It used to be said that everyone has a novel sitting in a drawer, waiting to be published. Well not any more. These days everyone has a novel, or three or five, sitting in Amazon’s Kindle Store or on Smashwords. Which is great for all those with literary pretensions. Unless they want people to notice their novel.

New independent authors can hardly contain their excitement. Suddenly they can publish what they want, when they want, without fear of rejection or criticism. They dream of hitting the best seller lists, of giving acceptance speeches at major prize givings, they are liberated by the thought of being able to spend the rest of their lives writing for a living. We live to write as my friend O.G. Tomes reminds me.

Then the awful realisation sets in. Books do not sell themselves. To write for a living means having to sell one’s books. To compete with everyone else who is doing the same thing. The dream starts to fade. The enthusiastic writer rapidly turns into jaded marketeer.

But writers, particularly writers of fiction, are creative. They have ideas. And soon they start to apply that creativity, which they’d hoped to confine to their writing, to their new careers as marketeers.

One of the most powerful marketing techniques is cross-selling. Alliances of different brands, all promoting each other’s products to their different audiences. Cross selling is starting to take off in the independent publishing world. Authors are banding together to promote their book collectively. It’s a powerful strategy for getting noticed. Authors who join alliances are no longer mere twigs in the Amazon rain forest. They’re not big enough to be trees yet, but they are certainly sticks and some of them are becoming branches.

I recently joined the Alliance of Authors, a cross-marketing group set up by Colin Chadwick. As well as our own independent promotional activities, every author features on the Alliance’s website. We fire tweets and posts about each others books into the social ether. We even blog about the Alliance. It’s all about cross-promotion.

Jon Reisfeld has come up with a variation on the Alliance theme. He describes his Indie Author Showcase as a book marketing experiment. Sixty indie authors representing six different genres will head ‘into uncharted waters’ on a book tour- cross promoting each other on book blogger sites, participating in free giveaways, offering free sweepstake prizes.

2011 was the year when independent authors developed their e-book formatting and publishing skills. 2012 will be the year when they mature their marketing talents. The independent book market is still young, and developing rapidly. It’s an exciting time to be an enthusiastic writer- and perhaps a not quite so jaded marketeer.

It seems that ebooks have become the latest creative medium to be hit by digital piracy. According to one report, ebook publishing is being undermined by pirates in the same way that the music industry has been. Books which retail on Amazon and elsewhere for up to $15 are being given away free by bootleggers.

I have to say that as an ebook author and publisher I am not very concerned about this. On the one hand some ebooks cost too much anyway, principally because of an agreement (which is now being investigated by the European Union) between six major publishers. It seems that these publishers are trying to protect their traditional print businesses by making it uneconomical for people to buy digital editions. Well, if that’s what they are really up to, having their books pirated serves them right.

Nor am I too worried about the welfare of the big ebook retailers, principally Amazon and Apple. They’re big enough to take care of themselves, and I’m sure they will.

On the other hand, I could worry about the little guys, the authors, people like me. Writers who publish their own books because they became so hacked off with traditional publishers. Authors whose financial security rests on not being squeezed too hard by the selfsame ebook retailers. It’s tough enough to make a living as an independent writer without some modern day Captain Hook hauling a skull and crossbones up over your work and stealing it from you.

But actually, I’m not worried about the ebook authors either. For two reasons. First, perhaps naively, I believe that most ebook readers respect our independence and integrity and are happy to see us earn money for our hard work. I think the vast majority of readers will prefer to reward  ebook writers than save the very few dollars that most independently published ebooks cost.

Secondly, if independent ebooks are pirated it could be a good thing. Many indies promote themselves by giving their books away. I’m not sure how effective a marketing technique this really is, but having your book pirated should be little different to giving it away yourself. The book is still getting exposure.

Not just that, but seeing one’s book pirated is likely to make a writer angry. Their work has been devalued. And, once a writer gets angry and feels their work is being devalued, they might ask why this is happening. Is it because they have already devalued it themselves by selling it on the open market for 99 cents? That’s what many independent author-publishers sell their books for. But no creative work should be sold for so little. No market should be encouraged to believe it can acquire intellectual property for such a pittance.

By underpricing their work, many indies do themselves a great disservice. They’re better than that, most of them anyway, their books are worth more than 99 cents. Cheap does not equate to value. Cheap suggests crap.

If independent publishers are going to succeed in a market dominated by established entities they have to be organised and commercial. They have to take the fight to the big publishers, by offering products of equal, or better, quality and value.

I don’t believe that selling a book for 99 cents makes any sort of positive statement about either quality or value. I think independents need to regard themselves more highly. When it comes to marketing they need to be driven, or even angry. Maybe being ripped off by ebook pirates will light the fuse to make them angry. Maybe ebook pirates are a blessing in disguise. And that’s why I’m not worried by  them.

The first time I wrote historical fiction I had no idea what I was taking on. Even now, with one historical novel under my belt, and with a second on the way, I am filled with admiration for anyone who can craft a good period narrative. Of all the literary genres historical fiction must be the toughest.

Writing a good novel is always a challenge, indeed it should be. But when I have written contemporary novels I’ve had no problem describing the setting. I know what my characters wear, what they eat, where they live, how they entertain themselves. I’m familiar with their slang, their humour and their daily concerns. It’s all familiar stuff. But it’s not when the characters lived centuries ago.

Writing a history book is a different sort of challenge. A historian wants to put forward a particular view of events. He has to organise his research coherently. If he’s good, and wants his books to sell he has to bring events to life. But he doesn’t go as far as a novelist. His emphasis is on informing his audience. A historical novelist has to inform and entertain.

Of course some periods in history are easier to write about than others. I live in London, if I wanted to write about Tudor England I would have a wealth of information at my disposal. I even had an office once in a Tudor building; I know what they feel like (dark, cramped and a fire risk!) But I wouldn’t find it so easy to write about, for example, 14^th Century Greece.

The Yavneh historical trilogy that I am working on is set in 1^st Century Jerusalem and Rome. The Rome bit isn’t too difficult, there is plenty of literature from the period, we’re familiar with Roman ruins, I have a Roman road not half a mile from my house (though it’s a bit more built up these days.) But setting the Jerusalem scene is much tougher. There’s is only one historical source, a Roman Jew called Josephus, and he’s pretty idiosyncratic about what he writes, I couldn’t rely on him too much.

There are some Jewish sources too, but they tend to be based on oral stories and written down centuries later, so it’s hard to tell whether the descriptions of clothes, food and daily life relate to the first century or to the time they were written down. In fact it’s the Gospels that provide the most information about daily life at the time, but only incidentally, it’s not their primary concern.

But I did find some interesting things. Did you know that ancient Jerusalem was full of pubs? Nor did I, but I found a reference to them somewhere, and to the date beer they served. As for its social divisions, they make today’s political squabbles look like playground affairs. Some people were so poor that a family might only have one outdoor garment between them, whilst the wealthy, those who enjoyed Roman patronage, feasted from golden vessels daily.

There is an inherent danger in writing historical fiction however. That the history gets ahead of the fiction. Generally an author can develop his characters however he wants. But the destiny of historical characters has already been determined. It’s easy to see how this can inhibit an author’s creativity. It’s why, when there is a conflict between the history and the story, historical novelists give precedence to the latter. They are writing historical fiction. Not fictional history.

Writing historical fiction has made me appreciate the genre much more. I know it’s not the most popular of genres, it challenges the reader as well as the writer, and readers don’t always want a challenge. I wasn’t much of a historical novel reader before I started writing historical novels. But I am now.

The Jewish festival of Hanukah, which starts tomorrow night, is only famous because it falls round about the same time as Christmas. In religious terms it’s a minor festival; in 21^st century cultural terms it is possibly the best known of Jewish holidays.

Hanukah celebrates a successful revolt in 165 BC by a bunch of guerrillas led by Judah ‘the Hammer’ against the Greek empire. Judah wrests back control of Jerusalem and rededicates the Jewish temple, which the Greeks had defiled.

That’s the history. About 500 years after the event a Jewish legend emerged that, even though the rebels were only able to find a smidgeon of oil in the temple, the holy lamps miraculously burned for a full eight days, until fresh oil could be procured.

It’s not an original story, Elisha did something similar with oil several centuries before. But it’s a nice story. Because of it Jews everywhere light candles for eight days in the dark of winter, brightening the place up. The legend of the oil turns the sombre commemoration of a military victory into a cheerful occasion. And, since Hannukah roughly coincides with Christmas, Jewish kids can get presents like everyone else. It’s a nice story. But it ain’t history.

In his magnum opus, Jerusalem- The Biography, Simon Sebag Montefiore, turns the miracle into history: “In the ravaged city there was a shortage of oil to light the candelabra in the Temple, but somehow the candles never went out.” Fair enough, it’s a nice story, Jerusalem is popular history not a text book, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of embellishment.

Or is there? What if, a few hundred years from now, a popular historian were to write: “in 21^st century England while people slept in their beds on Christmas Eve, Santa Claus and his reindeer flew from house to house delivering presents.” If we were still around when he wrote it, we’d try to set the record straight, wouldn’t we?

In his preface Montefiore warns us that in the city of Jerusalem “truth is much less important than the myth.” His aim is to write a “history in its broadest sense, for general readers.” And this really sums up the popular historian’s dilemma. How to inform and entertain at the same time, without straying too far from the facts.

It’s not a dilemma that an academic historian has. She assembles facts, as she understands them. She knows that others might disagree with her, or that contradictory evidence might emerge in the future, but that’s OK; for her that’s what history is all about.

A writer of historical fiction doesn’t have the dilemma either. When history and fiction collide, we give precedence to the story we are telling. We are writing historical fiction, not speculative  history.

Not so with popular history. Every fact requires a judgement call. You don’t want to write dry history. You’re not creating a work of fiction. You do want to engage, stimulate and inform your reader. You don’t want to misrepresent. Writing popular history is tough.

Nearly all religious festivals are based on popular history. There is rarely enough archaeological or primary evidence to substantiate the narratives they are built on. But that doesn’t matter. A good festival is one with a unique mix of narrative, emotion and spiritual inspiration. It doesn’t really matter if Santa lights a candelbra on your roof, or the Temple was dedicated with everlasting reindeer. What matter is that however we choose to impart history we do so in a way that engages and informs. Even if sometimes the legends become fact,

Handwriting is in decline. But writing is on the increase. Paradoxical isn’t it?

Think about it. How often do you pick up a pen these days? I bet it’s not as often as before computers came along, (unless you’re too old or too young to remember a time before computers). But you probably write more words each day now than you ever did with a pen or pencil. It’s so much easier with a keyboard, and there’s always another text to write, email to reply to, or online form to fill in.

What’s happening with writing is no different to what happened with photography. How many photos did most people take, before telephones turned into cameras? It used to be that your mugshot graced your parents’ windowsill, your passport and your police file, if you had one. Now it’s all over the internet.

And now look what’s happening with videos. Hundreds of thousands are uploaded onto the internet every day. YouTube, which was a mystery to most of us when it first started, is now part of everyday life. Moving images used to be for the TV and cinema, we planned our viewing and idolised the stars. Now anyone can be in a movie. If the flu virus spread as rapidly as a viral video, we’d all be bed ridden.

It’s a fair bet that the writing bug will become as contagious as imaging. Ebooks are just the start. Amazon may have invested millions in promoting the Kindle so they could corner the market in digital books. But it ain’t going to stop there. We are already doing far more with our e-readers than just downloading books; our newspapers, journals, magazines, even our business reports are all fired out to Kindles, Kobos, Nooks, iPads and Tablets.

All that’s needed now is for the written word to be consolidated onto a website that will be the literary equivalent of YouTube. In many ways it’s already happening; write what you want, hoist it up onto your Facebook page and everyone will be inspired by your words. Create a blog, devote most of your life to promoting it, if you’re lucky a handful of people will glance at it, a couple will read it from beginning to end and someone might even comment on it.

Where’s all this going? Old science fiction movies used to portray telepathy, non-verbal communication, as the medium of the future, a technique that the human race was evolving towards. Right now the opposite looks to be true; verbosity is king.

Of course, there will be gainsayers. The more we write, and the more our writing is disseminated, the more we will hear about ‘literary standards’. There are already those who condemn senders of text messages for their use of non-grammatical constructions and abbreviations. ‘Good books’ are judged by their literary merit. But literary merit is a slippery term, Sebastian Faulks argues that “in the loadsamoney world of cut-price book publishing literary merit is measured in quids and by the yard.”

The reality is that culture has always evolved in unpredictable ways. The mediaeval church forbade translations of the Bible because they feared their authority would be diminished; in fact what little authority they still have is almost certainly attributable to the fact that people can understand the Bible. The prosecution of Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960 was intended to prevent sexually explicit literature; it not only failed but quite possibly had the opposite effect. Society decides, and our cultural norms follow.

Writing is being democratised. It is being taken out of the hands of the guardians of culture (whoever they may be). New vistas are opening up for the written word. It’s an exciting time for people who write, and for people who read.

Independent publishers shouldn’t overlook this week’s announcement that the European Commission is to investigate ebook price fixing by Apple and five major publishers. The implication is that the agreement between the publishers and Apple has forced up the prices of e-books in Europe, leading to higher profits for the publishers and book sellers.

You might think this is good news for independent publishers. After all, if mainstream publishers have hiked their prices, then we have a competitive advantage- we can set much lower prices. But it doesn’t work like that. If ebook prices in Europe are high, there is less incentive for people to buy ebook readers. And if sales of ebook readers are sluggish, then the market for independent publishers is smaller, and we sell less.

So the investigation by the European Commission is important for independents. As is the class action lawsuit launched against Apple and the same five publishers in the Northern District of California earlier this summer. After all, we want as big an ebook market as we can get, worldwide.

A year or so ago the ebook market was in pioneer mode. The big publishers had been slow in getting going, the field was wide open for indies to make their mark. It’s different now. Ebooks are big business, and the established players in the book industry want the market for themselves. Over the coming months indies are going to find themselves being squeezed by the giants. If you’ve ever been squeezed in business, you’ll know what that’s like. If you haven’t, you’re about to find out.

Amazon are getting tough too. Their new KDP Select programme offers indies fees if they make their books available for free to the Kindle Owners Lending Library, plus the opportunity to host free promotions of their books on Amazon. The catch? Amazon get exclusivity on our books for 90 days. We have to take them down from Apple, B&N, Smashwords, everywhere. Except Amazon.

Is the Amazon offer good for indies? I don’t know. It might be. Time will tell. For now, it’s just more evidence that the ebook world is getting tougher. That if we are to survive we need to shape up to it. We need to know what we want, and to articulate it. Writing books is fun. Selling them is business. We need to excel at both.

That’s why the time has come for indies to make our voices heard. We need a conversation amongst ourselves about where we would like to sit in the new digital literary world. Right now there are loads of indy websites and blogs, each with its own audience. We need to start to bring them together, to establish dialogues across cliques, across different interest groups.

We may decide we need a formal organisation, an association of indy publishers. That’s my view. But if so we will need to collaborate well, with proper budgets and technology. Or we may just decide to choose to drift along as we are, enjoying ourselves, with less regard to the business aspect. Or we may decide something else altogether.

Of course most of us just want to write; we see marketing our work as a necessary evil, a consequence of what we do, not why we do it. But many of us have skills that we can bring to bear in making the publishing world a good place for indies to be. And some of us would welcome the opportunity to offer those skills.

So, if you agree with me that indy authors should be talking and collaborating more, let me know. You can comment on this blog or send me an e-mail, to harry@harryfreedmanbooks.com. If enough people respond we can get together and take things forward. If no-one agrees, I’ll find another drum to beat; the world’s not short of things that need fixing.

Please circulate this blog, tweet it, facebook it, do whatever you can to get as many indies as possible involved. Let’s see if we can talk as well as we can write.

Thanks for reading, thanks for listening,

Harry

Something very big is happening that could have a profound impact on world culture, and it’s all due to e-books! I’m not exaggerating (at least, not a lot) but the proliferation of websites dedicated to books, particularly e-books, and the number of visitors they attract is quite phenomenal. And it says something very exciting about peoples’ reading habits.

It’s not just that e-book sales are now nearly 20% of the market, and rising. It’s that ownership of an e-book reader is almost certainly encouraging people to read more. The low cost and instant availability of e-books, the boom in online resources dedicated to them and the convenience of carrying a library in your pocket or handbag; these are all factors that boost the popularity of reading.

OK, I haven’t got a bunch of figures to prove my point. I do know that Kindle Nation Daily boasts 14,000 opt-in email subscribers, that Kindleboards has nearly 52,000 members, that Goodreads has more members than the population of Denmark and that there are more book blogs on the internet than the combined sovereign debt of Southern Europe. I also know that these numbers don’t mean much unless there’s something to compare them with, and I have no idea how fast these sites are growing. If anybody does have hard figures to prove my point, I’d love to hear from you.

But I do know that Kindle sales this Black Friday were four times as much as last, and I’m pretty sure that even if only a small percentage of Kindle owners actually use them, that’ll be an awful lot more people reading books than a few years ago when we had to go into book shops and libraries to get one.

It must be good for the world, mustn’t it, to have more people reading? Not to be able to complain quite so much about the dumbing down of popular culture? We’re not suddenly going to see a world full of bookworms, but there is no reason why books cannot start to be as popular a medium as any other, rather than something which many people avoid because reading requires slightly more concentration.

Of course, the quality of what is read is important, there’ll be little cultural benefit if people use their Kindles just to download copies of the UK tabloid press. But a boom in readers means a boom in writers- and most people who write take pride in their work and want to produce something of value. Of course Kindles aren’t the last word, any more than iPods were. But iPod sales have only declined because something better has replaced them, it’ll be the same with Kindles. E-books are the latest example of how digital is changing our lives, and I think its great!

I know it’s not a new story, but the more it’s told the more the publishing world might take notice. Like so many people I have decided to move away from print to e-books. And although I’m fast becoming an ambassador for digital book technology that’s not why I decided to make the move. I only really saw the merits in digital once I started to seriously look into e-books- which wasn’t so long ago.

So why am I changing? In a word, because of indolence. Not mine, but the publishing industry’s. The agents and publishers who make it so hard, and so financially unrewarding, to get a book published. Unless of course you are an A-list author and there’s a good chance of a screenplay coming out of the book.

I’ve had a couple of print books published so it’s not as if I have always found it impossible to get published. But it is so demotivating, sending out enquiries and manuscripts, one after another, and getting nothing but standard replies back. Most of the time it’s quite clear nobody is reading your work.

Now I know that the publishing industry is in crisis. We are in the middle of a massive economic downturn, which is always a bummer for book sales. And hard copy publishing can’t compete with digital media, either on cost or on the speed of getting books to market. But, and it’s a big but, publishing is not the only industry to face these challenges. Every creative industry does, and others too. But – that word again- traditional book publishers and their symbiotic agents seem to be far better than anyone else at wallowing in their inactivity to rise to the challenge.

When books aren’t selling what sense does it make for an agent to say ‘my list is full’? Really? Well you must be doing pretty well out of your authors in that case, if you are not even prepared to look at new opportunities. And what nonsense for publishers to refuse to accept unsolicited manuscripts. You haven’t got the resources to read them all? Then you shouldn’t be in business. How many shops refuse to look at new lines that are offered to them? How many ideas did Steve Jobs refuse to consider because he was too busy? How many insurance companies refuse to give a quote because they’ve got enough customers?

I’ve been in business all my life. I know a bit about it. Traditional publishing faces challenges but they are not insurmountable. There is only one obstacle in the way of traditional publishers, and that’s indolence. How do I know this? Because the e-book business is booming and there are opportunities galore, for those willing to rise to the challenge.

I’ll use this blog to let you know how I’m getting on with my e-books. As of this week I’ve got one on Amazon (Jerusalem Imperilled), and three more that I hope to format and upload in the next few days. One of the most exciting things I have discovered since I started exploring digital publishing is that it is fuelled by a positive, knowledgeable and engaged community of authors and readers. I am glad to be part of it, I hope I can make a contribution.

Thanks for reading this blog and please let me have have your comments. I promise to respond if I have anything of value to say.