An Amazon Adventure (Part 3)

Uneven Odds

My investigations into, and grappling with the psychology and technology of self-publicity is on-going, and likely to take a while. I'll post more about this as and when I have something to report.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share my musings on another related subject. One source of frustration for me is that both writing, and thinking about writing requires usable tracts of good quality time, and these are in short supply. Even though I am currently out of work (unless you count being a writer of course) I still struggle to find those moments when I can think and be creative without distraction, or the nagging feeling that I should be doing something else. So, whilst I try not to make a habit of whiling away the small hours deep in thought, when I do find myself wide awake at two in the morning I tend to grasp the opportunity it presents.

I'm sure that those of us who write would all like to believe that there is some correlation between the stories we tell, how well we tell them, and whether or not they achieve any commercial success. Leaving aside my on-going attempts to make The Testing of Archie Rathbone appear somewhere within the portion of Amazon's listings that is visible to the human eye, last night I kept thinking about an observation made recently by a friend. When discussing whether or not TTOAR had what it takes she observed that she had read many books (that had obviously been considered good enough to make it into print) that were, in her opinion less worthy of publication than my own.

If like me your reaction to such well-intentioned observations is (privately) to question the impartiality of the observer, then you may also be familiar with the attendant sense of mild frustration at not being able to confirm your suspicions, either way. In my case this isn't false humility. The truth is that the effort required to publicise your own book is significant, and therefore not something you can undertake unless you're committed. Perhaps like a lot of writers my emotions are a mix of total self-belief, and abject self-doubt. I can't begin to explain how those two states of mind can coexist, but in my mind they just do! The point is that if I could trust my friend's evaluation of TTOAR then I would know that it is worth expending every effort to publicise my book, secure in the knowledge that her opinion is likely to be shared by a significant number of others.

There is another doubt that was nagging me at two this morning though. Going back to my friend's observation (and my nocturnal cogitations), there are a number of strands that can be picked from this:

Changing tastes

The types of story, styles of writing, pace, use of language, amount of description and countless other characteristics of a work of fiction all change over time - whether in response to changes in society or perhaps even (in some cases) leading those changes. I would hesitate to suggest that today's readership is necessarily more sophisticated in their tastes, but there is sometimes a slightly naive quality in the way some books were written in say the 19th Century.

I suppose what I'm suggesting is that sometimes a book will be published because it is 'right' at that point in time, but ten years earlier or later it would never have made it into print.

The established name

We must all be aware of books that have been published, written by an established author, but which have left us feeling disappointed. It's tempting to speculate whether or not those books would have been published if they'd been submitted by an unknown writer, but in some cases I'm sure they wouldn't. Whilst this is galling to the unknown writers amongst us who are struggling to achieve some sort of recognition (and fondly imagine that their work has the merit to justify it), it's hard to fault the commercial logic of a risk-averse publishing house, safe in the knowledge that a weaker book from an established author will probably still at least cover the publishing costs.

Greater competition

As you will probably have discerned for yourself, I am no expert, but particularly with the advent of ebooks and e-publishing the number of books available for purchase/download seems to have increased astronomically. Why is this? As always I suspect, for a number of reasons, but here are a couple for starters...

• perhaps there are more literate people (not to mention a lot more people) than there used to be, and therefore a larger pool from which would-be writers will inevitably emerge
• in the 'good old days' when the vast majority of books were published through an established publishing house, both literary agents and the publishers themselves filtered out the work that (in their sometimes demonstrably flawed opinions) weren't good enough. With the advent of self-publishing of ebooks, these filters have been removed resulting in a tidal wave of books hitting the e-bookshelves - many excellent, some inevitably not

So where does that leave me? My friend may be right - The Testing of Archie Rathbone may yet find itself onto people's Kindles in large numbers, but to assess its credentials by comparing it to other books (even printed ones) is probably not a particularly sound approach.