I’m always banging on about book marketing and book sales, the good and the bad, the glaringly obvious and the borderline insane. But if this blog were a book, how would I sell it? Would I be able to sell it at all? Of course I wouldn’t. In other news, the blog gets new pants.
And now, ladies and gentle man: in the grand old tradition of Lazy Summer Journalism, I present to you a list of potential blog posts I didn’t write this week, followed in some cases by a half-assed explanation for why I didn’t write them, and sometimes no explanation at all.
You’re welcome.
When customers want things, they want things now. They don’t want to wait for things to be manufactured or delivered or tested or marketed. If the fashion industry is now managing to get from catwalk to customer in six weeks, why does it take a year for a book which has already been written to get on the market? Also, naked men. Honest.
What makes a comedy black? And why are black comedies so black these days? Is life itself a black comedy? Is there any comedy left in black comedy? Is this excerpt getting too repetitive? Am I asking too many questions? Don’t expect any answers, but you might get a (slightly choked) laugh.
Dear Mister Publisher, I have written the best book. My book will be bigger than the bible. It will make cynics laugh, optimists cry, and toast. Before he died, David Bowie said he wished he had written it. Anyone who does not want to read my book is a potential terrorist.
Why is Young Adult Fiction pigeon-holed into a daftly narrow age category? If so-called General Fiction is a mirror held up to society which helps us to cope with what we are – how better to do this, than to look at ourselves while we are becoming what we are? But don’t worry, it’s not all serious. Or perhaps it all is, except for that last sentence. Hmmmm.
I am sick to the back teeth (ew) of people going on about ‘grip-lit’. Not the genre. The term. We can’t get rid of it. We can only try to outshine it. For that reason, Ladies and Gentlemen: I give you Wick-Lit, Flip-Lit and Crick-Lit. Go forth with them, and prosper.
Every writer with a day job dreams of writing full-time. It’s the holy grail of writerdom. But what’s it really like? Is the reality different from the dream? And what is it going to mean for your bathroom?
Hardly anybody is achieving writing greatness in their 20s anymore. Why is this? Have we become complacent? Or is our arrested development entirely down to antibiotics, narcissism, and an inability to properly research an article making a grand sweeping statement?
Why do so many female comedians struggle to be taken funnily? Is your mother to blame? Do you like broad beans? And why is there an ‘X’ in First Person?
Tara Sparling writes 