It simply isn't true.
While everyone's life story is unique and fascinating and worthy of celebration they don't always translate to a book. We are a species of storytellers and it's good to share our life experiences. And we've all seen or heard good storytellers. They bring the words to life. That's because when we speak to others, only 30% of our communication is in the words used. There's tone, inflexion, facial expressions, body language, emotion, movement - a multiverse of meaning. In the hands of an expert raconteur, the blandest of stories can become riveting. However, while a story told amongst friends in the pub may have everyone spitting their beer and clutching their bellies, it may well fall flat when nailed to the page. When all you have are the words, you need to be a skilled writer to make it dynamic and make it resonate with your audience. And, like any skill, that takes time and practice to learn.
The arrival of print-to-order technology and online publishing platforms like Amazon KDP means that anyone can now publish a book and offer it for sale. You can cut out the middle men and women and reap the benefits all for yourself. However, those 'middle' people are people like structural editors, copy editors, proof readers, layout designers, cover artists, legal and compliance specialists etc. It's a very rare book indeed that can run the gauntlet of that crowd and escape unchanged. They are experts in their fields. Their job is to make books better. But, of course, they cost money to hire.
And money is at the heart of the current difficulties for jobbing writers - most of whom make far below the minimum wage in the course of a year.
Publishing is a business. It has to make money to survive. The obvious way to do that is to publish 'dead certs' - books that are almost guaranteed to fly off the shelves. That means fighting over the tiny 5% of authors who make 95% of the profits - people like David Walliams, J K Rowling, Lee Childs, Margaret Atwood, Richard Osman etc. - or, more commonly, capitalising on the fan-bases of people that are already famous.
It's no surprise to learn that anyone who gets a reasonably regular spot on TV will soon be offered a book deal while the rest of us - who have actually spent years honing our craft - have to fight to be noticed. Just recently, I submitted a new non-fiction book proposal to publishers via my agent. What he got back was the usual three questions: 'Why this book? Why now? Why this author?' and the answers they wanted to hear from Question 3 were, 'he's been on Taskmaster' or 'he has a squillion followers on TikTok.'
The fact is that I sort-of have been on Taskmaster - or, at least, a sell-out live show called Artmaster that I did with Alex Horne last year. But that cut no mustard because 'it wasn't on the telly'. Nor did the fact that I was one of the writers of the TV show QI for nearly a decade or the fact that I was on the writing team that won the Rose D'Or for BBC Radio 4's Museum of Curiosity. My writing credentials may be impeccable but my public profile is small. So the book is still a no-go even though three major publishers really liked it and thought it was very well written. They just won't take the risk because the name on the cover isn't famous enough.
Okay, maybe a bit.
But it is reality.
I completely understand why publishers have become so risk-averse - a lot of companies lost millions due to Covid and they need to build their finances back up. However, by putting all of their betting money on just a few horses, they've created a situation where celebs now demand huge advances for their (sometimes ghost-written) books and the pool of money to publish worthy books by less famous authors has pretty much dried up.
Meanwhile, I read that over a million books were written during lockdown and uploaded to Amazon. With the best will in the world, it's fair to say that a lot of them won't be great. But some will have promise. And a few may be works of genius. But how will we ever find them?
Between these two extremes there was a void ...
All of which brings me to the Breakthrough Book Collective. This is a new initiative to get around these issues. Every member of the group is a published author. Most also have some skills in areas like marketing or design or editing etc. What this means is that members of the group can be both the authors AND the middle men and women. This results in books of industry standard and quality, and authors can expect to get a decent return on each copy sold. In return, all that's expected of them is a small percentage of profits to go into the Collective's funds (for things like marketing), plus a willingness to volunteer some of their time. If they have a specific skill that can be utilised - great. If not, they could just help with 'market research ' e.g. reading a submitted manuscript to see if a book reads well. The idea is 'authors helping other authors' by committing a small amount of their free time. The pay-off is that other members of the Collective will do the same for them.
It's a fascinating idea and, for someone like me who is a great supporter of 'commons' projects, it was a no-brainer that I'd get involved. If you don't know what 'commons' projects are, they are projects where people work together towards a common goal that benefits all. One good example was River Cottage's Land Share scheme which ran from 2009-2016 and put people with free but unused land in touch with people who wanted to grow their own fruit and veg but had no land. 22,000 people benefitted from that scheme and, even though it ran its course, it did spawn a host of similar community-run projects like Lend and Tend. Or look at Wikipedia - probably the biggest commons project of all time. All of the world's knowledge made available to the whole world for free and it's maintained by volunteers. Britain once operated on a commons system - large areas of land - although owned by a lord or king - was left open to the community to use and maintain (the modern leftover from this is the allotment). Bartering went on between the various 'commoners' and a small tithe was donated to the land owner to say thanks. Everyone benefitted from the concept (and it's also where we get the name of our two chambers in the Houses of Parliament - the Lords and the Commons). Sadly, the commons concept was trashed by the Normans who enclosed the land and made people pay to work it as tenants. It's how we ended up where we are today with profit being more important than people and the skills they have.
So say hello to a new commons project and to Taking Liberties. It seemed fitting that the Collective's first title should not only feature work by those who set the scheme up but also be centred on the concept of freedom and breaking out.
And, as time goes on, the Collective will be looking to build its catalogue. And that will mean attracting other authors and submissions.
It'll be a slow build but every great endeavour begins with a single small act of intent.
And this is ours.
The Breakthrough Book Collective's website is here.
Taking Liberties (e-book and paperback) can be ordered here.
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