The thing I love about book fairs is that I am obliged to talk about my books and authors for a week to everyone I see, all the time. I may lose my voice and at points my ability to construct a sentence, but the reason I still find this job fascinating after so many years is that there are always new books and new stories about books, and there's the possibility of a new favourite book just around the corner.
Links of the week April 16 2018 (16)
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:
23 April 2018
I love publishing because it doesn't play to formulae, and something always happens that no-one could predict. It keeps us all on our toes. I can't think of a time when there haven't been challenges in publishing or when the industry hasn't adapted to meet them, but at this moment my particular worry is that the market is being led by the success of a smaller number of titles, and that we are looking at a polarised publishing climate that makes risk-taking more difficult than it should be, particularly for literary fiction. There is a feeling of feast or famine, both on submission and publication, but is this a problem?
The theme of the day seemed to be ‘publishers can and must do more with digital' - whether through integrating it deeper into their business or simply realising that is where their audiences are spending most of their time. Competitor number one isn't another book, it's every other way a potential reader might pass their time. Increasingly that means crushing candy, swiping endlessly through Instagram or ending up in a YouTube black hole of videos. How does one compete in a world of constant distraction?
It's a journey every publisher is going on, and one that becomes increasingly more difficult as the years go on, especially as younger users spend even less time engaging with one medium as the habit of multi-tasking takes hold.
Since that day last December, we've been on an interesting journey and realisation of our own too. Happily, we've managed to raise an investment round to help to grow the business. But in the process it's made us ask questions about what's valuable about our product. Is it the technology? Is it the user base? Is it the engagement metrics, or is something else? What will get investors to sign a cheque and believe in us?
In reality, it turns out none of these things matter as much as you think they would. The number one question we were asked by investors was: How are you going to create great stories? What's the content model? How do you create stories that people will tell their friends about? Now that you've got a format that works, what do you do with it?
Five years ago, I decided that it was time to write my first book. It was the story of how a single dad of five led his kids, his business and himself from disaster to success. At that time, I hadn't written even a single word on the topic. Writing a book seemed like an overwhelming task and I didn't even know where to begin. What kind of book should it be? A self-help, memoir, parenting, leadership or business book? Should I self-publish or try to get a traditional publisher or was there another option? I researched and found 10 individuals who were either experts, consultants or had published books. I got 20 opinions on what to do.
I have recently completed the long and arduous journey of writing a book. Leader of the Pack, a self-published book memoir, even reached No. 1 in self-help, new releases on Amazon. Now I get to brag about having a bestselling book and share how I made it happen. So, here are some the techniques I learned along the way that you'll need to create your best-selling book:
What makes a writer? How do you become one? When I was younger, even asking those questions seemed to disqualify me: a writer isn't something one becomes, I thought, a writer just is. Despite writing, rewriting and reading all through my 20s, I was no closer to completing, let alone publishing, a novel. I realised I would need help if I was going to succeed, and I applied to several creative writing MAs.
Epstein's "tips" were alarmingly specific. "One must have in mind between 68 and 73% of the ending" before starting a story, he advised, tongue only slightly in cheek. Writing about dreams was discouraged, if not outright banned, as were ellipses, abstract nouns and satire.
When Hanya Yanagihara was 10 years old, her father let her visit a pathologist's lab. He was a doctor and an artist, twin interests his young daughter shared so that when the pathologist opened the cadaver, she whipped out a sketch pad and started to draw. "I was always interested in the disease, not the human," she says of that early fascination with medicine, a forensic interest that foreshadowed the themes of her fiction and, 30 years later, found Yanagihara in an unusual life: writing acclaimed novels at night, with a day job as a senior editor at the New York Times.
She expected A Little Life to sell 5,000 copies and would have been happy with that. Instead, it sold tens of thousands and inspired many rapturous reviews, including one in the New Yorker, which described it as a novel that could "drive you mad, consume you, and take over your life" - although, says Yanagihara, it often surprises people that after its success, she couldn't put her feet up and retire. The money, she says, is not "enough for me to live on, which I think people assume it is". One of the many reasons she returned to the New York Times was for the health insurance.
In a groundbreaking study of more than two million books published in North America between 2002 and 2012, scholars found that books by women authors are priced 45% less than those of their male counterparts. The researchers, sociologist Dana Beth Weinberg and mathematician Adam Kapelner, both from Queens College-CUNY, say there is a lot more to the story than can be gleaned from this price gap alone.
The similar pattern might be attributed to the fact that consumers are conditioned to pay less for books by women or within traditionally female genres. But because indie writers are able to set their own book prices, there was more parity in the price of books. So while indie titles are priced lower - on average - than traditionally published books, there was only a 7% price gap overall, compared to the 45% gap in traditional publishing.
"I see them as kind of a great white shark. You don't really want to mess with them." The words are those of a former manager at Amazon - and she is describing her former employer.
It is an apt analogy. Amazon is huge - worth $740bn (£530bn) at Monday night's share price - but it moves fast and is a lethal predator.
One of the 14 business principles set out by founder Jeff Bezos, who started the company in a Seattle garage in 1994, is "think big". Amazon does exactly that. It operates in nine out of the 10 biggest industrial sectors in the US and its scale and control is such that it has been compared to a private company owning the road network. It has also turned Bezos into the world's richest man, worth $130bn.
16 April 2018
For years, crime fiction titles have topped the bestseller lists and library lending tables. That sales of the genre have now overtaken general fiction, as revealed at the London Book Fair last week, comes as no surprise to its readers, practitioners, critics and industry professionals.
We've always recognised its reach, dynamism, integrity and, increasingly, diversity. Yet its rise, and indeed acceptance, is still a mystery to some, with any number of narratives seeking to understand the phenomenon. This is about as helpful as trying to define exactly what makes a bestseller a bestseller, and, perhaps more important, how to spot the next big thing. At best it's a lucky amalgamation; so many factors come into play. Being in the right place at the right time, with the right idea, and talent, might be one answer. But how the hell do you come up with the right idea?
It has happened at last! Finally, the literary world is a meritocracy! Crime fiction - which I first became aware of as the Best Genre Ever when I read my first Enid Blyton mystery at six years old - is now officially the UK's bestselling genre. Nielsen BookscanUK bibliographic organisation, describing itself as 'the definitive retail monitoring service for books', which shows UK bestseller lists on its website. http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/ data at the London book fair has revealed that crime novels in 2017, for the first time since Nielsen's records began, sold more than the category rather vaguely labelled "general and literary fiction". Crime sales of have increased by 19% since 2015 to 18.7m, compared to the 18.1m fiction books sold in 2017.
So why is crime fiction suddenly the most popular genre of fiction in the UK? I think readers have a sense that this is a genre that will: a) prioritise their pleasure and entertainment over anything the writer might want to get out of the experience; and b) offer a guaranteed a gripping plot. Yes, many literary novels have fantastic plots, and some crime novels are as dull as a puddle in a potholed pavement - nevertheless, as a genre, crime always promises suspense and action in a way that general and literary fiction does not.
A new collection of short stories featuring works from 18 well-known authors is bypassing print and going straight to audiobook. Could this be a sign of things to come?
Last week, figures from Nielsen BookscanUK bibliographic organisation, describing itself as 'the definitive retail monitoring service for books', which shows UK bestseller lists on its website. http://www.nielsenbookscan.co.uk/ showed audiobook sales have doubled in the last five years, rising by 12% in 2017 alone.
Harris points out: "You don't have to have 42 CDs to listen to somebody reading a book anymore. You don't have to physically have that amount of space. And people have busy lives, they like to listen to audiobooks in the car, on the commute, when they're running."
In a tightening market for fiction and especially for debut authors looking for that big break, editors can be choosier - and many are more dependent than ever on literary agents to find their next debuts.
"But sometimes the agent will have it go to auction. I've pre-empted two books this year," Chandler said, "and it usually involves reading the book overnight. It's very dramatic and exciting and involves sleepless nights."
Chandler said that like most editors, she finds authors through literary agents who filter submissions. "It's quite an old fashioned process," she said, "but in reality, I'm just one woman and I can only read so much." Not surprisingly, she said that good relationships with agents become important if an editor is to find the best material.
In the winter of 1983 I finished my first book. I wrote it in longhand on yellow legal pads and after putting down the last word I scrawled "The End" with a flourish, something that's impossible to do on a keyboard. Then I went out for a solitary, celebratory beer.
Creators of manuscripts, the large armies of writers denied authorship (larger in the days before self-publishing), are incapable of forgetting the work they've brought into an unsuspecting world. The thought of it sitting unread dampens their happiest moments and turns their worst days even darker. Their lives will not be complete until their manuscript goes through editing (cosmetic surgery) and production (chrysalis) and emerges triumphantly as a book. And because of this, they never lose track of it-where it's been, where it is now-and they never stop searching for places to send it. They are constantly on the lookout for new agents, small publishers-someone, anyone, who might find them gifted and worthy of championing. In bookstores they scan the spines of same-genre books and note the names
LONDON - At the opening of the London Book Fair on Tuesday, a mobile massage company set up a row of stools for anyone in need of a shoulder and neck rub. It's been a feature of the fair for years, but the service has never seemed more timely.
The Olympia exhibition center in West Kensington teemed with British publishers and editors, a cohort badly in need of stress relief these days. Britain's looming departure from the European Union has set many people here on edge.
Much of the worry stems from a looming fight with American publishers over sales in Continental Europe. For decades, the British have had this market to themselves, selling English-language editions of books in France, Italy and every other country in the European Union.
That helped turn Britain into the largest book exporter in the world, with total sales equivalent to $6.8 billion per year, according to the Publishers Association, a British trade group. Just over half of that revenue came from exports, and the biggest export market is Europe.
Sat across hundreds of small tables dotted around more than 2,000 stands, members of the publishing world turned ruthless as they hammered out agreements for territorial and translation rights and negotiated distribution deals for books across TV, film and other formats.
With more than 1,500 exhibiting companies, 120-plus countries represented and 25,000 visitors, it is one of the star events in the sector's calendar.
"Probably six or seven years ago everyone was really sounding the death knell for the printed book and everyone was saying why on earth would you continue to read the print book, everyone's going to read on their Kindles, etc, etc. And if you've seen any research then you'll know that's simply not the case and print is very stable," Thomas says.
Some books make little impression, others earn our respect. And others again make us greedy not just to read but to own them and return to them time and again. Enitharmon's aptly titled The Heart's Granary belongs to this last group. Beautifully produced, and with "poetry and prose from 50 years of Enitharmon Press" bursting the seams of its 380-odd pages, it's an anthology designed not to prove a theory or establish a canon, but to celebrate the work of one of our most remarkable small publishers.
Enitharmon was among the crop of independent poetry publishers that sprang up in the 1960s and 1970s. Poetry was then passing through one of its phases of heightened popularity - it was the era of the Liverpool poets, and of 1965's International Poetry Incarnation gala at the Albert Hall - just as trade publishers began to trim their lists. Together with Anvil (also founded in 1968), Carcanet (founded a year later), Peterloo (founded in 1972) and Bloodaxe (founded in 1978), Enitharmon established a new poetry world, in which some of the best writing from home and abroad appeared thanks to the editorial flair of a handful of visionary individuals.