Mariella Frostrup Plays the Mischievous Minx

It all started with the Book Show from Sky Arts turning up at the house to film me waffling about ghostwriting. Pleasant sunny day, guard down, camera running, my questioner enquired if I wouldn't prefer to write "in my own voice", or something similar.
What I wanted to convey was the idea that I wasn't particularly interested in hearing anything I had to say, but I was interested in hearing from other people with more interesting backgrounds. What actually happened was I proferred the opinion that the world had heard enough over the last five hundred years of people like me, ("middleclass, middleaged, middlebrow, male and english speaking"), pontificating and that it was time to give the rest of the world a bit of hearing.
The filmed interviews ended, (Hunter Davies and Kirsty Crawford had also appeared and been very charming), and the viewers were returned to the studio where, to my horror, distinguished novelists Robert Harris and Peter James sat listening to me pontificating, as if deliberately illustrating my own point, (if only I could lay claim to such subtle powers of irony). Mariella Frostrup, armed with her most disarming of smiles, then suggested to them that they were the under attack as "middleaged, middleclass, male and english speaking pontificators", (mercifully she let them off the "middlebrow" accusation).
Eek. These two were most defintely not who I had in mind. Most of Peter James's books of crime and policework are very much not set in the world of the middleclass etc etc, and Robert Harris tells tales on the very rich and very powerful, who are just as colourful and interesting as the underdogs of society. To make it worse, I know them both. Peter is a chum of long standing and Robert very sweetly quoted my "Ghostwriting" book at the start of every chapter of his novel, "The Ghost".
Both of them, mercifully, did not rise to the bait that the Mischievous One was dangling and doled out only the mildest of reprimands before saying very forgiving things. I felt a little like I had been hauled into the common room and told off by two much admired teachers for some piece of smart-alecry which I had meant for other staff members. Yet another illustration of why it is infinitely preferable to stay behind the scenes as a ghost and let other people do the media pontificating.

Brighton's Own Gatsby

Peter James is a phenomenon.

He threw a launch party for his latest detective novel, “Dead Like You”, at the end of Brighton Pier the other night and during the speeches his publisher announced that the book had gone straight into the hardback charts at number one.

Record numbers of translations and foreign sales and other mind-boggling statistics were also being bandied about. In an age when everyone is bemoaning the state of publishing and the decline of the book Peter is glowing evidence that people still want to read well told stories if they are marketed to them with enough energy and enthusiasm.

The most extraordinary aspect of that warm summer’s evening was that despite Peter’s enviable success, not one of the several hundred guests could be heard breathing the slightest criticism of the man himself. No one, it seems, ever has a bad word to say of this extraordinarily kind, amiable, generous and talented man. He simply defies cynicism. Anyone who has ever helped him on his way, right back to the English master who inspired him at school and up to the man who is going on Mastermind with Peter’s detective, Roy Grace, as his specialist subject, had been included in the celebration.

Twenty years ago Peter was one of the few people actively prophesying the inevitable approach of electronic readers. He was the first serious author I know of who actually produced a book on disc and became involved in the launch of an internet server. Since then he has produced films, raced cars, become a virtual member of the Brighton police force as well as visiting others all round the world. He is the Jay Gatsby of our time.

The Future of Books as Big Events

The big fear in the publishing world seems to be that books will go the same way as CD’s, rendered redundant by the wonders of the Internet. But maybe books will survive and prosper in the same way as blockbuster movies and pop concerts have.

Movies that you have to travel to and then pay to see should have been put out of business by television, by the DVD and by downloading, but still people flock to the multiplexes for the big screens and the social experience. Live pop concerts should have been destroyed by CD's and Ipods, but actually they have been fed by them instead. CD’s were just a way to listen to music, whereas books, like movies, live theatre and music, are much loved and user-friendly products in themselves.

That’s not to say that technology shouldn’t be changing the whole way we think of books, many of which do not need to be published in the traditional way. Business books, for instance, and topical academic works are often served much better by the convenience and speed of the computer download, (and the Kindle and the Sony Reader et al will take the concept to the next stage).

Peter James, now one of the world’s most successful thriller writers, has been predicting such things for at least twenty years and is finally being proved to have been both right and ahead of his time. His own enormous successes in the traditional publishing formats however, demonstrate that the book is still a long way from being dead.

What I believe the developments show us is that we have actually been publishing books the wrong way round, starting with the hardback format and then, if that is successful, republishing in ever-cheaper paperback versions. What if we turned the whole process on its head?

Imagine a writer has created a 70,000-word piece of work. We start by circulating it on the Internet, maybe doing some print-on-demand to test the market and build word of mouth. Maybe it will get no further, in which case it probably wouldn’t have worked as a book either, but at least trees will have been spared in the new process. If it does well, however, and shows that it has a potential market, it could then be published in paperback for a wider market.

If the paperback proves successful then beautifully designed, hardback souvenir editions could be produced as gift items and to be treasured on bookshelves for future generations. Hardback books would then be the equivalent of the great pop concerts that cater to demands that have initially been fed with downloaded tracks, videos on MTV, CD’s and all the rest.

There would still be exceptions like sure-fire hits, (a new Harry Potter for instance or a lushly illustrated companion to a popular television cookery programme), but I believe the vast majority of books would suit this route to market. It is as ridiculous to put a first time, unknown novelist straight into a glossy hardback, as it would be to book an unknown band into the O2 Centre.