This question brings up an interesting point that I’ve been researching.
Yesterday I became interested in the actual publication of Si’s work. I wanted to see how he’d published his books and what mediums they were available in.
On Amazon, there were (yesterday, they appear to have been snapped up today) two copies of The Creature’s Cookbook & The Creature’s Cookbook 2 still available, published by Strange Fuse, which is part of Fuse Literary.
So I went over to the Fuse Literary site and looked up their agents, and found that the person in charge of Strange Fuse is one of the partners, Laurie Mclean. Suffice to say that I think anyone who uses agentsavant as a twitter handle probably isn’t as clever as they think.
I mean, Si thinks he’s a bit of a savant too, doesn’t he?
Anyway, this morning my curiosity still isn’t sated and I decide to trawl back through Si’s blog to see how long he’s been on tumblr for (since 2014), and what do I find? Just an entry where he refers to Laurie as his agent and links to her page.
Also some of the stuff in the entry is hilarious:
She bounces when she walks. Her face does not simply form expressions, it is possessed by them. She gushes about my work, such that I sometimes feel guilty for not reiterating how much gushing actually goes into my work.
Today she has enthusiastically arranged for me to make the acquaintance of my publisher, which I suppose is a good thing.
but wait, I thought you’d never met your publisher, Si?
To be completely fair, the rest of the entry is just about meeting someone from Tapas. Which is what brings me to my point.
Si was probably approached about The Creature’s Cookbook for the launch of Tapas’ novel section. A book about a monster who eats people launching a platform called tapas is too good a marketing opportunity. Especially since he appears to have already had something of a tumblr following.
His agent constantly compares Tapas to serial publication. And Si is ridiculously verbose, which is perfect when you want to make a comparison to Dickens, who was paid per word (we’ll just overlook that Dickens could actually write). Also, it’s a self publication platform, so his writing doesn’t have to be any good.
So actually the reason his work isn’t available in hard copy anymore is because that was never intended to be the main method of delivery. And if Si didn’t know this, I do feel kinda bad for him.
