Whenever I am speaking at a public event or on the radio, one of the questions I inevitably get is: "What will be the next big discovery?" My answer is always the same: "If I knew, I would be doing it."
Links of the week September 11 2017 (37)
Our new feature links to interesting blogs or articles posted online, which will help keep you up to date with what's going on in the book world:
18 September 2017
What I didn't expect was the internet. Of all the technological developments that have changed the way modern society functions, perhaps none has presented such a disruptive challenge to society. It has changed everything about how we communicate with one another, shop, get entertainment, and receive our news - and of course the way science is carried out, to name just a few examples. Yet nowhere in mainstream science fiction was the internet imagined.
An English teacher once asked me, "Are you a writer or an editor?" This isn't an unusual question, it seems: plenty of writers (and readers) have come up against it, even if it all just boils down to how many hours they have in the day. But some magical people, of course, manage to do it all: write incredible books and also edit them. The premier example of this is of course Toni Morrison, whose impressive list would be much more discussed if she wasn't also one of the most important novelists of the century in her own right. But still: an editor's influence can be major, and they are not always well-appreciated for it.
Who says you can't be an acclaimed novelist and a beloved editor at the same time? According to Max Porter, who joined Granta & Portobello Books in 2012, and whose wonderful novel Grief Is the Thing With Feathers was published in 2015, that's not even all: the editor's role, he says, is to be "part proofreader, part therapist, part in-house champion and, increasingly, there to put a marketisation on the written word."
Multi-million-pound selling writer Milly Johnson has hit out after finding fraudulent books that she did not write being sold on Amazon under her name.
Commercial women's fiction writer Johnson, published by Simon & Schuster, said she felt "defiled" upon discovering the six titles on Amazon listed under her name while she was checking her rankings on the e-commerce site.
The titles, which have a similar style of book jacket to Johnson's work and feature some of the same character names, are YA short stories and are "dire, unedited, ungrammatical tripe" according to Johnson.
"I noticed a title that was not mine but had my name on it called Resisting Him," Johnson said. "I found six e-book titles on Amazon - three of which looked stupidly similar to mine. I was so shocked."
Complaining about the Man Booker Prize is an important British tradition. Since its inception-as simply the Booker Prize, in 1969-it has been criticized for its imperialist overtones, its unwillingness to take risks, and, above all, its corrupt insularity. Though any writer from the Commonwealth was eligible, the winner was determined by a small and incestuous circle of London elites. In 2001, the comic novelist A.L. Kennedy described the Booker as being decided by "who knows who, who's sleeping with who, who's selling drugs to who, who's married to who, whose turn it is."
With two debut novelists on the short list, the Booker is clinging to its reputation for breaking out authors and for rewarding the not-yet-famous. But only barely. Four years after first announcing the decision to open the prize to Americans, the Booker is virtually indistinguishable from its competitors. It is exactly what many feared it would become: corporate and daft.
March, 2015. I am sitting in the National Library of Ireland, scrolling through microform of an 1820s County Kerry newspaper. My eyes ache-this is the fourth day I have spent in front of the reader. As I wind through the pages of miniscule print, zooming in on articles and reading them only to discover their irrelevance, I feel familiar threads of anxiety knot in the depths of my stomach.
Next to me, carefully pasted in the front of my notebook, is an article reported from the 1826 Tralee assizes by the Morning Post. It describes the trial of "Ann Roche, an old woman of very advanced age" indicted for a serious crime "committed under the delusion of the grossest superstition." The woman claimed she had been trying to "put the fairy out" of a child she described as "fairy struck."
I found this article in 2011, and have spent the last four years plagued by questions of who Ann Roche was and whether she believed her own defense. Did she truly accept the existence (and malice) of the fairies? What had she done and why? I have told my publishers I am writing a novel about her. I have committed myself to her story, and am writing under deadline.
How do poets make money? The answer, a lot of the time, is: not through poetry. When I first attempted to live full-time from my words, I expected to make money in one of three ways: poetry on the page (through pamphlets and collections), poetry for the people (through commissions), and poetry in person (via poetry readings and spoken word gigs). Three years into my freelance career, my perception of how to make money as a poet has changed somewhat. These days, I understand that while I tend to call myself a poet first and foremost, of all the work I do to make a living, I probably spend the least amount of time actually sitting down to write poems. I'm a poet who doesn't write a lot of poetry, a writer who doesn't spend most of her time writing.
As a rule, most poets deemed ‘spoken word artists' tend to self-publish...
Of the many jobs I do, the one thing they all have in common is that they are about my writing more than they are about me. I'm lucky enough to be doing well enough from my writing to stay on this path. Making a living from poetry has never been easy, or simple. But the fact that so many poets are managing to survive from their words shows that today, it's perhaps more possible to do so than it has ever been.
A few years ago I wrote an article for the Guardian on ageism in the literary world, about the predilection of publications like Granta, the New Yorker and Buzzfeed for authors under the age of 40. The problem hasn't gone away and on Tuesday I wrote an open letter to the Royal Society of LiteratureThis British site may seem rather formal (stated aim ‘to sustain and encourage all that is perceived as best whether traditional or experimental in English letters, and to strive for a Catholic appreciation of literature’), but has a lively series of lectures and discussions involving distinguished authors. Also administers literary prizes. http://www.rslit.org/index1.html, after it called for nominations for 40 new fellows under 40.
Encouraging young writers is laudable. After all, it's increasingly difficult to get started. Publishers' advances are low and getting lower; arts degrees are more expensive than Stem subjects; social security is fiercely tested. Which must mean that those most able to pay for a writing course, or those most able to take time off work to write while still young, are those most likely to have money, security, contacts, confidence. There's a correlation between setting an age bar and encouraging the already privileged.
All writers were young once, and many start writing young, but not all begin their careers as published authors at that point. Leaving aside the fact that some only decide to start writing later in life, many factors affect one's ability to commit to writing seriously. Besides income issues, age bars can lead an organisation into worrying territory. Authors from outside the perceived cultural mainstream who do not already see their voices represented - LGBTQ writers, writers of colour - are sometimes slow to recognise the contribution they can make, or to feel like their voices will be valued.
In 2013, I observed a conversation on Twitter where a publisher said they didn't believe in author websites "for a lot of authors"-that social was a better place for authors to spend time from a marketing perspective.
It bothered me, and I ended up writing a blog post about it, exploring why a publisher might think this-rightly or wrongly.
Since then, I've taught countless conference sessions and webinars about author platform development, content strategy, marketing and promotion, and long-term best business practices. Hands down, the No. 1 thing I'm questioned about is social media-by the unpublished writers, advanced writers, and well-established career authors. I don't mind fielding such questions, but I find social media the most difficult topic to teach effectively, and I'll have a separate post about that tomorrow.
On the flip side, I rarely field questions about author websites, aside from technical ones about what service to use or other fiddly details related to domains, hosting, and WordPress sites. I believe this happens for a few reasons: Website design and development is a more technical area, plus few authors actively engage on their site with readers. It can be something of a "set it and forget it" thing. Who's really looking at an author website that much anyway, especially one without a blog or active updates?
11 September 2017
Ten years ago, while sitting at my computer in my sparsely furnished office, I sent my first email to a literary agent. The message included a query letter-a brief synopsis describing the personal-essay collection I'd been working on for the past six years, as well as a short bio about myself. As my third child kicked from inside my pregnant belly, I fantasized about what would come next: a request from the agent to see my book proposal, followed by a dream phone call offering me representation. If all went well, I'd be on my way to becoming a published author by the time my oldest child started first grade.
My books have been living in my head for more than a decade. I have had tea with the characters, argued with them, and begged them to get over their hang-ups. While writing articles or teaching, I'm simultaneously rethinking passages or entire chapters of my books. A walk through the woods is an excuse for me to mull over how to tighten my prose, increase the suspense, flesh out a scene, or dig deeper emotionally. It's a dual life, with one foot in reality and the other in the worlds of my stories.
Reactions to the shortlist have been mixed, with many remarking on the notable absence of Colson Whitehead's serial prize-winner The Underground Railroad (Fleet). Waterstones buyer Chris White said it "ranks among the biggest shocks I've witnessed", adding, "we may see this as the one which got away". Meanwhile Ladbrokes' Matthew Shadwick called it "quite a surprising list from the bookies' point of view, especially as the favourite and best-backed runner (Colson Whitehead) failed to make the final cut". "As a result it's a completely wide open race," he said.
Blackwells' Mattinson said: "It is great to see the panel were not afraid to include several debut novelists in place of the usual supects. Word is that Ali Smiths' Autumn is a strong contender, while Auster's 4321 although gargantuan and clever has totallly divided opinion. George Saunders' Lincoln in the Bardo is both unconventional and a great favourite for many this year, but having been made the Bookies' favourite is often a Booker listed novel's death knell as far as winning."
Nothing shatters the mystique of the floating city like seeing a McDonald's in Venice. But such deflating sights have been the norm for years. American colonization of the world's economy is complete. This summer in Madrid's Puerta del Sol, we listened to music under a sun-blocking billboard for Netflix's "Glow."
That disorienting moment came back to me Wednesday morning when I read the list of finalists for the Man Booker Prize. For the first time, half of the six nominees for Britain's most prestigious literary award are Americans:
"4321," by Paul Auster (U.S.)
"History of Wolves," by Emily Fridlund (U.S.)
"Lincoln in the Bardo," by George Saunders (U.S.)
"Exit West," by Mohsin Hamid (U.K.-Pakistan)
"Elmet" by Fiona Mozley (U.K.)
"Autumn," by Ali Smith (U.K.)
It's not that American novelists are suddenly writing better books. No, this U.S. invasion is the result of a controversial adjustment to the prize's eligibility rules. In 2014, the Booker judges opened their doors to include anyone writing a novel in English. (The prize had previously been limited to novels by authors in the Commonwealth, including Ireland, South Africa and Zimbabwe.) After that change, two Americans immediately made the short¬list. The next year, Marlon James, a Jamaican writer living in Minnesota, won the prize. In 2016, the American writer Paul Beatty won. This year, an American has a 50/50 chance of being the winner.
"If you knew the world was going to end in two days, what would you do?" the writer Sara Davidson was once asked. "Take notes," she said without hesitating.
That's me. The world as I knew it had ended, with a painful divorce I hadn't seen coming, and I'd done what I'd always done to make sense of things. I took notes.
Many years later, perusing those notes, I could never pull myself away. "What a great story," I kept thinking. "What an interesting way of putting a life back together from scratch." By then I'd become a radio journalist, interviewing experts on career change. What struck me, thinking of my own career transition, was how much I'd accidentally done right.
So I made the leap. Converting a Word document to an eBook wasn't the most fun I'd ever had, but I did it. Do-Over's available on Amazon now, and I'll never forget what my husband said as we held hands and looked at the preview before we pulled the virtual trigger. "It's a book!" Darrell said. Yes. It is.
When I decided to organize a book tour to promote my memoir, Getting Naked for Money: An Accidental Travel Writer Reveals All, I worried that self-publication might work against me. This was all terra incognita. I'd done signings and readings for my four previous books, put out by traditional presses, but never planned a book tour for a self-published title. Now I was planning an ambitious trip covering four states.
Self-publishing wasn't really an issue, I discovered. Bookstores are more concerned about your book bringing in an audience than how it was published.
These tips for planning a book tour apply not just to indie authors but to anyone looking to hit the road in support of a new title.
When David Lagercrantz's continuation of Stieg Larsson's Millennium series, The Girl in the Spider's Web, was published two years ago, there was the usual handwringing and fretting about whether Larsson's characters and the world he created was properly respected by the new writer. If anything, in that book and the just released The Girl Who Took an Eye for an Eye, Lagercrantz has been too conservative in continuing Larsson's series.
In Spider's Web Lagercrantz took some liberties, filling in more of antiheroine Lisbeth Salander's backstory, especially her dysfunctional family history (her father savagely abused her mother and Lisbeth, leaving his favorite child, Lisbeth's twin, Camilla, to grow up to be a nasty piece of work very much made in his image). Eye for an Eye does not provide any more concrete information about Salander's past-in fact, she's rather inert for the first third of the book, as she's in prison for her role in the events of Spider's Web (I'm trying to avoid overt spoilers here, though some of the themes of Eye for an Eye discussed below allude to the action in the book). She spends her time studying advanced math and blackmailing a guard to get the internet access she needs.
My delight and surprise in landing at the top of the New York Times young adult best-seller list a few weeks ago as a first-time author was short-lived. In an instant, I was pummeled on social media, accused of gaming the system, and summarily yanked off the list.
My book made headlines worldwide - but for all the wrong reasons.
"New York Times pulls YA novel from bestseller list after reports of fake sales," read a headline in the Guardian. On NPR: "The Brief, Tumultuous Reign of an Erstwhile Best-Seller." And on Salon.com: "Author booted from the New York Times Bestseller List lashes out."
OK, so what did happen with my book?
When my book reached the top of the New York Times best seller list, a handful of people took to social media attacking both me and my book. As one news report stated, "some in the YA community questioned how a book that many publishers and YA authors had never heard of... opened at No. 1 on the Times's YA hardcover list. Some suggested that people connected to the book had gamed the best-seller list through an organized campaign to bulk buy at stores surveyed by the Times to compile the list."
A bitter family feud over John Steinbeck's estate escalated this week, when a Los Angeles jury awarded the novelist's stepdaughter, Waverly Scott Kaffaga, $13.15 million in damages in an intellectual property dispute. The defendant plans to appeal.
The large sum awarded by the jury is the latest twist in a dispute that has dragged on since the author'ss death in 1968, when he left most of his estate to his third wife, Elaine Steinbeck, directing that profits from his work go to her. He left his two sons, Thomas and John Steinbeck IV, from a previous marriage $50,000 each. (John IV died in 1991, and Thomas died in August 2016.)