You’d have to be tied up in a velvet-lined dungeon not to have heard the publishing buzz over FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and its two sequels.  Initially published online as ‘fan-fic’ – fan fiction – the author got picked up by Random House, and the books have been squatting at the top of the bestseller list for a few weeks now.

To be able to talk with authority about what’s selling, I have to keep on top of the latest hot titles.  This means I read books that I wouldn’t otherwise pick up.

I am not the target market for the FIFTY SHADES trilogy.  I am a woman in my forties but although I read the TWILIGHT books (the basis for E.L. James’ novels), I didn’t get bitten by the glittery vampire bug.

Before I started reading, the only description of the book’s contents I’d noticed was when a rather defiant Newsnight presenter announced that there were acts they couldn’t discuss on the BBC at 11pm, but that they included fisting.  It’s not often you hear about fisting on Newsnight.

Initially I was intensely irritated, not least because the quality of the writing didn’t seem good enough to me.  The heroine bites her lip about every seven pages, and the hero announces how erotic he finds the biting about every – ooh – seven pages or so.

By the end of the novel however, I was feeling slightly  - well – better than I thought I would.  It was a little like accidentally eating a Heston Blumenthal Little Chef meal.  The packaging and the content look familiar, but have an element of quality that surprises you.

So what’s good about FIFTY SHADES?

The writing is fairly straightfoward, but she has managed to pull off (no kinky pun intended) the difficult feat of writing about sex without making herself a contender for the Bad Sex Writing Awards.

As in PRETTY WOMAN, the aphrodisiac of shopping entices the reader in to a world where platinum cards are thrown around with careless abandon, and the sheets are always high thread count.

The hero is ‘damaged’ and the heroine is the first woman that has ever managed to uncover his hidden hurt.  Predictable, but also appealing for the audience.

Pacing is sharp, and the ups and downs of the central relationship are nicely judged.  The author has also left the reader on a little cliff-hanger at the end of book one – and if my friend hadn’t heroically read all three volumes, I would have had to read to the end, if only to prove myself right about the hero’s background.

So what about the issue of using someone else’s ideas as the source for your writing?  The rules of copyright are fairly clear, you can’t steal someone else’s actual text, but ideas can’t be copyrighted.  What you can’t do is attempt to deceive the reader, so anyone is free to write S&M sex based on Twilight, but they can’t pretend to be Stephanie Meyers while they do it.

Have you read FIFTY SHADES?  Come on now, don’t be shy – there’s a lot of you out there.  Let me know what you think.  (And who DOES clean the Red Room?  I’ve been wondering…)

‘Our industry appears to have declared open season on the naïve, sometimes gullible hopes of aspiring writers. It’s the Wild West out there, and someone has to say that much of what is happening now is simply not right.’

He compares the conferences, services and critiques available, to publishing taking on the worst aspects of vanity publishing.  They are (in his opinion) providing false hope, and giving out information available for free elsewhere for vastly inflated prices.

‘Agents who charge to review submissions have traditionally been rightly viewed as shysters. Why is this kind of behaviour acceptable now?’

I can’t help feeling he has somewhat missed the point.  I should declare myself here, I am indeed one of these evil prospectors – out there, mining in the slushpile and trampling on dreams for profit.  I might put it a little differently though.

Authors contact me because they have sent their submissions in and got a fairly straightforward rejection.  It gives them no idea of where their writing is on the scale from horrendous to near-miss, and it’s this information that is lacking in the traditional industry.

At Redhammer, Peter Cox offers a free look at an author’s proposed contract, but he is careful to specify he can only offer this service to those being signed up the big publishers.  He runs Litopia to fill a ‘social need’ but does charge $30 a year subscription to cover costs.

Is he seriously suggesting that agencies take the time to send personalised rejections and advice to every slushpile submission?  Editorial consultancies, conferences and personalised sessions with agents exist to fulfill a very real and valid need for detailed information to help an author.

“You too can be a bestselling author!” is the implied pitch (which is a barefaced lie).

Like all parts of the industry, there are good and bad elements to it.  I make a point of telling any prospective clients that any consultancy that promises trade publication is lying, as do all the reputable agencies.

Peter Cox may not have noticed though, but the world of publishing is changing.  Anyone can become a published author – and many do.  You could argue that specific personal editorial advice has never been more needed, particularly for the growing self-published market.

If us ‘slush-pile cowboys’ are able to get unpublished authors out there to consider their work more professionally, to approach agencies and publishers with the right submission packages, to view writing as a skill that can be improved, and to realistically assess their own chances, that must surely be good for the industry as a whole.

What are your thoughts?

Meanwhile, tomorrow is the excellent Cybher bloggers’ conference, and I am delighted to be running one of the afternoon seminars, using ‘freaky mentalist’ Violet Fenn from the Skull Illusion as my guinea-pig.  I was rather surprised to be described as ‘Chic’ though.  After Sian meets me, she’ll be reconsidering that categorisation…

There is a meet and greet linky which I’ll add this to – so

Name :  Cressi (short for Cressida)

Five things you should know about me…
1. I’ve worked in books, publishing, bookselling and editorial services for over twenty years now.
2. I have two children – and enough patience for one and a half children.  Damn
3. I love cocktails, coffee and penguins (not all at once)
4. I am addicted to reading – and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I love my Kindle
5. I am something above a luddite but well below geek in the digital age – definitely an immigrant rather than a native

Looking forward to meeting lots of you there!

We will both be available to give advice on book ideas if you come by – and Louise also lays on a nice sandwich lunch at her stall.  Her stall number is EC1 – stand number A490.  You’ll need to email her to grab a slot on the day.

I will also be offering a LBF special for authors writing for adults – find me to get a discount code.

Now I’m not a shoe person.  My mother is – and, much to my horror, my daughter is.  They can spend hours admiring racks in shoe-shops and debating the benefits of this shoe over that shoe.  I tend to shop once my current pair have fallen apart. I favour watertight as a key shoe attribute.

Anyway, I’d been running a workshop on characters and it suddenly struck me that people tend to be very careful about how the clothes they were portray an element of themselves, but are sometimes less careful about their shoes.

Try this – the next time you’re somewhere busy – look down and just watch shoes for a bit.  Any shoe that looks remotely interesting, look up and see if you’ve guessed the owner correctly.  There were a lot of surprises and some very entertaining combinations.

What shoes do your characters wear – and why?

(Oh – and if you’re at Kings Cross, don’t forget to look up too – it’s beautiful up there).

See the letter for yourself – but the quote I liked most was:

‘There is humor in Dod Grile, but for every laugh that is in his book there are five blushes, ten shudders and a vomit. The laugh is too expensive.’

What reading experience are you giving your audience?  What price do they have to pay to be entertained – and will they think it’s worth it?  Beware of taxing them with step-by-step descriptions or charging them heavily with educational paragraphs to enlighten them.

The most enjoyable reads are those that cost only time and attention, and deliver back exponentially.  What are you charging your readers?

Tasha finds her colleague Jamie attractive but is wary of letting him know, as he’s married and has a handicapped child.  Once Jamie’s wife dies in a tragic car accident, Tasha is upset for him, but also delighted to be able to get close to him and help him recover from his unbearable grief.

I won’t expand further on the plot, but Jamie’s troubles aren’t over.  The novel is written as a confessional from Tasha’s point of view, she’s writing a blog but keeping it private, so in effect it’s a 21st century diary.

I found it very disturbing that Tasha could continue to pursue her rather teenage crush as Jamie’s world crumbles about his ears.  That obsession could be the start of a very powerful psychological thriller where Tasha turns out to be an unreliable narrator, but currently the author seems to want the reader to like Tasha, and be pleased for her happiness.

Nield did manage to get a very strong sense of what Tasha was like but it’s a shame the book didn’t develop along more sinister lines.  Relying on the diary format also leads to a lot of reported speech, and that becomes repetitive.

Classed as erotic fiction in the Kindle store, this does have some steamy but realistic sex scenes – very difficult to write – but the plot surrounding these elements needs work.

Thank you Johanna for letting me read NEW BEGINNINGS.

April’s Self-Published Saturday will be going live on Saturday 14th April.  I look forward to hearing your pitches!

Today’s seemed particularly apt.  I’m running a workshop with Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook this week on submission, and how to get your novel idea and flavour across succinctly.  Most authors seem to take a little warm-up run before they get to the crux of what they want to say, so a pitch would sound like ‘it’s about a woman who is in the 19th century and has discovered something serious about the Royal Family – oh – and there are murders’.

If this is you (and to be honest,it’s all of us really!) try transcribing what you’re saying and then see how you can make it pithy.  For my mythical author above that would be something like ‘Murder linked to the Royal Family, set in the 19th Century’..

Today’s Letter of Note is from Harvey Weinstein and is aimed at a film director, but he’s making the same point.  Have a look and see what you think – there’s also the original ‘boring’ interview for comparison purposes!

Last time we went to this same lush location, we were trapped by an unpronounceable Icelandic volcano – and although we were lucky enough to be staying on, and not having to pay any extra, I did (avert your eyes now please) run out of reading.  Our holiday club was almost entirely filled with Americans (nice ones) who had brought over books I’d already read, or the French, who had interesting books where I could understand one word in three.  Driven to reading terrible celebrity biographies, I lurched at my bookshelves when we returned like a not-very recovering alcoholic faced with an off-license.

This time – I have The Kindle.  It was bought for me as a birthday present last year, by someone close to me with a vested interest in keeping my luggage light – precisely for this sort of occasion.  I like many things about it – and dislike some still – but I am really enjoying knowing that – barring Armageddon - I won’t run out this time.

And – if you’re nosey – because the worst thing about Kindles is not knowing what other people are reading – here are the books I’ve got on there – so far:

A Death in the Family – Karl Ove Knausgaard
Silver – Andrew Motion
Lily: Jetset Mitfit – Yarah David
The Expats – Chris Pavone
Worm – Mark Bowden
Alys, Always – Harriet Lane
Disappearing Home – Deborah Morgan
Killer Instinct – Zoe Sharp
Look at Me – Jennifer Egan
Dark Eden – Chris Beckett
Pure – Andrew Miller
Plan C: Just in Case – Lois Cahall
What it Was – George Pelecanos
The Cold Cold Ground – Adrian McKinty
The Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning – Hallgrimur Helgason
The Hunger Games – Suzanne Collins
How to Leave Twitter – Grace Dent
66 Degrees North – Michael Ridpath
The Emperor of All Maladies – Siddhartha Mukherjee
Nurtureshock – Po Bronson
The Happy Depressive – Alistair Campbell
The Bones of Avalon – Phil Rickman
The Real Me Is Thin – Arabella Weir
The Pacific – Hugh Ambrose
Drowning Rose – Marika Cobbold
The Warden – Anthony Trollope

I can hide them under my Holiday folder – so for once I’ve not read my holiday reading before the plane – and I’ve been steadily adding to it over the last few weeks.  I wonder how many more will make it on there before we take off…

The most enticing submission will win a free review from me – to be published on Saturday 24th March.  Fiction or non-fiction – whichever you’ve written.

Previous entrants may re-enter – (but please change your pitch sentence).