions may follow.

To get a good overview of the kinds of fiction and non-fiction books that I have written in the past, please visit my author page on either the American branch or the co.uk branch of Amazon. Using these direct links is far better than just searching for my name, because the name is so common. A list of hundreds of books by various Michaels and Allens will not help you.

Finally, please consider writing a brief review of this book on your local branch of Amazon.

END OF THE OMNIBUS EDITION OF WRITER’S GUIDES

Content

Allen Michael A Writer's Guide To Everything Important: The Omnibus Edition Of Seven Essential Guides For Fiction Writers