Dan Holloway

There are plenty of “How-to” books out there for self-publishers. Just as self-publishing has taken off, so too has a whole industry devoted to providing self-publishers with the services they need, or at least the services they’re judged to need. Plenty of these books are, I’m sure, great; but they also tend to emphasise certain aspects – marketing, sales, technical details and so on – at the expense of others. What if you want to go a little deeper than that?

Dan Holloway’s Self-publish with Integrity would be a good place to start. There’s plenty of practical advice here, from building a platform to finding a printer to editing – but, as Holloway says, “these things were never, for me, the biggest challenge I faced when I self-published. The toughest thing by far has always been knowing how to filter the deluge of information and great advice that comes my way, remembering always exactly why it was that I started writing.”

That “why” – the reason you put pen to paper or finger to keyboard in the first place – is fundamental to Holloway’s book, as he invites you to ask yourself what “success” means to you. It’s a very individual issue, after all, and probably varies considerably from person to person. Is it selling your book in substantial numbers, or being able to give up the day job? Or is it writing to the best of your ability and not compromising on your personal vision?

“‘Success’ isn’t always ‘success’”, Holloway warns us. If the success you ultimately achieve is not the kind of success you value most, then ultimately, paradoxically, you’re not really successful at all. We’re guided through the pitfalls that lie in wait for the unwary: the pressure to succeed, the importance of knowing what you really want from self-publishing, and the perils of self-doubt and comparing yourself to others. Holloway reminds us that self-publishing does not begin and end with ebooks, or even with print books, and it certainly doesn’t begin and end with Amazon sales rankings, whatever some people would have you believe.

However you approach self-publishing, there’s something here for you. If you’re not even convinced that self-publishing is for you – and it’s not for everyone – this book might just help you to make up your mind. If you’re already treading the self-publishing waters, this book might help you to re-examine what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. To push this feeble analogy a bit further: it’s easy to get sucked along by the current. Not getting caught in that current, but forging your own direction, is the most rewarding thing you can do, and probably the only thing that can lead to any lasting satisfaction. I think I always knew that really, but those currents are damn strong, and there was a time when I got swept up in them. I ended up miserable and tempted to give up before I’d even really got going. This is why I wish I’d read this book before I self-published; it would have saved me an awful lot of angst.

Self-publishing is probably never easy; whatever you want to do, and however you want to do it, you’re probably going to have to face a lot of problems along the way. But having a copy of Self-publish with Integrity to hand might just help you through those tough times. Dan Holloway’s like a kindly friend; he knows what you’re going through, and – more to the point – he might just be able to help. Recommended.
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It begins so quietly, this novel. So unostentatiously. Granted, there are two corpses in Chapter 1 – it is a murder mystery, after all – but there is little, at first, to indicate that The Company of Fellows is anything other than just another detective story set in Oxford, following in the well-worn footprints of Morse.

The writing is a good deal better than Colin Dexter’s, which is to be expected. But in other respects the early chapters came as a surprise. For Dan Holloway is a tireless and selfless champion of alternative, edgy, indie writing (some of it, it must be said, a long way removed from his own literary calibre). Yet here he seems to be embarking on something more mainstream – an honest to goodness murder mystery, a thumping good read which manages to remain thought-provoking, told with flair, panache and insight.

It isn’t that simple, of course. Holloway’s calm, unemotional prose draws you along until you find yourself enmeshed in a harrowing ethical dilemma. And here it does get edgy, in content if not in style. The reader will need a strong stomach and colossal control of their own emotions to read beyond a certain point, but, despite the enormity of his subject matter, Holloway handles it with sensitivity and humanity. Moreover, he is not being gratuitously scatological: he has a reason to go where he does, though not every reader should be expected to go there with him.

There are many different Oxfords, in literature as in life. One suspects this particular Oxford, with its blend of rarefied collegiate life and thriving alternative culture, would be more familiar to Sergeant Hathaway than to either Morse or Lewis; certainly Holloway himself is very much at home there. The descriptions are clear, accurate and specifically Oxonian – and they are far more perceptive than most observations of Oxford, particularly about the mechanics of academe. (The comment – is the narrator’s tongue resting lightly inside his cheek? – about the Warden’s knack “of being someone who brought funding with him wherever he went” rings absolutely true.)

Above all, this is an Oxford peopled with true intellectuals, people who can deduce an entire chain of events from a single line in a page of research notes – and moreover, with characters who can read one another’s thoughts, motives and intentions from nothing more than a twitch of an eyebrow. My own eyebrow was raised fractionally at the idea that there might be so many people with such similar skills – from reading body-language to gourmet cuisine – in such close proximity, but if I had to suspend my disbelief at this, I did so willingly.

For Holloway is at his strongest when describing the inner workings of these characters, their thought processes and motives, particularly in the case of his protagonist Tommy West. He has endowed Tommy with an impressive quantity of baggage which will, no doubt, allow much scope for introspection and further character development in the two sequels promised for 2011 and 2012. Other characters are equally complex, particularly Professor Charles Shaw (the second of the corpses), whose motives do not always appear clear or consistent; it will take a second reading to understand him more fully.

It is no disrespect to Holloway’s impressive indie credentials to say that the book needs a thorough proofread. Along with a small handful of continuity errors (which could be easily corrected without damage to plot or structure), one’s attention is constantly distracted by typos – at least one or two per page – which in some cases leave one in the tantalising position of not knowing what the author meant to say.

However, no quantity of typos can turn good writing into bad, and this is very good writing. I very much look forward to the next Tommy West novel, All the Dark Places, scheduled for release in December 2011.… (more)