So, here's the thing! By the end of this month I will have sold 150,000 ebooks! I suppose that's quite good in 10 months! However, I do have 17 publications out - 15 books, a short story, and a book of poetry. I suppose it's still good though! Not in the same league as those people who have sold a million ebooks and written ebooks about how to sell a million ebooks, but in the scheme of things - I'm quite pleased. Also, four of the ebooks - the Parish & Richards series - have spent between two and four months in the Top 100, and are still there for which I would like to thank my readers - thank you muchly! However, I'd like to take issue with the powers that be! Here's a quote from the rules for the 2012 BBC International Short Story Award: "Writers whose work is published online or self-published are not eligible to enter." Say what? How positively antiquated is that? It's about time we addressed the issue of what it means to be a published author. The old criteria of having your book accepted by a publishing house, and then they take forever to publish it, before you can be considered a published author is an anachronism. As far as I'm concerned, I'm a published author now whether the BBC like to call me that or not. My books are out there, which reminds me of the Stargate episode when Jack O'Neil tells the Asgard, "You should know, we're out there already, and we're a very inquisitive race!" I loved Stargate, and I thought Richards Dean Anderson was brilliant in the role. Anyway, stop trying to distract me, Toady! As I was saying, my books are out there and being consumed by readers. Feedback through the medium of reviews, emails, comments on my website and fanpage are mostly positive and all are read and taken on board, and I'd like to thank readers for taking the time and trouble to contact me - muchas gracias. The problem - as I see it - is not the word 'author', but 'published'. The composer of a literary work is an author, therefore I'm an author (does a little jig!). To publish is to: Issue (printed or otherwise) for sale or distribution to the public, therefore I'm published - a published author, don'tcha know. So, whoever is saying I'm not a published author - I have some words for you that I keep in a lead-lined box - come up and take a look sometime! Oh, and if we're talking about words, we're losing some don'tcha know? If we published authors don't use them we'll lose them! There was a report yesterday by the Ministry of Words, but I can't find it so here's some forgotten English words instead - use 'em or lose 'em: Purfled: short-winded, especially in consequence of being too lusty (1808); squizzle: to let squizzle, to fire a gun (1956); chaddy: full of chads. The bread is chaddy [if] it has been made of meal not properly sifted to get out the husks, fragments of straw, or gritty particles of the mill-stone. (1830); tooth-saw: a fine frame-saw for sawing off portions of the teeth; used by dentists. (1874-77); lunting: walking and smoking a pipe (1824); curglaff: the shock felt in bathing when one first plugnes into the cold water (1808); scurryfunge: a hasty tidying of the house between the time you see a neighbor and the time she knocks on the door (1882); flippercanorious: elegant (1934); irrisory: addicted to laughing or sneezing (1897); jirging: the noise too dry shoes make when walked with (1824). Ebooks have changed the face of publishing, and its about time that 'the powers that be' - whoever they are and whatever grubby little hovel they crawl out of - recognised this and scurryfunged. Just because some faceless gatekeeper hasn't rescued me from the slushpile matters not, because I don't even send my manuscripts to agents or publishers anymore - I've bypassed them! Now, its the readers who say whether I'm a published author or not, and handcuff me to the bed and smother me in whipped cream and strawberries if I'm wrong, but I think I might have the thumbs up from them. That's about it really! Oh, I suppose I should mention Toady - he's helped me. Don't ask me how, because what he does is a bit technical - so he tells me anyway! Oftentimes, I hear him in the garden shed muttering to himself about agents and publishers with a handful of long pins and some strange looking zombie-eyed dolls!
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AuthorHi, I'm Tim Ellis - I write a lot and I hope you enjoy what I write. Archives
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