Brave New Digital Words

The Secret War has gone digital. Zapped into millions of pixels with a machine that looks like a Flash Gordon death-ray, the book has been miraculously reassembled by the IT bods at Macmillan, on screen. The whole process is apparently not that far removed from Mike Teavee’s fate in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

But without the children.

…And the songs (though I’m sure the techs at Macmillan probably whistle while they work)…

Richard Charkin has written a blog entry on this new bit of technology (which you can find by clicking here), or go straight to the “Macmillan-New-Writing-MikeTV-digitally-rearranged-zapped-and-deathrayed” version of The Secret War by simply clicking here.

The jury is still out how this will take off. I’m more of a book-in-hand kind of person, but it would save carrying around multiple novels, and your bookshelves will no longer groan from the weight of untold volumes of books.

The future is bright. The future is book-pod-shaped.

Read a new writer, win a new book

And so to Debut a Debut, a competition I mentioned a couple of blog entries ago. The competition was an interesting topic of conversation during Mike Barnard’s retirement do last week – and provoked quite a bit of interest from fellow authors.
Some reading this will remember Roger Morris’ Read A New Author Month (or RANAM) which was used to promote new writing as a whole. Roger quickly discovered that as a new author, running such an initiative can restrict the focus on your own writing, and will also open you to attacks from cynics. Debut a Debut is like RANAM in respect to promoting first books from new writers, but it is run by readers. And in my opinion, such a competition is very important to all new writers…

…Counter to what some might think, the success of the first book can make or break an author in many respects – financially and mentally. If the book does badly then there is little money to support the writer during the second novel, and wouldn’t it be dispiriting having waited all that time to be published for it to sink without a trace? First books tend to do that through no fault of the book or the author, but because word of mouth has not taken hold and Luck has decreed that no one is taking notice of it.
I mean, who wants to spend time and money reading a book from an author no one knows about?

Hopefully, there will be some reading this who have just shouted: “well, I do!” It is that sort of response that keeps first timers going, and Debut a Debut is an “I do!”-competition, encouraging people on the web to pick up a debut book and give it a go.
The carrot - if there is need of one - is the prospect of one of many book prizes donated by publishers, authors and bookshops. The prizes go to the reviewers of these debut books – and anyone can enter.
One of the prizes is a copy of my book, by the way. But that doesn’t mean you can’t buy a copy of The Secret War and review it!

…It just means you could win another copy that’s signed!!!

(For more information on Debut a Debut, go to West of Mars)