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| Scene of a fictional tragedy. But how many real ones have there been? |
I have been trying to promote my 'Social Insecurity' series to a new, wider audience in recent months, leaving the relatively safe and sympathetic Facebook sites of disability and welfare rights groups, and seeking a less niche audience. After all, if the purpose of the stories is to counter the Channel 5 propaganda against claimants, it has to reach their audience and be read by them.
Luckily for those of us with no marketing budget, there are numerous Facebook groups where self-published authors can promote their work to readers, though none apparently specialize in contemporary politically-motivated fiction, you'll be unsurprised to learn. Instead, 'Severe Discomfort' et al have to compete for attention amid a diverse field, dominated (no pun intended) by BDSM romance novels - their covers almost invariably adorned with a well-toned, bronzed male torso, teasingly truncated low down on the hips, plus a title containing word 'billionaire' - and recipe books for everything from desserts more sinful than the alpha male heroes of the aforementioned erotica to prim and perfect pickles. Occasionally, as if to offer an antidote to those who might have over-indulged on the latter category, a glut of diet plan books appears, while the steamy stuff is countered with a range of chaste and wholesome Christian romantic fiction.
However do I make my books catch the eye of readers among this miscellany? I'm trying a number of approaches, from simply reproducing the book 'blurb' above the link, to snappy one-liners. I got a decent spike of downloads for 'Severe Discomfort' with the strap-line 'Unsuitable for Daily Mail readers' but when I tried marketing 'Continual Supervision' with the confession that 'the heroes are on benefits, the lovers are middle-aged and the sadistic billionaires are in Government' my witticism seemed to be wasted.
Of course 'Limited Capability' is suddenly very topical, with the publication yesterday of the long-withheld DWP statistics on the mortality rates of ESA claimants. Having studied the figures closely, I have my doubts as to whether they actually tell us anything useful at all. Even the numbers for people who died after being pronounced 'fit for work' may not be as damning as many campaigners claim; after all, both my husband and my father suffered heart attacks (fortunately not fatal) while not just apparently fit for work but in employment, and without any help from a dodgy Work Capability Assessment.
In fact, I fear that the argument about the 'real' figures will become a distraction from the real ESA issues - whether the medical assessment is fair or fit for purpose, whether the qualifying conditions have become too strict, whether poor administration is causing stress and financial hardship to seriously ill and disabled people and whether people are dying as a direct consequence of failures within this system. The number of excess deaths does not need to be in the thousands or tens of thousands to matter; if the only proof of injustice we have are several dozen coroner's reports questioning the role of the DWP in a death or suicide, surely that should be enough of a scandal for questions to be asked and resignations demanded?
I hope that my fictional story might bring as much understanding of what is wrong to people unfamiliar with how ESA works as the DWP's mass of data. The problem is, it seems a little tasteless to try to promote it now, when there are real stories about the real victims that should be told instead. On the other hand, no-one browsing the Free Kindle Books site is likely to be looking for a news report, but a contemporary drama with a cast of interesting, if impoverished, characters might yet catch their eye among the six packs and the sorbets.
You can find a link to the first instalment of 'Limited Capability' here
