A matter of luck

I see the new Booker prize longlist contains five first novels, or at least five first-published novels. One wishes the writers luck. Luck is a big element in a writer's success; that is, success in making a living as a novelist rather than succes d'estime, although that is very nice.

No one knows just how many published authors there are. But there must be a lot of them. More than 10,000 authors are registered with the office of Public Lending Right, which pays them a fee when their books are borrowed from public libraries. The Society of Authors publishes a list of several hundred new members in its quarterly magazine, so the profession, if that is what it is, continues to thrive. What nearly all these authors have in common, apart from being published, is that they are unknown. They do not have the instant recognition granted to the relatively small number of authors of bestsellers. You’re a writer? How interesting. Do you write under your own name?

Unknown writers sometimes become known, like the five in the Booker longlist, but usually only briefly and to a small audience. After a few flattering reviews, they mostly return to normal obscurity. And there are writers who, while not unknown are only vaguely known. Didn’t he/she write ..? Anything else? Don’t think so. Books by the vaguely known may linger hopefully in bookshops long beyond their sell-by date, libraries are reluctant to throw them away and they may have an afterlife in charity shops. But it has to be said that most unknowns, and even the vaguely known, make little money from their books. But somebody loves them, or did love them and, possibly, will love them again.

The unknown tend not to love the well-known. Human envy, course. Each story of some fellow writer’s fabulous earnings feeds the envy. But famous writers you may encounter at literary parties grumble about their deals, about the pittances they are paid for writing book reviews to keep their name known, and how much they pay in tax. It is all quite cheering to an unknown writer who has a proper job, with a cheque coming in every month, paid-for holidays and is at peace with the taxman.

Mysterious ways

According to the Guardian, the next bestseller in Britain is going to be The Shack, which has done well in the United States. It apparently deals with God's mysterious ways. As I noted in an earlier post (July 3), God seems to be one of the themes that sell books. God though, being almost human in some ways, likes books that praise him. I have doubts that he will entirely approve of my own novel with a religious theme, Beyond Reason (Solidus). But read it anyway, bless you.

A woman's place?

The Anglican church is in a tizzy about whether God would approve of female bishops. The church is no longer a male club. A woman who believes she has a calling is no longer told, Hamlet-like, 'Get thee to a nunnery.' Yet its problems over the treatment of women attached to the church are more urgent than whether they should wear the mitre. Pardon me for mentioning my new novel, Beyond Reason (Solidus Press). Florence, a vicar's wife, is thinking of getting a paid job. Such a revolutionary idea is a blow to the running of a vicar's household. True, some parishes are run by bachelors, but church people prefer there to be a wife to be lured into the unpaid womanly activities in a parish; to be eternally on hand, at the end of the phone or behind the front door, an unpaid round-the-clock servant in cardigan and pearls. Some wives are happy with this disgraceful system, or if they aren't they are kept going by their faith. Florence, though, has no faith.

What's the question?

Some of the questions people may ask you, politely, when they find out you are a writer: Do you write under your own name? What sort of books do you write? What are they about? If you happen to write thrillers, say, you can confide, reasonably, that your write thrillers, or murder mysteries or whatever, and a pleasant and undemanding conversation may follow. Other genres may be less conversational. I have recently written a novel in which the theme is 'belief''. 'Oh, really?' says your conversationalist, looking over your shoulder in the hope that there is someone more promising to talk to.

So how do you sell a book about belief? The Guardian a few weeks ago (June 26) carried an article by Stephen Moss that deserves a repeat:

The humourist Alan Coren once complained to his agent that his books weren't selling. There were only three subjects guaranteed to shift copies, the agent told him - golf, cats and Nazis. Coren called his next book Golfing for Cats and put a swastika on the cover. But this publishing holy trinity is no longer enough: the new hot topic is God.
Sales in the US for Christopher Hitchens' God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything have been phenomenal. The book, published just seven weeks ago, is already in its 11th printing, and Hitchens has been commissioned to compile a companion volume, The Portable Atheist.
God Is Not Great was published in the UK by Atlantic Books a fortnight ago, with the somewhat more considered subtitle The Case Against Religion. It sold 4,000 in hardback in its first week, and stands at number six in the Amazon bestsellers chart. "It's a hell of a good start," says Atlantic's sales director, Daniel Scott. "I think we're likely to end up with sales of 35,000 to 40,000. It's starting to be talked of as 'the Hitchens God book', and when that kind of shorthand takes hold, the sky is the limit."
Hitchens has some way to go to match Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion, which last year chalked up sales of half a million in the US and 300,000 in the UK. It used to be just the Bible that sold in vast quantities; now the anti-Bible bibles are doing the same. Why? "There remains a lot of faith and belief," says Scott, "but people find it increasingly hard to marry organised religion with their own view of the world and want a more intellectual, contemporary take on the subject."
The God (and anti-God) market is expanding fast. Current titles on Amazon include The Case for a Creator, God's Politics, Conversations With God and Searching for God Knows What. The philosopher Daniel Dennett last year published Breaking the Spell; AC Grayling chipped in with Against All Gods; and Pope Benedict is leading the counter-attack on the militant atheists by bringing out a book most weeks.
The last time tracts about religion did this well was probably the Reformation. My own effort, How I Found God and Lost Weight on Life's 18th Hole, will be out shortly. Look for the picture of a cute tabby on the cover. Next to the portrait of Hitler.

My own modest novel, Beyond Reason (Solidus Press), has not yet caught up in sales with Hitchens or Dawkins. But I am hoping that God, if there is a God, will accept that at least I am being fair, and see that it gets space on a heavenly bookshelf. Do you believe or not? That is the question. Paul Schnidler, an American critic, wrote this of the book: 'The phrase "can't put it down" is frequently bandied about, but I used it here without reservation because it is literally true. Once I picked up this novel, I dev0ted full time to it... Well-written, fast paced, entertaining and, like his other works, endearingly eccentric. If you are interested in a good novel that doesn't read just like every other novel, and some thoughtful chatter about the state of religion, wrapped into an entertaining package, you'll like Beyond Reason.' So there.