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It’s been a particularly exciting week for my inner geek this week, with the arrival this week of an ‘author’s copy’ of Parliament: Legislation and Accountability (edited by Alexander Horne and Andrew Le Sueur, Hart, 2016). All those hours, days, weeks, spent slaving over drafts, with my dear friend and colleague, Helen Kinghorn, of a chapter examining the ways in which Parliament considers draft legislative, and the impact it has on the shape of legislation which hits the statute book and ultimately affects people’s lives, now seems so worth it. (Those who read my blog closely will probably know that Parliament is my day job and a long-term obsession.) Of course, a niche publication of this sort is only likely to interest a small cadre – those who are nerdishly interested in the inner workings of legislatures and the practices of law-making. It’s not going to reach any best-seller list or be talked about in reading groups but I am nevertheless ridiculously excited. The book is officially launched later this week but is already available on Amazon (hardback and kindle) and, of course, from all good bookshops! I have a lovely hardback in my hands, complete with an elegantly stylist dust jacket which gives my words more credibility and authority than I felt while drafting.
The chapter I co-authored sits alongside contributions and essays from leading practitioners and eminent academics (which is a bit intimidating and leaves me asking what I’m doing there). But what I’m wondering is whether I now can consider myself a published author? My only purpose in seeking an answer to this is to decide if I can fairly ask LibraryThing to add an author tag to my profile page? Hundreds of authors who LibraryThing have them, like this one which belongs to Patrick Rothfuss – not that I’m comparing myself to Mr Rothfuss! It would make me stupidly happy to have an author tag but I don’t want to claim it unfairly. I’d really well any thoughts, comments etc? What does being a published author actually mean?
