That was fun

 It was

I must do it again sometime

I have two more novels ready to go

Perhaps in the autumn, I'll let lose another one

For now, though, what did I learn?

I learnt that it is possible to blog a novel

I learnt that there is no limit to the number of pages you can have on Blogger but sometimes you do have to clear the cache or it won't let you add another tab or logout and log back in or restart the computer or something 

I learnt that blogging your novel concentrates the mind and helps you concentrate the story. Mostly, it went up as it was but there were some strategic edits, some deletions and some additional writing - usually, no more than half a page or at the most half a chapter

I learnt that blogging your novel helps you understand your story and the people in it. You begin to see more clearly what makes their lives tick

And I learnt that blogging your novel gives you closure

It's been twelve years and more I've lived with this story. I tried to do it as a dual timeline novel but it became too cumbersome and unwieldy so I concentrated on the contemporary story. I went to various writing workshops looking for advice and was told I had to have a body on the first page

"But, I'm writing a novel about archaeology!"

No. You have to have a body on the first page

It took me several years and several rewrites to extricate myself and the novel and my head from that experience. You can still see the ghosts of those years haunting the novel as it now is

And Broderick Arnot. It has taken me until now to really begin to understand Broderick but I think he has, at last, begun to come to life as a man

And that's another thing. It is a novel about a man. Elyssia Gadnall, among others, made a determined bid to take over the story and had to be put back in her place more than once, again and again ... and again. It is a novel about men and women. Staring into the past, as I've done for the past twelve or more years, you realise that this is what makes the human world go round

So, there it is: a novel blogged

I know self-publishing is the coward's way out but there is no way that I am ever, being the person that I am, going to hack all the razzmatazz of the publishing merry-go-round

I think it's a good novel. 

I think it stands up against published novels I read

I would like to think that you would agree

Thanks for (listening) reading

Merchants of Culture

This is a great book. John B Thompson successfully captures the middle ground between the academic thesis and the chat down the pub. It's serious stuff delivered accessibly.

Merchants of Culture: the publishing business in the twenty-first century. Polity, 2010.
Book details.

The book explains, for the publishing industry, particularly trade publishing, how we got here and why. It is a fascinating read and it explained things to me that I had never properly understood before.

1. The Growth of the Retail Chains. 
2. The Rise of Literary Agents. 
3. The Emergence of Publishing Corporations.

They are the first three chapter headings.
This book deals with the publishing business in the UK and USA, ie London and New York, the centres of the English language publishing industry. There are commonalities and differences and John Thompson addresses them both.
He continues the story with an analysis of the Polarization of the Field between the big corporation and the small press, with little in between, and then discusses the part played by Big Books and Extreme Publishing in the corporation business dynamic. For corporations, at the end of the day, it is all about the bottom line and delivering "growth" year on year. Imprints within big corporations pin their hopes on Big Books, in other words, on books they hope will sell in large quantities, and on Extreme Publishing, that is, bringing a new title to market very fast and reprinting very fast.
Chapter 7 is entitled Shrinking Windows and it recounts how opportunities for marketing books have diminished; less retailers, less time, more expense.
It was only when I came to Chapter 8 that I felt the pace begin to drag; that's page 291ff. That's some achievement! For three hundred pages the author had kept my interest without question. At this point there was some reiteration, inevitably, of what had gone before but, once through the back eddy, the stream picked up speed again fairly quickly. Chapter 8 is called The Wild West and it is about book retailing in the UK, particularly the end of the Net Book Agreement on prices and the rise of the supermarket as a power player in the business. Supermarkets demand, and get, very high discounts from the publishers, squeezing the publishers harder than they were already. The situation in the USA is different; there is a sort of gentleman's agreement enshrined in law which seems to stabilise the market to some extent. It is still tight but it is not quite as wild as it is in the UK but, then, the size of the market is so much bigger in the USA compared to the UK, so the pressures are bound to be different.
The last two chapters deal with The Digital Revolution and Trouble in the Trade and there is a Conclusion: Facing an Uncertain Future.
I've learnt a lot and I understand better how the market operates and what people involved in the book business might be thinking and why. I thoroughly recommend this book.