Thanks for that Roger,

I have to say the whole thing is fascinating. I've read a few articles by authors who get published on various sites but the information they give always seems to be very wsihy washy. It's all "Gosh, I was so fortunate to run into an old friend from school who happened to be major player in the literary agents scene."

Then they go on to talk about the whole process of writing their book leaving out all the details many would be authors would find really useful. So kudos to you.

So assuming (fingers crossed) that this book and the next lead you onto bigger and better things and you decide to swap publishers what happens to the books then? Do they retain the rights? Is that how it usually works anyway?

You know you should approach the Guardian or someone with a view to recording your experience of this new scheme. I mention the Guardian because that's where I came across the scheme, maybe they'd be interested in following it up.

Might get you a bit of publicity too.

Geoff

Geoff, funny you should say that, about the Guardian that is. The article on my blog called 'Kafka and me' was something I wrote originally with the Guardian in mind, after corresponding by email with the online books editor, Sarah Crown. She never got back to me for ages and ages. So I decided to get my blog going again and put it up there. I sent her a courtesy email saying that was what I was going to do, and she got back to me apologising for having let it slip. Apparently she enjoyed the article, had been inundated at the time and it had slipped out of her mind. She felt the moment had gone for that particular piece, as it was written as an answer to something they had published by a guy called Tim Clare, who basically was jumping on the anti-mnw bandwagon just to promote his own book. ('Don't buy them, they're crap. Buy mine instead.' This was ages ago before the titles were even announced and nobody knew what kind, or quality, of books they would be publishing. Anyhow, she has invited me to write another piece, scheduled for after or around publication, which they will use in their arts weblog section. It will be the online rather than print version, but that still gets a lot of readers, I think. Anyhow, I said yes.

As you say, it's all good publicity.


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By the way, that was not meant to be a smiley face. It was meant to be punctuation. Grrrrr.:( That was meant to be a grumpy face.