Making it in publishing is hard. The sheer size of the market, the ease of self-publishing, the difficulties in getting traditionally published… All these things make it an extraordinarily difficult landscape within which to establish any kind of foothold. While we’re fighting our corner, we can foster one of two basic attitudes to other writers. Either they are our adversaries in a dog-eat-dog world of savage competition, or they are fellow-travellers on the same difficult path, people that we can lift up, even when they may reach further down the road than we ever do. I prefer the latter. What follows are books I have loved by other writers that aren’t the big-hitters; that don’t get the press attention and the sales that the sort of writers who already happen to be TV celebs might get, but whose works are astonishing and deserving, IMHO, of your attention. If you don’t buy one of mine, you could do worse than buy one of these. But also, do buy one of mine.