So, things here are moving at a bit of a slow pace. Not sure if that’s good or bad, I have days where I really can’t be bothered and just feel like a complete failure, and then I have other days when I’m motivated to make things work out….I think that’s just called being human.

I went for a job interview the other day (@lami - hence nervous status on fb) for a part time sale assistant job in a shop here. It was a group interview thing. I hate those. ‘Let’s see how you work in a team, and how confident you are while we make you pretend to like the person you’re working with on these pointless tasks when you all know you’re in competition with each other.’

Ah well, I wont know if I got it until Friday, so we’ll see.

I’ve been kind of stuck for things to do lately, and I know it aggravates the boy, as he is quite happy entertaining himself playing video games all day, and I just sit around bored. I need to find a hobby which actually interests me, and will hold my attention for any period of time - problem is, most engaging hobbies cost money, something I am severely lacking in these days.

For quite a while I’ve wanted to write a book, and I thought that maybe this was a good idea - something to occupy my time, and, more relevantly, my constantly working mind. The boy knows someone at work who has recently had his book published. This guy is relatively wealthy in years and has been trying and failing to find a publisher for quite some time now, even involving an agent. So when I heard that he’d managed it I was really pleased for him…until I came to find out the details.

He hasn’t so much had his book published, as published it himself in ebook form on a well-known merchant website with their own branded ebook reader. This means that each copy of his book sells for about £2.00 - of which this company takes 30%. He has currently had 10 sales.

Apparently, this is now how the literary world works. The only way to get publishers to take on your book, is to publish it first, get it noticed, get a high number of downloads per month. Then, and only then, will a publisher approach you to put your book out in hard copy - when they can already pretty much guarantee that it will make them money. 

This depresses me so very much.

Being a self-confessed geek and lover of gadgetry I would usually champion any integration of technology with existing areas of life. But books, I’m not so sure about.

Aside from the fact that I think that books should be tactile - the experience of a book should involve actually turning physical pages - I’m fully aware of the amount of work, time and effort that goes into writing one. I just find it unfair, even in today’s economic climate, to only pay some one who has taken the time to craft something potentially unique for your entertainment 70% of £2.00.

Particularly as, from recent work experience, I know just how much money other people make from doing precisely nothing. It just makes me angry and sad at the same time.

This being said, the guy in question seems to be happy enough doing this, although perhaps as he’s already tried every other option with no joy. It might be that his book really isn’t worth publishing, but therein lies yet another problem with being able to publish your own work - the web is now full of rubbish, just because people can put it there. He said that he is up against people who have ‘published’ over 100 ‘books’ (which are really only short stories) but, because of the number of them, they are higher up in the rankings than others who maybe only have one, really good novel.

I now how the net works. Having been in the industry I am in, anyone can cheat the system. As long as you have the right key words and the right tags, what you actually say with them doesn’t really seem to matter. And that’s the sad truth of it at the moment.

So maybe I’ll find another hobby.