Posh-Publishing Embraces Self-Publishing

Faber and Faber, poshest of the posh old guard publishers, (T.S. Eliot, Peter Carey, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Sylvia Plath - you get the picture), run a thing called The Faber Academy - http://www.faberacademy.co.uk/ - and are launching a three-day course on self-publishing in February 2012 entitled "Bring Your Book to Market". The tutors are Ben Johncock http://www.benjohncock.com/ and Catherine Ryan Howard http://www.catherineryanhoward.com/ .

I met Mr Johncock, who runs a thing called The Twitter Consultancy, in a BBC radio studio in Oxford a year or two ago. I was still somewhat in a funk about social media at the time, but already uneasily aware that the things this extraordinarily bouncy young man was talking about were probably the future and sooner or later I was going to have to get my head round them. (The programme was being mediated by the fabulous Sue Cook - http://www.suecook.com/ - who was also proselytising on the joys of social media, making me even more aware that I might be cowering a little further from the cutting edge than was wise).

Catherine Ryan Howard I have not met, but she is a successful self published author and comes across on her website/blog etc as being very jolly, truthful, self-aware and endearing.

Not only are Faber and Faber an extremely bright bunch of people, (their editors re-wrote "Lord of the Flies" for William Golding for heaven's sake), they are also not afraid of things cutting edge - a point proven by their recent adoption of Jarvis Cocker as Editor-at-Large, which followed a similar appointment for Peter Townshend some time ago, when the old boy was still pretty cutting edge himself. If they are embracing the idea of self-publishing and the need for us to learn how to use social media properly, then I think we can safely assume that there is now no going back.

I find this is all enormously encouraging having just launched an ebook of my own, "The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer", (http://www.maggiedebeer.com/) and opened a Twitter account.

Were "Page Three Girls" the Founders of Modern Celebrity Culture?

Spending time with Maggie de Beer, helping promote her autobiography – “The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer” - has led me to pondering. Would it be fair to say that she and her fellow “Page Three Girls” became the founders of the modern celebrity circus in 1970 when they were persuaded for the first time by The Sun to take off their tops in a national newspaper?

Was that the moment when the concept of “being famous for being famous” first took root, when someone merely had to look sexy in front of a camera to start being treated as a VIP?

Of course the Sixties witnessed many meteoric and fleeting success stories, but those celebrities had usually sung a hit song, taken a photograph for the cover of Vogue or invented a new hairstyle. When glamour modelling went legit and the media started to write about the girls as well as showing their pictures it discovered the public’s surprising willingness to be intrigued, a fascination which survives forty years later with the likes of Katie Price and reality show contestants. I doubt if Maggie and the other girls had any idea they were changing society forever when first persuaded to whip their tops off for the boys.

Famous Mother and Daughter Reunited on Website

To be separated from your child at birth must be one of the most painful experiences any mother can endure. Worse of course to have them die before you, but there is a very special agony in knowing that they are alive, growing up somewhere else, in someone else’s care, loving someone else, and that you have no part in their lives.

The reunion of such mothers with their lost children is bound to be fraught with dangers. What if they hate you? Blame you? Want nothing to do with you? What if they have been told nothing of your existence and would prefer not to be disillusioned about those they believe to be their true parents? What if it looks like you are back only to cash in on their good fortune and new found fame?

Despite all of the above we have a happy ending for Maggie de Beer and Steffi McBride – mother and daughter are now reunited on a new website, with both of them telling their sides of the dramatic story of both their rises to fame and the secret that kept them apart for so many years.

http://www.maggiedebeer.com/

Maggie and Me in Seventies London

Maggie de Beer and I arrived in London in the same year – 1970, although she was only 15 and I was by then a sophisticated 17. We both had our fabulous dreams. She was going to be a star and I had my lightweight portable typewriter, which I trusted was going to make my fortune.

Of course she ended up as a national treasure through the wonders of reality television and the celebrity media circus and I am no more than a Boswell to her soaring Johnson, but I feel we understand one another. We share a timeline, arriving in Earls Court, sandwiched between the much trendier areas of Chelsea and Kensington, on the tail end of the much trendier Swinging Sixties. Then it felt like we had come in at the end of the party, but everything was about to change. Credit cards and parking meters were still a rarity and we had Hughie Green rather than Simon Cowell, Petula Clark rather than Lady Gaga.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/86679

Learning to Love Maggie de Beer

Maggie de Beer first came to my attention half way through the writing of a memoir for her daughter – Steffi McBride. In fact that was when Steffi first learned of her existence too, (it’s all explained in her book “The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride”).

Initially, of course, Maggie’s behaviour seemed pretty indefensible – I mean giving up your child for the sake of your career, particularly a career like hers, is hardly the work of heroines – but as I got to know her better I became intrigued. It must have taken some guts to leave a safe and secure home at fifteen and never look back, and the woman had to be admired for her single minded perseverance in her pursuit of fame and glamour. She endured over thirty years of endless disappointment but she managed to keep on believing in herself and refused to give up hope.

Of course she only got her big break because of Steffi, but my God she was ready for it when it came, knowing exactly how to exploit this window of opportunity for all it was worth.

I found myself becoming increasingly fascinated by her single minded personal ambition to be famous and adored, and so I wrote her side of the story, starting with her leaving home in 1970 and then following her through to the eventual rise to fame she had worked so long and hard for. Her story pretty much mirrors the rise of today’s celebrity culture itself, from the arrival of “Page Three” girls through to the explosion of reality television nearly forty years later.

One of the attractive things about Maggie is her refusal to complain about the terrible price she had to pay for having her fabulous dreams come true.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/86679

From "Blockbusters" to "Systemcrashers"

So, the button has been pressed and The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer are available for the whole world to read at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/86679 . Simple. People don't even have to worry about queueing round the block to get their copy. Instead of "blockbusters" authors should now aim to produce "systemcrashers".

Maggie de Beer Cover Image

We have an excellent new cover. Using the same model, (see picture in previous post), designer Elliot Thomson has created a look which is eerily reminiscent of the sort of poster I would have had on the walls of my Earls Court bedsit in the very early Seventies.

My publisher, Paul Hurst, is now preparing for the technical launch into the cyber marketplace.

Fifteen year-old Maggie arrives in London on the run from her humdrum suburban life, determined to make it big in show business.

For more than thirty years she is exploited by both men and the media. She struggles against endless set-backs and disappointments, always remaining optimistic, always believing that this time her big break has come. Then, when most of us would have given up all hope, the celebrity circus rockets her to bizarre and unexpected pinnacles of fame.

Starting in 1970 Maggie de Beer’s journey mirrors the rise of celebrity culture and the growth of the media which ruthlessly created it, exploiting and destroying the lives of girls like Maggie who willingly offered themselves up, happy to make any amount of personal sacrifices in exchange for a chance to live the dream. She is determined to make herself “interesting” and only when she finally achieves her goal, at enormous personal cost, does she discover, under the full glare of the media spotlight, that the family she was running away from was never as humdrum as she had believed.

“This, I thought as the chauffeured car slid me back from Park Lane to Earls Court behind darkened windows, is what life must have been like for party girls like Christine Keeler in the sixties. I had found my Xanadu, the place where I was meant to be …”

This is the story of a woman who just wanted to be recognised and loved by the whole world.

Blake Publishing Buys Autobiography of Steffi McBride’s Mother.

Blake Publishing has bought the rights to the autobiography of notorious but fictional ex-vice-girl Maggie de Beer.
Maggie, who ran away from home at the age of fifteen in search of fame and fortune, was one of the original ‘Page Three Girls’. The actress and singer became well known for her hard partying, rock and roll lifestyle, and for the many insights into the jet set lifestyle that she provided for the public as the all-time ‘Queen of Kiss-and-Tell’.
More recently she became a household name as the estranged mother of soap star Steffi McBride. The moving tale of their reunion was told last year by Steffi herself in her book, ‘The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride’, (also published by Blake).
Fifteen year-old Maggie became an infamous fixture on the glamorous London social scene soon after she arrived in 1970, emerging as a regular pin-up girl on ‘The Benny Hill Show’ and in the many West End farces and sex shows staged by Soho show business king, Paul Raymond.
In ‘The Fabulous Dreams of Maggie de Beer’ Maggie will be talking for the first time about what really went on in the steamy world of international nightclubs and hotels and revealing the secrets within her family that shocked even her.
‘Every teenager dreams of running away from home at some time,’ says ghostwriter, Andrew Crofts, ‘but not many of us have the nerve to actually do it. There are so many traps waiting out there for the innocent and the reckless. Maggie is one of life’s great survivors. She made a pact with the Devil for the chance to follow her dreams and paid the ultimate price. Her extraordinary adventures make for compelling reading; a parable for our media and showbiz-obsessed times.’