Christopher Rae's Blog

Given the current economic environment one might be forgiven for taking a dim view of the future generally. But let’s assume that at some point in the not too distant future we resume activity consistent with long-term trends, and things get back to “normal”.

The ebook is still in its infancy. Will it turn out to be a passing fad? Will users tire of their Kindles/iPads/Nexus etc and return to the printed books they were weaned on?

Well, some will, and some won’t. I suspect many people will gradually adapt to a mixed economy, still enjoying their printed books and occasionally buying new ones, while taking advantage of the convenience of the e-reading experience as well.

But the economic pressure on the printed book won’t go away. It’s just too expensive to produce and distribute. One click of my mouse buys me a Kindle book which appears on my device seconds later – that is simply impossible for the traditional publishing industry to compete with. When I’ve finished writing a book, editing and correcting my manuscript, I just publish it, and a few hours later it’s on sale all over the world. If I write something, even if I consider it to be of interest only to a tiny minority, I can still publish it within hours.

If we look at the music industry it’s pretty clear that the younger generation were perfectly happy to swap quality for convenience when the mp3 arrived. My kids, in their early twenties, have never owned a hi-fi system, and think that buying CD’s is inexplicable. They only listen to music online, as far as I can tell, or via a device such as a phone or tablet.

It may be the same with books, because the majority will happily forgo the subjectively superior quality experience of turning the crisp pages of a beautifully designed and typeset hardback in exchange for the convenience and lower cost of the ebook. No one thinks about vinyl records now, except a small rump of collectors and aficionados. Will it be the same with books? Those treasured hardbacks will still exist, and people will still make them, but the market for them will shrink inexorably, and as a result they will become more and more expensive. Collector’s items, prized and highly valued, but increasingly marginal.

A word of caution. The demographic is different with books, and stretches across the age range more than with music, where interest and consumption is heavily skewed towards young people. I think this means that the ebook will not spread quite as rapidly as the mp3 music file did.

But the writing, as they say, is still on the wall.

A controversial view of public libraries from author Terry Deary. But he reveals a rather interesting fact in the course of this Guardian interview. He says that if one of his books is borrowed he gets 6.2p via PLR, whereas if it is sold he gets 30p. Based on the current Amazon price of a typical Deary paperback that means he receives just less than 7% of the cover price. This is exactly one tenth of what Kindle authors can receive. Of course you might argue that conventional publishing and promotion is what has enabled Mr Deary to reach the point where 500,000 people want to borrow his books rather than buy them, and there aren’t many ebook-only authors yet with that level of interest in their efforts. But it does expose the vulnerability of the traditional business model of publishing in very stark terms. As the Amazon juggernaut rolls on, will people still prefer to borrow a dog-eared paper copy of that book from the library when they could read it cheaply on a shiny, new e-reader or tablet? And will authors like Mr Deary still be willing to accept such a low percentage of the revenue their books generate?

Still digesting the extraordinary announcement from Leicester, the condition of the skeleton, and the impact of the facial reconstruction. Watching the C4 documentary I was troubled by the often flippant presentation, and by the uneasy feeling at times that it was all too good to be true. An amazing stroke of archaeological luck, or simply good detective work?

And now the wrangling begins over the re-interment. As the last Plantagenet king he belongs in either Westminster Abbey, or at Windsor, but the interests of Leicester and York will no doubt be stoutly represented.

The condition of the spine was of particular interest for me, since in writing G I had tended towards the view that the traditional depiction of Richard as a crippled hunchback, the “Crookback” of legend, was pure fiction, a product of the Tudor propagandists. But having studied some of the material on scoliosis it does seem likely that he really did suffer from this malformation of the spine.

I thought of Ivar the Boneless, the Viking chieftain who led the Great Heathen army in the invasion of England in 865. It is thought by some that Ivar suffered from brittle bone disease and was unable to walk, but this didn’t prevent him from leading his men into battle, supposedly carried on a shield. Disability was not necessarily a practical barrier to men who were determined to carry out the functions allotted to them by birth.

Richard’s participation in the vigorous, physical milieu he was born into must have been more difficult for someone with scoliosis, but not impossible. His reputation as a military leader seems to have been largely unaffected by the condition, and like most nobles of his day he would have needed to spend long days in the saddle to go about his business. He may have suffered from back pain related to the condition but can hardly have been incapacitated by it. Although more sophisticated treatment is available today than in the late 15th century, the discovery that Usain Bolt has the condition seems to confirm the perception that scoliosis doesn’t necessarily hold people back from physical endeavour.

But it seems likely that the effects of the disease on his physical appearance must have been visible, and of course his enemies would have delighted in highlighting anything that might be used against him.

Assuming all of this is true, one has to accept the possibility that some aspects of the Tudor black propaganda against the king were rooted in reality.

Interview with Kerry Stott – talking about historical fiction

A number of ebooks are free over the holidays – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!

A Letter to Tiberius – Short Story for Christmas

Johanna

California

The Four Draft Process

Dead Beats One is a new anthology of contemporary poetry from Sheffield in the UK. The Dead Beats group was founded by three English Lit students at Sheffield University.

A pro bono project for me, and a good one too – great to hear some exciting, new voices!

I think it was Ken Russell who first drew my attention to this in an interview regarding his film “The Devils”, concerning the events surrounding the celebrated episode of demonic possession involving the nuns of Loudun, and the subsequent gruesome death of the priest Urban Grandier. Russell had favoured a modern look for the sets of the film, and answered a query on why he had done this by saying that the people of Loudun in the 1630′s considered themselves to be living in the modern age, in contemporary times, just as we do, and he wanted the look of the film to reflect that perception.

Reading Rose Tremain’s “Restoration” I was struck, once again, by her ability to evoke a sense of contemporaneity, and to create the illusion for us of characters who exist very much in their own time. Her masterful “Music and Silence”, set at the court of Christian IV of Denmark in the 1630′s, achieved the same effect with equal dexterity.

For us these real individuals live in the past, they are historical phenomena, and their strange clothes, manners and speech all serve to confirm it. But the essential truth, grasped so skilfully by writers of Tremain’s ability and intelligence, is that they lived in their own present, and saw themselves as exemplars of their own contemporaneity. They were living in the here and now, as we do. To them the future in which we exist was as cloudy and distant as our own future is to us, and their own conception of the past was quite different to our own. The distance between Merivel’s time and the Wars of the Roses is roughly the same as the distance between our time and Waterloo. To us someone like Edward IV seems an almost impossibly remote figure, whereas Wellington does not.

Merivel is a buffoon, but a strangely lovable one. His crush on Charles II is curiously endearing, and gives us an intimation of the veneration of royalty felt by so deeply by many ordinary Englishmen in the 17th century, which persists even to the present day. The King’s favour is everything, he is the source of light and warmth as much as of pecuniary advantage, and Tremain provides us with an acute insight into the psychology of the subject under a monarchy which was still convincingly absolute in many respects, despite the convulsions of the brief republican era. It is difficult to imagine anyone feeling quite the same way about Cromwell. Merivel’s star waxes and wanes upon the whim of the king, he is a gullible pawn, cynically manipulated in the service of the royal amours.

Merivel’s gloomy and ascetic friend Pearce functions as the voice of the more Puritanical temper of the time, disapproving of Merivel’s pretensions and the pleasure he takes in the trivial and ephemeral, and Pearce’s death could be seen as standing for the suppression of this tendency under Charles. And we can also see Merivel himself as standing for Charles, in the long and difficult exile which finally culminates in his own restoration, and in the progression from fool to wise man through bitter experience of the world.

Above all Merivel amuses us, and in our amusement we locate an empathy which enables us to feel close to the world of Restoration England. The book is a model for the sort of deep effects good historical fiction can create, and I am looking forward very much to seeing how our bumbling hero fares in the recently published sequel.

Sometimes it is only when you have finished that the full resonance of something sinks in.

It seems clear that the invasion and subsequent coup of 1485 were essentially the result of French action, making use of Henry Tudor to fulfil a long standing policy directed towards neutralising England, and to some extent towards exacting a full measure of revenge for the insults and depredations of the past.

The priorities for Louis XI, and his successor Charles VIII, were firstly, securing the integrity of the French state by annexing Brittany, and secondly, invading Italy in support of the claim to the throne of Naples. Neither of these objectives could be safely pursued if a potentially aggressive England had to be accounted for.

But of course when we think about the Tudors, it is not just Henry VII, or even Henry VIII we are concerned with, but Elizabeth herself, the magical symbol of English independence and sovereignty. It is easy to understand a reluctance to discuss anything which might serve to undermine the magic, and to suggest that her dynasty was only in power in the first place because of French policy.

Henry’s 1st attempt to invade in support of Buckingham’s rebellion was a dismal failure, which might easily have spelled the end of his career as a plausible pretender, as well as an extended period of Yorkist dominance. It was only with French blessing, and material support, that he was able to try again and succeed, and some of those who turned their coats at Bosworth may have been well aware that they were up against the might of France herself.

As I wrote the 2nd part of G I became more and more impressed by Louis XI, the “Great Spider”. Putting Edward IV on his payroll in 1475 was merely the prelude to the conclusion of the policy – actually installing a French client on the English throne.

The concluding part of G is now available from Amazon.

Since it is fiction it doesn’t do anything to amend or update the historical account. The job of G is really to lead the reader into questioning it, and perhaps also by implication to a broader scepticism concerning the accounts offered to us by the victors in the struggles of power and realpolitik.

Were the Princes really murdered in their beds and buried secretly somewhere in the Tower?

Was Henry Tudor really put onto the throne as a French client, in revenge for 1475 and Piquigny?

Was the character assassination of Gloucester instigated by Morton, to help a regime desperate to defend its own threadbare legitimacy?

G – God and My Right USA

G – God and My Right UK

[image error]