1. Frederick Forsyth, still best known after 29 years for writing The Day of the Jackal, is embracing the new technology.
2. His latest book, a collection of stories called Quintet, will be published on the internet by Online Originals.
3. In the world of books, this is known as doing a Stephen King.
4. Earlier this year, King cyberpublished Riding the Bullet. Sadly, it was much pirated.
5. He has had much greater success with his more recent part-work The Plant, which is available a chapter at a time, for a dollar a throw. More than 150,000 readers have forked out, and the third chapter is about to appear.
6. Back to Fred, as he is never known: He's 62, has knocked around a bit, but judging by his views on Europe and on mercenaries, he's not terribly keen on foreigners.
7. Forsyth, once the youngest pilot in RAF, worked as a journalist in Berlin and Paris, before turning out the Jackal book and famously having it rejected by a slew of publishers before it became a bestseller.
8. That's another thing he has in common with S King, who threw the manuscript of his first book, Carrie, into the trash can. It was rescued by his wife Tabitha, and went on to sell 2.5m copies.
9. King's latest three-book contract is said to be worth $48m. That's something he doesn't have in common with F Forsyth.
10. Nor is King terribly interested in politics. Forsyth is. He's a leading light of the Congress for Democracy (sic), and something called the Democratic Party which is headquartered, fittingly enough, in the Enigma Business Park in Malvern.
