Guest Blog by Malcolm Thomson: Writing, reading, publishing, …

Ian Roberts’ Guest Blog titled The Difficulties Of Becoming Published made grim reading.

Not that he fails to quote some words of encouragement…

“Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not: unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone can assure success. Press on!”.

But I wonder in what direction we should press on?

Could it be that we lovers of words-on-paper must find the courage to come out of our comfort zones and ask some questions… about publishing… and about storytelling.

Roberts invites us implicitly to do so. He points out that “these big [publishing] organisations have many established writers on their books and do not need to rely on fresh talent or first-time authors.”

How true. And it is not entirely a bad thing. As a reader of on average two trade paperbacks per week I am happy that there are the established writers I can count on to craft a good yarn. Many of these are authors who have developed a franchise over the years, with their series of novels becoming almost a form of episodic entertainment, cleverly promoted as such. I do look forward to ‘the next Ian Rankin’ or a new title from Kate Mosse, Lee Child or Diana (we all have our weaknesses) Gabaldon.

None of the big publishing houses are waiting for Ian’s manuscript or mine! In the United Kingdom over fifty percent of revenues are generated by just five concerns: Harper Collins, Pan Macmillan, Penguin, Hachette and Random House. They are satisfying both their shareholders and their readers.

So the answer to the question about the publishers might well be… let them be! In many ways they have enough on their plates, given their need to adapt to the world of e-Readers and iPad apps.

The other question which could be posed concerns our understanding of storytelling.

Under the heading Publish For What Reason? Johanna Denize reminded us on this blog that “change is slow, especially when it comes to an existing giant of an industry that has been run the same way basically since Gutenberg came along.”

But it could be argued that the Internet and a range of digital tools now provide a totally new toolset, in itself as revolutionary as Gutenberg’s press was in its time and as likely to bring about as radical and irreversible change as the advent of printing did. The scriptoria emptied! My comment to the blog post was as follows…

“I am wondering whether we are overlooking one of the most significant points with regard to narrative fiction and electronic interface devices. What I spy on the horizon is a move towards transmediality. I look forward to storytelling as compelling as any successful novel, but delivered not just as written prose, but in multiple forms on multiple platforms.”

I made a tentative step in this direction about four years ago. I had thirty-nine chapters of a manuscript and the vague notion that a website-based hybrid form of self-publishing was… thinkable. Sex&Drugs&Profiteroles… The idea was to release a chapter per week as an audio podcast hosted on what seemed at the time to be the most promising platform. The first thirteen chapters were to be free, but a one-time payment would be asked for from those wishing to carry on to the end.

Each audio chapter, however, was preceded by a short video clip, a vlog in which the novel’s heroine looks back on the events that the story relates.

Each weekly clip then closes with a call to action inciting the user to click through to the audio. The additional effort involved was far from onerous nor was it particularly demanding in terms of video skills which, in this day and age, are no longer exotic or unduly challenging. Basic editing is now possible on the latest iPhone.

In the case of my own project we didn’t get further than Chapter Seven. But this was not on account of any basic flaw in the operational model. There was a hiccup when a particular software suite, permitting videoblogging with virtual green-screen backgrounds, was suddenly withdrawn from the market when Adobe bought the company. When the product (Visual Communicator, US$ 399) was re-launched it was too late for us.

The main problem at the time was that I was working in Abu Dhabi and my ‘heroine’ was at university in England; our only direct collaboration was for the sixth and seventh chapters which were coveniently locationed in Dubai. And our realization was that a venture of this nature is totally not made easier when thousands of kilometres lie between the participating creatives.

I remain convinced that the video component enhanced the potential discoverability of Sex&Drugs&Profiteroles. And in 2006 YouTube was by no means as powerful a force as it is today. A story that is difficult to find is a story which will never be read; this being a problem that few of the self-publishing enablers have adequately solved.

Today the transmediality can go further than video. An interactive game, features akin to the ‘bonus content’ we know from DVDs, social network community involvement, virtual presence in a metaverse like SecondLife…

Ian Roberts recalls a writing course which “taught me to ‘throw away’ every word that was not essential and to focus on the story and the characters, not my self-indulgent descriptions and unnecessary narrative.” Many writers follow this brutal and soulless rule and even get their work published. My feeling is that their readers are the kind who mistake Fox News for journalism!

At the risk of provoking I would suggest that Ian’s self-indulgent descriptions and unnecessary narrative constitute, for a sophisticated audience open to the enrichment of a Gesamtkunstwerk, exactly the kind of resource which can be further developed as cross-platform extensions of storytelling. The motion picture Artificial Intelligence and the television series Alias and, more recently, Lost show the way. In these cases the total entertainment experience went far beyond the flickering imagery on the screen with immersive websites which attracted the active engagement of a participating audience.

None of the platform extensions a novelist might be tempted (I hope) to try imply any huge hardware or software investment, none demand skills which cannot be quickly learned. And all of these and more can move storytelling from mere words-on-paper to a new level, and one on which the independents and newcomers are probably better positioned than the publishing behemoths of old.

The thinking behind the trend in the direction of transmediality is far better expressed by others far more qualified than I. Might I recommend particularly Henry Jenkins, Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. In Convergence Culture Jenkins cites the Matrix as an example of transmedia storytelling. Jenkins explains that “…key bits of information are conveyed through three live action films, a series of animated shorts, two collections of comic book stories, and several video games. There is no one single source or ur-text where one can turn to gain all of the information needed to comprehend the Matrix universe.”

A Wiki page lists further links which will prove useful to those wishing to dip a toe into these fascinating waters.

Slush Pile Reader is, of course, for storytellers who are first and foremost writers. But as we authors, chastened as we must be by Ian Roberts’ well-intentioned

reflections, look ahead and realize that the chances of our tale being published between hard covers is truly remote, I think that the consideration of alternatives is probably a damn good idea.

Malcolm James Thomson is the author of Golden Dawn and blogs from, of all the interesting places out there,  Abu Dhabi, on Sandlander.

If you too want to be a guest blogger – send us a message: johanna@slushpilereader.com