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| +CommentSome sharp comment from people in the book world in 2007 Comment archive 2007 archive 2006 archive 2005 archive 2004 archive 2003 archive 2002 archive 2001
'A condescension chromosome' 'When it comes to women's fiction, critics have a condescension chromosome. The demeaning label chick-lit says it all. While male authors such as Nick Hornby, who also write contemporary comic fiction satirising the sex war are hailed as the new Chekhov, you will be dismissed as having undergone some kind of DIY lobotomy.' Kathy Lette in The Times
'A half-full view' ‘All prizes have eligibility criteria: nationality, or ethnic origin, or language, or country of residence, or subject matter, or religion. For those who see the world in negative terms, prizes celebrate the achievements of one group at the expense of another. But for those who have a half-full view, celebrating achievement is a good thing. Since 1996, Orange has done just that – celebrated international women’s achievements for the benefit of male and female readers everywhere. This is what matters – reading, and promoting writing. In much the same way, every single weekend millions of men and women (myself included) celebrate men’s achievements – except on the pitch not the page. And quite right too. It’s not unfair. It’s just football.’ Kate Mosse, co-founder of the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction, in the Bookseller
'The ultimate magic' 'Done badly, fantasy is more risible than any other genre, perhaps because there is such a fine line between heroic endeavour and bathos. Success isn't just a matter of consistency (Tolkien despaired of C S Lewis when he introduced Christian myths such as Father Christmas into a world with nymphs and satyrs). A gifted writer makes the mundane magical and the magical mundane. We believe in everything they tell us because the ultimate magic is to make us think that what they describe is true.' Amanda Craig in The Times
Going beyond ‘why don’t boys read?' ‘What surprised me is that nobody states what is blindingly obvious – that literature/literacy still represents the biggest demarcation in 21st century society. That dreary old question – why don’t boys read? – is an enormous red herring. Come to one of my book signings and, I’m afraid to say, you could easily imagine yourself to be in one of those southern states of America before Martin Luther King. Where are the black kids? Boys and girls from ethnic minorities are so rare that when one turns up, I almost want to sweep them into my arms. Malorie Blackman and Benjamin Zephaniah may entice a more ethnically mixed audience, but the answer can’t be black writers for black kids and white for white. We cannot be cosy about the debate any more.’ Anthony Horowitz, author of Snakehead and many other bestsellers, in the Bookseller
The return of the bonkbuster ‘I was in the airport lounge at Heathrow, wanting something big and juicy for the sun lounger and looking in the commercial women’s fiction section. I’d read everything that Jackie Collins and Jilly Cooper had to offer. Everything else at the lighter-weight end was misery memoirs and chick lit. I just thought, this really isn’t what I wanted. I wanted Valley of the Dolls, Lace: the sort of books that seemed to be out of vogue… Storytelling is key. I don’t think you can write 160,000 words on sex and shopping.’ Tasmina Perry, author of Gold Diggers, in The Times
An overnight success 'I never planned to be a children's writer. I wrote short stories for obscure and wonderful magazines. Then one day a new story flared into life. I knew that it was the culmination of years of hard work and, amazingly, that it was a children's novel. Skellig was taken by the first publisher to read it, won a string of prizes, and has been published in 30 languages. I was an overnight success after almost 20 years.' David Almond in The Times
Working as a Poet in the Community ‘Interestingly (to me, anyway) it’s meant that I’ve had to become three types
of poet. There’s the Slim Volume Poet: the poet who writes what most people
think of as Contemporary Poetry, (but which is often not very linguistically
adventurous, and just sounds like gentle stand-up comedy chopped about a bit,
and which I try to move away from when I can); there’s the Out Loud Poet who is
called upon to perform at events where they need a performer who can be a bit of
a battering-ram, who can enthuse a crowd who weren’t expecting to like poetry,
in the upstairs room of a pub, or in a draughty public hall at the edge of a
windy estate, or on a train full of sweaty commuters, and there’s the Occasional
Poet, the poet who can be called on to write something light and rhyming to
liven up a public event, to introduce someone or open a new building, and then
(in my case, with the aid of my trusty flipchart and a couple of felt-tip pens)
create an Instant Poem with the audience to send them away happy. Ian McMillan in his article on The Poet in the Community: A little adventure on 57 Productions’ website, along with other interesting articles on poetry.
'Readers want to read more' 'Despite resistance from all sectors of our industry, the book market is changing. Readers want to read more and if they are going to increase the amount of books they buy they are almost certainly going to do that in the cheaper paperback formats. Consumers will read literary fiction if we present it to them in a way they find attractive and enticing. Once an author has built a sufficient following then they probably can justify the move to hardback, but not before. Why pay £16.99 ($35) for a novel by someone you've never heard of when you could buy three or four paperbacks for the same price?' Scott Pack of the Friday Project in the Bookseller
Authors on the road 'We whine a lot, but it's not so hard. You stay in fancy hotels, and go to signings where people buy your books and want your autograph and tell you lots of nice things… I remember with my first book… no-one would show up at my signings. So where I am now, I have a greater appreciation of it all… (but) I have to remember that what got me here was writing books, and I want each one to be better than the last.' Harlan Coben, author of The Woods, in Publishing News
On teaching creative writing 'I tell them to forget about the business. That's nothing to do with me… They'll figure it out in the end. If they haven't got talent, you're not going to give it to them, but they will have it because you've chosen them. But they might turn out to not have will; which you can't always judge very easily at the beginning. If they don't have will, they're screwed. But you can't make them write every day or get up early in the morning; you can give them an example, or tell them what they should be doing, and they might listen.' Peter Carey, talking to Erica Wagner in The Times
The end of the novel? 'For a commissioning editor, the pressing question is this: when most books are sold on the net as downloads, how will this change their content? My hunch is that will finally spell the end of the novel. Of course there are good, perhaps even great novelists writing today. But in contemporary fiction there seem to be no monumental novels that dominate our mental landscape in the same way as the masterpieces of Dickens, Thackeray or George Eliot. Few titanic novels wrestle with the great questions of life and death and seek to alter our perceptions of them… The great new literary form that will replace the novel will, I believe, arise on the net and will take on its wild frontier spirit, its intellectual risk-taking, its two fingers at academic control-freakery, but it will also help forge a new form of consciousness in a much more fundamental way that has to do with the form of the internet.' Mark Booth, Publishing Director of Century, part of Random House UK, in the Independent on Sunday.
Writing thrillers 'The bad guys always have good bits in them and the good guys can have bad bits. My books are true to life both in subject matter and in how the plot develops - as a journalist, I like writing thrillers because they're more closely based on reality. But you can't mess around - everything has to be plausible and has to have happened, in some form, in the real world. So, I like my books to be open-ended.' Stephen Leather, whose latest title Dead Men is just out, in Publishing News
'A posh profession' 'Publishing this book made me an author, and I have since gone on to write other books, some about publishing/writing but also about parenting… So my views on the industry are sharpened by an awareness of feelings on both sides. Publishing remains rather a posh profession, and although there have been initiatives to widen recruitment… the workforce remains substantially white, middle-class, inward-looking. Publishers are suspicious of activities they don't engage in themselves, and it is increasingly up to the author/agent to prove an unfamiliar market exists.' Alison Baverstock, author of the authoritative How to Market Books, in Publishing News
Finding an agent 'Finding an agent can be even harder than finding a publisher. If you can find an established author who will recommend you to one, or some other personal contact, that's a good way to get them to read your typescript. Or you can look for someone who hasn’t been an agent for long, and who might be more hungry, have more time and be ready to take a chance on you.' Mandy Little, MD of Watson Little in the Sunday Times
TV tie-ins and children's reading 'I have published both "literary" books and licensed programmes, and have also managed some of the world's most famous classic book '"brands". Is one better than the other? It's like trying to decide between soup and pudding when both have a place on the menu. Children need a balanced diet, and above all they need books that they will enjoy, which match their interests and which encourage them to read. For long-term health they need plenty of the rich, nutritious soup of a great novel or picture book. They also need the comfort, stimulation and energy source of pudding - books that reflect what they meet every day. Both must be prepared with integrity and the best ingredients… For children who have difficulty with reading or just aren't interested, books based on familiar programming can be the vital hook that turns them into readers. As publishers, retailers and reviewers we owe our children, exposed to an unprecedented barrage from all kinds of media, a very catholic offering which admits the worth of good books of all kinds. We are all making readers.' Sally Floyer, MD of Penguin UK's brands and licensing division, in the Bookseller.
'If nothing new ever happens' 'For the book writer, the creative writer, the knowledge of a market of billions out there waiting to be tapped, is fascinating and baffling. The sorry fact is that the conventional publishing industry is currently running round like a headless chicken, giving readers what they think it wants, and getting it wrong, and losing money hand over fist. If you give people what they want, nothing new can ever happen. If it worked in the past, think the bottom line thinkers - ie made a profit - it will work for ever and ever. So, just do it again. But if nothing new ever happens, the audience drifts away.' Fay Weldon on Writing for the New Media in Writing and Education
'The Storyteller, the dream-maker' 'The storyteller is deep inside every one of us. The storymaker is always with us. Let us suppose our world is ravaged by war, by the horrors of that we all of us easily imagine. Let us suppose floods wash through our cities, the seas rise. But the storyteller will be there, for it is our imaginations which shape us, keep us, create us - for good and for ill. It is our stories that will recreate us, when we are torn, hurt, even destroyed, it is the storyteller, the dream-maker, that is our phoenix, that represents us at our best, and at our most creative.' Doris Lessing, in her Nobel Laureate's address
On having a famous father 'At the beginning there were people who said "She only got this deal because she's his daughter." There were people at home who refused to buy the book because they thought it had only been published for that reason - so I think it balanced out. People didn't know how long I'd be around. But nobody's debating with me about it any more.I've never felt I've written something and then deleted it because my dad's who he is, but then I'm not that kind of a writer. I'm fairly balanced about things - nothing is too severe or too extreme - and I think that's just the person I am as a result of growing up in a home where your parents always have to see both sides of everything. You have to be like that when you negotiate. My father's always looking at the two sides.' Cecelia Ahern, daughter of the Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, in the Bookseller
Four wars ' The publishing industry today is in a position rarely, if ever, experienced before: we suddenly have the upper hand. To wit, there are four wars raging today that are changing the nature of publishing and putting us in the driver's seat: discoverability, print on demand (PoD), repositories, and e-ink readers.All of these wars revolve around the notion of long tail, the theory that the optimized search capabilities provide almost endless access to otherwise obscure products and that the demand for these obscure products exceeds demand for bestsellers. Long tail is in effect the Holy Grail of an industry which pushes out more content every year, backlist growing exponentially with each new season of frontlist. Longtail in book publishing is about selling books we no longer actively promote.' Evan Schnittman, Vice-President of Business Development and Rights for the Academic and USA divisions of OUP in Publishing News
After Katrina 'The most important job of a writer is to tell the truth and I feel I've done that… The Tin Roof Blowdown came about almost by accident. I wasn't going to write a novel about Katrina because it was too depressing. Then an editor at Esquire called me and asked if I could write a short story and I said I didn't think I could…. The next day, I went to mass at a little town nearby, and when we got home I thought: 'Jesus out to Sea', and that was the title. I had heard an account of the priest in the lower Ninth Ward who tried to get his parishioners to leave. He stayed and he died, so I wrote the story based on two of his parishioners. I figured if I was going to write about Katrina, then this was the time and if others doubt what happened in New Orleans, nothing I or anyone else can say will influence their thinking.' James Lee Burke on his new novel The Tin Roof Blowdown in Publishing News
After the bestseller 'I've been asked many times since what are the pros and cons of life after Labyrinth. Too much pressure? Too much expectation? The easy answer is that the best consequence of a novel selling well is that it gives you the freedom to carry on writing for a while longer and, hey, it's a great problem to have. But the truth is that it does knock you off course, if only for a little while. Not because you haven't got the ideas - Sepulchre was already researched and planned before Labyrinth ever came out - but because you haven't got the time to write… You fret about the possibility that having raised your head above the parapet there might be those waiting to shoot you down - but then again, all authors, actors, politicians, painters and musicians feel this, regardless of what's gone before or since. And you do worry, most of all, about disappointing readers. What if they don't enjoy the new book as much as the last? But then you pull yourself together, get back to work and all those thoughts fade away.' Kate Mosse in Publishing News
Building an audience 'My goal as a writer is to have my readers meet people like them, people who make mistakes and learn from them, people who have problems and try to cope with them… They're books about relationships - between mothers and daughters, sisters, friends. I'm here to answer reader expectations and my readers want a good feeling at the end of a book… Having grown up in category romance, you have to build an audience and then keep your name in front of it.' Debbie Macomber, whose latest book is Old Boyfriends, in Publishing News
'An emotional connection' 'My feeling is that we know the benefits of literacy and the comforts of literacy - but we still don't know the benefits of reading the great works. I mean, there is no scientific proof that you will become a better, wiser person if you plough your way through Dostoevsky. Now, there are all sorts of reasons why I read the books that I read; but I think we've lost the sense of being able to tell people that what they should be looking for in a book is an emotional connection that makes you feel excited and alive, and you're as likely to find that it a 'literary' novel as in a popular novel.' Nick Hornby in The Times
'Everything actually happened' A great irony of creative nonfiction is that one of its chief assets is also one of its chief liabilities. The fact is that in nonfiction, everything actually happened. It’s all true. One of the reasons we eagerly turn to nonfiction is because we have it on reliable source – most often, in any case – that the events on the page actually took place, and the people who did them were, or are, real. A good part of our astonishment at reading Ernest Shackleton’s account of his eight-hundred mile open boat voyage from Elephant Island across the terrible frigid sea to South Georgia Island, for example, is that real men went through this, with real fears and real hopes, who had real families at home, with real men left behind, cold and hungry, depending on their success. This happened… But the cold clear fact is that no matter how astonishing the story, there is no guarantee that it will be interesting writing. Many writers of nonfiction, particularly in the ever-burgeoning category of memoir, seem to believe the strength of their subject is enough to keep the reader captivated… Not so. Or, often enough, not so.’ Richard Goodman in The Writer’s Chronicle, published by the Association of Writers and Writing Programs in the US
Starting to write 'I was a teacher at a primary school in Kent, reading a tedious story to my pupils, who were clearly bored. That night I complained to my wife, who said: 'You're quite good are telling stories - why don't you make one up?' So I screwed my courage to the sticking place. At the end of the session they all shouted: 'Oh, sir!' They wanted more. In one afternoon I understood what it is to be a storyteller. A colleague persuaded me to write it up and gave it to a friend at Macmillan. Luckily he liked it, and it quickly led to my first book, It Never Rained, a collection of stories about things that go wrong in children's lives.' Michael Morpurgo in The Times
'Poetry is necessary' ‘A poem is direct, and charged with energy. Its language is not clichéd nor second-hand. Its meaning, whether force or revelation, or slow truth, is something we can actually use. Poems are among the most useful things invented, along with rubber boots and sharp knives. It you are going to wade through the world’s rubbish, and know what to cut out and what to open up – perhaps even what to kill off – then poetry is necessary. A poem generates heat. The friction of the language causes the words to spark and fire. You can warm your hands at a poem; you can be consumed by it. It is, as Adrienne Rich puts it, "wood with a gift for burning". Jeanette Winterson in The Times
'This biography business' 'Biography is still, all too often, viewed as the skill of finding as many facts as possible and assembling them into a definitive likeness, as if each piece of paper, each interview, were a clue leading to a solution. On such and such a day the subject said this, the next week they did this, in 1935 they wrote this, and voila!, the portrait is finished. You only have to imagine a biographer attempting to write your life, 50 years hence - the idiots with whom they might discuss you, the motives they might attribute to actions that you yourself barely understood - to realize how extraordinarily parlous it is, this biography business.' Laura Thompson, author of Agatha Christie: An English Mystery, in the Independent on Sunday
'Books are different' 'Books are different, as people have always argued through the ages. They are a cornerstone of civilisation, so they're not quite like other consumer products. They are fundamental to intellectual development. The very depressing statistics you read about the coincidence of dyslexia and prison inmates suggest that in the modern world if you can't read and don't enjoy reading it's a major disadvantage. I think a home that doesn't have books is a bit of a sad place, really… (Books) are tremendously cheap compared to most things, like, for example, mobile phone calls. The amount of time a £6 ($12.19) book provides - 20 hours of entertainment? - means they are fantastic value.' Luke Johnson, whose company has just bought Borders UK, in the Observer
'No seven year famine' 'We believe that the web has come to praise books, not to bury them. There will be no seven-year famine. E-books will drive book demand: Amazon is expanding the market, not cannibalising it; print-on-demand will drive book production; and agents and publishers will both thrive because the cake itself, online and in print, will expand.' Bookseller editorial Comment archive 20007 archive 2006 archive 2005 archive 2004 archive 2003 archive 2002 archive 2001 |
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