I was having a drink with a few writer friends at the weekend and the conversation\u00a0got around\u00a0to publicity or, rather, the lack of it.\u00a0 The general feeling was that publishers choose one author to put all their resources behind and leave the rest of us to go to hell.\u00a0 ‘What’s worse,’ somebody said, ‘is the fact that they have to pay bookshops for putting their author on the table\u00a0and in the window.\u00a0 But it’s catch 22.\u00a0 If \u00a0they put them\u00a0in the window they’ll sell but they’ll only put them there if they do sell.’\u00a0 \u00a0‘That’s not all,’ somebody else said, ‘they do it on websites now as well so that everytime you click on a site you get somebody else’s book on the masthead.’\u00a0 ‘Galling,’ we agreed.\u00a0 ‘How much do they pay?’ somebody else asked.\u00a0 Nobody was sure.\u00a0 Then prizes were mentioned.\u00a0 ‘Do you realise publishers are expected to pay to get their favourite authors on the lists?’ ‘Surely prizes are set up to honour the best work at the time?’\u00a0 ‘It’s just like the politicians and the bankers. Anything goes if it makes money.’ ‘Aren’t we all being naive here?\u00a0 We’re crime writers.\u00a0 What else did we expect?\u00a0 Corruption doesn’t just exist in the pages of a book.’\u00a0 ‘Maybe a journalist might investigate.\u00a0Who pays what to whom. \u00a0It would give\u00a0 readers something to think about .’\u00a0\u00a0 Somebody wondered why we bothered.\u00a0 ‘I like writing,’ I said, ‘it’s the best thing.\u00a0 I’m miserable when I’m not working on a book.’\u00a0 Everybody agreed with that.\u00a0 Well, we would, wouldn’t we?<\/p>\n
Before we broke up \u00a0the conversation veered onto the things we hate about publicists, how the lazy ones use other well-known writers to publicise their own wannabe authors by saying \u00a0 If you like X you’ll like Y.\u00a0 ‘It’s\u00a0 cannibalising somebody else’s reputation and cashing in on their fame,’ was one view.\u00a0\u00a0 I pointed out that a top trade magazine had reviewed one of my novels by comparing it very favourably to a best-selling author (whom I happen to love) and my publisher understandably put the quotation\u00a0on the cover.\u00a0 I was reassured that this was OK as it was an unsolicited and unpaid for review and therefore genuine. \u00a0We still all agreed, though,\u00a0 that if you like Bloggins you don’t necessarily like Noggins.<\/p>\n
It was a good evening all round.\u00a0 Much Guienne was sampled. Thanks folks!\u00a0 Good writing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was having a drink with a few writer friends at the weekend and the conversation\u00a0got around\u00a0to publicity or, rather, the lack of it.\u00a0 The general feeling was that publishers choose one author to put all their resources behind and leave the rest of us to go to hell.\u00a0 ‘What’s worse,’ somebody said, ‘is the fact that they have to pay bookshops for putting their author on the table\u00a0and in the window.\u00a0 But it’s catch 22.\u00a0 If \u00a0they put them\u00a0in the window they’ll sell but they’ll only put them there if they do sell.’\u00a0 \u00a0‘That’s not all,’ somebody else said,<\/p>\n[Read More...]<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cassandraclark.co.uk\/casscb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}