What the f- is Indie Fiction?

What the f@#! is Indie Fiction?

Interstate Indie Fiction - An example of Indie Fiction in action

A personalised history of Indie Fiction

A talk on Indie Fiction given at the Swindon Festival of Literature 2008

Roger Frederick Interview with 3AM Magazine

Interstate Indie Fiction - An example of Indie Fiction in action

Based in West Wales, Interstate Indie Fiction currently publishes two new contemporary authors Roger Frederick and Dale Tyler, who both started writing because there were very few relevant titles in bookshops that they or their friends wanted to read.

Inspired by the ethos of indie music labels, Interstate is a cooperative venture where writers work together on editing, cover design, marketing, etc. Interstate currently uses P.o.D. with online distribution through Amazon and distribution to bookshops via Ingram. Interstate used to run an online bookshop, but found that for a small press the total cost of handling orders for paperback originals can be greater than the margins!

In terms of content, Dale Tyler's novels are feisty, in-your-face comedy aimed at the MySpace/Facebook/Hollyoaks generation. Roger Frederick's post-punk fiction is a darker fusion of the suburban and the surreal - Magic Realism meets Factory Records, if you will.

In common with Indie music, Interstate Fiction is at times naive and rough round the edges. It doesn't necessarily follow the narrative blueprints of the larger publishing houses (with one eye constantly on the TV adaptation/movie rights/Richard & Judy book club opportunities). However, it does refelect the thoughts and feelings of two lost generations that fiction publishers appear to have overlooked between 1979 and 2009.

The constant stumbling block for indie fiction has been the lack of a central place for the co-ordinated promotion of alternative authors - there is no literary equivalent to the John Peel show. On a local level the arts councils do much to support aspiring authors and small publishers (Academi, for example, in Wales). However, indie fiction tends to only make a temporary blip on the national literary radar, when a book from a small press is nominated for a high profile literary award.

The lack of imagination and diversity at larger publishers may be bad bews for the editorial staff who are being shed in their hundreds. But in the longer term, it may be good news for smaller publishers who can bypass the trade, sell online, promote through blogs on social networks, and go direct from author to reader.

A personalised potted history of Indie Fiction

Indie fiction aims to be the literary equivalent of the indie music labels that came to prominence in the aftermath of punk in the early 1980s and flourish to the present day. In the music industry, the DIY ethos of the indie labels provided a vehicle for some legendary - and highly literate - figures in contemporary music (Ian Curtis, Morrisey, Kurt Cobain et al) and spawned genres of music now popular with millions across the globe.

Alternative music labels, such as Factory, Rough Trade and Profile (NY Hip Hop label launched in 1981), involved small teams of highly independent and idiosyncratic individuals. These energetic groups of producers, entrepreneurs and designers collaborated to create an alternative to mainstream music - providing a showcase for the "uncensored" thoughts, emotions and creativity of indie artists who would otherwise never have been heard.

In the UK, many of these fledgling record labels and performers owe their success (in part) to the John Peel radio show, which five nights a week provided a vital link between the bands and a post-punk audience hungry for indie music that was radical, raw and "for real".

The indie fiction scene has also existed in one form or another for many decades, but it is much more fragmented and doesn't share (to as great an extent) the promotional channels that are available to indie music (e.g. live performance, video). Certainly there has never really been a centralised show case for indie fiction in the UK (i.e. no literary equivalent of the John Peel show).

Many new authors now start life as alternative comedians or TV presenters, establishing a media profile that makes them easier to market when they launch their first novel. But that's not really the indie ethos, which is led and thrives upon integrity of content, emotion and ID.

Whereas indie labels are respected by the popular music establishment as a vital force for developing innovative new talent, DIY and indie publishers are still looked down upon by the literary establishment, which tends to be more conservative and is still dominated by a few narrow fiction genres e.g. romance, horror, mystery, crime, thriller, teen, sci-fi, etc. In many ways, the publishing industry in 200x is rather like the music industry was prior to the punk revolution, which opened the door to a thousand new genres and created a market for a much wider diversity of music beyond 'blueprinted' rock, disco, country or ballad.

As time passes one forgets the lack of variety in music prior to 1976 and the huge diversity produced by indie labels thereafter - Joy Division/New Order, Dead Kennedies, The Cure, The Fall, The Specials (Ska), Depeche Mode (Electro Pop), The Smiths, Run DMC, The Cramps (pychobilly), The Cocteau Twins (Ambient/Dream Pop) - all unique at the time and now much imitated.

Given that indie variants exist in most art forms - indie music, street dance, alternative comedy, contemporary art, etc - why is the world of literature still so insular, dull (frankly) and dismissive of alternative fiction?

Historically, new authors have always found it hard to get published, and have been forced to go it alone, with literary heavyweights such as D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Wolfe and James Joyce all being self-published originally.

During the last century many thousands of other writers have self-published or set up small presses, but relatively few have then gone on to enjoy mainstream success.

For me, the independent contemporary literary voice perhaps originated from the war poetry of Wilfred Owen et al who questioned the status quo, the futility of conflict and importantly gave a voice to the unseen suffering of the everyday soldier in the trenches.

Certain post-war writers have also typified the essense of the independent writer. In the UK this might include the working class/ lower middle class intellectual - those of limited formal education and financial status who are nontheless able to powerfully illuminate unseen lives and express unheard voices via a literary narrative, or those who may be more highly educated but choose to indirectly give voice to the marginalised (as, indeed, Dickens did in the Victorian era)

Novels such as the Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner and Saturday Night, Sunday Morning by Alan Sillitoe and Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse, are particular inspirations for my own writing.

In the United States, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a classic in vocalising the thoughts of a million disenchanted, misfit teenagers who in more recent times see their feelings widely echoed by the lyricists of various post-punk music genres. As such it could also be considered an important progenitor of indie fiction - the naturalistic first person narrative much imitated, but arguably never bettered.

The work of John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath, of Mice and Men) was also notable for giving voice to the unheard migrants and under dogs of American society. Steinbeck's novel East of Eden, personified by James Dean on film, could be considered another antecedant in the story of indie ficiton.

Moving on to the swinging sixties, one book that stands out in my mind is Midnight Cowboy by James Leo Herlihy, 1965 (probably largely because of the high profile of the oscar winning film that was based on it). Its strength is that is reveals the humaity and sensitivity of people struggling to survive on the margins of society. This is another central theme of indie literature - "giving voice to those who would otherwsise be unheard" - a sharp contrast to more escapist novels where heros (James Bond et al) are seemingly invincible, or where happiness is found through great material wealth or the solving of a crime or the conquering of a distant planet.

Herlihy, who became a friend of Anais Nin had studied at Black Mountain College in the US, which encouraged "alternative artsists". Although he initially worked as a dramatist, he produced a few novels and collections of short stories that also cover indie themes and his affinity with 'the outsider'. Check out The Sleep of Baby Filbertson and Other Stories, All Fall Down, A Story That Ends in a Scream and Eight Others and The Season of the Witch.

In the late sixties there was perhaps a blurring of the boundaries between alternative and mainstream art with the imagery and ideas of counter-culture being sold 'over the counter'. The Avant Garde filtered up from the underground and was absorbed by the art, film and literature establishment (illustrating that alternative forms of artistic expression can sometimes go mass-market). In the late sixties various psychedelic one hit wonders (Angel Pavement, Tomorrow, Motherlight, the Smoke, et al) wove their way crazily through major recording studios, such as Abbey Road. Music and film was truly experimental (although the lyrics amounted to little more than nonsense rhymes and movie plots collapsed in random patterns like the beads in an old-school kaleidescope).

By the turn of the decade the end of the Vietnam war, high profile drug casualties, and the Manson atrocities saw the radical pipe dreams of hippydom start to fade.

In the early seventies some highly influential and original writers came to prominence. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (One hundred Years of solitude, etc) and Thomas Pynchon (Gravity's Rainbow) are two great favourites of mine. However, to return to my musical analogy, their prose is perhaps more prog rock than indie.

The die hard alternative bands and radical small presses did linger on in the underground scene of the early 1970s - a slow flowing, lightly polluted stream babbling beneath the crudely poured concrete floor of popular culture. During this period, counter culture occasionally popped up at free festivals in Stonehenge and the like, but alternative (indie) art didn't properly explode to the surface again until 1976 with the advent of punk rock.

An important point to remember is that at this time writers did not have easy access to the means of production. There were no home computers. Professional typesetting and binding was prohibitively expensive. So writers who were short on funds could only produce shorter works, which might typically be hand-printed and staple bound. There were plenty of poetry magazines and fanzines circulating (and these would occassionally include the odd shorty story). However, it was difficult for the average alternative writer to publish and distribute a 400 page novel (although some industrious authors produced small numbers of hand-made tomes).

In the early 1990s independent presses seemed to gain some ground. And I recall a large selection of small press title being available in my local branch of WH Smiths - including those from Bloodaxe, Serpent's Tail, Canongate, Fourth Estate and many others. Notable example from my personal library include:

Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture (1991) by Douglas Coupland - an international best seller - all the same it covers what I would consider as "indie themes" (as do his his subsequent novels)

Trainspotting (1993) and The Acid House (1994) by Irvine Welsh

Dreams of Sex and Stage Diving, Martin Millar, Fourth Estate (1994) - one of a number of novels by this author starting in 1987

And the Angel Saw the Ass (1993) by Nick Cave republished by Henry Rollins (21.3.61)

Vurt, Jeff Noon by Ringpull (1993) - a relatively short-lived Manchester based small press that showed that smal presses can launch innovative authors to a wider audience.

Babyfather, Patrick Augustus, X-Press (1994) - still going strong and aiming to be the "world's leading black book publisher".

More recently I enjoyed the Taqwacores by Michael Muhammad Knight, Telegram (2003) - a book about Muslim punks in New York, orginally published by hand on photocopiers and distributed in the parking lots of mosques.

In the UK, early titles by some some highly succesful authors arguably cover indie themes: Jonathan Coe, The Dwarves of Death (1990, Fourth Estate); Ian McEwan the Cement Garden; Ian Banks, The Wasp Factory, Espedair Street, Walking on Glass, the Crow Road, etc.

Interstate managed to shift a few of its early titles directly through local bookshops during the 1990s - but the discounts required by retailers and wholesalers, pretty much meant you would operate at a loss if you tried to scale up your distribution (a four figure up-front investment was needed even for short print runs, at a time when jobs were scarce and salaries were low).

Even so, the post-punk music explosion of DIY music labels in the early 1980s provided a blueprint for indie fiction that "sustained the dream" for me until the means of production and distribution became available in the 2000s.

Indie music in the mid 80s was typified by obscure bands sending demo C90s to John Peel and getting write ups in hand printed fanzines, while in 2009 indie fiction is typified by obscure authors producing Print on Demand (PoD) books, sold on Amazon, and promoted via write-ups on community websites and blogs. But the spirit and ethos of artistic self-determination is similar.

The indie fiction market remains very fragmented, with a relatively small number of widely dispersed authors, readers and publishers.

The latitude festival in the UK with its literature stage forms a fragile link between the traditional festival-going indie music audience and the literary establishment. Whether this is a one-off or the start of a wider trend remains to be seen.

However, to use this as an analogy of sorts, indie fiction is perhaps now playing on a small stage somewhere at the back of the 'publishing festival', rather than just busking in the road outside.

Certainly, collaborative small presses with an online presence, such as Interstate Indie Fiction, can provide an island of opportunity somewhere in the vast ocean that lies between the large media conglomerates and pure self-publishing.

If electronic book readers (Kindle, etc) ever go mainstream in the UK, there may be a further opportunity for indie fiction publishers to reach their audience. But digital distribution probably cannot ever match the aesthetics of the printed tome.

Roger Frederick presentation at Swindon Fesival of Literature 2008

Yea, we play all the big venues... :-)

Intersate Indie Fiction is a small press which aims to be the literary equivalent of an Indie Music Label. But before explaining a bit more about Interstate, I'd like you to picture 2 teenage twins Nicky and Micky.

Now, Nicky and Micky are fortunate enough to have fairly middle class parents who occasionally took them to the local libarary and still buy them books for their birthdays.

At their local comprehensive, they've studied the Great War poets - Dulce Decorum Est - and all that. They've even been inspired to have a stab at their own angst ridden rhymes:
The world is horrible
It's not fair
Everyone hates me
I don't care

It's a developmental phase most aspiring writers go through (and one that I'm personally hoping to grow out of by the time I hit 50)

At this point the twins' paths diverge. Nicky gets a guitar for her birthday. Micky gets a copy of Catcher in the Rye. Nicky learns a few chords and starts to write songs. Micky realises that fiction doesn't have to based on "all that David Copperfield crap" (as J.D. Salinger put it) and he sets about penning his semi-autobiographical first novel.

Over the next few weeks, Nicky gets together with a few musical friends to jam and is pleased to discover that her singing voice is not unpleasant to the ear. Micky shuts himself away as he struggles to think of an opening sentence for his novel.

The months pass.

Having done a few open mic nights at the local folk club, Nicky supports a well-known Singer Songwriter at her local arts centre. She plays 4 of her own songs to an audience of 250. A couple of the songs go down well, and she sells 20 copies of her home-made demo CD.

Micky doesn't come to the gig. He's at home, rewriting chapter one of his novel...again.

And so it goes on. From local music festival to support tour, Nicky gradually evolves as a performer. She becomes a musical butterfly - a miniature Martin acoustic strapped to her thorax, admired by all, as she flutters prettily among the flowers of creative opportunity.

Micky (now on Chapter 4 of his Booker Prize winner) is more like a snail hidden in the leaf litter at the base of a damp wall. Occassionally he pops his feelers out of his shell to look around. He evens sends some sample chapters off to an agent (who isn't currently considering any new authors) and a publisher (who doesn't accept unsolicited manuscripts).

Poor old Mickey. Bravely he tries again, but gets the same response. And retreats deeper into his shell to escape the crushing boots of repeated rejection.

Meanwhile the supermarket shelves are stacked with the ghost written offerings of soap stars, footballers and reality show contestants. Among them are some readable memoirs by stand-up comedians.

Micky suspects some of those stand-ups are frustrated writers who turned to humour as a way to achieve some sort of recognition. But poor old Micky's not very good at telling jokes, and he sadly returns to his draft of Chapter 5.

Is Micky's writing any good? How will we ever know?

What we need is a way to give Micky a little hope - to give him wings (the literary equivalent of Red Bull) - a hyper caffeinated route out of creative obscurity.

And that in some small way, is what Interstate Indie Fiction (and similar ventures) are trying to achieve.

Now I spent my formative years listening to John Peel every night on a battery operated transistor radio under the bedsheets. In fact, that's what led me to start writing. The sound was so crackly I could only ever make out half the lyrics. So as I walked our whippets through the local woods, just down the road in rural Berkshire, I would fill in the gaps with lyrics of my own, which turned into poems, short stories and eventually novels.

I was also greatly inspired by the ethos of the Indie Record Labels of the 1980s. In particular, I followed the development of Factory Records from cradle to grave.

Many of you I'm sure will have seen the recent Ian Curtis biopic, Control. There's one scene where the late great Tony Wilson signs a contract in his own blood. There's a rare moment of levity in the film, when Joy Division's manager pretends that the drummer's name is spelled wrong. With ashen face, Tony slices his hand open to obtain another nibful of that special red ink, and promptly keels over.

Now, for sure, Ian Curtis was a great lyricist, and an incredibly intense performer, but what I really admire about Factory was the passion and integrity of their team - the designer, the producer, the band, the manager were all driven by a desire to make great art, not make great amounts of money. There was a tremendous synergy between them. And aspiring writers can learn a lot from that teamwork, self-belief and passion.

Novel writing is a solitary business. So it's important for writers to get togther and support each other, through local arts events, writers group, internet forums, etc.

In a way, Interstate is a self-help group for lonely writers, whereby individual work is edited by mutual peer review (a case of I'll show you mine, if you show me yours). Writers tend to be an insecure bunch and so can in turns be scathingly bitchy and oversensitive. However, if you can get past that, it tends to be a very helpful process.

My personal interest is in contemporary fiction and 'alternative' writing, so I don't get too hung up on religiously following formulaic narrative structures. Indeed, I was told by one reviewer that I had violated all ten rules of fiction writing in the first paragraph of one novel. He was outraged. I took it as a compliment.

Joking apart of course, there are a list of tips and conventions that are very, very useful for new authors. But the rules can be overly prescriptive. New fiction shouldn't simply follow a 10 page blueprint from an established genre publisher. What's novel about that? Nor should the commissioning of new ficiton solely be a high-brow X-factor for the graduates of creative writing MAs. We need greater literary diversity. More fresh and distinctive voices.

So, you've written your book. You've used peer review to polish off the rough edges (without losing the distinctive flava of your work). What next? How do we create the literary equivalent of an Indie Label 4 track EP. Well thanks to DTP and Print on Demand you can professionally produce very short runs of Paperback Originals for a couple of hundred pounds.

It's not that simple, you need ISBNs, you need cover designs, you need to be familiar with layout software and creating PDFs. That's where the self-help philosophy of a writers cooperative also pays dividends. If you design my cover, I'll spellcheck your draft. Lets share some ISBNs. And it works.

A word of caution, if you search on the website, you'll find plenty of small publishers looking for new authors. Run by writers for writers offering 50% royalties. Sounds great. But delve a little deeper and you'll find they're mainly author services companies who will tell you that your book is wonderful and then charge you handsomely for everything.

That's not what Interstate is about!

So we've worked together to produce our book.A box has come back from the printers. Now what do we do with it? How do we get it into bookshops? Well, to be honest. The economics of traditional book distribution are against you. Once the distributor and retailer and printer have taken their cut. There's little left. You don't have sales team that can go round aggressively touting your new title. When you do get you book into shops you can't afford to pay for window diplays, or to be part of 2 for 3 offers. So should we just give up? What alternatives are there?

You can also sell online, which is not difficult to set up. You can participate in arts events and sell direct to the reader that way. You won't shift huge volumes, but that's not really the aim.

You need to consider yourself more as an inventor. The paperback original is your patented prototype. Your pen name is your brand name. Your author website is your promotional vehicle.

So, in conclusion, the Intersate approach is that writers should get together
to cooperate on editing and production
use print on demand to produce professional paperback originals
promote them through the web, online readings on YouTube, through the media, literary events

It doesn't guarantee that a major publisher will immediately come along and offer you a mass market distribution deal. But if books are professionally produced, they can be entered for literary prizes, sent off for review, or waved under the noses of agents.

These are realistic, achievable goals, and offer a stepping stone perhaps between having a handwritten manuscript gathering dust on top of a wardrobe and achieving distribution to a wider readership.

Anyway, this is just one approach to promoting new authors. It's not perfect. But hopefully it's provided some ideas and inspiration, that maybe you can build upon.

Roger Frederick Interview with 3Am Magazine

Interview by Sophie Erskine.

3:AM: My first question is about your book, Of Lemonade Lizards and Other Brief Trips into Post Punk Fiction. What is Post Punk Fiction, and why are you so interested in it?

RF: For me, post-punk fiction is the literary equivalent of the ‘Indie’ music that appeared in the UK and late 1970s and early 1980s. It shares the same ethos and attitude as bands such as Joy Division and the Dead Kennedys and the others that followed. Before the advent of punk, music was very predictable and genre-based, and didn’t reflect the lifestyles, opinions or emotions of millions of disaffected youths tumbling out of their comprehensives into the jobless, culturally bereft wasteland of Thatcher’s Britain. British publishing has never seen this revolution. There is no high-profile publishing counter-culture. There has never been a literary equivalent of the John Peel show – a central place where you can showcase your angst-ridden short stories or set-flight your fledgling novels.

A few book retailers have created sections within their stores for independent publishers. Unfortunately, the percentages that larger retailers and wholesalers take, coupled with cut-price selling of bestsellers by supermarkets and the domination of the 2 for 3 tables at the front of bookstores, make traditional retail a waste of time for small presses.

Fortunately, the web, social networking sites (not to mention wonderful online magazines such as 3:AM), combined with digital print on demand, PayPal, and the like, mean that aspiring authors and publishers can now at least produce, promote and sell their work outside the constraints of traditional book retailers.

The large multinational media conglomerates may dismiss self-publishing as not being proper publishing like what they do [sic]. And, it’s true, the market for indie fiction is small and fragmented. But I would always rather read a rough-edged novel by some aspiring young author with a cover created on a kitchen table rather than some ghost-written pile of shit, printed in China and sold in Tesco like tins of spam.

That’s why I’ve stayed interested all these years! It’s about expressing, experiences, ideas and emotions through words; not acquiring this or that literary prize or shifting x-thousand units.

3:AM: I’ve noticed that your books often involve unconventional encounters: in Shorts and Dresses, between two journalists and the widow of a man impaled on screwdrivers; in Of Lemonade Lizards, between a veteran porn star, a telepathic cat and a hippy gardener; in The Shrewdness of Apes, between Newton Driftwood and his beloved Sophie. Are such encounters an integral part of your fiction? If so, is this because they are a necessary part of (a good) life?

RF: Absolutely. I’ve always been attracted to people on the margins of life (those at each end of the bell-shaped curve) as they are just far more interesting. Seemingly, society is made up of homogenous groups of people – stereotypes (flamboyant gay designer, sulky council estate gang member in the stairwell of a tower block, merchant banker in a gated community, stay-at-home mum or dad picking up the kids from school, etc., etc.). We all share the same roads and towns (and planet), but often seem to be living in parallel universes – mixing with our own kind. What interests me is when those tracks deviate and cross and lives collide. People then find they often have a human affinity for each other. It’s no great revelation. It’s all really just a variation on the theme of the prince and the pauper or the film Trading Places.

In my latest novel a single urban saleswoman with a designer wardrobe and a go-go-go, deal-chasing lifestyle suddenly finds herself disfigured, friendless and living in a tiny and run-down Welsh seaside village. She is still the same person, but has to morph into a new lifestyle and environment. She finds that everything she thought was important is actually completely unimportant. As ever, it’s a rather bleak story dealing with rather fucked up people, but there’s a message in there for us all…

3:AM: On your website, below the blurb for ‘Fishing For Angels’, you state explicitly: ‘this is not a religious book…’ Is religion something you’ve deliberately avoided or rejected? If so, why? Assume I’m open-minded.

RF: Organised religion is irrelevant when you have a basic grasp of the space-time continuum, quantum theory and the simple probability that underpins the concept of natural selection, and when you have the independence of mind to decide what you believe is wrong and right. For people who struggle with these concepts and like to be dictated to (the sheep who graze in the middle of that bell-shaped curve), religion provides structure and meaning to their lives. It’s an illusion. When you include the words ‘fishing’ and ‘angels’ in the title of a book, some may assume it is by a religious publisher and may end up being offended. I’m not out to needlessly upset people and have no inclination to argue about other people’s perceptions of existence. None of it makes any difference. We’re all just momentary players in an infinite narrative. I just enjoy writing. It makes me feel good. I imagine religion, drugs, cruelty, pain, sport, shopping, luxury chocolate products, etc., offer similar outlets to others. I don’t avoid or reject any of these things. The one thing I genuinely hate about some religions is the way that they subjugate women, denying them self-expression, education and the freedom to write. Unfortunately, those centuries-old cultures and practices are hard to escape. Most people are forced to live their lives a very specific way by circumstance, necessity and oppression. If you have a choice to do something different, you really should explore that.

3:AM: Tell me about Interstate Indie Fiction: what is it, and what were your motives for establishing it? Go all out, if you like.

RF: Very simple. I walk into a large branch of Waterstone’s (a converted chapel, possibly…) and see shelves and shelves containing thousands of books. I love books. They are the greatest things in the world. But among those thousands, nay, millions of titles there is nothing that fits my mind, my experiences, my feelings. So I have no choice but to write my own stories and search the internet for other likeminded souls…

3:AM: How successful have you been at banging the drum for Indie fiction? Have people listened (or have you just made a big hole in the drum from banging it too hard)?

RF: Actually, someone once used a similar analogy of a large rock blocking my path. ‘Roger’, they said, ‘you can kick that rock as long and hard as you wish, but it will never shift. All you will ever do is break your toes. Find yourself another route.’

I say, ‘you can never bang the drum too hard.’ It’s there waiting for a hole to be made in it! Yeah, I know that rock ain’t gonna move. But I’m gonna keep fucking kicking it anyway. That is the raison d’etre of the post-punk artiste.

God forbid (mild irony) that the rock ever moved. I wouldn’t know what to do next.

To answer your question from a commercial standpoint: prodigiously unsuccessful.

3:AM: How… shall we say… open to the world is Interstate Indie Fiction? Do you read submissions? Do you accept them?

RF: I’m always happy to receive submissions. However, Interstate Indie Fiction is a self-help author co-operative rather than a conventional publisher. That’s a smart-arse way of saying, ‘I’m always happy to offer advice on publishing routes and read other people’s work and add it to the website electronically and promote it through reading, etc.’ But I don’t have any spare cash to pay writer’s printing costs. That sounds a bit stingy, but conversely (and rather self-righteously) I have never charged anyone a penny for my time, either!

Seriously, though, independent authors should view their books primarily as a way of sharing their unique world-view and emotions, and secondly as demo-tapes or prototypes that they can flaunt to agents and larger publishers. No-one else has the distribution and marketing infrastructure to generate a profit (in fact, most of the big companies can’t make a profit any more, either; ha, ha, fucking ha – another illusion shattered). It’s good to be outside the system when the system collapses (I’ve waited thirty years to feel this smug, but it was worth it!).

Anyway, enough gloating already.

In 2009, in terms of maximising exposure, online blogs are maybe a better means of communication for aspiring writers. But it always gladdens my heart when I see fifty copies of some bound, bitter tome piled futilely on a trestle table at a fringe art event.

Keep kicking that rock until your feet fall off. That is the Roger Frederick way.

Consider this: if a million would-be-punk-rockers had never had the self-belief to send their home-recorded C90s to John Peel, we’d all be still listening to Disco Duck and Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

So, keep writing. Keep creating websites to share your literary wares. Keep the post-punk literary revolution alive. And maybe, just maybe, one day we’ll have some decent books to read an’ all.