It's been a day of cleaning up here. Notebooks out, trying to collate all of the digital notes into some semblance of order - that kind of thing. I re-read some of the story work I did across the Spring and Summer and although I posted them here previously, chose to take them down and then, today, chose to put them back up again. So excuse me if I commit that most horrendous of sins and engineer this post to conform to some kind of SEO results (cue a ton of junk mail from people I don't know who will try and tell me they didn't notice me in the top three google results and for eight trillion dollars they can fix that for me and zintuple my income) for it to get picked up. One of the downsides of not playing the fb game I guess - so here goes (regular check-iners, just sweep across the next paragraph - it pains me too): Today I reposted some short stories. I was going to rough them up and make them free short stories for kindle but then I figured my time was better spent writing some new material, so chose instead to post them here instead. You can click that if you like - or hit the short stories tab up above. The first resurrection is the ongoing supernatural crime serial in the shape of short stories featuring Inspector Kang. I kind of like how that's panning out but I have no idea where it's headed. I may rework it when I get to around part six or seven but there's something about 'growing up in public' that appeals to me. The same goes for the August Moon serial - dear SEO spider, that's a free supernatural story kind of thing with monsters in it - which will head off in a very different direction. Somewhere in my head, the worlds of Kang and Moon collide but it certainly won't be for a little while yet. There are things that happen in free supernatural monster and pulp crime short stories that need to be written about first. (See what I did there?)

If anybody passing by really would like them for the kindle, drop me a note and I'll get it done. They're all here, ready to go but I need to re-design the covers on the master files - if you're curious as to what they look like, scroll down (or up if my SEO didn't work and you turned up here late) and you'll fine them. On which subject, I've decided to kill off all the third party material that used to appear in that column. I deleted my instagram account yesterday. Aside from the 'media furore' about them being able to sell your stuff and then retracting the statement, I found that to be like your girlfriend saying she wanted an open relationship and then changing her mind when you got the suitcase out from under the bed for her. But rather simply put, I'm not a photographer and have nothing of value to share in my instagrams anyway.

That's why the God's invented blogs... isn't it? "Come on world, let's micro-blog with our micro-minds." No thanks (Will that count as a good SEO keyword?)

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

New Harry Bosch is always good news right? I'm listening to this in the car right now (well, not right this second obviously) but with all that muscle behind them, is that really the best book trailer they could come up with? Sounds to me like every police procedural novel I've ever read. Get your act together guys...

I don't feel very festive yet and I think I should. The kids have got their Christmas tree up already and I'm being pestered to get one up this coming weekend and I think I will give in gracefully. I guess I had better finish off some Christmas shopping too. I still haven't got a clue what to get Eleanor for Christmas - she says I'm hard to buy for but that's the pot calling the kettle out for sure. Something has been bugging the hell out of me this last week and it's taken me a while to figure out what it is. It finally dawned on me last night that it was the cover of The Monster Magnet - it is weak to say the least, so if you happen upon the site/blog while I'm changing it, apologies for any confusion but it deserves a better cover than a spooky looking tree. How many times have I sat here and slated publishers for going down the 'spooky tree' road? Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, Linwood Barclay - and those are off the top of my head. If I went and looked I could probably find at least a dozen more. Anyway, I've got a real bee in the head over it as well, so I've sourced images for the entire series all at once. I guess this is the beauty of doing it yourself. Can you imagine how much carnage that would cause if you were in the hands of Harper Collins? Then again, Harper Collins wouldn't have let it go out looking second rate, but you know what I mean...

About a week ago, I read a fantastic blog post "Reasons Not To Self Publish" over at The Millions. While I disagree with about as much of it as I agree with, it's the wealth of knowledge, hatred and disbelief that follows in the comments that yields the good stuff. There are no answers to be had there. There are as many haters of self publishing/digital publishing as there are those that love it. There's all kinds of squabbling going on, but much of it appears to be about being validated as an author by a publisher putting money into you or how people view published books as real and ebooks as not. Money, money, money...

I thought about this long and hard. It really made me question my own motivations for writing at the moment.

1. I write because I have stories in my head and believe other people would enjoy them

At which point, the list ends because having talked to other authors/writers, there are two roads we can down at this point. The first is that I can either write because I have a story to tell regardless of commerce, the second is that I can write because I believe I can make a living out of it.

Regardless of the fact that I write for a living - because running a magazine has about as much in common with writing a book and washing cars does with building them - I fall into the first category. I don't believe I have the 'right' to be published. I would like to be pubished but I don't have any rights to it at all. That's not for me to decide. Publishing is a money making business and I'm sure if a publisher thought they could make a success story and some money out of me, I would be the first to know.

Meantime, I also don't expect a publisher to pay any attention to me at the moment. Why would they? I have nothing. Buying into a first time author with no track record is akin to taking on somebody ho left school last week and leaving them in charge of an entire department (yeah, it does happen, but they are few and far between). My own thinking on this is about the same as it was when I was playing in a band. If you haven't got a demo of your music for people to listen to, all they have is your word for it.

Am I the only one looking at digital publishing like this? I mean, every day above ground is a good day right? Why would you want to sit on something you had written until somebody paid you for it? Wouldn't you rather some people read it and then told some other people about it. Sure, getting paid is great but it can't be the end-game anymore - not in this climate.

Which begs the question that it must be time to differentiate, not between published authors and self published authors/hard copy books and digital books but between story-tellers and commercial writers. Those, I feel are the two categories we should be looking at. I think then, the word of publishing would make a lot more sense to people.

Following on from this, I thought I would go back in time and check out Amanda Hocking's blog posts from the beginning of time. From the era before she had sold a million. Her grammar and spelling are terrible but that didn't stop millions of people from buying her material. I find her a bit of a whiner and I also feel like she plays some bizarre sympathy cards a little too often as well, but hey, she is the one that shifted all of those books not me. She obviously knows her audience well and they identify with her.

The end result, she has gotten herself a decent deal and a good team behind her - there's even movie talk these days. She gets a raw deal when really all she did was grow up in public. It's no different from making indie movies until you know what you're doing. Look at Del Toro and Tarantino. It's no different from demoing songs until you're a fantastic songwriter and recording artist. Back in the seventies and long before that, music artists where given time to develop. Nobody expected anybody to sell a million on your first album. Everybody took some knocks to get the job done.

So answer me this, why isn't everybody playing nicely together? Why aren't the big six publishing companies using self published sales data to fuel their risks for the future? Or have I missed something?