Author: Chris James

Chris James is an English author who lives in Warsaw, Poland, with his wife and three children. He has published three full-length science fiction novels and is currently writing a series of short story volumes inspired by characters in songs from the rock band Genesis. For more information, please visit his website or Amazon author page.

Indie News Beat: All the Fun of Frankfurt

The Frankfurt Book Fair is one of the highest-profile fairs on the calendar. But now it’s been a few years since the meteorite of self-publishing hit the world of books, just how well are the mainstream dinosaurs coping with avoiding extinction?

Finally, they appear to be accepting that Indie Authors are here to stay. Writing for paidcontent, the interestingly-named Laura Hazard Owen began her report with the book-with-the-unmentionable-title, which, somewhat worryingly, is being held up as the perfect example of the self-published goldmines that potentially await the mainstreams. Of course, now that E. L. James’s trilogy is rumoured to have sold over 50 million copies, big-hitting mainstream people are lining up to point out that she couldn’t have done it without them, and that thanks to Random House, her “relatively modest success” was turned into a “maelstrom of money”. Continue reading “Indie News Beat: All the Fun of Frankfurt”

Indie News Beat with Chris James

IU Ace Reporter Chris James

The big publishing story over the last few weeks has undoubtedly been the sock-puppet scandal. First broken by the New York Times, suddenly we were drowning in stories, articles and opinions from it seemed everyone in publishing. But just as suddenly as the elephant in the room was acknowledged, so it disappeared.

The general outrage that a few bad apples in the Indie movement would actually pay for multiple, glowing reviews on Amazon, soon diffused when stories appeared reporting that some mainstream authors were also not averse to puffing their own work, while sticking the knife into their competitors. Likely the mainstream authors will suffer more in the short term, given their higher profile, but all this summer flurry really did was draw more attention to the intense competition on Amazon, and the shortfalls of its rating and review system. Continue reading “Indie News Beat with Chris James”

Indie News Beat with Chris James

NEWS FLASH: Mainstream Publisher opens its doors to Independent Authors

In what is believed to be a first, on 1 October a mainstream publisher will open its doors, for a limited period of two weeks, to unsolicited submissions of full-length manuscripts, including self-published novels.

This represents remarkable admission by a mainstream publisher that Independent Authors have something to offer. Voyager, which is the Science Fiction imprint of HaperCollins, is looking for “10 to 12 new authors”, one of which it will publish monthly over the course of next year. Continue reading “Indie News Beat with Chris James”

Write Like a Playwright

The best three words to get a good discussion going among writers are: “Show, don’t tell”. When I first heard this instruction, I actually did explode: What do you mean, ‘show’, don’t ‘tell’? I want to TELL a story, for Pete’s sake!

Always remember Jimmy –
Show, don’t tell.

I want to be a storyTELLER – it’s in the job description, you see? And now you tell me that I’ve got to ‘show’ and not ‘tell’ my story? How should I do that, exactly? Put a few arrows around the page, pointing to the words? Draw little pictures of stickmen? Get my printer to emboss cupcake shapes into the pages?

However, that was sometime ago now, and I ascribed my misunderstanding to the fact that I’m left-handed and, all my life, little sayings that everyone understands have left me baffled, unless and until they are explained differently. In this case, it happened with an example I want to share with you. Now, because you read Indies Unlimited, you are clearly a cultured person and doubtless go to the theatre (work with me here, I’ve heard that a little flattery goes a long way). Imagine you’re in a theatre now, watching two characters on the stage. They say this: Continue reading “Write Like a Playwright”