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Comment from the book world in June 2014

June 2014

'An electric thrill that is totally addictive'

30 June 2014

'I'm amazingly fortunate to have a chance to write a second book that people will be interested in reading because they liked the first. It would be awfully pessimistic if an author with enthusiastic potential readers sat around in anguish...

The book has your chromosomes all the way through it, you feel squeamish about someone critiquing your inner life...

The great enemy of creative production is the internet...

80 percent of the time the work isn't that scintillating, but you become addicted to those moments when you feel like it's come alive. That gives me an electric thrill that is totally addictive.'

Tom Rachman,author of The Imperfectionists and The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, in the Evening Standard

 

‘I never wanted to be a writer'

21 June 2014

‘I never wanted to be a writer. At first I wanted to be a violinist but I just wasn't good enough. My love of stories came, I suppose, from my father, who used to read books to me like King Solomon's Mines. I've loved adventure books ever since.

Writing historical fiction means I do lots of research, so my study's covered in notes and bits of paper. It helps me get under the skin of my subjects. I also do lots of practical research. My latest book, Citadel, for example, is set during the Second World War, so I felt it necessary to learn how to shoot a gun. It was horrifyingly good fun. I actually felt guilty for finding it quite so exciting.'

Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth, Sepulchre and Citadel in The Times

 

 

'I began to notice people reading it'

16 June 2014

‘After publication, nothing much happened for over a year. I didn't have much hope. Then I began to notice people reading it - even on aeroplanes when I was travelling. It was everywhere, it was surreal. I was proud of it yet it was so dark and its central character so spineless and set in a country people in the US knew little about... I didn't think this was what bestsellers were about...

Structure is the most difficult decision, a deciding factor. My books never go where I think they're going. This one is like an oak tree: a big trunk with stories branching out. The easier something seems to read, the harder it is to write...

In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote The Kite Runner. I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do.'

Khaled Hosseini, author of And the Mountains Echoed and The Kite Runner, in the Observer

'I never thought I'd self-publish a book'

9 June 2014

'I never thought I'd self-publish a book, because for me it has all the hallmarks of delusional desperation. But after my children's book, The Tale of Russell the Sacred Crow, was rejected a few times for one reason or another, I had some commission from my printer and I thought I might as well have a go.

Nowadays you really don't need to self-publish a novel or biography, you can just whack it up on the internet for the whole world to see, but a children's picture book is different. You've got to have a good story and idea, a strong look, and it has to be printed properly. And that isn't cheap. In my mind there is no point scrimping on print and finish because otherwise it's going to look like what it is: a self-published book (and no-one likes a self-published book!). You have to fool people into thinking it is a 'real' book, then both bookshops and customers will take it seriously.'

Matt Carr in the Bookseller

‘Content is king, and it will remain king - tech will come and go...'

2 June 2014

‘Content is king, and it will remain king-tech will come and go... It's not I don't believe in tech, I do. But I also know that content is king. Not to quote Rupert Murdoch, but he used to say: ‘You have to own the pipes, but if you don't have anything flowing through it, what are the pipes going to do? ' We developed technology to market and sell our content, but the technology doesn't come first. You got to have the content and then get the technology behind it...

One of the problems with traditional publishing is that the word innovation is never used. That's because you're protecting your base business, getting books into bookstores. As bookstore shelves diminish, one has to figure out a way to spread the word to get to the public. But in traditional publishing you can only market a book for a certain length of time because you have to market the next books, and you're sitting on a balance sheet that has huge advances. We have the opportunity to play and that's what we do.'

Jane Friedman, CEO of backlist ebook publisher Open Road Media