Books Monthly website

Lots to read, including reviews, and plenty of nostalgia here. A veritable treasure trove for book lovers and readers.

http://www.booksmonthly.co.uk/index.html

Big 900 - thank you, page-viewers!

I've managed to write 900 posts in this blog to date. I must admit I started off in 2009 intermittently, which is not the way to gain regular readers. For the last couple of years I've tried to blog daily, though have not always succeeded in that endeavour. Holidays and life tend to intrude from time to time.

Individual post reads have varied from about 50-odd to a thousand, and there doesn't seem to be any common factor relating to the type of post. Still, I hope that those who made the 120,500 page-views have found something of interest. On average, per month the blog has about 3,500 views. Not great by many blog posters' standards, but I appreciate everyone who drops in.

In conclusion, thank you page-viewers all!

Tomorrow, there will be a colourful post pertinent to the day and time of year.

Writing - 'The pen conveys...'

During my research for Cataclysm (set mostly in China [but also Tenerife, Madrid and Rome]), I discovered a few interesting quotations – none of which I’ve used in the book.

But they may be interesting to readers and writers – or not...

Certainly, the old fellow Anonymous has the most attributed to him; he must have been very busy.

 

 

***

Procrastination is the thief of time – Anonymous

 The cure of ignorance is study, as meat is that of hunger – Anonymous

The difficulty is not in reading books, but in applying the truths to life, and the greatest difficulty is in remembering them – Chang Chao

 

In making a candle we seek for light; in reading a book we seek for reason: light to illuminate a dark chamber, reason to enlighten a man’s heart – Anonymous

The pen conveys one’s meaning a thousand miles – Anonymous

It is more profitable to reread some old books than to read new ones, just as it is better to repair and add to an old temple than to build an entirely new one – Chang Chao

The benefit of reading varies directly with one’s experience in life. It is like looking at the moon. A young reader may be compared to one seeing the moon through a single crack, a middle-aged reader seems to see it from an enclosed courtyard, and an old man seems to see it from an open terrace, with a complete view of the entire field. – Chang Chao

And… a general quotation:

He who has never tasted the bitterness of life has never known the sweetness of it all – Anonymous

 

 

Books - worlds of the imagination

Today is World Book Day in the UK; though UNESCO has deemed it should be on 23 April (which happens to be the anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, 1616).

Two different days for the same event? Why not? To my mind, every day is a ‘book day’. Avid readers and book lovers probably can’t get by most days without reading.

Worlds of adventure and excitement

I can’t remember when I read my first book unaided, but it was a long while back in the mists of time. There were not that many books in our house – a single small bookshelf, containing Arthur Mee’s Children’s Encyclopedia, a few adult hardbacks and home-help tomes, and an enormous dictionary with thumb indents for each letter of the alphabet. With my pocket-money I started collecting the children’s hardback Regent Classics that could be bought in Woolworth’s: Knights of the Round Table, Robin Hood, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, The Coral Island, Lorna Doone, Kidnapped, Black Beauty, Last of the Mohicans, Quentin Durward, among others; all with bright dust jackets. At about the same time I discovered the local library, and Swallows and Amazons, Doctor Dolittle etc. This was before the paperback explosion of the 1960s, when books became ‘affordable’.

 

Unread books
Even discounting A Brief History of Time, a number of books occupy shelf space but never get read. That’s according to a recent survey, commissioned by a storage firm of all things. In fact, their sample of 2,000 people suggest that one in five books on our shelves go unread. I’m sure the statistic is higher in my case – I’ve got so many unread books because I don’t have the time to read as many as I’d like, but I bought them with every intention of reading! The same applies to my backlog of e-books.

The average home contains 158 hardbacks and paperbacks. (I’ve got more than that in just one genre!)

In Patrick Tilley’s Mission (reviewed here) the main character, an alien, simply has to touch a book and he has read it. I assume he gleans pleasure from the experience. Anyway, that would certainly take care of my backlog!

What are the reasons for hanging on to books? Research suggests many people hoard books (some eight billion!) of which one in five is unread. They keep books because there’s an emotional attachment; others hate throwing away anything. And we all know that charity shops often plead ‘full’ where books are concerned. Sixteen percent of respondents admitted they keep certain titles on their shelves so that they can appear intelligent! Those most likely to impress guests include To Kill A Mockingbird, Moby Dick and the Bible. On the reverse coin, Katie Price’s autobiography, 50 Shades of Grey and anything by James Patterson were considered liable to adversely affect their reputation in the eyes of guests.

The snobbish slight to James Patterson seems a little unfair. He has a ready market of readers who like his books, so why not cater for them? And he does put his money where his mouth is: over the last few years he has supported reading initiatives – not to sell his books but to encourage reading. He has donated £50,000 to the new World Book Day Award. Winning schools will receive thousands of pounds worth of books for their libraries.

 
As Patterson says, ‘Reading is one of the building blocks of life and can take you to another world.’

www.worldbookday

 

Writing – and readership

Most authors write to be read. The financial consideration is important, naturally, but it is rarely the main impetus. We write because we cannot not write.

So the transformation over the last decade or so has to be welcomed, whereby readers can post reviews on the Internet – whether that’s in a blog or on Amazon and the other online book sites. Considered feedback is always welcome. We’re trying to entertain – following in a long line of storytellers stretching back to that distant age in caves when the social media was verbal and illustrations were paintings on rock.

The other helpful feedback tool for the author has been around for twenty-five years – the PLR. Last year’s (July 2013-June 2014) Public Lending Rights statements have just been issued, and they make interesting reading.

Of all 20 of my books registered with PLR, only 5 titles show readers. This is because the rest are not supplied to or obtained by British libraries. The five titles reflect the hardback and the large print editions - two of each, separately registered.

Yet those 5 have clocked up almost 8,000 readers among them. That’s good to know: because that’s a minimum readership figure, based on a sample of libraries, not all of them, in UK.

These titles are all westerns (because Robert Hale has a high representation of books in public libraries):

Death at Bethesda Falls (2007) – 1,300+

Last Chance Saloon (2008) – 1,500+

The $300 Man (2009) – 1,600+

Blind Justice at Wedlock (2011) – 1,600+

Old Guns (2012) – 1,700+

My latest western The Magnificent Mendozas (2014) was published and registered after the cut-off date of June 2014, so won’t appear on a statement until January 2016.

This proves that there is a readership for westerns out there, no matter what the naysayers might pontificate.

 
The British Library has taken on the administration of PLR. They collect loans data from a changing sample of UK public library authorities. This year’s payments are based on loans data collected from 44 library authorities across the UK during the year July 2013 – June 2014.
 
The maximum earnings for any author amount to £6,600; 190 registered authors were paid this for 2013/2014. Interestingly, there were 22,053 authors who received PLR payment and 16,996 who were paid nil or their loans were below the minimum threshold (i.e. loans didn’t amount to £1 or more).
 
Compared to last year’s figures, there are about 300 less recipients of PLR this year; and about 1,200 more authors who fell into the nil bracket. It is not clear whether or not that’s due to a fall in library readership or the choice of libraries in the sample or some other factor, such as more authors are going independent so aren’t represented in local libraries.

So, the moral for authors is, register your book with PLR.

https://www.plr.uk.com/

 

 

 If you hanker after writing a western - or any genre fiction novel, come to that - you might like to have a look at Write a Western in 30 Days, which reviewers have said is useful for all genre writers, not only those who write westerns!

 

Amazon UK paperback here

Amazon UK e-book here

Amazon COM paperback here

Amazon COM e-book here