Tag Archives: revolution

Bits and bobs

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Hugh Howey

Ok, just a few things.

  1. Sorry for the lack of posts in here. The book has kinda taken over my life, I will try to rectify that in the future.
  2. My other blog site robcutforth.com is still hacked and still pumping out garbage. There is nothing I can do to stop it. If you subscribe to that blog, please delete your subscription
  3. There are reviews forthcoming for the book. Creative Tourist, Leftlion magazine, Northern Soul and a few assorted environmental campaigner types are reviewing it. I will post them here when I get them.
  4. I am writing for Creative Tourist again. Here is the first bit of non-fiction I’ve done in awhile… readers of my Leftlion column will recognise the style 🙂 Polari Mission at the John Rylands

Got a nice message from the uber-famous Hugh Howey in response to putting him in the back of my book.

"Rob, what an honor, man. Thanks for the kind note. And I love the acknowledgement. Not dirty words indeed.

Best of luck to you with your work. Keep writing, my friend!

-Hugh"

So that’s quite cool. If you don’t know who Hugh Howey is, he’s basically the biggest selling self-published guy going. He’s sold millions of books and the film rights to his book Wool have been bought by Ridley Scott. Not like he needs any more help, but if you haven’t read Wool, you should. It’s immense. Industrial Revolution would not have been self-published if it hadn’t been for him. I’ll let you decide whether that’s good or bad.

If you are reading this and have a blog or a magazine or whatever and want a free copy of the book to review, email me at robcutforth [AT] gmail [DOT] com. Be honest, I can take it!

I promise I will write more in here once all the book stuff dies down!

One of those people

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Self-publishing is a choice, yeah, a decision I made after years of careful thought. It’s political, man. Publishing houses are evil art destroying factories and agents are just heartless robots with chainsaws for arms and dollar signs for eyeballs. It has nothing to do with the fact that the book was rejected by all the agents I sent it to. IT’S A CHOICE I MADE, I TELL YOU.

Book club nerd

Don’t let anyone tell you self-publishing isn’t great. Why would I want to share all those fat profits with some sort of agent? What do they know about getting books published anyway? It’s not like they do it for a living or anything.

Being rejected isn’t soul destroying, it’s liberating! I just get so JAZZED by the idea of self marketing.

businessman dreaming of fanny

Nothing gets my blood pumping faster than the excitement of putting myself OUT THERE. In the world. With other humans. Branding, SEO, marketing campaigns… Finally, I’ll have an excuse to drink during the day, snort coke off a hooker’s tits and eat a monkey’s brain like a real, live, Ad Exec. I cannot wait to start selling things to my friends.

This is how I imagine it going:

Me: Hey buddy! How are you? Yeah, I know we haven’t spoken in years… how are you? Yeah, whatever, listen. Hey did you know I am a writer now? Yeah man. Got a book and everything. Yeah, it’s self published… hello? I HATE MY LIFE!

It reminds of that time my best friend in school, Josh, (not his real name) convinced me to attend a “business meeting” with him that turned out to be a pyramid scheme selling soap to old ladies. Josh is now living large as a born again christian with dreadful web design skills and a disturbing penchant for World of Warcraft. Incidentally, he’s also written a self published novel. It’s horrendous.

hellboy cosplay. man in background looking dubious. Caption not convinced

Luckily, unlike Josh, I am the king of social media. People love reading tweets from fake authors about their amazing self published books, am I right? Hey world! Check it out, Johnnie Dillhole from Antfart, Nebraska gave me three and a half stars on Amazon! And daddy said I’d amount to nuthin. Up yers, daddy!

But twitterers aren’t fools. If there is one thing I learned from the National Film Board of Canada, it’s that persuasion is better than force. You can’t just hit them over the head with your pitch, you have to finesse it. You need to trick people into buying a book by writing a funny joke. And use many many hashtags.

Knock knock, who’s there? BUY MY SELF PUBLISHED BOOK, IT’S GREAT #seriouslyitsawesome #book #self #published #amazing

What is my book about, I hear you scream? Fine, settle down and I’ll tell ya.

It is about a man who wakes up in a near-future, post-Apocalyptic Manchester with no memory except that of a machine that prints human beings. He has to survive long enough to retrieve his memory and find the machine. A difficult task what with all the zombies… THERE AREN’T ANY FUCKING ZOMBIES IN IT, STOP ASKING ME.

Anyway, the book is the best thing since To Kill A Mockingbird and it is totally what Harper Lee would’ve written if she was still alive. Out next month.

Thanks in advance for reading it.

Your pal,

Robert

EDIT: Harper Lee IS still alive? DAMMIT.