Book Publishing: The Future ... Part I

There’s a certain kudos to being a writer.

Millionaire novelists like J.K. Rowling, John Grisham and Stephen King spring to mind. Or perhaps the literary cool of an Ernest Hemingway, Jay McInerney or Zadie Smith.

And the non-fiction arena is an even bigger market. Self-help bibles, business success stories, health and fitness guides, even cookery books have the power to turn their authors into celebrity figures.

And even if it doesn’t make the New York Times bestseller lists, a book can act as a badge of status that a writer can leverage for speaking engagements, workshops, coaching programmes and a host of other money-spinning activities.

No wonder so many people dream of becoming a writer.

But the traditional publishing world has an uncertain future.

There are the big success stories of course, with reports of millions of copies of certain titles – not least the Harry Potter series – flying off the shelves.

Nevertheless, reports indicate that for years the general public as a whole has been reading less and less. It doesn’t bode well for your business then if demand for your product is steadily falling.

Plus publishing has an idiosyncratic business model. For while the publishers bear the expense of producing and – less frequently these days – promoting their books, any unsold ones can be returned by the retailer without having to pay for them. The publisher then has to find warehouse space to store them, or pay for them to be pulped. In other words, they face all the risk for the success or otherwise of their products. Can you imagine any other business working that way?

So it’s no wonder publishers are keen to focus on what they think will be surefire successes – the celebrity writers with marketable names, and established literary big guns with a track record.

Which isn’t to say new writers can’t break in. Arguably those that are good enough, and keep submitting, will get noticed by agents and publishers, who are full of talented people as keen to sign the next literary superstar as the writer is to be one.

But it’s not always easy for the aspiring debutant. And the rewards for all that work are often pitiful.

Meanwhile a mass of mediocre books continue to hit the display stands largely on the strength of the author’s name blazoned across the top.

But an alternative future is emerging ... which I’ll come to in Part II.

Book Publishing: The Long and Winding Road

Ernest Hemingway, Tom Wolfe, Bill Bryson ... the list of successful authors who started their writing careers in journalism is a long and illustrious one.

Like so many other journalists, I too have been dreaming of that publishing deal that would set me on the road to literary fortune. In fact, my journalistic career was more happenstance than design, a by-product of my early book writing efforts, rather than the other way around.

The impulse to write has been with me since my exercise book-filled scribbles at infants’ school. But it wasn’t until a backpacking trip around Spain with my wife in 1997 that I took the all-important step, and committed to become a writer. And that means consistently putting pen to paper.

I remember it now. Sitting in front of our tiny tent under the pine trees and stars, enveloped in the warmth of a Valencian spring evening, I opened my newly-bought notepad and with a cheap ballpoint began to recount our adventures.

In the 12 years since I have written something practically every day.

In amongst the hundreds of magazine and newsletter articles for my day job there has been that original backpacker’s tale, several novels, a host of short stories, TV programme pitches, and at the moment a work-in-progress screenplay.

The investment of a lot of time, a lot of work and a lot of hope. It’s been a long, and at times frustrating, journey. Indeed, given my lack of publishing fame and fortune you’d probably be justified in thinking it’s about time I gave up.

But although the dream of being a full-time author has seemed a million miles away at times, I have never lost sight of it. So I persevere.

Still, rightly or wrongly – and I’m sure there were glaring deficiencies in my work that merited the stack of rejections – I haven’t had much joy thus far with the traditional publishing world.

Which is why for “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” my guide to the pros and cons of expat living, I decided to go down the internet route by writing an e-book, and setting up a website to support and sell it.

The internet is a fantastic evolution in the spread of the written word. For it has provided the opportunity for anyone with a message to reach out to a global audience, even if at times it can be difficult to get that message heard.

But the thing is, you never know when someone is listening. And that’s when one of those serendipitous events occurred to me.

Somehow Bea Stanford, founder of global network community Inside Twente (http://www.twenteinside.com/), stumbled on my website and signed up for my Moving Abroad-opedia newsletter. Apparently she liked what I wrote and asked if I’d share my blog posts on her site.

Through Bea and Inside Twente my book then reached the attention of Jo Parfitt, the author of numerous bibles on expatriate living, including “Expat Entrepreneur” and “A Career In Your Suitcase” (http://www.joparfitt.com/).

And I have Jo to thank for referring me to her publisher Lean Marketing Press, who in turn got in touch expressing interest in my book. As a result, we’re now working together to produce a print version of Should I Stay Or Should I Go, which we hope to bring out in the autumn.

It’s been a strange, circuitous route to publication – certainly not how I imagined it would occur. Nevertheless, it is an immensely exciting prospect, not least because I believe – and many other writers have similarly argued – that the model adopted by companies such as Lean Marketing is the future of publishing. But I’ll go into that another time.

Expat Living Book Deal

It’s been a while since I’ve done any blogging for Expat Living 101.com. In truth, like so many other expatriates I’ve been hit hard by the financial crisis over the last nine months – particularly in the interest rate on our mortgage and the currency conversion of my foreign earnings into euros – which has forced me to work twice as hard. Not what you want at the best of times, but especially when the sun is beckoning outside!

But now I’m starting up again with this new Blogger site and a new mission ... for today I signed a contract with Lean Marketing Press for them to publish a print version of my book on the pros and cons of living overseas: “Should I Stay Or Should I Go? The Truth About Moving Abroad And Whether It’s Right For You.”

The publishing contract may not come with a $1 million advance and movie tie-in rights as per my J.K. Rowling aspirations, but it’s an exciting prospect nonetheless – one that hopefully will help a lot more people get a better handle on the real benefits and costs of moving to a foreign country, and enable them to get a much clearer view on the right path to take. And if it can help readers towards living the lives they truly desire then I will be well satisfied.

This blog then will record the book’s journey to fruition and beyond, as well as being an opportunity to record some of my thoughts and observations on the expatriate life as they crop up.

I hope it proves interesting – and if you have any comments or questions on the way then please feel free to add them.

Hasta luego ...