The Tyranny of the Amazon review

Most authors will appreciate where I come from with this. You slave God-knows-how-many-hours, weeks, months (years) on a book. Probably in your spare time, whilst still earning a "regular" living. You finally get an agent, then a publisher interested, after numerous re-drafts of your pitch, your content and -- in my case -- paying thousands of £/$ for flight costs, hotels and research *out of your own pocket*.

You then (in my case, for the book Homeland) have to hire your own editor, because your publisher refuses/cannot (apparently) afford the time/resources/unpaid intern to actually edit your work. You try your best, with the limited cash (overdraft) you have available, to put out as good a work as you can. You stand back, exhausted, and marvel it has come this far. You've given birth to something unique, that doesn't simply parrot what's already out there; which is not a celeb ghostwritten piece of crap; and which you also have to have extensively checked by researchers and legal sources to ensure no libel.

Then the fear sets in.

What if no-one will notice the book when it comes out? Will it lead to more work? Has it been worth the slog, the damage to your relationships, the stress, the threats passed your way (how many times have Internet weirdoes and sad violent guys sought to have me followed ...) -- and will it be properly reviewed?

You then (if lucky) get your two week window of fame. The PR ladies at the publisher get you interviews on a few radio stations; you try and get on Richard and Judy, just missing it (too intellectual/not enough undercover violence!); you pen articles; pay for your own internet ad campaign (Google); and generally stick another huge amount of effort into getting it noticed. The reviewers (who, after local radio stations, are more or less the only people your publisher has to ensure *any* marketing at all) then ignore/maul/promise to review (but don't)/or sometimes give nice reviews to your work. I could debate the quality of professional reviewers -- I'm one myself -- let's just say there are some very good ones, and then there are those like the ladies who go on to Radio 4 and write in The Times, who clearly don't read the entire thing and give some liberal hogwash opinion which says more about their own worldview and prejudices than your own work. Time and time again I could tell who had, and had not, read the work by the tone of their comments. It is why when I review, if I don't like something I substantiate it, or give the writer the benefit of the doubt ("it's not to my taste, but I can see x y z liking it").

Be fair is my guiding principle.

But then all goes quiet. If you don't have a weekly column, face on Newsnight Review, making documentaries or generally some other "star" quality, your tome disappears among the 120,000+ published each year. Your publisher has no budget left to market and is already promoting the next work which, unbelievably, has almost the same title as your own yet is concocted trash. The publisher has no budget to promote your work each time something occurs in the news. The big fat obvious truth is that you're on your own. You're a one man band and need to promote that work yourself. In fact, if you could hire a printers and do deals with vendors, you could probably sell it almost as well as they can. That just leaves Amazon.

Amazon operates a readers' review system: people give stars and comments, from 1-5 (1 = bad, 5 = good). Many writers try and stuff their friends in, awarding suspicious 5 stars. But as time goes on, you're left with -- as my old GMTV friends called it - "the nuts and sluts". Having written a book on the extreme Right, I only get white supremacist nutters coming along these days. They uniformly give the work 1 star, which clearly has less to do with any writing or research quality (or even if they fully read it), more to do with their own obvious bias and political views.

I don't object to people not liking something, but I do object to liars, falsehoods and slander. Left at the mercy of these half-hinged cranks, every future reader sees such comments and is left with a plethora of negative reviews which they may, just may, think are fair and accurate comments. Like I said, as a professional reviewer I rarely stoop to such lows and underhand tactics, even if I really don't like something.

But if publishers aren't paying for marketing, and the author is relying on word of mouth, the tyranny of Amazon represents a powerful force in all future sales. And it is those who "shout" loudest on the Internet that, sadly, seem to get heard.

(In the interests of fairness, you can see some examples of this "he who shouts loudest" from the reviews on my Amazon.com page. Note that the lead "negative" reviewer is a self-proclaimed UFO expert ... How come Jon Ronson gets to stare at goats and they love him, whilst my chaps just hate me ... ^^)

Life after Death Row

Great story from The Guardian about the freed Death Row prisoners in the States and their campaigns for justice.

Death-row survivor John Thompson is angry, but not bitter. Which is remarkable, given that the prosecutor in his original trial for murder in 1984 deliberately withheld evidence that proved he was innocent. "I'm angry," he says, "because that man was trying to murder me. He knew I did not commit that crime, had the evidence to prove it, but it made no difference. He was going to have me killed in the chair to further his own career." Of all the cases of death-row prisoners who have been exonerated in recent years, Thompson's is one of the most troubling. Jerry Deagan, the prosecutor in question, only confessed that he had concealed the blood evidence that would have absolved Thompson when he found he was dying of liver cancer, 11 years after Thompson's conviction. In an attempt to clear his conscience, Deagan told his colleague, Mike Riehlmann, what he had done.

But even when Deagan died, it was almost five years before Riehlmann came clean and earned a brief suspension from Louisiana's Supreme Court for his "inaction". After 14 years on death row and seven execution dates, Thompson was given a retrial in 2004. The jury took just a few minutes to acquit him, and later he walked out of Louisiana's Angola State prison with just $10 in his pocket for his trouble. Now he campaigns against the death penalty. And not just for those who might be innocent. "There is nothing about justice in death penalty cases in the US," he told me at the annual conference of Lifelines (www.lifelines-uk.org), the organisation that arranges pen-friends for those on death row, where he and I were guest speakers. "It's all about votes and careers."

He opened his briefcase and took out a large photograph of a burly-looking man wearing gold-rimmed spectacles. The man, Jim Williams, was the senior prosecutor who oversaw Thompson's original trial. In the picture, Williams wears a look of pride and stands behind a large desk, upon which stands a small model of an electric chair. Attached to the chair are the photographs of five black men. Thompson's picture, in the centre, is the largest. "He was especially proud to send me to the chair," says Thompson, "and it was all based on lies."

Here's a link to John Thomspon's site and new work, helping to rehabilitate prisoners.

Vote for editor of 'The Journalist'

The National Union of Journalists (NUJ) is voting in a new editor of its house magazine, The Journalist, shortly. If some of the discussion I've seen are anything to go by, passions about the role - and about journalism, its future and future of the NUJ - are running high.

The nice folks over at Journalism.co.uk are hosting debates and information about the candidates, so worth checking them out.

Governments using journalists to spy

A dangerous precedent is being set. Governments around the world are using journalists -- or 'fake' journalists -- to gain access to movements they consider a threat, then using those journalists to either spy on or (if they're disguised police officers) to arrest people.

It's happening in Nepal, Israel and Canada, to name just a few places. And it's got journalists around the world pretty riled up: for if people can't trust us (as little as they do now), how will we get to report on stories if everyone suspects we're working for the police or intelligence units? It's bad enough with some of the conspiracy-minded people I talk to, who seem to believe they're being bugged from the lamposts and that the "Zionists" are out to get them; think how much worse it could get if governments routinely used us as a cover to infiltrate others.

***

IFEX reports

The Nepali government intends to use journalists as informants as part of a security plan, report ARTICLE 19 and the Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), a decision that would undermine the role of independent media and increase attacks on journalists. Meanwhile, the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) reports that Israeli security forces
were disguised as photojournalists in the midst of a demonstration on 8 and 9 October and arrested protesters.

This issue is not reported frequently and it is difficult to prove the practice takes place, says Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE). CJFE last documented a case of a police officer in Canada impersonating a journalist in order to have greater access to a protest in 2008.

According to ARTICLE 19 and FNJ, the use of Nepali informants as security informants is a breach of the code of conduct issued by the Nepali Press Council. ARTICLE 19, the FNJ, and another Nepali group, Freedom Forum, have called on Nepali authorities to remove any proposal to use journalists as spies and to ensure the safety and security of journalists.

"The Government's plan is opportunistic and irresponsible," said FNJ Chair Dharmendra Jha. "Threats and attacks against, and even murder of journalists are rampant in Nepal and to propose to use journalists as informants is at best grossly negligent."

In Jerusalem, Israeli security forces posed as photojournalists by carrying cameras and dressing like Palestinians, reports MADA. They arrested several young protestors at a demonstration last week against Israeli practices regarding Al Aqsa Mosque. MADA comments that this is a violation of international laws and charters and endangers the lives of journalists.

Previously in Canada, a police officer pretended to be a journalist at a Mohawk rally in conjunction with the Aboriginal Day of Protest in 2007. CJFE comments that this practice undermines the media's position as an independent third party, threatening reporters' safety and ability to access stories and sources. Police pretending to be journalists threatens free press as it creates an environment where citizens cannot trust that those who identify themselves as journalists truly are journalists. Police
action has "chilled" potential sources, says CJFE.

Fred of The Philippines

Photo: Ermita, the "sin city" of Manila

I just discovered this story of mine during an office clearout. I decided to type it up again: it ain't hopeful but it is 'real'. And most of all, it is true.

***

'FRED'


I first met Fred in a brothel*. He had a woman on either side of him, laughing and chatting away in Tagalog, the Manilan language. They eyed each other nervously whenever his coarse and frequent laughter disturbed the other patrons and caused them to turn and stare. None of us knew his background but his clown-like face, all furrows and bulbous nose, looked lonely, weary and afraid, even then. He looked like someone’s grandpa gone astray, turning up white-haired and inappropriate in one of the sin capitals of the world.

I got to know Fred pretty well during my three months in The Philippines. We’d meet up in some provincial centre, all the travellers gathered in the same bar or hotel that the guidebook promised would be deserted, and talk about England. His England. I’ve been to pre-war Fulham whilst gambling in the boiler room of a steamship and worked with the lads down at Peckham sorting office, sitting on a tiny tropical island. I probably travelled more with his words than my own feet.

Looking at the spreading web of his tattoos depressed me. It spoke of lost opportunities. His hands and body didn’t move much, just kind of collapsed inwards to eventually protrude in a fragile beer gut. But his eyes were alive with vitriol and longing to live. He knew he didn’t have that long, that was apparent in his bitter and sarcastic talk about friends and family deserting him over the years. I think that Fred must be one of the loneliest people I’ve ever met. He was 79 when I last saw him.

I often asked him why’d he’d put to the road so late in life. In his sober moments, which were few, he told me.

As the youngest of four children, he’d been reared by his mother and sisters in a Fulham (west London) terrace. Their father deserted them before Fred reached his teens. His stepfather beat him. He left school at 14 to do a variety of jobs, never settling and never sticking at anything for a length of time. He blamed it on The Depression.

The War changed his life. Or so he said. He’d never travelled further than Bognor Regis (an English seaside town) and now “some bastard in Whitehall” had sent him to join the 14th Army in India and Burma. The Forgotten Army. They were abandoned with their half-competent officers, more concerned with observing the rigours of protocol than the health and well-being of their men.

He’d been sent to guard temples where teenage girls, sold by their parents, were lowered kicking and screaming onto a hallowed spike, symbolically removing their virginity and consecrating them to a secretive caste of prostitutes. He vividly described the sight of their bright garlands spattered with blood, silken robes parting over twisted, brown flesh. After this he considered all Indians, and most Asians, to be “animals”. The irony of our Philippines surroundings seemed lost on him.

He deserted after a couple of years. The situation was forced on him, he said, by 2,000 Japanese soldiers “running down me bloody throat”. He’d been based in the Burmese jungle when a naked white woman ran into his camp and began babbling, in a Glaswegian accent, that the Japanese were advancing only a couple of miles away (she, by the way, had been an anthropology student who’d installed herself as the leader of the tribe she’d come to study).

“Them fucking officers” ordered her to be arrested because she’d entered their mess, off-limits to anyone below the rank of Second Lieutenant or, for that matter, a civilian. Fred and his mates fled when several hundred tribesmen surrounded their superiors and held them until the Japanese arrived.

He’d been fleeing from himself ever since. As a postman back in Peckham, he’d spent the next 30 years in four unhappy marriages. Fred’s charm did not lie with women (he was robbed twice by prostitutes and charged at least double for their services during the times I met him in The Philippines) and he’d managed to alienate his only daughter.

Postwar England had obviously not brought happiness or fulfillment. He was pensioned off to live in a high-rise flat somewhere in his native Fulham, griping about Maggie Thatcher and femalekind in general to a cold and silent audience. After five years he set off to travel the world, scraping together the savings he had left and vowing, he told me, never to return. He’d been more places in those few years than I’d been in my entire life.

I sat and watched this incongruous figure, spindly legs jutting from beneath fake Fred Perry shorts, and failed to imagine him as a young man. That pained me because I felt I was doing an injustice to his memories. His lips quivered and he frothed everso slightly at the mouth, a broken old man reliving an alien youth. He talked too much. My companions – a motley assortment of minor drug dealers, Norwegian runaways and a hotelier-in-training – laughed and took the piss. Fred would halt his tale and join in with them.

He hadn’t escaped the sorrow of his life by travelling. He was still unsettled. This was the impression you had talking to him, an old man reeling drunk on San Miguel beer and bitter memories. At those times he would begin swearing at everyone around him, the Filippinos, prostitutes and us. He didn’t seem to care, perhaps because he’d lost all he had already. It embarrassed me to see him like this.

I doubt that Fred is still alive. I hope that he isn’t because his weariness and despair I found painful to witness. I shall strive to make my life a success in memory of that man and hope that wherever he is now, he rests in peace.

* Ed note: Most of the bars for the backpackers were also brothels.

Frank Deasy: A great man passes away

Back in 2000 I was called into the bowels of the BBC to discuss a possible play about the Far Right. The BBC hadn't produced anything on this are for over a decade. We didn't have much of an idea, then, of what to do: I was in the midst of writing my book HOMELAND and Ruth Caleb, the producer, was looking for a screenwriter to turn my research into riveting viewing.

We slowly interviewed a succession of writers: those well-established, others who were little more than cab drivers with a desire to hit the big screen. Then we met Frank.

In walked this taciturn, brooding figure; a monk-like man with deep brow, a thinker's face and thoughtful expression. There was an intensity there, behind the measured-but-strong Dublin accent. He wouldn't talk about his childhood, that was quickly off-limits after I asked about his background. Apparently he had a reputation for being difficult to deal with – he even warned me that, most likely, we would fall out during the process of filming and making this drama (we did, but only for a short while) – but mostly it was fascinating to work with him. He'd written a brilliant TV series called Looking After Jo-Jo, starring Robert Carlyle, which was set among the drug dealers of a Glasgow housing estate.

I took Frank to the British National Party's 'Red White and Blue' annual festival (something they had copied off their big brother, the Front National in France); then to the East End to meet BNP people; we even ended up outside the house of an infamous Combat 18 member in south-east London. Through many months and script revisions, the drama 'England Expects' (directed by Tony Smith) was born. It was while staying in Welshpool, near BNP leader Nick Griffin's smallholding, that I learned of Frank's troubled past: he searched high and low for a local AA group, which he felt he needed to attend. (Inadvertently I'd asked him if he wanted to join me in the hotel bar for a beer.) He hinted even then about the health worries troubling him.

I watched Frank's other work appear on the screens in the following five years: an Emmy-winning Prime Suspect with Helen Mirren; The Passion, his tale of Jesus' life, and death; he had co-written an unseen Hollywood film Prozac Nation, made on a book of the same name (and which he hinted had been riven with troubles); and worked on many other superlative dramas. Sadly I only recently learned of the liver cancer that was to contribute to his death on 17 September this year. We swapped an email only the day before, after friends told me about Frank's poignant writing of his condition – waiting for a liver transplant, for which he had a rare blood type – in The Observer newspaper. It led to him doing an hour-long radio show with RTE in Ireland; thousands of letters poured in to the newspapers in support of his and others' plights.

Frank's email to me of 16 September read: "Thanks Nick – we live in hope ay?" I replied later that evening, not realising he was already in the life and death operation to transplant his liver, and which he hoped would give him a new lease of life. Instead it robbed him of that life – he died on the operating table – and his wife, Marie, and three children are now left without a father.

Frank Deasy was a rare man: principled, gifted, honorable. I was glad, in the end, to have known him.

Ponzis, Dying & Mercenaries

Updated here is a roundup of my latest stories. Several are part of larger projects or available for resale, and I hope they make for interesting reading.

1) Follow The Money. October 2009: Wired (UK) magazine. In an era of financial scams and Ponzi frauds, it takes cunning, smart thinking (and a little luck) to nail the bad guys. Nick Ryan meets the 'fraud busters', the team which hunts down major-league swindlers from a luxury Caribbean base and recovers millions for victims. Based on my 10-year contact with the hotshot lawyers of Martin Kenney & Co.

2) Living with Dying. August 2009: The Times Magazine (UK). What does it mean to be dying? Nick Ryan followed five people with terminal illness as they journeyed towards the end of life. A major piece for the Times, which took many months and a lot of heartache to put together.

3) Good Heart in Africa. July 2009: The Tablet (UK). Father Kieran Creagh narrowly escaped death in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and more recently in South Africa where he founded Leratong hospice. Nick Ryan meets a man who for many epitomises the essence of priesthood and its sacrifices. (This is merely the intro/taster to part of a much longer project.)

4) Lords of War. Walrus Magazine (Canada). They brave their lives in the shadowy world of mercenary riches, risking all for reward – but what are the dangers today of using so many 'soldiers of fortune' to protect corporate and diplomatic interests? Nick Ryan, who has met many private military and security contractors, looks at their motivations and at the wider industry they inhabit. (Look out for more pieces to come from this area).

5) The Fog of War. April 2009: The National (UAE). Captured fighting alongside the Taliban, a young American Muslim convert, John Walker Lindh, became the United States’ most infamous “enemy combatant” and a potent symbol of betrayal. In a rare interview, Nick Ryan talks to his family, who ask if their son really deserved a 20-year sentence. (John Lindh deserves his freedom, despite many Americans' misguided enmity.)

6) Gold Trading Exposed. March/April 2009: Eurogamer. A major four-part, 12,000 word investigation into the blackmarket world of "gold selling" in virtual video games and online worlds. Includes exclusive interviews with Chinese gold farmers and brokers; as well as revelations such as the huge size of the market ($10bn) and size of the industry (one million employed in China alone).

Part I
Part II
Part III
Part IV

7) (reprint) Hammering the Rock. 2005: Maxim. One of the most feared gangs in American history faces the ultimate showdown with the authorities – but will it be enough to smash 'The Rock'? Report by Nick Ryan.

8) My Virtual Family. 2009: The BBC. They are the 'Twitter generation'. Couch-potato teenagers, addicted to video games and instant messenging, dangerously cut-off from the outside world. That, at least, is one depressing stereotype painted of today’s youth: we have a disgruntled, alienated generation ignored by its guardians and parents. Yet more and more of us are finding ways to stay in touch with family and loved ones via online game worlds or "MMOs.

Further articles, books, and documentaries currently in development.

The Fraudbusters™ revisited

The two men stepped off the long flight from Dublin. The Miami heat washed over them in a second, but they didn't flinch. In their line of work they were well-used to entering harsh climes:

War-torn Liberia, the jungles of Papua New Guinea or a freezing Toronto winter – they went wherever the money trail led them.

The taller and more broad-shouldered of the two had once guarded US Presidents and worked out on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border when the US supported the mujahideen. His companion, shorter and with carefully-buttoned suit and tie, was a forensically-minded lawyer responsible for crossing swords with some of the most tenacious con-men the world had ever seen, sociopaths who would stop at nothing in their avarice. When you heard of names like Bernie Madoff or Sir Allen Stanford, chances are he was on their trail. He had sat across from these criminals as they told him how they lay awake at night, dreaming of ways to kill him.

Meet the world's sharpest fraudbusters.

Follow The Money. October 2009: Wired (UK) magazine.

Photo © Neil Massey.

Grapes of Wrath revisited

It's 70 years since John Steinbeck's seminal Grapes of Wrath (about Depression-era American families moving west) was published.

Here The Guardian's Chris McGreal retraces that journey and finds a series of desolate ghost towns clinging to the famous Route 66.

(I recently went to see a theatre production of the book and it still holds its power, decades since it was written).

Jack's Death

A moving tribute from a father to his slain only-son, in Afghanistan.

Trooper Jack Sadler was killed in December 2007, when a land mine exploded underneath his army Land Rover in the desert of southern Afghanistan.

At the inquest into the death of the 21-year-old, in July this year, a coroner in Exeter said the government should explain why such light vehicles were used for army reconnaissance patrols.

Hear the audio tribute here.