You get what you pay for... don't you?

I've been thinking, recently, about self-publishing for Kindle. Not for Inevitable - I'm not yet ready to give up on the traditional publishing route, and I maintain that if a novel is not picked up by a publisher, there is usually a reason, hard as it is for me to feel my baby is unloved in the world.

But I've been writing a book about learning languages - I'm actually more comfortable calling it an eBook, since apart from anything else it will be short, and of course because I'm planning to e-publish.

The received wisdom about becoming a bestseller on Kindle is this: price it as cheaply as possible.

I don't like this. I don't like it at all.

Doesn't it ever cross your mind, when you are buying something - is there a reason why this is so cheap? It's one of the arguments I make in my book, in fact - if a tutor's prices seem to be too good to be true, be wary - they may not think of themselves as a professional. So, by the same token, if you are putting out your book for next to nothing, are you not sending out the message that it's, well, not very good?

According to this month's Writing Magazine, "In the US, people do seem to equate price with quality and many refuse to buy books at 99 cents as they assume they aren't very good. The market in the UK definitely seems to be different on that score, with readers seemingly happy to snap up a bargain".

I love bargains as much as the next person - hence my obsession with second handbookshops and inability to come out of them empty-handed, even when I have a Eurostar to catch and already far too much to carry - but I am siding with the Yanks on this one.

3BT: writing, coffee, and summer

1. I lie in bed, wishing I weren't awake, and inspiration strikes for the article I've been simultaneously excited about and terrified of writing. Three hours later, it's done, and I'm pleased with it, and excited that my name (albeit my pen name) is hopefully, for the first time, going to be in at the bottom of an article in a magazine that can be bought at WHSmith.

2. My new coffee machine gurgles and gargles and splutters, and makes me the perfect, grain-free coffee.

3. I put on suncream for the first time this year. It smells of holidays. After half an hour's swimming and thinking about my writing, I sit in the sunshine sipping at Schwepps Agrum', reading Mslexia (which, coincidentally, also has my name in this month). I feel tired and relaxed, almost as if I'd spent the day on the beach. I love the summer - better late than never.

3BT: books, the West Wing, and a nice famous person

1. Time to read. Not just on trains, and not even just in bed last thing, but curled up on the sofa in the middle of the day, too. Reading a chunk in one day is just great for really getting into a book like the Finkler Question. It's also great research for my next novel - I've got itchy fingers...

2. I re-watch what might be my favourite West Wing episode ever, or rather episodes, plural, because they're a part 1 and 2, at the beginning of season 2. I do this with a glass of wine and some actual real home-cooked food. I just don't think any TV will ever compare to this, so it's bittersweet, but it's certainly easy on the eyes. Unless you count the tears.

3. A Hollywood star does a really nice thing for a friend of mine, and I'm partly involved. He does it in a very understated way (and he is not normally understated), but that doesn't stop the few of us who know about it squeeing that he's amazing and we love him.

3BT: coffee, books and birthdays

1. I meet my friend for coffee at 6 pm. After about an hour, I check my watch for the time: 8.20. Now that's quality conversation (and a comfortable Starbucks chair).

2. A book comes in the post; not just any book. This is a sample copy of a friend's novel - self-published for now, but I am looking forward to the day when we are both properly published and hanging out in literary circles together.

3. Plans are coming together for my birthday. Hooray!

3BT: a story, a baby, more stories

1. After four hours' sleep, even a breathless gallop up the hill to the station by no means ensures that I will make this train. But I do, and unable to keep my bleary eyes open I turn to my iPod and listen to Joshua Ferris reading out a chilling and cleverly allegorical story by George Saunders. I love these New Yorker Fiction podcasts: they feel like bite-sized pieces of an MFA in Creative Writing.

2. Across from us on the train, a blond, blue-eyed baby boy gurgles and giggles in the arms of his attentive father.

3. Books, books, books: Amsterdam is full of bookshops. I come home laden down with American magazines and new stories to sink into over this quiet part of my year.

3BT: Authonomy, magazines and toothpaste

1. I spend most of today on Authonomy. I didn't mean to; it just happened. I find some great books, and am buzzing with my new backings. It's a lot of fun, in a nerdy kind of way.

2. The magazine I write for comes, complete with my article on learning a language. They've called me a 'language tutor and writer'. They've highlighted my favourite sentence - something about not doing your homework between lessons being like not cleaning your teeth between dentist appointments. And they've called it 'Speaking in Tongues', which amuses me.

3. Speaking of teeth, I have a new type of toothpaste today. Its colour reminds me of Blue Minty Gel, which I loved in my childhood and have missed: one of my earliest memories is trying to dilute it in water so that I could drink it. Well, this new toothpaste tastes very similar. Thank you, Colgate.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Belgian taxis...

Note: this was an assignment for my fantastic Gotham Writers course, in which I had to write about something I hate. Hence the negativity.

I know I should be grateful that the company where I teach twice a week pays for a taxi home. And I am. Really I am. There’d be no other way of getting there otherwise – public transport in these parts being what it is – and I’d be missing out on a lot of easyish money.

But oh, Belgian taxis. Firstly, they are never on time. Well, not never, not exactly, but when they are late, they are properly late. And there is never an apology. We Brits are compulsive apologisers, and it grates to live in a country where saying you’re sorry is optional at best. Like the woman at the taxi firm’s office who stated that she took no responsibility for the mix-up which had caused her to cancel a taxi which we had not asked for her to cancel. That it was actually her fault entirely is almost insignificant: in England I like to think she would have said “I’m sorry about the inconvenience” or at least “I’m sorry, but it really isn’t my fault”, even if she hadn’t meant it. And not hearing “sorry” makes me cross, even crosser than I already am when I’ve waited forty-five minutes for a taxi.

And then when it arrives, you ought to be grateful, or at least relieved, and you try to be, you try to tell yourself that you are imagining the smell of stale cigarettes impregnating every fibre of the car. But you are not imagining it: it is every bit as real as the no smoking stickers on every door. At least today they haven’t sprayed the odour-eating chemical which only serves to increase the nausea and headache brought on by residual cigarette smoke.

But even without all that, you’d still feel nauseous: there’s the stop-start driving, the swerving round corners, the fear when the driver keeps turns most of his attention to the form he is filling in. (“Don’t be so nervous, Madam, I do this all the time,” he says when you ask him if he wouldn’t mind waiting until the car has stopped.) There’s the screeching to an abrupt stop a few metres past the red traffic light then reversing back up the main road to rectify his position. (Again, of course, no apology; no acknowledgement that any of this is anything other than a mundane everyday occurrence.)

It’s only a ten-minute drive, but it’s the most stressful minutes of my week, and it takes a little while to shake off the nausea. I’d complain if I thought it would make any difference. Instead, I update my Facebook status accordingly and vow to blog about it someday.