Morning campers!
I know that lots of our members are writers (and almost all of us enjoy reading!) so I thought some of you might be interested in helping a friend of mine James. I think this is a great way to support authors and bring new books to the market. I hope you do too! This is what James has to say:
I'm James Flint and I'm the author of three novels - Habitus, 52 Ways to Magic America, and The Book of Ash. It's been a while since I published anything, but I'm currently putting the finishing touches to a new novel I first began over a decade ago. It’s been a long and often difficult journey but now it’s nearing completion I can honestly say that the resulting book is the one I’m most proud of - and my best work to date.
It’s called “Midland” and is the story of two families torn apart by hidden debts of love. The action cuts between the Warwickshire countryside, where I grew up, London, where I now live, and South America, where the novel was in part conceived. It’s character-led contemporary literary fiction, is set in 2006, and I’d say its tone lies somewhere between that of Jonathan Franzen and Ian McEwan, though I’d hope that its voice is all its own.
There’s a little promotional video here to give you more of a flavour:
https://youtu.be/awnHq9jf-a0
“Midland” is going to be published by Unbound, a very exciting new outfit that blends crowdfunding with a more traditional publishing model in order to give readers more of a say in the kinds of books they want to read and writers more of a say in the kinds of books they want to write, cutting out the marketing departments that have hitherto sat in the middle trying to second-guess - or dictate - what both sides should want.
That all means that if you’d like Midland to be published you now have the chance to say so, by pledging for anything from a lowly ebook up to a piece of original artwork from the novel or one of the days out I will be organising later on this year. Details of all the pledges can be found here, on the book’s website:
https://unbound.co.uk/books/midland
What do you get out of it, apart from a copy of the book? Well, even if you just pledge for an ebook you’ll get access to my writer’s “shed”, a kind of interactive blog where I’ll be talking about the process of finishing the novel and posting exclusive content about it. And if you pledge for a hardback, you’ll get a special limited edition crafted by Unbound especially and only for supporters - a far superior edition of the book to the one that will go into bookshops.
Ebook or hardback you’ll get your copy well before the book goes on general sale, although you will have to wait a little while after funding is complete for the final draft to be proof-read, typeset and printed. And finally - and perhaps most importantly - your name will appear on the supporters page included in the back of all editions of the book, so that everyone can see that you had a hand in making Midland a reality.
And just in case you were wondering what happens if it all goes wrong, well, Unbound books have an incredible track record of hitting their funding targets, but if by some remote chance Midland doesn’t get fully funded, no money will be taken from you - so your pledge is risk-free.
That’s enough spiel. Thanks for reading, please do pledge if you can, and if you can’t please go ahead and share details and enthusiasm with anyone in your networks that you think might be interested. The more people we can reach out to the faster Midland will get funded, and the sooner everyone will get their books.
I look forward to seeing you in the Shed!