Digital Life Form - fact or fiction?

 I wrote Digital Life Form in 2010 - 2011 after a walk in the Lake District with my wife.  There's a route alongside Lake Windermere that starts at Wray Castle,  a Nineteenth Century folly with an interesting history of its own.  The path we were on follows the lakeside mainly until you get to Hawkshead pier, a short bunny hop away from Beatrice Potter's home.  From there you jump on a boat, or take a foot passenger trip on the car ferry, to Bowness.

The walk isn't any great shakes - about four miles end to end and over mildly undulating paths.  Back then there was a muddy field you had to traverse from Wray Castle to the main path but today it has a hardened path linking them.  A stout pair of walking shoes or boots is all you need - you don't even need a map!

We've done this walk practically every time we've visited the Lakes - it's a great warm up before we scale Loughrigg or bimble along the Coffin Trail and in our mind is practically flat.  Except it isn't - not totally.  There's a short stretch where the trail rises for, I guess, about a quarter of a mile.  It's one of those stretches where conversation stops and, if you're like me, the mind starts to wander in a reverie.

Prior to hitting that part of the trail we'd been chatting - we'd just bought a Tom Tom sat nav for our trips - this was back in the dark ages when smart phones were in their infancy, voice commands such as we're now used to with Alexa and Siri were rumours on the internet, self driving cars were a pipe dream of some guy called Elon Musk - whatever happened to him?  

We were both impressed with the sat nav - I said this was a while ago - and started to speculate how they would evolve.  I suggested that the interface was the Achilles Heel - you're driving, concentrating on the road and you have to start typing post codes (zip codes to US readers) so to reprogram one you really need to pull over. I suggested that some kind of voice control would be a natural evolution - as I said above this was way before we started chatting to AI voices to turn the lights on and off .

Then we hit the climb and I fell into my reverie.  By the time we hit the top of the hill and started chatting again the idea that became Digital Life Form had taken root in my head.  Part of what had occurred to me was the speed of technological evolution - and looking back ten years I can see that up until then it had been fairly sedate compared to what it is now.  Some folk have an issue with the concept of evolution and have a belief that an entity just created everything as we see it now.  I'm not going to get into a debate on that - each to their own - but I personally don't have an issue with Darwin's theory.  But technology evolves at such an incredible rate these days it gave me pause for thought - what if the evolution took place in another time, another place and we're just reaping the benefits now?

The story is pure fiction - in fact it's very tongue in cheek and, if I may be so bold, a darned good yarn.  It includes an AI supercar, probably one of the best car chases in written form, a pursuit by special forces utilising a Chinook helicopter, an Apache helicopter with Hellfire missiles and a British government prepared to destroy part of north west Wales to stop an open secret becoming commonplace.

I mention all of this for two reasons.  First - I picked up on news reports last week about meteor showers being tracked in the UK with scientists rushing to intercept them.  The scientists were urging anyone finding the meteors to not touch them, to bag them carefully.  They backed it up with some BS reasons about carbon affecting the meteorites but my version of events - that they are carrying Digital Life Forms obviously has the benefit of plausibility.

Like all my books Digital Life Form is available on Amazon in eBook format and as a paperback.  It is also available for reading for free if you are an Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited customer.  There is one other ethical way to read this for free (I'm aware some dodgy websites are offering this book for free - it would have been nice if they'd asked) and that is via this blog.  For the foreseeable I'm going to be serialising Digital Life Form here two or three times a week, starting tomorrow. 

Hope you enjoy the read.

Skin is on Countdown promotion starting 14th April

Skin is going on an  Amazon countdown deal starting 14th April - not sure which time zone, probably 8 o'clock in the morning somewhere on the West Coast of the US, and runs to the 21st.  The way the countdown deals work is that the normal selling price for the book is discounted, with a bigger discount at the beginning of the promotion getting less of a discount the longer you leave it.

So why Skin?  Well, it is a book based in the near future with elements stuck firmly in events of the second Gulf War.  There are flashbacks to a failed special ops mission just inside Iraq on the days running up to the shock and awe phase of that war that had unresolved questions for one person in particular, Rory Callum.  Rory was engineering support on a Chinook that crashed on that mission and was the only member of the mission to make it out of Iraq alive, however years later there are many important details of his journey back to Kuwait unresolved, while other parts of the mission are on an endless loop every time he sleeps.

In the book's present, our future, Rory is now working on the fringes of legality, acting as an industrial spy being inserted into manufacturing companies at a low level, usually, and sneaking out details of next year's big product.  This time he's inserted into a local manufacturer that has developed something really big, life changing and worth a lot of money to the right investors.  It's a development being watched all the way up to the top, with the British Prime Minister of the day indulging in some sneaky insider dealing - no, not Boris, a later replacement for him further down the line.

But parts of Rory's past start to catch up with him as he carries on his job, working for the enigmatic Max and the sexually disturbed and violently dangerous Melinda and Rory finds himself facing up to a madman called Fabin, who has an ex-Royal Marine killer to assist him.

The title refers to the process Rory is spying on - a method to create artificial skin that was just science fiction when I wrote the book but is now looking like it will hit the mainstream in some form in the near future.  There are parts of the book that are still science fiction, or at least technically difficult and improbable at the moment, but I'll leave you to decide which parts are in which compartment.

There's a lot of action in this book, from pitched battles in Iraq to manhunts in London in the book's present day.  It's a long book, but thanks to the pace you will race through it running from battle to battle, past to present as the story and, critically, Rory's missing memories, are revealed.

Obviously, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then you can download this book for free anytime.  But for those who haven't got access to that, or as Prime members have already used up their monthly allowance, then this promotion is an affordable way to add it to your laibrary.  Put the date in your diary.

My other eight books are also available for free to Kindle Unlimited members and you can access links to them here.

The Last Simple is free to download on Amazon

My latest promotion is the parody 'The Last Simple', written a long time ago, in 2011.  I had read most of the Dan Brown novels published up to that date and had enjoyed them, up to a point.  Dan has a method of writing that keeps the story moving and gives the impression that much of the storyline is well researched.  However, in line with most novels, you only have to stray into your own sphere of knowledge and specialism to realise that the author is winging it a little.

That's not a criticism, by the way.  We all do it, when we have to write about things we have limited experience of.  For me the warning bells sound when authors start writing about aircraft, and how they fly.  I've spent enough time working around fixed and rotary winged aircraft to know when someone is making assumptions, based no doubt on snatched views of a flight deck and scenes from movies.  I'm sure practically every reader with specialist knowledge cringes with  every book they read and film they watch, it's just that we all cringe in different parts.

Anyway, the winging was one thing. The trend towards ever shorter chapters was another.  I get it, write short, punchy chapters and readers can park the book after two stops on the subway, the perfect commuting aide.  Dan, or more probably his publisher, took this to a new level.  To me a chapter is a self contained unit.  Sometimes it can contain several perspectives but there should be some form of unity from start to end of the chapter.  Many of Dan's chapters ended in the middle of a subject and the next chapter picked right up where the previous one had ended.  That's a very artificial way of breaking a story up and to me it jarred, however after the Da Vinci Code became an international best seller the technique appears to have become legitimised.

So The Last Simple was born.  In part it is a parody of several of Dan's novels - if you've read any of his books you should be able to spot most of them fairly easily.  But it has it's own life as well and is pretty tongue in cheek.  For starters, the characters in the book know they are characters in a book.  In the case of Bradford, the lead character, he knows he's the lead in a third rate parody of a Dan Brown novel, but his ambition is to be one of Dan's lead characters.  The trouble is, he doesn't know if he has to dumb up or down for the gig.

There is a lot of wordplay, puns and silly gags running through the book and none of these are meant to reflect on Dan Brown.  I tried to cram in as many silly jokes as I could on every page. Some will make you groan, hopefull many will make you smile.

The promotion is time limited and finishes before the next weekend, probably Friday morning UK time.  Of course, if you have access to Kindle Unlimited then the book is free to download any time you choose.  For those stumbling across this blog entry too late, the book is reasonably priced anyway.

The Journeymen available for free

For a limited period I've set The Journeymen as free on iTunes, B&N, Kobo etc. Currently this book is priced $0.99 (or £/€ equivalent) on Amazon but if that's your Ebook reader of choice then there's no good reason why you can't report a lower price elsewhere - Amazon usually price match.

The free offer should either be active now or will kick in the next day or so. If you've been reading the blurb and considering giving it a go then now's the right time to do so.

The Journeymen is two stories interwoven into one. The main story is about Tom Roberts, a space vehicle designer who becomes targetted by a group known as The Journeymen. The back story tells the tale of how the Journeymen came to be here in the first place, while introducing you to the colonists, the Sons of Arlgón and, of course, the Interbreds (or IBs). By the way, in all probability you are an IB: if not you'll know the back story and will almost certainly be dangerous.

Be warned, The Journeymen is violent. It's also thought provoking and for a limited period, free.

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Tripped up by Amazon, Saved by Smashwords, Free Book To All

Although I can see there is a fair amount of interest in Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning from the Amazon listings, there is a glaring oversight on the page - the eBook isn't being listed!

I've had an email from Amazon stating that the book is live in all regions and they also sent me a link to the page it's on - the page exists somewhere in Amazon and the link opens it, but there is no pricing information so I suspect there's been a hitch there.  I've emailed them so the book should appear soon, I hope.

In the meantime can I suggest you check the book out on Smashwords, instead?  I've broken with convention and ignored Smashwords' ruling that if there is adult content then to indicate it - there are profanities, lots of violence and the merest suggestion of sex if you're averse to those topics, but looking at the content that removing the 'prude filter' reveals shows me that actually, there is a lot worse on Smashwords.  It has become a bit of a dumping ground for - ahem - explicit erotica.  I've previously tended to list my books as containing adult content and I know a lot of people struggle to find them on Smashwords as a result, but not this baby!

Anyway, here's a link to Journeymen II: Day of Reckoning

And here's a reason to go there today. XY33F     This code, when used when purchasing a copy of the book, will render the price to zero.  That's right, for a limited period I'm giving the eBook version away.  But not for long, so you'll need to act fast.

Feel free to share this link with your friends.

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Is Ths The Worst Scam Attempt Yet?

We're all used to people attempting to reduce our bank balances without providing anything useful in return - and no, I'm not banging on about the taxman again.  I'm talking about those emails and other assorted internet based attempts to trick us into providing our personal data or just to get us to click on a link that then squirts malware into our computer.

Let's start with the links first.  Common sense in this day and age should tell us not to open any URL that we cannot absolutely verify or be certain about.  It's actually a tall order in many cases, especially if you know someone who thinks it's a public service to forward on each and every joke-based email that drops into their inbox, emailing their entire address book, even if the joke isn't that funny or has been around the internet an incalculable number of times.

I used to have a golden rule regarding these emails - if they started by claiming they were the funniest joke on the internet or included the words 'wait for it....' followed by an interminable space which you assumed the punchline would reside in I deleted them, there and then without reading further.  I say I used to have such a rule, these days I just delete automatically.  I'm sure there must be some genuinely funny emails floating around out there, but life is just too short to waste wading through the genuinely unfunny emails that form the bulk, plus many of these emails are simply a vehicle for viruses and malware, readily forwarded from unsuspecting friends.  The real giveaway, though, is the link that some hope we will click on.

But these are pretty low level scams, based on the hope that they will go viral before the payload is detected. Usually the payload simply redirects the search engine of the infected computer to one that looks real but is almost certainly up to no good.  I've helped a few people eradicate these intrusive changes in the past but due to my cautious nature I've never attempted to find out if they really do search for anything.

More serious are the well organised phishing scams, usually in the form of an email that, if you follow the links, opens up a credible looking web page, usually for a major bank,  While the skills of the designers can be variable, many of these are very accurate copies of existing web pages - it's only a push of PrtScrn after all.  The strength of these scams is that they are very realistic looking.  The weaknesses are twofold.  First, all the major banks - hopefully all the banks regardless of size - continually tell us that they will never email us and ask us to use a link in the email to log on to our accounts.  As most of us can read, that should be enough.  But the second weakness is that, although there are only a finite number of banks and other savings institutions, there are enough to make it difficult to second guess who uses which.  If any of us receive an email purporting to be from a bank we don't have an account with then we'd guess it was at best a mistake, more likely a scam.  However one way of achieving this - in the minds of the scammers - is to send emails from all of the major banks at the same time.  If that failed to send alarm bells then we deserve to be scammed.

I don't know how many fall for these scams - I'm guessing some must otherwise they wouldn't bother, but it can't be many.  The next kind of scam probably doesn't fare much better, although if anything will work, this could be the one because it feeds on our inherent greed.  It's the email that tantalises us - in their mind, anyway - with the possibility of profit we're not entitled to.  You know, funds locked in an African state, needs a European (or US) bank account to pay into.  Then there's the lottery wins for competitions we've never heard of, let alone entered.  If anyone is greedy enough to provide bank details to claim a prize in a competition they never entered, then they also probably deserve to be fleeced.

Today I received what is probably the worst ever example of one of these emails.  It is so bad, it's almost good.  I'll suppress some information - I know anyone who is smart enough to read this blog isn't going to fall for a scam like this, but I can't do anything about the occasional wanderer who may think the following is reasonable.

It starts with the sender's apparent name - Lucas Moore.  Unfortunately for Lucas, my email also identifies his email address which shows his real name isn't as Anglicised as the header might suggest.  Then there's the subject: 2013 Scam Victims compensation!!!.  That's right, three exclamation marks, showing that this must be a professional communication.

Next there's a list of pseudo official text indicating this comes from the Scam Compensation Office Department of the Ecobank International Inc.  That's right, not just an office or a department, but both.  To make it official the email includes a bogus reference number.  Then comes the text, which suggests that Ecobank have been nominated by the World Bank/United Nations (I'm not sure which and neither are they, seemingly) to pay out up to $500,000 in compensation to scam victims.  Well, they would, it's their fault, surely?

But don't get any ideas about this being an easy payment to lay your hands on, no - all applications have to vetted by Ecobank - I'm pleased to see some diligence being applied here - and of course they would like me to provide some personal information.  Now that gets my goat - they email me and ask me to provide my name and email?  Oh, and could I provide some contact details, such as address, phone number, age, occupation.  In fact some of the key information that might just help someone crack my bank account with some additional information.  And one last thing - could I ensure I advise them of the amount I've been scammed?  That's a tricky one, talk about chicken and egg.  I'll only know that when they've finished hanging my bank account upside down by the ankles, surely?

And then there's a phone number - it starts with the number +234 and some other numbers which I expect is a premium rate number in somewhere like Belize.  Like I say, it's so bad, it should win an award.

The final example of scamming that I've had to wade through this week - the list above is just an sample that we all experience through our inboxes - differs in that instead of waiting for me to drop my guard and let them in, they've just taken something of mine.  Once again I've been alerted to a website offering one of my eBooks for download - I suspect for free, but it wasn't too clear - and I had to go through the usual motions of contacting the hosting ISP and getting them to cease and desist.  It's not that I'm overly bothered by people sharing my books - I fully recommend letting your friends and family have a read of any of my books you've enjoyed in the same way you might pass a paperbook version around your group of friends.  It's the bloody cheek of giving away copies to anyone without even asking my permission that irritates me.

So I'll continue to shut down any site that attempts to scam me without my permission, in a heartbeat.  But I'm up for providing free copies of my books if anyone wants to ask me politely - just send a short email to raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com making a bid for a free eBook, stating which title and if it's a friendly enough request I'll happily generate a code on Smashwords for you.  Just don't pop it on a website offering it for free download, please.  And whatever you do, don't pop a web link in your email that might make me think it could be malware!

And - wait for it.... - don't include any internet jokes.  I've deleted them all.

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The Numbers Game

When I finished my first couple of novels I tried to get published through what was then the only available route, excepting vanity publishing.  I bought the Writers and Artists Yearbook, followed all the considered wisdom of the day and started to pitch my books.  Not to publishers, it was pretty well clear that unsolicited manuscripts from unknown authors to the publishing houses would hit the reject pile unopened.  Only those unknown authors who had achieved fame and popularity by other means such as playing sports successfully or being a TV celebrity, in all of its variable meanings, could go straight to the publisher.

No, I tried the accepted route and pitched at various literary agents and quickly realised a couple of home truths.  First, those literary agents who had access to the publishing houses, had pretty much enough work to not want to break a sweat on a unknown author.  Second, they didn't worry overmuch about reading the submitted material before rejecting it, based on some of the reject letters I received.  I realised that pitching like this is a long slog - Stephen King famously had a nail above his writing desk overflowing with reject slips - and consequently I got on with the day job while continuing to write in my spare time.

And then came the self publishing revolution and here we are.  All grown up and published.  Now it might seem a little strange that someone trying to eke out a marginal second income from words should admit to being more interested in numbers, but apart from having a degree in mathematics I've worked in manufacturing industry monitoring production figures for a remarkably more rewarding income in my recent past, so for me monitoring the numbers is more interesting than many other parts of this industry.

It can be a little frustrating, because following the numbers can often yield way more insight than a hundred thousand words of inspirational text, in my opinion.  Take Amazon, for example.  Many self published authors do so through Amazon, some exclusively.  In fact I suspect there are few who don't, and would question anyone who chose to not do so, despite my recent call to arms to stage a boycott on the company - which although it didn't get a lot of vocal support proved  to be a very popular posting which suggests a few of you were thinking of joining in.  Anyway, if and when you sell a book through Amazon you find out which region it is sold in - North America, which until recently used to include Canada but now includes India instead.  Even if the sales data reveals where your  books are selling best - my Amazon data indicates that North America is my best market followed by the UK, not sure if I would know if any of the US sales were actually India sales at present - I don't have any information about where I'm nearly selling books to Amazon.  To make that a little clearer, I have no visibility of where my books are being looked at, no idea if people are cruising past my books on Amazon.  If I did I might be able to target promotions in different regions.

Smashwords does let me know about drive-bys, but only by book.  I don't know how many of the page views and book sample downloads took place in the US, how many in the UK or Germany or France, although I do often get some idea of where books were bought when the likes of Barnes & Noble return sales data to Smashwords.  In some cases I can even narrow the sales down to sub regions - I watched Digital Life Form sell in one Canadian state then start moving around Canada state by state over a period of a couple of weeks for a short period last year.  I could almost feel the emails flying between friends and family who had found an eBook that worked for them.

It's a similar story with this blog - I'm sure those of you who write a blog will track your daily pageviews and Blogger, Google's blogging tool, provides data that is tantalisingly helpful while not helping at all.  For example I know that the US is the main landing location for my blog, with the UK in second place.  In fact, in recent weeks, the UK hasn't featured greatly, the US has increased its readership followed by a slew of European locations.  But I can't tell you if the main US readership is East or West coast, or whether it is the mid-West, perhaps?  I can make some assumptions by the timings of hits but it's not scientific.  Maybe I wouldn't do anything with the information even if I had it, but it would be nice to have the choice.

One of the things the data could help with would be the impact on pricing on different price points.  We can all make assumptions about who can afford books and what they are likely to pay.  Well, although it's not all the data I would like to play with, Smashwords' CEO Mark Coker has provided an update to last year's survey on eBook selling trends.  Smashwords have an advantage in that they see a lot of books sold directly through them and through the likes of Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony etc and they can crunch the data to see if there are any trends.  There are and they've shared them in their latest blog entry which you can read using the link above. Please note that Smashwords' blog is an incremental blog, so if you've stumbled across this entry some time after I've posted it you'll need to scroll down a bit to reach the May 8th entry.

I'm not going to regurgitate all of the data that the posting provides - Mark does his usual ultra detailed analysis in a fine way that I would only mangle - but I can reveal that some things haven't changed over the year and one of those is that books offered for free are the most downloaded - now who would have thought?

One final point on numbers, for this posting anyway.  When I started self publishing I read up on all the considered wisdom on the subject and top of the list was to start a personal website to promote the books and the other was to start blogging.  I didn't know what a blog was back then so have had to develop my own style over the last couple of years.  I've just looked up and this is published blog entry number 500.  I don't know if that's a milestone in blog terms, but I reckon that between my book serialisations and general musings I've posted somewhere near 400,000 words in those 500 postings.  So, to celebrate, I'm adding a little extra to this posting.  My first book, Parallel Lives is currently listed for free at all good booksellers except Amazon, for reasons I've adequately explained in earlier postings a week or so ago.  For a very limited period I'm making the other five books free for a day or so, but only through Smashwords, using the codes provided below.  Feel free to download a copy of any of these books you may be missing and do pass the codes to friends and family - just remember that they will expire fairly soon.  If you pass them the blog URL instead of just the codes, then I may be able to derive some more data about you guys.

The Journeymen - MW35J
Skin - HP59D
Digital Life Form - ND94T
The Last Simple - AK96K
Project: Evil - MQ28M

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Get Parallel Lives For Free

Since the beginning of October I've been posting my first novel, Parallel Lives, three chapters a week.  Some of you have clearly been following it week by week, others have dipped in and out of the story.  Some chapters have been stumbled upon more than others - Chapter 8 in particular - to the point that I started reading and re-reading the chapter in case there was a howler of a typo circulating the internet.  I haven't found one - although anyone who writes and is honest with themselves will concede that although we know what we think we wrote, on reading, we'll often read what we thought we wrote, not what we wrote.  If you get my drift.

Anyway, Parallel Lives was started one lunchtime in my last job in the RAF.  I wrote a short story that had a paradox at its culmination.  In itself it was OK, in my opinion, but lacking in resolution.  However, lunch over, I got back to work and promptly forgot about the short story.  At the time I was writing a comedic TV drama loosely based on the X Files, which was still popular back then.  Once I'd finished the comedy I looked around for something to write and the background to Parallel Lives occurred to me.  I started writing the book in my last few months of military service and continued it as I started my civilian career. Consequently the book forms a tangible link between my military career and my civilian one, and I guess anybody who has spent a significant part of their lives in a career like the military will appreciate that it's good to have something that links the past with the present.

So I have a soft spot for the book and I've enjoyed sharing it with you all.  Now I realise that reading a book serialised on a blog isn't the best way to enjoy it - that's why we all have eReaders and tablet computers these days, so that we can read eBooks at a pace and duration of our choosing, not at the pace dictated by some blogger.  Consequently, for a limited period, I'm setting the price of Parallel Lives at almost all eBook-sellers to zero.

Those of you who self publish your own books on Amazon will know that they don't make it easy to list your books for free.  They do if you sign up for KDP select, which requires the author to give Amazon exclusive rights to publish your book.  In return they make it easier for the author to give it away a few days a months, which is an acknowledged successful promotional tool.  They also are pushing shovel loads of money to get authors to sign up exclusively with them, to exclude Apple, Barnes & Noble, Sony and all the other eBook-sellers out there.  Potentially I could make a little more money by signing up for KDP Select, by tapping into the Amazon slush fund.  But as I've mentioned once or twice before I'm morally against the concept so I keep my books available at multiple sellers, including Amazon, and have to offer alternative ways for Kindle users to get my books for free when I run a promotion like this.

Right, for those not tied to Amazon, pop along to your favourite eBook retailer and check out Parallel Lives there.  If it isn't listed for free and you're reading this posting somewhere around the second of May then try again later - it can take a few days for the instruction to propagate through the various eBook retailers.  If, however, you've stumbled across this posting a while after that date and the book isn't free, then I guess you've missed this boat.

For those who use a Kindle or the Kindle App, then you've got a couple of options.  First, consider getting your copy from Smashwords.  Smashwords is the bookstore that distributes my books to everyone who isn't Amazon, but they do have Kindle compatible versions available.  Unfortunately you won't have the benefit of Whispersync to pop the book into your Kindle, it will simply load onto your PC and you'll have to drag it across to your Kindle over the USB cable you use to charge it with.  It isn't rocket science, but not everyone who uses an eReader wants to be a computer geek, so there's an alternative method you can use.

Complain.  Not to me, I'm pretty impervious to that sort of thing.  To Amazon.  Although they won't give me the tools to list for free, they'll let you have a free copy if you can prove I'm listing Parallel Lives on one of their competitors' sites for free.  I've never tried it myself, but I've been on the receiving end when I've listed books for free previously.  Certainly in the US they appear to be pretty good about it - I haven't seen it used on UK or other Amazon sites, but you'll see a link on the Amazon page asking you to 'tell us about a lower price'.  Use that and I reckon they'll price match - they don't guarantee they will, but hey, it's an electronic file.  Incidentally they tend to leave it on zero long after the promotion has finished - maybe to punish me - so if  you have stumbled across this posting after I've restored the price of the eBook across the field you may still find it for free on Amazon.  It's the wrong format for most dedicated eReaders, but tablet users can download the Kindle App for free.  Just a thought.

So please do take the opportunity to download Parallel Lives for free - it won't last for long, so don't delay.  If you've enjoyed some or all of the book then why not tell your friends - post a link to this entry to them.

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Taxing Times for All

These are hard times for many.  In some parts of Europe, in the mature economies, unemployment is running at over 25%.  That's a tough gig for anyone.  I know some will carp about the Social State and the amount of benefits available in such-and-such a country, but I'd rather earn a wage than be on the dole.

Those of us who have kept earning through the last five years have noticed a reduction in the purchasing power of our wages, in the main.  Taking a dive in spending power might seem trivial compared to not having a job, and I'd agree, but it is still unpleasant.  It is also galling to many that there is still an apparent strata of society that seems largely unaffected by the economic downturn - there's a significant amount of people who appear to be able to spend money like there's no tomorrow.  Senior bankers appear to be in this group.

Of course, whether you have experienced a pay cut, job loss, or just an erosion of your spending power, or even if you are one of the lucky few who are relatively unaffected by the economic situation, the impact of the current financial situation will not have passed you by.  However all of us are likely to be affected by the cuts in public spending to some degree.

Now this isn't a political rail against any particular party; this blog is read across the globe in both hemispheres in countries that have widely differing political systems so that would be a pointless exercise.  And I fully accept that some readers believe whole-heartedly in the cuts to public sector spending while others will think it needs to be balanced and another group will insist that any cut is a bad one.

Now I'm a bit of a pragmatist by nature.  I recognise that we are always going to have a public sector of some size and consequently there are always going to be taxes needed to fund them.  Plus, apart from the extreme right wing in this country (at least) I guess we all want roads, schools, hospitals and all the other embodiments of a public infrastructure.  In the UK at the moment the drive is to reduce the public sector while maintaining the tax burden to reduce the deficit, mainly because that's the only obvious route to doing it other than raising taxes.

Like many other countries the UK is now taking a firmer stance against those who choose to not pay the right amount of tax, however this isn't always an easy task.  It is for those of us who are normal wage earners, but for the well heeled and large corporations with the cash to pay smart people to scrutinise the tax laws there are many ways to avoid paying too much.

This has caused a bit of a furore in the UK recently as it seems many of the global tech companies such as Amazon and Google are paying little or no tax in the UK and global coffee house Starbucks has managed to avoid making any profit, in a technical sense, for a decade, consequently not paying any tax.

Actually, despite the public outrage about the Starbucks side of the picture, they did pass on a sizeable amount of tax in the form of VAT and staff Paye-As-You-Earn (PAYE) income tax.  What they did do was reduce their Corporation Tax liability by legally shifting money around Europe and leasing their own logo from the US.  As far as I know, and I'm not an accountant or a lawyer, they didn't break any laws, they just exploited gaps in the legislation of the country.

The same goes for Amazon and Google.  They employ a lot of people in the UK, who all pay income tax.  A lot of the goods we buy from them are subject to VAT, so that feeds back into the public coffers too.  But they do seem to have spent a lot of effort in reducing their tax burden.  But I'm guessing they quite like having roads to drive on and hospitals for their employees.

Anyway, there's been a bit of a stink about the tax avoidance tactics of these three companies.  I'm sure they're not unique but it would appear that they are amongst the most effective at the avoidance thing.  As a result of a newspaper campaign backed by outraged politicians, who quite recently spent a lot of their inventiveness in fabricating expense claims that bled the taxpayer pretty well dry, the three companies are getting a lot of public scrutiny as 2012 draws to a close.

Predictably Starbucks caved in first - avoiding buying a latte in Starbucks is a lot easier than avoiding using Google to search for an alternative coffee house in the area or using someone other than Amazon to do your on-line Christmas shopping.  But Google have also felt the pinch as advertisers have decided that associating with them might damage their corporate image.  Amazon may come out of all this unscathed and virtually untaxed - they hold that much sway in the public shopping mind that it's difficult to imagine any other business ousting them right now.

But the real issue is the tax rules.  None of these companies, as far as I'm aware, did anything illegal.  Sure, they may have been inventive, wilful even.  Morally challenged probably doesn't even come close.  But law breakers?  Almost certainly not.

Simplify the tax rules, then make it clear - you trade in this country, you pay the taxes due.  If any Government gets that wrong and makes it too unprofitable for the likes of Amazon, Google or Starbucks to trade here then they'll do what any rational commercial enterprise would do - they would turn their backs on the country and millions of vote bearing, coffee drinking, Google searching and Amazon buying people would ensure the Government got it right pretty quickly.

Sorting the tax rules out should be a priority, although I don't see any move from my armchair, just lots of outraged politicians attempting to bully Amazon (good luck there guys).  However, getting the tax laws is likely to be a big job, will take time to get right.  So I guess a bit of moral pressure on these three and any others that are legally avoiding tax will have to continue.

In the meantime, why not avoid paying any tax - or indeed any money - at all by 'buying' my second novel, The Journeymen for free using the special code in this posting.  Offer good until January 1st 2013, don't ask exactly when, it's in Pacific time zone.  Best you get your copy from Smashwords earlier than later.

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