Another Published Author

[Simon R]

Just mooching around t'interweb as you do on a wet Saturday night and came across the Little Egret Press site.
They're publishers of specialist angling books - both new and reprints of the classics.

http://www.littleegretpress.com/index.php

One of the upcoming titles that they're advertising is "In The Still Of The Night" by Andy Spreadbury who, I'm almost certain, is a long-standing member of this site aka 'The Hat' and who was I seem to remember getting coached by Peter regarding the finer points of match fishing.
http://www.littleegretpress.com/action=viewbook&id=225
How many other published authors have we got on here (as in regular posters - not people who've popped in once and never posted again) I know there's Mark Wintle (Mr Roach[]) and I'm sure Mac Campbell wrote a couple of books with Allan Haines.

If magazine or newspaper articles are included we've got lots of contributors - the current and former editors of Match Fishing are both members here - plus there's current and former members of the AT editorial staff and lots of feature writers.

It does seem to be quite difficult to make that jump from a 1000 words once a month in a magazine article to 100,000 words once in a lifetime to put together a book - I've never tried it but would imagine there's three big problems - firstly deciding about which aspect of angling you're going to write - instructional, anecdotal, factual - bearing in mind that you need to (hopefully) sell a few copies once complete. Secondly finding the time to actually put it all together - not just the writing, but also research and possibly persuading other authors to write a chapter or two. Finally - if you want to sell more than half-a-dozen ebooks to family and friends - find a publisher who's willing to take a risk on publishing a book by an 'unknown'.

A lot of the most famous anglers never actually wrote the books attributed to them - Kevin & Benny Ashurst, Ivan Marks, Billy Lane. Tom Pickering etc - their books were ghost written by the likes of Colin Dyson, Colin Graham or John Godwin.
The words were by the anglers themselves - the ghost writers job was to get the information onto paper and make it actually readable. I believe Ivan Marks weekly column for Angling Times was ghost written too.

I'm sure there must be one or two other authors who grace this forum with their presence - there's certainly one or two I'd like to see in print although I'll save their blushes by not naming names.


Simon

 

[Dave]

Here you go Simon...

In the Still of the Night by Andy Spreadbury..

https://www.maggotdrowning.com/stillspreadbury/

Unfortunately the online version wasn't fully completed for some reason

 

[G0zzer2]

Ivan Marksweekly column in AT was indeed ghosted, by Peter Collins, himself a very good angler and a former features editor on Angling Times. Dick Walker wrote his own stuff.

I put together the Angling Times book of Coarse Fishing with Allan Haines who started it on his own but ran out of time and I was commissioned to help him get it finished quickly. It was actually harder than writing it ourselves, because we had to pick out stuff that had been published and put it together, as well as finding pictures to illustrate it, because the original pictures were often mislaid. I also took a lot of the pictures especially for Allans books on match fishing and floatfishing.

I also wrote a book on legering for a series published by David and Charles - other contributors, including John Wilson, wrote others in the series, which was commissioned by them. But of course there was a deadline - from memory about a month.

Its much easier to write a book than work as a journalist because the journalism has to be done at times convenient to the person you are interviewing, you have to make sure you get sufficient pictures (usually with a photographer) whatever the weather, notes taken and later referred to, and it all has to be done to a very short deadline - perhaps one day. Your subject also has to trust you to get it right and not start making stuff up, or they might refuse to work with you again. Then two days later you may be out again doing the same thing. I ghosted a lot of good anglersarticles when on Angling Times including Benny and Kevin Ashurst and Dave Thomas (though he could probably have written his own) I used to send my stuff to Kevin to approve, though a lot of journalists refuse to do this. I never understood why, provided there was time. Anyway he never altered anything!

I was features editor on Angling Times for a number of years, and had my own column, Macs Peg, as well as starting Star Tip on the youngsters page, which proved very popular with matchmen, and later I went out dozens of times with Mark Pollard and Alan Scotthorne for Match Angling Plus, and also with many other top matchman.

The writing itself is the easiest bit - I never had a problem once I had the intro (the first line), and had thought up some sort of a headline (which was usually altered by the sub-editors on AT!) I easily wrote one or two thousand words each night when I did the book. Altogether I was with the angling magazines for 20 years.

Im toying with the idea of a novel next. But as SimonR says getting it published would be the hardest bit. Friends might say its good but I would always trust the opinion of a journalist, since they tend to be pretty sceptical and would have no qualms telling me if it was terrible.

PS Ive started a blog about my matches and expect to get it online in the next week or two. Ill put the details on this site, of course.

Mac Campbell

 

[willsmodger]

Fascinating stuff. Ivan's column was a must read as a kid, along with Dick Walker, shame they were never collated as a book, that's what the likes of Jeremy Clarkson does with his latest. Just a compilation of the articles he writes for a Sunday newspaper, forget which one.
Anyway, suffice to say you and the other staffers did a great job. The AT was an inspiration to a young angler.
I went off the Mail. They published an idea for a bite alarm from a youngster, drawing and everything.
They then said it was the sort of idea they DIDN'T want to see, too complicated apparently.
I imagined how that young lad must have felt, sending in his idea, excitedly seeing it was printed, then reading that.
Anyway, thanks and all the best with the novel.

 

[Simon R]

Originally posted by willsmodger

Fascinating stuff. Ivan's column was a must read as a kid, along with Dick Walker, shame they were never collated as a book

They both were
'Ivan Marks The People's Champion' was reproductions of the best of his weekly Angling Times columns.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ivan-Marks-Peoples-Champion-Greatest/dp/0956701590&tag=gomaggotdrowning
Noticed the price has doubled since it was originally released[:0]

There's been a few compilations of Dick Walkers columns
The one I own is 'Dick Walker's Angling - Theories & Practice, Past, Present and to Come' edited by Peter Maskell which dates from 1979 and contains extracts from his weekly columns from the 1950s until that date.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/d/Books/Dick-Walkers-Angling-Theories-Practice-Past-Present/B002C4NKKE

This is, I presume, an updated version - also edited by Peter Maskell https://www.amazon.co.uk/Best-Dick-Walkers-Coarse-Fishing/dp/0715390899&tag=gomaggotdrowning


Simon