Hear What the Critics are Saying

It seems I was a mite hasty in chucking in this indie publishing lark. I bemoaned the lack of celebrity endorsements, luring in readers with a pithy quote about how great I am, yet all the while, these words were right in front of my eyes, in the comment section of the piece I wrote about David Icke and Jimmy Savile. I feel pretty stupid that I didn’t think of this before. Eat your heart out, Paul Ross, because these are notices to make my mother proud, and my bank manager start priapically grinding against my leg.

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The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.com, $3.99

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.co.uk, £2.99

Amazon’s free Kindle app for PC, Mac, phones & tablets

The Game is Rigged

For the last two months, I’ve been pushing my Kindle book The Beach Diaries 2012 relentlessly. The month of release actually did pretty well. It sold better than expected, resulting in my biggest sales month ever. Great, I thought, feeling for the first time in ages that I might actually be able to make a go of this, if I could keep up that momentum. I know it’s not the done thing to talk about specific sales figures, unless you’re throwing out huge, imaginary numbers to big yourself up, but this post about the reality of ‘Indie’ publishing doesn’t work by vaguely tiptoeing around the facts, so, in its second month, April, during the midst of this big promotional blitz, The Beach Diaries 2012 sold a whopping 2 copies. Today, we’re almost ten days into May, and so far this month, it’s yet to shift a single one.

Deader than Lindsay Lohan. Hm? Oh, give it a year.

There are stacks of opinion pieces about why ‘Indie’ publishing is a dead end — which it is — but from some poor fucker languishing on the inside, here are the reasons why.

The Stink of Self-Pub

Overwhelmingly, this is the downside of putting yourself out there. While you are afforded complete artistic freedom by going ‘Indie’, as I went into before, you’re also shouldering 100% of the promotion. This is tough, because ads cost the kind of money regular folks — especially broke-arse writer-types — generally don’t have, and big reviews or celebrity endorsements are all but impossible to come by. At the root of all these issues lies a bigger issue, the one cause making everything tougher; the terminal disease behind all of the symptoms — “Oh, this is self-published? I’ll pass.”

I haven’t made it yet, but I’m trying. Fuck me, right?

That whole self-publishing-as-stain thing, where any author who does it is automatically a laughable pariah shouldn’t work any more. These are no longer the days of vanity publishing, when terrible writers in howling wolf t-shirts dropped $20k on “admin costs” for their 1,500 page space epic to an extortion racket dressed as a publisher, so they could have them sit in boxes in their garage until the end of time. Self-pub in 2013 isn’t a sign of failure, it’s merely a new way of making your work available; a new distribution model brought about by changes in technology.

Of course, things can, and often do fail, on various levels, but I’m talking failure in a sense of, “I sent this out to every agent and publisher in town, and everyone passed, so here we are. Not good enough for literary contracts, but good enough for the Kindle!” The game has changed. With the new distribution methods, I, as does anyone capable of cobbling together the Word files for uploading, have the ability to put my stuff out there. That I choose to do that, rather than run the time-heavy gauntlet of agents and publishers immediately chalks me up in the eyes of most as a failure who’s pimping something of such lesser quality, it belongs only in the garage, to serve as mice food over a slow period of decades.

“I think I might have a copy left. Let me check…”

Not forgetting that the Kindle store allows me to do something a little different. Let’s take The Beach Diaries as an example. For a start, it’s an unpitchable concept that wouldn’t have found a home anywhere else, unless I was already established. Agents and publishers are very specific in the types of manuscripts they’ll accept. A 20,000 (2011′s) or 40,000 (2012′s) word non-fiction kinda-journal of people-watching interspersed with flights of fancy has no place on anybody’s list of wants. Following those rules of the legitimate avenues, TBD should sit on my hard-drive, unpublished forever, because it’s not welcome anywhere else. Like a Chinese baby with a vagina, the length, content and subject matter condemn it from birth, left to die squealing in literature’s gutter, regardless of potential artistic worth.

There’s still this overriding notion that self-published work isn’t ‘real’; somehow fake; a pale imitation of real literature, because God knows, there’s nothing but five star classics out on those highstreet shelves. Literature is the last medium with this elitist holdover. Bands who play for studio time, independent comics, self-funded movies; all fine. Nobody’s calling Shane Carruth a prick for making and distributing the best film of the year all by himself. But a self-published book? That’s just a stick to beat the author with. “Oh, you’re self-published…” It’s the same stick that keeps you at arms length like a hobo who’s gotten into a garden party when you’re reaching out for those absolutely crucial reviews or endorsements. And that latter part is the true killer. Reviews and publicity are the oxygen that keeps a book alive, and if you’re ‘Indie’, they’re all casually stepping over you as you lay on the ground with your lips turning blue.

The only way to lift yourself clear of this and legitimise yourself in people’s eyes is to sell a ton of books, at which stage, it’s a moot point anyway. Money is the only validating factor. “Oh, you sold a hundred thousand copies? It must be good!” It’s the same work, yet shifting bulk has a transformative effect; Pinocchio being patted on the back for finally becoming a real boy, despite his being able to defecate for the last six months. It’s the same thing should a self-pubbed author get signed. Suddenly you and your work are validated and you’re worth talking to; worth reviewing or pimping; behind the velvet rope where other artists meet your eye instead of the floor at your shabby-shoed feet.

Published Authors: Left, Right. Indie Author: Centre.

This kind of thinking breeds elitism even within the ‘Indie’ world. Any time I stepped out of my usual internet circles into the Kindle author ‘community’ (quote marks indicating heavy sarcasm), it resulted in nothing but the volcanic explosion of my bile ducts. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been snippily told that I shouldn’t expect to sell any books, by passive-aggressive seers of wisdom with large collections of historical and/or paranormal erotic romance for sale, with covers of poorly manipulated stock photos of 21^st century Fabios with vampire teeth, because my covers are shit, or because “you should be putting out a book every month!” Yeah, just churn those fuckers out. Which leads me nicely to point number two.

Dilution of the Pool

If the early part of the twentieth century was mostly comprised of people braying that Warhol quote about fifteen minutes of fame while waving an accusatory finger at Reality TV, then the 2010s need another pithy line about how, by 2017, every person on the planet will have at least 3 ebooks for sale. I mentioned how most people equate ‘self-published’ with ‘terrible’, but in a lot of cases, without no gatekeepers, yes, much of what’s being published is objectively unreadable garbage. Obviously, I don’t put myself in the unreadable garbage pile. My stuff is great. Again, fuck me, right?

The problem here is that I simply cannot make myself heard above the cacophony of other people hawking their wares, like cockney men with suitcases full of bootleg Justin Bieber dolls that emit lethal doses of Co2 from their girlish, plastic faces. I naively used to believe that something only had to be good, and it would eventually find its audience. Maybe I’m wildly deluded, and my books are all guff, but it’s clear that I was way, way off. You could produce the most incredible work in recorded history, but if nobody takes that chance to read it in the first place, you might as well have wiped your bum across the pages and scanned it in for all the good it’ll do.

There’s a huge glut of ebooks right now, increasing almost exponentially every day. It’s kind of a dick move to question people’s motives, as though I’m somehow more of a pure artist, but some people just want to be able to call themselves a writer; like sending off the entrance fee for Mensa and flashing your membership card every time you walk into the room. People who’ve always dreamed of being a novelist — well, now they can be. All it takes is the ability to upload a correctly formatted .Doc file to Amazon, and suddenly they get to tell everyone “Hey, I have seventeen novels on Amazon!” As each day passes, introducing another ten thousand newly published writers into the world, people’s interest becomes further diluted, down to a homoeopathic level.

Oh, fuck off.

I’ve witnessed this in the diminishing returns of my own work. Each new title has been less successful than the one before, despite a bettering of my craft, seemingly new opportunities to reach people, and a wider potential audience with which to connect. When Frantic Planet: Volume I came out, seven years ago, there was no Twitter. We were all stuck on MySpace, pretending to be friends with Paris Hilton. There wasn’t even the Kindle. Back then, in those heady days of Tila Tequila, and Michael Jackson still being alive, someone releasing a paperback was a real novelty; a genuine achievement. In 2013, your nan probably has a 20-book series of erotic minotaur fiction, so with each new release, the novelty, and interest levels, further dissipate into nothing. To this day, Volume I is by far the biggest seller I’ve ever had.

Think of the potential audience as a taxi full of tourists, the windows darkened by the pleading hands of third-world child beggars. The first hollow-faced child they spot has a missing foot, and as his fingers push against the glass, the pinging heart-strings see them reaching towards their wallets. But soon they’ve seen a child without arms, and another covered in horrific burns. By the time the cab’s halfway down the street, there’s a little girl who’s just a head, shaking a bucket she grips within her teeth, and everyone in the cab’s figuring they’ll probably just save their coins for the hotel bar, and showing each other Youtube videos on their smartphones of a Rhino in a zoo doing a big messy shit and laughing.

Of course, there are people who’ve found success from self-pubbing, and plenty who chucked in their jobs because they’re making a living from it, but they’re the exceptions that prove the rule. For every Hugh Howey, there are a million and a half Stuart Millards, some of whom are currently undergoing the horrible acceptance that they could have spent the last seven years more productively.

This could have been me. I’ve wasted my life.

The title of this piece is a quote from The Wire, and the concluding line of dialogue is: “You cannot lose if you do not play.” The first draft of this article, written a couple of weeks ago and then sat on because I didn’t want to post it, originally followed the Wire quote with this:

“But I want to play. I have to.”

Now? Not so much. I still have to, but it doesn’t work, so it doesn’t matter. I’m done here, I think. And I know when people make these “I’m done, I’m done!” posts, it reeks of a tantrum, or bitterness, or fishing for compliments begging them to reconsider, but I’ve been in this for the long haul, having devoted a lot of my life to effectively making zero headway, and barring some miraculous thing that causes my books to suddenly catch fire, it’s not happening. Not this way. At this point, I’m both frustrated because I couldn’t make it work, and legitimately terrified for my future. I don’t know where I go from here, other than, “the fuck away from ‘indie’ publishing as fast as I can,” or deeper into a financial black hole that I’m never, ever climbing out of. I’m sure there’ll be sporadic bouts of “Maybe this time, this thing will make them catch fire…” and me linking to a new poster, or tweeting a quote and a link, but don’t expect a Beach Diaries 2013, or anything else, ever.

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On the subject of reviews and that, while I’ve been busy with my miserable, existential crisis, a few sites were kind enough to review The Beach Diaries 2012, so check those out if you like.

Read Between the Lines liked it to the tune of five stars (out of five, not out of a thousand, if you were wondering).

And Kook Blogs also liked it. “”… beautiful honesty and a sharp wit…”

Lastly, Louise West picked it as one of her 5 Incredible Indies.

If those reviews, or this post, inspired you to snap it up for yourself, have at it with these handy links.

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.com, $3.99

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.co.uk, £2.99

Amazon’s free Kindle app for PC, Mac, phones & tablets

Live Below the Line. For a Bit.

There’s been some chatter in the news and on the social media gob-stream lately about the ‘awareness campaign’ Live Below the Line. By chatter, I mean patronising tosh. The central message behind Live Below the Line is “Could you live on a food budget of less than £1 a day for five days?” Well, yeah. I could. I’ve been doing it for years, thanks.

Everyone from local news reporters to Hollywood actors have been pledging to raise awareness of global poverty by taking the ‘challenge’ of eating in the way that 1.4 billion people have no choice in, for a bit. The official website has a handy list of rules, that make it sound like so much of a game, you’re wondering where to get the dice and cardboard counters shaped like pound coins. Look at this guy from a regional newspaper, he’s Living Below the Line and having a whale of a time.

“Cheers!”

“Pound a day for five days? Sounds like a jolly jape!”

This whole campaign is offensive bollocks, but let’s imagine for a moment that good intentions got a little misguided and merely point out that, at best, this is an idea that’s deeply, fundamentally flawed. The true killer of living so meagrely is the overwhelming, crushing sense of hopelessness; the feeling of fear, of “Well fuck, maybe I won’t be eating next week at all. And who knows where I’ll be in six months time.” 5 days can’t give you that any more than you could empathise with the plight of a wrongly convicted death row inmate by spending 24 hours alone in a room. In your house. With the door unlocked.

To take one element of poverty and briefly co-opt it into your non-poverty life is a bullshit, patronising misunderstanding of what it is to exist on that level, with no choice in the matter, and no option to call it quits if it gets too much. Okay, so you’re spending £1 a day on food for not even a full week? Are you turning your heating off too? Because if you can’t afford food, you certainly can’t afford heating. Are you going anywhere that isn’t within walking distance for 5 days? Because you don’t have the money for a train or bus fare, and certainly can’t afford to run a car. And no nights out, right? Because you haven’t any disposable income, so a trip to the pub or to catch a film is out of the question. Ditto on buying, well, anything for yourself. What about clothes? Still swanning about in fresh selections from your wardrobe, or did you toss out everything but a couple of pairs of jeans and some fading t-shirts with the logos flaking off, to really get that “Haven’t had the money for new gear in years” feeling? How about replicating the sense of complete isolation that goes with the territory? Any ideas about recreating that for this little adventure of yours? No? Oh.

The recent petition to make loathsome Tory Iain Duncan Smith live up to his words and survive on £53 a week like he claimed anybody could suffered from the same flaw. Of course he could. In his mansion, with his fully stocked larder. I could survive quite easily on nothing a week if I had a support network of millionaires and a fucking driver. You can’t dip your toe into poverty like it’s a fancy dress costume. ‘Campaigns’ like Live Below the Line reduce human suffering to the level of charity-tourism, like those middle-class gap-year Christians who go to Africa for 10 days to take photos of themselves putting three bricks onto the foundations of a half-built classroom. Their iPhone pics of giggling groups of little black children feeling their blonde hair, and being held, smiling, in WWJD-bangle-adorned arms, to be revisited in later years like snapshots from an outing to the petting zoo or the local museum, in the knowledge that, for a while, they really slummed it; really experienced.

“…AND we had to poo in a hole in the ground!”

So, if you do manage to Live Below the Line for five whole days, be sure to let everyone know how tough that was for you, little soldier. Stick photos up on Facebook of you sat at your dining room table in the decently furnished flat or house where you live, taken with the smartphone you can afford to own and use, in the clothes you aren’t ashamed to be seen in. And when you get to the end, and you enjoy that big, hard-earned celebratory “We did it!” feast, try not to choke.

The Bargain of the Willenium

Why, hello there.

For the next few days, my Kindle book, Dirt Baby and Other Small Mercies, is available for the price of zero pounds and zero pence. Or, zero dollars and zero cents. Yes, nothing. I’m literally giving it away. Best described as “a strange little book of strange little stories,” Dirt Baby is a mini-length collection of super short, weird little stories, and perfect for reading on the train, toilet, or just in regular, normal places like in a bed or on a chair.

Free! In 2013! When even urine is taxed.

If you always saw me harping on about the stuff I’d written, but never got around to sampling it yourself, or couldn’t figure out the best way in, Dirt Baby is the perfect entry-level me-book, at the perfect price (free!)

Let’s be honest. In this economy, if you brazenly sit there and turn down free stuff, you’re essentially pleasuring those cackling fat cats, like bankers, toffs and Iain Duncan Smith, with your mouth and hands, while the little guy (i.e. you and everyone you’ve ever loved) goes hungry and limp in the gutters below. That’s not a metaphor. If you don’t download Dirt Baby, this will literally happen. That’s what the fat cats do. Don’t come running to me on Monday morning when your mouth’s all sore from being full of Tory, because I’ve given fair warning.

But anyway, Dirt Baby is pretty awesome, and I’d be wildly appreciative if, after you’ve grabbed it yourself, you could let people know about just how goddamned free this thing is, otherwise the title of my unpublished future autobiography will be “From Writing about the Beach to Sleeping on it — How I Fucked up My Life.”

And here are the links –

Dirt Baby and Other Small Mercies on Amazon UK

Dirt Baby and Other Small Mercies on Amazon.com

Amazon’s free Kindle app for computers, phones and tablets

Now, for the love of God, get downloading.

Andre the Giant’s Bra Sunglasses

Andre the Giant’s head was so enormous, regular-sized sunglasses didn’t fit. Instead of getting expensive, custom-made pairs, Andre came up with his own solution. Women’s bras.

Andre and a young fan.

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Backstage with a buddy.

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Classy black and white.

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For promo shots, Andre often went with a peephole, to make use of his expressive eyes.

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Retro pic, retro bra.

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And finally, relaxing on the set of The Princess Bride.

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More wrestling stuff:

The Mad Lies of Hulk Hogan

WWF Magazine’s Anti-Masturbation PSAs

Also, you should definitely buy my new book:

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.com, $3.99

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.co.uk, £2.99

Amazon’s free Kindle app for PC, Mac, phones & tablets

Diminishing Returns, Propaganda and the Infinite Abyss

As I may have mentioned, and will continue to do so until every one of you swines and ten of your friends has bought a copy, I’ve got a new book out. I’ve also been over how shameful and wretched the selling part is when you’ve got a product to get out to the world, and told you how I struggle to shift copies to American audiences because they hate me; so now what?

Well, I’m now in that awful stretch that comes a couple of weeks after that thing you did first becomes available, where the people who know you — your pre-existing audience — have already snapped theirs up, moving you from the exhilarating “Woo, people are buying this! It’s working, it’s finally working!” period to the soul-destroying open space stretching infinitely on into the future, where the only remaining sales are going to come from new readers.  Historically, this is the part where I always quit, as I never really got how to do it. I’m a writer, not a salesman — a writer with a promotional budget of zero — and day by day I find myself sliding out into that infinite abyss with the words “Fuck it then, forget it” on the tip of my tongue. But much as I’m near enough completely out of ideas once again, I can’t give up, not this time. As I mentioned before, this is currently my only source of income, so if it doesn’t work — it has to work. It has to. So, I keep trudging on.

At this point, even my pre-existing audience are (probably quite rightly) glazing over with each tweet or new mention; the law of diminishing returns turning what, three weeks ago, was exciting and retweet-worthy, into white noise that sails straight over their poor, brow-beaten heads, like the thousandth cry of “Wolf!” from some prick in a Greek fable. One way of freshening things up has been the creation of posters. That whole minimalist movie poster thing has been a bit of an online fad for a couple of years, and it’s a nice fit if you’ve got a good eye, but the actual drawing skills of an infant. I’ve done these for previous titles, but the ‘overheard conversations’ gimmick lends itself to a lot of poster-worthy dialogue, so The Beach Diaries makes for good material. Now join me, and wheel-click this link into a new tab, as we wander the gallery.

“Chimp”

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“Friends again?”

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I didn’t personally witness said bum, or said bucket.

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If you’ve not seen HBO’s Oz, 1) This will make no sense, and 2) You’re a bell

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“Superman”

And here are a couple of general Beach Diaries ones.

“Beachtown”

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“Beachtown” alternative version, where I’m wearing my crown

And finally –

Inspired by an Amazon review, and those post-911 pictures of eagles weeping over Old Glory

If nothing else, at least they’re the right shape to slide along that infinite abyss on, like some horrible magic carpet ride to homelessness.

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.com, $3.99

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.co.uk, £2.99

Amazon’s free Kindle app for PC, Mac, phones & tablets

America Hates Me: A Response

So, my new book has been out for a couple of weeks now — long enough to get a little bedded in on Amazon — and already, a strange and worrying pattern has begun to emerge. For every ten sales of The Beach Diaries 2012, eight or nine of these come from UK customers, while America, with all those untold millions of Kindle owners, lazily chips in with the other one or two. Tempted as I am to yell “Thanks, Obama!” and fold my arms like he just kicked in the back door and farted on my gun rack, this is merely the continuation of a life-long trend.

To help us examine this gulf more clearly, please point your eyes at the diagram below, illustrating the sales percentages of my entire catalogue of work, from 2006′s Frantic Planet: Volume I, right up to my most recent release. I’ve represented the nations with their most iconic figures, namely, the Queen of England, and ‘Hacksaw’ Jim Duggan. Observe.

Quite obviously, this is a big problem for me. There’s an enormous audience out there that I’m not reaching, and unless I want to die in a ditch, I need to get to the root of why America hates me. Generally, we’re led to believe that America loves British things. “British comedy is so great!” they often say, quoting that bit where the knights go “Ni!” and wryly remarking that Stephen Fry should have been the new Pope. Yet here I sit, a hilarious British writer, with one of those accents America thinks is awesome, watching as 313 million people thumb their noses and effectively tell me to go hang myself.

I have to ask why? I have my suspicions about the cause of this painful rejection. Because of my status as a nostril-flaring, rain-soaked, “Ooh, love a duck!” Englishman, I’m quite obviously shouldering the blame for this…

Twat.

Well, yes, he is awful, and we Brits are very, very glad to have gotten rid of him, but believe me, I had no say in the matter. If I had, he’d have been shot into space inside some kind of air-tight, urine-filled dustbin, where he’d have been no bother to anybody either side of the Atlantic. As damaging as the arrival to your shores of the world’s biggest prick was to the relationship of our two nations, I feel I should remind you, America, of some of the great things Britain has given the world.

* The Beatles.

* Monty Python.

* All those actors you love to make cutesy/frighteningly sexual Tumblrs of — Dr. Who, Benedict Cumberbatch, the guy who played Loki in the Avengers, etc etc etc.

* Mr. Bean.

* Bespectacled boy wizard, Harry Potter.

* Sex. We invented sex. Before we came along, the rest of the world was cluelessly using their genitals to hang their hats on, or to hide valuables from passing brigands.

* Sandwiches. The literal saying is that the best thing ever is sliced bread. The Earl of Sandwich? British as fuck. He had a foreskin and everything.

* THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. You know, that thing that you speak, and that all your books are made out of? Good luck with the morning Starbucks order when there’s nothing coming out of your mouth but a spittle-flecked collection of random, howling vowel sounds.

So here’s the deal, America. If you’re going to blame me for Piers Morgan when you’re perusing Amazon’s Kindle store, then you should also be crediting me with all of the good things, and factoring them into your purchases. $3.99′s a pretty bargain price for Ian McKellen and the BLT. But cultural exchanges aside, as my sales figures wither on the vine along with my chance of eating this year, there’s yet more that I can do.

One big part of selling yourself is that you’re supposed to know your markets, so I figure me and the US can get over our little misunderstanding with some simple, regional variations on the cover. Here’s my first attempt.

It’s good, but as a hands-across-the-ocean plea for friendliness between our peoples (and sales in my bank), I feel I could somehow push these ideas further. I asked myself “What does America like?” The answer is of course “America.” As a people, they’re super proud and patriotic, and as such, I’ve drafted a second updated cover, to appeal to their sense of chest-beating national pride; a symbol in itself of my empathic understanding of the way the wonderful American public thinks.

Again, it’s good — great even — but still not enough. I’m desperate here. I need America on side, and if that’s going to happen, I have to move beyond hollow, foot-stomping patriotism and fully embrace everything that America loves. This is it. This is where I do what Robbie Williams never could, and crack the States. Six months from now, I’ll be floating down from the skies of the Hollywood Hills on a Mary Poppins umbrella, and it’ll all be thanks to our glorious American cousins, who will love me, DO YOU HEAR ME?

OBSERVE MY NEW COVER AND LOVE ME!

Now I just sit back and watch the sales roll in. Peace out, America, my friend. My best, best friend.

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.com (Don’t let me down, America), $3.99

The Beach Diaries 2012 on Amazon.co.uk, £2.99

Amazon’s free Kindle app for PC, Mac, phones & tablets