Readership of my blog (and, I suspect, all blogs) is fading away, while Substack seems flourishing. This week on Substack, I’m reposting an old post about Napoleon’s escape from Elba, a note on Georgian furniture, a poll on what readers want to see and a pretty picture to round it all off. I’m finding it easier to use than WordPress (that’s here) and more fun. I will still cross-post, but not every week and I’ll probably gradually fade away here. Apart from anything else, maintaining this site costs me money and I don’t feel it generates enough enthusiasm from me or my readers to justify it.
One of the fun things about writing historical fiction is the details of language that turn up. Guessing the dates that words or phrases were in use is tricky. I recommend that historical writers get a copy of the Complete Oxford English Dictionary (OED), which gives the earliest recorded use of words in their context. It was very useful when an editor objected to ‘garbage’ in the late 18th century because it seemed too modern. I was referring to bodies after the Battle of the Nile floating ‘like garbage’ in the Mediterranean (in Burke and the Bedouin). I had just thought it sounded right, but I had to check. It turns out that the word was originally used of offal and waste thrown out by butchers, so garbage was exactly the correct word – though it was mainly a happy guess.
This comes to mind because I was recently writing about the early 19th century and I referred to soldiers’ gear, which a reader said they thought was too modern. I had the feeling I had heard of ‘gear’ being used right back to knights in armour and it turns out I was right. The OED gives me ‘On ich wulle mid mine gære’ from 1305 when it often referred to ‘warlike accoutrements’. I thought the modern equivalent would be ‘kit’ but here I was mistaken in the other direction. The word was recorded, again in a military context, as early as 1785: ‘The kit is likewise the whole of a soldier’s necessaries, the contents of his knapsack.’
Napoleonic re-enactor with his kit
Phrases bring problems too and the OED won’t help here. I remember reading that an author had been criticised for referring to people in the early 20th century as ‘hanging out’ with each other, but research revealed that this was definitely a term used at the time.
EDIT: And just a few days after writing this, I have come across this from a vicar in 1858 (thanks to Eva Chatterji’s excellent blog): “Felt very Mondayish today; so I took a holiday, and went to some pony races…”
It’s because of things like this that the simplest paragraph in a historical novel can lead to ridiculous amounts of research. I’m not sure that readers really appreciate it, but if you don’t like checking that sort of thing, then writing historical novels is probably not for you.
Last Friday, for the first time in about 15 years, I just didn’t bother to write a blog post. Friday came and went and I didn’t post an apology for not writing anything or worry about whether or not anybody would notice that it wasn’t there. I just didn’t do it.
I’ve been threatening to cut down on my blogging for a while, but this is the first time I’ve just followed through. Not a big dramatic statement – just the absence of some words.
What’s changed?
I think the whole business of engaging with people online has become increasingly difficult. It seems to involve more work and few obvious benefits. I don’t think it’s me or you, dear reader. I think the whole ecosystem that has supported online communication has rather curled up and died.
The most obvious example is Twitter. For all its occasional rancid unpleasantness (usually quite easy to avoid by liberal use of the block button) it was a lively place, with lots of interesting chat. Now the chat is lost, submerged in a flood of nubile young women who apparently just want to be my friend, political propaganda that owes rather too much to Dr Goebbels, and endless advertisements for crypto-currency. Many of the people I used to enjoy exchanging ideas with have fled the platform. Those who remain engage less often with anything I might say, presumably because they, like me, find it difficult to spot the stuff we might be interested in amongst the dross.
Some refugees from Twitter have gone to Bluesky and some to Threads. I’m on both of these platforms but I find it difficult to engage with people there. Threads, in particular, is endlessly entertaining, but not something I really engage with. Amusing (and, I suspect, often made up) stories are interspersed with random political stuff and recipes, and that is not really where I’m at. Bluesky is more serious but also almost silent. My old Twitter pals are scattered everywhere and we really don’t have a community any more. We just shout (or sob) endlessly into the void.
And don’t get me started on Facebook, which used to be a way of keeping in touch with people you don’t see around everyday, but which is now (at least on my feed) endless rants about the US administration (I don’t like it either, but I don’t appreciate the constant long messages about what’s going on in a strange political system a long way away), links to articles hidden behind paywalls, and plugs for theatrical shows I will need to take out a second mortgage to visit.
Speaking of shouting into the void, much the same thing is happening to my blog. I used to get very healthy readership of my blog posts. The posts haven’t changed. Occasionally I may even repost an old one that was very popular some years ago. But readership has dropped off a cliff. I suspect Google is fiddling with the algorithms again. Every so often Google changes the way it recommends blog posts and sometimes this works in my favour and I suddenly get massive readership and other times it doesn’t and – well, I’m not sure that many people will have even noticed this week’s post didn’t appear.
Does it matter that my great thoughts on (to take a recent example) the movers and shakers of Georgian Twickenham don’t reach an audience of thousands? It may be good for my ego to think that people care what I write, but what (as my mother used to say) does that have to do with the price of fish?
It might not affect the price of fish, but it does affect the profitability of writing. (I use the word ‘profitability’ loosely. If you take into account the cost of time spent writing at even the legal minimum wage, we are looking at the depth of the losses.) I’ve blogged recently about the financial reality of writing fiction. The sad truth is that few authors can afford to pay for enough marketing to enable potential readers to find their books in the hundreds of thousands of works published every year. They rely on word of mouth and one of the cheapest ways of spreading the word about your books used to be through social media and channels like my blog. (I do plug other writers’ works there as well as my own.) With social media and blogging both reaching fewer and fewer people, I have being dabbling in advertising. I’ve tried both Facebook and Amazon and discovered that, though they may increase sales, it involves a significant up-front financial investment which may never pay for itself. More importantly, it involves quite a lot of thought and effort. I didn’t retire to allow myself more time for writing so that I can fritter it all away on advertising my books. So I don’t. Which means that sales drop and the whole business of writing becomes less obviously worthwhile – especially on gloriously sunny days when I could be outside doing other things.
Am I going to abandon my blog entirely and never write another book? Probably not. But I will be cutting back on social media and the amount of effort I put into my blog. If you get in touch, I do read everything that is sent me by e-mail, comments on this blog, or messaging on social media and I usually try to reply. But, for now, I’m going to concentrate on enjoying the summer. I spent most of last weekend dancing in the open air and I loved it. I hope you all find something you love and spend the next couple of months doing that.
Things are looking bright at the moment — and not just the weather. People seem to be buying Burke and the War of 1812 and some have even been in touch to say how much they are enjoying it. Right now, being an author, even a not-particularly-well-known one, feels pretty good. And that’s important, because warm fuzzies are what writing brings, rather than any great material rewards. So now, warm fuzzies notwithstanding, is a good time to look at the realities of life for the overwhelming majority of writers.
Why you can’t find an audio version of my Burke books
Recently somebody asked me to recommend them an Audible book written by an indie author. They drive a lot in the course of their work, so most of their ‘reading’ is on audiobooks in the car. They said that I’m always encouraging them to try indie authors instead of just going for bestsellers, so they were going to give it a try.
I duly checked out some of my favourite indie authors and soon realised that hardly any have audiobook versions of their work.
There’s a simple reason for this. Paying a narrator is expensive and indie authors simply don’t generate the levels of sales that are needed to meet the narrator’s fees.
Narrating is hard work and narrators bring a lot of skills their job. I know, because I tried to narrate my novella, Dark Magic, myself and I don’t think that the result is nearly as good as if a professional had done it. (You can buy a copy for just 99p if you want to hear for yourself.) Recording a full length novel will take three or four days and the voice artist will reasonably expect a substantial amount of money. This is completely fair enough, but does rather beg the question of why a voice artist expects to be paid properly for the days of work that they put in while the author cannot generate enough money to pay their narrator, even though they will have spent months writing the book.
Please feed the authors
Underlying the problem with paying for narration, as with so many book-related issues, is that our culture does not believe in paying for books. In the recent scandal of Meta illegally copying millions of books to train their AI, Meta has claimed that the books have no “economic value”. In one of the lawsuits currently underway, Meta is quoted as claiming “none of Plaintiffs works has economic value, individually, as training data.” It’s a view presumably shared by those who download pirated copies of my books. (I’ve given up filing “cease and desist” claims against sites offering illegal copies of my books because as quickly as one site is shut down another opens.)
Writers contribute to this idea. Many regularly make their work available for free from time to time as a promotional ploy. I offer the occasional book for sale at 99p. A more fundamental problem is that the product of our labour is regularly sold ridiculously cheaply. All my books are available on Kindle for £3.99 or less. Perhaps I should put the prices up. Do feel free to respond, letting me know.
Writing isn’t cheap
Although the book is available in paperback, most sales of Burke and the War of 1812 will be on Kindle. Of the £3.99 cover price, I get around £2.76.
I’m lucky, because my family are spectacularly supportive and between them and some very good friends, I can get by without paying for professional editing and proof-reading, both of which are expensive. I prepare my typescript for publication by Amazon myself and by now I can do a decent job without wasting too much time, though many authors pay someone else to handle this.
All this means that the only cost I have to carry myself is the cover design. Mine cost £100 each. Authors who pay for editing, proofreading and preparation for publishing can easily spend thousands of pounds getting their book ready for market.
Because I write historical fiction, I can spend quite a lot on research costs. Some of the research is definitely fun. For Burke in the Land of Silver, I rode a horse high into the Andes until we were turned back by snow. For Burke and the Lines of Torres Vedras, I travelled to Portugal to see the remains of the fortifications. I enjoyed both trips, which is just as well as neither book generated enough money to pay for them. Fortunately, I enjoy historical conferences too, as these don’t come cheap. Less obviously enjoyable is the pile of reading matter that has to be worked through before writing can start. Many of the books I use were written in the periods I write about and are therefore out of copyright, but many are not and they have to be bought and paid for before any writing takes place.
Research trip for Burke in the Land of Silver
I’m not even going to think about the incidental costs, like hosting and other fees on my website (where you’re reading this blog) or membership of writers’ associations.
Any author who expects to make their fortune out of writing is unwise. Some may, but most won’t. Many will end up well out of pocket for their efforts.
Why we write
I think that writing could well be regarded as the sort of compulsive behaviour which, in other areas of life, could be regarded as a form of mental illness. Speaking for myself, it is something I’ve always wanted to do and which I’m glad to have been doing for the last fifteen or so years. I’m lucky. I’m retired and I can afford what is a (more or less) paying hobby. But most people – including many whose books you might enjoy – can’t put in the years of work that build their skills without seeing any tangible reward for their efforts. And even people like me, who can afford it, find themselves asking, increasingly often: what is the point?
Does it matter?
That rather depends on whether or not you enjoy reading decently written books by people who have the time and resources they need to keep writing them. Already, most books are being written by older, middle-class white people. The economic model of writing hardly encourages diversity and things are likely to get much worse.
Perhaps, in a world of digital entertainment, reading has just had its day. Perhaps Meta is correct: books have no economic value. Maybe we don’t pay our authors, because we do not really care about the books they write.
It might be time for authors, including me, to call it a day.
What can you do?
You might well agree that a world with a great deal fewer books is a better world and people like me should just stop adding to the pile of unread literature. (Ironically, as people spend less time reading, technological changes mean that ever more books are being published.) If you agree, do comment to say so. It’s a point of view that deserves to be heard and explored.
If you think books are important, there are things you can do.
Buy more books, obviously. It especially helpful if you buy books from the great pool of unknown writers, rather than the handful of established bestsellers – or singers/film stars/whatever whose names have been attached to someone else’s writing.
Please don’t steal books. Pirated copies are common. I used to take the view that I’d rather people stole my books than that they didn’t read them at all but the scale of theft has got to the point that some authors and publishers are giving up on sequels because recorded sales of early books in a series are too low to justify continuing. It isn’t just about the money: if a book is pirated there is no record that it was read at all. Plus stealing is, you know, Wrong.
If you can’t afford books (and, at the prices they sell at nowadays, that seems unlikely) use libraries. In the UK, authors get paid when you borrow books from the library. And a good chunk of what little I make from writing comes from people who read my books on Kindle Unlimited.
Tell people about the books you enjoy. Better yet, write a review on Amazon or other review sites. It doesn’t have to be an essay. Twenty words, sharing the pleasure a book has given you, are better than the 500 words you never actually get round to writing.
Let writers know that you enjoyed their books. The main reason Burke and the War of 1812 got written was because people I have never met let me know they wanted to read it. (True story.)
If you are a parent, read with your children.
If reading matters, writers matter. Please support your local writers. Or any writers. Without writers there will be no books and I think that will make the world a poorer place.
It’s Friday morning and time for me to write my weekly blog.
It’s been a good week. Saturday was publication day for the latest of my James Burke books, Burke and the War of 1812. We had a party. There was a cake.
It was quite a night and, frankly, not a lot got done on Sunday. And, after that, the weather was so nice that not a lot got done for the rest of the week either.
I suppose I should buckle down and get on with promoting the book. Unfortunately, books don’t sell themselves. If people don’t hear about them, they won’t get read. So marketing, not writing, is my priority now. If you read Burke and the War of 1812, you can help by writing a short review on Amazon.
I’m getting very excited here with the official launch of Burke and the War of 1812 coming up tomorrow. I quietly made the paperback available earlier, so if you want it on paper for launch day, you can order it today and it should arrive at the same time as the e-book is released.
I’m having a party at home with a few friends, which will, inevitably, feature tango dancing. We’ve also got a White House cake made with flames bursting from the centre to reflect the burning of the White House in 1814. That’s after the events in the book, but it’s the only thing most people know about the War of 1812, so we couldn’t resist having a White House fire as our centrepiece. I hope to have photos to share next week, although whenever we do have a party taking photos seems to be the last thing on anybody’s mind. Fingers crossed we remember this time.
There’s always a degree of excitement with any new book, even though this will be the eighth in the James Burke series, alongside the other seven novels I’ve written on other subjects. I’m particularly enthusiastic about this one, though, because the political situation between America and Canada has led to a revival of interest in what was, until a couple of months ago, a very little-known war in the UK. It’s better known in the US, but comments on social media suggest that many Americans have a very limited understanding of what actually happened. I’m guessing that Canadians will be better informed and I’m hoping that they’ll buy the book anyway because they do like to remember how they saw off the United States then, as they’re hoping to do again now.
Anyway, I have a party to prepare for, so this is all for this week’s blog. I’ll see you next week and let you know how it went.
