I’m sitting writing this article in the comfort of my London home and yet I feel a part of me is already in the United States. In the past six months I have entered the realms of self-publishing, producing two novels ‘Summerset’ and ‘Mad About the Boy’. I’ve sold the usual copies to friends and family and sent copies to book stores who say they’ll stock it only to never contact me again and place it on Amazon.co.uk for an exorbitant amount of money afterwards. But in terms of making real links with the writing community and people who are embracing the new ways of publishing and reading, well, I have to say I’m more well-known in the US than I am in my own country. I don’t know what it is with England, but mention self-publishing and people have ideas of vanity publishers (one of which I worked for upon graduation) and deluded writers being given ridiculous praise for appalling novels, then parting with their life-savings for badly printed and bound books that will never see the light of day again. Self-publishing is different, its ethos is quite similar to punk, whereby bands make a few demos on a cheap four track and hawk them around to gigs and bars trying to build a fan base. Of course some were dreadful but amongst the rubbish there will always be a few diamonds. Hands up anyone who thinks every novel they’ve read (published by a big house) was perfect. Let’s face it, it isn’t going to happen. If I (albeit vainly) google my name on UK sites, nothing comes up. If I do it on US sites, suddenly I have pages and pages of entries. I have a whole new online community of US based friends and readers and find it all quite strange. So for now, I say hello to my new American friends and thank you for embracing something different, I just hope and pray the UK follows suit soon.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2001 at 4:46 pm and is filed under Free Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.