Everything Goes Better With An E

A missive drops into the Inbox from Mark Coker of Smashwords, announcing that the ‘Annual Read an E-Book Week’ kicks off today, Sunday 6th. Naturally, I’m going to take that as a licence to plug the bejaysus out of my own e-book offering, EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, about which I’m sure the Three Regular Readers are already sick and tired of hearing about. That said, the book did pick up a couple of very nice readers’ reviews over on Kindle UK during the week, and it would be remiss of me - with my Reluctant Self-Promoter’s cap on - not to give them an airing. To wit:

“You want a book with heart, humour and brains then look no further than EIGHTBALL BOOGIE … I am quite frankly in awe of Declan Burke’s ability with a sentence. His writing is at turns lyrical and succinct; his dialogue snaps in your ear and his characters are so real they stay in your head long after you’ve turned the last page. Simply can’t praise this writer enough. Get yourself a copy now!” - Michael Malone

“I loved the book. It wasn’t just the cool dialogue that got me. The twisty-turny plot kept me guessing right up to the final pages. Okay, so that’s supposed to happen in crime fiction, and should be a given rather than a point of praise, but I think Burke is especially adept at this … I hope with a bit of much-deserved interest in this new Kindle release Burke will launch a whole series of Rigby novels.” - Gerard Brennan

  I thank you kindly, gentlemen. If that has whetted your appetite in any way, then please clickety-click here for more information …
  Meanwhile, Adrian McKinty’s new offering FALLING GLASS is also available as an e-book. Scroll down to the post below for yesterday’s Irish Times’ review of same, then clickety-click here for some e-McKinty action …
  Elsewhere, my interest has been piqued by THE RISE AND FALL OF GER MAYES, by Ruby Barnes. Not the snappiest of titles, it’s true, but I do like the cut of Ger Mayes’ jib. Quoth the Kindle blurb elves:

The streets of Dublin teem by day with workers, intertwined with a seamier underside of beggars, criminals and drop-outs. Gerard Mayes, a man with an ego the size of Everest but living a very average life, walks amongst them, bathed in the delusion that society owes him more. Ger is a modern, metropolitan slacker. He considers himself the jester at work but the other bottom feeders that share a cubicle with him think he’s the joke. Ger’s a misfit and malcontent who would never appear on anybody’s radar until, that is, he murders a beggar during a mugging gone wrong. We know that Ger’s life is going to unravel, but the consequences of that murder also bring the Sword of Damocles down upon the heads of those closest to him. This is the story of a common man who steps over the line and commits the seven deadly sins. Someone has to pay the price.

  I hosted a panel discussion yesterday on Irish crime writing on behalf of the Dublin Book Festival, which was graced by Paul Charles, Niamh O’Connor and Gene Kerrigan, and one of the topics discussed was the extent to which crime writers have engaged with modern Ireland, both its precipitous economic rise and disastrous crash, whereas literary Ireland has yet to grasp the nettle. Seems to me that THE RISE AND FALL OF GER MAYES, in prospect at least, stares contemporary Ireland in the eye, although - there being no sampling option available - I have no idea as to how well or otherwise the book is written.
  Still, there’s a bright ‘n’ shiny new Kindle winging its way towards me as you read, courtesy of the ever-generous Mrs Lovely Wife, and I’d imagine THE RISE AND FALL OF GER MAYES will be the first purchase I’ll be making. If anyone out there has read it, I’d love to hear your opinion …

The Kindness Of Strangers: Web 2.0 And Readers’ Reviews

I hope you’ll excuse the trumpet-parping, folks, but I’m having an unusually good week in terms of reviews, and possibly my best week ever, given that all four of my books - two conventionally published, one published as an e-only novel, the last yet to be published - have been reviewed in the space of a short time. I blogged about a couple of reviews for THE BIG O and BAD FOR GOOD on Monday (see Barbarians, below), and almost immediately Michael Malone popped up to say that he had rather improbably included EIGHTBALL BOOGIE, which was published way back in 2003, in the ‘Best Books of 2010’ series he is running on his blog, with the gist running thusly:

“You want a book with heart and brains then look no further … writing that’s so sharp you could shave by it … I am quite frankly in awe of Declan Burke’s ability with a sentence. His writing is at turns lyrical and succinct; his dialogue snaps in your ear and his characters are so real they stay in your head long after you’ve turned the last page.” - Michael Malone

  Which is very nice indeed, sir, and entirely gratifying.
  Shortly after, I got an email notification from Smashwords to say that a reader had reviewed CRIME ALWAYS PAYS. The gist:

CRIME ALWAYS PAYS: A SCREWBALL NOIR (****) is a fun yet complex novel, which definitely falls under the heading of screwball, but not always ‘noir’. There are many of the characters you would expect of that genre though, including cops and robbers, some crooked and some with hearts of gold, there are mysterious dames and shady lawyers, and a crazed wolf thrown in for good measure …
  Burke does an excellent job of quickly outlining each character and then slowly revealing further details about their past, their motives and giving hints at important aspects of their personalities which come to bear in future. The dialogue is humorous and generally realistic but becomes over the top at some points, much like many of Guy Ritchie’s films, which seems to be a common and accurate comparison. Even though many of the characters are amoral, violent, or just greedy, and each has reason to hate one or more of the others, they are all easily likeable and by the end of the novel you want all of them to get what they want, even when that seems impossible.
  There were many aspects of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS which I greatly enjoyed and only a few things which I found distracted me from the story and characters. If this is your ‘go-to’ genre than you may find the jumps between characters, the complex web of relationships, and the over-the-top gangster slang easier to get past than I did. Once I overcame these very minor irritations I became engrossed in the events of the novel, the characters, and the questions posed by many of the characters regarding morality. The unique mixture of a fun cops and robbers caper and the complex plot and character relationships makes this novel highly enjoyable and worth a read, or even a re-read. - Katie Lee

  Again, hugely gratifying, and I thank you kindly, ma’am.
  Leaving aside my fascination with the web’s potential for generating coverage of writers who might not otherwise get a fair shake, not to mention the opportunity it provides to by-pass traditional publishing and go straight to the reader, it’s always nice to know that someone is reading your stories, and nicer still when you know that you haven’t wasted their precious reading time, and particularly nice when a reader goes to all the trouble up writing a review and uploading it. These are not things I take lightly.
  It’s one thing, and a marvellous thing in itself, to be reviewed in the traditional media outlets, but the fact remains that said reviews are written by people who have received a copy of your book for free, and are being paid to write the review. But, and at the risk of being overly sentimental, there’s something a little bit special about a review from a reader who has paid good money to read your story, and then, off their own bat, and with no reward for it, puts in the time and effort to write a review and post it to the web. Above all else it’s a practical example of that much abused phrase ‘the kindness of strangers’, and I deeply appreciate it, and always will.

The Loveliest Review In The World

Some reviews are good, some are bad, others are quirky. This review of CRIME ALWAYS PAYS popped up on Smashwords over the weekend, and is without doubt the loveliest review I’ve ever had. To wit:

When I was a kid and it was too hot to play outside, I would talk my mother into giving me a quarter if I didn’t have one, and then I’d grab my bike and hightail it down to the drugstore.
  By the time I hit the railroad tracks I’d be sweating. But downtown they had big trees with lots of shade and the pedalling would be easier.
  I would walk into the drugstore and head down to the comic rack. I would get what I could get for my quarter and head back. Going back I would pedal harder, full of anticipation. Just before I got to the house, I’d make a quick stop at the gas station and get a soda (ok, I had an extra dime.)
  I’d get home, turn on the fan, open that soda, spend a little time looking at that glossy cover and then I’d turn to the first page.
  Man, life couldn’t get better than that.
  Well, this is better than that. Shake a couple of bucks out, grab a Coke and have yourself a nice afternoon in the shade. ***** - Francis Roderick

Only The Trashy And The Brilliant Will Thrive

There was an excellent piece in the Daily Telegraph by Sameer Rahim yesterday, which should be required reading for anyone interested in the future of publishing, aka Publishing 2.0. The gist runs below, but it’s well worth reading in full here …

“The death of independent bookshops is just one symptom of a much wider crisis in publishing. Discounted books, online bookselling and the advent of ebooks are destroying old patterns of reading and book buying. We are living through a revolution as enormous as the one created by Gutenberg’s printing press – and authors and publishers are terrified they will become as outdated as the monks who copied out manuscripts. How this happened is down to ambitious editors, greedy agents, demanding writers and big businesses with an eye for easy profit. Combine that with devilishly fast technological innovation and you have a story as astonishing as the credit crunch – and potentially as destructive …
  “We are living through a moment when all the balls have been thrown in the air and no one is sure where they will land. In the digital age, will publishers and agents survive in their current form? Derek Johns argues that “authors need agents as first readers and financial advisers” and someone will have to collate and distribute books whether in bound or ebook form. But will they? How long can it be before Tesco (which already has a 10 per cent share of the book market) stops dealing with fussy publishers and brands its own books? The ebook is also changing things dramatically. The iPad arrives in this country next month and looks set to put the Sony Reader out of commission. Perhaps more significantly, ebooks will allow writers to bypass agents, publishers and bookshops by launching their work on the web or exchanging it quickly among themselves. The extra costs involved in manufacturing books will inevitably come to make them seem a luxury and make the bound book as obsolete as vinyl.
  “Without some form of institutional support, there is a risk that only the trashy and the brilliant will thrive. That might sound like a bracingly efficient way of doing things, but the wonder of books is that no one can ever be sure how important they might be – or who might start slowly and then turn, eventually, into a genius. The careers of many authors show that the mercurial and the eccentric often take a long time to be appreciated. Abolishing the gatekeepers – however excessive or peculiar they may be – will not help reveal all those hidden talents to public view. Instead, the danger is our bookshelves will come to resemble a long line of branded baked beans.” – Sameer Rahim

  With impeccable timing, Smashwords announced its hook-up with the iPad, by which ‘unpublished authors can sell their work on the Apple iPad at virtually no cost’, according to Dean Takahashi at Digital Beat. To wit:

“Smashwords, a site where writers can publish their own e-books, said today it has signed a distribution deal with Apple to put its books into the iPad iBookstore. Mark Coker, chief executive of Smashwords, said in an email to authors that his company has been working on the deal ever since the iPad was announced. And, yes, this means that unpublished authors can sell their work on the Apple iPad at virtually no cost.” – Dean Takahashi

  The next couple of years are going to very interesting indeed, people. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride …