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Writers' magazine |
Comment 2009 |
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| CommentSome sharp comment from people in the book world in 2007 Comment archive 2008 archive 2007 archive 2006 archive 2005 archive 2004 archive 2003 archive 2002 archive 2001
'Free' book content ‘It's a colossal irony to have the guys and gals of Amazon, Google and their ilk lusting for free book "content" as premium material on which to stake their enlarged claims to commercial riches. For these clever mathematicians and engineers who are shaping the electronic business of our time and the archives of the future, these baby-faced young entrepreneurs, have risen to their mercantile eminence without encountering books, and don't think they need to. I enjoyed the fatuous surprise of Google's Sergey Brin discovering that "There is fantastic information in books. Often when I do a search, what is in a book is miles ahead of what I find on a Web site." Translating this backhanded recognition of value into his own debased lingo, he understands that books make for "viable information-retrieval systems," information being the only cultural signifier he recognizes, evidently. His company's amazing presumption that book people should simply hand over the keys to their priceless kingdom shows how completely he and his colleagues misunderstand what is at stake. But these Internet people don't care. For billionaires like Brin, accessing the giant river of infinite book "content" onto which they can glue paid advertising is simply a giant new way to make more money, and they are single-minded about that. The giveaway is not only in their ignorance but in their reluctance to share the wealth. For its Look Inside program, Amazon demands that publishers give it, gratis, electronic files of the books, along with blurbs and cover art, arguing that in return the publishers will have increased sales. How might you prove or disprove that? (Publishers might recognize Amazon's argument, since it resembles the pathetically phony one about composition costs that they themselves used against writers years ago.) The (not yet settled) settlement between Google Book Search and the publishers who sued it for copyright infringement proposes to give a breathtakingly audacious near-monopoly to Google and mingy terms to writers. We publishers seem to have forgotten that Google's and Amazon's profit margins are triple or quintuple ours, and we haven't always checked our contracts with the authors. It is a confused, confusing and very fluid situation, and no one can predict how books and readers will survive. Changed reading habits have already transformed and diminished them both. I, for one, don't trust the book trade to see us through this. Wariness is in order.’ Veteran American editor Elisabeth Sifton of Farrar, Straus & Giroux in The Nation
'Poetry sings the song of itself' 'Poetry waves a flower in the face of a highly utilitarian age. That great secular hybrid, pragmatic evolutionary psychology and neuro-aesthetics, is busy telling us that art is a slightly puzzling evolutionary superfluity. Art is defended as "cognitive play," crucial for the evolutionary development of homo sapiens. Art, for such people, must always somehow be justified. But poetry sings the song of itself, and offers a musical gratuity. Just as no one should have to justify, in pragmatic terms, playing the piano or listening to Bach, so no one should have to justify reading Keats or Wallace Stevens. And I am not making the weak case that poetry evades or exceeds such pragmatic cost-counting, but that it challenges such utilitarianism, makes it doubt itself. It faces down the enemy. James Wood, the critic for The New Yorker,at the recent Griffin Poetry awards
'Just a set of instructions' ‘A screenplay is really just a set of instructions, it doesn’t actually have any value of itself. You can read a screenplay and be entertained by it but unless it’s made, it’s worthless. You’re always thinking: ‘How can we get this made? Is it as funny or dramatic or engaging as it can be? Will people pay to see it? Is someone else going to pay the money to make it? A screenplay is written entirely for other people; consequently, decisions you make with a screenplay are for technical, practical or financial reasons… Writing fiction is inevitably much more personal. Not necessarily autobiographical, but much closer to your way of seeing the world, and much more demanding. I find it much harder. But that’s also its great pleasure, that you have so much control. It’s a personal form of expression as opposed to a screenplay where I think you’re second-guessing the director or the producer or the audience.’ David Nicholls, author of One Day and many TV scripts, in the Bookseller
'Not a threatened species' ‘Books are not a threatened species. They are ordinary features of the ordinary world. Kids read them, just as many (how many?) adults read them. They aren’t "good" for us in the way that medicine is. They don’t "help" in any specific way. Feeding books to the bad lads won’t immediately civilize them and make them good. But they draw us together. They entertain us. They show us as we are – imperfect, partial, elusive, unfinished, beyond straightforward comprehension. They show us as we could be – more angelic, more satanic. They show us how our world could be – more like Heaven or more like Hell. Paradoxically, it’s in fiction’s weird mingling of facts and lies that we can approach the deepest and most complex "truths" about ourselves. Should we, who read books and believe that books and the stories within them contain such power, be surprised that kids read, that books survive? Of course not. We should be celebrating these facts.’ David Almond, author of Skellig, in The Times
Self-publishing - speed and control ‘Self-publishing has taken a huge leap forward in recent years. It’s always existed, but with all the technological changes from desk-top publishing systems to PoD to blogging and so forth it’s now more acceptable than ever before. It may not be so appropriate for fiction, though there have been some notable successes, such as Jill Paton Walsh’s Knowledge of Angels, but for specialist non-fiction titles it is proving popular. The trend is hardly surprising: mainstream publishers have cut back and cut back, so that even authors who had niche titles published and might have been in print for some years now find it harder and harder to keep their books available… In difficult times, when people need inspiration more than ever, providing it in portable book format is still important, regardless of all the possibilities available through the internet. One of the attractions of self-publishing is how quickly books can be made available, plus the amount of control an author has over every aspect of production and design. I believe it’s the perfect answer for authors who have had worthwhile books published, but who have been unable to remain in print with a major publishing house due to the continual trimming of lists. If authors are already established in the marketplace and are familiar with marketing and promotion and have experience on the lecture/workshop circuit, they stand even more chance of being successful, providing expectations about sales are realistic.’ Eileen Campbell, Mind, Body and Spirit expert and author of 6 books, in Bookbrunch Read up on self-publishing in our WritersPrintShop, the most comprehensive online explanation of how it works.
'Women under the radar' 'Writers like Jeanette Winterson have resisted the lesbian label, but it's never felt like a problem to me. I'm very lucky. I have a lesbian audience but a mainstream one as well... I use a period landscape we all know well, and put lesbians in it. I think it makes for quite an interesting experience - for straight and lesbian readers alike - to go back into the past, and think, "oh yeah, it's not actually all heterosexual".' Gays have such an obvious historical record - think about Oscar Wilde. I think this is because male homosexuality was illegal; men were arrested for it, executed for it. Whereas women were under the radar a little. In a way, it was always easier for the mainstream to ignore them.' Sarah Waters, author of The Little Stranger, in the Sunday Times
'Free maximises your reach' ‘The enemy of most authors is not that they are not making money, it’s that they are not being read. Eighty or 90% of authors don’t make a living from it, so why do they write? For other reasons that don’t pay the mortgage: attention, reputation and expression. For them, free is great because it minimizes the barriers to entry. Let’s say I give the e-book version of Free for free, and 95% of the people experience it for free and then 5% decided they like it so much they want to buy the hardcover to have on their shelf, or give it to someone. You may say: "Well, gosh, that’s not very much." But what if it’s 5% of 10 million people? That’s not so bad. Free maximizes your reach.’ Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail and Free: The Future of a Radical Price, in the Bookseller
Books in the recession ‘My guess is that it will be ‘all change, all stay the same’. The notion that the economic environment will change people 's taste in one sweep I think is fanciful. The usual five celebs will have their 'autobiographies' fight it out at Christmas and everyone will be looking for a zeitgeist humour break out - nothing last year interestingly. In 'serious' non-fiction, there will be the usual motivations for buying: narrative, terrific individuality to the writing, the stories of lives... but here, like everywhere, sales numbers may be allied to keen pricing and awards won . I think there may be a mid year drift toward escapism and jollity. Fathers Day may spearhead this with lots of books about bad behaviour. Commercial fiction will be interesting. I have a feeling there's changes in taste afoot: a move back to more 'big', 'airport' novels; historical moving into different eras; a real reduction in 'chic'. The established brand authors will be a safe haven and it will be more difficult to persuade retailers to take a chance on new authors. But smart, well packaged, well written books of all types will still sell. How many? That's largely up to us.’ Trevor Dolby, Publisher of Preface at Random House UK
'A dumbed-down genre'? ‘ So, Cheryl Cole is to write a series of ‘chick-lit’ novels . . . Ms Cole is gorgeous and talented . . . as a singer and celebrity. But can she hack it as a novelist? Does she actually know what it entails? Where’s her track record of being able to write 100,000+ words of original fiction?...I take this very seriously. It’s not about ‘slagging off Cheryl Cole’ (she’s seems lovely) - it’s about protesting at the decisions made by our leading publishers. My concern is that talented, promising, as-yet-unpublished authors may be ignored because publishers are investing their funds elsewhere, where literary quality does not figure. Tell me that Ms Cole’s fine UK publisher won’t now reject and forfeit fine unknown novelists on account of having spent a vulgar amount on her advance? We all know the adage of 'everyone has a book in them' - but how many truly have the commitment, courage, tenacity - and skills - to write a series of novels? Writing a novel is not about ‘burning ambition’ - where ambition is solely about publication or money or fame. For a novel to be a good novel - and worthy of the generous readers who part with their cash to buy it - it can only arise from the author’s absolute desire to write that story out of their system - and being blessed with the necessary talent to do so... Above all else, we object to the assumption that it's 'easy' to write commercial fiction - that 'chick-lit' (an umbrella term I've always loathed...if anyone called me a chick I'd belt them...) is but a dumbed-down genre that 'anyone' can turn their hand to. It’s great commercial fiction, it’s perennially popular and there should be quality controls!!!' Freya North, in a Bookseller blog
Creative writing and the canon 'Teaching ‘helps in thinking about your own writing in a more formal theoretical way. Writers might think about point of view or structure or character, and often you have an instinctive understanding, but what it has helped me do is get a more theoretically well-founded idea… I t’s very frightening for the students, they just don’t know what they are going into at all. When I was starting in 1989 the potential routes one could take were reasonably clear. Now it’s so much more complicated…The idea of what constitutes literary value has changed or become less consensual. It’s harder to establish what is good and what is not, and that is one of the things that forms the canon. Barnes, Amis, McEwan were the last people through the door, and then the door closed, and then the building fell down.’ Giles Foden, author of Turbulence, in the Bookseller
'Rejected by every single UK publisher' ‘All writers, unless they’re very fortunate, know how difficult it is to
get noticed, to become ‘discovered’. I became an ‘overnight success’ (I
clapped when I read the review that said it) after almost twenty years:
stories in obscure little magazines; a couple of story collections published by
a tiny northeastern press; a novel rejected by every single UK publisher; a couple
of dozen readers who loved my work; a part of me that said it all would work out
well; and another part that simply didn’t give a damn. I wrote because I
loved to write, and I’d keep on writing no matter how much recognition I
received. David Almond on SWBWI website Undiscovered Voices
'Poetic language' 'I've nothing against popular culture, but the idea that there is something divisive about bringing to people the greatest language ever written is utterly wrong. I think it's dying out, but there was a feeling that somehow it almost wasn't politically correct to be interested in serious and great poetry. To some extent it's much more politically correct to go to football matches... 'After all, what is it that makes us human? It's language. And poetic language is the most rare form. It's like a thrilling thing that a line can set off in your mind a whole world of potential experience. Either it inspires you in terms of wanting certain experiences, or it can help you to treasure the experience within those lines. And therefore life, for the short time we're on this Earth, is immensely enriched.' Josephine Hart, author of the Words that Burn book and CD
'The e-book revolution' 'There is some hesitancy with publishers fully embracing e-books. We have a 'book love', the printed book is a gorgeous object. We need to communicate that love with e-books, and there is something shiny and new and mobile about them. The author deserves the value. There are people out there that don't understand that, who think that bytes are cheaper than paper. The industry has established a level of value of buying the work of a creative person and I think we should sustain that throughout the e-book revolution.' Stephen Page, CEO and Publisher of Faber, in the Bookseller
'At the heart of the writer's life' ‘One of the attractions of being a writer is that you’re never a specialist. Your field is entirely open; your field is the entire human condition… There’s no doubt that writing can on occasion be grim, lonely, miserable, desperate and wretched, and there were many years when I struggled materially. But I’ve also known wonderful times. Writing is a very emotional thing, especially when words come in a way that you know is right. At the heart of the writer’s life there can be a great sweetness. And it’s also a great adventure: your whole life, from book to book, is a constant adventure.’ Graham Swift in the Observer
'The sunlight of literature' 'Without the sunlight of literature children cannot grow as they should. We know that from books come knowledge and understanding, that they are a source of infinite joy and fun, that they stimulate imagination and creativity, that they open eyes and minds and hearts. It is through the power and music and magic of stories and poems that children can expand their own intellectual curiosity, develop the empathy and awareness that they will need to tackle the complexities of their own emotions, of the human condition in which they find themselves. And it's through books that we can learn the mastery of words, the essential skill that will enable us to express ourselves well enough to achieve our potential in the classroom and beyond.' Michael Morpurgo, launching the Sunday Times/The Times Books for Schools promotion
'A focus on frontlist?' 'If backlist sales decline significantly - notwithstanding the questionable "Long Tail" argument - will publishers have to rely on frontlist and ancillary revenues? We're in an industry that produces perhaps 100,000 new consumer titles every year. We publish as many consumer titles in a day as Hollywood releases movies in a year, each supported by marketing budgets book publishers cannot emulate. Would it really be so terrible if bookstores stopped selling backlist, aside from a few staples and p.o.d, and became like apparel stores, selling mainly frontlist? There would be more space for big promotions; inventory turn would improve; and publishers and retailers would sharpen up their marketing skills. The book trade hasn't prided itself on business savvy, but now may be the time to develop appropriate skills. Maybe publishers could sell to retailers on a firm sale, guaranteed gross margin basis, allowing markdowns in place, doing away with the expense and nuisance of returns, and their demoralising impact. Or is thinking like this a step too far?' Lawrence Orbach, CEO of Quarto, in the Bookseller
'Movies and pop music and stuff' 'I think readers who aren’t used to reading contemporary poetry are surprised to find it’s about our world now, our experience; it talks about movies and pop music and stuff. It’s not some fuddy-duddy thing, and most of it contains a good deal of imaginative brilliance. My experience is that when people read contemporary poetry they are engaged and interested in a way they did not expect to be.' John Stammers, whose last collection was Stolen Love Behaviour
'Just get it all down.' 'I first started writing when I worked as a copywriter in an ad agency. I was dreaming about having babies, but I also got an idea for how to begin a novel and started writing under the desk at work. They told me my heart wasn't in it, and I remember going home and telling my husband that I had lost my job, but not to worry because I was going to finish my novel. He wasn't particularly impressed. It was 18 years and 10 books ago and what I was writing seemed to strike a cord. My main characters have grown up just as my readers and I have, so in my latest book there are darker themes than before. Much of what I write is inspired by the ups and downs of my friends' lives, and life does become more complex.' Advice to new writers: 'Just get it all down without being too self-conscious. I carried a notebook, but I kept losing it; so I just store ideas in my head. With the first draft you should get it all out, then revise later. I never know what will happen when I sit down and that's what keeps me hooked on writing. I want to know how it will end.'Catherine Alliott, author of A Crowded Marriage, in the Sunday Telegraph's Stella
Working with a new editor - and on a sequel 'It's a bit like getting divorced, and then having sex with someone for the first time. It's awkward and you sort of feel weird. And it did, until I read her editing notes and they were brilliant... I am very nervous, I'm never going to do a sequel again. I'm out to prove something to myself and I'm not sure if that's a good idea. People will compare the fresh, untainted voice of my 29-year old self that was completely unselfconscious about writing (it) because I didn’t think anyone was going to read it. It was innocent, it wasn't trying to be anything, it just was. I've put myself in a vulnerable place, but I suppose you do every time you write a book.' Lisa Jewell, author of Ralph's Party, in the Bookseller
'Perhaps the greatest of human inventions' ‘A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called "leaves") imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person – perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.’ Carl Sagan
Last column in Times Books 'Times Books as we know it will be no more, but books themselves, thankfully, seem shockproof against change. Neither economics nor e-readers will oust the beloved book. We don't stop reading because we are poor, any more than book lovers will give up books for their electronic lookalikes... As a writer, change is necessary, otherwise writing becomes a kind of copying out of what is there already. That may make money but it won't make new imaginative space. But then, neither will ceaseless technological innovation, which is simply distracting. I don't see that Shakespeare or the Brontes or Eliot would have written better if they had laptops. I love my Mac but I can work without it... Readers of this column will know that I believe in art and literature as a counterweight to prevailing values, and that for me, fiction and poetry are not leisure activities but active energies at the centre of life... Writing this column has been a way of thinking through much that is important about books, about creativity, about what it means to read seriously and think poetically, when everyday language is both non-stop and trivial. And it has been a meeting-place, or so it seems to me; as though on Saturdays we sat on a bench with our books and talked.' Jeanette Winterson, in her final column in the last separate book supplement of The Times.
The post-Gutenberg revolution ‘The primary goal of publishing general fiction and non-fiction was never profit—though profit was essential to stay in the game. Publishing is a vocation in which the work is its own reward, an insufficient goal for today’s conglomerates. The business as it exists cannot survive, but in the miraculous way such things happen, a shining future is at hand. The 500-year-old Gutenberg system in which copy is delivered to a printer who ships inventory to a publisher’s warehouse from which it is consigned to bookshops is being displaced by the combined impact of digitization and the Internet, whose vast implications for the existing supply chain have yet to be fully exploited or perhaps grasped by today’s industry. In theory, every book ever published in whatever language can now be stored and delivered in digital form as cheaply and quickly as e-mail to be downloaded onto a variety of devices from dedicated readers, to more versatile handheld devices and to free standing machines that quickly and cheaply print and bind a selected title on demand wherever electricity and Internet connectivity exist… Authors’ complete works may be downloaded practically anywhere on Earth from appropriate websites, their property protected and royalties conveyed by secure software. The effect of this post-Gutenberg Revolution will be to radically decentralize the marketplace for books and greatly reduce the cost of entry for would-be publishers... Meanwhile, through today’s gloom we may discern a spectacularly bright future in which the rewards to writers and readers and even to publishers will be unprecedented as world-wide multilingual backlists expand online in a cultural revolution orders of magnitude greater than Gutenberg’s world-changing technology generated five centuries ago.’ From An Autopsy of the Book Business by Jason Epstein, Chairman of On Demand Books, LLC, who was for many years editorial director of Random House US during a 50-year career and is the author of Book Business, now available in 10 translations.
Sucking the air out of the system 'The heart and soul of any publishing business is its editorial department, the men and women who, crudely, acquire the 'content' on which the imprint depends. In the past 20 years, editorial freedom has become eroded. Sales people have increased their influence as bookshops have gained power at the expense of publishers. Gone are the days, with rare exceptions, when an editor's positive enthusiasm for a new book could trump the negative anxieties of the sales department, almost the only books that now generate much excitement among publishers are would-be bestsellers... Bestsellers are not intrinsically bad. But they suck the air out of the system, and distort the delicate ecology of the book trade. The publishers make a pact. In exchange for turnover, they supply the bookshops with the kind of merchandise they can sell in large quantities. In this world, the little book - novel or memoir - struggles to make its way... There is perhaps a sliver lining to these clouds of recession. Books remain comparatively cheap, and excellent value for money. Most paperbacks are approximately the price of a cinema ticket. Is it not possible that the downturn will purge the trade of vacuous bestsellers and bring the British reading public back to better books?' Robert McCrum in the Observer
'A primitive pleasure' 'In times gone by, poetry was always the word-form most immediately associated with strong feelings. What is surprising is finding that in the present day, when articles in newspapers about 'the death of poetry' come round as regularly as a lost sock in the washing machine, these ancient offices and values are still so honoured. It's because poetry is a fundamentally primitive thing. We understand this before we realise it, when we chant and recite in the school playground, taking a basic human pleasure in the rhythms and rhymes and games that language allows... ...Poetry, which belongs in life, should reflect the whole experience of life. It should be as happily diverse as the society which brings it into being, and... as manifold as the relationships it will describe, Sometimes rejoicing in things as they are, sometimes criticising them, sometimes welcoming, sometimes rejecting - always keeping its eyes peeled, its ears open, and its devotion to meaning as intense as its passion for mystery. A primitive pleasure? Absolutely. But a primitive pleasure that is endlessly transformed and re-invented. Andrew Motion, UK Poet Laureate, in the Sunday Telegraph
'This wonderful tool for self-knowledge' ‘Culture, as I have said, belongs to us all, to all humankind. But in order for this to be true, everyone must be given equal access to culture. The book, however old-fashioned it may be, is the ideal tool. It is practical, easy to handle, economical. It does not require any particular technological prowess, and keeps well in any climate. Its only flaw--and this is where I would like to address publishers in particular--is that in a great number of countries it is still very difficult to gain access to books. In Mauritius the price of a novel or a collection of poetry is equivalent to a sizeable portion of the family budget. In Africa, Southeast Asia, Mexico, or the South Sea Islands, books remain an inaccessible luxury. And yet remedies to this situation do exist. Joint publication with the developing countries, the establishment of funds for lending libraries and bookmobiles, and, overall, greater attention to requests from and works in so-called minority languages--which are often clearly in the majority--would enable literature to continue to be this wonderful tool for self-knowledge, for the discovery of others, and for listening to the concert of humankind, in all the rich variety of its themes and modulations.’ Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clezio, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize for Literature, in his Nobel lecture
Fewer books, more money 'I think every year we sell fewer books, but every time we do sell a book now it's for more money. Publishers are happier to spend more because buying a small book means you have small expectations. It's not necessarily a bad thing. What is more marked this year is that it takes longer for publishers to make decisions than it used to, and there is a little less room for flexibility than there was.' Simon Trewin of United Agents in the Bookseller
Indigenous children's literature 'Cultural identity, it could be argued, is best developed like a language, at an early age. Children can absorb these ideas before they are corrupted by the prejudices and complications of the adult world... In the face of increasing homogenisation of global culture, it is important that every opportunity is taken to allow publishers to support and sustain indigenous children's literature.' Maria Dickenson in her Dublin Notes in the late lamented Publishing News
'Too big, too costly' 'The very cost of some of the superstructures necessary for global giants may be one of the causes of increasingly homogenous publishing. If publishers have to deliver a profit margin sufficient to pay for it all, they may be driven to produce certain types of books that seem to promise large rewards when they succeed, but which also involve huge advances and, usually, huge risk of failure too - for evidence see the current outpouring of celebrity books for Christmas. When these big international groups were formed, there were obvious synergies to be found. But once you have centralised the accounting function, closed a few warehouses and built a newer, bigger and more modern one and amalgamated sales forces, is there much more cost cutting that can be done? The mood of the times is changing. There is a return to be made from publishing good books but perhaps not sufficient to pay for atriums and limousines. Could it be that some conglomerates are just too big, too costly and no longer offer value for money?' Clare Alexander, agent at Aitken Alexander Associates, in the Bookseller
'Write about what you know' 'Write about what you know. And embroider the hard facts a little if absolutely necessary. I don't exaggerate or embellish so much in my stories since I started writing for the New Yorker because their fact checkers are as fearsome as their legend suggests. I wouldn't be able to say that I took my water off the table without them first establishing that I'd put it on the table. I wrote about a child molester in our village in France and their French-speaking fact-checker called the farmer and his wife across the street from us and corroborated everything with them.' David Sedaris, author of When You Are Engulfed in Flames in the Observer.
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning hits 50 'It's something that comes from within you, the need to write. You're born with it.... I think all those years of writing before being published had taught me to write with precision. I didn't want to indulge in purple passages and overwrite and use too many words. I knew that the voice and tone was just right. I had found my own way, which is just as well. I'm pragmatic about the first two books. They got me going and have allowed me to write for all these years. As long as I'd had a roof over my head and food on the table, I would have carried on writing whether I was published or not.' Alan Sillitoe in The Times
'We are all in the copyright business' ‘Digital activity is critical to the evolution of publishing and in children’s we are best placed to break this out because our audience is already there, growing up with it. I produce books and love working with great authors, and whether that’s online or in print doesn’t matter to me. What matters is that their work reaches as many children as possible. As a children’s publisher we have to be aware of, and embrace, as many models as possible. We are all in the copyright business and we have to work out how to make the right connections.’ Ann-Janine Murtagh, Publisher of Children's Fiction and Picture books at HarperCollins UK, in Publishing News
'Just one thing that I wanted to write about' 'When I began, there was just one thing that I wanted to write about, which was the true devastation of racism on the most vulnerable, the most helpless unit in the society - a black female and a child. (On winning her Nobel) 'I felt representative, I felt American, I felt Ohioan, I felt blacker than ever. I felt more woman than ever.' Toni Morrison in the Observer
'A paltry 15% royalty' 'At the end of the day, the writer herself is a more valuable brand than the publishing house and it's time for writers to wake up to this fact: why should we sign contracts giving us a paltry 15% royalty in an industry where actual costs are being massively reduced overnight? Why aren't writers jumping up and down over this?' Kate Pullinger in the Guardian Online
'Inexpensive, enduring and relevant' 'In such times it is much better to be selling books than higher ticket items. In the frequent periods of recession through until 1992, our industry was relatively immune from the worst effects. Results were disappointing but certainly not disastrous. As domestic budgets are squeezed, books benefit from being an inexpensive form of recreation and indeed a necessity for priorities like education. Above all, families will do all they can to still have a great Christmas. Our opportunity is to reinforce the strengths of the book as a gift: inexpensive, enduring and, if well-chosen, relevant to the needs of the recipient.' Alan Giles, former CEO of HMV, in the Bookseller
What makes an agent say yes? 'First, is the writing truly brilliant? Second, will the market be accepting of it? And, finally, am I the right person to make the connections for the book?... There is no school of agenting. All you need is to have an opinion and not be afraid to share it. You have to be tenacious, honest and straight-dealing - although being Machiavellian at times can be useful. I am driven like everyone else in this industry by the art of possibility. We all hope with our next book that it is going to be our moment. There is nothing more exciting than reading something that really catches fire for you.' Agent Simon Trewin, interviewed by Hannah Davies in the Bookseller
Children's publishing in the post-Potter era 'I suppose my trawl through the back pages of children's publishing would be criminally incomplete without a proper mention of the Potter phenomenon. It changed everything. Not a whole lot more needs to be said, except that it wasn't all for the good. The fact that children's books are now very much in the spotlight and up on the same stage as adult books, where they have always belonged, is great. That children's publishers have picked up some of the less welcome adult practices (jostling to become members of the Six-Figure Club by paying way too much for manuscripts, to name but one) is not. But, hey, to paraphrase Joe D Brown in Some Like it Hot, nothing's perfect... I'm leaving PN during the era of conglomerates, who have absorbed and amalgamated and rationalised until you can count the independents on the fingers of one hand. Publishing has always been accused of being desperately inefficient and often that it's run like a summer fete, but there is something to be said for the entrepreneurial spirit of the likes of Peter Usborne and Brenda Gardner, and Barry Cunningham - without whose eye for a good story, of course, this would be a very different business.' Graham Marks, chronicler of children's publishing for the now-defunct Publishing News
'The Nobel doesn't sell books.' 'In literary fiction, the big awards definitely translate to sales. And it seems to set up the writer for the rest of their career: Anita Brookner won with Hotel du Lac in 1984 and she's never without a contract. The late Bernice Rubens won in 1970 and sold for as long as she was published. If you win the Booker, the Costa or the Orange, your name will be known. But for some reason the Nobel doesn't sell books. In contrast, I think the popular awards bring sales to the book but not readership forever. Popular winners are known on a popular level but not across all readers in the same way a Booker winner is... There's blurring of the lines, anyway. Take Andrea Levy's Small Island. In the UK it won the Orange Prize, the Whitbread, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Orange 'Best of the Best' - yet it was also shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year Award! That shows you how different the views are of one book.' Matt Bates, W H Smith Fiction Buyer, in Writers' Forum
'The creation of a new artform' 'As ebook readers become more affordable, publishers will produce electronic versions of books with the usual notes and introductions and the prices of both the devices and the books will come down. And that's only the beginning. What's most exciting about ebooks is not what they can do at the moment but what they may do in the future. The iLiad can connect to the internet: imagine reading Middlemarch and, at a touch, of a button, being able to look at images of the same paintings and sculptures Dorothea looks at in Rome or, for academics, being able to see links to all articles which reference the passage you're reading. Works written specially for the ebook reader are an even more exciting prospect. A piece of 'ebook native' fiction may allow you to hear the birdsong while reading a romantic outdoor scene, or may automatically subscribe you to a fictional newspaper mentioned in a crime thriller. Some will consider such things gimmicky and a threat to 'proper' reading, but different kinds of text can co-exist... What we're seeing isn't the death of the book, but the creation of a new art form. Naomi Alderman, author of Disobedience, in the Observer
Editor turned author 'When I sat down to write I realised I knew nothing, I felt really ashamed of myself having been an editor... I can remember delivering my second book by hand, in the old days before email, and Helen Fielding's novel had just hit the shops. I walked in and said to my editor: "I've got a terrible feeling that my book's a bit like Bridget Jones." She said: 'Robyn, that's not going to be a bad thing."' Robyn Sisman, author of Hollywood Ending, in the Bookseller
Advice from a children's agent 'If I were to offer two pieces of advice, it would be to focus on quality - the story has to be compelling whatever the genre - and to find your indefinable 'voice'. There's no magic to creating this, rather it is a case of you're either got it or you haven't. As an agent, you can teach an author everything except the art of storytelling. As for content and style, do your research, read up, see what works and what doesn't... The (submission) guidelines are straightforward. We want the first 50 pages, double spaced, single sided, plus a page that tells you about yourself. If you want an agent and publisher to invest time in you, it's important that you invest time in getting your submission right.' Sarah Molloy of London agency A M Heath in Writers' Forum
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