Veteran erotic fiction writer Susie Bright has a pleasingly different interview with Melinda Gebbie and Alan Moore about their new erotic fairytale odyssey, Lost Girls. Melinda is an old friend so it makes for a nice personal touch.
It's also worth reading Susie's Publisher Weekly interview about the explosion of erotic fiction and the death of the bookshop:
"Do you know how many times I've walked into a book-signing and the manager greets me with: "Thank god you're here!—the only thing we're selling nowadays are sex and business books."
My heart sinks. It may sound good for "sex authors" at first glance, but it's more like an "end times" mantra. It's the last thing the bookseller says before they close their doors.
We are in a bookshop crisis of mind-boggling proportions. I have a list of every bookstore that I have appeared at or done a special promotion for since 1984.
Do you know how many of those stores have closed since I started my list?
NINETY PERCENT.
Book biz observers understand this, but they don't always draw the line between our business imploding and the slender survival thread of erotica."
Belle De Jour and Girl With A One Track Mind both had bestsellers on their books based on their blogs. Girl is on her 5th printing in the third week of publication I think. Both of them published on plain vanilla Blogger-hosted blogspot accounts. No bells or whistles or technical knowledge required.
They write filth - entertaining, intelligent, literate filth, but filth all the same. So perhaps they can be discounted as anomalies - sex sells and all that.
John Battelle'sThe Search, Chris Anderson's The Long Tail and Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's Naked Conversations are all books that were written chapter by chapter on the authors' blogs to a large degree, with readers offering feedback and critique along the way. Those books wouldn't be half as good or half as successful without the process of talking theories and ideas over with readers.
All three books have become subsequent bestsellers. But perhaps they are only successful because they are in the tech market, and the internet is full of geeks.
Seth Godin has just published Small Is The New Big, a collection of marketing aphorisms - which are taken from his blog. Granted, he's had several bestselling books already so he can get away with it, but the content written on his blog is still good enough to be turned into another bestselling blog.
Nearer to fiction, Mil Millington got a newspaper column and a subsequent book deal out of his proto-blog Things My Girlfriend And I Argue About.
And, of course, let's not forget the bit of buzz around Tom McCarthy's Remainder created by the various Brit Lit blogs which must have helped move at least a few more copies.
Blogs do sell books - it's all still in its infancy, and it's hard work too, but these books show there's a lot of potential for finding an audience. MJ Rose had a moan at publishers in the Holtzbrink group (Holt, St. Martin's, Farrar/Straus, Tor, and Picador) a couple of weeks ago for suggesting their authors set up a blog and that it wouldn't take much time to maintain - she's right, blogging does take time, but I don't think a publisher should be castigated for encouraging their authors to do it. (Admittedly I wouldn't publish a blog on my publisher's site - I'd do it independently so I have complete control over it).
What would be a better idea would be a guide for authors to blogging so they can minimise the pain of getting a blog set up and getting it noticed.
Fiction still remains a hard sell through blogs - through anything - because it remains so intangible. Even when fiction is categorised as "historical", "thriller" etc it's difficult to generate any excitement around that.
But the blog format is also what lends itself to a different style of writing. Belle De Jour and Girl With A One Track Mind and Mil Millington all write in short, sharp, pithy entries - driven by the diary format of the blog perhaps, but also creating a brevity and immediacy that a lot of other writing could use too.
Perhaps more tellingly, the blog format - ie adding to a narrative over time - also lets the writer build an audience of readers. One of the reasons all those books mentioned above have done well is because there were hundreds of people who bought the book as soon as it came out because they read the blog. Finding the audience is the hardest part of writing.
Someone writing a novel with half an eye on serialising it on a blog - like David Wellington's Monster Island, a zombie novel on steroids - will hopefully make an effort towards being concise and letting each chapter work as an advert for the book. I don't think that's compromising the integrity of the book - I think that's a writer pushing themselves to make their writing really tight. (Wellington's site is a masterpiece of presentation too for putting a book online too - clean, clear and readable).
There is, then, a lot more fiction writers can do with blogs to promote their work - and also use blogs themselves to help their writing and find their audience.
David Bishop is writing a history of 2000AD, one of the UK's most influential comics and starting point for the likes of Alan Moore. He's got an excellent blog about the writing of Thrill Power Overload which has just made me lose half an hour reading it. Bastard.
"Everything was carefully inspected [at the airport], including my camera, laptop - and my books.
The first one, a German novel, seemed alright. But the second, Murder in Samarkand, Craig Murray’s account of his time as the UK ambassador to Uzbekistan aroused some suspicion:
“Is that about terrorism?”, asked the lady that examined my onboard luggage. “Humm, well, it contains mentions of that, but it’s about your former ambassador to Uzbekistan and more about diplomacy”, I replied politely. “Does it have al-Qaida in it?” I looked a bit confused. “What?” - “Well, I have to check this with my manager, the rest of your stuff is fine, though.”
The manager then came after a minute or two. “Hello Sir, can you tell me about this book?” “Sure, it is about Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan.” “Where, if I may ask, did you buy this book?” - “Well, it is available at any Waterstones here in Britain. I just bought my copy in the Angel branch yesterday.”
Still, given decisions about who should be considered a terrorist has seemingly been abdicated to Amanda from Bolton with the orange tan, perhaps it's not such a surprise.
This is spectacularly wrong on so many levels: "Mumbai, India (AHN) - A Hitler-themed restaurant that opened last week in India's major financial district is causing an uproar. The restaurant's title - "Hitler's Cross" - refers to the swastika that symbolized the Nazi regime, and the restaurant's interior is decorated in red, white and black - the colors of the Nazi party.
The road leading up to Hitler's Cross is lined with posters, one of which reads "From Small Bites to Mega Joys." An enormous portrait of Hitler is the first thing visitors see when they open the door.
According to the store's owner, Punit Shablok, his establishment is not promoting Hitler.
Shablok tells Reuters, "We wanted to be different. This is one name that will stay in people's minds ... we want to tell people we are different in the way he was different."
Restaurant manager Fatima Kabani says they are planning to open more branches in Mumbai.
"This place is not about wars or crimes, but where people come to relax and enjoy a meal," the manager says.
Jonathan Solomon, chairman of the Indian Jewish Federation, is among the infuriated.
"This signifies a severe lack of awareness of the agony of millions of Jews caused by one man," he says. "We are going to stop this deification of Hitler.""
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<html><head><base href=3D"http://www.spikemagazine.com/splinters/index.php"=
></head><body bgcolor=3D"white" text=3D"black">=20
<a href=3D"http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EMI5K6/125"><img sr=
c=3D"http://ec1.images-amazon.com/images/P/B000EMI5K6.02._SCMZZZZZZZ_V55873=
595_.jpg" align=3D"left" alt=3D"" title=3D"Charles Bukowski - Factotum DVD"=
border=3D"0" hspace=3D"5" vspace=3D"3" /></a><br><br />AP carries <a href=
=3D"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060818/ap_en_mo/film_adapting_bukowski">an=
article about Factotum</a>, the latest adaptation of a Charles Bukowski no=
vel for the big screen. Matt Dillon stars, which will be interesting - I al=
ways thought he pissed his career away after the brilliance of Drugstore Co=
wboy. (Don't even get me started on how much I hated Crash which spent 90 m=
inutes telling us "People can be bad and good - <I>at the same time!</i>". =
Fuck, really?). <br /><br />It'll probably be another noble failure (indee=
d, <a href=3D"http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_en_re/film_review_fact=
otum">AP's film reviewer</a> slates it and the <a href=3D"http://www.amazon=
.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000EMI5K6/125">Factotum DVD is already available</=
a>) - Bukowski's stuff just doesn't translate to the screen precisely becau=
se the screen just makes it literal - here's a drunk guy trying to score wi=
th scarlet women for, er, 90 minutes. The screen destroys the voice of Buko=
wski's work, the narrator talking to the reader, and reduces it to a series=
of events which therefore completely loses what makes Bukowski great. The =
booze and the women are the props that Bukowski's books hang on, but they a=
re not the essence of them. Which is what Steve quotes John Banville talkin=
g about recently. Although Banville wasn't talking about Bukowski, natch. <=
br /><br /><a href=3D"http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0863697658/1=
25">Factotum</a> is one of Bukowski's best books. The first of his I read b=
ecause I couldn't find <a href=3D"http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/=
0863697607/125">Post Office</a>.<br /> <br /><br />--<br><font color=3D"gra=
y" size=3D"2">Posted by Chris to <a href=3D"http://www.spikemagazine.com/sp=
linters/2006/08/new-bukowski-movie-factotum.php">splinters: books, authors,=
literature, travel, politics</a> at 8/21/2006 05:19:57 PM</font></body></h=
tml>
Interesting Guardian article about the still enduring legacy of Bill Hicks , which has been highlighted again by a couple of performances at the Edinburgh Festival. (Chris Hall has, of course, provided the definitive explanation of Bill Hicks here on Spike).
Did anyone ever read that What Would Bill Hicks Say? book? I've never understood why people get so uppity about the fact Hicks would have hated the hero worship, because to my mind it misses the point - which is that there is no one else around asking the same questions as Bill Hicks or pushing for the real Truth with a big capital T to be shown. That is the real value of his legacy, and yes, there will always be people who ape him poorly - that's the trade-off of being talented - but the fact Hicks has become used as shorthand for "What is the truth of this situation?" shouldn't be decried.
Besides, Hicks would have loved the hero worship. He'd have finally got laid.
So then - what book titles should be on the Booker list then, besides Remainder? Has anyone done an alternative Booker list? Or is everything shite? Answers on a postcard...
In Singapore last week. Plaza Singapura, one of the never-ending gleaming malls, had a book sale. Not a cardboard-box-full-of-still-overpriced-crap sale like you normally get in bookshops, but a honest to god 30 foot long trestle table literally heaped with thousands of the buggers. Most of them were going for $3 Singapore Dollars each - that's about a quid a book. Magic.
a href="http://www.spikemagazine.com/0806-michel-houellebecq-atomised-movie-Elementarteilchen.php" target="_top">Michel Houellebecq's Elementarteilchen "...Oskar Roehler's film of Houellebecq's Atomised diverges from the book to produce a distinct and humbling tale on the fragile nature of human love...."
Alexei Sayle - The Weeping Women Hotel "...Sayle has passed the test and managed that rare transition from decent comedian to proper, good, novelist, as opposed to a passable one..."
Pack is now writing a blog called Me And My Big Mouth, on which he's recently revealed the reasons he actually left Waterstone's - because the senior management are cretins, apparently. (Quelle surprise).
Seth Godin is one of my favourite writers. He is a marketer, which should make him the Antichrist, but Seth's writing on his blog is always, always full of interesting ideas, not particularly about shifting product, but about what it is that makes people buy stuff. His writing style is a masterpiece of brevity too, very short and simple - clearly a lot of editing goes on in his brain before he publishes.
Godin has published several best selling books (the last one was All Marketers Are Liars) and today he published a brilliant 19 point list of advice for authors. That's advice as in getting people to read your book, not advice on how to write it.
Being concerned about getting your book published is redundant (you can do it yourself if no one will take you on). Getting your book read is the issue - even if you are published by a major publisher, there is no guarantee they will do anything to promote it. So authors have to be ready to do it themselves. Godin's list is a brilliant crib sheet of where to start.
Sort of. "And it gets better. For those of you troubled by the lingering idea (instilled in youth by parents obsessed with the benefits of "enjoying the sunshine") that a life spent reading is a life half-lived, your worries are over. Not only does sitting with your nose in a book positively influence others' opinion of you, it could actually - get this - lead to sex. A third of those surveyed said that they "would consider flirting with someone based on their choice of literature". It's finally official, people. Reading is hot." So says The Guardian, with lots of reader comments too on the blog.
A while ago, Bobby Henderson published The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, an elaborate satire of Intelligent Design theory which has gained huge popularity across the USA in part due to its promotion on blogs like BoingBoing. It's also invoked a huge amount of anger as well, as you can imagine, and the Hate Mail for the The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster has now been lovingly compiled on a dedicated website. Bigoted, illiterate, violent and incapable of following the thread of their own logic, these responses are masterpieces of crazed, impotent rage - does the Church really want these people calling themselves Christians?
I mentioned this on Free-New-Books.com but I think it's worth repeating here - author Thomas Dowler has been using MySpace to promote a free download of his debut novel Mr Nice Guy. Dowler has got over 1000 people to become friends of his on MySpace by figuring out the sort of demographic that might enjoy his book and then inviting them to view his profile - and download their copy of the novel.
This is essentially the same formula that up and coming bands used to grow their fan base - and, of course, which catapulted the Arctic Monkeys to fame too. Because people specify on their own profiles what they are interested in (usually quite lengthily too), there's hope for even authors of fiction - surely the most difficult sort of book to sell - to find people who might be sympathetically minded towards their work.
Be interesting to search MySpace for "Blanchot"...
"But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis [Armstrong]'s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril."
Music to my ears. (See what I've done there?) [via Reddit]
Trolling around for a deeply dull bit of web design info, I tripped over a forum where one contributor was asking advice on fixing something on his political language blog. I followed the link and discovered it was Steven Poole's deeply impressive Unspeak blog, put together by his own fair hands to promote and extend the arguments in his book also called Unspeak. The site seems to have attracted several intelligent commenters with whom Poole enjoys sparring in his posts' comments - and there's a particularly good page where Poole responds to Unspeak's critics, several of whom wholly failed to grasp the book's argument (stand up, Alistair cocking Campbell).
Unspeak is in my To Read pile on my shelf at the moment, and I'd still like to read his previous history of videogames, Trigger Happy, which I seem to have presented as a present for others on several occasions but never had a copy for myself.
I think I'm most impressed that Poole has simply got on with it and put together a blog that not only showcases his work but lets him correspond to readers - and that readers have genuinely responded to his work and the site by engaging in conversation. It doesn't seem to have disintegrated into "son of a terrorist whore" just yet, but give it time...
I've set up Free New Books over at - surprise! - Free-New-Books.com - it's a site where I'm showcasing recently published books that have been made available in their entireity for free on the Web. There are plenty of great sites around like Project Gutenberg that collect thousands of classic texts in the public domain - I wanted to focus on newish ones, and also to make browsing the books on offer more manageable.
I feel pretty lost when I get to most online free book sites because they have few ways of guiding you through the thousands of books available - they simply give you a search box or an alphabetical list to browse. I want books highlighted to me and pithy summaries of why they're of interest. So that's what I've tried to do with Free New Books. I hope to find a couple of books a week that are worth adding to the site. Spike has a continually updating list on the front page of the latest titles I've added, which I'll add to Splinters too. The RSS feed is at http://feeds.feedburner.com/free-new-books
I'm obviously interested to hear about free new booksfrom anyone else out there - and I'd also strongly advise authors to take the counter-intuitive step of making their books wholly available on the Web for free if they can. If you want to find a readership, giving your book away free is a great way forward - people tend to skim read on the screen, so providing them with the whole text means they can get an idea of whether they want to buy the real book or not. Plus, of course, not many writers to give away their new books for free at the moment, so it also generates some much needed publicity.
A book review I wrote over on Travelhappy: China Inc.: The Relentless Rise of the Next Great Superpower - Ted Fishman's China Inc. offers a breakneck tour of China's economic boom and its huge impact on both the country and the world. The short short review: It's an excellent book.
Sometime in June 1996 the first version of Spike Magazine arrived on the Internet. I'd learned HTML in a weekend thanks to one of Laura Lemay's doorstop books and I didn't actually have access to the Internet myself. I had to go round to my mate Dave's house to upload the files I'd painstakingly built at home in and then put on a floppy disc. Dave was - and still is - my Internet mentor: he encouraged me to put Spike together to hang off the back of his own huge website hedweb.com, dedicated to the brain scramblingly complex research of paradise engineering. Spike still lives on Dave's server to this day - thanks Dave.
When I started Spike, there really wasn't very much else about art and literature and music online from the UK. Steve Kelly had set up the superb Richmond Review several months before, but that was about it. Now we've got a hugely vibrant and eclectic Brit Lit online scene (whether they're blogs or not) - hell, we even have our very own Sinister Overlord of the British Litblogging Scene now. I wouldn't say Spike is in any way a father to them - perhaps more like an older, badly dressed brother with Tourette's Syndrome.
By way of contrast, Slate Magazine just celebrated its 10th anniversary and Salon past its first decade last year - the first Great Hopes of Journalism in the Internet age who burned millions in the quest for profitability but by a miracle are still with us. I mention both those sites because Spike has been compared to both over the years - which always made me wonder what would happen if I'd been let loose with a budget and an editorial staff.
The takeover of a small South American country, probably.
I'm glad I never did try and take Spike "pro" though. When I worked at Future Publishing we did an entire publishing plan for a books magazine - it was going to be like the Q magazine of books, codenamed "The Word" with staggering originality. Steve and Gary Marshall gave me lots of ideas, bless them. We realised that there was a lot of advertising dollars floating around for books, and a glossy magazine would be the perfect vehicle to catch them - but then you get locked into chasing the money and it quickly stops being about books altogether. I was secretly relieved when plans for the mag got shelved.
Much better Spike stays as it always has been - a bloke in his bedroom publishing stuff when he can be bothered, with no one else to answer to but Spike's writers and readers themselves. There's been scores of people who've contributed to Spike over the last 10 years, and it's those contributors who have made Spike what it is. The only criteria for publication is - "Is it interesting?"
In between moving from Brighton to Bath to London to all over Australia and Asia and winding up here in Bangkok over the last 10 years I've managed to keep Spike going, although Steve basically wrote this blog for about three years. My interest has waxed and waned in the site, which has had a life of its own - like Steve Kelly used to say to me, "Everytime I leave the site alone for a couple of months, about twice as many people seem to visit it".
What's continually renewed my enthusiasm is the people I've met through Spike simply squatting on the Web like some bookish toad of judgement - not just the authors and writers I've interviewed, spoken to, or simply read their books, but increasingly the people who write about that stuff - the Ben Grangers, Ismo Santalas, Craig Johnsons and all the other great writers who've shared their love of all sorts of things through Spike. Spike has also acted as a placemarker for me in other people's lives, a way of staying in contact with friends far away, like Steve, Chris Hall and Nick Clapson, three of Spike's original contributors who have suffered the fate of knowing me in real life as well as via email. Spike's even led me to meet other people on the other side of the world, like the incomparable Jayne Margetts. You can't beat that.
I thought, when I started Spike, I had the archetypal "something to say" - I think that something was "I'm great. You should pay me". Now I'm more content to read what other people have to say - the Hive Mind that is the Internet means that I don't need to bother writing an essay about why I think Michel Houellebecq is great because Lee Rourke's done it already. Steve got me into Blanchot, Cioran, Bernhard and Beckett before I left Brighton, then slowly teased out essays about each one for Spike which he's embarrassed about now but are still, without hyperbole, some of the finest writings about Literature with a big fucking L you'll find on the Internet. Chris Hall produced a superb eulogy for Bill Hicks and numerous interviews with J G Ballard and Will Self - (Self takes the prize for most interviewed writer on Spike). The Man Whose Penis Made Him Locally Famous has also continued to thrill bored office workers for the last decade, written by Adam Baron who helped me set up Spike in the very beginning - and who had the story purchased by Penthouse US as a direct result of the editor finding the story on the Web through Spike. They paid him 200 dollars for that. It seemed like a miracle at the time.
The onset of early Alzheimer's prevents me from rolling out any further anecdotes about the last decade of Spike publishing, because, well, I can't remember any. It's been a long, strange trip, as the good Doctor would have said. But I don't see Spike stopping anytime soon. Through the power of sheer bloody-mindedness, there's now over 500 interviews, articles and book reviews on the site, with a couple more added each month. Wikipedia is the main source of Spike's traffic because stuff like Steve's aforementioned essays and Nick's essay on Bruce Chatwin and Ben's interview with Julie Burchill and Craig's interview with Tony Wilson are all - rightly - considered authority pieces: if you want to get the essence of what these people are about, read these articles. Quite why the broadsheets et al aren't falling over themselves to commission Spike's writers is a perennial mystery.
These days, with teh Interwub ubiqitious, the thing I enjoy most about Spike is being sent new articles about all sorts of stuff - books, art, music, travel, anything - that I've never necessarily heard of, but the drive of the writer sparks my own enthusiasm. Ben's Morrissey reviews are a case in point - I can't stand the bequiffed misery guts, but I like reading Ben's love letters to him all the same. There is some fantastic stuff on Spike, and I'd hoped to get a real, proper book anthology together in time for the 10 year mark, but it'll have to wait - maybe in time for next year. Spurred on by the loveliness of 3:AM's Edgier Waters book, I'd like to see Spike collected in a similar way, and let the articles have a new lease of life. It's the best way of saying thankyou to all the people who have written for Spike over the years.
I just remarked to my girlfriend Lindy that Spike is already 10 years of my life. She gave her best cackle and said, "I'll be taking you for a lot more than that, mister." Here's hoping I get to keep both.
If you haven't been keeping up, Will Self has posted a couple of new blogs whilst on his book reading tour in the last few days.
Tim invited me down to the office to use the computer there. He even said no one would mind if I smoked my Hoyo de Monterrey petit robusto. We went down, I logged on to my server and began typing my observations on the woeful progress of John ‘Castrate All Sex Offenders’ Reid at the Home Office. And typed. And typed. And then, after about an hour, hit ‘send’, only to be told by the server that my ‘time had expired’. My copy had, naturally, been consigned to the ether. And no, I hadn’t saved it.
I moaned and spat expletives like a man whose testicles have been shot off in the front line of a bitter and yet strangely useless counter-insurgency operation.
If you're fond of RSS, you can get Will's blogs direct at http://will-self.com/category/wills-blog/feed/
"Women, romance novels and revealing snapshots have always been a cause for public fascination and blogger Qin Dai has incorporated all of these elements on her blog, creating a buzz throughout the online community.
Posting pictures of her naked buttocks and back alongside a copy of her romantic novel, Qin, who claims to be the Chinese Kafka, has brought about some strong reactions from online critics, who either love her, or hate her." [more at Asian Sex Gazette - sort of safe for work if buttocks are allowed]
Proof, if proof be need be, that you can make the Bible justify anything: "The sex act called fisting is a source of confusion and misconceptions for many Christians. This is unfortunate, because it means that many Christian men and women are depriving themselves of what could be the most spiritual sexual experience of their lives. Like anal sex and BDSM, fisting is often mistakenly associated with the gay community or is considered a sex act too extreme to be appropriate for Christian couples. Not only are these views incorrect, but fisting actually has a scriptural precedent, as we will show." More, in all its knuckle clenched glory, here
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