So the other week I went to my local writers' group Christmas party in Norwich. It's the East Anglian Writers, since you ask, the local offshoot of the Society of Authors. Their events are always relaxing because, as pretty much everyone else attending is a published writer with a new book or collection to sell, you don't get the in-your-face, will-you-buy-my-book hard sell you can encounter at some other networking events for writers.
This year's event was no exception and I came away with ten new pieces of information (or at least eight existing fears, concerns and prejudices confirmed plus two surprising facts I was unaware of). In no particular order, here they are...
(1) No matter how illustrious your agent or publisher, you cannot rely on them to win you a lucrative publishing deal or promote your books once you have got that contract. When it comes to winning business and promoting your books (or 'product' as they are more generally termed these days) you are on your own.
(2) No matter how illustrious your agent or publisher, if something goes wrong, you are on your own. This came from a long established author who has had her series of children's books ripped off by a Chinese author, right down to the illustrations, and now has a legal battle on her hands because she cannot get her books distributed in the United States because they think she has ripped off the Chinese author!
(3) Should you be lucky enough to have a publisher who shows initiative in their efforts to promote and publicise your books, you'll be the last to know. This came from an author who first discovered his publishers had hired a well-known actress to record some of the songs from his book, when he opened a copy of his book in Waterstones and saw the CD attached to the back cover. He was also the last to know when the publishers lost interest and stopped printing copies of his book.
(4) Along with the Chinese, who have no concept of honouring other writers and creatives intellectual property rights, you apparently also cannot trust BBC radio and TV producers not to rip off your ideas.
(5) If you want to make money out of creative writing, write books about how to make money out of creative writing. That, or write for Mills & Boon who at least have a machine to promote your product.
(6) If you want a sure fire way to land a book deal, start your book with a very long, explicit and kinky sex scene. Apparently it doesn't matter that the sex scene has no relevance to the rest of the book or that there is no further carnal activity within the book.
(7) No matter how much you protest your innocence, someone you know – probably a relative – will take offence at one of the characters in your book and complain it is based on them, even when the book character is not even remotely like them.
(8) No matter how illustrious your agent or publisher, they are all terrified by the ebook/epublishing revolution and don't know how to react.
(9) President Barack Obama is an enemy of literature, joining Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher as world leaders who have slashed their countries' contributions to UNESCO. In the case of Obama, UNESCO's crime was to support literature development in Palestine.
(10) Europe's most celebrated Medieval Hebrew poet Meir ben Elijah lived in Norwich in the 13th century. Just how the only surviving manuscripts of his work came to spend the next 600 years in the Vatican Library was a question we were unable to answer at the Christmas party.
