Archive for the 'Writing & Publishing' Category

I received this email from an Italian e-zine Buran a week or so ago. If you are a writer or aspiring writer - especially if you are from Asia - and would like to see your work published online and in Italian, contact Flaviano Fillo at Buran with your writings or to find out more - his email address is at the end of his email.

Dear Yang-May Ooi,

I’m writing (and reading your blog) from Italy.
I am involved in some literary projects regarding the web.
Now a new project is about a web magazine named Buràn (http://www.buran.it)

In the new magazine Buràn we host foreign (for us) bloggers and writers,
from every part of the world.

The aim is to show what we call “Invisible Writing”: stories that we
usually are not able to read because of the language (chinese, arab and so
on) or because they are fading away into the great ocean of the web.
We are collecting stories from all over the world.

I read your blog, and appreciated it very much.

We would really like to publish something from you or from the people who
read Fusion View.

Our magazine is divided in two different parts: the first part hosts
stories (fiction and non-fiction) about a subject chosen by us (for the
next issue it will be: “The City”).

The second part host stories (fiction and non-fiction) regarding subjects
chosen by authors. There will be no resctrictions about themes.

We are interested in stories published on-line; if they’re published also
on paper, no problem.

About lenght: it should be good for us to get stories possibly composed by
about 5,000 to 10,000 characters.

About the rights: you’ll keep on owning all the rights about your stories
. Buràn is a no-profit project. It’s a web publication, everybody is able
to read it online; nobody will be allowed to use the italian version for
economic purposes.

Everybody (authors, translators, webmaster) join the projet for free.
No honorarium, unfortunately! Just a link to your website, and your name on an italian literary magazine that’s becoming very popular, and a lot of people reading your words and
your world.

If you are interested in our project, please contact me at
flaviano.fillo@libero.it or at redazione@buran.it

Thank you very much for your kind attention.
I hope to hear from you soon.
Best

Flaviano

PS We collect stories in original languages and than translate them in italian.

Next deadline: 19 march

About charaters: I don’t mean number of words, but number of letters and blanks (i.e. “Yang-May” has 8 characters). But consder the numbers of characters just as a suggestion, not a “must”.

People don’t have to mark their submissions as fiction or non fiction.

About authors biography, we link to authors blog or site.

The first issue of Buràn counted 10,000 hits; many blogs from many regions of the world linked to it. Our stories has been about; A white farmer in Zimbabwe, Africa; A year in a scientific base in Antarctica; Imaginary People in Mexico; A girl who never stops crying in Argentina; A murder in Korea and so on (from 18 Countries).

The Creative Commons Licence is a protocol on the net whereby creative types can licence their creations to be used by others freely, subject to various restrictions that you might specify. It is commonly used by people who upload photograhps to flickr.com to allow others to use their photos elsewhere without fear of being sued for breach of copyright.

Some writers post up downloadable pdf versions of their books or writings under the Creative Commons Licence. Their intention is to distribute their work freely to others. But what’s to stop someone else downloading your book and then sending it off to a printer and then selling it on their own behalf, keeping the profits themselves?

Nothing it seems. Bestselling author and marketing guru Seth Godin found his downloadable free book “Everyone’s an Expert” being sold on Amazon by someone else. There’s some heated debate in the comments and trackbacks to his post about this on his blog. It seems that the Creative Commons Licence doesn’t prohibit others distributing the work in print form and profiting from it. So Seth does not appear to have any legal recourse to stop this profiteering.

So, if you are a writer who has or who is thinking about distributing your books or writings electronically via the Creative Commons Licence, do check out the fine print before you do so. It would be sensible to think about what additional conditions and restrictions you might want to include for downloading your work and state that clearly on your site.

But bear in mind that at the end of the day, you may have nice legal wording on your site that protects others profiteering from your work but it’s a whole different story trying to enforce it in the event that some scoundrel does in fact rip you off. The music industry is spending millions of dollars trying to stop their music being ripped off and pursuing international court cases to protect their rights - how much time or money can you as an individual spend to try and shut down your thief?

Photo: thanks to oldwest brew.com

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I received a query from TK in response to my Writing Tips. TK asked: once a story is ready, who should a writer contact to get it published?

In some ways, the easy part is the actual writing of a story. Getting it out there and into publication is the challenge. So where do you start?

Novels

If you’ve written a novel and want to get it published in the UK, the first step is to get a literary agent. You can find agents listed in the Writers Handbook and the Writers & Artists Yearbook (both published annually - so get the most up to date ones). They will act on your behalf in submitting to publishers. This gives you the strongest chance of getting your work noticed by a publisher. For a more detailed insider’s view of what a literary agent does and how they can help you, listen to my podcast interview with a UK literary agent Lucy Luck - click here.

If you’re trying to get your novel published in Malaysia, I believe that the way you do it is submit it direct to the publisher. Eric Forbes, the books editor for MPH Books in Malaysia, gives useful guidelines at his blog - click here.

Short Stories

If you’ve written a short story, you should try and get it published in magazines and journals first before hoping for a book deal in the UK. It is much more difficult to get a collection of short stories published in the UK than a novel - especially if you have no track record of published work. Readers here tend to prefer novels so that is the primary market. Check out magazines and journals in the Writers Handbook and the Writers & Artists Yearbook and submit your story to them - make sure they are interested in short stories first, obviously. Payment is likely to be minimal. Once you have a published body of work, then you could try to get a publisher to put together a collection - the editors of the magazines you have published in may be able to suggest the best route for that. I do not have any experience of trying to publish a collection of short stories but I suspect that the process is the same for novels - ie to get a literary agent first.

There may be publishers who are actively looking for short stories to put into collections arranged by theme and featuring a range of different writers. You could try to seek those out. I do not know where or how you would find them but the Writers Handbook and the Writers & Artists Yearbook may be good places to start. Also literary / writing magazines and journals may publicise or advertise such ventures.

I believe that it may be easier in Malaysia to get short stories published in book form as that is the primary local market. I have no personal experience of this process but you might like to check out Ted Mahsun’s blog at http://tedmahsun.blogspot.com to see how he’s got his stories published - Ted is a regular Fusion View reader and commentor based in Malaysia, who is a great example of a tenacious and focused writer. For ages, he has been writing stories, sending them out for publication, getting rejections, picking himself up again and keeping writing. Last year, he had his first two stories accepted for publication and is starting to make a name for himself as a book reviewer, too.

Other Countries

These tips focus on the UK as that is my area of experience and I’ve mentioned Malaysian opportunities for publication based on what I’ve gathered from others.

If you have any tips about the publication process in other countries, please do add a comment or email me (see the Email Me link on the sidebar).

Or, if you have anything to add to what I’ve said here that could help emerging writers, do get in touch as well.

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Photo: thanks to wrtehereinfrance

What’s my image?

As a writer, I have been pitched into the public eye almost to my surprise. The trait of a successful writer is someone who can sit alone in a room for hours on end for as long as several years in order to complete a novel - and you have to like that solitude. Sometimes, I used to stay in my pyjamas all day and when the heating broke down in my flat, I sat in a sleeping bag with several big sweaters on, a woolly hat and fingerless gloves. And then my book was published and I was sent off in limousines and on business class flights to literary events, book signings, radio interviews and television appearances in London, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore. I had to chat entertainingly about my book and myself and wear make-up and smart clothes and pose for photo shoots. All in the interests of raising the profile of my book. This was what the public out there saw, never knowing about the pyjamas and woolly hat…

I made it up as I went along, overcoming my natural stammer and worrying that my clothes looked smart enough and that I didn’t have lipstick on my teeth and most of all, hoping I didn’t say anything I would regret. After a number of years, I think I’m kinda getting the hang of it now but I still have trouble with lipstick…(as a hopeless tomboy, I always seem to smear it everywhere!)

So I was really curious to go to an event they organised by the City Women’s Network on How to Create and Maintain Your Image. Had I been doing it all wrong? Would they share some secret tips to make it all a bit easier?

Authenticity

First up was Aliza Blachman O’Keeffe, Executive Coach. Her message was for businesswomen and professionals but I found it applies equally to writers. Be your authentic self, she said, and it will be a strong foundation to build your image on. You can discover who you are by developing self-awareness and getting structured feedback from friends and colleagues. Authenticity builds trust in all your relationships, whether personal, business or in the public eye. Authenticity helps you to have confidence in who you are so you can perform with integrity in your own personal style. Hmmm, so this lipstick thing - if that’s not my authentic self, perhaps I can ditch it at last? And maybe I needn’t worry too much about being ultra smart provided I can be smart enough on occasions to be let into the Reform Club. And the fact that I sometimes spend all day in my pyjamas doesn’t have to be my dirty little secret…

Four Questions

Next was Jane Atkinson, image consultant, whose clients included the late Princess Diana. She was elegant and charming and it was intriguing to see her with the third speaker, Stuart Higgins who used to be the editor of The Sun, the tabloid that is known for its scandal hunting of celebrities, notably Princess Diana - whom it was Jane’s role to protect, of course. They were both amusing and witty about their professional enmity, Jane saying that she liked him better now that he was no longer at The Sun.

Given her experiences of the media from that unique perspective, Jane advised anyone looking to raise their public profile in the media to ask themselves four key questions. (i) Why do you want a higher profile? (ii) Who are you trying to reach? (iii) Are you prepared to face the bad with the good? (Once you’re in the public eye, there’s no going back!) And if the answer is yes, to all the above (iv) What is your message? Let’s see…. For me (i) I want my writing to have a higher profile so I can have a greater opportunity to communicate with people (ii) I’m trying to reach people who are interested in books and writing and who share my interest and curiosity in cross-cultural lives (iii) This is a tough one. I’ve had my share of bad reviews, like any writer, and it was a painful shock at first. Now, I take the view that everyone has their own opinion and their own preferences and I can’t expect everyone to agree with what I say or like what I say. But it can still sting, what can I say? (iv) And my message? It has to be: Hey, isn’t life interesting? Isn’t every single person’s life interesting and worth something?

Jane’s final word was a warning. Be careful - the media is difficult to work with and it’s not going to be what you think it’s going to be.

Papparazzi

Stuart Higgins, media consultant (ex-editor of The Sun) also peppered his advice with words of warning. And coming from him, I think you have to heed that warning. The media is mostly run by chauvinistic, ageing men, he said. Sport, sex and scandal sell papers. Women are not treated well. (But then, as one CWN member pointed out in the Q&A, neither is anyone else in the public eye!) Once you step into the public arena, you are public property and fair game. So, sometimes, it’s worth knowing when to shut up. Princess Diana was a master at handling the media while Camilla preserves a mystique by not engaging with the media - both successful strategies reflecting each woman’s different styles and personalities. On a hopeful note, he did say that the media does like to report on achievement stories, offbeat stories, stories that capture the imagination so there is opportunity for a good story to get out there.

I have to say his stories made me laugh but also made me worried. I started to have flashes of being hounded by paparrazzi taking photos of me in a bikini in a compromising situation on a yacht off the coast of Barbados, of coming out of nightclubs and being caught vomittig copiously onto the pavement. And then of course I snapped out of it and thanked my lucky stars that I had chosen to be a dull, quiet writer instead of a rock star, princess or football player.

Google yourself

Finally, Neville Hobson, new media guru sketched out the new frontier that is the blogosphere. From a show of hands, it looked like only a very small percentage of us blogged though a larger group listened to podcasts and read blogs. If you are reading this, then you are probably comfortable with the world of blogs and aware of the growing power of bloggers. For example, in the news today, I read that a blog campaign to remove Starbucks from the Forbidden City in China drew so many supporters that the palace museum is likely to take some action to encourage Starbucks to move outside the walls of the World Heritage site. This illustrates nicely the point that Neville was making that you - or your business - may already have a profile on the internet that you cannot control - like Starbucks in this instance - and it is worth finding out what it is (google yourself!) and considering carefully how you respond to it. Surveys show shifts in trust away from government, corporations and the “suits” to “people like us”. Thirtysomethings and younger folk receive news, information and entertainment on their mobile phones and on the internet. Many people look to peer opinions and recommendations online rather than to traditional sources of authority. Having an internet profile that you control eg through your website or blog taps into this audience. A blog with your authentic voice can build trust over time. But it does take commitment and an ease with writing online content and may not be everyone. Whether you blog or not, it is important to be aware of and to engage appropriately with net content about you.

In the lifetime of Fusion View over this last year, I have been aware that blogging has really taken off in a huge way in Malaysia and Asia - even among those who are not necessarily computer geeks or college students. Housewives, grannies, professional people and those who are over thirty all thrive online. Whereas in the UK, I get the sense that it still tends to be twentysomethings and computery types while the other groups are still taking their time to catch up. I wonder why that is. Anyone have any thoughts? For me, I love connecting with a fascinating range of people from all over the world through my blog and I’m enjoying writing more than when I sit down in a room all alone with my novel!

The New Me

So the evening helped me think about what my objectives are in engaging with the media, traditional and new: which is that I love being part of an interesting cross-cultural community, sharing ideas and writings. And what makes up my authentic self that I am sharing with you now: which means I will throw out the lipstick….

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For photos from the event, see my flickr account - click here

Today, I’d like to share some highlights from comments that were posted on Fusion View in the few weeks before Xmas.

First, thanks to jennifer for her Christmas wishes. Happy New Year to you, jennifer - and also to all Fusion View readers and visitors.

Thanks also to everyone who added comments and emailed me following the feature in StarMag about this blog, in particular to julie yee, say lee, senghooi, lmsell and bibliobibuli. Bibliobibuli discussed the question of reading habits in Malaysia, prompted by my Book Lovers Poll - the current results of the poll show that of 47 people who voted, the majority (46.8%) read more than 40 books a year. 23.4% read between 2 and 10 books a year. The remaining number of voters read between 10-40 books a year. The poll isn’t very scientific of course but I like to infer from it that Fusion View readers are generally pretty literate, genuine book lovers!

We also got a query from sonia , another British resident in France who is keen to make malt loaf and doesn’t know where to get malt extract. Can anyone help? Sonia, I wonder if you might have to get it by mail order eg from Fortnum & Mason or one of those stores that deliver overseas.

Returning to the literary theme, pey and burhanuddin have added some more background information on Yiyun Li, the award-winning short story writer from mainland China. Silvia shares her experiences of writing in numerous languages and how German helps her hide her emotions and how she finds herself expressing her thoughts naturally in three different languages!

On mind and body matters, frank fernandis picked up on my post on painful feet awhile back and notes the lack of support for women with bound feet while andrew and tera ponder on how we can learn from water, in response to the film of a bursting water ballon.

And there is always the subject of food on Fusion View - yeeton advises us to to boycott bad restaurants in response to my post on the concept of “heong”.

Thanks to everyone who emailed me to let me know that the article about Fusion View came out in StarMag on Sunday. I’ve had great feedback from StarMag readers by email and comments - and it looks like The Star Online has fans from all over the world, including the USA as well as those in Malaysia (and London - I catch up with Malaysian news regularly by checking out The Star online).

Many would-be authors from Malaysia have emailed me since the article came out and asked me for writing tips and if I could give feedback on their writing. While I would love to help everyone, I am busy with my own writing and projects as well as my day job and if I took on the role of editor for everyone who asks, I won’t have time to sleep either! But what I can do is give some general tips which you may find useful - specifically picking up some of the common themes from the writers who emailed me.

# Write from your heart - feel what you are writing about.

# Don’t try to write in a high literary style - keep it simple. Write in your own voice.

# Work on your use and mastery of language - whether you are writing in English or any other language. How many ways can you find to say the same thing? How many words can you use to describe an emotion or an object or a colour?

# Have in your mind your reader - it could be someone you know or just a person sitting with you as you write or a crowd. Address your story to them.

# Keep reading - all kinds of writers and genres. Keep learning from other writers. You may not naturally like romances or thrillers or literary fiction. Try them all out. What can you learn from them? Read actively - ask yourself why that sentence is so good, why that paragraph really works. Then try writing something of your own in several different ways - eg as if it were in a romance or thriller or literary fiction.

# Join a writing group or start one of your own, go to creative writing classes - helping someone else with their writing hones the editing skill. You know what works or doesn’t work in someone else’s writing - now apply that to your own.

# Try writing poetry - the old-fashioned kind that rhymes and has rhythm. I find it helps to remind you of the beauty of the language and also stretches your vocabulary (how many words rhyme with “orange”?)

# Oh, and keep writing that novel … just keep going, one word after the other.

“The Spectacular Adventures of Noggin and Izzy” is a great blog created by Barbara Gibson, an American media trainer living in London. You can contact her and she will write a little story all about you, featuring you and her dog Noggin up to all kinds of adventures. This is such fun especially if “you” are a kid.

I came across this blog ‘cos I met Barbara in London a few weeks ago and as bloggers, we bonded immediately and bored everyone else at the party with all our blog talk! Anyway, here is what she told me about how she came to be inspired to create “The Spectacular Adventures of Noggin and Izzy”:

Barbara writes:

I first got the idea when my husband and I and a group of our friends (along with kids and dogs) went away together for a few days of holiday, staying at a big, old house in Wales . During the trip, our friend’s daughter, Isabelle, attached herself to my dog, Noggin, and they became best friends. One of the days we all went to visit an old gold mine, and it got me thinking about writing stories about adventures they could have together. It was around the same time that I had just begun experimenting with a blog, and it occurred to me that a blog could provide a great medium for writing stories, and building a reader base of kids and parents. When I told Isabelle about it, she got excited and began working on ideas for stories, as well. I then realized that it could not only provide stories for reading, but could become interactive, perhaps sparking in older kids an interest in writing. Then it also began expanding to include other kids, first the children of friends I stayed with in my travels, because as they took me out sightseeing, we were having adventures together. So many of the stories are at least loosely based on my own experiences with Noggin, Izzy and the other kids written in. I’ve also encouraged readers to write in, either contributing whole stories, story ideas, or just names of kids, pets, etc., to be included in future stories. The most recent post about baby Ryan came from a reader posting a comment. So far, the kids who have been in the stories have absolutely loved reading about themselves and seeing their pictures on the internet. At some point, I hope to edit and publish Noggin & Izzy books, but for now, the blog is a great way to get ideas, and it provides some built-in discipline for me to write semi-regularly.

I’d love to get contributions from your blog’s readers, so send ‘em on. I’d also like to hear from others who have either story blogs, or blogs aimed at kids and parents – it still seems pretty rare.”

You can visit Noggin and Izzy at http://barbgibson.typepad.com/nogginandizzy/
If you do and Barbara writes a story about you, please let me know and I will post a link to it for all to visit!

Photo: shows Noggin and friends - from Barbara’s blog.

I’ve been re-working the draft of my third novel Tianming Traviata recently.

The novel is an off-beat family drama with a cast of quirky, colourful characters. The main character is a 70-year old cabaret singer, Evie, who is still going strong in her sequinned gowns and feather headdresses. She owns the only nightclub in a small town in Malaysia and sings old show tunes, with the “grand dame” air of days gone by. Her neice Kit-Mei works as software programmer in Kuala Lumpur, a blogging, city-slicking modern young woman who is very much part of 21st century Malaysia. The family are thrown into crisis when Evie’s daughter disappears and the clash between the old and the new generations are brought to a head.

I had been writing it in Standard English using a third person narrative structure. It was zipping along nicely - but it just lacked “oomph” and I was finding that I was getting bored. The dialogue bits were fine when Evie was in the thick of the action. But the narrative was just lacklustre. Now, if the author is bored by the novel, there’s no hope that the narrative will be able to grip others!

So I put it away for several months. Then a few weeks ago, Evie’s voice kept coming back to me. In the dialogue bits, she is in full flow, loud and raucous and full of energy - speaking in Malaysian English. In contrast, the third person narrative was in measured, proper, sensible full sentences with proper syntax, grammar and punctuation.

And I thought, why not try writing the narrative bits in Malaysian English? Yah, why not-lah? So stupid I was before. This one is Evie’s story-lah so, of course, got to tell it with her voice, isn’t it?

Since then, I’ve had such fun getting the narrative down in the voice of a 70 year old cabaret singer who will not let her arthritic hip stop her doing high-kicks and whose language is full of verve and peppered with “-lah”s.

When I’ve got a bit further along with the text, I will upload a podcast reading of the first chapter so you can see what you think. In particulary, I would be interested to see the response of Malaysians to the use of our form of the English language in fiction.

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To hear what Malaysian English sounds like in contrast to Standard UK English, listen to my podcast “Two Voices” about my “schizophrenic” relationship with language.

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I will write more next week about “-lah” and its use in Malaysian English.

So, you’ve got your contract with a publisher and you’re working hard on your re-writes. And you’re being paid - yippee, you’re a professional writer now!

And, finally, you get to plan the dust jacket of your book. Of course, you’ve been planning it probably from the time you started writing the book - or maybe even before. Or perhaps from the moment you decided to be a writer. What writer - or would-be writer - hasn’t stood in a bookshop and imagened their book there on the shelves, their own name beaming out from the best cover design ever in the whole world?

And this is exactly the reason why all new writers arriving at this point in their careers will need to navigate with caution. All your blood, sweat and tears and hopes and ambitions for your beloved book, your baby, will be tied up in the dust jacket. After all, for the first time, you are handing control over to other people - it will be these other people who will dress your baby and present it to the public. It is an alarming moment for Mommie Dearest.

My sense of it is that publishers don’t really want a bug-eyed, frothing, hysterical mother on their hands trying to tell them how her baby should be dressed and presented to the world. For this reason, they are hesitant to let their first-time authors authors go anywhere near the design process.

In my podcast conversation with Lucy Luck, the UK literary agent, I described the negotiations over the dust jacket for my first novel “The Flame Tree”. I was not too happy with the first design for the cover - it was staid and dull, I felt. I spoke to my agent, who agreed that it was too un-thrilling for a thriller. On her advice, I played it cool and let her handle the discussions. She was able to negotiate a re-design. This time, I got the chance to talk to the illustrator and give him my take on what elements the cover could show. I was also invited to watch the photo shoot - “watch” being the operative word: I was careful not to do the whole fussy, interfering mother thing. The result was a brilliant cover that captured the essence of the novel.*

In contrast, I heard the story of a first-time author who was unhappy with the cover design of his book - it had a “Boy’s Own” feel to it, signalling the action/ adventure genre of his novel. Unfortunately, in his mind, he had written great literature and he had expected a cover to denote that gravitas. He had a row with his editor that lasted for weeks - against the advice of his agent, who shared the same view as his editor - and worst of all, he completely lost his cool. The publishers retained the “Boy’s Own” style cover and subsequently, rejected his next three manuscripts. Now, it may be that those later manuscripts lacked merit in their own right. But, in my mind, I don’t think the tantrum over the first dust jacket helped.

Would you have a head to head row with your colleagues or boss in your day job, complete with the chest pushing and going red in the face? Not the greatest career move if you did, I’d suggest. So, too, with navigating your way through the business of being a professional, published author. It can be very difficult especially as one’s life and soul can be bound up in one’s literary baby. So, if you’ve managed to get this far on a bit of luck and a lot of talent, do leave Mommie Dearest at home….

* This first edition of the book is now out of print. “The Flame Tree” is now in its second edition.

The story so far: A couple of weeks ago, you got a call from your agent saying that your manuscript has been accepted by a publisher.

It’s your dream come true! You’re a real writer - it’s official! You ring round and tell all your friends. Your mum is so proud of you.

And then they start asking you: “So, how much is your advance?”; “I bet you can retire now, huh?”; “When are you going to buy your own Lear jet like Patricia Cornwell?”

The sensationalist stories in the press about authors being paid millions do the rest of us a huge disservice. Most writers don’t find themselves in the thick of a bidding war; most writers are lucky to get into five figures. In the moment of your crowning glory - you’re going to published, for god’s sake! - you are deflated by your well-meaning friends whose questions only serve to emphasise what you CAN’T buy with the money you’re being paid.

Some big name authors started with £500 for their first book and worked their way up the same way you might do in your day job - with long hours, commitment and striving for excellence. The more books you write, the more you become known and the more you become known, the more valuable you are - so your fee can go up.

What was my advance? For a two book deal from a first-time novelist, I was pretty lucky - I got into five figures - but not high up enough in those figures to keep me in the style I’d imagined (a ranch in Montana or some other vast American landscape a la John Grisham…)

How does an advance work? It’s an advance against royalties. Essentially, the publisher is taking a punt on you and your book and giving you some money up front. When your book hits the bookshelves, you get a royalty ie a percentage of the sale price. The publisher recoups the advance they’ve paid you by keeping your royalties until it breaks even and pays back what they’ve advanced you. The good thing for you is that if the royalties don’t break even, they don’t ask for the difference back from you.

So the financial risk lies entirely with the publisher and you can see why they tend to be cautious when doling out lump sum payments. They have no way of knowing if your book will make them anything back on their investment. All they know is that subjective gut feeling that your editor and her team has that they loved your book and they think it could sell.

Which is why in these competitive times, publishers prefer to take a punt on sure-fire successes like celebrity books. It’s like if you’re investing in the stock market - you’re more likely to invest in a strong well-known brand name multinational that’s safe like Boots or M&S than One Man and His Van Plc.

Here we are, we writers, thinking we’re creating literature and art. And at one level, we are - and those in the publishing industry do get excited and passionate when they come across great writing. Yet, at another level, it’s just economics.

So, don’t take it personally - whatever your advance is. There’s one thing that’s certain, at any given moment, somewhere in the world, there is a writer who’s just got a book deal and been told the sum of their advance and in that writer’s mind, it won’t be enough!