North London Reading Group

Think of a book and you think of a finished article. Whether made of paper or virtual pixels, the book you read is the end of result of months, years or decades of work by the author. After slaving away in seclusion over a hot pen or laptop, the author proudly delivers the fruits of their labour to the world. Once out in the world, the book can be lauded, criticised or just ignored, but there’s no turning back once it’s done.

I’ve had books like that published. It’s a heady process – the years of work, the anxiety over what the public will think, the anxious search for feedback once it’s out and the frustrating collation of errors spotted too late and improvements for future editions that may or may not ever be published.

But since the end of 2011, I’ve been working on a different kind of book; one that’s published piece by piece, one in which the public play a big role before it’s even finished.

The best water skier in Luxembourg

The book is called The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds. It’s part-travelogue, part personal story, part pop sociology. In the book I visit obscure ‘small worlds’ to find the people who matter in them, the unknown heroes (and sometimes villains) who make big waves in their own small ponds but are invisible outside them.

The book derives from a joke I used to tell about myself. I’m one of the top academic experts in heavy metal and in the UK Jewish community, both of them very small fields – making me a bit like the best water skier in Luxembourg.

In 2011 I had a brainwave: why not track down the real best water skier in Luxembourg? This could form the basis of a book that pays tribute to the commitment and excellence found in small worlds; a book that would be an antidote to the obsession with celebrity, power and ‘bigness’ often celebrated in the publishing industry.

The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg is about connecting with people, hearing their stories and making them part of my own journey. I wanted to involve readers in this journey too. So I chose to publish the book not through a conventional publisher, but the ‘crowd-funded’ publisher Unbound. Set up in 2011, Unbound lets readers support books before they are written.  The people behind Unbound select a few projects to put their weight behind, filming a pitch video in which authors appeal directly to readers for support.

Uncovering a turbulent history

I started modestly, by asking for funds to write the first chapter, in which I would attempt to track down the eponymous best water skier. It took a couple of months but eventually I got the money and in December 2011 I found myself in a village called Mondorf-Les-Bains, near the French border, meeting Luxembourg’s best water skier. I also found much more: stories of the turbulent history of Luxembourgish water skiing, from the successes of the 1960s (in which one Luxembourger, Sylvie Hülsemann, won the world championship), to the turmoil of the 1970s, when the Luxembourg water skiing scene split into two rival federations.

This wasn’t the end of my journey. In summer 2012 my pitch for the rest of the book went up on Unbound. Since then I have been appealing appealed directly to readers to fund my journeys to find the most powerful politician in Alderney, the Icelandic special forces, Malta’s favourite soft drink, Botswana’s top heavy metal band and Surinam’s best-selling novelist.  Anyone who supports the project gets to download the Luxembourg chapter immediately and other chapters will be uploaded as they are written. Supporters can support at a number of levels, from a simple e-book, to a lavish hard copy with other goodies such as postcards from my travels and a unique best water skier T-shirt. Pay enough and supporters can even join me on my trips!

Slow going

It’s slow going as I need to raise a lot of money, particularly for the Botswana and Surinam chapters. But by October last year I had raised enough to go to Alderney to find the channel island’s most powerful politician. As in Luxembourg, I found more than I bargained for – an intricate and fascinating story of how a tiny group of people jostle for power on a tiny island.

Throughout the project I’ve been speaking at festivals and literary salons about my work. This is a vital part of the process and not just because I need their money! I’ve received many suggestions, queries and reactions that have helped shape the book.

On 26 January I spoke at the North London Reading Group’s Bookstock event. I shared sections of my first draft of the Alderney chapter and the audience’s response will be vital to how the chapter turns out. I will also reflect on what I found in Luxembourg and what I hope to find in my other destinations.

In 2013 I hope to travel to Iceland and Malta to research the next two chapters. Whether I do so is partly up to you! Have a look at my page on Unbound and consider helping me shape a book whose final form even I don’t know yet.

Keith Kahn-Harris is a writer and sociologist. His website is www.kahn-harris.org

A month ago I self-published an e-book for the first time.

It was Redemption Blues, which 12 years ago sold a million hard copies and gave me 15 minutes of fame. The book’s success back then was overwhelmingly overseas. Few people in the UK have ever read it, and none in e-book form, since it appeared when dinosaurs roamed the earth. So Amazon e-published it and put it in the January 2013 deals for under £2 (until Thursday 31 January – move fast!)

This was the result.

In three weeks, 1,200 people bought Redemption Blues. That’s worth £3000 to me. Not big bucks, but more than my last conventionally published novel, The Warning Bell (by pen-name Tom Macaulay) generated in two years with four times the sales.

Get the message? I did not have to submit the manuscript for a gruelling selection process, or argue with 19-year-old editors called Josh. I didn’t have to hawk the book at vegetable markets, or be auditioned by the Women’s Institute for the right to speak about it to their members for free. I did not have to peddle it like some medieval chapman at goat-ropings and dwarf-throwing contests.

The book was simply pushed out into the stream and given its chance.

Traditional publishers regard Amazon as the spawn of Satan. The gripe is that they offer books far below cost – most of the Kindle top ten go for 20p. This devalues books in the eyes of the consumer, the argument goes. Amazon will develop into some intergalactic Tesco’s, using its reputed $9 billion of cash reserves to slash prices until the competition is driven to extinction.

Will this happen? You bet.

For mid-list writers, conventional publishing has not worked for years. It’s fiendishly difficult to get published at all, and there’s very little support if you do – unless you look like making kerzillions of sales overnight. Virtually no mid-lister makes a living at it, which means that society’s stories are told by a few celebrity writers, or by middle class mezzobrows who can afford to do it as a hobby, or are supported by long-suffering spouses.

People like me are going to go the self-publishing e-book route in greater numbers. I only need an audience of about eight thousand to make a living this way. I’d need at least three times that to get by with conventional publishing. And a living is what most of us want – not stardom, just sufficient appreciation and reward to allow us to do what we do best. If e-books and self publishing offer that, no contest. That’s capitalism.

But look out. Once there’s no other option, expect Amazon to slash the price it pays authors. That’s capitalism too.

And consider what we’ll be faced with: a truly vast amorphous pile of self-published outpourings, most of it drivel. How will discerning readers find their way through this congested cyberspace?

Cue the rise of a new sort of enterprise. One which selects and nurtures talent, and presents the result to appropriate audiences. One which regards sales of a few thousand as worthwhile, and capable of development. I’d pay a bit extra for that, wouldn’t you?

Funny thing, though: I thought that’s what publishers were supposed to be doing all along.

Pity they didn’t, eh?

T.D.Griggs’ epic Victorian saga Distant Thunder has just been released in paperback and e-book. His tense psychological thriller Redemption Blues is published by Amazon as an e-book, and will soon be available in hard copy too.

The Warning Bell (by pen-name Tom Macaulay) is a modern day father-son story with links to WW2 and is available both as hard copy and e-book.

T.D.Griggs’ website is www.tdgriggs.co.uk or follow him on Twitter @TDGRIGGS1

The more I looked into it, the more feasible it sounded. The benefits: total control over design, content, distribution, and bigger royalties. The downsides: lack of marketing reach. What I’ve decided is that it’s certainly worth trying and if I believe in my novel, why shouldn’t I put myself behind it like this?

One aspect I have enjoyed is the fact that it can be done so quickly.

Once you get over the harrowing process of formatting your novel to the specifications for e-books in particular, you have a lovely file which could potentially be on the market in no time at all. As I hate errors that I spot later, I have checked and re-checked the file about a million times.

However, another benefit for people like me is that even after publication, I can upload a new file and any of those niggling errors I missed will be gone! With the paperback copy, this is less possible, so I have taken extra time to read over it, and to really ensure safety, I asked a friend who works in publishing to edit it.

That’s also another useful tip – if you don’t ask, you don’t get. For Semblance, I have managed to find someone with the right skills to edit my novel to a high standard and another person to design a cover (print and digital versions) – all for the grand fee of nothing! It’s amazing what you can uncover in your friends and those people who are willing to give you a favour for the price of a pint.

Have there been any problems?

Sure there have! If you are considering self-publishing via sites like Amazon or Smashwords, you will soon encounter a problem with something called an ITIN or EIN. What it means is that if you DON’T have it, your royalties will be taxed 30% by the US. If you do have it, you get to keep all your money.

The problem is, the process is lengthy and horrific. What saved me was a great blog I found giving me information on obtaining a tax number, an EIN rather than an ITIN, with one easy phonecall. The only catch is you have to declare your income to the IRS, which you should be doing anyway via self-assessement, especially if you’ve been published before. Either way, head over to my blog for the information on this. It saved me a lot of hassle!

I may not sell millions, or even thousands.

Most likely, it will struggle to reach a few hundred. What I will be pleased about is that the sequel to Ellipsis sees the light of day and hopefully, those who enjoyed the first novel will grab a copy of the sequel. Marketing will be the biggest problem but I will use social networking and my blog as much as I can. Also useful will be the contacts I made when securing reviews and attention for Ellipsis.

What’s important is being present on the web, whether it be as a reviewer, or a commenter, or via running something literary as I do with my magazine, streetcake. It can’t hurt in any way and fingers crossed, because you’re interested in other people, they will take notice of you when you need it.

To read more about Semblance or Nikki’s other literary endeavours, as well as random thoughts, visit her blog

Bookstock returns on Saturday 3 November 2012.

Buy a copy of Semblance from Amazon