Book Writing and Publishing

The UK is I understand, the nation which per head of the population has more authors of published books than anywhere else in the world.  Iceland  perhaps has more bookshops per head, given the small size of its population.

Possibly for those who  have recently retired from full time employment, writing a novel has health benefits, may be even including  staving off Alzheimer's disease, though that disease is possibly now benefitting from new medical treatment

Given the difficulty these days, of securing publication of a book through traditional publishers or publishers' agents,  many authors will try self publishing through say Google, which can be done for a few pounds or dollars. Others may try their works with  publishers which charge  for the privilege of taking on one's tome. Such publishers will then deal with  copyright and ISBN (international standards book number) registration in The British Library  and its US and Irish equivalents. 

The latter publishers  are slightly expensive but have been most helpful, though why there are so few such publishers which are British owned is a mystery, as English is surely one of the most if not the most, popular language for book writing and publishing.

Interestingly, looking through the shelves of popular bookshops, their emphasis these days seems to me, to be  upon the  characteristics of authors rather than  simply upon the quality of their reading material, though of course I may be wrong. Popular authors like say John Grisham, are probably unaffected.

Of my own works above, only The Wandering Soul and Trainee Solicitors' Loves Live and Tribulations have as yet, been published with The Sussex Container Ship Hijack being published soon (I hope). 

The trustees of my long since closed old school (Beaumont College)  have been kind enough on  couple of occasions, to permit me to use their  central London church hall, for endeavouring to sell the published works to parishioners over cups of coffee after Sunday Masses, and my younger brother was happy for me to have a selling stand at his own book sale within the Bread and Roses pub; his own work is entitled I think Kill the Coder with the Lowest Score. 

The largest income from my own works so far,  has been through photocopying of the photographs in The Wandering Soul. Given that many of these were taken in Egypt over 50 years ago when that country had recently been riven by war, and had just had three jumbo jets blown up in the desert, possibly the interest in photographs of the time is understandable. The absence of traffic in Cairo I suspect, contrasts sharply with scenes there today. For me though the pictures of my co-traveller John Farr as a young man, are the most poignant given his death a week ago sadly mentioned in my previous blog post

The other two works have no pictures within, though   their covers are excellent imho!