Context: the present, the past and all things related

Right at this moment I am sitting in the living room of my brother and his wife, in a large flat situated in a small north Devon town in the UK; next door is my bedroom, and this is my home for the foreseeable future. There are also two small children in the house, one just at school age the the other a toddler. Now, my experience of small children is severely limited, by a combination of choice and the luck of the draw. I should say, was severely limited. I now know plenty about children, including the unexpected fact that I quite like them. I'm going to drift off subject just a little more before I pull it back in the next paragraph. Another thing I expected to dislike and don't is the X Factor – no one could be more surprised than me: last night Jamie was lost to the program and I was horrified – one of the two best voices and performers on the show gone, and yet the twins remain. I console myself (and I need consoling which to me is the amazing part – I mean, I don't know these people, why should I care?) with the certainty that Jamie has a career ahead of him now, whereas before he did not.

I guess the reason I empathise with Jamie is that we have something in common: he is getting a bit long in the tooth for the industry he is now seriously a part of, having dicked around on the edge of things for decades before coming to light on X Factor. I have been writing for decades and only recently begin to believe it is possible to make a living doing what I am best at. The internet, waning resistance to e-books, increasing sales of Sony e-readers and other methods of downloading novels, the slow decline of the nefarious publishing industry, the creation of smashwords.com ... all these things conspire to make it possible for me to take my products directly to the marketplace and let the market determine my worth. Before this I would spend chunks of my life writing a book, get work while I sent the book out to agents and publishers who invariably responded with comments such as these... “interesting as this looks we have decided it is not for us.” or “I really enjoyed reading X but we feel it is not sufficiently marketable at this time.” or “We regret to inform you that your book failed to make the final cut (after two damn years being considered, I might add).” After a time I would destroy the work, deciding it clearly wasn't good enough, and begin something else and repeat the process. Not very satisfactory. Of course, the future is not written; Jamie could disappear amongst the vast number of singers out there... and I could fail to sell enough books to make it financially viable to continue writing. But I believe Jamie will have a future so bright that he has to wear shades... for myself, I can only hope and work toward a financially viable future.

Marketing is the current bugbear – books are sold by publishers... well, actually they are given to bookstores on a sale-or-return basis... and if you want to buy a book that is where you go. Or to amazon.com and get the books sent through the post. If the publisher decides the book will sell well it prints a larger number of copies and spends some money on advertising. This last is a self-fulfilling prophesy in many ways. This is the standard pattern, or was. It's a pattern that is breaking under the strain created by burgeoning e-book sales. There are now writers who will not be seeking to renew publishing contracts for books in print because their e-book sales are higher. Sales driven by publishers and bookstores putting books on the shelves. Clearly e-books are different – my books are available through smashwords.com at $2 and anyone can go to the site and buy my books. That's the good part. Here's the bad part... how do you know to look? If you don't know it exists, how can you possibly buy it? Here is where Jamie has the advantage over me, the exposure on X Factor has given him a huge boost... people know he exists, will be keeping an eye out for his first works and when he releases a single or album people will remember the name and buy. Somehow I have to make people aware that I exist, that my work exists, that they can go to smashwords.com and read 40% of it for free before they buy. Marketing and advertising are foreign fields for most writers – we go to book signings set up by publishers, we attend conventions, and that's about it. Something has to replace that process – but as yet I have no idea what. Needless to say, I think about it a lot and am doing research into the subject.