The day Dave Eggers, Jean M. Auel, Jacqueline Wilson, J.M Coetzee and Donna Tartt asked to be my friends.

It all started when I announced the publication of my latest book, (A novel ironically titled “On the Backs of Others”), on a number of Facebook Groups dedicated to writing and writers. My Facebook page was immediately inundated with people congratulating me, telling me how much they liked the cover and the synopsis of the plot, asking me to tell them more about my “writing journey” and my “inspirations”, wanting me to describe the “greatest challenges” I had faced in the writing, asking if this was my first published work and what my marketing plans were. They all professed that they wanted to be my friends in order to swap author tales while sitting at my feet, gazing up at me, adoringly, (that mental picture I added myself).

For a few heady moments I was thrilled to receive such an avalanche of reactions so quickly after publication, but then I noticed that they were all asking the same questions and they were all then telling me that they could help me to get reviews on Amazon, or increase my sales in the same way they had done for their own books, with a variety of magic marketing strategies. Apparently, it was all going to be extremely affordable. So far, so predictable. I mean everyone’s got to hustle a living in any way they can, right? Even a Bot.

Then Dave Eggers got in touch. Yeah, I know – Dave Eggers. I did a quick bit of due diligence and it certainly looked like him and sounded like him. Now I happen to be a big fan, so this hit a button for me. I asked if he was the real deal, and he assured me he was, and he chatted so convincingly that I suspended all disbelief and went with the flow. I mean – it was Dave Eggers! After a bit of affable, writerly, to-ing and fro-ing, he then offered to brief his team to help me to get more reviews on Amazon, and my disbelief was no longer suspended. I mean, I fully believe that the charming Mr Eggers would be helpful if he could, |his track record in such matters is impeccable, but what were the actual odds that he would decide to bestow his kindness on someone he has never heard of, who lives on the other side of the pond?

Then I noticed that one of the others who had been offering to help was none other than Jean M. Auel. And then, as if that was not exciting enough, I got messages from Jacqueline Wilson, Catherine Steadman, J.M Coetzee and Donna Tartt. If any of these authors genuinely did contact me in order to congratulate me on the stunning cover of my book, and on my amazing achievement of being published, I apologise for doubting you. But I have a strong suspicion someone is pulling my leg.

The question that occurs to me, however, is do any of these distinguished authors have any idea that they are being impersonated in this way? I seem to remember there was someone who got away with impersonating Graham Greene for years, back in the analogue days of yore, but the digital world seems to have taken this template to extraordinary heights.

There is an army of imposters on line, pretending to be famous authors, in order to win the confidence of less famous authors and sell them services of dubious value or quality, but the saddest part of the whole story is that I really enjoyed being Dave Eggers friend for those few minutes.

The 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.

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.

Having said that, when the big boys do wade in with some promotional help the power of their clout can be stunning.

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.

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.

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.

Writing is Just Gardening for the Mind

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.


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?


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.


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.


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.


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.


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).


Is it possible that writing is really just gardening for the mind?

Should Books Be Shorter?

Why are books so hard to market? Is it possible that the main stumbling block to purchase, (and to consumption), is the sheer amount of time required to read them?

For the sake of argument, let’s say that the average book is 80,000 to 100,000 words long and requires six hours of fairly sustained attention from the customer.

In some situations that will be precisely why the purchase is made, because the customer has ‘time to kill’ on a beach holiday or a long journey, in a sickbed – whatever. Sometimes the pure beauty of the author’s prose and the languor of the storytelling is the reason why that title or that author has been selected. But what if the motive to purchase is that the reader merely wants the information contained in the book and wants it as quickly and painlessly as possible?

Am I the only person who has seen a book that they really want to read in the shops, or read a review, and then simply failed to find the time to read it – or at least failed to get beyond half way? Most people have a colossal number of calls upon their time once they have put in the hours required to earn a living, bring up their family or clip their toe-nails. Given a choice between a quick flick through a newspaper with a cup of tea, an hour in front of the television with their supper, or consuming one sixth of a difficult book, how often does the poor consumer give in to one of the easier options?

So many books could do with severe editing to remove extraneous material, repetitions and all the rest – “kill your darlings” as any creative writing tutor will tell you - but if the final manuscript then comes in at 30,000 words, or less than a hundred pages, it will not look like good value for money, and the publishers will have another marketing hurdle to overcome.

It seems likely that the printed book will never escape from this trap, any more than the average sit-com will escape the traditional half-hour format or many feature films will be allowed to come in at less than ninety minutes. The audiences have historical expectations of the formats which cannot be lightly dismissed.

But if electronic books take off, might we see something altogether different evolving? If people can’t see how ‘thick’ the book is when they buy it, might they be less daunted by the long ones and less likely to dismiss the short ones? Might publishers then be able to stop buying writing by the pound?