The Great Blogger Book Deal Handicap 2009

BLOGGER BOOK DEAL HANDICAP 2009

RUNNERS AND BETTING

PROBABLE STARTERS

Annie Rhiannon, To The Left Of The Midwest, picaresque account of travel through interregnum United States, 4-1

Christopher Campbell-Howes, Thirty-Six Steps To Vienna, picaresque account of travel to Vienna to pay homage at the grave of Beethoven, 5-2

Robert Self-Pierson, Moonwalking: Discovering Britain By Full-Moon, picaresque account of travel through Britain under a full moon, 6-1

James Henry, The Curious Cabinet, children's fantasy novel, 8-1

Geoff, Contains Mild Beryl, acerbic comic poetry, 9-1

Great She Elephant, The Trouble With Toyboys, a work of what I'm reliably informed is termed 'women's commercial fiction', 6-8

Tim Footman, as yet untitled biography of Leonard Cohen, 3-1

Hannah Blonde, Blonde Moments, 'Sex and the City meets This Life', 8-5

NEW ENTRY Dave East, My Dear Sally, second edition of definitive biography of female Methodist preacher Sarah Mallet, 7-4 on

Patroclus, The Pictish Trial, pop-academic rebuttal of Dr Richard Cox's 'Language of the Ogham Inscriptions of Scotland', 100-1


Which of our redoubtable bloggers will follow Bête de Jour's early lead and score a book deal this year? Place your bets, ladies and gentlemen, and let the great Blogger Book Deal Handicap 2009 commence!

Top Ten 11 Books By Bloggers

One of the things that struck me about the Top 100 bestselling books of 2008 (which I saw in the G2 yesterday and now can't find a link to, annoyingly) was that there were no books by bloggers on the list.

This was a bit of a surprise to me because I'd got it into my head that *all* books these days are drawn from the blogosphere, what with it being a heaving pool of writerly talent and brilliance and whatnot. And even more so now that all the non-writerly bloggers have buggered off to Twitter and Facebook, leaving the 'sphere to ponderous, erudite types who like to think carefully before putting one word in front of another.

But despite the fact that the blogosphere is an enormous vat of literary greatness, and that not a week goes by without another blogger securing a fabulous publishing deal, it seems the bloggers have comprehensively failed to storm the ranks of the authorial élite.

In a way, this is how it should be: bloggers are misfits, outsiders, niche-dwellers, tiny, creeping denizens of publishing's long, scaly tail, not bright, gaudy jewels studding its small, glittering head. Bloggers, by their very nature, are destined to have small, loyal audiences whom they know by name and chat with in their comments boxes, not great big mass audiences that they don't know at all.

So how *do* the bloggers fare, away from the glistening cocoon of the Richard and Judy book club and the halogen-lit dais of the Waterstone's bestsellers table?

I will tell you.

Via the extremely comprehensive and scientific method of 'thinking of some books by bloggers and looking up their respective sales ranks on Amazon', I hereby bring you the DEFINITIVE TOP TEN ELEVEN books by bloggers. Or at least, the books by bloggers that I can think of, off the top of my head (not least because some of them are on my blogroll, related to me, the father of my child, or a combination of the foregoing).

Anyway, without further ado:

The Top 11 Books by Bloggers (That I Can Think Of):


11. Scarecrow Dizzy by James Henry
Amazon Sales Rank: 1,035,630
'Dizzy has the important job of guarding some wet cement, but it's not as easy as it sounds. Squawk, the crow, is determined to land on it. Will Dizzy manage to keep the naughty crow out of mischief?'


10.French Leaves by Christopher Campbell-Howes
Amazon Sales Rank: 943,125
'In this book of short autobiographical vignettes, the author provides a series of funny, touching, bizarre and decidely down-to-earth glimpses of what life is like in the rural southwest of France once the ex-pat's rose-tinted glasses come off.'


9. How To Worry Friends and Inconvenience People by Leila Johnston
Amazon Sales Rank: 251,239
'I bought this book as a gift, but found it such fun that I decided to keep it and buy another copy. The writer has an impish sense of humour, coupled with wry observations. It is not a challenging book but great fun and an excellent present.'


8. Welcome to the Machine by Tim Footman
Amazon Sales Rank: 81,198
'Radiohead have been the subject of many, many books, and it might have seemed difficult to develop a new angle. But by focusing on one album, and looking at the music, movies, books, politics and other factors that influenced its creation, Footman has come up with a really good read. '


7. The Gap Year for Grown-Ups by Annie Sanders*
Amazon Sales Rank: 75,066
'The novel addresses gritty issues of marital boredom, empty nest, teenage angst and middle-aged blundering all with empathy, insight and gentle wit. Clever twists in the story line draw the reader to enagage with each character in turn only to be surprised and intruiged as the plot thickens.'


6. Over You by Lucy Diamond
Amazon Sales Rank: 19,027
'This is Lucy's second book, which once again deals with infidelity, but from a very different angle. A subject that could be difficult to write about, Lucy keeps the tone just right...the events and issues are described in a realistic and believable way, and there's a lightness and humour in there too.'


5. Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
Amazon Sales Rank: 12,022
'This book was a joy to read. You don't need much knowledge of Greek mythology to follow along and the story is utterly engaging right from the start. The premise is incredibly clever and well thought out and has been executed beautifully. It'd make a fantastic book to take on holiday because it's short and snappy. I read it from cover to cover in a couple of days.'


4. Blood, Sweat and Tea by Tom Reynolds
Amazon Sales Rank: 7,812
'Tom is an Emergency Medical Technician who works for the London Ambulance Service in East London. He has kept a blog of his daily working life since 2003 and his award-winning writing is, by turn, moving, cynical, funny, heart-rending and compassionate. It is never less than compelling. '


3. Venn That Tune by Andrew Viner
Amazon Sales Rank: 7,071
'A highly witty, clever book to exercise those little grey cells and stimulate them. Venn That Tune is a wonderful fusion of pop and maths in the shape of charts and diagrams. Somewhat taxing to work them out but highly satisfying and rewarding when one does. The book will make a very good present, whether at Christmas or at any other time of the year.'


2. Girl With A One Track Mind by 'Abby Lee'
Amazon Sales Rank: 2,721
'Girl with One-Track Mind is different. It's the blog of a very liberated, very experimental girl in search of an indefinable sexual something that she's always wanted. Upbeat and chick-litty, but with the thoughtful introspection needed to be interesting.'


1. Wife in the North by Judith O'Reilly
Amazon Sales Rank: 958
'This is a really great read. There is so much to relate to, to laugh at and to sympathise with. Judith writes brilliantly, her style is totally addictive and she has a really poignant way of expressing things, especially her feelings for her children.'

Who have I missed? Maybe together we can compile a Top 100 Books by Bloggers, to rival the Top 100 bestsellers list.


* Ms Sanders may like to identify herself in the comments...

This Post Was Meant To Be About Something Else Entirely

My efforts to bring on labour naturally - in advance of a looming 8am Tuesday deadline for induction - have turned, as you might expect, to the increasingly baroque and desperate.

So desperate in fact that I found myself attempting to spur my recalcitrant uterus into action by reading - or at least trying to read - that 'Wife in the North' book by Judith O'Reilly, which is based on her blog about how her husband knocked her up and made her move 350 miles from London to Northumberland and how unspeakably awful and intolerable the whole situation is.

'Wait a minute!', think I, not for the first time. 'My significant other made me* move 300 miles from London, and knocked me up, AND I have a blog - why haven't I got a book deal?'

The answer (apart from all the obvious stuff, like how this blog has no central premise nor narrative arc, and is in fact a fifth-rate ragbag of poorly conceived rubbish), is that I'm not a former journalist, nor am I chums with popular political blogger Iain Dale, nor therefore am I able to pull any 'strings' among the London 'media power elite'.

(Unless you count that phone call I had with BT the other day, during which I persuaded them not to charge me for selling me their BT Vision service because it turns out that our house is incapable of receiving terrestrial television - you see, this is exactly the kind of unspeakably awful and intolerable situation that would never arise in London, why haven't I got a book deal, etc. etc.)

Nor, to be fair, do I whinge very much about 'having' to move to Cornwall, because Cornwall is every bit as beautiful and idyllic as everyone always says it is, and because I'm quite euphorically happy here almost all of the time, and because, unlike Ms O'Reilly, I am capable of putting petrol in the car.

I did find her book better written than I expected, although the quote on the back cover describing it as 'Cold Comfort Farm with booster seats' is not only deeply misleading but also an outrageous insult to one of greatest and funniest satirical novels ever written in the English language. And I did cry at a couple of the more mawkish bits, but blamed this on hormones. And I do feel sorry for her in some ways, as her husband seemingly did make her and the kids move to an isolated spot in Northumberland and then continued to spend most of his own life in London. (You may feel inclined to draw your own conclusions from this, incidentally.)

But when I got to page 67 and to the third time she complains about running out of petrol in the car because her (absent) husband hadn't filled it for her, I lost patience with her CONSTANT WHINING and threw it on the floor.

Betty recently wrote that Ms O'Reilly seems to think that she is in some way representative of women in Britain today**. Personally I would hope that most women in Britain today are capable of identifying when the car is low on petrol (clue: the red light comes on), and subsequently of driving it to the petrol station and filling it. But then Ms O'Reilly is a Tory, and therefore perhaps more inclined than many to view herself as subordinate to her all-powerful, all-decision-making husband. The Tory worldview of women and their role in society doesn't make me particularly optimistic about our next government, I have to say.

Anyway, I couldn't help noticing that not even the physical effort of dashing a paperback to the floor had succeeded in prompting my waters to break, so in desperation I turned to the next book in the pile of '3 for 2' books I'd brought back from Waterstone's, namely Ben Goldacre's 'Bad Science'.

Which is actually what this post was supposed to be about, but I got distracted almost immediately. Dr Ben and his one-man Quest for Truth will have to wait until tomorrow.

Unless I'm otherwise engaged tomorrow, of course.


* I wasn't exactly uncomplicit in this terrible act of coercion.

** I've just noticed that Betty took umbrage at exactly the same bit as I did, heh.

They Seek Him There...

Stop panicking everyone, the wandering Wyndham has been located! He's in the tearoom, over here, no doubt serving up cake and the finest wines known to humanity.

Hurrah!