Thus it is with an eye set keenly on the pitfall of overindulgence that I turn to tell about my own experiences on the outside of the publishing industry, as an author looking to break in. My weapons of choice were battered manuscripts and postal stamps; my hopes, youthfully optimistic.

My first experience as a writer came when I was ten years old. During a break time, and also possibly after school, I wrote a short illustrated story about some kids wandering into the woods. After getting lost they stumble upon a shack pieced together from corrugated tin and wooden pylons. I was too young to detail any T&A action they got up to in there; but needless to say, Jason Voorhees, the hockey masked killer you’ll recognise from the Friday the 13th series, soon turned up with machete in hand and instigated what could be best described a bloodbath.

All I truly remember from the story was the ending. Jason tracks the remaining teenager though the woods. The teenager trips and the monster advances, machete raised, ready to make adolescent chop suey. Seconds before the coup de grace is delivered, a lightning bolt connects with the raised machete and causes Jason to implode in a rain of fried flesh. The kid survives.

My teacher wasn’t worried for my mental health, as one might expect; and, indeed, she read the story to the rest of the class during what was called Reading Hour. I was embarrassed to hell but afterwards my pre-adolescent colleagues congratulated me on the story — apparently, it was a crowd pleaser.

Years passed and I taught myself how to write; or, I developed a written voice that I was comfortable with. Manuscripts and short stories followed, written around my life as a sixth former and then university student. The only one I ever tried out on publishing industry pros was a manuscript I called Turbulent Times, about a year and a half ago. I won’t go into the plot mechanics here but it was a darkly comic tale that ended with a spectacular account of violence that the marketing department could have sold the book on. If nothing else, it was a tad more mature than Jason stalking in the woods (and hopefully not as derisive).

The manuscript wasn’t picked up. I sent it to the Betty Trask Award for consideration, and also a few publishers, and a few literary agents. I would say eight at most. Postage costs were far too great and other things were going on in my life that the posting of three chapters with cover letter soon fell by the wayside. I even got a website designer friend of mine to create a little site for it, with an animated introduction, believe it or not. It was snazzy.

But after my unenthused few attempts to get the book published were met with silence or standard rejection notes, I let the matter lie. An easy dismissal at the time was to concur that you could only get a literary agent if you were already famous or, insanely, had already published a book.

I called this blog piece ‘The Manuscript Motorway’ as, at the time, that’s what it felt like. You, the author, were battling to get your work onto the motorway, the central hub, when in actuality it was languishing, along with many others, in the backstreets, unseen, irrelevant. The motorway, my admittedly limited experience had shown me, appeared unsurpassable to the fledgling writer.

Since then I have worked in the industry and now know my earlier supposition to be untrue. Good writing will most likely be picked up, eventually, although I recommend trying more than eight port of calls; more like twenty, thirty, and a result might be forthcoming. Much of it is luck, again. Your manuscript may be rejected if the literary agent has a hangover the morning they turn to glance over your work; or they might have been proposed to by a long life love the night before, and suddenly you could find yourself with a literary representative, just like that. The books by or about famous folk are usually commissioned anyway; they are creations of the editorial department. New writers do get through though, and a numerous set of them every year. The trick is perseverance. The lesson is to continue writing, unperturbed.

Summer has arrived and we’ve all managed to survive the bloated story-boat that is Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End (shouldn’t it have been At Wit’s End?). One of the great things about writing writing that you will not pursue to publication is the copyright-infringing, excessive flights of fancy you can indulge in. I may just bring my stolen character Jason Voorhees out of retirement, after a fourteen year hiatus. The new plot: he travels to Hollywood. The new victims: the writers of focus-lacking summer blockbusters. The tone of the story: eviscerational.

Gather round as I delve into the minefield that is Format; book format.

Yawn.

Yes I too thought the matter worse than life itself until the other day, when I got into a hoedown with a stubborn little paperback. Or, rather, stubborn beefy paperback that refused, outright and central, to slot neatly into my bookshelf, the rascal.

Content-wise, the book was a waste of environment by its very creation: Ladies and Gents, I present to you the atrocity that is _________.

Ah, the WordPress filters have edited out my critical endeavours. It appears that I’ve been as censored as Google China.

Needless to say (write), it’s by an author renowned for travelling autobiographies, and this particular book appeared written-to-order. It also earned him-or-her a large pay check. Not that I begrudge him-or-her receiving a fitting dividend for their efforts; just that this particular effort didn’t warrant the reward, whereas their earlier manuscripts did. This could therefore show that talent is always rewarded with money, eventually — not so, I say. Not always. Jeffery Archer is living proof that all too often, idiocy is rewarded; talent is only on the margins.

But this book, this paperback, wouldn’t stay put on the shelf. It was what I believe is a B Format (or was it A?), you know the kind. Designed to plug the market during the long desert drought between hardback original and mass market paperback, the book weighed a ton and, worse, flopped all over the place like a caffeinated Jack-in-the-Box.

First I dumped it at the end of the row, as a sort of bracket to keep the other books in check (holding the fort at the other end stood a hardback version of War and Peace; regal, epic, prestigious, unread). _________’s book wouldn’t stay still, you see, and the crux of my problem (and this blog) began there. It kept leaning forward, slouched like a stoner as it drooped down, hanging its overwritten head in shame.

Aha, you don’t fool me! I laughed, taking the book out and slotting it in-between two smaller paperbacks situated in the middle of the row (of A Format . . . or was it B?). Then, get this, the book fell out of the bookcase, pulled by its own glue-heavy spine (curious for a book so reluctant to take risks, a book so . . . dare I say it . . . spineless).

Pause here. I’m in danger, I realise, of stressing the melodrama of the situation. For dramatic purposes it would do to have increasingly screwball situations arise from this moment, such as me stepping on the book and falling over, or me accidentally throwing it at the wall and smashing a fire alarm, etcetera. But the truth was I just laid it across the top of the books, went on my merry way, and the problem was solved. Damn.

It got me thinking, very much after the fact, about those poor stockers of shelves, who must undergo such paperback battles daily, if not hourly. How they cower in the face of what I like to think of as the Paperback Monster — the runt of the litter, the misshapen, over/under-grown paperback that is sized and shaped so strangely it refuses to sit and be proper beside its numerous cousins.

But it gets worse. Then, after several minutes of toil to make the thing sit on the shelf, someone, some mug, can stroll into the shop and tear it free, only to briefly peer at the back cover and then discard; usually on top of the other books, when they find out what a stubborn cookie the paperback is.

The cycle repeats.

Real research revealed that these deformed paperbacks aren’t the true bane of the bookseller however, oh no, ‘fraid not.

If you hold a grudge against the workers of Waterstones, if you emanate bad feeling in the direction of Border’s boys, do this: publish novelty.

Free stuff, add-ons, toys, books with bells and whistles; this is the true Achilles’ heel of any bookshop bookshelf.

One of my latest literary obsessions is the author B.S. Johnson, who I probably mentioned round here once or twice, in a manner that I hope seemed casual, off-the-cuff. I wish I could say I stumbled upon this word-slinging wizard through my own sharpened senses and nose for a good author; truth is, I picked up one of his books in a 2-4-1 at Borders, when they were having a free-for-all on their cult fiction section. It didn’t take long for me to realise that this author likes to mess around, by which I mean he indulges without shame in the act of novelty. So we get holes punched through the pages of his books (so the reader can ‘read’ into the future), we get characters pausing after a piece of dialogue “because a break was necessary for the readers’ eyes to rest after what would otherwise have been a large piece of text,”, and we get a book in a box.

That’s right. The Unfortunates is its title and consists of twenty-seven chapters, which can be read in any order with a narrative that will still make sense, supposedly. The concept is mesmerising, the practicalities, not. To stock a box must not have been very appealing to booksellers and resultantly the book is nowhere to be found, spoke of in whispers but not present in the shops, currently going for £104 minimum on Amazon, and getting up in that heady region on eBay, when listed there at all.

Sorry but no cigar this time, eh B.S.?

It is tragically unfortunate for the booksellers that these loopy format designs intrigue us in a way that the simple paperback doesn’t. Even the awkward, heavy tome by _________ had a certain charm to it, I must confess. It felt substantial; that’s the best way I can put it. The format alone got me thinking about other uses for the book.

A tent for a gerbil; an absorber of spilt coffee; a crusher of intruding flies.

Most of all: the kernel of inspiration for a blog.

What can I say? I was younger then.

The first draft didn’t work, bluntly speaking. But from the carcass of that well-meaning but ultimately stillborn blog I was able to fashion this and I hope the disjointed but opinionated pieces slot together to make a meaningful whole. It’s all very postmodernist, still, for fans of such endeavours.

A character sketch: Quentin wakes when the sun rises, stirred by a dawn chorus and the misleading promise of a day yet to be lived. Throughout this day he will undergo many of life’s necessities — drink, excrete, eat — with robotic precision, and human enthusiasm (read: subdued). His pleasures away from this are derived through an incessant search for sensory stimulation; fresh greens, the nose; bits of cardboard to devour, the tongue; the scruffy old slipper in the corner of the conservatory, the penis.

If the title hasn’t already tipped you off, Quentin is my pet rabbit, and he is a simple creature, with simple pleasures.

Take the slipper, for example. This he likes to hump, of an eve. A low intelligence and a pre-programmed biological survival code are surely to blame for this comical — and frequent — occurrence, for sure. But I’ve taken it upon myself to use this case study as a microcosm for people’s book-buying habits, and see what conclusions can be drawn from the conceptual blender.

Whoa, whoa, wait. Come back here a second. I told you it would get odd.

The rabbit humps the slipper, okay; he goes for what his brain tells him he wants, even though, I’m sure, Quentin knows that hunk of sweaty material isn’t a female Lionhead rabbit, and it won’t birth him a litter. It’s just an inanimate object in front of him, and one which he can’t resist, at certain moments.

Now. I and millions of other readers undergo the same process, I hereby argue, with authors such as Stephen King.

Let me rephrase that, to avoid confusion — we undergo the same process with the books of Stephen King and his bestselling ilk.

Again — we have an undesirable urge, when in the bookstore and the supermarket, to pick up these flashy paperbacks and proceed to the counter (not with the intention of humping them, I hope).

The amount of times I’ve been branching through a King book and have thought to myself: Aw, King, mate, what’re you being a dickhead for? Or, shaking my head in disappointment: King, come on. You can do better here and I think you know it. Only the other week, I retired a Grisham book to the bin after a disappointing first half.

Yet I buy more! We all do. These bestselling ‘kings’ are good at what they do, no doubt there, they Pass Straight To Go (a typical Kingism — yeah, I can do it too, Steve). But there is so much more that I, personally, want and should be reading when instead I tend to favour these authors. And crucially, I favour them when they have let me down, and quite spectacularly cough theconclusiontotheDarkTower cough. I’ve given them extra chances, despite frequent bad behaviour, despite crap film adaptations, despite the thousands of other authors begging for my attention.

Yet perhaps that is it. We go with what we know. It’s safe and easy and doesn’t spring any nasty surprises on us; just an occasional weary disappointment. We ignore the real deal – Quentin’s female rabbit friend – and go for the comfortable greyness, the discarded slipper in the corner. The slipper is our constant.

On 28th May Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Rising hits the shelves for just £3.49 discounted and I dare say that I will purchase it, despite detesting his last slab of tedium, 1999’s Hannibal. The reviews tell me this book is awful, the film adaptation was awful, my own reading of it as a hardback original told me it was awful, yet still I will dump it into a basket as I rove around the aisles of Tesco’s. I know already this act will occur in the future, it is predestined, inevitable. I must be nuts.

The study of Quentin has shown me that book buyers and horny rabbits have a lot in common, in a trade fiction-irrepressible impulse sense. Both are creatures of pattern and environment, and will follow the same cycles if there is no break in the routine. Place the bestselling authors at the front of the shelves, they buy; place the footwear in the conservatory, they hump. The metaphor, analogy, whatever you want to call it, may be simplified if not downright sloppy but scientists experiment on lower life forms to help understand human problems and conditions and here I use a cute but lower life form to understand our habits as readers. I wonder what other secrets study of The Quent will reveal – the possibilities are endless. The case, ongoing.

Taken from the list of Quotes That Never Were (But Should’ve Been):

“And why not?” — Barry Norman

It does engage a certain amount of common sense; if an industry, any industry, is going to be judged and lauded over, then why not judge that industry on the achievements of its champions and not its runts? By being constantly reminded about the successes of The Few in computing, in politics, in publishing, in countless other British industries, we give those just starting out a level of prestige to aspire to. I can hardly imagine a young undergrad majoring in Business Management hoping to become the next Robert Maxwell; but in becoming the next Richard Branson, yeah, sure, why not. He may not be the coolest cat on the block, but then again who is?

Power and popularity seem inextricably linked in the sense that the individual personalities succeed, primarily because they know that self promotion adds a lot of potential to their business practice, and they understand that no-one else is going to promote them. This is how the hierarchy of power is fashioned; the determined individuals don’t wait around for opportunity to come knocking and as such they rise to the top. A pyramid of semi-determined, then vaguely-determined, and then don’t-cares develops below. In order for the young undergrad to get to the top, he has to ascend the ranks, slowly; or else create his own pyramid of power and hope the followers fall into place. The former option is the most stable, even though it forces one to ascend in a structured way. You can’t just jump to the top. To do so would be akin to me challenging Richard Charkin, current King of the Publishing Blogs, to an arm-wrestle.

Now there’s an idea.

So yes, Chark, you may get several hundred hits a day for your blog; you may be seated in a prime position in Macmillan at the moment; you may have thirty-plus years experience in the publishing industry on me. But can you swim the English channel in under two hours forty-three minutes, eh? Can you write a novel in less than three weeks whilst holding down a full-time job and then see several publishers bidding furiously on the MS, Chark? Can you drink eight pints in succession and still sing for Sunday Choir?

The fact that I can’t do any of these things is besides the point. Charkin has found a niche and developed it. He’s an all singin’, all dancin’ industry professional who promises secrets and tips for those interested in publishing and, for the most part, doesn’t disappoint. No false prophet, he. The rather difficult task I would face, should I wish to usurp him from his throne, is to come up with another angle on the whole business. A post-modern novelty trick up there with the inspired devices of Tristram Shandy and B.S. Johnson; a weekly controversial rant to spark up attention; a free iPod for every tenth reader of my blog (to come out of Fifth Estate’s marketing budget). I would be in the enviable position of likening my David to Charkin’s Goliath.

But away with such fancies.

A slow-track progress to the top, to gaining that power so precious, keeps some people sane, I think. Chances are we will never get there anyway, but only within reach. Even for those who do make it, what are the available options? It can’t be abused much further than asking someone to make the tea for you, for as we all know abuse of power leads to this:

(Sorry, easy target).

The nice guys succeed at the top of these power hierarchies but so too do the bad ones, who have the habit of usurping any threat to their own elevated status and position. The printed lists of powerful beings keep a check on who is where and as a result may provide a warning check on any evident loonies rising through the ranks, but the obvious side effect is that they also promote competition.

My mission this week is to apply the brakes to this whole crazy power scheme; and not in relation to the lists. It may sound gospelly, but: Let’s all us as individuals stop scurrying for the power, yer hear, can I get a Hail Mary? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to better oneself, to get money and material distractions, but that’s not my point. This is — if we ignore the power lists, if we cease to care about those at the top and care more about those around us, those known to us, then we may find ourselves a tad happier. We need to stop worrying about becoming the next Branson, the next Bill Gates, the next Chark (some would argue that nobody would want to be the next Richard Charkin anyway . . . but they would be unkind people).

Besides, if we ignore the figureheads at the pinnacle of our various industries, they might get worried, and scrabble for our attention. They might slip up, make some colossal failure; and the throne will be ours for the taking. Cover your eyes, England — the new order is about to rise!

For an industry based around the relatively solitary act of reading, I have always found it curious just how much publishers like to get up and talk about what they are doing. Through luncheons and presentations and literary events, Oxford at least is overrun with the Talking Publisher and the Vigilant Listener. I think this set of circumstances goes beyond people just wanting to get out of the office for an hour or two (though let’s keep that at the back of our minds, eh?): to wit, I think that the Talking Publisher is not so much a slacker as a strange beast, a multi-faceted being with many motives and aspirations. So why don’t we delve a little deeper.

Disclaimer: The following is based upon personal experience and as such individual observation will be passed off as informed generalisation. Those of a delicate disposition are advised to employ caution.

Since last September I have had the pleasure of being a Vigilant Listener to a varied host of speakers from the publishing industry. From wide reaches of the country they travelled; others, they came from the international publishing community. And all for the benefit of me and around fifty other MA publishing students. The selection has been mind-bogglingly diverse, from the traditional book and journal publishers to spokesmen for offbeat bookshops like QI, via talkers on new technologies (Print on Demand, the Google Book Project — don’t worry, I doubt they’ll be as apocalyptic as some fear) and international matters. In other words, most publishers are as much eager public speakers as Chuck Norris is a kicker of ass.

I’m trying to think back and, no, actually, I can’t think of any of these Talking Publishers who appeared nervous, at least not openly. The consensus was that they were eloquent, amusing, enthusiastic, and generally worth the price of admission. A brazen observation would be to say that publishers are intensely social creatures, and the image I had of publishing, long prior to taking this course, as a quiet occupation has been disproved.

If the publishers I met are anything to judge by, most people in this industry can’t wait to get up and speak, before mingling with the Vigilant Listeners over a pre-paid mini buffet and wine.

In an earlier blog I put forth the crazy idea that innovation was the key to publishing and, tidily enough, it could also be the key to my current argument. Namely, that publishers frequently feel the need to get up in front of a crowd and explain what they are doing as much of the work entails an exploration into the unknown, if you’ll excuse the fancy.

Yes, friends and neighbours, the many avenues that the publisher can take and the many products that can be developed lead to others having doubts — and them wanting to know. The Talking Publisher is, to an extent, like a small child putting on a show for its parents; “Ma, ma, look’it me. Over here! See the costume I made, it’s got glitter! All my friends will want one, when I show them it!”

But sometimes, supposing we are the parent, would we tell the child to shut up?

So many speakers and so much information leads to a very open industry, where secrets are sparse and insider knowledge available to anyone who can log onto the internet. Several times I’ve been present at speeches where the subject has proclaimed that he/she is going “off the record” before proceeding to destroy an individual or company in a deftly-spun anecdote. It’s all very gossipy, all very fun (and all very harmless, I might add), but it does illustrate the curious blasé approach most industry specialists have to detailing ideas and innovations and personal opinion.

It’s a situation, in my opinion, that I’m rather fond of. It gives the impression on a surface level that the industry is distinct and personable, a step away from the corporate landscape of secrecy and laser-sharp legalities that plague the world of big city business and one that has been at the forefront since the 1980s (or The Decade When Decadent Dorks Took Over).

I said impression, mind. Of course the Talking Publisher conceals; of course they hide the true punchline behind the quick joke zinger. Their job is to show off a little bit to a note-taking audience and their job is to entertain, and if they choose to spice things up a bit with a few company secrets and product previews, that’s at their discretion to do so. It is akin to a stand-up comedian dropping his trousers on stage, bearing all for the braying audience; it may be distasteful, it may be grotty — but, my God, does it get a response.

Afterwards, in the bar, it will be all they talk about.

The notion of the speech is one that remains fully ingrained in the structure of the industry. To not speak publicly is anathema. I have come to realise that if one wants to work in this industry there is no place for shyness; similarly, on the social side, you must invest in others to be invested in yourself (but that’s a whole other blog entry, one that entails further examination of liquid buffets and slurred conversations, and parties in the oddest of places).

One rule goes that the better the speaker, the better the speech. I disagree. Nervous Bob can best Cocky Joe through the information that he imparts; scandal, secrets, and juicy anecdotes will always win out to a confident speechmaker with standard material. Just.

Should you be interested enough to view some Talking Publishers in action, I advise you to keep checking up on the Brookes publishing events page, viewable here (and please note that they aren’t paying me for this . . . not much, anyway).

We know what it’s not, and only too clearly. Step forward and take a bow Wayne Rooney’s autobiography; we’ll see you at the pulping plant, Anthea Turner! Although it’s amusing to poke fun at these colossal publishing failures (a failure that is compounded through the frankly ridiculous advances given to their borderline-illiterate subjects), they don’t shed any light on what makes a good book sell. They are only examples of poor books, with lacklustre sales reflecting the quality contained within.

So it seems that I’m saying good planning is the key to success. Sort of. That certainly helps with regard to these biographies, where it can be ascertained from the beginning if an audience exists for them or not – to an extent, at least. Fiction however is a different beast, wily and vastly unpredictable, although in most cases the large advances are forgone and the potential losses much lower. Who would have thought there would be a worldwide market for stories dealing with a boy wizard or a cannibalistic serial killer?

A few publishers who got lucky, and a couple of optimistic authors – that’s who. Once those authors have got their hooks into the subconscious of the general reading public, any book they deem to produce will be a bestseller written to order; I call Thomas Harris as my witness, who is now churning out screenplays and still tops the bookselling charts (see Hannibal Rising, a thinly-veiled screenplay masquerading as a novel).

My interest lies in working out how authors get on that bestselling conveyor belt in the first place. I suspect that luck, as with life, plays the largest role in it.

Something that is popular en masse has to attain an appeal that is significant and temporarily worthwhile. How many people have you heard talk in excited tones about the Dan Brown they just read before ending with the disclaimer: “It wasn’t very well written, though”. The onus on the fiction writer therefore appears to be in creating a manuscript that we can all relate to, can all talk about, but not necessarily one which will drastically alter our lives. Is not one of the goals of fiction to say to the reader: you are not alone, your pain is felt by many, your dreams, achievable. Does that mean the author should write in broad strokes, so as to reach as many people as possible?

But here lies the rub. Certain concepts that are inextricably linked to the human condition — and by this I mean the two Big Ls (love and loss), jealousy, hope, anxiety, happiness, you get the picture — will always be entwined in fiction, and readers will always like reading about such concepts. That’s why Shakespeare’s plays have stood proud through several centuries. We see ourselves in the characters and situations, the amped-up drama showing us that our own experiences are nothing new, whether bad or good or in-between. As such, we learn to be content, and see the story unfold. The trick for the author is to avoid making the story completely about the concept, by which I mean: never will a book sell if it purports to be about ‘love’. It needs to have a story to hide behind. We need to know first about the Capulet and Montague hoe-down. We buy Silence of the Lambs because it promises a descent into the taboo (the triumph of justice as embodied by Clarice Starling comes as a secondary surprise and warm reassurance); and Peter Benchley’s Jaws was a bestseller because, erm, the gore was vividly described and the death of the shark represented human resilience in the face of adversity?

I think it’s time I started wrapping this argument up.

Writing about love and whatnot might mean that in a hundred, in two hundred, years’ time readers may be able to relate strongly to your text, but it does not guarantee you financial dividends now and, crucially, may not even be accepted for publication in the first place. You need car chases, gun battles, matricide, haunted cars, blood-specked barbed wire on your cover, snappy dialogue, an agreeable face for the author photo on the back cover, a large trade discount for Tesco’s, a way to make people pull the book from the shelves and deposit it in their trolleys. Keep all that “human stuff” in the background, and don’t moralise; leave that hot potato well alone. From this, a bestseller might just surface. Might.

David Mamet, sweary writer of American Buffalo, has written several plays that forgo a forward momentum and are almost blank verse. They don’t work, in my very humble opinion. Shakespeare in comparison – hear this – does work. Now Mamet is a good writer, that is evident; one only needs to read his vicious deconstruction of masculinity in Glengarry Glen Ross to realise that fact, although he does have a penchant for bogging down his sentences in excessive cursing. The issues that he writes about are enmeshed with strong stories and clever drama. The failure of his blank verse epics must lie in format, then. Although they may well stand the test of time the format of blank verse no longer resounds with the modern reader unless as reading it from an historical perspective. Similarly the bestselling novel cannot work outside of its discounted, highly-visible window display presence. The secret lies there, the external attributes of the book being flaunted to such an extent that the internal is almost irrelevant. The key is in having a good cover and a large marketing budget. It’s enough to make one wonder how Mamet would react to new editions of his works being sold in supermarkets and in dump bins.

With more expletives, I expect.

Although he promises to “be nice” towards his students — a sentiment he didn’t feel fit to lavish upon his publishers when he demanded a £500,000 advance for The Information in 1995 — I do believe that his inherent celebrity will work against him, causing students to take his negative comments personally and respond with informed viciousness and underhanded swipes.

How long, I began to wonder, as I tried to cast my mind off an ensuing dissertation, before a variation of the following would occur:

“But is it a story?” Amis enquires, bringing his eyes up to meet the class. “I see it more as a portrait. Post-modern, witty, and laced with cultural reference it may be. Dripping with delectable charm, sure. Yet when we get to the meat of this two thousand word submission, when we get past all the bells and whistles — we find that this isn’t so much as a story about Barney the Prussian Vampire as it is a portrait of a day in his life. It’s Joyce on pre-Weimar steroids.”

“Riddle me this, mate. Without your dad — without Kingsley — you wouldn’t have ever been a writer, right? You’d have been a tramp.”

Here Amis would have two options, the way I see it.

Option A —

Amis sighs audibly, and puts the flimsy manuscript down on the table in front. Shrugging like a subdued teenager, he mumbles something about “being disappointed” and points at the clock above the classroom door. “Let’s take a ten minute coffee break. People are getting strained and we could do with some time off. Class dismissed.”

Option B —

Amis meets the glare of the student. He puts the flimsy manuscript down on the table in front. He smiles. The accusation of the student rushes through his mind once again — “without your father . . . you’d have been a tramp” — before he attempts his reply.

“Why yes . . . Yes indeed. I believe I would have been.”

I think it’s going to be tough for Amis (although not so tough with that £500,000 securely in the bank, correct?). Citing flaunty reasons for teaching creative writing — the aforementioned book he hopes to rise from the ashes of the experience — is all well and dandy but to me is a cop-out answer. He’s rich; unlike most writers who teach creative writing, Amis doesn’t need to supplement his writing with a job on the side. Ol’ Father King sorted all that out for him years ago. Saying he is doing it for the experience doesn’t sit with me, either. You read some kids’ writing, you comment upon it. How’re you going to squeeze a book out of that, Martin? It’s hardly going on the road like Kerouac, is it?

Why, Amis, why?

I was pondering this one day whilst walking in the glorious Oxford weather, trying to keep my mind away from Dissertation Land, and a conclusion hit me all at once (the espresso I’d just sunk might have had something to do with my divine inspiration, it must be said).

All of the supposed reasons for Amis trekking to Manchester to teach led to one destination, to one realisation, and at once my cynicism and confusion was gone.

I realised – It didn’t matter.

And, oh look, that realisation led to an observation about the publishing industry.

It’s an industry to which motives and analysis rarely apply. Yeah, yeah — it’s a business, profit is the defining goal, yawn. That’s very true. But the key to the industry is innovation and, in effect, doing stuff that other people can’t see the point in, or benefit. Print On Demand is one such example; now Lightning Source are on their way to going global. Giving books free away with the tabloids is another. Sending authors on tours around the country, turning them into rock stars — it all worked, to some degree or another. Further back, Allen Lane steaming ahead with his paperback collection.

Therefore, just because we (I) can’t see Amis’s point in teaching creative writing vis-à-vis his current life situation isn’t necessarily something to hold against him. He could have an Ace concealed, waiting to reveal it at a future date. The experience may just inspire him to write a book that bests Money (no sniggering, at the back); he may just find the next Thomas Hardy studying at Manchester University; he may just outlive his stigma as an author who only got published in the first place because his father was famous.

Whatever the case, I salute Amis. He’s breaking the mould, albeit in a very square, academically approved way. In following this age-old publishing tradition, there is the opportunity for a wide reaching commercial and individual success. The trick is to avoid the mould-breaking innovations that turn mouldy, like scapegoat Judith Regan’s unfortunate O.J. book and the Anthea Turner biography. If he manages that, Amis will come up trumps, and in the end will even have a story to write about it; Bad Boy Amis Offspring Morphs into Luvvy-Darling Academia King.

I was fourteen then, reasonably healthy, reasonably happy, and enjoyed the odd bike ride. One evening I decided to bike with a friend out into the countryside. Now Lincolnshire, for those not in the know, is pretty; very pretty. Full of fields. Full of wildlife. And for a fourteen-year-old, full of boredom. But we had found something of interest, a potential pit of fun hidden away in the Lincolnshire wilderness.

It was a disused quarry, small, but full of ridges and rolling hills that we could bike up and down; a makeshift obstacle course that was ours for the taking. We got maybe a good forty minutes out of it, riding about, laughing, falling off our bikes in a spray of dust. We were having so much fun we didn’t notice the 4×4 Land Rover pull up.

“This ‘ere’s private prop’ty,” the farmer said, stepping out of the Land Rover. “Whart you lads up tuh?”

We mumbled some excuse and started wheeling our bikes towards the quarry exit, looking towards the horizon and escape. Not once did we stop to consider if it was indeed his private property to preside over.

“Stay orf land that’s nat yours!” he barked after us, adjusting his hat with tobacco-stained fingers. “Go on — ‘op it.”

Turning this event over in my mind later on that evening, I realised for the first time I was consciously aware that what I had viewed was a living, breathing, talking, excreting caricature; a farmer portraying the image of a stereotypical farmer that is ingrained in all our minds from birth. Like the Hawaiian shirt-clad, cigar-chomping American tourist stereotype, this chap was a complete pastiche of himself. Some publications, like Viz, produce caricatures from the national demographic and pursue them towards their logical conclusions, with often hilarious results. I think the point is that there is a kernel of truth in every stereotype; although it can never be taken as the ultimate truth.

There is much talk in publishing today of the author brand. I have a recent Stephen King paperback on my shelf where on the spine we find the author’s name is roughly a 12 point font size larger than the title of the book. There lies an example of the author-brand at work; but I propose there is also a concept of an author-caricature. Whereas the brand is created by the marketers, the author-caricature (hereby referred to as AC) is a complex structure created by the author itself, as it relates mostly to the contents of the books rather than the covers.

Hunter S. Thompson is a classic example. Read The Rum Diary. A novel he wrote in the late 1950s, dealing with a fictional character who gets up to lots of mischief in Puerto Rico. Now read any of the books he wrote after that, after emerging as a survivor of the 1960s. Thompson himself is the central character of these subsequent cult favourites, and in all of them he clowns around, and gets up to lots of craziness ala The Rum Diary’s Paul Kemp. Thompson essentially converted himself from author to AC, becoming one of his own characters and producing books that we can only presume are real-life experiences. But would the Thompson of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas have gone on such a reckless drug-fuelled epic if he had known he wasn’t going to write a book about it later on?

The reason Thompson moulded himself into an AC is because caricatures, when done correctly, are fun. If I had written a story about the farmer at the quarry, it could be an amusing diversion because it plays into our pre-established ideas of The Farmer as occupation, supplanted in our subconscious by countless children’s books and TV shows. In real life, he played into that notion to such a tee that to fictionalise him would be to acknowledge the ridiculousness of the caricature and at the same time emphasize its worth in society. ACs like Thompson and Burroughs created their very own caricatures that today one can comfortably slip into, should one be so inclined: the drugged-out writer. Others occupy spaces that have been created long prior to their arrival on the publishing scene; Irvine Welsh as angry Scotch writer; Stephen King as a Dickens-esque ‘writer of the people’; Jaime Oliver as Yet Another Young Male Chef.

Eventually, so I’m told, the summer of 1998 ended. In the September I started at a Grammar school and in the years following observed many more caricatures, both in the media and in real life. Some ugly, some lovely, most plain funny. The biggest caricature I ever met was in 2002, at a talk given by one Jeremy Paxman. This grumpy, take-no-prisoners TV tyrant was as sweet as a puppy dog in real life; the hard nosed reporter image he portrays is a lie. So is fiction, by its very nature, and that is where caricatures of people and occupations can be most successful as it is there we can recognise exaggerations of the strangers we meet from day to day. One day I very well might return to that disused quarry, in the hope of finding the farmer. I would ask him for some advice, for some tips; “Just how, Mister, do you manage to keep up the lie?”

So far, so clichéd, right?

Well, yes; incredibly so. But I doubt any man, whether watching a similar scene on the big or small screen, wouldn’t be in quiet awe of the Clint Eastwood character. Women might not be so easily fooled by such brash masculinity, but they have their own equivalents, too: Pam Grier in Coffy (“She’ll cream you!” the posters memorably screamed) is one, and Alias’s Jennifer Garner, another. But I mustn’t pigeonhole according to gender. Here are some other examples that we can all aspire to: Don Vito Corleone (in spite of his moral ambiguities), Ripley from Alien, even pug-faced and dumb-voiced Rocky Balboa.

Still with me as I work through this ramshackle metaphor? Good.

The point about all these examples is that we admire them; they show us an existence that might just be reachable, an elevation away from the mundane and small-fry intricacies of our everyday lives.

In essence, they inspire our respect.

Politicians wish for much the same. It’s interesting to note that all the examples I gave are of fictional characters; they aren’t human. They are or became characters in film and television too. Unfortunately, politicians appearing on the screen is often a cringe-inducing experience, especially when they try to act outside of their day-to-day job. So that is a no-go.

The nearest and greatest thing is through making themselves a character in a book; will this, they ponder as they sign off a £150,000 contract for their autobiography, bring me the respect and acceptance amongst the public that I so endlessly crave? Will this make me — shudder — cool?

The problem with the political autobiography is that its very existence is defined by scandal, by human degradation; in short, people buy them because they want to know about the intensely private and flawed moments these public figures undergo. People want to know what Blunkett did with his dangly bits, what Edwina Curry did with John Major’s, and why Shirley Porter was as ghastly as Margaret Thatcher’s politics.

Which leads me on to my next point. May I quote Pinhead from Hellraiser? Thanks. In that film he describes himself as being “an angel to some; a demon to others,” — a sentiment which I think perfectly fits Thatcher. Her own memoirs are reportedlty fact-filled accounts of her time in office, omitting practically everything to do with her personal life; in short, an account of what she and her zany supporters consider her ‘finest moments’. Long after she had left her duties as a politician, she was still eager to build a picture of herself to gain respect from the masses. She had enough money by then that she could have foregone the £150,000 publishing contract, so the only motive to partake in such a publication must have been to wrench readers’ opinion of her in the direction she wished it to go; but here is the conumdrum. Without the human element, without the grit, consumers don’t and won’t buy.

So what to do? Here is my solution:

Now, censorship can never be justified. Never.

Except in this case. Political autobiographies: ban the lot. Don’t let them be published in the first place. They don’t supply their subjects with the respect they so endlessly crave and all the best bits are serialised in the shlocky tabloids anyway. Plus – let’s be honest here – they are rather dull. It’s a real shame to look over The Independent’s recent Banned Books list and see all the great literature there that has been supressed and denounced over the years; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, A Clockwork Orange, Last Exit to Brooklyn. Then dross like The Blunkett Tapes: My Life in the Bear Pit gets stellar shelf space (or did, briefly). So I declare that into the ‘bear pit’ these books should go, and instead the politicians can try to win over the public through how they compose themselves when running the country, sans details of dangly bits.

I truly think publishers could save a mint foregoing such high advances in their pursuit of politicians and instead focus elsewhere, promoting quality fiction and celebrity autobiography.

In case it isn’t clear, I joke about the latter; if anything, that’s an even more vulgar example of what I’ve been writing about. Yet sometimes, subjects are so absurd in their own right that they leave no room for comment or analysis — there really is nothing to say about them. The celebrity autobiography is one such subject.

Although it would be interesting to see Clint Eastwood grab the barman by the lapels, hoist him over the bar, pull him close until they are chin to chin, and then hiss out of the corner of his mouth at one of the tavern patrons to go grab a camera and take a picture, adamant the scene would make a perfect cover for his autobiography Clint Eastwood: My Life in the Snake Pit.