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.

A Publishing Fairy Tale

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Which brings me to the point of my story, which is to draw the world’s attention to a website called http://ThisisDrama.com , 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.

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.

What Would George Bernard Shaw be Campaigning for Today?

The Society of Authors has kindly nominated me for its Management Committee. If all goes smoothly and I join the other distinguished committee members I thought it might be useful to have a clearer idea of what it is that we would all like the Society to be doing for authors in these exciting times.

What, I wonder, would George Bernard Shaw, (an early and active member of the Society), be campaigning for if he was around today? What would his views be on e-books and self-publishing, for instance? Would he be championing Amazon for making books so accessible or criticising their monopolistic and capitalistic tendencies? Would he be sympathetic towards struggling high street independents or would he see them as the architects of their own downfall?
If you have any ideas on ways in which the Society should be making itself useful to its members please email me at CroftsA@aol.com.

Below is a short biography which the Society has published in The Author to support my nomination.

Andrew Crofts is a full-time author and ghostwriter. He has published more than 80 titles, a dozen of which have spent many weeks at the top of the Sunday Times best seller charts.
As well as using traditional publishers to reach readers, (including Arrow, Blake, Bloomsbury, Century, Ebury, André Deutsch, Hamish Hamilton, Harper Collins, Headline, Heinemann, Hodder, Hutchinson, Little Brown, Michael Joseph, McGraw Hill, Orion, Pan Macmillan, Penguin, Pocket Books, Sidgwick & Jackson, Sphere and Weidenfeld & Nicolson), he has also experimented with e-books, publishing “The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer”,(a prequel to his traditionally published “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride”), on both Kindle and Smashwords, and has guided a number of international clients successfully through the minefield of independent publishing.

Ghostwriters and Biographers as Gift Items

Following a recent trip to Bangkok, (see previous blog entry), I have been thinking about this concept of ghostwriters and biographers as gift items. I have recently been commissioned for a number of such projects. One client, for instance, wished to write his autobiography in order to present it to his grandson. He had no expectation that the grandson would actually read it for many years to come, he just wanted it to be there, ready for the day when it might seem a tempting proposition. A couple of other clients have presented me to recipients who they knew wanted to write books but who they also knew would never get round to tackling such a daunting task without help.

Millions of people are now hooked on the idea of tracing their family histories. I have met enough of them personally to know they would be thrilled to discover that their great grandmother or great uncle had written a book chronicling family relationships, homes, businesses and – with any luck – scandals. It wouldn’t matter if the books had been read by no one since the day they were written, to that particular researcher they would be absolute gold dust.

It might once have been called vanity publishing – and if the author is persuaded to part with money on the promise of becoming a bestseller, then it still should be – but if all you are doing is leaving a record for future generations is it any more “vain” than commissioning a portrait painter or an architect to create a great family home?

Printing books to a high standard is no longer hard. It can be done on line at sites like Lulu.com or by the many specialist self-publishing companies, but writing the books in a readable style can be more challenging and that is where the specialist skills of the ghostwriter or biographer come in.

Self-Publishing Moves into the Mainstream

The idea that The Bookseller magazine, that venerable trade organ for the traditional publishing process, would dedicate four pages of editorial for a "Flagship Feature" on self-publishing would have been unthinkable even a short time ago, but that is what happened at the end of last week Bookseller. The very suggestion of people publishing their own books has in the past brought forth patronising smirks at best, and howls of derision at worst, from those who believed such things should be left to the professionals.
All that has now changed and leading the charge is Alison Baverstock, (the author of the Bookseller feature), with the publication of her guide to self-publishing The Naked Author.
It would be hard to overstate what a seismic change in attitude this represents. Self-publishing does not in any way threaten the livelihoods of the existing publishing businesses that are able to add value for their customers in matters of packaging, distribution and marketing, but it does mean that a whole new cottage industry has been allowed to spring up and is now thriving thanks to a variety of factors coming together at the same time.
The Naked Author is an absolute milestone in this exciting journey.