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Comment from the book world in September 2008

September 2008

Children's publishing in the post-Potter era

29 September 2008

'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.'

22 September 2008

'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' ForumBritish writers' magazine which is highly recommended for all writers. It features wide range of news and articles which help writers to improve their work and get published: www.writers-forum.com

'The creation of a new artform'

15 September 2008

'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

8 September 2008

'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

1 September 2008

'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' ForumBritish writers' magazine which is highly recommended for all writers. It features wide range of news and articles which help writers to improve their work and get published: www.writers-forum.com