Hard Facts

The difficult truths I'm learning right now about my choice to publish books in an uncompromising and independent way

I wanted to show you all Joe McLaren’s full, finished cover design for Everything Will Swallow You, which came hot off the press this morning. It’s all I hoped it would be and more. Joe always seems to instinctively grasp the feel of what I write and, were it entirely up to me, he’d be designing my books from here to eternity. The Amazon page is now also up for pre-orders which I guess means this huge thing that was once just in my not particularly intelligent but overcrowded brain is actually going to be part of the physical planet.

I was thinking of serialising the first third of EWSY - as my editor Imogen and I are now tending to call it - here, for free, in the lead up to its publication in March, and wondered how you might feel about that. I say “the first third” because I fear if I serialised the whole thing it would… swallow this newsletter somewhat. And in my eyes the book is now already part of my creative past and I want to make new writing - for which I have many plans - the primary focus of this Substack.

I am so, so excited about EWSY, and about getting it into your hands, despite a few other things about the planet, publishing, and my own future that are currently frightening me as we slide into the thinnest, most malefic part of winter.

You can’t allow yourself to become complacent in a writing life. I already knew that, and I don’t believe I have become complacent, but recently I have relearned that fact, which probably doesn’t hurt, in the wider scheme. A few months ago I’d just submitted the first draft of EWSY, my second novel 1983 was about to be published, my Substack subscriber count was growing rapidly - giving, most pleasingly of all, my first novel Villager a new readership outside the UK - and I was feeling positive about the prospect of a bumpy writing life finally yielding some solid results, three long decades in.

I don’t know of anything specific I’ve done wrong since then: I’ve continued to write, albeit at a marginally less frantic pace, and worked harder than ever on EWSY’s edit. But the rest has been quite humbling. My publishers appear to be going through some difficulties and still haven’t paid me money that was owed to me half a year ago, and whether they’re going to be able to pay me due royalties next month for the other six books I’ve published with them currently seems in serious doubt. I go into bookshops and often can’t find 1983 in there, it was wholly ignored by UK legacy media, and it’s become apparent to me that many people who enjoyed its immediate predecessors don’t realise it even exists. I wait for a call from my agent bringing good news, and it doesn’t come, as it once regularly did. Meanwhile, I’ve lost nearly three dozen paid subscribers on Substack and my general growth here has pretty much ground to a halt (which I realise is just part of the ebb and flow of a site where there is too much to read, but on bad days somehow serves to punctuate my financial concerns regarding my books). I feel exhausted from promoting my work in an effort to compensate for the lack of conventional marketing heft behind it. I don’t want to ask people to buy my books any more; I just want to write, and learn. Being a one man band takes its toll, and even more so when you are not being remunerated for your effort. I know I’m writing the best books of my life, but the future - the future of publishing books in general - scares me. I am extraordinarily glad for Substack right now because it means I do not have to worry about keeping a roof over my head - not this winter, at least.

Sometimes I feel like I want to quit. I wish someone would just tell me it was allowed. But when I get that feeling, it’s a contradiction. The central thrust of my feeling of wanting to quit is that quitting might give me more time to write. So what do I want to quit? I want to quit the feeling that to make this come even close to being sustainable I must not just write books, but continue to be doing everything I possibly can, all the time, to stop my books from dying. In other words I want to quit the worry. At least some of it. Maybe dial it down from 100% to just 38%? I’d settle for that. I realise that a bit of worry can be useful. I don’t want to be one of those people who live completely without worry. Those people freak me out.

Overall I tend to come back to the realisation that I’m fortunate to be able to earn my living this way at all, especially as a person without generational wealth behind him, coming from the area and cultural background that I do. I am fortunate to have the support of bright, passionate readers and a channel to reach them. I am long enough in the tooth to realise this dark period will pass, and it’s probably a turning point - perhaps, ultimately, a positive one. But it hurts, too. The times it hurts most are when I see clearly that by choosing a more independent path, by separating myself from the media and contacts I once had within it, by working harder to write better books than I once did, I’ve made my life more stressful. There is absolutely no doubt that, nine years ago, when I chose a more stubborn path, it would have been better for my health to have compromised, if not for my soul. What I see too often is that the world wants me to be a lazier, louder, better-connected writer. Social media, meanwhile, of course feels like a machine constructed to remind you (falsely) that you’re not doing as well as everyone else, and that goes for authors especially, some days. I often despair, seeing the discord between the flattering, passionate reader feedback I get and my Amazon sales rankings/the literary world’s general indifference to what I do. But those thoughts lead nowhere good or productive. Oddly, what I in fact realise is that a more positive way to look at it is this:

What I have written is simply not good enough.

When I decide that this is the cause of what is happening to my books in the marketplace - that it’s not about injustice, or cliques, or my refusal to fit in and play the game, or people not reading fiction any more, or the depressing reduction of everything in our culture to surface noise - I feel better.

I need to improve. I need to learn more, write more.

Because there is always a way to improve.

I am still (just) in my 40s: a mere adolescent, in literary terms.

Maybe what I thought was lunch, or afternoon tea, was in truth just elevenses.

Then, when I’ve realised that, I begin to buzz about what I’m going to do next.

I just have to keep the faith that I will find a way to get it out there, somehow.

In the meantime, I will write here, and I trust that’s where the improvement I am so excited about will begin. And I hope I am also brave enough to spend less time promoting my previous works in the process.

There’s too much writing about writing on the internet. I intend this to be the last of it from me for a while. Look out soon for some new short fiction, and a short piece about ghosts, which will undoubtedly be much sillier and more cheerful than this one.

Yours, worried, but optimistic, in the darkening days,

Tom