Steve Feasey

The other day I looked over my daughter’s shoulder while she was online and saw she was on YouTube watching pop wannabees banging out ‘bedroom ballads’. What I saw made me smile. I think most of us did that kind of thing when we were younger (the only difference now is that the i-generation think nothing of posting these up to a site where they’re available for everyone and his dog to view). I pointed out that most of the people seemed a little ‘deluded’ and lacking in real talent – most sang covers and very few seemed to play instruments. She quickly pointed out that there were some diamonds in the rough, and proceeded to show me some of her favourite artists that were not signed up to a label but still making some great music. And yes, there were some fabulous singer/songwriters as well as truly talented musicians. The great problem is that it’s difficult to find them amongst the tons of dross that is posted every single day. There’s no filtering process, no way to judge what might be good and what might be bad except the number of views.

Buying an e-book on Amazon’s Kindle site is a bit like that at the moment. A quick glance at the bestselling e-book list reveals a host of novels by hitherto unknown authors selling their wares in the 50-70 pence price bracket. “Bargain,” I hear you shout. And so it would seem.

So I thought I’d check out a couple of the bestselling books that have been self-published by entrepreneurial souls that have seen a way of getting their work out there. I figured that if these books had made it into the Kindle Bestselling Paid list, they must be pretty good, and the star rating that went along with the two I selected seemed to suggest this would turn out to be the case. One was a crime thriller set in Glasgow, the other a paranormal fantasy. The thriller was very good, and I can see how a book as well written as this could and should have been in the list for as long as it has been. The other was little short of calamitous. It was a poorly written, ill-thought out and badly executed mish-mash of claptrap, and not worth a single penny of the seventy-odd that I paid for the privilege of downloading it.

“Oh, come on,” I hear you shout, “it was seventy pence, what do you expect?”

“Something readable.” Is the answer.

But there’s another problem. I listened to an extremely interesting interview on a web broadcast the other day in which Maureen Johnson argued lucidly and unambiguously against an article that suggested too many books aimed at the YA market had content in them that was ‘inappropriate’ and potentially ‘damaging’ for their young target audience. I won’t dwell on the rights and wrongs of this too much, but I think Maureen did a great job of dispelling this scaremonger’s notions (you can read a potted version of what she was saying here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/jun/08/teen-fiction-dark-young-adult). As a writer for a young audience I am aware that there is a line that should not be crossed in terms of both content and the means of communication in my books. I try not to overstep that boundary, but sometimes I fail. And when I do, my wonderful editor points out these indiscretions and suggests new means that I might like to consider expressing my ideas. I’m not talking about censorship via the backdoor here, but a set of checks and balances that ultimately mean that the books are age appropriate and don’t contain subject matter that any right-minded individual would consider wrong for a book aimed at young readers. Most of us think we have a pretty finely tuned moral compass, and would instinctively know what is acceptable. But not all of us do, and without an editor, these checks and balances can go amiss.

All of this makes it sound as though I’m anti self-publishing, and that couldn’t be further from the truth. I think that publishing is on the cusp of a new age which should be welcomed by all of us involved in promoting reading and the love of fiction. As a reader I salivate at the exciting prospects that devices like e-readers and i-pads can provide. And as a writer I look forward to creating works that the new generation can easily access and interact with. What worries me is that without a filtering system in place to try to separate the wheat from the chaff, readers will be put off and possibly lost forever.