One of my pet projects is finally off the ground - now I have to do some work to fuel it. WSPA called me yesterday and we spoke long and hard about my quest to save a bear that's been locked up all its life. It's very sad out there and it turns out that nothing is as easy as it would first appear. I probably should have known better but when freeing up a bear in the backwaters of Romania, you will come across that old favourite of a troll under a bridge: international politics. I won't bore you with the details but consider my Big Bear Rescue launched. I have nine months before I have to actually do the thing I'm going to do and in the meantime, I need to get my head around raising some funds. This involves some art, some stories, some clothing, some auctioning and finally an appointment with ink.

All will become clear - like I said, there's a lot of things for me to do behind the scenes. As a bi-product of this, I'll be spending some time here:

Known in the real world as Bran Castle and in the fictional world as the likely setting for Mr Stoker's Dracula, if this isn't a good place to stay and write for a day, what is? I'm excited to be finally getting on with this. It's going to be tough but "if you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly" - is £10,000 too ambitious? No, I don't think it is. Let's do this. More to follow...

I'll hook up some kind of bear symbol thing and newsletter shortly. it will be fun keeping track and logging all of this he said scratching his head.

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In other 'going outside' news, I've decided to head out for the Aarhus Art Convention in Denmark sometime in mid-June. If I can tie it in with some other ideas or projects (of which I have far too many to be entirely practical) then I will. If you're reading and headed out that way, drop me a note - it looks like quite a trek from the airport!

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I realised yesterday evening that a lot of people subscribed for posts to be delivered by email - which means you'll miss anything I throw around that's not actually in the blog. Bearing that in mind, I'll start rounding off my posts with any of these things so nobody misses anything. If missing something was your intention, simply don't click on stuff. It will look like this:

WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING:

I started a new section on the site called Scaramanga Bag. Although it sounds like a small pouch to keep your third nipple safe if you happen to be Christopher Lee, it's actually a new series of Hard Boiled Travel Writing (thanks to Wayne Simmons for the tagline). The first story - Clan of the Heart Punch - is out there already. If it makes you chuckle, you like it and want to share it with somebody, knock yourselves out - I've also filtered it out to the website Medium to catch other people in the net. I don't like going third party but let's just think of it as a test...

I'm off to Belgium at the weekend for three days. That's just far enough away to see exactly lightly I can travel - regular readers will have figured out by now exactly how much I dislike carrying luggage. Here's what I'm thinking: Personal hygiene materials (including socks and pants) - buy them when I get there and throw old stuff in the trash before I come back.

Books - this one was proving tricky but for the relatively short trip that it is, Rankin's new Rebus offering - Standing In Another Man's Grave - as an audiobook seems like an excellent travelling companion.

Clothes - figured I would wear a suit, meaning I don't need only need two shirts, one of which I shall be wearing. A man can find a white shirt in any city on any world if he needs to buy another.

This more or less means I can get by with just my phone and a bottle of water (the ultimate in instantly disposable items), but I always think this. Worst case scenario? The old Scaramanga bag. I don't mind that so much at all. The hard part is the fight with yourself that says if you really have to take a bag, you might as well fill it with stuff - which is wrong.

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Blogging is a little sporadic at the moment due to - wait for it - actual words being written. The schedule says two more books by Christmas so that's what I'm aiming for and there's nothing like having a deadline hanging over your head to sharpen the pencils. I was talking to an author friend yesterday about his latest book and how it was faring internationally. The word came back that sales, although respectable, where not as good as his previous novels resulting in something of a 'pay-cut' from his publisher. I like hearing things like this because the temptation is to always look at King/Gaiman/Koontz for business models but they are the exceptions and not the rules. That's not taking anything away from them because Lord knows they deserve everything they have but even though they may be the ideal, it's always good to know the reality of any likely situation from the guys in the trenches.

I know he won't mind me quoting him here - particularly as I haven't said who he is - but this was a good reality check for me:

"Well, there is a really scary thing happening with a lot of us mid list authors right now. Publishers are not editing our books. They are not backing them with much, if any, marketing or advertising. They are fighting us over titles and cover art and pigeon-holing us. And for that privilege we allow them to take 85 cents on the dollar."

85 cents in the dollar? That leaves you with 15 cents that one would presumably have to share with ones agent. My number skills are pretty poor, but let's take a simple example. Let's say a book is ten dollars. Your share of this using this model would be one $1.50. Let's take a simple sum that I can work out and say that you have to give your agent 20% of that - which is 30 cents - you are now left with $1.30 per book sold. Let's quickly move that model to the UK and say that if a book is £10 on the shelf, your share eventually becomes £1.30. Let's take a ballpark salary of £30,000 that is probably an average wage to live off these days. You would need to shift 24,000 copies of your book to make that grade - and that's not factoring in taxes etc either.

Now, I don't know if this is typical of the industry or not but it doesn't sound great. I also assume that most authors sell remarkably less than this. If it is a reasonably typical example, it's small wonder that a self published kindle/ibooks author goes down that route, as it tips the percentages on its head in your favour. By my (probably bad maths) you would only need to sell in the region of 3,500 books to make your £30,000 salary. That even seems achievable - and even though you would probably be insane to try and sell your book digitally for £10, the numbers are at least something you think you might be able to deal with. I even forgot to add the money back on that you would give your agent.

The fly in the ointment in this is that a good publisher can get your books in front of people. People buy books that are in front of them in a book store. I am 'people', so I know. Digitally, I tend to hunt very exactly with sniper crosshairs. How do you get your book in front of people to sell that many of a digital device. You might think social networking is a great place to start but as I have always said about networking online, it's like being at party with a million people all of whom are looking out for nobody but themselves.

I am genuinely intrigued as to how an author can make this work properly for them and break the traditional model once and for all - and I'm not talking the lower than low sock puppet tactics recently in the news. Did I say everything that was in my head on that? I think so... possibly some edits to come.

COMMERCIAL BREAK:

Meanwhile, I meant to post this quite some weeks back now. My friend Mr Downes came up with this and I loved it - and now you may love it too because he couldn't find anywhere online he wanted to post it.

I feel that we must finish the day with something from the music library that kicks royal ass with total agreement from all. Thus, I present to you, this: