Free Holiday Reading

Just a quickie to recommend that, if you're after some free holiday reading, you point your browser at the newly launched website www.blogaholidayread.co.uk today.

The site is operated by Penguin Books (UK). They say:

Blog a Holiday Read, the perfect excuse to put your feet up, relax, and escape into one of Penguin's Top 500 bestselling fiction titles, guaranteed to get the nation talking, and you yearning for a break to soak up some top reads. Here's how it works:

Sign up and, if you're quick enough, you'll become one of the lucky people to receive a randomly chosen, FREE Penguin in the post. Plus you'll be the first to review it here, enabling the blog, and comments, to begin!

You can see the books being promoted on the website - there's a wide range, from Adrian Mole: The Wilderness Years to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Of course, you don't get to choose which book you receive, but I guess that's part of the fun ;-)

As you may gather from the quote above, if you want to participate in this promotion, you are meant to read the book and submit a review to the Holiday Read Blog within six weeks of receiving it.

As far as I can tell this promotion is open to anyone in the world. In any event, you are asked to enter the country you live in when registering. Don't hang about, though, as this promotion will close as soon as all the free books have been allocated.

Good luck, and I hope you get a book you like!

P.S. I've just heard that I've been allocated Your Blue-Eyed Boy by Helen Dunmore - 'A compelling and passionate psychological thriller'. Sounds good to me!

P.P.S. If you apply and are successful, why not add a comment here letting me and other readers know which book you are getting?

P.P.S.S. Just heard they are fully subscribed already, within a few hours of my posting about it. Very sorry if you tried and missed out.

How Well Read Am I?

Linda Jones recently tagged me on a meme about what bloggers have and haven't read. You have to look at the list and:

1) Bold those you have read.

2) Italicise those you intend to read.

3) [Bracket] the books you LOVE.

4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

Incidentally, as I understand it the list in question comes from the American Big Read survey of the 100 most popular books there. The list differs somewhat from the UK Big Read list. As you might expect, a few more American titles are included!

Anyway, here's my version...

1 [Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen]
2 [The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien]
3 [Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte]
4 [Harry Potter series - JK Rowling]
5 [To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee]
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 [Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell]
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 [Catch-22 - Joseph Heller]
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 [The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams]
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll]
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 [Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres]
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie-the-Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 [Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy]
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 MISSING
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 [The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon]
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 [Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding]
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - A. S. Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 [The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro]
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 [Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle]
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I make that 59, so I still have quite a few titles left to read! Although there may be one or two books in the list I read long ago and have now forgotten about - Enid Blyton's Faraway Tree Collection, for example.

Looking at my list also makes me realise that I seem to have steered away from reading most Russian authors. That's definitely something I shall have to remedy before too long...

I must admit also that there are one or two books in the list I know almost nothing about - in particular, the titles by Rohinton Mistry (86) and Mitch Albom (88). Perhaps these books are better known in the US than in the UK? Anyway, if you've read either of these titles, I'd be interested to hear your opinions on them.

I'm tagging Suzie, Carrie and June next, because they all volunteered when I posted a request on my forum (I didn't like to just nominate people). You can also see Linda's list here. Between us, it seems, we've actually read the great majority of the books in the top 100!

Read me on the WEbook blog!

I thought perhaps you might be interested in checking out this mini-article I wrote recently for Melissa Jones's WEbook blog.

As you'll see, it's a tip that's relevant mainly to fiction writers, though there's no reason why non-fiction authors can't use it as well. Not long ago I ran a workshop on this topic for the Lichfield & District Writers, and their members were impressed by the improvement that applying this one piece of advice made to their work.

The article also gives me the opportunity to highlight WEbook again. WEbook is a collaborative writing project that gives authors the chance to work together in a wide range of writing projects centred around the WEbook website. You can read all about it in this article by Melissa Jones which I published a few weeks ago on my blog. And yes, they are still very much open to new members.

I'd also like to give a quick plug for the book I used as an example in my piece for the WEbook blog. Painter Man is the first novel by my old friend and sometime collaborator Jeff Phelps. You can hear Jeff being interviewed about his book on WritersFM, and read my blog post about it here.

Painter Man, like What Was Lost which I raved about recently in this post, is published by Tindal Street Press, a small, Birmingham-based publishing house which regularly punches above its weight in literary awards. Painter Man is quite different from What Was Lost, but both books are well observed and beautifully written, and I'm disappointed that Painter Man has not (yet) received the recognition it deserves.

Anyway, I've included links to Painter Man on Amazon (com/uk) below, in case you're interested in finding out more about this excellent novel. As ever, if you're receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see the image links.

My "New" Book Out This Month

UK readers of this blog in particular might be interested to know that my 'new' book Starting Your Own Home-Based Business comes out later this month.

I put the word 'new' in quotes because this is actually a totally revised edition of my popular book 'Start Your Own Home-Based Business'. And no, I don't know why they changed 'Start' to 'Starting' in the title. Publishers move in mysterious ways sometimes!

As the name indicates, the book is aimed at anyone who hopes to join the growing ranks of people running a business from home. It covers everything from deciding whether you are suited to doing this, through generating and evaluating business ideas, to marketing, invoicing, financial record-keeping, making the most of the Internet, and so on. It's written for UK readers, so it refers to British laws, taxes, etc. - but, of course, much of the content would be equally relevant to people in other countries as well.

Apart from the title, there are quite a few changes in the new, 2008 edition. For starters, it's being published in full-colour magazine format, and will be sold via newsagents, kiosks and convenience stores rather than (primarily) through bookshops. This is something of a trend in publishing right now, as traditional bookstores struggle to bring in paying customers. I understand that my publishers hope to attract people who might see my book - or perhaps I should say magazine - on the newsagents' racks and buy it on impulse, rather than the (endangered) bookshop browser.

To get the book down to magazine proportions, some content has had to go. And with the new edition, this is the old Part B of the book, which listed 50 different home-based businesses, giving details of how to get started, useful resources, and so on. I'm sorry to have lost this section, but if you particularly want it, you can still buy the original version of the book at Amazon.co.uk (see below).


The new edition is fully up to date, however, and more attractively presented. Look out for it in the magazine rack of your local W.H. Smith (the UK's leading book and magazine retailer) or other newsagent very soon!

* You should also be able to order the new edition of my book from bookstores or via your local public library. Once again, the title is Starting Your Own Home-Based Business and it is published by Zone Publishing Group. The ISBN is 9781848470002. It isn't yet available from Amazon, but I'll let you know via this blog if (or when) that changes.

My Holiday Reading

Before it becomes too much of a distant memory, I wanted to mention a couple of books I read on my recent Greek holiday.

The first of these was What Was Lost, a novel by Catherine O'Flynn. This is actually quite a short novel, but I highly recommend it. So far as the content is concerned, I can't really do better than quote the review by Jenny Colgan on the back cover:

"It's quite extraordinary. There's an amazing insight into the mind of a young girl, a very funny account of working in a high street record store, an entirely sympathetic hero in the form of a security guard, a cracking mystery, a brilliant sense of place in the form of a modern shopping centre, and a ghost story to boot. I adored every page of it and recommend it to everyone."

I agree with every word of that. I suppose it helped for me that it's set in Birmingham (England), a city I lived in for 20 years and am still close to now in Staffordshire. Even so, I thought it was a brilliant book, both funny (don't miss the description of a butcher's shop window on page 10, which had me chuckling for days after) and also poignant. If you're looking for something to pack for reading on the beach or beside the pool, I reckon it would be an excellent choice.

Here are my usual links to the book's pages on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com. As ever, if you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see these.




Unfortunately I didn't enjoy the other title I took with me as much. This was The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway. I've put links to this below, although the book isn't officially published yet.




This was actually my first free book I got as an Amazon Vine reviewer, and I had high hopes for it. As it turned out, I admired the quality of much of the writing, but thought that as a novel it was fatally flawed. I've copied my Amazon.co.uk review below...

Well written, but lacks narrative drive
Good things first: The Gone-Away World is beautifully written. At times I was blown away by the almost musical quality of Nick Harkaway's writing. And the basic concept of the book - that most of the Earth has become uninhabitable after a nuclear disaster, save for a narrow band of land surrounding the mysterious Jorgmund Pipe - is unusual and intriguing.

On the minus side, though, I felt at times the author was so in love with his prose, the actual story almost became secondary. None of the characters really engaged me, although there are some nice cameos (notably the narrator's mentor, Master Wu). Neither do I share the author's fascination with martial arts and (believe it or not) Tupperware, though I can appreciate that others may find these aspects of the book quirky and amusing.

The Gone-Away World does include some quite funny (and caustic) observations about the nature of business, bureaucracy, international relations, and so on. They reminded me a little of the asides in Terry Pratchett's Discworld books, although they lacked Pratchett's warmth and sly humour.

The most serious problem with this book, in my view, is the lack of narrative drive - a compelling storyline, in other words. This is partly down to its structure. The opening chapter sets up an intriguing scenario, and I wanted to know what happened next. But then the story goes back in time to the narrator's childhood and on through his adolescence and early adulthood; and this rambling narrative takes up most of the rest of the book. I didn't find the 'coming of age' stuff particularly interesting, and completing the book - to find out how the action in the opening chapter was resolved - ultimately became a bit of an endurance test for me.

There are things to enjoy in this novel, but overall I was rather disappointed by it. Nick Harkaway is clearly a talented writer, but in my view he needs to take a few lessons from his father (spy novelist John Le Carre) on how to create a compelling plot, and try to reign back his obsession for style over substance. I'll await his second novel with interest, but I doubt if I'll be reading this particular one again.

As you'll see if you check out the Amazon.co.uk link in particular, other Amazon Vine reviewers weren't exactly bowled over by this book either. At the time of writing it has an average rating of 3 stars out of 5, which I think is about right (it's what I gave it). I'm afraid that if the publishers had hoped to whip up anticipation by getting an avalanche of glowing reviews pre-publication, they'll be disappointed. Obviously, I can't recommend this book myself, though some reviewers have liked it.

Fingers crossed, I'll enjoy my next Amazon Vine selection a bit more!

The Top US Market Guide for Writers

In this post last week I reviewed the three top UK market guides for writers.

Well, as promised, in this post I'm doing the same thing for the US market. But this will be a much shorter post, because there is actually only one major annual guide to the US marketplace for writers. That's the blockbusting Writer's Market, from Writer's Digest Books.

Like the UK guides I mentioned last week, Writer's Market is published annually. The 2008 edition - the most recent currently available - weighs in at a massive 1176 pages, and claims to include over 4000 listings for book publishers, consumer magazines, trade journals, literary agents, and so on.

The current (2008) edition was published on 1 July 2007, so I would expect the 2009 edition to come out very soon. Till then, here are links to the book's pages at Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. As ever, if you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see these.




Although I am UK-based I do a lot of work for US publishers, and until recently I bought Writer's Market every year. This year, however, I decided to subscribe to their online version at http://www.writersmarket.com/ instead. This is reasonably priced at $29.99 a year (around 16 UKP), for which you get everything in the printed version and more, plus the market listings are continuously updated. I might still buy the printed book occasionally in the future, but actually I find the online version meets my day-to-day needs very well, and it takes up less space on my bookshelf ;-)

Finally, I should mention that although it is primarily a guide to the US marketplace, Writer's Market also lists publishers and magazines in other countries, notably Canada, Australia and the UK. It also has an excellent selection of articles about all aspects of freelance writing. If you write for the huge US market, or hope to, either the printed or online version of Writer's Market is probably going to be an essential for you.

Best UK Market Directories for Writers

We may not even be half-way through 2008, but already the 2009 market directories are coming out.

So I thought in this post I would take a look at the three main UK directories. I'll save the US market guides for another post.

As a UK-based freelance, I buy at least one of these guides every year. The content varies between them, but they all include comprehensive lists of UK publishers, agents, magazines, newspapers, and so on. Nowadays, as well, they include a growing range of articles and ancillary information. If you're serious about making a living from your writing, and UK-based or want to write for UK markets, having a current edition of one of these guides on your bookshelf is, in my view, essential.

The best known, and longest-established, guide to the UK market is The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, published by A&C Black. I've posted a link to the 2009 book's page at Amazon.co.uk below. As ever, if you're receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see this.


The 2009 WAYB is published on 15 June 2008, and has a foreword by Kate Mosse. It weighs in at 832 pages and is available for 9.89 UK pounds from Amazon.

The WAYB is still the favourite UK market guide of many writers. It has a good range of publishers and markets, and unlike the other guides includes information specifically aimed at freelance artists and photographers as well. It has a website at http://www.writersandartists.co.uk/, which includes a free search facility (although the only info given for a magazine or publisher is its website and email address). You won't go far wrong with the WAYB, but its two main competitors are ahead in some respects.

The WAYB's longest-standing rival is The Writer's Handbook, published by Macmillan. You'll have a little longer to wait for this one - the 2009 edition is due out on 25 July 2008. Here's a link to its Amazon page...


The 2009 Writer's Handbook also has 832 pages and costs 9.89 UKP on Amazon (what a coincidence!). It is edited, as usual, by Barry Turner. The Writer's Handbook has been my favourite market guide for a few years now. There's more information on writing for newspapers and magazines, and more on radio, TV, small presses and theatre companies. The new 2009 edition also apparently includes free online access to The Writer's Handbook website, offering a directory of markets and some additional resources and advice for writers. I don't have a URL for this, however, and assume the site is not operational yet (unless you know otherwise?). The obvious URL at http://www.writershandbook.co.uk/ seems to be owned by someone else and is currently up for offers. I assume some frantic behind-the-scenes negotiation is going on!

The last of the three UK directories is the 'new kid on the block'. Writer's Market UK comes from David & Charles and is edited by Caroline Taggart. The 2009 edition was published back in April this year at a slightly cheaper price of 8.99 UKP on Amazon.co.uk. It weighs in at an impressive 976 pages.


I bought Writer's Market UK for the first time this year, and was impressed by what I found. The presentation is more attractive than either of the two rival guides, who will have to start looking to their laurels. There are nearly 100 pages of articles on most aspects of writing, as well as a particularly wide range of publishing houses. There is a also a good selection of writing websites.

One thing I found a little bit confusing was that some magazines were listed under Publishers - so having looked for, and failed to find, the details for Readers Digest under Magazines, I fortuitously discovered them later under Readers Digest Association in the Publishers section. To be fair, I could have looked up Readers Digest in the index at the back of the book and found it there, but at the time I assumed it just wasn't listed.

Buyers of Writers Market UK also get a one-month free trial of their online service at http://www.writersmarket.co.uk/. After that, I assume you have to pay, but despite my best efforts I haven't been able to find out what they charge.

These are all excellent guides, but my overall recommendation goes to Writer's Market UK at the moment. When The Writer's Handbook 2009 comes out, with its promised free website, that may also be worth considering. The Writers' & Artists' Yearbook is slightly behind the other two in my view, but if your interests also extend to photography and art, it may nevertheless be your best choice.

An Interview with Paul Kilduff

As previewed in this post a few weeks ago, I'm delighted to welcome Irish author Paul Kilduff to my blog today. Paul is visiting as part of a Virtual Book Tour (VBT) to launch his new book, Ruinair, a tongue-in-cheek account of his experiences travelling round Europe with low-cost airlines. Without further ado, let's get down to the questions and answers...

1) Is this your first book, Paul?

No, I have written four financial thrillers previously for Hodder Headline in London. Ruinair is my first work of non fiction and is published in Ireland.

2) How long have you been writing and what started you off?

I began writing in 1998 - what started me was when I read a financial thriller where the author got a large advance and I knew I could write a book at least as good as his.

3) How would you describe the writing that you're doing?

It's vaguely funny travel writing at present, full of informative content, fast paced, lots of variety, topical stuff, with amusing anecdotes and some insights.

4) Who is your target audience? Who influenced you?

Passengers of the Irish low fares airline Ruinair and its CEO, Mick O'Leary! And all those who love travel writing and having a go at large corporations.

I was influenced by Bill Bryson, Pete McCarthy, Tim Moore, Don George, Simon Calder, Alain de Botton and many good guide books and maps over the years.

5) Is your fiction writing autobiographical at all?

My fiction features the work environments, places, cities, people, scams and scandals I had encountered in real life when I lived and worked in the City of London.

6) What are your biggest challenges as a writer?

Converting from writing fiction to non fiction was a big challenge. Also balancing a writing career as well as holding down a day job in a US investment bank.

7) Do you write every day, and how do you begin and end the process?

No, I work every day until I can retire! I write on weekends, holidays, Christmas, Easter, time off, and on my sick days off work!

8) What aspects of your writing do you enjoy most?

I enjoy the creativity, of producing an end product and seeing it on book shelves in shops, such as being the No. 1 non-fiction bestseller in Ireland right now. I enjoy being taken for slap up meals by my agent and editor in Dublin's top restaurants, and I enjoy PR work where I meet some of Ireland top radio personalities!

9) What is your book about and what inspired it?

My book is about travelling around Europe on a cheap Irish low fares airline called Ruinair and seeing the good and bad of a most amazing continent - all for a 1 cent fare!

10) What sets this book apart from what you've written in the past?

I think this current work of fiction is much more populist than my former financial thrillers. also I think non fiction is easier to write than draining your imagination for fiction.

11) How long did the whole process take, beginning to end?

I was abandoned by Ruinair in Malaga, Spain for 10 hours in August 2004, I began the book in 2005, finished it in 2006, sold it in 2007, and it was published in Feb 2008.

12) Did you begin writing for the love of it, or did you always aim to become published?

It was always my aim to have my books published - I really believe that's the main aim of any writing - I want to share my half-decent writing with as many people as possible.

13) What's your most significant achievement so far?

I think seeing the book enter the Irish non fiction bestseller list at no 1 and stay there for the past 7 weeks since publication has been fantastic.

14) Where do you get your ideas? Do you build characters and events slowly or do they come to you in a flash?

My ideas for travel books come to me when I am on the road - I have to travel and fly frequently to get my observational and literary powers humming.

15) What's next for you?

Next up is the sequel to Ruinair - this will be a book about travelling on low fares airlines to the 12 countries of Eastern Europe - the book is called 'Ruinairski', due Feb 09.

16) Do you have any advice for other budding authors out there?

I would say read all the books you can in your chosen genre, write often, read books on 'how to write', attend writing classes and workshops, persevere, be realistic, enjoy...

17) Finally, as we're conducting this interview online, I wondered if you could tell me what are your three favourite websites, and why?

1. www.ryanair.com
A great site for low fares travel on a friendly flexible Irish airline run by a shy retiring chief executive named Michael O'Leary. 'I'm probably just an obnoxious little bollocks. Who cares? The purpose is not to be loved. The purpose is to have the passengers on board.'

2. www.airlinequality.com
An extensive site about airlines and airports. Before I travel anywhere on any airline, I can check out what other flyers experienced and advise.

3. www.paulkilduff.com
I built my own site myself, using FrontPage. It's basic but full of content and often updated, and readers of both my fiction and non-fiction like it.

Many thanks to Paul for visiting my blog on his VBT, and for taking the trouble to answer these questions in forthright and entertaining style! If you have any further questions or comments for Paul, please feel free to post them here.

If you're inspired to try to follow Paul's example, dare I mention it, my CD course Write Any Book in Under 28 Days will help you get a book of your own completed in the shortest possible time. And my publishers, WCCL, also produce an excellent introductory guide to travel writing, written by my colleague Mel McIntyre.

For more information about Ruinair, clicking through here will take you to the publisher's sales page. I have also included an image link to the book at Amazon.co.uk below. Note that if you are receiving this post by email, you will need to visit my blog to see this.

Guest Post: Readers are Doomed!

I'm pleased to welcome another guest blogger today, Nigel Edwards from Letsgetpublished.com.

As you'll see from his article below, Nigel has some strong views about what the future holds for readers - and, by extension, writers. I'll let you read what he has to say, then give my personal response to his comments.

Readers are Doomed to Extinction!

That's a bald statement to read, isn't it? As it stands I imagine many, if not most writers would call it a ridiculous notion - but is it? Let me explain my thinking.

Ask this question: why is the written word so popular? The answer is that books provide the medium for people to indulge in their fantasies. They bring us escape from the drudgery and indifference of modern living, and have done so for a long, long time. Stories have entertained us for thousands of years, though only comparatively recently has the written word replaced the narrator. Imagine in pre-history a camp-fire was lit, and around it huddled a hunting party, squatting by its glowing warmth to hear their leader recount the time when he single-handedly bested a wild and enraged boar? That was perhaps the beginning of an oral tradition that was long appreciated, and indeed still is in some dwindling corners of the world; but this is the important point: where in modern society are the oral story-tellers now? What happened to that tradition? It's virtually gone. Why?

Once upon a time, someone figured out a way to capture thoughts and ideas in a physical medium and, to cut a long story short, invented writing. At first it was crude and limited, but over time it grew in sophistication until it came to a point where you didn't specifically need a story-teller with a great memory and a good voice; all you needed was to have someone write the words, thereby replacing the memory, and someone to read them - and remember, reading can be done silently. At first, as we know, the art of reading and writing was rare, and only a few had the skill. The old story-teller still had his place, perhaps as the reader of narrative, but by the time we come to the present day his presence is virtually nil, made redundant by education which spread the ability to read and write far and wide. When the general populace finally reached the point where the majority could read, I can imagine that there would still have been many people who remembered the enjoyment of the camp-fire and preferred to be read to, rather than read for themselves; but gradually their number declined, and with the advent of mass book production they all but disappeared.

And it's going to happen again. Sort of.

Who reads for pleasure today? According to many reports that I have come across the number of people actually reading books for pure enjoyment is on the decline. The reason is new technology. As the introduction of writing resulted in the death of oral tradition, so will the presence of new, more exiting methods of communication replace the book. It's a spreading canker. Take the cinema. A really good writer can construct a story that is gripping and thrilling, and can compete well with the cinema, except on one front - the reader has to interact with the story, become involved with it, and this requires the active use of their brain. You actually have to do some mental work to get the best out of a book. Now compare that with the cinema. What does it take to simply sit in a seat and let the mesmeric film envelope you. There's no need to read thousands of words to imagine the final confrontation at the OK Corral - there it is in glorious colour and surround sound, dished up for your gratification for the price of a ticket.

Do you see where this is leading, yet?

Take television. You don't need to go to the cinema to see and hear the movie; today it gets piped directly into your home. Press the button and there it is. You can record it, or buy the DVD, and play it over and over without having to exercise your interpretive powers one little bit. Then there are computers. You don't even need a television any more; just download the feature or film you want onto your laptop or desktop, or even your mobile phone! Entertainment wherever you go, and no more need to cart cumbersome volumes to your deckchair on the beach. Just pick up the phone and enjoy.

What this means is that the reader, the one thing over which no author has any control, no longer needs to read to get their pleasure. And if they don't need to, they won't. It's because they- we - are lazy. We always look for the easiest way to do something, and if we can get our thrills passively, why should we bother with getting them in any other way? The story-teller died out because he was old-fashioned, because people either had to go to him, or wait until he came to them; and people today are taking the next step, which is to discount the written word in favour of the instant gratification of immediate explosions of light and sound pulsed almost directly into their brains. You might say that technology has become the new story-teller. Could it be that we are coming full circle?

Not convinced?

The demographics for reading are changing. The days when our children all enjoyed the delight of a bedtime story are disappearing. How many youngsters now will pick up a book when there is the alternative of television, computer games, and the internet? Here's a bold prediction for you: within my lifetime the average age of a regular reader will rise to 60. Within 100 years the number of books being sold will drop to a point where the supermarkets don't even bother to stock them. Within 200 years the only people to read for pleasure will be the few remaining authors themselves, devouring each others' words in sad, cannibalistic indulgence. Let me know if I was wrong! ;)

So, not only the end for readers, but authors too in the general sense. Only those who can successfully adopt the skills needed to produce stories for translation into multi-sensual experiences will be able to make their way to public acclaim, and reap the rewards thereby associated. Why bother writing the intermediate step of a book when you can go straight for the final product? It's a corporate world we live in, and the money that is its blood will demand economies to maximise profit. The old fashioned, traditional writer of words for pleasure will become redundant, and virtually extinct.

Of course, I could be wrong...

Nigel Edwards, founder of Let's Get Published (http://www.letsgetpublished.com ) and author of PRISM - EXILES (http://www.lulu.com/nigeledwards - http://www.angrywildlegends.com ).

Thanks for a thought-provoking piece, Nigel. I largely agree with the points made above, although I think it will be a while yet before books become a thing of the past. Yes, people increasingly want their entertainment in multimedia formats. But equally, you only have to look around any beach or swimming pool on a hot summer's day to see that books still have something going for them. And it's still the case that popular films and TV series are spun-off into book form.

But Nigel is definitely right about one thing - writers today need to become (multi)media savvy. Even 'literary' authors can longer afford to focus exclusively on producing fine prose, when in many cases it is the potential for a book to be adapted into a variety of media that determines whether or not publishing it will be viable.

Anyway, those are Nigel's thoughts, and my responses. What do YOU think? Feel free to post any comments below!

A New Reason to be an Amazon Reviewer

I've just found out a good reason for reviewing products at the Amazon online store - you may receive an invitation to join their new Amazon Vine program and get books, DVDs and so on free of charge. Here's the first paragraph of an email I got from them this morning...

As one of our most valued customer reviewers, we would like to offer you a special invitation to join an exciting new Amazon program called Amazon Vine. As a member of this exclusive community, you will have access to pre-release and new products across various Amazon categories, and the opportunity to be among the very first to review them. There is no cost to you to participate or to receive Vine products. We are simply asking for your time in writing reviews for the products you select from the program.

The email goes on to explain that members of Amazon Vine receive a monthly newsletter listing items that are available for review. You simply choose the items you want, and they are sent to you free.

I was quite surprised to receive this invitation, as I've only ever reviewed about a dozen items on Amazon.co.uk (and no, they're not my own books!). But I've bought quite a lot of stuff from them over the years, and am also an affiliate of theirs, so maybe that had some influence too.

I understand that the Amazon Vine program also operates in the US, though I'm not sure about other areas such as France and Germany.

I tend to review items on Amazon I have strong feelings about, perhaps where I disagree with other reviewers and want to 'set the record straight'. Of course, you don't get paid for reviewing on Amazon, but there is nothing to stop you adapting your reviews and publishing them on your blog or website if you wish (which, again, I have done on occasion).

Anyway, I'm grateful to Amazon for offering me this opportunity, and look forward to receiving my first list of free items available for review soon!