Comely Bank Publishing - Writers Diaries

The Value (Literally) of An editor

24/11/2016

This article from the Irish Times (click on one of the links) makes several good points about the use of editors in self-publishing. Good editing is crucial, especially if you plan to print your book – mistakes are expensive. Good editors, especially brutal ones, earn their keep: in which case, it must help if the editor is a little personally removed from the author. It's hard to tell your loved ones that they write dross.

It also helps to be completely aware what your "editor" is actually doing on your behalf. Here are just a few possible tasks:

Commenting on and making suggestions on the plot, structure and layout of your book;
Commenting on the accuracy or otherwise of content, including continuity and the credibility of characters;
Commenting on the writing per se – style, grammar, punctuation, rhythm and so on;
Proofreading the finished product. Surprisingly, it's easier to proofread if you're not interested in the book – it's utterly impossible to proofread your own work.

What I'm not so sure about is that any editor is better than none at all. There are some pretty dodgy editors out there, especially if the author/publisher and editor live on opposite sides of the Atlantic. We used one who came recommended, but although I've no doubt she was excellent for American authors, we felt she didn't really have a grasp of the subject from a UK perspective – and her usage of English didn't fit with ours, either.

On which point, if any editor ever quotes the Chicago Style Manual at you, terminate their contract immediately. First of all, the Chicago is very much the definitive American English guide, not the UK one. In any case, any editor who actually has to look anything up doesn't have a proper feel for their language.

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/should-i-get-book-i-plan-to-self-publish-professionally-edited-1.2879411

Four Ways To Beat Writer's Block

3/9/2016

Writer’s block: every writer gets it sometimes. You want to write something, but you can’t get anything down on paper. Actually, I sometimes wonder if it’s perhaps a close cousin of stage fright, or the putting ‘yips’ in golf. But for one reason or another, a seemingly productive writer just dries up; he or she simply can’t think of anything to say.

I mention stage fright and the yips because I wonder if the problem is fear: perhaps we writers are afraid of writing absolute rubbish, wasting our time on drivel that we’ll immediately want to throw in the waste basket, or in winter, on the fire. It’s a confidence thing. I write a lot of rubbish, actually, and even my best stuff has a lot of rubbish running through it, much of which (if I’m lucky) is later removed by an editor. Once you can face up to the reality that you can have really rancid days as a writer, you’re halfway towards success. I think I should start a group called Writers Anonymous, where people can sit around in groups and confess to having written simply awful stuff. Then it can go in the bin, or better still these days, on a 500GB portable hard drive.

So here are a few tips for writers with writers block.

Write something – anything – that comes into your head. 50-100 words of absolute drivel. If you find yourself writing, keep doing it. I post stories on a website called Friday Flash Fiction. Why not try it yourself?
If you’re looking for a subject, consider what’s in the news. Try a ‘what if?’ scenario picturing yourself present at some scene you’ve read about. Or write about your own dreams or nightmares, even your own innermost desires (you’re going to put these onto another central character but you can always destroy it anyway).
Try writing about something you can see – describe a chair in your room, or the fireplace, a garden, a bird flying, a woman walking on the pavement, a man reading a newspaper in a café. Treat your notebook like an artist’s sketchbook and sit in a railway or bus station. Imagine the people you see have issues – escaped prisoners, are suicidal, are refugees, clean a variety of houses (describe the houses they’ll go to) and so on.
If all else fails, go for a long walk and while you’re alone, try telling yourself a story out loud. The golf course is a great refresher for me. Most of us write best when we replicate our speaking voice on paper. Not having anything with you can make you want to write it all down when you get home – the very process you’re trying to kick-start.

If you’ve got stuck on a novel (I’m slightly stuck just now), you just have to drive yourself forward. Take notes of potential ‘good bits’ that you think might work later in your book – essentially I wrote the last chapter of Four Old Geezers And A Valkyrie when the book was half-finished. These later highlights – perhaps a little conversation exchange, a turn of phrase, a character’s description – act as little stepping stones that get you through to the end. Write the little stepping-stones down, though, or you’ll forget them.

I’m sure something will work. If you’ve ever written anything at all, then you can write some more. However, once you’ve re-started, keep going: the first stuff might be only so-so, but you’ll get better if you don’t drop out of the habit.

Good luck!

Gordon Lawrie

Review: Mark Haddon

23/8/2016

EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
Baillie Gifford Theatre

Mark Haddon has written all sorts of stuff, it seems – plays, poetry, children’s fiction and, of course, some adult fiction including the celebrated The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. (The latter, we’re told, has sold 10 million copies, which must make him a reasonably wealthy man.) Now he’s turned his hand to some very dark short stories into a volume called The Pier Falls.

Here in the Baillie Gifford Main Theatre at the Edinburgh Book Festival, Haddon was interviewed by publisher and editor Lennie Goodings. He came across well and is a good speaker with a wry sense of humour, and – prompted well by Goodings – he kept the audience fully entertained for the allotted hour. Goodings asked him about the persistent darkness of the stories, which feature death throughout, it seems. Haddon didn’t really argue, or give any reason why: they just came out that way, it seems. He read briefly from one, Wadwo, a modern retelling of the story of Gawain and the Green Knight, then talked about where these stories came from – it was interesting to hear that several began as abandoned plays. As a result he informed the audience that he has permanently put aside his playwrighting amnitions, but we’ll see if that really proves to be the case.

As a writer, publisher and editor myself, I found his section on writing technique by far the most interesting. He claims he doesn’t set daily targets – he’s wealthy enough not to have to – and he’s pretty obsessive about redrafts of his manuscripts. Even his wife doesn’t get to see anything that hasn’t been re-written twenty times or so; how I wish all authors shared his sense of pride in their work.

The hour closed with a few audience questions, none of which seemed to relate to the new book. One questioner harked back to The Curious Incident and seemed to be desperate to make a point about a celebrated court case involving an autistic Scot found guilty of a financial crime in the USA; Haddon patiently waited, then answered by saying that he didn’t really know enough about autism to make a comment, a response so impressively adept that it probably drew the biggest round of applause of the entire hour. The (for the most part) poor questions didn’t spoil the event, however, which was a thoroughly enjoyable and interesting hour spent in Charlotte Square.

Gordon Lawrie

The Pier Falls, by Mark Haddon, is available priced £12.99 from all good booksellers.
Image: Mark Haddon." 2012. FamousAuthors.org 23 August, http://www.famousauthors.org/mark-haddon

SEQUELS SEQUELS SEQUELS

14/8/2016

Permit me to set off again on an favourite topic of mine: sequels.

When an author writes a successful book – or at least one that washes its face in terms of costs – it’s terribly tempting to write a sequel, a follow-on ‘what happened next’ novel. The author wants to develop the characters and develop the settings, and it’s entirely natural to want to turn that enthusiasm into a sequel.

The trouble is that, commercially, it’s not a good idea. That might sound a bit strange: you’d think that if the author has acquired a following, a sequel should sell. But if you give it a little more thought, only those people who have read the first book will be interested in reading the second, which immediately limits your book’s potential sales. You already know what the first book sold, and I’d guess that only 30%-50% of that would read volume 2. That’s not an attractive prospect for booksellers, which in turn means it’s not an attractive prospect for the publisher. That sort of sequel is only ever going to work if the first book was such a massive success that 30%-50% of the first sales is still a lot, and not everyone can be J.K.Rowling.

On the other hand, if the second book in your series can be read before the first without containing any spoilers, you’re OK – a second book might even kick-start the sales of first. Unfortunately, that’s an incredibly hard thing to do. Crime novels generally work, though – the whodunnit aspect of the book is usually more important than any ongoing narrative. Read the Harry Bosch or the Inspector Montalbano books in order, though.

If you really must revisit old ground, then one possible compromise is to use some of the minor characters from your first book and make them central ones in a new book. Readers might welcome familiar territory, but it does mean that the novels can be read in reverse order.

So what do we at Comely Bank Publishing recommend writers do instead? Actually, we always encourage writers to write a completely new, unconnected story. Good writers surely have more than one storyline in their heads, and being obsessed with a sequel rather advertises how good you think your own first book was, doesn’t it?

Gordon Lawrie

Getting to grips With Typesetting

13/8/2016

Creative Director Emma Baird and I were chatting the other day about typesetting manuscripts. Typesetting is the process which puts all those words, perhaps as many as 100,000 or more, into a form that looks like a book and ready for printing. Modern printers expect that the interior text of a book is supplied to them as a pdf file, the same kind as you fire off from your computer to your ink-jet at home when you ‘print something’.

We do our own in-house typesetting at Comely Bank Publishing. What that involves is creating a blank document of exactly the same dimensions as the final page of the book, working out suitable margins allowing for chapter headings at the top and page numbers at the foot, and quite possibly different margins for left and right pages throughout. That’s because, when you open a book to read it, the ‘tightness’ of the binding means that it feels more comfortable if the text is very slightly nearer the outside than the inside of the page. But every printer is different: our current one needs the the text to be slightly more offset than previous ones – there’s a degree of trial and error involved.

We also have to think about fonts, or to be exact, typefaces. We want the text to look good and be easy to read, which means using a good serif (those little bits at the foot of letters) font such as Garamond Pro or Minion Pro. These two are free; there are are others that cost more, and sometimes it’s worth buying one. Fonts can look fine until you start using figures, or italics, or bold text. Incidentally, the choice of font can considerably shorten a book and make it cheaper to produce. On a 400 page book, Garamond is around a dozen pages shorter than Times New Roman, and apparently uses 16% less ink.

And then there are ‘widows’ and ‘orphans’. It’s bad form to end a chapter with one single line on a page on its own, and it’s also wrong to start a new section with a single line right at the foot of a page. We might ask the authors to make some alterations, but I do some editing myself a lot of the time – take out a carriage return, re-order a sentence, simply re-write something slightly. Authors are invited to approve, of course, but they never notice. That’s something an outside typesetter could never do.

Anything that deviates from standard paragraphed text causes problems, and sometimes we have to print something like an email, a letter or a notice on a door in a different font. Those chapter headers are tricky, too – the document has to be formally divided into ‘sections’ to allow that to work, and often the book needs different headers on left and right pages – the book title on the left, say, the chapter title on the right.

Finally, some text is very difficult. Anything using strange mathematical formulae causes trouble because some of the characters simply don’t exist in very many fonts. Diagrams, maps and any sort of picture is a challenge. It all takes time.

We can, and do, typeset some books using Word. Word is limited, but that can be a good thing if all we’re trying to do is typeset a straightforward novel. Failing that we have to use the industry standard Adobe InDesign, but that unfortunately costs £17.00 per month. Either way, what we then produce is that pdf file for the author to approve. We’d never let the author near anything other than a pdf at that stage, though – authors can ruin hours of work by making one or two ‘innocent edits’.

It’s an in-house secret how much we charge, I’m afraid. I have considered outsourcing the process, but the standard fee – for a less flexible service – seems to start at well over £1000, and we do it for a bit less, that’s all I’m saying. £1000 plus is a lot of money.

Gordon Lawrie

Poetry Review: Over The Water, by Bert Flitcroft

12/8/2016

I

Stand on the cliff's edge,
  look down the gully
where water
has chiselled
     an entrance
     like the eye of a needle,
where the Sea tries to thread herself.

Her wind-tormented skin is unrelenting
   in its liquid motion.
and today she spits
and hurls herself
against the rock's solidity,
its damned immovability.

Like a long-married couple, without knowing,
                    Sea and Rock

have come to mirror each other,
                    in the wave-swell of fields,
       in these rolling hills contoured
                    like seals or humpbacked whales.

In the troughs are farms   like   scattered   flotsam,
spindrift of sheep and   bobbing cotton grass,
       barns like dried up blocks
                             of bladderwrack.
       brown and head-down cows
                             like scraps of kelp.

II

Norsemen came out of the Sea,
  risked the riptides,
rose out of a haar
as white as their dragons' breath at dawn,

found fragments of Rock

                 and named them Orknayjar,

the islands of seals.

Stand at the edge of the world
               where the Rock succumbs,
                               and slips
                                      below the waves
                                                like a drowning man.

Make for the wind-lashed, whale-skulled headland,
the screech of bad-tempered terns at Birs ay.

Cross the causeway         at low tide
and climb to the steep cliff's edge.

Breathe in      big skies,     the isolation,

that sense of separateness
                 that comes with         islands.

© Bert Flitcroft 2016

I’m not a great one for reviewing poetry. I’m not sure it’s very valuable to pick over such tiny fragments of the english language, because good poetry should come from the heart and speak to the soul. In any case many of the best poems are encrypted like emails to withstand hacking by critics.

But Bert Flitcroft – whose performance at Blackwell’s Writers At The Fringe I reviewed on this website yesterday – was kind enough to send me his as yet unpublished poem Over The Water, and I reprint it here with his permission. Like the rest of his work, it’s extremely accessible, and it brought back memories of holidays in Orkney with my wife Katherine over forty years ago. I'd like to share it with readers so that they can see why I like his stuff.

Orkney’s a flat and exposed series of islands, but Over The Water at first focuses on its western cliffs – Hoy, Yesnaby, Marwick Head, perhaps – and the relationship between land and sea. Not for the only time, Flitcroft sees the action of the sea on the rocks as a metaphor for marriage: ‘Like a long-married couple, without knowing, Sea and Rock have come to mirror each other."

Then, after a nod to the farming heartland of the islands, he turns to Orkney’s ancient atmospheric history, its atmosphere, its seals. Finally, Flitcroft takes the listener to “the edge of the world, where the Rock succumbs and slips below the waves like a drowning man.” There, we stand in silence as we “Breathe in big skies, the isolation, that sense of separateness that comes with islands.”

It all makes me want to go back again for real.

Gordon Lawrie

Bert Flitcroft's has two collections of poems, Singing Puccini, and Thought Apples.

Discover Secret Copies of Weekender at This Year's Edinburgh Festival

2/8/2016

By Roland Tye

How on earth can giving away free copies of my book boost sales? I know, it seems bonkers doesn’t it? Let me explain further…

Years ago, I wrote a book, Weekender. When it was still a rambling, sprawling opus hiding in the recesses of my hard drive, I launched a guerrilla marketing campaign to get it noticed. I had tried and failed to elicit the support of agents and publishers by conventional means.

It was time to rally the troops and go underground...

I set up a website with videos, music, samples from the book and, of course, a synopsis. Then I printed off flyers, thousands and thousands of them, promoting the website. These were distributed in clandestine fashion around the city of Edinburgh during the Festival.

The trouble was the flyers and the website weren't really selling anything. All they did was highlight to people that some guy had written a novel and couldn't get it published. Needless to say the campaign was a disaster. Most of the flyers ended up in the gutter. Many more remain in my hall cupboard to this day. Weekender remained unpublished and in obscurity.

With that chastening experience in mind, I am now embarking on another campaign that will cost me even more money. The difference this time is that, thanks to the lovely people at Comely Bank Publishing, I now have something tangible to offer. A real, physical book. Something that people can touch and feel, and maybe even read.

I plan to leave secret copies of Weekender around the city in the coming weeks. Each will have a message inside congratulating the finder and asking them to read the book and then leave it somewhere that someone else will find it. A coffee shop perhaps, or on a bus or train.

In this age of social media people will be able to log and track Weekender on its journey. The aim is to get Weekender travelling around the world – although to be honest if one copy gets across the river to Fife I will be happy.

The self-published novel is a delicate flower. Neglect it and it will die very quickly. Indeed, the only thing that will keep it healthy is publicity. Lots and lots of publicity. I think Weekender is a cracking read, but it has to find its way into the right hands if it is to truly bloom. I want it to make the leap from local tale to global phenomenon, so its name (and mine) needs to embedded in the consciousness of as many people, in as many places as possible.

Like any successful, self-published novel not only must it be visible, it has to constantly shout and jump up and down waving its hands manically above its head. The biggest arts festival in the world would seem an appropriate stage for it to do so.

The campaign will run over a weekend (obviously!) as follows:

Friday 19th August 2016 – Leith
Saturday 20th August 2016 – West End/Gorgie
Sunday 21st August 2016 – Edinburgh City Centre

So look out for secret copies of Weekender on those dates and remember – a lot can happen in a weekend...

Weekender is available to buy at Blackwell's, South Bridge; The Edinburgh Bookshop; Elvis Shakespeare's and also on Kindle.

Roland will be posting occasional updates on the campaign here.You can also get involved on Twitter #discoverweekender @weekendernovel and @comelybankpub

Are you being Fleeced? 6 Ways To Spot a Vanity Publisher.

26/7/2016

William Caxton showing specimens of his printing to Edward IV/Wikipedia

What’s the difference between vanity publishing and self-publishing? (Yes, yes, we’ve covered this subject before, but some people still don’t get it.) The differences are as follows:

When you use a vanity publisher, you hand over the rights to your book. When you self-publish, the rights to your book remain yours. Self-publishers who use other services are in complete charge, and that should be written into the agreement.
When you use a vanity publisher, you’re expected to underwrite the costs of the book yourself. They take a (large) share of the profits if it does well; their money isn’t at risk if it doesn’t. Self-publishers take the risks, certainly, but they also take all the profits. In addition, the books actually belong to the author, not to anyone else.
Vanity publishers will provide a number of services for the author – they’ll design your cover, edit your book and print it for you. But each of these services will be under contract to the vanity publisher, and in all likelihood commission will be charged. Self-publishers are free to choose whoever they want to design their covers, edit their books, even print their books. No commission.
Vanity publishers will distribute your book for you. That means they’ll charge you a regular fee for storage and postage, to be deducted from your profits. Self-publishers have to make their own arrangements for storage and distribution. (Hint: spare room/Royal Mail.)
Vanity publishers will log your book’s ISBN with Nielsen, who manage them in the UK, send copies of your book as required by law to the six Legal Libraries. Self-publishers do it all themselves. It’s not hard.
Vanity publishers will probably ‘market’ your book by sending out a press release to all the major booksellers. Self-publishers market their own book by all means available, including press releases, personal visits to bookshops, and even to libraries.

I’m sure that some authors have great success with their vanity publisher; I’ve just not come across one yet. Some are certainly worse than others. In addition, there are commercial self-publishing firms, who are quite open that they charge a fee to help ythe author self-publish – the best-known of these is the Matador imprint. They’re fine, if a little expensive.

What about Comely Bank Publishing? We are a group of self-publishing authors who get together to limit our costs and help each other. The authors pay for everything themselves and keep all the profits, every last penny – we are completely not-for-profit. However, books don’t get out on our imprint unless they pass a quality test: we only want to be associated with good stuff, and if you see our name on a book, you know it’s of a decent standard, been thoroughly edited, and the physical book looks, feels and actually is extremely well produced. And authors can pull out and take their book away any time they like.

Books By The Bedside

13/7/2016

Take a look at the picture above: does it fill you with horror or with excitement? Comely Bank Publishing author's Gordon Lawrie swings wildly between one and the other.

These are what his Goodreads page would term 'To-read', to which he's very specifically added his own category 'by the bedside'. He says it's a little intimidating to go to bed last thing at night and waken up first thing in the morning to piles of books that he's desperate to read but can't quite find the time for.

The problem, it seems is that his wife reads so much quicker than he does, and with many shared tastes in novels she constantly fizzes through books then lobs them over to his side of the bed with a 'that's a great book – read it'. And he wants to: it's just that there aren't enough hours in the day.

On the other hand, he's only too aware how lucky he is. With such a cornucopia at hand, he knows just what a joy it is to have the chance to choose from such riches.

So – what do you feel? Would that collection of books as yet unread get you down? Or would it have you licking your lips? Answers below, please...

Gordon Lawrie's own books can all be found at the
Comely Bank Publishing bookshop page.

One Woman's Book Promotion Strategy

5/5/2016

By Jane Tulloch

Writing a book is one thing, the publication process is another but the promotion of the book, once published, is something else altogether and is rarely considered by the first time author. I can only comment on my own efforts in this direction but there are many books on the subject already available.

In my case I just wrote the book I wanted to write - Our Best Attention. Simples! However, after the first efforts of publication (thank you Comely Bank Publishing) and the euphoria of the book launch (thank you Blackwell’s bookshop) it was time to develop a clear book promotion strategy. I felt that it was a matter of matching the book to its potential readership and working out how to bring it to their attention.

This is what I did:
•   Analysed my book. Who might enjoy it?
•   Worked out where this potential readership might be best located
•   Worked out how best to connect with this potential readership
•   Analysed which of my own personal skills were most likely to facilitate this connection
•   Made the connection.

Findings

As my book is based in the 1970s, more than 40 years ago, the potential readership is older adults. Given that it’s about the activities of a large department store, it seemed likely to be of most interest to older ladies, either previous customers of such a shop or former staff members.

Many older ladies enjoy membership of a variety of ladies associations of various types e.g. Women’s Institutes, church group and book groups, for example.

Writing a Memoir: Some Considerations

23/4/2016

By Eric J. Smith

Undertaking the task. Before becoming too deeply involved in writing a memoir or autobiography, I advise you to determine why you’re undertaking the task. Perhaps you’re writing it for your family and friends with no expectation of major sales: you simply want to leave them a record of your outlook and exploits.

Then again, if you want to sell a warehouse full of copies, think about whether some subpopulation of strangers will want to buy your book. If you’re not a celebrity, they probably won’t unless it’s beautifully written and expertly marketed. Even then, it’s likely to be a tough sell unless you’re a convict, madam, or escort with an attention-grabbing hook to make you the toast of the latest news cycle. Otherwise, your potential readers won’t be emotionally invested in your story before reading it, and that’s what it takes to generate sales.

Planning. First, you need to decide whether you intend to write an autobiography or a true memoir. An autobiography is a life story from beginning to end, whereas a memoir is a selective set of autobiographical sketches that focus on certain aspects of one’s life. I first intended to write a memoir that concentrated on single decade in my life—1966 to 1975. But as the manuscript (MS) took shape I realized that to get the story told, I needed to write a hybrid genre that also related a few adventures from my earlier life and several more recent episodes.

Since 1975 I’d amassed 110,000 words of autobiographical sketches recounting memoires from my early life to more recent stories. I’d written these out of chronological order, in various styles, and at varying levels of discipline, detail, and quality.

Some of these fragments were epistolary—emails I’d written to friends—and some were written versions of tales I’d told people countless times over drinks. I thought the book would write itself it in a matter of months—a simple matter of organisation and editorial polish, right? Instead, the task turned out to be daunting. I struggled mightily through more than three years of false starts, rewrites, and edits before putting together the book I was happy with.

Organising. I assessed the mixed bag of material I had to work with. Unfortunately, I had not developed any particular theme, structure, story arc, cast of characters, or outline to follow. I decided to present my chapters thematically and chronologically within each theme, which seemed reasonable at that stage.

Publishing Your Book – Covers (2)

24/3/2016

It was a bookseller, Marie Moser from the Edinburgh Bookshop in the Bruntsfield area in Edinburgh, who first gave me a serious lesson in the importance of book covers. Marie’s background, she once told me, is really in marketing and retail rather than in publishing, so her interest is in selling books. That mights sound rather obvious for a bookseller, but what it means is that she wants books in her shop that will clear the shelves and won’t hang around.

Assuming the buyer hasn’t come in to buy or order a specific book, bookshops can be a bit of a jungle. Your book has to get noticed by a potential customer, and it’s got a big advantage if it’s been given a special place on a table instore. If you stand and watch in any bookshop, you’ll see the same little routine happening all around you: the customer browses, is drawn to the front cover of a book, then immediately turns over to read the blurb on the back to see what the book’s about. All the time, Marie pointed out, the customer is subliminally feeling the book’s surface, too; the author has to feel that the book will sit well in the hand. Finally, only at the end, the customer will flick through the book randomly to see if the font looks nice, the paper feels nice, to see if the print is large enough, and to see if the book is the right length. If you, the author, are a new, unfamiliar writer, the potential customer will be more likely to take a chance on your book if it isn’t too long.

If the customer puts the book back at any stage, you’ve lost them. End of story.

So the front cover must be good. However, so too must the spine, because most books sit upright, end-on on a shelf, especially if they’re not on special promotion. If your book is in the general bookshelves standing upright, spine-outwards, the customer will only choose your book either if (a) they’re actually looking for it, or (b) they’re browsing generally and looking for something – anything – different, perhaps as a present for a friend, even for themselves.

If you’re an unknown author, your name is never going to be a draw. That means for the great majority of struggling writers it’s the title that counts – it’s got to catch the eye, be a bit different, if possible look a bit different. Once you’ve made it, your name becomes the draw, and the author’s name becomes the bigger thing on the cover; the latest title by Kate Atkinson or Ian Rankin, that sort of thing. But until you’re a superstar, learn your place in the scheme of things, I’m afraid.

Here at Comely Bank Publishing we do create some covers (and we’re not bad) but most writers come to us with some pre-conceived idea of what their book should look like on the outside – and why not? If that happens, though, it’s usually better if the author works with an independent professional cover designer who might well have specialist skills and experience to make the author’s dreams come true. I’d recommend that you listen to any professional designers: they know what works and what doesn’t, and there’s little point in paying someone for advice then not heeding it.

In the meantime, here are the covers of some of Comely Bank Publishing’s current titles, plus a sneak preview of a forthcoming publication, Roland Tye’s Weekender. Judge for yourself which works best. There's no right answer, by the way.

PUBLISHING YOUR BOOK – COVERS (1)

4/3/2016

The first in a series of posts by Gordon Lawrie offering a few tips for writers.

One of the great sayings in publishing is, “You do judge a book by its cover.” In fact, a good book, well-written, can be completely undermined by a poor or inapproriate cover, and all yout good work goes to waste. On the other hand, a really well-designed cover can attract a reader’s attention and their curiosity to look inside. Then it’s over to you, the author, to make sure that reader isn’t disappointed.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to share some thoughts in a series of posts covering the design of covers, and what you, the author can do to help. Even if you eventually decide to go for a professional book cover designer, it’s still a good idea to know what you’re really looking for – you can’t expect designers just to guess.

The first thing to consider is size. We deal in fiction, and I’m assuming that as a self-publisher you’d want your book published immediately as a paperback. (Hardbacks are a special case, generally.) I’d suggest that you’re looking at either the ‘B-Trade’ paperback size 129mm wide x 198mm tall, or the slightly bigger ‘Demy’ – pronounced “dehm-eye” – which is around 138mm wide x 229mm. I certainly wouldn’t suggest anything larger, and booksellers would probably be reluctant to stock something that didn’t sit easily on their shelves with other books. Avoid any attempts by printers to get you to print on A5; it looks amateurish.

Which of these two sizes you choose is up to you. In theory, a slightly larger page can hold more type, but in practice it can look wrong if you don’t increase the font size to match. All that you end up with is a book that’s bigger and heavier (and therefore costs more to post).

However, you need to consider your readership, too: is yours the sort of story with readers who might like larger print, or perhaps it’s a book aimed at a reader who might prefer something easily placed in a bag or a coat pocket? It’s a matter of judgement. I’d certainly consider Demy for younger readers, but nothing’s set in stone.

Finally, any ebook will simply have the portrait image you first imagined. On the other hand, remember that printed books have rear covers and spines, too, so your total print cover will actually be a landscape picture. And that’s where the fun starts...

(Watch out for the next instalment coming soon.)

SELF-PUBLISHING IS AS GOOD A ROUTE AS ANY

7/2/2016

I’ve seen a few posts lately about the perils of self-publishing. Most of them are by editors who are trying to sell their services.

First of all, I need to make it clear that ‘self-publishing’ and ‘vanity publishing’ are not one and the same; indeed they shouldn’t even be mentioned in the same breath. A vanity publisher takes your manuscript and publishes it on your behalf. That means they technically take the financial risk on your book, distribute and market your book, and pay you a percentage of any profits. In addition, as publisher they retain the rights to your work, so that if it’s a big success the vanity publisher (potentially) makes a lot of money.

However because it’s very unlikely that your book is any good, vanity publishers offset that risk very simply: they charge the author. If you want your book to have a better chance of doing well, fine, but that means editing, proof-reading, arranging for a decent cover and so on. Each of these costs money, and the vanity publisher passes all of these costs onto the author.

That seems fair enough, but there’s a catch. Vanity publishers are highly unlikely to tell you that your book is rubbish – it’s not in their interest to do so. They want you to publish with them and to pay them a princely sum to do so. Lots of people do it, mostly folk who think their life story is intersting enough to appeal to others; mostly, those folk are plain wrong. Meanwhile, if your book is any good, the vanity publisher holds the rights. Worst of all, if you try to get out of the arrangement to go elsewhere, you might even find yourself paying a cancellation fee of some sort.

That’s why self-publishing is so much better an idea, so long as you’ve got the energy to do it. Once again there are companies that help authors self-publish, and once again they charge quite a princely sum to to do so. But you can also do a great deal of it yourself, especially if you have the energy to do all the donkey work. Self-publishing authors all know what that means: getting your book edited, proof-read, an ISBN, getting a cover designed, getting it printed, arranging distribution and publicity, and turned into an ebook amongst other things.

Here at Comely Bank Publishing we go one stage further along the do-it-yourself path. We’ve created a self-publishing collective where a group of local self-publishing authors who advise each other, help with proof-reading and other tips, and collaborate on distribution. We also set a standard; books have to be of decent quality or they don’t get our logo on the spine, and we do reject books, too. One other thing: our advice, every bit of it, is free. Unless you live locally, I’m not volunteering to help you with your book – the authors must be local for a variety of reasons – but there’s no reason why the same model wouldn’t work elsewhere. Groups of writers anywhere could form their own publishing collectives. Comely Bank Publishing would be more than happy to link with anyone trying to do the same as elsewhere.

In 2016 I can see no problem with self-publishing. Let’s face it, you're highly unlikely to make a living out of writing novels anyway, whether you do so conventionally or by self-publishing. However the more you write and get onto any sort of bookshelves, the more chance you have of eventually writing a winner.

In addition, I'd advise all authors one other thing: it looks great on your CV to be able to say you've written one or more books. It shows staying power, an ability to take a kicking, a considerable degree of drive, planning skills and the ability to see a project through to the end. Which interviewer isn’t going to be intrigued by the applicant who can say ‘published author’ on his or her application form? Ultimately, landing a better, higher-paid day job may be the quickest way to make money from your writing.

Just go for it, write your book, then write another one, then another. Better out than in.

Gordon Lawrie

The Best Things In Life Are (Almost) Free

23/1/2016

From left: Chicken & ham panini; Craigleith; small latte

Some of the best things are free, to be sure, but others need a little help. For me, there's something wonderful about consuming nice food and drinking good coffee in a location (this is the free bit) which is simply wonderful. Even the location isn't truly free, of course, as most of the time it still costs a little to get there.

So there's something special about a flask of coffee and a chocolate digestive biscuit – preferably a good quality plain chocolate one, I think – on a cold winter's day. This is January, so there are plenty of cold winter's days around, and they're free, too.

But today Katherine and I lashed out a little. There's a little café called Zanzibar in North Berwick which sells simply wonderful toasted paninis or, if you prefer, lovely tarts and cakes; it also happens to sell quite the best coffee in East Lothian. Put it together with fabulous scenery and you can't lose.

And that's what we did today. I had a small prima latte to go with an extra shot together with a chicken and ham panini. Then we took our lunch along to the picnic tables at the east end of the beach at North Berwick – under the Glen Golf Club – and sat and watched the busy turnstones and manic oystercatchers doing their thing so close to us that we didn't need our binoculars to see what they were up to.

Many good things in life might be free, but for a small amount extra – less than £10.00 in this case for the two of us – the combination of the best mankind can offer and the best of nature can be truly sublime.

Gordon Lawrie

ONCE IN A LIFETIME

11/1/2016

Some first-time moments remain in the memory for a lifetime: the first drink, the first cigarette, the loss of virginity, the first time behind the wheel of a car, the first day in a new university or job. It’s not that the events themselves are uncommon, but rather that they happen once, just once, for each particular individual.

When in addition the event happens to mark the end product of a huge amount of work and is itself a huge achievement, then we’ve every right to expect a little trumpet fanfare for that individual.

It’s only a little over a year since a chance conversation on social media brought Jane Tulloch’s half-written novel Our Best Attention and Comely Bank Publishing together. Nevertheless, Jane’s first novel is published today and goes on sale in good bookstores and as an ebook. By no means has it been a smooth ride – first novels never are – but here we are all the same and this is a moment Jane should enjoy and remember for ever. She’ll enjoy Thursday’s official signing launch in Edinburgh Blackwell’s even more. The first book is always special, and unique.

Of course Jane will be the first to acknowledge that she’s had the help of an awful lot of other people who’ve helped her with editing her work, proof-reading, designing covers, arranging publicity, distribution. But today is her special day in the sun, and I for one would like to offer my warmest congratulations.

Gordon Lawrie
Founder and Managing Director,
Comely Bank Publishing

What do STAR Wars, SHakin' Stevens and "Our Best Attention" all have in common?

26/12/2015

I often find myself saying that never a week goes by without me learning something new about the publishing business. One of the best tips I received in 2015 was from an old schoolmate, Mike Aitken, the former senior sports writer at the Scotsman. Before switching desks, Mike was actually first employed as an assistant literary editor, and his advice about marketing books was to give it plenty of time – get review copies out as much as six months in advance, for instance. It gives reviewers a chance to read and say what they think about the book, and to prepare a review or some publicity around the time the book is first released. The public has to be properly primed.

Take Star Wars: The Force Awakens, for instance. Can there ever have been a film with more pre-release hype? We've been hearing all year about the return of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Chewbacca, R2D2 and C3PO that by Christmas everyone was desperate to see it. Someone I know planned to take over an entire small cinema for a private showing for his friends, but the cinema's booked out for weeks to come. The distributors have had us wound up like a coiled spring.

Another interesting case is Shakin' Stevens. (Incidentally, I'm inclined to think that Mr Stevens might be a slightly underestimated talent: most things he sings pretty well.) This year he's released a new version of his 1985 No.1 hit "Merry Christmas Everyone" in conjunction with a YouTube video of the Salvation Army in action. Here he is in 1985:

The point, though, is that Shakin's No.1 1985 Christmas hit was actually intended for Christmas 1984. That's right, 1984, a whole year earlier. But that was the year of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas and it was quickly realised that Stevens' song would quickly be lost against that. So it was delayed for an entire year until the moment for release was right.

Finally, there's Jane Tulloch's book Our Best Attention, which is to be published early next month. It's been ready for ages, but we at Comely Bank Publishing needed time to set everything up, get books to the attention of local booksellers and give them a chance to order, prepare posters, press releases and so on. We think it's made a difference. Customers are asking when the book is coming out

So what we'd say to all self-publishing authors is this: don't be in too much of a hurry to publish your book. Wait until the moment is right, and you can always sell copies privately to your friends and family if you're in a hurry.

As Shakin' Stevens would say, timing is everything. He'd also say something else – Merry Christmas, Everyone!

-– Gordon Lawrie and the Comely Bank Publishing team

Book Review

27/11/2015

Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge

Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge by Eric J. Smith
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quite simply, this is the best book I’ve read in ages.

I’d come across Eric Smith’s writing before, mostly his flash fiction, and so I was attracted to this, his… “memoir”, I suppose you might describe it. Written as a series of vignettes, the author covers the various phases of his life, with special attention to the period from adolescence through until around forty.

Smith’s writing can only be described as “evocative” – evocative of a mid-west US that probably only exists in my imagination, but nevertheless seems very real all the same. His skill is to make the ordinary seem extraordinary in much the same manner as Alan Bennett and, before him, Joyce Grenfell have done in the UK. The characters are real, the author is real. He doesn’t attempt to paint himself as some sort of hero, or a tortured soul. He’s just ordinary, albeit a little above ordinary in some aspects of his life – he runs, and he writes for a living, although not in a literary sense. But that writing craft shines through; I’ve seen it before, the professional writer – albeit of catalogues, or proposals, or reports – is able to turn those skills to quality literature as a sideline. Much of it is achieved with a turn of phrase; a woman of thirty-six is described as “rode-hard-and-put-away-wet”, for instance. I’d read one or two of these stories elsewhere before and assumed they were fiction, now I realise they weren’t. Because he’s become interested in flash fiction since retiring, the author includes a few examples at the end, but this is an autobiography at heart.

One might say that Eric Smith’s capture of the mid-west voice is all the more remarkable because he isn’t really a mid-westerner at all, but it transpires that he was born in Canada, and there’s perhaps a Canadian accent in that quiet narrative. This is not a book where exclamation marks are to be found; stories tend to end quietly, with a gentle, meditative sentence for the most part. I’ve no idea what the author sounds like, but the reader can imagine. Read the book and you’ll see what I mean.

Because the book consists of these vignettes, it makes for great breakfast-table or bedtime reading – this isn’t a huge tome with which to immerse yourself on a holiday. You can even read his book and something else at the same time – it works fine.

I’ve heard a whisper that Eric Smith is working on a novel. That would be something.

View all my reviews

Remembrance Day

8/11/2015

A purely personal comment from Gordon Lawrie.

I found myself in an interesting debate yesterday with a friend regarding poppies and Remembrance Day. She rather objected to being forced to observe the rituals of a minute’s silence and the current rise of “poppy fascism” – the trashing of public figures who didn’t wear poppies at this time of year. Her perfectly valid point was that honouring “The Glorious Dead” was hypocritical and dishonest, given that there was nothing glorious about war at all and that so many of the wars Britain (let’s face it, most countries) have fought have been morally wrong. We both agreed that not everyone would observing the minute’s silence would actually be thinking about war dead, and people should be allowed to wear whatever they like.

I also had to accept her points about war. The Great War may have been historically inevitable but it was also futile and generally in pursuit of imperial gain. The Iraq war was always, always wrong. Even where the wars have been morally right, as in Afghanistan (shame on the rest of the world for not joining in the attempt to ensure peace there) our armed forces have arguably achieved little so far. As a country, we don’t seem to pick our fights very well.

But that’s rather missing the point of Remembrance Day. In remembering those who died, we shouldn’t be grading the worth of each fallen individual according to the moral value of the conflicts they took part in. The armed forces – particularly in the United Kingdom which has no conscription and we rely on professional soldiers – do our dirty work for us. They act on behalf of an elected government, a government which we as a society elect to take war and peace decisions on our behalf.

Ah, I hear you say, but the Iraq war was ‘not in my name’. Well I opposed the Iraq war too, but if you try to walk away from your responsibilities to the armed forces, I’d suggest you’re treading a dangerous path. The last thing we want are politicised armed forces; experience across the world suggests that doesn't usually lead to good outcomes.

In Iraq, the armed forces loyally did as they were asked, as we would expect them to do in all situations except when they’re asked to flout the Geneva Convention and commit a war crime. If we don’t approve of the Iraq war, say, that’s a matter between us and our government, it’s not for the military to contradict a democratically arrived-at policy. (And it’s worth noting that Blair’s government was comfortably re-elected in 2005; we care more about our money in our pockets than the rights and wrongs of the wars in which our troops engage.)

In that sense, those soldiers who die, and the people they kill, are simply victims of our petty squabbles between governments and ourselves. It’s cowardly not to acknowledge our own responsibility for the decisions our governments take. And if you have a minute to spare in the next few days, it’s maybe worth considering that instead of wondering what you’re going to have for tea tonight.

LAURA BATES: Everyday Sexism

7/11/2015

It's been a while since I did one of these. This my Goodreads review of a book I'd recommend to everyone – Gordon Lawrie

Everyday Sexism

Everyday Sexism by Laura Bates
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Where to start?

This is NOT a flawless book. The essential theme of Laura Bates’ book is a description of the Everyday Sexism project, in which she invited women to submit their stories and personal experiences detailing harassment, sexual assault, abuse, discrimination, just about ever form of ill-treatment imaginable. The book consists of twelve chapters, most of them devoted in turn to some aspect of society – girls’ experiences, education, the media, politics, motherhood and so on, and in each the structure is the same: Bates describes the problem, then uses copious quotes gathered from her websites and so on as exemplification. There are plenty of quotes, and in truth once you’ve got the general message there’s a temptation (for a man, at least) to skim some of them.

Early on, Laura Bates acknowledges that her research is methodologically imperfect. The women seek her out, which means that by definition she’s generally going to receive endless examples of unhappy women who have had terrible things happen to them. And make no mistake, there are plenty of those examples. However in accepting that her methodology is weak, she airily waves that aside by saying effectively ‘so is all social science research’. Well, Ms Bates, you’re wrong there, and that’s a bit of an insult to social scientists. The thing is, it shouldn’t really matter, but in general the quality of research is guaged by its weakest part, not its strongest, and it might have served the author better to remember that.

Further, some chapters are pretty weak. I wasn’t impressed with the politics chapter especially – too much of the sexist ‘experience’ was from many years previous, and she talks about male domination in politics as if it’s something that no one is trying to address. (And of course, there are plenty of other groups in society who are under-represented in politics, too, such as ethnic minorities, the social classes C2, D and E, rural inhabitants, non-Oxbridge and LBGT.) She really fails to look at why so few women are politicians – is there a correlation, for instance, between where the MP represents and how likely they are to be female? Nor does she acknowledge the efforts made by – and success of – the Scottish Parliament. In general, she relies too much on anecdotal evidence; one-off comments can’t be extrapolated into generalities.

And her own polemic is irritating at times. I began to get annoyed by the number of times she “cried” reading particular things sent in by women, although to be fair that dried up as the book progressed. To quote herself:

“One of the reasons why it is so important to let members of oppressed groups tell their own stories in their own ways is that it’s too easy to think you’re getting it when you’re not.”

Unfortunately, that’s exactly the mistake Laura Bates makes all too often herself.

Too often she makes unsubstantiated statements, which may well be true but need to be backed up by hard objective fact all the same. Sure, women still face the assumption that they won’t be engineers, but it would have been nice to see some concern that women massively outperform men in education generally in the 21st century – better school results, better degrees, more in higher education and so on.

I’d also like to have seen a recognition that women themselves can be the source of the anti-women discrimination. Long ago I used to be a member of golf club where women could only be part-time members, and I led a campaign to allow women full membership. The women were asked if they would like the option, and 133 out of 140 said no, that is they would not like ANYONE to have that option. In the end it was the male members of the club who decided that if one woman wanted to join, then one was enough. It happens.

And yet... this is a life-changing book all the same. At least it was for me. There can be no question that women face a much greater degree of sexism than men do, even although men do face it, too. There’s no question that male primary teachers are still less trusted by parents than ‘comfortable’ female ones. Male PE teachers in particular are targeted for accusations of sexual impropriety, the assumption often being guilty until proven innocent. I’ve experienced sexual ‘touching up’ from women – not very often, mind you.

But three things became clear to me. First of all, the sheer volume of abuse, inappropriate touching or remarks, discrimination, inappropriate assumptions and general denigration of women is wholly on a different scale from what most men can possibly understand. Second – and this was one of those moments that suddenly occurred to me as I was reading the Everyday Sexism, she didn’t write this – it occurred to me that if I’m inappropriately touched or spoken to by a woman, I’m not physically threatened. I can resist, refuse, walk away. That option isn’t open to many women. Sexism really is about power. Finally, Laura Bates says something that I realised is entirely true: men and women don't live in the same world, they live in separate, parallel worlds. And it's hard to see how that could change any time soon.

But I felt that Laura Bates left it too late to deal with the issue of ‘tarring all men with the same brush’. Sure, she does near the end, but we could have done with some worthwhile research about what percentage of men are unaware of the damage they do. We could have used some research into whether sexism is getting better or worse. We could have done with some research into differences in generational attitudes – in women as well as men. Most of all, we could have used some worthwhile research into how to improve the situation. As human beings, we lack role models who can show us the correct way to adapt to life’s newer dimensions – openly same-sex relationships, transgenders, whatever.

I so wanted to give this book five stars. It will change the way I think and approach relationships with women; it has already, and I strongly recommend it to any man with the courage to take it on. You can be sure that anyone who has given this one star (a) probably hasn’t read it and (b) is exactly the worst sort of animal Laura Bates is writing about. But for me at least, it simply has too many flaws.

This book was recommended to me by a young woman who totally related to it. Intrigued, I told her about a recent occasion when I was engaged in a conversation outside with a couple of other people and a woman I know walked past, slapped me across the backside, and said ‘hello’. My first reaction was shock, then I felt slightly flattered for some reason – I didn’t find it offensive at all. Then I began to think: what would happen if I’d done it to her? The consequences would have been dreadful.

I asked the woman who recommended this book if there was a difference between a man doing it to a woman, and a woman doing it to a man. To my surprise she said there was, the latter was OK. I still don’t get that. It seems I still have a lot to learn, then.

View all my reviews

High Stakes, by Gordon Lawrie

2/10/2015

At the start of October 2105 a medical research paper declared that tall people were more likely to develop cancer than small people. Gordon Lawrie, who is 6feet 51/2 inches tall, responded:

I was made aware of my own mortality this morning when I picked up the newspaper and read that I was rather likelier to die than I’d previously assumed. The cause of my misfortune, it seems, is that I’m very tall – 6 feet 51/2 inches, to be precise, or, as the French would say, 1.97 metres. Tall people, we’re told, are more likely to develop cancer than short people.

On reading this startling fact, I immediately googled the price of coffins, as you do, where I found the incredibly informative website www.comparethecoffin.com. There, my eyes were opened to a whole range of exit vehicles, including cardboard boxes – the pink cardboard coffin was Reduced! to a mere £375 – rainbow coffins presumably aimed at diversity groups, and things constructed more robustly from wood or steel. (You might think I’m making this up, but I’m not.) Comparethecoffin.com also sells cremation urns in many tasteful shapes and sizes and a selection of rockets so that the bereaved can scatter the ashes by firing them several thousand feet into the air.

My personal favourite was the “DIY flat-pack coffin with red liner” which would presumably allow the about-to-die the opportunity to while away his or her final hours wrestling with a screwdriver and some glue. I did check to see if it was IKEA-branded, but it didn’t have one of those meaningless Swedish names like Splorg or Kubrask, so I assume that at least it would come with instructions that made sense. In reality, of course, one has to live with the knowledge that the whole thing would probably fall apart at the most unfortunate point in the funeral. Incidentally, one of the rockets came in DIY form as well.

Then I saw something that made my blood run cold: one of the coffins described itself as ‘oversize’. I hadn’t really given this much thought, but I suppose I’ll need a bigger box, too. I should be used to this, actually, as my clothes are more expensive, I need to book extra-legroom seats on flights, I even have to look at a far more limited selection of cars, all simply because I’m a big guy. It’s not fair; being a monster costs a lot of money. We bump our heads a lot as well.

Nobody quite knows why tall people are more likely to develop cancer, but it seems the most credible hypothesis is that there are more cells in me than there are in someone shorter – I don’t have ‘bigger’ cells than average. That means that there are more cells in me to go wrong. I don’t feel I’ve been given a large number of cells, and when confronted by two short people trying to beat me up, I truly feel outnumbered two-to-one. Nor do I even have an extra finger or toe to show for my extra cells. Just an increased risk of cancer, thanks.

But a little time in amongst life’s coffins, urns and ash-scattering rockets at least gave me time to renew my perspective on life, and more relevantly here, death. I can only die once. What that means is that if I’m more likely to die of cancer, then I must be less likely to die crossing the road or in a plane crash, of being murdered, or of dying of other illnesses such as a heart attack or a stroke. So the good news about being more likely to die of cancer is that I can go back to enjoying all the good things in life, so it’s back to the burgers, pizzas, crisps and deep-fried Mars Bars. (That last one’s a lie – the very thought makes me want to throw up.)

And there are compensations in being tall. I can see over crowds. I can reach shelves in my house that no-one else can get close to. I can also paint ceilings, although that’s a horrible job and I try to pretend that ‘even I’ can’t manage to reach. Best of all, though, is that 1.97 metres, which you square and then divide the resulting 3.88 into my weight in kilos to produce my Body Mass Index. So the taller I am, the more weight I’m allowed before I have to admit to being obese – back to those burgers again. Being obese, we’re told, is a contributory factor in developing cancer.

So being tall helps combat cancer? Hang on...

Ye Cannae change the law of physics. Or can ye? by jane tulloch

28/9/2015

Way back in 1686 Newton, the English physicist and mathematician, stated in his third law that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

How does that apply to the everlasting conundrum of which came first; an attempt to preserve a thought or action in an enduring shareable form or a thirst to find out what someone else had recorded?

Well, for every writer there is surely an equal and opposite reader. It seems likely that every writer has at least one person who likes what they write (even if it’s only their Mum) and at least one who hates it. If a writer is very lucky the likers will outnumber the haters but this can’t be counted on.

So how should a writer set out to find the equal readers? Should they try to analyse what it is about what they have written that people like? Should they try to emulate other, more successful writers? Or should they continue to write what they like writing?

Equally, how should readers set out to find books they will like to read? Should they go for the same genres or writers that they have previously enjoyed or try something new or as recommended by friends?

The answer is most likely the same - there is no answer. Writers will always write and readers will always read and mood, situation and idiosyncratic aspects specific to the individuals will always come into play. There go the laws of physics!

My book baby, by Jane Tulloch

17/9/2015

It’s one thing to sit at your PC and write up the stories that leap into your head, it’s quite another for it to somehow mutate into an actual book.

There are, of course, many stages of gestation before the beautifully cleaned up item is handed to you wrapped in its lovely clothing of paper and card.

Stage 1: I could write this idea down.

Stage 2: Don’t be ridiculous. Who do you think you are?

Stage 3: OK then I’ll have a go.

Stage 4: Well that went OK, now I’ve got a real something. I could print it out. Will need to hide it though. Don’t want to expose it to others. Think I’ll write some more.

Stage 5: Show written stuff to trusted friend. She likes it and she reads a lot! BUT she’s a friend and unlikely to say its rubbish.

Stage 6: Heard about Comely Bank Publishing (CBP). Dare I contact them? What would they say about my little embryonic book? Is it even a book?

Pic thanks to Drew Coffman on flickr.

Food for the stomach, food for the brain

14/9/2015

The only thing that impresses me more than either good food or a good bookshop is good food followed by a good bookshop. And the place to go for that is in Edinburgh's Stockbridge area, where of course you can also find Comely Bank Publishing. Stockbridge is in fact awash with fabulous eateries, and at the bridge end you can find – for a start – Chinese, Spanish, Italian and traditional Scottish food plus an excellent Pizza Express. All good, but you can check those out for yourself.

Today my wife Katherine and I went to the David Bailey exhibition in the National Gallery in Princes Street, then we each had Spanish coddled eggs for lunch in The Pantry in North West Circus Place.

But the biggest surprise was Golden Hare Books, a small independent bookshop in St Stephen's St which has been around since the middle of 2014 but only came to my notice thanks to one of those pull-out features in the Scotsman – on this occasion probably timed to coincide with this week's Stockfest 2015, running from this weekend until Sunday 20th September.

When you step inside Ian Macbeth's bookstore, you're reminded that this is how bookshops used to be. It's a fairly minimalist white interior, with a varied stock but not a massive one, and the visitor is left with the impression that the books on display are those which Ian himself personally approves. This is not a place to find latest bestsellers piled high and flying out in quantity; the books here are about quality. More to the point, if I wanted to go in and ask for a recommendation for a present, I reckon Ian would give me one – even enjoy the challenge – and not behave like some pain-in-the-backside-let-me-do-my-job sales assistant. We haven't had that sort of service in Stockbridge since Read Books in Raeburn Place closed.

One last thing. If you ever want to order a book, support your local independent bookseller. They'll do it just as cheaply, probably quicker, make sure it's done correctly, and your custom will help them stay in business.

– Gordon Lawrie

the value of diaries, by jane tulloch

2/9/2015

Reading other people’s diaries is a secret pleasure of mine. Not obviously, that I would illicitly read other people’s diaries without their permission – although given the opportunity…

No. Smack hand. Never do that!

Anyway, I really mean the Mass Observation Unit diaries submitted by ordinary people at first during WW2 but continuing on after that.

The writers often commented on how boring their lives must seem to readers but they absolutely are not. They provide a fascinating insight into the minutiae of other people’s lives at a time of uncertainty and genuine fear but also beyond that into humdrum times of simply getting on with things.

I love to read about the worry of what the neighbours will think of this or that minor infringement of respectability. What tactless thing a husband (always a husband in those days!) might have said about a carefully prepared meal or a garment secretly knitted as a Christmas present from prudently hoarded wool.

The apparently tiny preoccupations of previous generations provide plenty of food for thought. Which of our current concerns will amuse future generations?

From a diary writing point of view, as opposed to reading, I only ever kept one for my own use when carrying out a research study. We were told to write a “reflective” diary. I bitterly resented it at first but soon came to value it highly. It was up to me what I recorded.

At first I’d just note what I planned to work at that day. Then I began to add in whether or not I’d done it, if not, why not and what thoughts arose while doing it. From reading over this as time went on, I could see emerging strands of thinking and ideas that led my study into different and fascinating avenues.

Even the emotions I was experiencing as I progressed were useful to note as the study went through various ups and downs. Breakthroughs and disappointments were faithfully recorded.

Thus it became a record of activity but more than that, far more than that. The diary itself became a major propelling force behind my study. Re-reading it, I can clearly see the whole study crystallising. Entire sections from the diary could be transplanted into the discussion section of the thesis and contributed considerably to the conclusions drawn.

Now I write fiction I wonder if I should start a diary?

Excuse me while I reflect on that!

Pic thanks to Feeling My Age on flickr

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Gordon Lawrie is the founder and managing director of Comely Bank Publishing, and the author of Four Old Geezers and a Valkyrie. The Discreet Charm of Mary Maxwelll-Hume and The Blogger Who Came in from the Cold. He is also a flash fiction aficionado. He’s currently in search of that book that earns him a fortune.

Emma Baird is a freelance/blogger, and the author of Katie and the Deelans. Since then she's moved onto pastures new where she self-publishes experimental YA and chick-lit novels both online and as print-on-demand.

Jane Tulloch is the author of Our Best Attention (published 2016) Attention Assured (2017) and now has a further lease of life as an expert on the history of Edinburgh's lost department stores. She is relishing the freedom of writing an (almost!) complete pack of lies after years of writing very serious reports on her professional topic of autism in adults.

Eric J. Smith lives in Maryland, USA, and is the author Not a Bad Ride: Stories from a Boomer's Life on the Edge, which is available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes and Noble and iTunes.

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