Second Review for Make Me One with Everything

"Ms Dunford takes you on a twisted and complex ride through the mind of Penny Roberts. A journey that is emotionally and literarily captivating for her readers." Lototy, Reviewer for Coffee Time Romance. Reviewer for Karen Find Out About New Books.

Full review here.

First Review for Make Me One with Everything

"Readers looking for a well-written story that requires more than a little thought to read will enjoy Make Me One With Everything immensely". Reviewed by Whitney at Fallen Angel Review. Rated five Angels. Full review here. 

Royalties again

I've been watching the news of the art world go by and to be honest it feels like a lot of the same old  waltz of argument and counter argument. But as the dance is moving particularly fast today I thought I'd update you on the old issues

- Copyright

The ever thorny issue of how long can artists of any form make money out of their work has been raised today by musicians. The BBC reports 38,000 musicians are petitioning Gordon Brown for a change in copyright law. Their argument is that they contribute vitally to the export industry and the government is not recognizing this. Phil Pickett, from the 80s band Culture Club is quoted as saying 90% musicians earn less than £15,000 a year from royalties. As the majority of authors earn more like £5,000 a year I confess I could feel my sympathy slipping at this point. However...

Composers and authors currently retain copyright until 70 years after their death (who says you can't take it with you when you go?) while performers' copyright expires after fifty years. So if you made your money recording in the 60s things might be starting to look a little thin now regardless of your sales.

It raises the whole question about paying those who entertain in any form. A writer labors long and hard to create their work, but a performer is gaining royalties from recording the work of another. However, they are still employing their talent and their training and effect to reach their level of success will have been considerable. 

Effectively we're asking when does it become reasonable to pay someone royalties, as opposed to a flat fee, for their work? For example should an architect get a proportion of rent or entrance fees on a building he designed? If you've trained long and hard to get to the level where you produce something that people generally enjoy, use and pay towards when is it fair to ask for a royalty? How about a surgeon, who saves your life, are they entitled to a proportion of your income for life? It's so easy to push at the boundaries of this issue and extend it far beyond reason.

I'm an author. I believe in royalties. Okay, there's a small part of me that sort of fancies the old days when a patron kept giving you chunks of money so you could peruse your art and you didn't have to worry about pleasing the general rabble - er - sorry, the great public. But even then your livelihood depending on continuing to please your audience.

Or is it about risk? I could, theoretically, become a wage slave at some institution or another. Or I can continue striving for that bright and elusive star, a best selling novel. Are royalties my reward for taking that leap of faith?

All this comes at a time when the draft European Copyright Term Directive is under debate. Under this performers and producers would have their copyright extended from 50 to 95 years after release. 

I'll confess anything with Draft and European in it makes me want to run away and hide under the duvet. By the nature of the beast you just know it's going to be long, complicated and written by a committee - and while writing by committee seems to work well for some television shows that's about as far as it goes. 

But we should pay attention. How we reward people in society for their efforts in all areas requires our attention. There are already, to my mind, some grossly unfair accepted ways of rewarding professionals. 

And art - art is the heart beat of a people. It reflects and exposes as much as it entertains. Art in all forms represents the spirit of a nation. It can inspire, lift moods and generally remind us of our own humanity or lack of it.  In these darker days books, music, art, film will become personal weapons against the demoralizing times of the credit crunch. 

I can feel this is about to turn into an argument for why we need the arts at all, so I'll stop here. Please pay attention to the copyright arguments and make your opinion heard. If you don't you may find vast pool of artistic talent and associated products we have in the UK rapidly diminishing before your eyes as current and future generations opt for financially safe occupations rather than artistic ones. 

Guesting

Guesting today at the Lyrical Press Blog and talking about branding.

Writing, launching and going naked again

I've been away for a while. Sadly not in Hawaii or any other luxury leisure resort but in places of my own imagining. 

These are fun too. Although recently on my current work in progress I've been battling with two characters who insist on running away to sea at the least opportunity. I don't sail - or at least I don't sail either well or willingly. This requires me to do a lot of research on how boats work and how those flappy things were rigged through the ages. These two characters also have a propensity for heading into storms, which means I spend a lot of my time thinking about it feels, tastes, smells, sounds and looks like being in endless sheets of rain. As I live in Scotland it's not particularly hard to imagine, but I do keep getting up to turn up the central heating. Who says imagination can't affect body temperature?

Spending so much time mining for stories is not unlike mining for gems. As I shift through the sands of my imagination I'm never entirely sure how the raw materials I find are going to turn out. I cut and polish as best I can and eventually put them out on display. It's only then I discover if my idea of what makes a good story matches anyone else's. As a lot of writers before me have said offering up a story is rather like going naked - any of my stories gives you a window into  my mind. 

So if you want a peek then....

On Monday 3rd November the e-book version of my novel Make Me One with Everything is released. This is a romantic thriller set in contemporary Edinburgh. You will be able to buy it here at Lyrical Press's Once Upon a Time Bookstore. Remember it's released Nov 3rd EST.  You can read an except here. And see the stunning cover art work here. At $5.50 it's a snip especially if you live in the UK! However, if e-books aren't your thing you'll be able to buy the print version from May 4th 2009.

Books up. Authors Down.

Credit crunch. Recession. Global Economic Collapse. What people need in times like this is good, cheap, entertainment. Don't go down the pub. Don't go to the cinema. Buy a book. It's cheaper and will give you hours more entertainment. If you're worried about becoming a loner start a bookclub - people may even bring you biscuits.

So is this going to be a boom time for the generally downtrodden profession of writers? (Bearing in mind most UK writers currently make around £5,000 a year) Even the publishers, generally the strictest of disciples of the doom and gloom philosophy, are being mildly hopeful. They predict a rise in sales for crime, thrillers and books that tell you how to do things more cheaply - this millennium's making do and mend. Who knows they may even be digging out those old hippy books from the 70s that told you have to grow cress on your windowsill and stressed the importance of sharing baths.  In fact books are so very much the next greatest thing they can even make obese children thin. Sure there's the odd shaky fear that EUK, the entertainment dominant wholesaler, parented by Woolworths might be on a bit of a sticky wicket and that might adversely affect Christmas stock. But then Sir Sugar's just stepped in and scooped up 4% of Woolworths and anyone who's seen the BBC's reality show The Apprentice won't be worrying. 

But if you look a little closer it's not such good news for writers.

Lulu one of the champions of the little people (I mean individual authors not fairies) despite protesting its future is bright has cut a quarter of its employees. Could it be co-incidence that at the same time that publishing giant Amazon launches POD (print on demand)? Now, we all love amazon. It lets us search inside books, offers package deals, gets stuff to us quickly (for a small fee) and while you can't buy milk at the website you can pretty much buy anything else. What most people who buy from Amazon don't realize is that they take a hearty whack of the sales price. Even in the little, growing, hopeful future of ebooks Sony are taking a huge 50% of the sale price of any book bought to download for their ereader. Publishers have no choice but to cut royalites accordingly or lose money on stock - and eventually go bust.

Much as happened in the music industry everyone is taking such a big slice of the pie that the people who actually created the material are seeing an increasing diminishing return for their efforts.

While it's a nice, radical idea to say let's cut out the middle man and (to misquote) self-publish and be damned, the sad fact is self-publication rarely leads to success. (Remember what I was saying about the good, the great, the worthy Lulu above?). But why doesn't it work? It doesn't work because when faced with several thousand single voices shouting for sales your average member of the buying British public (myself included) opts to spend our hard earned pennies with people with we think we can trust to provide the kind of goods we're looking for - in short we go with globally known distributors like Amazon and publishers whose names we learned in our cradles. Sure some independent stuff might be cheaper, but it might also be rubbish and we won't know until we've spent our cash.

What we need is for someone to come along and help with the overwhelming choice of available books - whether that's going to the 3 for 2 section at Borders (where your last free throw is a risk taker) or whether it's doing some radically different.

It would also be good if we could find something that let authors get a decent royalty and stand a chance of making the week's garret rent.

There was another industry that had much the same problem. The music industry. Apple's itunes have on a number of occasions preventing the major music labels from upping their share of the ante.

It's not a perfect answer for the book world, but we need something and we need it now or your average author is going to become the archetypal starving artist in the very near future.

Hannu - voice of the future

I'm very happy to inform you that yet another member of the East Coast Writers Group (to which I belong) has made it big.  Hannu Ranjaniemi has just had a major three book pre-empt offer made on the first chapter of his SF novel by Gollancz. That's a three book deal on just 24 pages, folks. Something tells me this is going to be an outstanding trilogy! Go Hannu!