Wow, David, I'm flattered. Thank you so much.

I share your concerns about how "becoming an author" is becoming big business, and I'm worried that I'm becoming a part of that: I'm writing a book which is based on my blog; I appeared at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer talking about the publishing business; and I'll be on at York in March, too.

I had a fab time at the EIBF but I was flabbergasted by the basic nature of some of the questions I was asked by the people who attended my talk. I'm not sure if I helped a single one of them, to be honest.  Will I give up trying to? Nope.

There's a great big underbelly to publishing which enables desperate writers to get into print, regardless of their talent or ability to write a good, commercial book. It's terribly sad; people spend a fortune on schemes like the BWA's latest, or on promoting their own self- or vanity-published books to little or no effect: people can't buy them because they're just not in the places most people buy their books from, and so all that effort is pretty much wasted.

I've been asked over and over why I care about this so much. There's a big part of me which hates to see writers ripped off in this way, regardless of how good or bad they are; and I hate to see the work of all the brilliant writers, agents and editors I know condemned as being "trashy" or "elitist". It's insulting, wrong, and ultimately pointless, and I think we all lose out as a result of it.

Grrrr.