tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-25013188154290565762024-03-13T13:16:00.187-07:00Andrew CroftsAndrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.comBlogger131125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-1504659298687318972019-03-11T11:44:00.002-07:002019-03-11T11:44:33.193-07:00<div class="yiv9934229627MsoNormal" style="background-color: white; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 24px; margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt;">
<b><i>What Lies Around us</i>, a sequel to <i>Secrets of the Italian Gardener</i>, to be published by Red Door in June 2019</b></div>
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Why would one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful billionaires offer a British ghostwriter a million dollars to write the autobiography of one of Hollywood ’s biggest stars?</div>
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Only once he is living and working amongst the world’s richest and most beautiful people does the ghost realise that there is way more than a publishing deal at stake.</div>
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<i>What Lies Around Us</i> takes us to a world where ghostwriters work with presidents, (James Patterson and Bill Clinton writing <i>The President is Missing</i>), and create presidents, (Tony Schwartz who ghosted <i>The Art of the Deal</i> , setting President Trump on the road to becoming the most famous name in the world).</div>
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This is the world of myth-makers, story-tellers and media manipulators – the people who really run the world and the ones who shape the global conversations.</div>
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-73963658581571124412017-10-23T08:10:00.000-07:002017-10-23T08:10:20.451-07:00Why Everyone Should Write a Book – Even if No-One Reads It – Just for the Sheer Joy of Creation.<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
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“Everyone has a book in them” or so
the cliché goes, but in the past the gatekeepers of the publishing world would
throw up their hands in horror at such a sacrilegious, egalitarian thought. Now
their power to select which stories do and which stories don’t ever get into
print has gone; we can all write and publish whatever we want, as long as we
are not worried about things like sales figures or royalty payments. As long as
we undertake the project for sheer enjoyment alone.</div>
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Why would you want to do it? Well,
to start with, it’s fun. Remembering the past in order to write a memoir,
getting something off your chest if you have a topic you feel strongly about,
laying out your expertise if you want to write a how-to book. These are
pleasant things to do.</div>
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If you are writing a memoir or a
family history there is no telling how many people in the family will be
thrilled to read it, or use it as reference for a book of their own, either now
or centuries in the future. All the people who spend happy hours on heritage
sites like Ancestry.com would be delighted if they came across a book by an
ancestor which threw new light on their researches. Most of us have questions
that we wish we had asked our parents or grandparents before it was too late,
and would be thrilled to find the answers between the covers of a book.</div>
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The cost barriers are gone because
now you can publish on-line for free and you can print-on-demand a few copies
for next to nothing. If you want the book to have greater quality, or to be
printed in greater quantities, you can hire experts to help with the writing,
the editing, the cover design and whatever else you require – but none of that
is compulsory if you think you can do it alone and have the time to dedicate to
learning the necessary skills.</div>
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So even if no-one else ever reads
the whole book, you have still had the enjoyment of creating it and the
satisfaction of seeing the task completed. </div>
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But maybe that won’t be the end of
it. It is always foolish to dream of writing a “bestseller” – just as it is
foolish to dream of winning the lottery, but that doesn’t stop millions of
people from buying lottery tickets every day, and getting pleasure from their
dreams of winning a fortune. Once you’ve written the book you can put it in a
drawer and leave it to serendipity as to whether it is ever read, or your can give
copies to friends and relatives who you think might be interested, or you can see
if you can sell some copies or garner some reviews – there’s nothing to lose
apart from the time you put into the project, and everything to possibly gain. </div>
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If you decide to invest money in
editorial, publishing or marketing services then you need to be sure that you
are happy to write that money off should the project fail to produce any sort
of pay-back – but if it has been a pleasure to do, then does that matter?
Someone who loves golf and spends money on the game doesn’t expect to make a
fortune as a professional player, an artist who enjoys painting watercolours at
weekends doesn’t expect to get them shown in top galleries and bought for
millions by collectors. The pleasure lies in the creation of the thing, not the
selling of it. Not that there wouldn’t be pleasure to be had from successfully selling
that thing once created, but that would just be a bonus. </div>
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If the idea of writing a whole book
seems too daunting then start out by talking into a tape machine and
transcribing your words later, or simply think of it as a long letter to a
friend, telling them everything about your story. Once the bulk of the material
exists the editing and development of the material is relatively easy, (and is
another job you can hire people to help with if you have a budget).</div>
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It seems a shame to pass through
life and never leave anything written down for posterity – whether or not
posterity takes any notice, of course, is beyond your control. </div>
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-55381996660501512862015-12-16T04:57:00.000-08:002015-12-16T04:57:08.705-08:00The Ghostwriter as Hero<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
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We live our lives episodically, like
the detectives, doctors and lawyers who are so often used as the narrators,
protagonists or, dare I say it, heroes of fiction and drama. Each episode opens
with the story arriving in the protagonist’s life or with a mysterious email or
phone call from a stranger that leads to an adventure and the unearthing of a
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Detectives then solve their cases,
doctors cure their patients, lawyers win their cases and ghostwriters create
their books.</div>
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That is why two of my novels have
ghostwriters as narrators. Not only do I have the background information on how
the ghostwriting business works, and not only does my profession lead me to a
variety of exotic locations, from palaces to brothels, but it also supplies an
endless stream of interesting characters with interesting stories to tell. </div>
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In <i>Pretty Little Packages</i> (Thistle Publishing), the ghost is informed
by a girl called <st1:place w:st="on">Doris</st1:place> that someone has
“stolen her beautiful breasts”. She asks for his help and he finds himself
plunged into the dark and dangerous worlds of people-trafficking and modern
slavery. Much of the action happens in the <st1:place w:st="on">Far East</st1:place>,
a part of the world where I have worked a great deal as a ghost.</div>
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At the other end of the social
scale from sex slaves are the rich and the powerful, who also
like to write books. Since they are always short of time they also need to
employ ghostwriters to do the actual writing, particularly if English is not
their first language. The global elite, whether they are political leaders,
business leaders or celebrities, live in a world which ordinary people seldom
get to see inside, which puts ghostwriters at a huge advantage. They also live
the sort of lives which produce endless story-lines.</div>
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<i>Secrets
of the Italian Gardener</i> (RedDoor Publishing) is a novella I have written as
a result of those encounters, again using a fictional ghostwriter as the
narrator. In this case he has been hired
to tell the story of a Middle Eastern dictator during the Arab Spring. Trapped
inside the dictator’s besieged palace the ghost, who is harbouring a terrible
secret of his own, forms an unlikely friendship with a wise and seemingly
innocent gardener and unearths more than he expects as the dictatorship
crumbles around him. He discovers that the regime, and indeed the garden
itself, is not all it appears to be and he discovers the shocking truth of who
really holds the power and wealth in the world.</div>
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Like detectives, lawyers and
doctors, ghostwriters are the holders of other people’s secrets, the raw
material of all fiction and drama.</div>
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-47486887965865623462015-03-04T06:25:00.000-08:002015-03-04T06:25:11.769-08:00A Day in a Ghostwriter's Life<div class="MsoNormal">
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Some days there might be an
invitation to fly to a private island on a private jet, or to spend a night
lurking in the shadows of a back street brothel with a girl forced into sexual
slavery. Most days, however, ghostwriters are like every other sort of writer, bashing
away at our keyboards for hours on end. So, let’s pick one of the more
interesting days.</div>
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Their enquiry had stood out from the usual half dozen that
arrive on my screen each day. James emailed that he and his girlfriend, Penny,
lived in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region>
and were looking for a ghostwriter to tell their love story. He warned that it
would contain sexual elements that many would find shocking, but that there
would also be many lessons to be learnt from it. He told me they would be in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city>
the following weekend and would be staying at the <st1:place w:st="on">Dorchester</st1:place>
in <st1:street w:st="on">Park Lane</st1:street>.
Since I was going to be in Mayfair that Sunday anyway, interviewing an African
President whose memoir I was ghosting, I suggested I pop into the <st1:place w:st="on">Dorchester</st1:place> once I was finished.<span lang="FR"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The
President, an easily distracted man of almost infinite good humour, had to break
off from our meeting to deal with a crisis and I found myself free in the
middle of the day. James invited me to join them for lunch at Zuma’s, a famous
Japanese restaurant in Knightsbridge. Even if nothing came of the book it would
be an interesting lunch and would pass the time until the President was free to
resume talking.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The
couple waiting at the restaurant were extremely good looking, reserved and
charming at the same time, intent on making me feel comfortable in their
company despite being completely wrapped up in their adoration of one another
and being about to share some amazingly personal details about their lives. One
chilled bottle of wine followed another as they shyly revealed their tale of
true love. <o:p></o:p></div>
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They
had met as teenagers and, like Romeo and Juliet, were forced apart by family
pressures. Unlike Shakespeare’s star-crossed lovers, however, these two had
been given a second chance, which they had turned into something magical and deeply
erotic. By the time the espressos came I was hooked and had agreed to fly out
to <st1:country-region w:st="on">Switzerland</st1:country-region>
the following weekend so that I could start the process of “becoming Penny” in
print.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I
was so in thrall to their story I only realised the whole afternoon had sped by
when my phone buzzed to tell me that the President was now ready to talk again
over dinner. Grabbing a cab back to <st1:place w:st="on">Mayfair</st1:place> I
set the tape recorder going once more and realigned my brain, submerging myself
inside the head of a man clinging to power in a dark and dangerous world, many
miles from the hushed luxury of the room we were going to be spending the
evening in. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-39884132965157206682015-02-12T03:41:00.000-08:002015-02-12T03:41:02.227-08:00"Pretty Little Packages" from Thistle Publishing<div style="line-height: 150%;">
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Fifteen
years ago I was ghostwriting books for the most disenfranchised members of the
global community; victims of enforced marriages, sex workers, orphans, victims
of crimes, bonded labourers and abused children. Out of those experiences I
wrote a novel, (initially entitled “Maisie’s Amazing Maids”, and now
re-launched by Thistle Publishing as a sumptuous paperback and e-book entitled
“Pretty Little Packages”).<o:p></o:p></div>
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Thistle
is an enormously successful imprint set up by <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> agents Andrew Lownie and David
Haviland to keep books alive and available when the more traditional publishing
organisations are no longer willing or able to do so. While there have been
some grumblings in the industry about the possible ethical problems of agents
acting as publishers, and the Society of Authors recommends careful scrutiny of
the contracts, Thistle has shown exactly how an agent/publisher can fill this
gaping hole in the market, providing another potential stream of revenue for
authors. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Electronic
developments mean that publishers like Thistle can operate with minimal capital
outlay, able to be nimble and responsive to the demands of both authors and readers
in ways that are impossible for organisations that have invested in vast,
glass, riverside tower blocks and mighty wage bills.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Until
a book or author becomes a phenomenon, (step forward J.K. Rowling, E.L. James,
Patterson, Donaldson, Walliams, Paddington et al), we authors are really more
suited to the cottage industry style of production and marketing than the
corporate. A book that can provide a good living to an individual author and an
individual agent/publisher is often hard pushed to make any significant
contribution to the bottom line of one of the mighty glass tower corporations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Joe
Tye, the ghostwriter protagonist at the heart of Pretty Little Packages, is
definitely working at the “cottage industry” end of the business when he is
approached by a girl called <st1:place w:st="on">Doris</st1:place>, who informs
him that someone has “stolen her beautiful new breasts” and asks for his help.
Responding to her plea plunges him into the dark and dangerous worlds of people
trafficking and modern slavery – his discoveries making the glass tower
publishers suddenly eager to open their cheque books to him.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div style="line-height: 150%;">
At
the same time as dealing with the amorous advances of the sixteen year-old
daughter of a gangster, who also happens to be his client, and navigating his
way through drug dens and backstreet clinics from Brighton to Manila, Joe is
trying to be a responsible, newly divorced father to a young son who constantly
does the unexpected – and then things turn really ugly.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
At
the heart of everything sits Maisie, and her network of “Amazing Maids” – all
called Doris and all having their breasts stolen. But behind Maisie lie much
more powerful and sinister forces. People for whom other people’s lives are
entirely expendable. People who do not want Joe telling stories. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Back
in the real world; the more publishing companies there are like Thistle the
more chance that stories will be told which the denizens of the glass tower
blocks would otherwise allow to disappear – stories like Pretty Little Packages.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-41376151261904061532015-02-02T07:32:00.000-08:002015-02-02T07:32:24.302-08:00The Greatest F***ing Love Story<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
“How
about ‘The Greatest F***ing Love Story?” the publisher suggested as we brainstormed
possible titles for an erotic love story that I had ghostwritten for an
anonymous European lady, hereafter known simply as “Penny”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The
book had worked out well and one of the biggest agents in <st1:city w:st="on">London</st1:city> had agreed to take it round the
publishers for us. The reactions were dramatic. Some were shocked by the
contents and thought it too strong for the general trade market, others were
worried that the general public wouldn’t like the fact that it was non-fiction
rather than fiction, (they were all at that stage scrambling over one another
to find the “next 50 Shades of Grey”). We received some offers but they didn’t
seem to reflect the value which we believed the book could have. The advances
on offer weren’t dramatic enough to distract us from the paltry percentages we
would earn in royalties.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
Penny
and James, (her lover), decided we should take control of the project ourselves
by working with the new and dynamic selective partnership publisher, Red Door,
which is the baby of Clare Christian, an editor whose previous venture was The
Friday Project, (now part of HarperCollins). We also felt we needed to address
the “discoverability” side of the challenge right from the beginning. To that
end we hired Midas, probably the country’s best known publishing PR and
marketing consultancy, and they worked with Clare on the design and packaging
of the book right from the start. We now had all the elements of a traditional
publisher in place, but without the overheads of a huge Thames-side building
and everything that is required to support such an edifice.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
The
marketing gurus within Midas liked the idea of “The Greatest F***ing Love Story”
as well – it did after all sum the story up at several levels – but were
fearful that, even with the asterisks, it would frighten off too many of the
potential retailers. More titles were bandied around until we settled on
“Chances”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
With the book due to be published in February the mighty
Midas marketing machine fired into action as soon as Christmas was out of the
way and I found myself writing articles and doing a succession of interviews to
promote the book, culminating in an encounter with Claudia Winkleman on her late
night Radio2 Arts Show.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Whenever I mentioned to anyone that
I was going to be meeting Miss Winkleman I always received the same response -
“Oh, I love Claudia Winkleman”. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It didn’t seem to matter what age
or gender the person was, or whether or not they were likely to be fans of
reality shows like “Strictly” or cultural offerings like “Film Night”, her
puppyish glamour had somehow worked on all of them. It appears the woman is
fast-tracking towards being a national treasure. What, I wondered, could be the
secret of this magical spell she was casting over the nation?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Listening to so many paeans of adoration
rang alarm bells. How could the reality possibly live up to this awesome
reputation? Was I going to have to report back to all these devoted admirers
that in reality the woman was a monstrous confection of insincerity and vanity,
propped up by armies of sycophants and hangers on? Could she possibly live up
to everyone’s heady expectations?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
I have to report that fifteen
minutes in a studio with Miss Winkleman is like being enveloped in a
particularly cosy nuclear explosion, flattened by a steamroller of charm and
wit so overwhelming that you barely notice the pain when she skewers you with
an unexpected stab of journalistic enquiry. She opened by caressing the book
lovingly, purring with pleasure at the production job Red Door had done on it,
and continued in much the same vein from then on. All in all it was the most
exhilarating and enjoyable quarter of an hour I can remember ever spending with
a total stranger. I felt like we had been friends for ever and that, I suspect,
is the secret of Miss Winkleman’s magic. </div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<i>Chances</i> is the true story of the most
erotic of love affairs, of the most intense and rewarding relationship possible
between a man and woman – a relationship that blossomed out of heartbreak.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
“What”
the cover asks “if your first love was your soulmate and perfect sexual partner
but you made the mistake of letting them go? What if you were reunited with
that first love after fifteen years of unhappiness and you were then able to
fulfil every romantic and erotic dream you had ever had?” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oCwo_g0gDfk/VM-Xrsnc5ZI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/12MVQZ1IedE/s1600/Chances_final_front%2B(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-oCwo_g0gDfk/VM-Xrsnc5ZI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/12MVQZ1IedE/s1600/Chances_final_front%2B(1).JPG" height="320" width="211" /></a></div>
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-5750536009138146912014-03-17T11:20:00.000-07:002014-03-17T11:20:03.395-07:00The Future of the Book is AuthorsThe Spring issue of <i>The Author</i>, the invaluable house journal
of The Society of Authors, is out and the opening article – “The future of the
book is you” – is by Dan Franklin, Digital Publisher at the Random House Group.
<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
Being unquestionably
one of the leading thinkers in digital publishing, <st1:city w:st="on">Franklin</st1:city> admits that he occasionally gets
asked to comment on “the future of the book”.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
“The answer is simple,”
he says, “The future of the book is authors. Or rather, the future of the book
is whatever authors want it to be: ‘the writer leads, (s)he doesn’t follow'.”<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
He ends the article
concluding that he sees a space continuing to open up in which publishers can
play “an important part”, although he doesn't know exactly what it will be.<o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
He puts a key question
to authors. “Where do you want to go, and what experiences do you want to
create? And,” he continues, “can I come with you, to help you get there?”<br />
<br />
Is that the politest
and most respectful request any publisher has ever proffered to the writing
profession? I would certainly like to hear if anyone has heard
anything more heartwarming. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<br />Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-35276704226896431252014-03-05T07:10:00.000-08:002014-03-05T07:10:01.842-08:00How Much Should Writers Worry About Sharing Credits?<div class="MsoNormal">
The media rumour mill has it that director,
Steve McQueen, and screenwriter, John Ridley, have fallen out over credits
regarding their Oscar-winning movie, “12 Years a Slave”.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If that is true it’s a
shame that something which should be a monumental life achievement for them
both has been tarnished by what could appear to many as egotistical petty-mindedness.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a ghostwriter the twin subjects of professional credit and extreme ego-management
are of particular interest to me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Harry Truman is believed to have
said “You can accomplish anything in life provided you don’t mind who gets the
credit”. <o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-6791092818047737982014-03-03T04:29:00.001-08:002014-03-03T04:35:02.611-08:00Why Most Writers End Up Starving<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In <i>The Observer</i> this weekend Robert McCrum wrote
a fascinating piece entitled “From Bestseller to Bust: is this the end of an
author’s life?”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Partly
it is fascinating because nothing much really seems to have changed. To be financially
successful as a freelancer you need to be entrepreneurial and most creative
people are not. The exceptions, from Dickens to Archer, Rowling to Blyton, are
blindingly obvious.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most
writers, like most designers and most musicians, need someone else to take care
of business for them. Sometimes that person will be an agent, sometimes a
traditional publisher, sometimes a lawyer. It might even be Amazon or a
freelance publicist.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Finding
the right person and being able to make it worth their while to put in the
necessary hours on your behalf, has often been a matter of serendipity. If
Rupert Thomson, one of the authors that McCrum cites as falling upon hard
times, had had a business partner they would probably have advised him not to
hire himself a work space in South London, for instance – rule number one for
any freelancer must be to keep the regular outgoings down because you are never
going to have regular in-comings.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Yet
again, however, we are left at the end of the article not really knowing what
figures we are talking about. I wanted to know exactly how
much these writers have made each year of their careers. Would it be comparable
to the lifetime earnings of a nurse or a doctor? A teaching assistant or a
headmistress? These sorts of figures are particularly instructive when you have
authors who have been working for a long time, so that blips like occasional large
advances or arbitrarily cancelled projects can be ironed out. If we knew those
figures we could judge better whether the rewards or the sacrifices of a writer’s
life might be deemed worthwhile. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-22422835151765499852014-02-28T09:33:00.000-08:002014-02-28T09:33:05.415-08:00Our Never-Ending Fascination with the Rise and Fall of Tyrants<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
The world – or at least the world’s
media – are now transfixed by the hunt for Viktor Yanukovych, newly deposed
President of the <st1:country-region w:st="on">Ukraine</st1:country-region>,
and with exposing the extent of his corruption and extravagance while in power.
The rises and falls of tyrants and autocrats always make fascinating and satisfying
storylines. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
I confess that the first, (and
sometimes only), criterion that I apply when deciding whether I want to take a
ghostwriting assignment is whether I find the author and the story
“interesting”. The most “interesting” people, however, are not always the ones
you would trust to care for your children, your grandmother or even your
favourite puppy. To me, “interesting”
still means people the like of which I have not come across before, or people
who have lived lives that I do not yet know anything about.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
Had a charismatic young German
leader contacted me in the nineteen thirties and asked me to help with a book
he was planning, tentatively entitled “Mein Kampf”, I might well have skipped
over as naively as a Mitford sister to see what the fuss was all about. Lord
knows how long it would have been before the penny dropped and I realised the
full horror of what this strange little man was actually talking about and I
would then have ended up as deep in the soup as the unfortunate P.G. Wodehouse.
I might have been equally tempted by a ticket to <st1:place w:st="on">China</st1:place> to volunteer to help young
Chairman Mao knock his thoughts into shape for the infamous Little Red Book.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
When I first travelled to Haiti Baby
Doc would be ensconced in the white folly of a presidential palace for only a
few more years before he was overthrown and fled into exile on the French
Riviera. The palace now lies in ruins, as uninhabitable as the rest of the city
around it, but then it still gleamed like a heavily guarded wedding cake amidst
the squalor as I stood outside the gates staring in, trying to imagine the
domestic life of the tyrant and his family, wondering how they managed to
justify their actions to themselves and to one another. It was a curiosity
which would later tempt me to accept invitations to the palaces of a variety of
other rulers, wanting to see what made them different, wanting to understand
how they had found themselves in such extreme situations, able to exert their
will over whole populations. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
I was invited to take tea with Mrs Mubarak at her husband’s
palace in Cairo, just before the Arab Spring broke through and brought hope to
a city darkened by storm clouds of popular resentment. Inside the palace Mrs
Mubarak, who is half Welsh half Egyptian, was a gracious hostess. White coated
waiters dispensed cakes, which she assured me were home made. The tranquillity
inside the gilded salon was reminiscent of our own Queen’s garden tea parties –
where they also provide excellent cakes – completely insulated from the boiling
stew of hatred festering in the hot, overpopulated streets outside the heavily
guarded walls.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
It was that contrast, which I had experienced in similar
palaces all over the world, that started me writing “Secrets of the Italian
Gardener”. The initially peaceful revolutions that erupted at the beginning of
2011 seemed to promise something wonderful for the world, but it proved to be
as brief a moment of optimism as the hippy “Summer of love” in 1969. Now <st1:place w:st="on">Egypt</st1:place>
is plunging back into the familiar cycle of violence and hatred and it is like
nothing has changed, except that someone new is no doubt now taking tea in Mrs
Mubarak’s elegant palace quarters.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
When my
agent at United Agents first read “Secrets of the Italian Gardener” he told me
it was, “a contemporary re-casting of Ecclesiastes,
a story about the vanity associated with the desire for power and possessions
and ultimately about the cycle of birth, growth, death and re-birth".<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;">
As we see yet more rulers being
dragged from power and more corpses piling up in the streets we remain riveted by
the endless cycle of ambition and hubris.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%;">
<i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-59505256903690006122014-02-27T11:13:00.000-08:002014-02-27T11:13:00.213-08:00Exactly How Much Does a Self-Published Book Earn?<div class="MsoNormal">
Why is everyone so secretive about how much they are truly earning from their books?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br />
I believe it would be helpful for the many thousands of authors venturing into self-publishing if those who have gone before would be a little more open and transparent about how much they are actually earning for their efforts.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Authors are traditionally evasive about their earnings, either out of modesty or embarrassment, so it is almost impossible for a newcomer to get a true idea of what rewards are likely to lie in store.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, in the hope of encouraging others towards greater transparency, here are some actual figures for my novella, “Secrets of the Italian Gardener”, which went up on Amazon about six months ago as part of their “White Glove Service”, in conjunction with United Agents, one of the biggest and most successful literary agencies in London.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After a month or so the money started to dribble in at about £50 a month, but much of that was from purchases which I had made of POD copies that I could hand out for promotional purposes.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The reviews started to build up, (on Amazon there are now eighteen with five stars, four with four stars, two with three stars and one with one star), on various blogs, writers’ websites and a variety of news sites. That meant that anyone coming across the book could feel pretty confident that they would not be wasting their money, but the problem still remained of how to alert people to book’s existence in the first place – (the all-encompassing problem of “discoverability” which dogs ninety nine per cent of books ever published).<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once they could see the reviews building, Amazon included the book in a promotion which instantly raised it from around 150,000 on Kindle’s charts to being in the top thousand and number one in their “political books” and "political thrillers" categories. Most of the sales were in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">UK</st1:country-region>, but some also came from the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region w:st="on">Germany</st1:country-region>, (even though it has not yet been translated).<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So, the actual money coming from Amazon in February has been just over £850, from which United Agents deduct their well-earned fifteen percent. Since the costs of the cover design and the initial purchase of copies was covered with the earnings from the previous few months, this is now clear profit.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If the book was a plant I would say it is now firmly bedded in and starting to spread its roots. Once the sun warms the ground it should be able to thrive and blossom with time and continued tender care.<br />
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-29616531719461830342013-12-19T06:14:00.000-08:002013-12-19T06:14:15.407-08:00The Mighty Power of the Digital Promoters
All authors have now got the message that they need to “create a platform” for themselves. We understand that the bulk of the marketing burden for any book will lie on our shoulders until we are a big enough brand for the publishers to be able to justify on-going advertising or public relations budgets for us.
<p>
No one is ever going to give us or our careers as much thought and attention as we are - why would they? - so no one who wants to earn a living from their writing can hope to escape the responsibility of being their own marketing department on a day-to-day, year-on-year basis.
<p>
Having said that, when the big boys do wade in with some promotional help the power of their clout can be stunning.
<p>
This month Amazon put the price of “Secrets of the Italian Gardener” down to .99p in a promotion negotiated through their White Glove Service and the book went straight to number one on Kindle’s political books list. Whenever Wattpad puts “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride” or “The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer” on their “featured” pages, the number of hits soars from hundreds to thousands per day.
<p>
The only individual authors who could hope to rival this sort of promotional power would be celebrities with millions of followers on Twitter, or people, like J.K. Rowling and E.L. James, who manage to become front page news stories.
<p>
Authors once longed for their books to be picked as Book of the Week on BBC Radio 4 or to be selected by their publisher for window displays in Waterstones, but the potential power of the great digital promoters now bestriding the globe makes such efforts seem quaintly parochial.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pcIYi7H1Q3s/UGmn99rp6QI/AAAAAAAAAQA/Ha49YIDvNUk/s1600/italian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pcIYi7H1Q3s/UGmn99rp6QI/AAAAAAAAAQA/Ha49YIDvNUk/s320/italian.jpg" /></a></div>
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-460236329428770552013-12-02T09:10:00.000-08:002013-12-02T09:10:03.752-08:00Daisy White and the Ultimate Empowerment of Authors
Whenever authors get together we can be heard complaining about those who we work alongside. We complain that our agents never return our calls; our publishers never promote our books and the booksellers then refuse to display them with the prominence they deserve.
<p>
Digital publishing has called our bluff on the first two because we can now publish and promote our own stuff, so we have no one to blame but ourselves if things don’t go as well as they did in our dreams.
<p>
Now a young author called Daisy White has gone one step further and is running pop-up bookshops, not just to sell her own books but also those of other participating authors. Any author who thought they could do better than Waterstones now has a chance to put their money where their mouth is and back Daisy White’s “Booktique”.
<p>
This Christmas Daisy can be found in Tunsgate Square Shopping Centre in Guildford, nestling up amongst blue-chip names like Barbour and Heals. She will be there until January 12th.
<p>
If authors can be their own agents and their own publishers and their own booksellers we will never be able to complain about anything ever again – apart from the readers of course, and no author ever complains about their readers, only the lack of them.
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-64328302732234012112013-08-29T02:11:00.000-07:002013-08-29T02:11:13.678-07:00Home Baking While Cities BurnI was invited to take tea with Mrs Mubarak at her husband’s palace in Cairo, just before the Arab Spring broke through and brought hope to a city darkened by storm clouds of popular resentment.
Inside the palace Mrs Mubarak, who is half Welsh half Egyptian, was a gracious hostess. White coated waiters dispensed cakes, which she assured me were home-made. The tranquillity inside the gilded salon was reminiscent of our own Queen’s garden tea parties – where they also provide excellent cakes – completely insulated from the boiling stew of hatred festering in the hot, overpopulated streets outside the heavily guarded walls.
It was that contrast, which I had experienced in similar palaces all over the world, that made me start writing “Secrets of the Italian Gardener”. The initially peaceful revolutions that erupted at the beginning of 2011 seemed to promise something wonderful for the world, but it proved to be as brief a moment of optimism as the hippy “Summer of love” in 1969. Now Egypt is plunging back into the familiar cycle of violence and hatred and it is like nothing has changed, except that someone new is no doubt now taking tea in Mrs Mubarak’s elegant palace quarters.
“Secrets of the Italian Gardener” is now up on Amazon and Kindle. When he first read it my agent told me it was, “a contemporary re-casting of Ecclesiastes, a story about the vanity associated with the desire for power and possessions and ultimately about the cycle of birth, growth, death and re-birth".
As we see another President dragged from power and more corpses piling up in the streets it does seem we are indeed all trapped in an endless cycle.
Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-10930474587414754212013-06-28T04:46:00.000-07:002013-06-28T04:46:21.926-07:00Agents Claim E-Book SuccessThe lead story by Benedicte Page in this week's <em>Bookseller </em>is headlined "Agents Claim E-Book success", and many of the starriest names in agenting have been quoted.<br />
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"It's quite lucrative" Andrew Lownie admits. Johnny Geller at Curtis Brown says they are "looking into doing a further range of titles", Ed Victor claims he is "very happy" with the performance of in-house e-books.<br />
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With a book just appearing through the White Glove Service, with the help of the good folk of United Agents, I can only feel optimistic.<br />
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http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Italian-Gardener-ebook/dp/B00DC4Y4IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371028839&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+of+the+italian+gardener<br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-55209139357772303942013-06-12T03:57:00.000-07:002013-06-12T04:01:48.515-07:00Secret “White Glove” deals between Amazon and the Literary Agents. <br />
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It is my belief that almost all the innovations that Amazon has brought-to/forced-on the publishing and bookselling industries over the last couple of decades have eventually worked to the advantage of authors and readers.<br />
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I am quite sure if I were a publisher or a bookseller I would feel very differently about the rise of Amazon to virtual world dominance, but I’m not. As both an author and a reader I love the many ways in which they have enriched my life.<br />
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There have been rumblings recently of “mysterious and secret” deals being done between Amazon and some of the biggest and brightest literary agents. They are calling it their “White Glove” service, and from the point of view of authors whose agents love their books but are unable to persuade traditional publishers to take them on, it’s a brilliant innovation.<br />
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Last year I wrote a novel, <em>Secrets of the Italian Gardener</em>, set inside the palace of a dictator about to be overthrown in the Arab Spring. The narrator is a ghostwriter who, while inside the palace writing a book for the dictator, meets a wise, elderly Italian gardener who gradually unravels the story of who really holds the power and wealth in the world. He literally discovers "where the bodies are buried". As the rebels draw closer to breaching the palace walls the ghost is also struggling with his own breaking heart. I have spent much of my ghostwriting career amongst the dictators, politicians, arms dealers and billionaires who hold the reins of power and control the wealth of the world, passing time in their lavish palaces and heavily guarded compounds in the wildest parts of Africa, Asia and the Middle East as well as in tax havens like Monaco, Geneva, Bermuda and the Caribbean.<br />
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I sent the manuscript to one of the biggest and best agents in London, who I have known for many years, and he came back brimming with enthusiasm. He wanted no re-writes and he was sure he could get a sale. He told me the book was a "contemporary re-casting of Ecclesiastes” and was about “the vanity associated with the desire for power and possessions and ultimately about the cycle of birth, growth, death and re-birth" - which was a surprise, but by no means an unpleasant one. <br />
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Six months later he had to admit that he had failed to convince any publishers to come into business with us on this one. In the old days that would have been the end of the story. Simple self-publishing was now one option, of course, but with Amazon’s “White Glove” service we had another, and to my mind far preferable, alternative.<br />
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Highly skilled staff at the agency proceeded to do a totally professional copy-edit and then did all the heavy lifting with getting the book up onto Amazon, ready for print-on-demand as well as electronic publication. It has become a team effort rather than a lone author’s voice in the crowd and should the book start to “gain traction” in the market place the agency is already fully engaged and ready to handle the business side of taking it to the next level.<br />
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The book is now available at <span style="color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: 'Times New Roman'; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Italian-Gardener-ebook/dp/B00DC4Y4IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371028839&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+of+the+italian+gardener" title="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Italian-Gardener-ebook/dp/B00DC4Y4IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371028839&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+of+the+italian+gardener"><span style="color: purple;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Italian-Gardener-ebook/dp/B00DC4Y4IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371028839&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+of+the+italian+gardener">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Secrets-Italian-Gardener-ebook/dp/B00DC4Y4IA/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1371028839&sr=8-1&keywords=secrets+of+the+italian+gardener</a></span></a></span><br />
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So, bravo Amazon for inventing yet another route to market for authors.<br />
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<br />Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-31899561784427370872013-03-18T16:11:00.000-07:002013-03-18T16:11:46.429-07:00A Publishing Fairy Tale<br />
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In the beginning there were only storytellers and those who made up their audiences. Then the storytellers learned to write and the audiences learned to read.<br />
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Next came the middlemen offering bags of gold and countless ideas on how to bring these two sets of people together more effectively. Some offered to print the words, design covers and transport the results to the audiences. Others offered to open shops where the stories could be displayed and promised they would be able to ensure that the stories were talked about and praised by all the right people. <br />
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Then they offered the possibilities of displaying the most favoured stories on stages and screens, building cinemas and theatres for the audiences to come to and inventing radios and televisions which would carry the stories into people’s homes.<br />
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All these services that the middlemen were offering were so useful to the storytellers and their audiences that both became lazy, willing to allow the middlemen to do all the hard work, leaving themselves free to do the things they liked the best – writing and performing, reading and listening. <br />
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The middlemen grew more and more powerful and soon the storytellers were more worried about pleasing them than they were about pleasing their audiences. The business people became the ones who decided what stories would and would not be told. <br />
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The storytellers spent all their energies trying to impress the middlemen and trying to persuade them to help. Those who failed to do so grew despondent and bitter. Then, when the middlemen became too busy to read everything that was sent to them, the storytellers had to turn their attention to pleasing the agents who sprang up to serve the publishers. <br />
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And so it had come to pass that it was now the poor storytellers who were offering their services to the middlemen rather than the other way round, and the audiences could only gain access to the stories that had been blessed by the middlemen.<br />
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A lot of people were able to make a lot of money of course, because that is what the middlemen are particularly good at, but this was not the way that things were meant to be when the storytellers first started and they began to feel ill at ease.<br />
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Then one day, with a dazzling flash of light, the internet galloped into everyone’s lives on a white charger and suddenly the middlemen with all their bags of gold didn’t seem so important. Their services did not seem quite as useful because the storytellers found that with a little more effort they could go straight to their audiences again, using a service which seemed to be almost as free and open as the country roads they had strolled along from town to town before the middlemen first arrived. Self-publishing, which had been damned as mere vanity during the reign of the middlemen, suddenly seemed a perfectly reasonable way to lay your goods out for the public to view.<br />
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As with books, the same thing seemed to happen in television. Storytellers no longer had to have the approval of any commissioning middlemen if they wanted to make a programme, they just needed a camera.<br />
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Which brings me to the point of my story, which is to draw the world’s attention to a website called <a href="http://thisisdrama.com/">http://ThisisDrama.com</a> , which has dramatised my book “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride” into five minute segments for YouTube. The production values are as high as any to be seen on broadcast television and the authenticity of everyone involved is glaringly obvious to anyone who comes across the material on-line. Maybe this finally is “The Age of Aquarius” that we were all dreaming about in the sixties.<br />
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Those middlemen will always be there, of course, offering the gold pieces needed to keep the storytellers alive while they seek out their audiences. Undoubtedly they will come up with new ideas on how to help with the distribution and promotion of stories, but hopefully this time the storytellers will remember that it is the middlemen who have to sell their services to them and not the other way round.<br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-74503116610359949542013-03-17T07:24:00.001-07:002013-03-17T07:24:27.823-07:00Episode One of "Steffi" is Out There<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-38011911284520310752013-03-12T08:37:00.003-07:002013-03-12T08:37:52.788-07:00Behind the Scenes on Steffi McBride<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-84319105712457837822013-03-12T05:20:00.000-07:002013-03-12T05:20:06.072-07:00Steffi McBride Trailer On YouTube's Thisisdrama <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-77363924309287101272013-02-05T07:23:00.000-08:002013-02-05T07:23:39.806-08:00A Faff About PlathFaber design an eye-catching cover for a new edition of Sylvia Plath’s <em>Bell Jar</em> and the grumbles start to rise. Literary folk who are just as likely to be complaining that their publishers are “useless as marketing” raise their hands in horror, suggesting that the Philistines have now made La Plath look like a purveyor of “Chicklit”.<br />
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At the same time Wattpad.com, a true purveyor of writing to and amongst the world’s masses, proudly prepares to launch its own “Chicklit” genre on February 11th, (<a href="http://www.welovechicklit.com/" title="http://www.welovechicklit.com/">www.WeLoveChickLit.com</a>), spearheaded by the fabulous Marian Keyes, a woman who has never shrunk from any label which will help her to talk to wider audiences. (23 million books sold so far and constantly rising).<br />
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Naomi Wolf, when asked her opinion of Faber’s scarlet cover, has very fairly suggested that those who might be attracted to the book in the hope of finding something frothy within might be a little disappointed by what they actually find – but then again Marian Keyes, and other writers perfectly willing to be branded as Chicklit, also tackle some pretty depressing themes.<br />
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Personally, I love any “label” and any cover design which coaxes more people to read whatever I have written, and I had better declare an interest here and admit that Wattpad are including my novel, <em>The</em> <em>Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride</em>, in their Chicklit launch next week. I am looking forward to a great deal of correspondence on the site as a result, since connecting with readers is the whole point of coming into this game in the first place.<br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-6902483774142339332013-01-03T09:51:00.000-08:002013-01-03T09:51:52.728-08:00Wordsmiths to the World<br />
Monocle Magazine hit the headlines a few months ago by putting Britain number one in its “Soft Power” league, claiming we were the “most powerful nation in the world in terms of cultural influence”.<br />
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Admittedly that was in the wake of the Olympic/Jubilee euphoria, but even if you discount the hyperbole, British writers should still be feeling pretty cheerful about the future. If we cast our minds back to Danny Boyle’s Olympic opening ceremony, a huge part of the show referenced characters who originated in the minds of British writers – Messrs Potter and Bond obviously, Mary Poppins, Captain Hook, Cruella de Vil – all now clichéd images certainly, but our clichés none the less.<br />
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Looking back over my ghostwriting client list of the last few years I am struck by how many of them are international – India, Nigeria, China, America, Uganda, Switzerland, Greece, Cyprus, Monaco, Bermuda, Brazil, the Netherlands, Australia, the United Arab Emirates ….<br />
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This seems to have come about firstly because the internet makes hiring a ghost in a different country a relatively simple process, and secondly because British writers and publishers have a global reputation as steeped in heritage and folklore as our pop musicians, fashion designers and royal folk. When the world thinks of British writing a number of mighty figures spring readily to mind; from Austen, Shakespeare, Byron and Dickens, through Fleming, Orwell and Greene to Rowling and the rest.<br />
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Fortunately for us there is also the fact that English is now the second language of the majority of literate people on the planet, while it is our “first” language, giving us a definite advantage when it comes to spinning tales.<br />
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We can now proudly set up our stalls as wordsmiths to the world, just like the educated scribes who plied their trade in the marketplaces of the ancient world, and exercise our newfound “soft power” to the advantage of all. <br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-91150542431466495382012-11-20T03:33:00.000-08:002012-11-20T04:08:21.094-08:00"Ghost Lit" becomes a GenreOn yesterday's Guardian blog, the esteemed literary commentator, Robert McCrum, analysed some of the "genres" in the book publishing market. Astonishingly, one of the genres he identifies and labels is "Ghost Lit".<br />
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"A surprising number of successful books," he writes, "(bestselling memoirs especially) are written by ghost writers. But there are also ghosted novels, too. By definition these wraith-like creatures have no names and are known only to their fellow spooks – and the publishers who depend on them."<br />
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Well blow me down with a feathered quill; from being publishing's "guilty secret" we have been catapulted to having our own genre. We are even openly represented on the Management Committee of the Society of Authors. The closet doors, it seems, have been flung well and truly open!<br />
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Does this mean, I wonder, that I need to purchase myself a suitable tuxedo, get a haircut and start preparing to mount the rostrums of the great literary prize ceremonies? Will I live long enough to deliver the first great ghosted acceptance speech? Do I hear the bell tolling on a life spent dodging the many onerous responsibilities of proper authorship?<br />
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<br />Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-55095917335851988792012-10-31T02:52:00.001-07:002012-10-31T02:52:40.565-07:00Cameras Roll on Steffi McBride<br />
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This week the cameras started rolling at Twickenham Studios on a pilot episode of “Steffi”, a dramatisation of my book, “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride”, which is destined to be broadcast over the internet and then go on to television through a maze of deals involving a variety of major sponsors and agreements so complex they make your head spin. In fact, I haven’t even tried to understand them, having total faith that the producers at Emerald Films know what they are doing in this “multi-platform” world. <br />
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The cast are a mixture of established television actors, pop stars, internet stars and Jasmine Breinburg, the young actress who won "overnight fame" herself in Danny Boyle's opening ceremony for the Olympics. The producers have been working on the whole package for a couple of years since first expressing interest in the original book.<br />
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In that time the print version, published in the traditional way by Blake publishing, has pretty much sold out and there are negotiations under way for them to produce an e-book version.<br />
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Blake Publishing has always been one of the more fleet-footed, broad minded and innovative of publishing houses, so I suppose it should be no surprise that they have also been open minded enough to give me the go-ahead to put “Steffi” up on Wattpad, (where her mother, “Maggie de Beer”, is about to pass the 300,000 hits mark with her memoir “The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer”). I have commissioned a new cover from the talented Mr. Elliot Thomson, making this the fourth cover he has done for me. <br />
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What an interesting new world we are living in.<br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2501318815429056576.post-22521536051360920142012-10-01T07:29:00.000-07:002012-10-01T07:29:40.108-07:00Writing is Just Gardening for the Mind<br />
There’s been a great deal of discussion lately about how writers, (and publishers), can market their books in the same way as mass-market commercial products, all of it leading to disappointment as inevitably as the purchase of a lottery ticket. <br />
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Most recently there has been the “sock-puppetry” controversy, the most startling element of which is that major publishers have been revealed to be writing glowing Amazon reviews for their own books under false names; (a) is this really surprising? and (b) is this really what publishers mean when they tell authors that their “marketing skills” are one of the reasons why they can do a better job of publishing than we can?<br />
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I’m wondering if it would be helpful to put forward an analogy for writing that looks less like the marketing plans of Mr. Heinz, Mr. Coca Cola or Mr. Simon Cowell. <br />
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Imagine that instead of deciding to write a book you decided to create a garden. You might have visited a few stately gardens, either in the flesh or in the company of on-screen gardeners such as Monty Don. These inspiring public gardens are mighty commercial ventures, bringing joy to millions – they are, in other words the “blockbusters” of the gardening world. I doubt that you would imagine for a moment that your efforts would ever be seen, (or paid for), by the same numbers of people, but I also doubt that that will put you off for even a single heartbeat.<br />
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I suspect that once you have decided to create a garden you will happily labour for many years, investing time, money and back-ache into the project to the point of obsession, with no financial motivation beyond a vague idea that you might be enhancing the value of your property or saving on your bills at the green grocer, (both of which are probably delusions). You will be delighted to share your garden with friends and family and maybe you will even open it to the public for charity. You might go in for local horticultural prizes, fill the house with cut flowers or sell a bit of produce at your front gate. Mostly, however, you will either be working till you ache or gazing contentedly at your achievements.<br />
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I am willing to bet that at no stage will you decide that you have been hard done by because the general public is not beating a path to admire your dahlias or singing the praises of your green-fingered genius, you will simply have enjoyed the process and the result of creating something beautiful.<br />
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If, however, you were to decide that you wanted to make a living from gardening, as opposed to doing it simply for pleasure, you would go looking for jobs that require gardening skills, (just as writers who want to earn a full-time living usually have to turn to journalism, ghost writing, copywriting or writing for genres that are popular but not necessarily their own favourites).<br />
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Is it possible that writing is really just gardening for the mind? <br />
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Andrew Croftshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16101696875255886422noreply@blogger.com1