Brian Clegg's Blog, page 154

Working an audience at Blackwell's, Oxford

Something that's regular asked over on the Litopia website is why authors are expected to work at marketing their books (surely that's what publishers get such a large chunk of the income for?) and what authors should realistically be expected to do.

The simple answer to the first part is because your book is more important to you than it is to them. I'm not saying that the publisher doesn't love it, but they've got to share that love across however many books they are publishing this season. You just have the one.

It's not that the publisher won't do stuff. They will put a lot of effort into trying to get the book reviewed and mentioned in the media (including sending out typically 100-200 review copies). They will look for opportunities for you to appear at festivals and similar gatherings. They may, if it's a big book, set up a website. But don't expect too much. Specifically they are very unlikely (unless you are a celebrity) to do any poster/TV advertising, so don't be disappointed.

However there's a lot more that you as an author can do. Here's my tips to help get your book noticed:
Be prepared to give time for anything your publisher sets up (interviews, broadcasts, public appearances). If you are reluctant to do your bit, they will soon lose interest. Make it part of your everyday communications. Put the details (including links to buy it) in your email signature, for example.Look for opportunities to be visible locally, things the publisher might not do - local radio/newspaper, contact your local bookshop about a signing etc.Use blogging, Twitter, Facebook etc. to spread the word. But don't get tedious about. All too often people stop following you if all you do is sell. Try to give added value.Set up a Facebook page for your book and optionally a website for your book.Consider doing your own book launch if the publishers aren't doing one (and most books don't get one). I've never done this, but quite a lot of authors do, and if you organize it right you can get some visibility.Get yourself set up as a Goodreads author and set up author pages on Amazon.com/Amazon.co.ukEmail everyone you know. This has to be done subtly. Do a personal email, but include stuff about your book. It takes time, but is much better received than a generic mail to a mailing list.Look for specialist websites (like my www.popularscience.co.uk for popular science books) that might tell a targeted audience about your book.Do an online search for relevent businesses that might have an interest. For example, when I did a book about infinity, I emailed companies with 'Infinity' in their name to see if any wanted to buy copies as a corporate giveaway. One ordered 100 copies.Does this sound like too much effort? It probably is compared with the return you will see for any particular activity. But the fact is there are a couple of million books out there in print in English. If you don't do everything you can to get noticed, in a way that will get you noticed rather than irritate people, then you can resign yourself to staying in the long tail of books that don't sell many copies. It's up to you.

Added P.S. - Excellent 11th suggestion from Neil Ansell:

One thing you don't mention is a book trailer. I filmed mine myself but it was edited and posted by the publishers. It's had 4000 hits and counting, which doesn't exactly make me Justin Bieber, but is encouraging nonetheless.

  I've always been interested in nanotechnology. In part it's because it winds up the Soil Association, who really don't like it. But mostly because there's something fascinating about technology that uses components that are verging on the quantum scale. And there's the 'Fascinating Voyage/Incredible Shrinking Man' aspect of seeng the world differently when looking from a very small perspective. As Richard Feynman said in a piece on the subject, there's plenty of room at the bottom.

Although the pinups of nanotechnology are nanobots, which for the moment remain more comfortable in science fiction than in a manufacturing plant, the everyday uses are both more mundane and more realistic. Probably the most widely used at the moment is in sunblock, which makes use of nanoparticles to block the nasty UV, but I rather like the look of a nanotechology being used to keep trainers and other flexible materials waterproof. Let's face it, there's nothing more depressing that a pair of trainers the water has leaked through. The smell of soggy trainers is bad enough at the best of times, and the feel of that water coming through is horrible.

Abingdon-based P2i have produced a nanotechnology coating that is 'hydrophobic.' This possibly isn't the best choice of adjective, as hydrophobia is another name for rabies, but the idea is simple enough - we're talking molecules that don't like water and repel it, while allowing the material to 'breathe.' The neat thing about working at the nanolevel is that water works that way too. Unlike ordinary coatings, this stuff takes on water molecules at their own scale, reducing their chances of slipping through the gaps.

Apparently the technology is already used by a range of snazzy sports brands, is employed on around 50 percent of hearing aids (who wants a soggy hearing aid?) and is soon to appear on mobile phones. But the specific application that caught my attention was the pictured running shoe from Magnum, which has the added benefit of a £10 donation to Help for Heroes from each pair sold.

In good hair product advertising mode, let me put on my white coat so I can say here is the science stuff and lazily reproduce some information from a press release:

The liquid-repellent nano-coating technology is based on PhD research carried out by Stephen Coulson, at Durham University. It originated as a project within the UK Government's Defence Science & Technology Laboratory (DSTL), to make soldiers' protective clothing more effective against chemical attack while maintaining comfort.

P2i's technology employs a special pulsed ionized gas (plasma), which is created within a vacuum chamber, to attach a nanometer-thin polymer layer over the entire surface of a product.  This dramatically lowers the product's surface energy, so that when liquids come into contact with it, they form beads and simply roll off.

The nano-coating technology can deliver performance benefits for a wide range of materials, including polymers, metals, fabrics, leather, ceramics, glass and paper. Even complex, 3D objects incorporating several different materials can be treated successfully.

Ooh, er. Apparently the trainer to look out for is the V-Lite Intrepid HPi H4H, which isn't the catchiest of names, but hey. They are rather scarily priced at £100 (even more scarily they're £175 on Amazon, which I like to think is a mistake), which is more than I would pay for a pair of plimsoles, but if you are into this kind of thing I'm given to believe that this not usual pricing for such hi-tech kit.

An award that does not get anyone suedThis is a very sad story from the world of writing. A couple of years ago a company set up an awards scheme for British writers called the Brit Writers Awards. Their company's business was making money from helping starting writers, but the awards appear to have been genuinely to support new writers, and the first ones went well. I really have no problem with their aiming to make money from the services they offer to authors if they're upfront about it.

Unfortunately, after a couple of years, things started going a little wrong. I have no information on what happened, but my suspicion is that they weren't making enough money out of the business to keep things going properly. At this point, when people were starting to get disappointed and suspicious, a well respected authors' site published some comments about this situation - only to be threatened with legal action.

This really isn't good enough. The people running the company need to accept responsibility for their mess, and to accept that people will flag it up. They should answer the questions being posed to them. But most of all, they should desist from threats of legal action, which simply make it look as if they guilty of more dubious dealings than they really are.

One of my fun emails this morningI'm sure I'm not the only one who gets deluged with a daily dose of spam, though I probably get more than most as a reward for having one of my email addresses on my website. On the whole I just delete it without a moment's thought. It's part of the background that I don't really notice, like breathing.

I have to admit I was caught out once. I had just done something on eBay (can't remember what) and at just the right timing a spam email arrived asking me to log into eBay to check a query from my buyer. I fell for it for about 30 seconds, then hurriedly got into the proper eBay and changed my password. As far as I know nothing resulted.

However, when I'm in a less easy-going mood I want to get my own back. Take just a few of today's batch.

When I get told that I have 'irregular activity on my Internet banking account' at Barclays or HSBC (or some American bank I've never heard of) I want to take the spammers by the scruff of the neck, shake them, and say 'I don't even have an account with this bank, you moron!' Or better still, I want the bank in question to make good use of some of those obscene profits they make to trace the sender back through the net, pick them up, and lock them in their vaults.

Similarly when I get a message from 'Larry Grahams' at Canary Wharf that starts:

Attn: Dear PartnerI got your response to my proposal I am so delighted to Informed you that the Consignment's in question is currently in the UN Cooperate fiduciary agent office in U.S.  Upon your respond to this message i will put together a special arrangement to have the Consignment's deliver to you directly in your door step with the same help of the UN diplomat.

I want to take 'Larry Grahams' and shove his consignment where the sun don't shine, taking similar action with all those 'no need to enter' lotteries and bequests from random people (mostly called something like Reverend Cheerybell Butterbucket or something) I keep receiving.
I realize I can't do anything, but I so want to get back at them. Is there no way? I want to irritate them back, to get the authorities kicking their door down, and quite possibly to have something illegal under various international conventions happen to them. But all I can do is delete their spam. It's not fair.

I've finally realized who is responsible for the current financial mess in Europe - it's J. K. Rowling. I think that the malevolent influence of her Gringotts Bank has leaked out of novel-space and is corrupting the real world. Let's look at the evidence.

The way Rowling's wizarding world works is to take some aspect of the real world and twist it in such a way that it becomes odd, strange and lacking real-world logic.

Just look at what has been happening with Italy lately. The financial community has concerns that Italy may not be able to pay its debts. What's the logical thing to do in such circumstances? Obviously lighten the load a bit. Perhaps temporarily reduce the interest rates they have to pay. So what do the financial wonks do? Put their interest rates up. Oh, yes, that will help them stay solvent. Logical? Only if you think quidditch makes any sense.

If this kind of mad, fairytale behaviour isn't enough to convince you, just look at the rating agencies. Can you really believe that companies like Standard and Poors, and Moody's (Moody's?!?) are part of the real world? What logical world would put the financial security of countries in the hands of a few small private companies who can arbitrarily decide if they are good credit risks? This is clearly Potterworld logic.

I'm sorry. I'm sure she's a nice person. But it's time Ms Rowling was hauled in front of a parliamentary committee to explain how she is managing to influence the money matters of the planet.

On the way to the corner shop (picture not same day)I was toddling down to our corner shop, aka the Asda Walmart superstore on Sunday on a beautiful (if chilly) blue skies morning, wondering why anyone ever drives to the supermarket if they live as close as I do. It was so much nicer to walk.

At least, that's what I thought on the way. Coming back, carrying everything for a Sunday roast plus milk, cans of Coke etc. I felt like a decidedly overloaded beast of burden. Usually, though, I manage fine, using the supermarket as a corner shop and just buying what I can easily carry. It means I go more often, but I can walk and feel smugly green.

The only thing is, I'm not really encouraged to do this. Asda has a deal that if you spend £40 you get £5 off your next shop - but unless you are buying high value items, it's hard to spend more than about £20 and carry it home. This isn't just an Asda problem. All the main supermarkets have deals where you have to spend £40, 50 or even 60 pounds to get discounts, money off petrol and so on. In effect these deals tie the customer into using a car.

Come on supermarketpersons! Let's see a deal that allows your shoppers to be green! There must be some way to amalgamate a series of small purchases over a relatively short period of time. Get imaginative.

A simulation of a Higgs discovery. Allegedly.The recent kerfuffle about faster-than-light neutrinos has stirred an old concern in my mind. One of the essentials of good science is being able to replicate the results. Any particular experimental setup can always mislead those using it because they get something wrong that they don't realize. This is why the neutrino guys have asked other experimenters to try to confirm what they have found.

A classic lesson in the dangers of relying on a single experimental setup is the one that emerges from the work of Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons. They were the people behind the cold fusion debacle in 1989. This was, as far as I can tell, a serious experiment by good scientists. They got some amazing results from their single experimental setup then did something stupid. Instead of attempting to publish in a journal and get peer review, they went straight to the press.

There are two reasons this was stupid. It was partly because it missed the opportunity for critical suggestions from reviewers. And it was partly because the science community hates a show-off and is always suspicious of going directly to the press. It meant that the rest of the community was much heavier on the pair, who had a perfectly legitimate idea that turned out not to be particularly good, than they otherwise would be. Most ideas in science fall by the wayside. There's no problem with this, if you go about it the right way. But once other labs tried to duplicate cold fusion and got nothing, the suspicions started to rise and Pons & Fleischmann were torn to pieces. (Not literally. Scientists aren't that bad. Not quite.)

But here's the concern I have. Just imagine the LHC gang announce that they've found the Higgs boson. Whoops and hurrahs all round. But who is going to duplicate this result? If theirs is the only toy big enough to do the job, who can say that this isn't another cold fusion? Of course they'll check it and do all they can to ring the changes - but the fact is it's the same experimental setup with the same people, and that always carries a risk. I don't want to rain on anyone's parade - but I do think particle physicists need to be really careful about exactly what they announce when their experiments can't be duplicated.

Image from Wikipedia

As many a comedian-turned-writer has found to his or her cost, writing good humorous fiction is a whole different level of difficulty to simply being funny on stage. I can count on the fingers of one hand the authors who have consistently managed to combine genuinely funny writing with style and readability. Wodehouse, of course, has to be one of those digits. (But don't get me started on so called humorous Booker Prize nominees - they wouldn't know funny if it bit them.) And one chubby finger surely must be allocated to John Mortimer and Rumpole of the Bailey.

Mortimer wasn't the first to combine the law and humour. There was a lot of gentle amusement to be had from Henry Cecil's series of law-based novels like Brothers in Law . Cecil's was observational humour. His stories were based on experiences real barristers might go through, just exaggerated to bring out the funny side. Rumpole, on the other hand, is full scale legal pantomime, bringing on full scale laughter to Cecil's gentle smile.

As a character, Horace Rumpole has everything going for him. He is a supporter of the underdog, always the defender, always prepared to pull a success from the jaws of failure, despite the whole legal system weighing against him. If he has a tendency to resort to catch phrases... it's not exactly unheard of in comedy. He is a relic in his chambers, for ever battling the forces of modernization and efficiency, forever injecting the human touch... plus a cigar, and a large glass of Chateau Thames Embankment.

Rumpole is, simply one of the best literary creations of the twentieth century. If you haven't read any Rumpole, the new collection I've just got hold of is going to be the ideal introduction. It combines seven stories chosen by the author as his favourites in 1993 with seven of a more recent vintage. This gives an excellent feel for the whole opus, around 80 stories and a handful of novels. If, like me, you are a long term Rumpole fan, I admit there is less to make you rush to the bookstore, as they've all been published before, though the most recent of the stories, Rumpole and the Christmas Break, is one that had so far evaded me.

For the out-and-out Rumpole devotees there are also the first three chapters of a Rumpole novel, left unfinished on Mortimer's death. I really can't bring myself to read this, as once I've started a Rumpole I need to finish it, and as soon as possible. To venture into that would be cruel indeed.

If you haven't read much Rumpole (or none at all), or if you want a Rumpole-oid gift it's hard to go wrong with this 500 page collection, as pleasingly rotund as the great man himself. It's pure legal comedy gold. Forever Rumpole is available from Amazon.co.uk as a hardback or on Kindle and similarly from Amazon.com as hardback and on Kindle.

[image error] Please don't ask why they're watching an HD microwaveI was privileged to be one of the first people in the UK to see broadcast HD TV in action at Sky's launch of their HD box many years ago. At the time very few TVs were HD ready - now it's the majority. Yet there was a question I was bursting to ask at Sky's event that still applies when you see HD and Blu-Ray being pushed today.

What I couldn't understand was why Sky didn't show HD alongside normal TV, so you can see how much better it was. They kept going on about the extra detail and clarity and brilliant picture, so I asked this at their launch why we didn't see that side-by-side comparison. They came out with some technie-wechnie excuse for why they couldn't show both images simultaneously. But there was a much better reason for their decision.

Just go into a TV showroom and look at all the TVs showing HD and Blu-ray. Again, why isn't there a clear comparison so we know it's worth paying extra for the technology? Here's that same issue rearing it's ugly head.

The fact is that, although HD is significantly higher resolution, producing clearer, sharper pictures, ordinary digital TV is already pretty good and on many programmes the difference is hardly perceptible. They don't do side by side comparisons because if you saw them, you'd realise there's no great advantage to switching. Except to the wallets of manufacturers and retailers.

For many years my definitive address book and diary have resided on my computer. I really can't remember when I last used one of those paper things. The problem with this was that when I was out at a meeting, I couldn't check my diary, so had to cross my fingers and hope, if necessary ringing up to modify an appointment later.

Since having the iPhone (and more recently the iPad) things had improved significantly, because every time I synchronized my mobile devices they got up-to-date copies of diary and address book, so when I was out and about I had access to these crucial resources. They might be a touch out of date, but essentially it was all there. What's more I now had extra backups of this essential data - and unlike users of a mobile phone with a conventional, unsynchronized address book I would never lose my phone numbers.

In the last week, Apple has launched iCloud, and with it my situation has changed again - and more fundamentally than I first thought. The migration was not without a little pain. When the Apple software was attempting to set things up, its duplication correction module went beserk, so now every entry in my diary is in twice and several people in my address book have two copies of their address.

What's more, the process has partially screwed up my desktop control centre, Outlook. It has moved my address book and diary to one hosted on iCloud, patched through to the Outlook system. Outlook is designed to be able to incorporate external sources, but it very much regards them as 'the rest' rather than the main one. So several of Outlook's useful features, like displaying the next six diary entries on the home screen and being able to add flags to emails to put them on your to do list have stopped working.

But in return I have a more fundamental change then I realized. Up to now, mentally, my 'real' address book and diary have been on the PC. So if I want to look up an address I would use the PC, even though it's a bit clumsy. Now my 'real' address book is in iCloud, so my natural tendency has moved to use either the iPad or the iPhone - and that's quite a fundamental shift. (It also means I can see my diary and address book from any internet connected computer, but the times I'm likely to use this seem very small.)

This is a significant shift of mindset, which I simply hadn't realized would come with the process. It will be interesting to see how things evolve...