The site is at http://www.fatbrain.com. You click on the 'eMatter' tag and go to the music section. There you will find the following: Before they change their layout to let you access the music section easily, just use the quicksearch you will see on the first page. Type in GOTH and you’re there!

Last year I tried interesting people on predominantly British newsgroups, in the idea of selling text online, or on disc. The idea was met with incredulity, as though I'd lost my head. They all wanted to concentrate on their 'eye candy', despite my belief that websites don't generally cover enough. There are some fantastic ones out there, but in my experience in monitoring hundreds, the main 90% don't even update on a regular basis, and so repetition to the visitor fast becomes the key. If magazines kept to a rigid look and to a strangely brief editorial policy you'd never buy more than two issues, yet websites bask in their futurist glory, without realising that a lot of them are as dull as can be, and the 'eye candy' aspect is simply another way of dumbing-down art.

I always assumed people recognised that Goth and all the surrounding activities involved with it, or empathic with it, was based on intelligence. Even bands that opt for a funny approach do so utilising genuine wit, rather than formulaic stupidity. I thought people would get the notion that text made sense. Haven't some people got used to the ideas of novels?

Anyway, since I confounded people with this apparently audacious suggestion, there is now an online bookstore, which specialises is legal and scientific books, that has started its text-only service, called 'eMatter'. They suggest it is perfect for old articles, speeches, reports etc. I have placed the text of all my books on there and have started putting my archives up there for sale. Cheaply. (Unlike the general ‘eBook’ approach which means you have to sell at higher prices. I have looked into a lot of that and there are many certain clauses which can put the writers at risk. Just look at the weird events happening with various MP3 sites, and Geocities, and you know what I mean.)

I want this to represent something new in publishing, so I make one point which I think most people will get, now that they know a serious business has adopted a similar approach to what I suggested before.

Book publishers are usually cheapskates, ok? Most Goths who are serious about their music download plenty of images from websites and store their own library of images. So, you buy one of my books, or archive bundles, if you are at all interested, and then illustrate it with your own selection of images, far better than ANY publisher would ever manage. And you can add to it whenever you like.

The site is at www.fatbrain.com. You click on the 'eMatter' tag and just use the search box you will see on the first page of that section. Key in Mick Mercer, and you’re there!

GOTH Mick Mercer GOTHIC ROCK BLACK BOOK $7 The original text to my first book, which is out of print.

GOTH Mick Mercer GOTHIC ROCK (All You Wanted To Know...but were too gormless to ask) $8 The text of the second book

GOTH Mick Mercer HEX FILES (the goth bible) $8 Again, my most recent book.

Obviously some of you have these books, but in years to come, when new people are entering the scene, and have no way of finding an actual printed copy, they have here all the information on various aspects of the scene, and its history, and can then illustrate it as they themselves think best.

Anyone can do this, to make use of the hundreds of images they may have downloaded over the past few years. In fact, your own illustrated version of these books can change throughout the years depending on other visual material you also uncover.

GOTH Mick Mercer GENERATION HEX, Volume I $9 This is the first archive bundle, including an interview taken from my fanzine in 1977 with the first Goth band ever, Gloria Mundi, plus an interview from the same fanzine in 1980 with Siouxsie Sioux and Steve Severin which is a trifle weird, as the police got called in. There is several articles done in the mid 90's which led up to the release of the Hex Files. A huge four-parter of the History of Goth with quotes from over a dozen well-known individuals. There are smaller updates or pieces on END-G, Adams Family and Rose Of Avalanche, large pieces on Creaming Jesus, Rosetta Stone and Midnight Configuration, and two spectacularly large interviews with Andi Sex Gang, where he talks about his time in an American prison and Julianne Regan discussing her times in All About Eve, and what she is doing now, and how you actually cope with having to return to a day job. Both interviews are startling in their honesty and make for a gripping read.

And then, this:

GOTH Mick Mercer BUFFY: Demons Are A Girl's Best Friend' $5 A 37,000 word analysis of the first Season of Buffy. My favourite programme ever, this stuns me more than any one individual band ever has! So I hope people can appreciate that I have written about this in the same manner which I handle music. To give any of you who might be interested, I include here an example chapter so you can see whether you fancy getting further into it.

(The second Season review, 'AB Negative' will be available online at the fatbrain site by the end of November.)

If you know anybody who has their own website, it may be worth them contacting fatbrain and doing that whole affiliate thing, because I hope to selling a whole lot of material there, including fiction, so they'd be on a percentage for every sale that goes through their site.

I will be starting a website next year, with a more fully International flavour than any site I have so far located. I will make it as interesting as I can, and be updating it weekly, because I am someone who understands the nature of deadlines, and I hate the ossification process. But I won't be putting any of the stuff you'll find at fatbrain in my website archives. Being a writer I regard the starting of a website as a new departure. It will, in time, build up its own archive. Within months, obviously, but everything I have done before exists in its own right, and was written for different reasons. I don't even like the idea of the two areas colliding.

Besides, people can either decide if they want it, or they don't.

Cheers!

Mick