Is this the future, and do I like it? Pt. 2

After Paul Torday related his latest adventure in the digital new world, here is Fleet Street veteran Walter Ellis on the trials of self-publishing on Amazon.

Soon kindled and soon burnt: The gentle art of online publishing

The idea of a level playing field is that everyone engaged in a competitive activity should have the same opportunity to achieve success as everybody else.
 
Kindle is supposed to offer independent authors a level playing field. But does it? So far as I can tell, unknown authors who break into the Top 1,000 are quite rare, though nowhere near as rare as those who make it into the Top 100.
 
There are, of course, examples of complete unknowns rising to the top of the virtual pile and staying there. Kerry Wilkinson, whom I profiled on these pages last month, is one. His crime novel Locked In came out of nowhere and made it to number one, with three sequels poised to follow, one of them already knocking at the door.
 
Wilkinson told me he didn’t know how this happened. But he certainly knows what he’s doing. He is a considerable Kindle engineer, whose book spanners are enviable tools of the trade. A feature in the Daily Express (for which he once worked) that lauded him as the ‘hottest new author in Britain,’ and a two-page interview in his local daily, the Lancashire Evening Post, clearly helped, as did his consequent elevation by Kindle to the coveted status of Mover & Shaker.
 
Another Kindle original is Ben Cheetham, who has been working in fiction almost his entire adult life. Cheetham was previously better known for his contribution in the science fiction and horror genres in Britain and the United States, typified by Zombie Safari, a tale of survival after a holocaust of the Undead. His ‘gritty crime thriller’ Blood Guilt, set in Sheffield, has been climbing high in recent weeks, and his follow-up novel The Society of Dirty Hearts looks set to go the same way.

Candles on the Sand, a beach weepie by Katie Stephens, is, at the time of writing, the next bestselling Kindle original, ranked at 8. Written while its author was taking a creative writing course, it is also self-published on Lulu, sitting at 19,833 as a paperback. Stephens, whose day-job is in public relations, is now at work on her second novel, no doubt hoping for the day when she can call herself a full-time writer.
 
She worked hard and took time out to learn her craft. But the truth is, most first-time Kindle authors vanish without trace – hardly surprising given that there some 950,000 titles presently on offer. The Top 100 is dominated by established writers, as are Amazon’s much fought-over promotions sites, Movers & Shakers, New and Noteworthy on Kindle and (just out) Best Books of 2011. Most — but not all — bestselling Kindle titles have been actively promoted by their print publishers, using Facebook, Twitter and Kindle, as well as the traditional media, including advertising. Only a handful of genuine independents makes the cut at any one time.
 
Undeterred by any of this, I decided last July to put up a novel of mine on Kindle. Called London Eye, it’s the story of three old friends about to turn 50 whose lives have been ripped apart by a series of unforeseen calamities.
 
Three years ago, it was nearly published by three large London publishing houses, but in the end wasn’t. The prevailing view was that it was well written and funny. The main reason it didn’t make it seemed to be that it didn’t easily fit into any of the dominant genres: chicklit, crime, horror, fantasy, war, serious lit-er-a-ture, erotica or men on the make. The fact that it was humorous counted strongly against it. Since the death of Kingsley Amis, the only comic novelist permitted to succeed by British publishers has been Tom Sharpe (born 1928), whose authorial career is now in its 41st year.

Anyway, to cut a long story short (or at least to get it published), I re-worked London Eye, then sat down and followed the instructions provided by Kindle.
  
It wasn’t easy. Getting the cover right, so that it could be read as a thumbnail, was tough, though not as tough as formatting the novel in Word in such a way that paragraph indents, page breaks and chapter breaks all looked vaguely professional. Pricing was a complicated affair, both in terms of royalties on offer and territories where I had rights. But I managed … just. Next, a professional digital publishing consultant designed a website for me and undertook to introduce me to the Wonderful World of Twitter. So far as I could tell, I was ready to tweet all the way to the bank.
 
Except that I wasn’t.
 
For the next three months, with help from my consultant, I did everything I could think of to excite interest in London Eye without appearing overly pushy or obsessed. The trouble was, I was overly pushy and I was obsessed. How could I have been otherwise? The only tool I had was social media, which scrolls past and is gone in the blinking of an eye. I did my best to be funny and interesting. I tried not to repeat myself too obviously. But I have to confess, it wasn’t easy.
 
In sales terms, I failed abysmally. At the time of writing, I have sold just over 100 copies, netting me about £40.00. Recently, I raised the price in the UK from 99p to £1.99, hoping to convince potential readers that I was more than a novelty item. The result: 16 sales in four days and a reprise, if short-lived, appearance in the Kindle Top 1,000.
 
As for the Top 100, where sales can run into scores, hundreds, even thousands of copies per day, that was a step too far. Exhausted, I abandoned my campaign and watched, dismayed, as my ranking collapsed once more towards the bourne from which no novelist returns.
 
Or as Henry IV put it to Prince Hal: ‘Soon kindled and soon burnt.’ London Eye stands today at 14,439, and falling, in the UK and 151,665 in the U.S.
 
Friends tell me I shouldn’t be too despondent because my reviews were good. And that much at least is true.
 
Matthew D’Ancona said:  ‘[Walter Ellis] has produced a superb e-novel – a form that is clearly the future of contemporary fiction — that will have readers laughing over their Kindles in public places, gripped by the taut and entertaining plot that he has devised.’
 
Andrew Roberts was no less effusive, ‘A fast-paced, intelligent read … I was gripped from the opening chapter and hugely enjoyed it through to the end. It also serves as a biting satire on the state of modern Britain.’
 
And they were not alone. All I got was five-star reviews, including one from the publisher Patrick Janson-Smith that described the book as “warm-hearted, wickedly funny and true-to-life; a novel for grumpy old men (and women) and all those who want (or need) to understand them”.
 
Alas, it did no good.
 
Looking back, my regret is not so much that I didn’t give Robert Harris and Howard Jacobson a run for their money as the fact that I couldn’t turn praise into even modest returns. In the end, I think, success must come from a kind of alchemy, turning my base motives into gold. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to have the app for that.
 
Maybe next time …