The Book Channel

This week sees the timely launch of new British digital TV channel
The Book Channel

Timely, as it comes just as Richard and Judy are contemplating retirement from our screens, along with their hit television Book Club based on Oprah Winfrey's original model in the US, an idea which in turn led to multitudes of private Book Groups being set up among friends and neighbours up and down the country to either link in with Richard and Judy's or read their own choices. We even had a hit sit com on the subject!

Those of us with published books know how tough the market is out there. Plus publishers give so much money to their celebrity 'author' list in bidding wars or to stop them seeking more elsewhere, they have increasingly little left to offer the real authors on their list. Gone are the days when even a previously successful author could count on another book deal, or even on more than diminishing returns for any subsequently accepted book. It is shocking to realise how many seemingly successful authors, far from living JK Rowling lifestyles are actually struggling to make their mortgage payments each month! But then publishers themselves are also struggling and going to the wall by the week. Though JK Rowling was one of the lucky ones who managed to attain both celebrity status AND successful author status!

It is great therefore to see the rise and rise of that 'novel' innovation The Book Festival in the last ten years, bringing authors and readers together and books alive in a new way. Now almost every town and city has one and authors have nationwide tours much like pop stars, only without the riches! Here's a couple of pictures from The Oxford Literary Festival (one of the original book festivals) last month. In fact such has it mushroomed, last year it spawned the also mushrooming OxFringe arts festival too!











I do hope The Book Channel will similarly blossom for authors and readers alike. It certainly has the increasing paucity of quality content on other digital channels in its favour! So many times I have sat in front of the screen and found absolutely nothing I wished to watch, despite countless channels to choose from. A 'Jackanory' and 'The Book Tower' for adults would be good - I might apply to present!

The Lost College & Other Oxford Stories

Next Tuesday night in local pub Far From The Madding Crowd sees the launch of a second book of Oxford short stories - 'The Lost College & Other Oxford Stories' by the OxPens writer's co-operative, of which yours truly is a member.

This follows the success of our previous anthology;



which was launched almost two years to the day in the same pub in 2006, to a gratifyingly packed venue with copies flying off the table, and which, with the help of various marketing-minded members of the group, went onto enjoy success and profit for all thirteen of we contributors (if not quite enough to renounce the day job), beyond our intially-modest breaking even hopes, being both Blackwell's and Waterstone's no. 1 local fiction seller for some time.

Far from 'vanity publishing' (a process by which you hand an over-inflated sum to a shyster for a set number of often poorly produced books over which you have virtually no quality/editorial control - and who seldom offers after-sales or marketing services), knowing ourselves to be quality and capable writers, we made a conscious decision that we wished to take control by publishing ourselves, using a reputable 'publishing partner' to produce a high quality, bookshop saleable collection on a par with anything to be found from a terrestrial publisher.

This enabled full cost/editorial/jacket control, the option of marketing help and to go the print-on-demand or POD route so that if our first volume was less than a success we didn't have boxes of the darned things cluttering up our living rooms and tying up assets we didn't have for years!

Thus we have been able to order them in batches of 100-200 as needed and mostly supply Oxfordshire shops directly (gift as well as book), not forgetting to ensure a presence on various online bookshops including Amazon. In addition we have solicited reviews wherever we can and been lucky enough to have an author friend or two in a high-er place who has been happy to say nice quotable things about us, and genuinely so - we didn't need to bribe them or anything! We also had the splendid luck of the aid of one of Oxford's finest artists, Valerie Petts, with our lovely eyecatching wraparound jackets.

As a group who have often had agents and publishers come and talk to us over the years, we realised some while ago that the majority of authors (however good) are depressingly now shut out of mainstream publishing, with most publishers and agents refusing to take on new authors and having dispensed with the 'readers' who used to read slush piles to pick out the next JK Rowling, so the DIY approach made ever more sense rather than an UnpublishedWriters4Justice stunt abseiling down the Houses of Parliament to get noticed! Not least since those of our members who have been conventionally published in the past now struggle as much as the rest of us to get anything further published in this increasingly competitive climate.

Sure we've had endless meetings labouring over every comma and the odd disagreement along the way, but we've (nearly) always managed to stop short of inkshed, and most of us have been pretty pleased with the results.

Should you be stuck for an Xmas or birthday present for the Oxfordophile in your life, you can purchase either or both titles here;

The Lost College & Other Oxford Stories

The Sixpenny Debt & Other Oxford Stories

I've slightly reduced the body count in my latest short story!