Smatrphones, unfriendly lists and geographical order

How should I organise my DVD collection? By title? By director? By genre, date or lead actor? Or should I carry on with my present approach - periodically scooping up the DVDs that have accumulated on the floor next to the television and shovelling them onto a nearby shelf?

The same question presents itself when people try to organise papers in an office or products in a supermarket. Specialists in organisation have devised many different systems. However, there is no one-size-fits-all answer, as the system which works best will depend on the individual using it. An excellent book on the subject is ‘A Perfect Mess – the hidden benefits of disorder.’ Highly recommended.

The question is of particular interest to me because, like many dyslexics, my creative, chaotic mind and my tendency to live in the moment lead to a level of chaos that some might find distressing. People of a delicate disposition on entering my office are likely to throw their hands in the air and cry: ‘You’ve been burgled. I’ll phone the police.’

Happily technology is helping with this. The computer allows me to change the way my files are sorted with the click of a button. Alphabetical, by date of creation, by file type, by size. This suits me well, bringing my creative chaos back towards the zone I like to call ‘functional disorder’ (as opposed to ‘dysfunctional disorder’ or ‘dysfunctional order’.) I keep my work space as paperless as possible. A decent shredder helps.

Those who follow this blog will know that a few months ago I bought a Dell Streak smartphone, hoping thereby to drive myself towards a higher level of functionality. I’m happy to report that my experience with it has been excellent so far, helping me deal more efficiently with dates, times, communications and places.

But it is the last of these that has been the revelation. Places. Smartphones are data access / data collection devices. Through GPS they know where they are to within a few metres anywhere on the planet. And the number of people carrying them is rocketing. Put those facts together and a future opens up before us in which location is increasingly used as a means of organising and retrieving information. And THAT is an exciting prospect. For me, anyway. It matches the way my mind works. Data scattered across a map is infinitely more friendly to me than data neatly arranged in a list.

I hope we are on the brink of a more dyslexic-friendly future.

Writing in a digital future

As a dyslexic author, I have a somewhat conflicted relationship with the written word. Most authors and publishers are quick to say that people will never give up books and reading. And whilst I do believe that is true, I am convinced that other modes of creative expression and information transfer will grow in significance.

In our pre-literate past dyslexics were not disabled. And in a future where recorded image and sound are given more weight, our present sense of disability will recede. Indeed, I believe this is already happening.

Imagine that I wanted to find out what it would take to install solar panels on the roof of my house. Twenty years ago, I’d probably have headed off to the library to find a book on the subject. Ten years ago, I might well have searched the Internet for an article to read. Today, I’d go to straight to YouTube or Vimeo and find a video tutorial.

We live, as they say, in interesting times. None of us know how writing and digital media will develop in the coming decades. But change is happening. Change is accelerating.

Hang on to your hats.

(Irony warning – yes, I have noticed that this article comes to you via the very medium that I appear to be dissing. No need to point it out.)

Back online - thank you Virgin Media (not)

As the title says, Virgin Media have sent an engineer round and we are connected once more. I mentioned to him that this was not the first time and added the information that each time I've complained I've been told that someone would call me back, but that no one ever has. He pondered this and then said: "A bit bad, that."

So there we have it.

But my time offline has not been wasted. I now have a printout of Interviews With A Serial Killer sitting on my desk. It will be sent soon. And Memorabilia has also progressed to the point that I feel it is safe to say we will have a completed screenplay by the end of the year.

More on both of those later.

Whilst writing a couple of days ago I spotted the shadow of a pair of wires on the side of a cabinet. It was so arresting that I couldn't resist taking a photograph:

Virgin Media broadband customer review

The Virgin Media broadband fiasco continues. Late yesterday the household was blessed with connectivity and I managed to post up the blog entry I’d written earlier. The problem, it seemed, was solved. However, at 8.30 this morning I turned on the modem and found no service yet again.

I am now a master of the Virgin Media helpline system. Not through any natural ability. Rather, through repetition. I phoned up, keyed in the numbers before the voice could ask me for them and was put through to a charming Indian man who asked me to turn things off and turn them on again, report on which lights flashed and which lights didn’t, tell him which operating system I was using and eventually informed me that there was a problem in my area but engineers were working on it and the service would be back by 6pm.

‘How many more days will the service be out?’ I asked.

‘It will be back by 6pm today.’

‘That’s what I was told yesterday.’

‘Yes.’

‘And the day before. And the day before that.’

‘Yes.’

‘So when will this problem be over?’

‘At 6pm today.’

Whatever they are paying their helpline staff it isn’t enough. The guy must be
facing a screen which tells him to tell me this stuff. It is ludicrous, frankly. He knows it. I know it. But he delivers the lines faultlessly. He is polite, concerned and does not deviate a hair’s breadth from the script. I’ve spoken to seven or eight of these helpline workers in the last week. They have all been charming.
It seems that Virgin media have wisely invested in their complaints department. Shame about the broadband service.

If you are a Leicester customer of Virgin Media and are having problems could I suggest you phone the helpline on 151. Key in the numbers 2 followed by 3 and wait while it tells you to turn everything off and then on again. They’ll play you a bit of music, then someone will speak to you. Ask for a refund and they should credit you £5. Today I asked for a substantial refund and was told I would be credited £10. Tomorrow I intend to ask for an enormous refund.

But then again, if you are a Leicester Virgin Media broadband customer you probably won’t be able to read this.

Virgin Media – Broadband Service Review

Virgin Media’s broken broadband service is to blame for the lack of blog entries this week. Yes, let’s say that again so that the search engines find this page. My customer review of Virgin Media’s broadband service: in my recent experience it is highly unreliable.

For the last week or so Virgin Media broadband has been cutting out for chunks of five or ten minutes at a time. Then three days ago the service stopped completely. I called the help line and discovered I was not alone. The entire LE3 postcode area was apparently experiencing problems. No broadband and no cable television. But all would be well by 6pm. That’s what I was told.

The forecast proved correct. By 6pm we were up and running again. The problem was over.

Except that it cut again the following morning. I was getting used to the automated help line by this time and, having memorised the route through the maze, could key in the various number choices without waiting to be prompted by that insufferably cheery voice.

Yes there was a new problem, they said. A faulty fuse somewhere. But all would be well later on very soon.

When it happened again today I began to see a pattern. The service is on until work starts in the morning and then off until work finishes in the evening.

‘I suspect your engineers may be cutting me off,’ I said to the helpline worker.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘They are working to upgrade your area. But it will all be over soon.’

‘This was planned?’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Then why didn’t Virgin Media bother to tell its customers?’

‘It will be up and running by 6pm,’ she said.

‘And tomorrow?’

‘Your area is being upgraded.’

So here I am, composing my blog entry offline in the hope that the Virgin Media engineers may have a tea break and let me back onto the Information Superhighway at some stage.

Coincidentally, Virgin Media just hiked the price of their broadband. The justification? The service was going to be better.

Mr Branson, you are a highly successful dyslexic, an inspiration to dyslexics like me. But your Virgin brand is not looking so shiny right now. Quite frankly this service is shoddy.

The cost of a Paperback

The year is 2020. It costs £5 to buy a paperback novel. £3 if it is one of the few hundred titles being stocked on the shelves of your local supermarket. Most of that money is needed to cover the direct costs of producing the physical book. Ink, paper, printing and binding. Some is needed to cover transport. The shop takes a chunk to cover its overheads and to keep its shareholders happy. How much goes to the author? A few pence per copy.

Alternatively you can buy your novel as a download and read it on your shiny new book reader. How much for? There is no printing, no transport and no shelf stacking. Shall we say, fifty pence for the author and fifty pence to cover the website design and management?

What about a third possibility – read the book online courtesy of Google and see a few adverts along the way. The author gets a few fractions of a penny from the advertising revenue. You pay nothing.

What do publishers do in this crisp new digital world? They have already out-sourced the job of selecting the best novels. Literary agents do that. As for editing – literary agents increasingly take a hand in that too. Cover design is usually subcontracted. Publishers rarely spend money on advertising for authors who are not already famous. All that is left is the sales team who work so hard going bookshop to bookshop. But with digital distribution, the bookshops are not needed.
A world without publishers?

It is a world in which anyone and everyone can publish by themselves. Digital distribution – costing so little it is basically free – makes this easy. I am lucky enough to have seen many as yet unpublished but wonderful books in manuscript form. But I have seen a far larger number of badly written manuscripts. In 2020 are all of them being published?

Google Book Settlement

The Google Book Settlement debate is heating up. Hundreds of millions of dollars are on the table. It seems like a lot of money until you remember that it is the entire future of writing and publishing industry that is being shaped.

In yesterday's blog post I wrote about business models in which artists give their work away for free. But here we seem to have a business model in which an artist's work is given away by someone else.

The crux of the matter is this - Google took it upon themselves to digitize huge numbers of books in order to offer them in whole or in part through the Internet. Some of these books would be out of copyright - in America if not in the UK. In other cases the copyright holders could not be found. And where a copyright holder could be found, some money might flow back to them from Google.

Although an author opt-out has now been offered by Google as part of the legal settlement, some authors are less than happy to have had so little say in the formation of the deal. There is also disquiet among the other Internet giants, who are presumably worried about the hold Google is going to gain over the digital distribution of books - which is surely the future of publishing.

Google has been parading supporters of the deal ahead of any final legal decision. One advocate apparently said: "We see access to knowledge as a civil right. Information enables individuals to learn, to create and to pursue their dreams. Access to knowledge defines the meaning of equal opportunity in a democratic society."

Hard to argue with that. Who would vote against spreading knowledge? Until you remember that the 'knowledge' being offered includes the creative work of individuals. You and me.

Is this the future of publishing: that all creative work will be accessed for free, and interspersed with adverts, from which revenue a trickle will return to the authors? Is the concept of copyright now so unworkable that this becomes the only way for artists to make a living?

Giving it away - a business model

Making money by giving things away free seems, on the face of it, to be a contradiction. But I have recently noticed several people who have done just this - and done it with great success.

But first an example of the traditional business model. This morning I found a podcast about a subject I was interested in. Naturally, I started listening to it. I hoped to get some free advice from a person who knows what he is talking about. What I actually heard was a sales pitch for a workshop from person who apparently knows what he is talking about. He hinted at the content of his workshop without actually giving any details. The method was named but not described.

And who could blame him? If I could get the content for free, why would I sign up for the course? This is the traditional business model.

But here are three examples of people who have become successful through giving things away for free.

1) David Blaine the street magician. Think back before the endurance stunts. He made his name by approaching people on the street and giving free magic shows. And not just the casual coin disappearing stuff that your uncle does to amuse the kids. These were sophisticated illusions which must have taken much time and effort to perfect and set up.

Of course, he had someone with a camera there to film it all. And he would later sell the show to TV stations. But at the point of origin, he was apparently giving something away.

2) How about the graffiti artist Banksy? Sneaking out in the night and spray painting works of art onto people's walls. Giving it away. Take a close look at his work and it becomes clear that a huge amount of thought, preparation and skill goes into what he does. People who find a Banksy on something that belongs to them can go and sell it if they want. It could easily be worth tens of thousands of pounds.




The public interest he has generated through this is so huge that money must be pouring in. I bought a copy of his book so I could enjoy the pictures. The very wealthy might buy an original canvas.

3) And if that doesn't convince you, how about the film maker Chris Jones? His blog is like a masterclass in the film industry. There is no sense that he is holding things back so we will be more inclined to buy one of his books or go to one of his workshops. He is open and frank about the projects he is involved with.

I have no idea if this was his idea from the start, but when he needed money to make a short film, he simply asked for £50 from everyone. And such was the respect his readers and other contacts held him in that they gave freely. The money came in and the film Gone Fishing was made. (I'm sure you already know, it reached the final shortlist of 10 films for the Oscars).

The outstanding feature of each of the above examples is that the artists didn't give away their leftovers. They gave away the very best.

Being Dyslexic and Empathy

www.beingdyslexic.com is, as the name implies, a forum for people to discuss issues relating to their dyslexia. I have been a daily visitor to the website since I came across it some months ago. It has been refreshing to learn about the experiences of dyslexics directly from dyslexics instead of from reading the conclusions of research projects. Why? Because the issues raised are the ones that concern the dyslexics themselves.

Instead of fixating on reading and writing, the discussions range from talking about time management to empathy, from creativity to relationships. From this dyslexic-centred discussion several surprises emerge.

I have for some years wondered if there could be a connection between dyslexia and the degree of ability to recall emotions and to sense the emotions of others. My suspicions emerged from a chance remark by a dyslexic actor who said she relied on her strong “emotional memory” to help her get into role. This chimed with my own experience. As a writer I use the ability to recall and relive emotions when I am creating characters and working out what they must be feeling and how they will act as a result.

But when I asked dyslexic professionals I was told that there was no such relationship. I searched the internet and found no references to research on the subject. If such a connection did exist it would be a dyslexic strength. It would be something that dyslexics could use to give them an advantage.

Then someone posted a question on the ‘Being Dyslexic” forum. If you had a superpower connected to your dyslexia, the questioner asked, what would it be?

A stream of answers came through over the following days saying that the superpower they already had was the ability to read other people’s emotions – to know what they were thinking or feeling. It was such a strong effect for some of these people that it felt uncannily like ESP.

There is no doubt that in a predominantly non-dyslexic world, dyslexia presents itself as a disability. But in my opinion, the anomalous strengths of dyslexics are systematically under researched and under reported.

Which brings me to one of the other surprises from the being dyslexic forums – the spread of attitudes people have to their own dyslexia. Some hate it and wish it would go away, feeling it is blighting their lives. Others see it as a source of strength and part of who they are. The variation is huge. Now THAT is an area which could do with some research. It might not help anyone spell better, so educationalists might not regard it as a priority. But I’d rather be happy than get my spelling right every time.

Perhaps my priorities are skewed.

Thinking Differently in the Digital Age

Some people think differently from the rest of the crowd. The different thinkers don't do so well in times when the mainstream crowd has life all figured out. At such times the different thinkers are easy to spot. They're the ones doing crazy stuff, heading for disaster. Or ridicule.

But in times of rapid change, when the mainstream crowd are hanging on to modes of thought and behaviour that no longer work - that is when we need our different thinkers. In my opinion, that is why dyslexics and other kinds of people who tend to think differently are so valuable to society.

Take the example of the movie industry today. Digital production and digital distribution have arrived but the industry has not yet adapted. Or look at the the business of book publication. Or music. There is a tendency for people rooted in the way things were to see the new technology as a way of making slight modifications to the status quo. This is when the different thinkers shine.

I came across the following video on Chris Jone's blog. It is the work of two film makers Arin Crumley and Susan Buice, creators of Four Eyed Monsters. I this completely inspirational. If you are interested in the collision of old media and the new digital age, this is well worth the half hour it takes to watch.

Search Engine Optimization and new Blogger

Much is talked about the dark art of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). But the actual substance of it is usually kept behind locked doors. Pay me a shed-load of cash and I will work my magic on your website, making it appear nearer the top in Google searches.

But (as always) the advice on this blog comes to you free!

There are people who believe SEO is just a sprinkling of common sense dressed up with the smoke and mirrors of a conjurer and the hype of a good marketing machine. There are also people who believe that a good SEO consultant will boost the volume of traffic attracted to a website by one or two orders of magnitude. As with most things, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

So here is one little observation to add to the mix. Having just reformatted from the old Blogspot templates to the newer system, I notice this blog coming out lower in Google searches than it was doing last week. I don't know whether this change happening at this time is coincidence or not. But I thought I'd share it with you anyway.

The common list of other things to do in order to boost the number of people finding your site from Google, Yahoo and others includes:

Research commonly searched for phrases. (Google, YouTube and others have helpful predictive text which flashes up lists of the phrases people most commonly type in as soon as you start to type.)

Use key phrases in the title of the site, the title of the page, the title of the article and the first line of the article.

Include captioned photographs.

And most importantly - get other sites to link to yours.

Do please add suggestions to this list. Especially if you are an SEO consultant or have had an SEO consultant work on your site. :-)

Blog Visitors

Having moved over to the new blogger platform the other day, I was having a look at my visitor statistics and was shocked to see they had dropped to zero. No visitors at all?

Duh. Slap palm to forehead. I'd not moved the counter software into the new blog page template!

The glitch is now amended and thankfully people are still looking in from time to time.

Moving to New Blogger

When I started keeping this blog, four and a bit years ago, the system offered by Blogger had fewer bells and whistles than it does today. A new, improved platform came online some time ago, but since my blog was already up and running, I held off from switching over.

Today I gave in and switched to new blogger.

I must admit to being rather nervous. I've done much tinkering with the basic template over the years and was afraid of losing all that work. As things turned out, the switchover has been fairly straightforward. I still haven't got everything sorted. I'll still want to tinker with the fonts and colours. The information in the side-bar will be shuffled to some extent. The links list will be expanded.

If you have any problems with the new layout, please let me know.

Smartphones for Dyslexics - my decision

Thanks to everyone who gave me suggestions and advice on moving towards better time management through technology. (My dyslexia gives me a rather fluid and vague grasp of the flow of time - which tends to get me into interesting situations occasionally). I have listened to what you've told me. I've also gone shopping and looked at different models of netbook and smartphone. And prices, of course.



Ivory kindly let me play around with her iPhone on Thursday - which has given me more of an idea about how I might use one.

Yesterday I came to a decision. I'm going to shift a load of my organizational stuff onto Google calendar, google mail etc. But I am going to hold back from buying any gadgets for a few months. (I am having a fairly intensive period of writing during the next 6 months, so my organizational load will be limited). Then, when the next google phone comes out, I will probably go for that. Presumably it will be called the G2. By that time, I'll probably be renewing my laptop as well - and will go for one of the long battery life Samsung netbooks.

Why the Google phone rather than the iPhone? Simply because of their open-source policy. Whilst I have complained about Google's attitude in trampling over copyright holder's rights, I am perfectly happy for them to release their own intellectual property to the creative commons.

Apple's more-or-less opposite approach of centralisation and secrecy seems less wholesome and, however beautiful the iPhone is, I feel uncomfortable with it.


So there we go - thanks again for the input.

Dyslexia Resources

I have come across two excellent resources for dyslexics recently.

The first is the Being Dyslexic community. This is a free to access social network site for dyslexics and people concerned with dyslexia. Much of its client base seems to be based in the UK, though there are members from other parts of the world as well. On its forums questions, discoveries, advice and support are freely shared.

I stumbled across it a few weeks ago and was instantly hooked.

Lots of people are interested in dyslexia. There are neuroscientists - people who scan brains to work out the physical differences between dyslexics and non-dyslexics. There are educationalists - people who try to figure out how to get dyslexics to achieve 5 or more GCSE passes at grade C or above. Much of the information on dyslexia is produced by these two groups. The refreshing thing about Being Dyslexic is that the material there comes from a third interested party - the practitioners, the owners of dyslexic brains.

The strap-line on the front page of the site is: "Being dyslexic is being someone amazing." I love it.

Then to my second recommendation. I have mentioned it on here before without realising that it could be useful for those who want to understand dyslexia. It is the novel Ghosts of Eden by Andrew Sharp.

This is a book I read in manuscript form some years ago. Since the book launch, I have been reading it again. This time a truth hit me that I'd missed before. One of the characters is dyslexic. It is never stated in the book. But all the evidence is there.

The following contains a very small spoiler, so if you are already convinced to read the Ghosts of Eden, perhaps you should stop here, and come back once you have finished it. Otherwise, do read on.

The first section of the book deals with two cowherd brothers living in East Africa. One is well respected, the other is having problems and is a worry to his family. The respected one has a natural gift for understanding the cattle. He knows them and they respond to him. He can also tell stories in the way the adults do, using the same rhythms and fluency. He knows what people are thinking before anything is said, and intuitively senses the outcome of events before they happen. In short, he is gifted and destined for greatness. If he has a shortcoming it is that he tends to be impulsive. But this can also be a path to greatness, for he is the one who will act when others might stand around thinking and talking.



But life is about to change for the two boys. The white man's education is coming. They head off to school together and suddenly their position is reversed. The boy who was so able is suddenly disabled because this new world values different qualities. Conversely, his less able brother suddenly flourishes. The white man's education values the ability to read and write, to spell correctly, to remember abstract information. Here the day is measured in hours and minutes instead of by the passage of events. Here impulsive behaviour is bad behaviour.

In short the super-able becomes disabled and the disabled becomes super-able. Why? Because different qualities are valued.

Last Thursday I asked the author if he had intended the able cowherd boy to be dyslexic. He said yes, though he hadn't spelled it out because that was not the main theme of the book.

In my opinion, the opening of this novel - which can be taken as a stand-alone story - should be compulsory reading for anyone concerned with dyslexia. You can buy copies here. (And no, I don't get a commission!)

Postscript on Publishing

I have learned a huge amount through all the contributions made on this subject - both in the comments section and through individual e-mails. Many thanks once again.

Having said that, I still feel as if I am driving in the dark.

The only thing I feel sure of is that the world of books is going through a period of rapid change and that the change is going to get much faster over the coming years as digital readers spread. The publishing industry is not a system in equilibrium. And with the system out of equilibrium it is a time of opportunities for far-sighted writers, publishers and retailers.

Now, as promised, I'll shut up on this for a while!

Publishing trends and the Net Book Agreement

I have been pleased to receive a large amount of e-mail and other comment on yesterday's article about the publishing industry. Interestingly, some of the views seem almost irreconcilable. Hopefully I'll be able to compile some of them for a future post - (I'm still waiting for permission from a couple of people.)

However, my understanding of the situation is as follows:

The publishing industry can been seen to have three elements - writers, publishers and sales outlets.

The writers are producing novels. More novels than ever before. I'm an example of this. I would not have been able to attempt to write a novel if it hadn't been for the advent of the word processor. My dyslexia would have been too great a barrier. I may be an extreme case, but I recon other people have been enabled by technology in similar ways.

Contrary to popular belief, the publishers are producing more titles a year now than they used to. I've failed to come up with detailed statistics for the last couple of years, but from what I read the trend seems to be growth.

What has happened to buying patterns since the end of the Net Book Agreement? I sketched the following 2 graphs to illustrate what I believe the change to have been. They are not based on any real data. Rather they illustrate a change in pattern that corresponds to what I have been told is happening.

The x-axis on these graphs represents all the books published in the year, from the #1 best seller on the right, all the way down to the 10,000th seller on the left. The y axis represents money made by each title. Thus, the best selling book made lots of money and the worst selling book made little.

Here we have a picture of the market during the prime of the Net Book agreement:

And here we have a picture of the market now:

The total number of books being published is dazzlingly large. But the number of books being sold in any volume has reduced. (I understand the value of the market in total is not growing or shrinking at present.)

The big sellers are selling more and being promoted more. The small sellers are selling less and being promoted less.

Now - with the arrival of the e-book - the number of novels being published each year is likely to increase at a huge rate.

My question is - how will a reader know what books are worth looking at? The top selling couple of hundred novels will be easy to identify. They are being promoted. They are given prominence in Waterstones, Tesco etc. But what of the rest - the mid-list and below? Here we have a huge expanse of publications in which the excellent has a problem making itself seen above the mass of frankly poor writing that is now finding its way into print.

This is my impression of what is happening. I have no real data to justify it and, as always, am open to being told I am wrong!

Why some great books don't get published

I'm still thinking about the talk given last week by Corinne Souza of Picnic Books.

During her talk Corinne observed that nowhere else but in the publishing is there a product being produced which people are hungry for but which is not being delivered to them. This was such an arresting observation that I have kept thinking about it since.



The origin of this strange situation can be traced back to the early part of the last century, when publishers set up something called the Net Book Agreement. The agreement stopped shops selling books for lower than the cover price. The effect of this was that no shop could try undercutting other shops. The public paid anomalously large prices for their books and booksellers large and small thrived.

But such an agreement was always doomed to collapse. It was a restrictive practice. A cartel. The inevitable started in 1991 when Waterstones among others started selling books at discount. If there was to be a price war the big chains could use their buying power to get better prices than independent bookshops. The economies of scale would enable them to undercut and put the squeeze on their competitors. The collapse of the agreement was completed in 1997 when it was finally declared illegal.

Anyone buying books in the UK will have seen the result. Small operators have largely disappeared. (Leicester lost its last two independent general bookstores last year.) Supermarkets had even greater buying power than the big stores and started selling paperbacks for under £3 a shot, thus undercutting even the big bookshop chains.

Low prices and huge volumes are now the name of the game. Thus the vast majority of the money in the publishing industry is made on the top few hundred best sellers.

If you were working for one of the main publishers, of course you'd be looking for books that would sell in large volumes from the shelves of Tesco. You might regretfully decline to publish the more risky, quirky, individual and challenging books that arrived on your desk in manuscript form. Such books would once have found outlets through the independent bookshops. But line those books up in a supermarket... would they really sell at the required volumes.

Curiously, when I go visiting book groups and do talks in libraries, I meet many people who are searching for the kind of literature that they don't find on supermarket shelves. "Give us things that are quirky, individual and challenging," they say.

Which brings us back to Corinne Souza's comment. These books are being written. There are people out there looking to buy them. But the mainstream publishing industry is not bridging the gap. Something is broken.

Perhaps that explains the recent flowering of new independent publishers, often rooted in regions outside London, often publishing books that are being turned down by the big players. Having said that, I see many books in manuscript form. Five of them in recent years have been so stunningly brilliant that I was sure they would be picked up - and yet have to this day remained unpublished. (I am talking about manuscripts of obviously greater quality, originality and importance than many of the books reaching the supermarket shelves.)

In this article, I haven't mentioned the Internet. Amazon. Viral marketing. Print on demand. Digital publishing. I will write more about that in another article.

As ever, please leave comments, because I would love to hear your views on this.

Digital Publishing

A fascinating article in the Times Online about the future of digital publishing can be found here. Thanks to David Hood for sending me the link.

I'm starting to wonder if the publishing world will eventually split into two branches, beautiful objects published in hard copy and low cost literature (also low environmental impact)published digitally. If this sounds strange, consider that the present publishing market is already split between hardback and paperback.

Just a thought.

Using Skype for team writing

The White Angel sequel screenplay is pushing forward again. This morning me, myself and Ivory had a two hour Skype consultation which has resulted in pages of notes. Mostly these are small modifications to Act 1, but there are also some real revelations (to us, at least) about the nature of the different characters, their power relationships and their motivation for different courses of action.

I plan to spend the afternoon transferring these notes to the screenplay itself. Then I'll e-mail it to Ivory for her to review this evening. If all goes well, we'll be ready and set for another Skyp consultation tomorrow morning.

All well and good. Especially as we are not using video conferencing. I look distinctly crumpled this morning.

It is the school holiday at the moment, so I have retreated to the bedroom in order to have this Skype call in privacy from the rest of the family. Half a conversation about the motivations of serial killers must sound very odd indeed.