Dashes: em, en...and tildes

In my occasional series on punctuation, I have reached the dash. Dashes used to be very popular back in the days when a book might begin, "I took a handsome to --- Street, in the small market town of ---, with a view to calling on Lord ---", a sentence that makes me want to hit the author with a rolled-up newspaper until he stops being so annoying. And in more devout times, when the third commandment was taken seriously, characters were wont to exclaim, "By G-d, sir!", another handy use for the dash.

These days many writers have an irrational dislike of brackets, and tend to use dashes instead (I like both of them). But what kind of dash do you use? If you are traditionally published, you won't get a choice; the publisher's house style will decide. As an indie, you make up your own mind.

It's the mark of an amateur to use a hyphen where a dash is intended. A hyphen with no spaces either side is even worse, and plain confusing. In typography you have the choice of an em-dash, so called as it is the width of a capital M with no spaces, or an en-dash, the width of a capital N with a space either side. I prefer the en-dash (as used by Penguin) because the spaces allow the text to flow better in digital format, where em-dashes can result in ugly gaps in the text.

And the tilde? For this post I looked it up on Wikipedia, and rather wished I hadn't. I almost certainly don't need to know all that, and neither do you. But it's one of the prettier punctuation marks.

On starting a new book

I don't really talk much about my novels until they have reached a tipping point and know I'm going to finish them. Especially in the very early stages, when delicate tendrils of ideas are emerging, vulnerable to tramping feet, icy blasts or harsh words. I make an exception of the offspring, but remind her not to be squashing. So I'm not going to talk about my next book, just the process of switching from one to another.

I've completed four novels now, and found each one of them hard to leave. The final words have been written, all corrections made, it's finished; but the characters are still kicking around in my head. Not until I've found at least one new character equally absorbing can I begin to transfer my allegiance; I have to peg away doggedly until there's an almost audible click, the thing is done and the book begins to fly.

I can see the allure of writing a series. Not just the opportunity to garner a faithful readership, but the switch to the next book must be so much easier when your characters come with you.

Do any of my readers find the same thing? Or are you like Trollope, able to finish one book in the morning and start another in the afternoon?

You don't need permission...

American literary agent Rachelle Gardner wrote a blog post a couple of days ago, Will Self-Pubbing Hurt My Chances? And the answer she gives is,

NO. Self-publishing probably will not hurt your chances of traditional publishing. This is a 180 degree switch from just a few years ago! There was a stigma attached to self publishing, and authors who went that route risked alienating those in traditional publishing. The self-pub author was perceived as someone who was impatient; they [sic] were someone who was unable to pass muster with agents and editors; they put out cheap-looking books that were poorly written and badly edited. But today it’s different.

This is good news for authors unable to attract an agent, who feel they need 'permission' to self-publish. The industry is beginning to give its blessing to those pesky indies it was once so scathing about. Perhaps more... one commenter wrote, "I’m worried that publishers will start to expect an author coming to them to already have readership and sales numbers in hand."

What I want to say in big letters is, YOU DON'T NEED PERMISSION. Just a good book, because validation can only be given by readers: not agents, editors or marketing departments.

Konrad Lorenz tells a story about the geese he kept. Each morning he would open the gate to the small compound where they spent the night to allow them to roam freely during the day. One morning, he saw from his window he'd forgotten to close the gate the night before, so he didn't need to open it. A while later, he noticed the geese were still in their compound, making dissatisfied noises. The gate was open, but they would not go through it until he went over, shut it, and opened it again with a flourish. This ceremony over, they went off to forage.

Don't be like those geese. Agents and publishers are losing some of their power. They are becoming aware of this, and so should we be.

On numbers and what they mean

Any indie with a book doing reasonably well on Amazon is obsessed by numbers, and Amazon makes it easy to indulge one's obsession.

Once an hour, rankings change. On Author Central, you have a sales graph going back to December last year. You can watch sales tick up on your KDP page (Kindle Direct Publishing) as they happen - last night I waited before turning out the light for the last few UK sales that would take Replica to a total of 7,000. Childish, I know.

What I don't forget, though, is that each time the number goes up, a human being has decided he/she likes the look of my book, and is prepared to spend several hours reading it, and I am very grateful. Now and then readers write a review, or email me to say they enjoyed the books, which makes my day.

David Gaughran has blogged about some other very interesting numbers, under the title Print Continues Its Death Spiral; the American Association of Publishers have released their sales figures for April 2011. The figures make it clear where books are heading - away from print and towards digital. The implications of this are enormous for writers, readers, and anyone in the publishing industry.

Winners and losers in the revolution? My guess:

Winners

Authors and readers - it's often forgotten, but they're the only essential components of the business. And Amazon, whose business nous is awesome.

Losers

Bookshops (we'll all be sad about this), publishers, agents.

You will identify with one of these...

...and so do I, but I'm not going to admit which one. I have my pride.

E-book piracy:Yo ho ho and what happens next?

Google Alerts alerted me last week to a site where Remix can be downloaded for free. I checked with a knowledgeable friend, and yes, the book is indeed available for download, not just there as an inducement to buy membership to their site. I’m surprised, as a) I’m not a famous author, and b) Amazon charges £0.49 or $0.99 for Remix – hardly prices worth evading. But then, the book has been in the UK top 100 for 209 days…

This got me thinking about ebook piracy, so I did some research, and these are my conclusions:

• Ebook piracy is happening now. DRM offers little or no protection.
  
  
• Many of the early adopters of the Kindle are middle-aged; they can afford it, adjustable font sizes are good for ageing eyes, and it’s an easy gadget to use even if you haven’t been brought up with computers and mobile phones from earliest youth. This age group is less likely to use pirate sites.
  
  
• Younger readers aren't buying Kindles at the moment, thinking them overpriced and that the technology will only improve. This doesn't mean they don’t download pirated books and read them on their computers. Or smart phones, a recent development.
  
  
• As e-readers get cheaper and more common, people used to downloading their music for nothing from torrents will expect to do the same with e-books. A quick search shows you can download the BBC list of top 100 books. It's in pdf format, but it's easy enough to convert to epub or other formats.
  
  
• Publishers are encouraging piracy by their determination to maintain high ebook prices, causing resentment among e-reader owners. One reason they give for high prices (and low digital royalties for authors) is they need to spend money to prevent copyright infringement; but it’s not clear quite what they are doing, beyond giving more money to their legal departments, and hoping e-books are a passing fad.

If the experience of the music industry is anything to go by, publishers will not be able to stop piracy even if they try wholeheartedly to do so, and they have no Plan B. Witness the whole huge amount of effort put into trying to shut down The Pirate Bay - legal proceedings have been going on for years, and yet the site is still up. Maybe I'm being naïve, but I can't see any way that they will be able to stop people illegally downloading without heavily censoring the internet. I don't believe people would stand for that.

This is a big problem for authors that will only get bigger. I've no idea what the answer is.

EDIT: I sent the site a Cease & Desist notice, and the page has been taken down.

Mainstream versus indie authors

...or, the farmer and the cowboy should be friends.

Last week Robin Sullivan, who successfully runs the indie small press Ridan, was banned from AbsoluteWrite with this message from the administrator:

"You have been banned for the following reason: Just get the hell off my site. You're relentlessly snotty, rude, and you're a fucking bald-faced liar. I'm done with you.

Date the ban will be lifted: Never."

Nice. Robin's offence? To politely argue the case for indie publishing on AbsoluteWrite's forums on this thread. On AbsoluteWrite, they don't like self-publishers. Mention that some indies have done rather well, and you are likely to be ignored or disbelieved. The majority of members are wedded to the way things are currently run in the publishing industry, however much evidence accrues that it is broken.

Why are they quite so vitriolic? I have a theory. It can be pretty discouraging, being a writer. You toil away on your own for years, learning how to write, then you reach stage one: submit to agents. Suppose you get an agent (and only a handful of writers I know have achieved this) she will submit your book to publishers. They take their time to reply, and you may find after a year or so your agent has used all her contacts and failed to place your book.

If you are lucky enough to find a publisher, you will wait eighteen months or more to see your novel in print. As a new author you are unlikely to get much of an advance (I know of two exceptions to this, Guy Saville and Elspeth Cooper). With little of the publisher's money invested in it, your book will not get much hype or a favourable spot in the bookshops. 90% of new authors sell fewer than 1,000 copies and don't earn out their advance. Unless you sell surprisingly well, after some months your unsold books will be returned and pulped.

Anyone committed to this dismal system, accepting repeated rejection with gritted teeth and the mantra I'll write another book, is likely to be touchy with those she sees leaping over the gatekeepers and making their books available to readers within weeks of finishing them. It makes it even worse that some of these writers are doing rather well out of it. Stockholm Syndrome kicks in.

The most clued-up authors think that a mixture of indie and traditional publishing is the best way to go. Being hostile to writers who have chosen a different route is pointless - and anyone who subsequently switches sides is going to feel really foolish.

Not the bigots at AbsoluteWrite, though. They know what they think, and you'd better agree with them if you go on their site.

(I choose not to, myself.)

The author, the agent and the cover artist

The publishing industry is in a strange but interesting state, with everyone trying out each other's jobs. This story caught my eye.

Catherine Cookson's books were published long before ebooks were thought of, so her publishers, Transworld and Simon & Schuster don't hold the rights. Catherine Cookson's estate has authorized her agent Sonia Land to release a hundred of her books for Kindle in an exclusive deal with Amazon. Priced at £3.99, I'm sure Cookson's many fans will be delighted.

What struck me as odd is how Sonia Land has published the novels. She's started her own company, and called it Peach Publishing, in spite of the fact that there is already a Peach Publishing in existence in the UK with a website here. Sonia Land's website is still under construction. Did she not think to google the name?

And then there's the covers... I move in indie circles, and have seen a few amateur book covers in my time, but these take the biscuit. How any professional in the publishing industry could think these acceptable beats me. They aren't just ugly and cheap-looking, they're inept.

Perhaps Ms Land has the visual equivalent of a tin ear, or maybe she reflected that Catherine Cookson's books would sell however dire the covers. Maybe the designs were done by a relative, and she found it hard to be objective. I do hope she didn't do them herself...

Whatever the explanation, I wouldn't want her choosing a cover artist for my books.

Sales, publishing and salads

Yesterday sales of Replica went over 5,000 - not bad in seven weeks. And most commenters who have read both books think it's a worthy follow-up to Remix. I'm sure all authors worry over this; you spend a year writing a novel and really don't want readers saying, It was okay, but not as good as her last.

If anyone had told me a year ago I'd sell over 27,000 books in ten months I'd have been astonished, which makes me think about that stratospherically successful indie hero, Amanda Hocking. I've just watched her amusing first vlog, and one of the things she talks about is her decision to self-publish. She says, "I had to do something other than just sit here and wait." And doesn't the publishing industry know how to make us wait, whether it's for a response to submissions or publication after the contract's been signed. (Can anyone tell me why it takes eighteen months to get a book into print?)

And what, I hear you cry, is the significance of the photo? Not a lot, admittedly, but every now and then I like to post something random just because I can. A month ago I bought a matchstick garden; like a book of matches, but stick them in the earth and they grow into a salad. So I did that, and sure enough, leaves sprouted. Not many, and growing rather slowly; in fact, it looked like the sort of salad that would make an ideal accompaniment to Baldrick's very small casserole made from five beans. Then one day it seemed to be growing backwards. Two caterpillars had moved in. As they get bigger they eat more, and I'm beginning to wonder whether I'll have to buy in salad leaves to stop them dying of starvation. I've marked one with a ring on the photo. The other one is there, but you can't see him.

Who chooses what you read?

The answer to this question is not as obvious as it may seem.

For starters, people only get to choose a book from what is available, that they get to hear about. Impossible not to know that Kate McCann recently published a book about her missing daughter, for instance, given the huge publicity and controversy it attracted.

If you go to a bookshop, what catches your eye, the piles of books in the window or on a table near the entrance, or books spine out on the bottom shelf at the back of the shop? Most members of the public are unaware that the prominent books are not those the manager has selected on merit; publishers have paid a lot of money for particular books to be well displayed.

As a self-published writer, I love Amazon because it has given me the chance to prove there is a market for my novels. At the moment, the playing field is nearly level for indies and mainstream; but is that going to last? Amazon has its own version of the table at the front of the shop; its various recommendation pages, Kindle Bargains, Editors' Picks, New to Kindle etc., all of which have a dramatic effect on sales. And publishers are turning their attention (somewhat late) to the rich pickings to be made from ebooks - which, although they will never admit it, cost them nothing at point of sale.

I subscribe to emails from The Bookseller's FUTUReBOOK. In the last one, Philip Jones said:

"At a time when agents and Amazon are moving into publishing, the ability of traditional publishers to demonstrate digital success along with physical dominance will be important. One sign of progress will clearly be when the digital book charts begin to resemble the physical book charts–since it will show that publishers can still make and break bestsellers and that price is not the only determining factor in what sells in e."

Kick out all those presumptuous indies cluttering up the top 100 just because their books are cheap and popular, then. Publishers will decide what sells.

"...crucially publishers have learned and perfected many other strategies [besides price cuts] to push books into the bestseller charts (window displays, handselling/bookseller recommendation, reviews, serialisation, POS, dumpbins, the list goes on . . .), they simply have to also now learn the skills for the digital arena."

So, who is going to be choosing what you read on your Kindle in the future? You, or the Big Six Publishers?

Pinch of salt, meet writing rules

There is only one writing rule you should never, ever, break: Don't Bore The Reader.

Everything else is negotiable.

I was going to make that two unbreakable rules, the other being Get Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar Right, but then it occurred to me that the most successful indie writer ever, Amanda Hocking, admits her books are far from flawless in that regard.

So, on to rules you can break as necessary:

• Show, Don't Tell. This is usually a good rule, but not invariably. Some less riveting bits of a novel are best summed up in a brief paragraph rather than shown happening. And I'm not a fan of describing the minutiae of facial expressions in order to avoid 'telling' when we are all so good at reading people's faces. I favour, 'The Professor came in, looking furtive and agitated' over, 'The Professor came in, his brow furrowed, his colour high, glancing over his shoulder as if checking he could not be overheard.'
  
  
• Avoid Adverbs. Well, okay, it's certainly possible to overdo them, but I've been on writing sites where you got criticized if you used any at all. I don't see why they should be pariahs - adverbs are just one tool in the writer's toolbox.
  
  
• Stick To Single POV. There are occasions when this is a good idea. Mary Renault in Fire From Heaven has an excellent scene entirely in Demosthenes' POV, where he mistakes a young Alexander the Great for a slave boy. The reader enjoys seeing through his eyes while knowing his mistake. In other parts of the book she uses multiple POVs, and why not? It works.
  
  
• Don't Start A Book With Dialogue. Why ever not? Two out of my four books start with dialogue; my favourite being the line suggested as a good opener for Trav Zander by Alan Hutcheson, "I wish to acquire a dragon."
  
  
• Kill Your Darlings. Weird, this one; we are advised to delete any passages of our writing we think particularly good. Um...why? If I truly trusted my own judgment so little, then how would I know I'd got anything right at all?

Have I missed any others?

Desperate writers with cunning plans...

Unpublished authors are a pretty desperate lot. This became clear to me in the later stages of Authonomy, Harper Collins' site for writers, where some members would do anything, it seemed, to scrabble their way to the Desk and win a review by an HC editor. Swap backing, creating sock puppets, grovelling flattery, backing hundreds of books a day, and spamming the entire site all became common. It was a refreshing change to move on to Amazon, where the stakes are real and paying customers don't have an axe to grind; if they like the look of your book they will buy it, simple as that.

So I do a bit of eye-rolling when I see people attempting to game the system. It makes them look sad, and it doesn't work except in the very short term. Today on Kindleboards, a writer started a thread offering to buy the books of the first twenty posters, as long as they bought her book in return. She's had plenty of takers, all, in Mark Twain's phrase, trying to make a precarious living by taking in each other's washing.

Another author a couple of months ago offered to repay the cost of her ebook, if buyers emailed her with proof of purchase, thus effectively buying her own book in an attempt to get it high in the charts (it's now around the 33,000 mark).

And among the tags on my books I've found other writers' names or book titles, presumably put there in the hope of gaining exposure. Hey ho. Have these people no shame?*

*Er, no, they don't, in case you are in any doubt about the answer to my rhetorical question.

DailyCheapReads UK Indie Spotlight and other good news

This is going to be a cheerful post - lots of good stuff happening.

But first I want to mention DailyCheapReads UK, a great site for Kindle owners that features bargain ebooks including mine, nothing more than £6 and many for much less. It's hugely successful in America, and I'm sure the UK version will do equally well, as it's brilliant for finding good, affordable books. The two sparky women whose brainchild it is explain their policy here. Do check it out.

In the last week I've had several nice things happen. Remix's Kindle sales went over the 20,000 mark, and Replica sold its first 1,000. Replica has been chosen by the lovely kuffers at KUF (Kindle Users' Forum) as their May book of the month (or is it June? Anyway, they are reading it in May). I've signed a contract with Könyvmolyképző Kiadó for Hungarian editions of Remix, hardback, paperback and ebooks in 2012. I can't wait to see what the cover looks like.

And Replica has just popped into the UK Kindle top 100...

Woot!

Paperback or not for Replica?

It was a no-brainer to publish Replica for the Kindle on Amazon; it cost precisely nothing, as I did my own proofreading, formatting, photography and cover design. I believed that the readers who bought and enjoyed Remix would buy Replica, and indeed they have; Replica has spent most of its twenty days since launch within the UK Kindle top 200, and it won't be long till sales reach 1,000.

But is it worth producing a paperback version? I'd like to be able to hold a physical version of the book in my hands, of course, but how many would I sell? I'm not entirely sure how many paperback copies of Remix have sold, but I think it's fewer than a hundred. (Compare this with Kindle sales of nearly 20,000 so far.) Sales were brisk in the first half of December, but Amazon put a 9-11 day delivery on it, and sales stopped. By the time Amazon had ordered 45 from Lightning Source, the Christmas rush was over, and the book had dropped out of view.

To publish a paperback, I'd have to re-format the text (a job I enjoy, but it's painstaking and time-consuming). I'd also need to re-do the cover to the correct specifications, including a spine and back. Then, assuming I got everything right first time, Lightning Source would charge me about £70 for set-up and a proof copy. It's possible to sell to individual bookshops, but the time it takes and the profit margin make that a waste of time. And I can't sell the paperback as cheaply as publishers with print runs in thousands can, so as an unknown I'm charging more for my novel than famous authors. This naturally puts buyers off.

I'm just not sure it's worth it. What do you think?

Killing Cupid by Mark Edwards and Louise Voss

Killing Cupid, co-authored by Mark Edwards and Louise Voss, is a psychological crime novel. (That's them to the left - at a goth party, if you are wondering about Mark's pallor and eye make-up.)

I've read the first chapters, and it's sharply-written and funny, though wimp that I am I'm a little worried the story could all turn very nasty...

When Alex Parkinson joins a creative writing class, he realises immediately that he and his tutor, Siobhan McGowan, are meant to be together. Alex will do anything to be with her...

What particularly interests me is that alternating chapters are related by different narrators, a bit like Replica. With Replica, every time I got on a roll I had to switch povs and start again with a crashing of gears, so I’m envious of Mark and Louise – with each writing a chapter in turn, how much easier it must have been. Mark agreed to write a piece for my blog about the process:

Writing partnerships: why two heads can be better than one.

Unlike songwriting duos, writing partnerships are rare. There's Nicci French, the husband-and-wife team who have been knocking out a thriller a year for the past decade. There are new kids on the block Saffina Desforges, in real life Sarah Griffiths and Mark Williams, who have been sitting at the summit of the UK Kindle chart for months with Sugar & Spice. And of course there is James Patterson and a parade of writers who do all the work in exchange for having their name in tiny letters on the cover of his latest schlockbuster.

Writers are supposed to work in solitude, hunched over a laptop surrounded by half-empty cups of cold coffee while they wrestle with their personal demons and howl into the great void... before going online and checking their Amazon rankings just one more time.

It doesn't have to be like that. My experience of writing with Louise Voss, which has so far led to two books, Killing Cupid (available in one good online bookshop) and Catch Your Death (watch this space).

Back in 2002 I was near the end of phase one of what I grandly think of as my writing life. I had recently been dumped by my agent (by letter; I'm sure these days she would have done it on Facebook) after a series of near misses with publishers. Louise, meanwhile, was halfway through her contract with Transworld/Black Swan. One evening, while gawping at celebs at the Groucho, we came up with the idea of writing a novel together.

I have no recollection of whose idea it was but like all the best brainwaves we were sure it must have been done before: a stalker novel in which the tables turn and the stalker becomes the stalked. We checked Amazon. No, it hadn't been done. We brainstormed a rudimentary plot and started writing.

It was a delightfully straightforward process. I wrote a chapter as the male protaganist, Alex, and emailed it to Louise, along with a few ideas for what happened next. She would edit my chapter then do the same, writing as Siobhan, the female protaganist. The process meant that we were both motivated to write quickly and to a high standard. And we were constantly surprised by what happened next.

Halfway through writing Killing Cupid I moved to Japan to teach English. But I was determined not to let Louise down; besides, this was the most fun I'd ever had writing. I remember my first morning in Tokyo, jetlagged and disoriented, sitting on the tatami mat in an unfurnished boarding house, writing the next chapter of the book on my laptop.

We had already discovered that Transworld were not interested in the book as they didn't want to publish anything that was not in Louise's normal genre of mainstream women's fiction. Her agent wasn't that interested either. However, a meeting with a BBC producer uncovered a big fan of the novel-in-progress. In fact, this producer – who went on to win a BAFTA – loved it so much she optioned it. For the first time I had actually earned a reasonable sum for something I'd written, and we were convinced the option would act as juicy bait for hungry publishers.

When we finished Killing Cupid – the final third of the book flowed as easily as water from a tap – we were sure we were going to be the next Nicci French. But the book commits that unforgiveable crime of not fitting neatly into one genre. It's half thriller, half comedy. We couldn't find a publisher. Then the TV adaptation went into development hell. I came back from Japan and life as an unpublished writer went on.

The experience of writing together, though, had been such good fun that we decided to give it another go. This time we would write something that fitted into a genre. It was shortly after the SARS outbreak and just before bird flu became big news. And The Da Vinci Code was massive. Louise had been thinking about setting a novel in an interesting setting: a closed-down common cold research centre near her hometown of Salisbury where, in the eighties, volunteers could spend a week blowing their nose and doing a lot of good for science. This all came together into Catch Your Death, a fast-paced conspiracy thriller.

But this time we hardly made an effort to find a publisher. We finished the book the same week my first daughter was born. Our own personal lives were chaotic. Real life got in the way. The book, although rather brilliant if I do say so myself, went on the shelf.

Skip forward a few years and the Kindle arrived. I persuaded Louise that we should publish the books ourselves. We re-wrote them, updating all the creaky technological references and lypo-suctioning the fat. This February, we published Killing Cupid. It has so far sold around 400 copies, attracted some great reviews and, excitingly, the BBC producer who liked the book the first time around has since set up her own film production company and wants to option it. Catch Your Death will hit Amazon in May.

And the rest is the future.

Mark Edwards' blog
Buy Killing Cupid for £0.70 on Amazon co.uk
Buy Killing Cupid for $0.99 on Amazon.com
Email: markandlouise@me.com

Thanks, Mark - I feel sure it is only a matter of time till Killing Cupid reaches the Amazon Kindle top 100.

Tweaking

I am a terrible tweaker, and this is probably not a good thing, because the last 5% of improvements can take the same amount of time again as you spent on the first 95%. I suspect that prolific authors never do that final 5%, which few people will notice in any case, and very sensible they are.

I've just spent about fourteen hours making a new cover for Remix; I finished last night and loaded it to Amazon. This morning I started making small but telling changes, and can't wait for the book to come out of Amazon's 48 hour publishing limbo so I can upload the improved version. I doubt anyone will notice the difference...

Interview with Lou, founder of Kindle Users’ Forum

After publishing Remix last August, I went on various forums to promote my book. I stumbled on KUF, and was struck by its attractive layout and friendly ethos (a contrast with Authonomy, then deep in its bloodbath phase). I was the first author there, and members made me very welcome. A few months later Remix was chosen as Book of the Month for October. I am proud to be a Kuffer.

Today Lou, the founder of KUF, answers my questions about the site.

What gave you the idea to start KUF?

The UK Kindle Users Forum (KUF) came into being for a couple of reasons. I was waiting for my pre-order Kindle to arrive last autumn, and like so many others found myself spending a lot of time on the official Amazon forum chatting and generally getting excited. With such a buzz around the release, one of the major shortcomings of the Amazon forum - the lack of structure and a permanent archive of all the great tips made me realise the need for a dedicated forum for us Kindle fans in the UK. After taking a look around some of the established forums which were predominantly US-centric, I decided to use some of my spare time to create something for us Brits to use.

In all honesty, I wasn’t expecting a huge uptake of the newly created forum but was pleasantly surprised by the number of people who showed an interest and became members - yourself included. Once the Kindle actually started shipping we saw quite a rapid growth in new members and the posts really started to pick up as new users shared their thoughts and tips for both the Kindle hardware and related web sites with books and services.

The site is one of the most attractive and functional I go on. What things did you consider when designing KUF?

I think in some ways, the site almost designed itself although I had a couple of goals in mind before I started. Firstly I wanted to make sure that the site was going to be able to handle a potentially large number of users if it took off, so I chose a lesser known but more powerful forum software as a basis. The second, and perhaps most important (to me at least) factor was I wanted to ensure that KUF would work nicely with the Kindle browser as so many other Kindle forums were very cumbersome to look at and use on a small black and white screen.

With these things in mind, I decided that the colour scheme should be predominantly black and white so that the transition from using the forum on a computer to browsing it on a Kindle was a comfortable one. It took a lot of work to make sure that everything would scale down to the Kindle screen and that the forum would be as usable as possible on the experimental browser. It was quite a tricky job and it’s still a little rough around the edges in some places, but on the whole I am pretty happy - I just need a bit more time to iron out the final wrinkles.

Soon after the forum was up and running, I launched a side project, the feed service, partly to encourage growth of the forum and also because it was something I wanted to use myself. Basically, the KUF feed reader allows you to easily read RSS feeds from other sites via the Kindle browser. At the moment it is suffering from some neglect due to lack of time, but it still works very well and has quite a few regular users.

There are still many things to do with the forum and probably an infinite number of side projects, the latest of which is the KUF TV guide which is a 7 day TV guide properly formatted for Kindle and updated every day. Also as a side project, I set up a url shortener called 32go.co which adds an extra level of security over traditional url shortening services. KUF now uses that for all of its facebook and twitter posts.

The latest development has been the new home page. The old one was so dull that most people didn’t even realise it was there (they were just going straight into the forum) but now it is much more interesting, although there are still some things I wish to add over time.

Forums always attract trolls. KUF seems to have achieved an ideal balance of light-handed moderation, combined with zero tolerance of the nastiness sometimes found on other forums. What is your secret?

As our demographic seems to indicate that most of our members are fairly mature we don’t seem to have many real incidents on the site other than occasional spam. Anything that has cropped up has been handled comfortably by our moderators who have a very sensible approach to dealing with things.

We did have a few short discussions about how to handle moderation and were pretty much in agreement to keep things friendly and tolerant at all times but to come down very hard on things like spam, bigotry or personal attacks.

We want people who use KUF to feel at liberty to talk about anything they want, but also to feel safe at the same time - I think the moderation team have got the balance just right in every action they have taken. Because of this approach and a truly friendly bunch of members, I think KUF has quite a unique kind of atmosphere in comparison to many other forums.

And how do you deal with us pesky authors, always ravening to promote our novels? Other sites can seem almost anti-author (bit like the publishing industry, really).

The way I see it, the whole Kindle thing is not just about the device, but also about the books and the authors who write them. There seems to have been a lot of anger directed at authors of late on some forums. I have always wanted authors to feel at home on KUF - input from the authors is always very welcome and it’s great to be able to chat to them about their latest work. Sometimes the promotional material can be a bit much, but as long as it’s kept in the designated area of the site I think everyone is pretty ok with it. Some authors do tend to hit-and-run, simply posting promo and not really interacting with our members. That’s fine, but I think there is more to be gained for them by actually getting to know us all.

During October 2010, at KUF we had a last-minute idea of compiling together some specially written short Halloween horror stories, to which several authors contributed including yourself. [Thus demonstrating how unhorrific is the horror I write - Lexi] This year I would like to do something similar but with more forward planning and more time for authors to submit something. I think concepts like this are a great way for authors and wannabe’s alike to introduce people to their style of writing and a good way to encourage further book sales.

We also have the KUF book club which always has a good number of indie authors in the running and because of this, I think many of our members have been introduced to authors they wouldn’t have considered before.

KUF has grown fast since its launch August 2010. How do you see KUF developing?

It’s hard to say - I guess a lot of it is going to be down to Amazon and where they go with the device itself. The festive season was particularly busy for the forum with so many people getting their first Kindle for Christmas. Naturally things have slowed down a bit since then, and it’s the books themselves that keep things ticking over until new developments on the hardware front.

As much as KUF is about the Kindle, I think it’s the social aspect that keeps everyone coming back - it’s been a great way to meet new friends and people who appreciate the same things, so I hope that the forum continues to grow steadily. I would like to see KUF evolve into a great platform for everyone who has an interest in reading and as a way for authors to connect with their UK eBook audience. As the Kindle platform and electronic publishing evolves, we're set to keep pace and make sure that Kindle Users Forum is the best resource in the UK.

Do you have a day job, and if so, what is it?

It's actually more of a day and night job at the moment. For the last 15 years give or take, I've been a web developer building online applications for a huge variety of projects. It's a tough job with technology and practices changing almost every day. I may be getting a bit long in the tooth for it now, or perhaps I just need a holiday.

It's great to work on KUF as it's something that I can take pleasure in and enjoy without the pressure of deadlines. I just wish I had more time to work on it during the course of the week.

One assumes you must be a great reader – what sort of book do you enjoy?

I've always been a keen reader, ever since I was a child and perhaps even more so as I get older. Reading a book is my way of relaxing at the end of a challenging day. As far as taste goes, I'm pretty eclectic - perhaps even more so since the Kindle has given me access to a bigger range of genres and authors than ever. I would generally class myself as a Fantasy, Horror and Sci-fi fan primarily however as these are the books that really take me away from it all. Probably my two favourite books ever are the Gormenghast saga by Mervyn Peake and Shadowland by Peter Straub. More recently I have enjoyed the fantasy works of Joe Abercrombie, Steven Erikson and Scott Lynch; I've just finished reading The Heroes by the former. I have a huge number of books still lined up for me on the Kindle, and the backlog just seems to get bigger as I discover more and more that I want to read. I really enjoyed your very own Remix by the way. [Thank you! Lexi]

You must also be a Kindle fan. What do you like about it, and do you see the Kindle changing much in the future, and if so, how?

Aside from the points I've mentioned previously, one of my favourite things about the Kindle is the free 3G and Whispernet service which is invaluable when away from home. As a fan of genres that usually demand very long books, I also love that it's so lightweight and easy to hold in one hand.

Regarding the future of the Kindle, there has been quite a bit of speculation about the Kindle becoming an Android device with an LCD screen, although most of this seems unfounded. I'm quietly hoping that the speculation is wrong because it seems like every man and his dog is launching a tablet device at the moment and the fact that the Kindle is a dedicated reading device is what sets it apart. It may be that Amazon does release a tablet device, but I can't believe that it would be to replace the incredibly successful Kindle line.

One of the more interesting bits of information that has surfaced in the last six months is the very real prospect of a colour e-ink Kindle. Now that really would be a step in the right direction as it would mean that electronic magazines and image based publications would be much more inviting.

At this stage, only Amazon know where they want the future of Kindle to lie, but based on getting everything right thus far, I'm quietly confident that the future of Kindle is looking better than ever.

Thanks Lou, and may KUF go from strength to strength as it deserves. And if any of my readers with Kindles aren't already members of KUF, do pop in. You'll get a warm welcome.

My new novel, Replica, on Amazon

Yesterday Replica the ebook went live on UK Amazon, then in the evening on US Amazon. Thanks to Remix enthusiasts, it went straight to number 1 in Movers & Shakers, and at one point cracked the UK Kindle top 100. (For some reason, it's not appearing in any of the genre charts it should be in; it's not, for instance, in the Thriller top 100 chart, which doesn't help sales. Annoying.)

It's an extraordinary experience, publishing a book you've been working on for more than a year. So much thought, research and work goes into it, and then you hand it over to readers and wait, breath baited, to see if they like it. I'm going to quote Winston Churchill again, as he puts it so brilliantly:

"Writing a book is an adventure. To begin with, it is a toy and an amusement. Then it becomes a mistress, then it becomes a master, then it becomes a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him to the public."

Replica has been flung to the public. I hope it doesn't get lynched, or worse, ignored. I hope it will give hours of entertainment to many readers, and make me some money.

Titles - what do you think?

Any opinions on the title and the lettering would be appreciated, as I do last-minute tweaks and rethinks. This is what it's about:

Beth Chandler works in a government research institute, and is accidentally replicated in a flawed experiment. The replica has no official existence, and when she overhears plans to liquidate her, goes on the run. Homeless, penniless and pursued by MI5, she has to learn to survive on London's icy streets. Meanwhile, the original Beth, unaware of what has happened, becomes romantically involved with Nick Cavanagh, the spec op she believes is there to protect her. In fact, he’s hunting her double.

Unofficial Girl, the cover...

I've rethought the cover for Unofficial Girl, dragooning the offspring into posing for me. She's a few years younger than Beth, my heroine, a little thinner, and has the WRONG HAIR. Beth's is long, curly and red/gold. As you can see from Remix's cover, the daughter's is long, blonde, straight as rain, and wants to stay that way.

So I spent an hour with curling tongs, hair grips and a lot of extra-strength hair lacquer, and you can see the results in the new cover. I changed the colour on Adobe Photoshop.

All my future heroines will have whatever hairstyle my daughter has at the time, I've decided.