Writers work successfully in so many different ways, I never assume that what works for me is best for someone else. But if a common denominator exists among us, it might be attitude: the enterprise of writing a book has to feel like walking into a cathedral. It demands humility. The body of all written words already in print is vaulted and vast. You think you have something new to add to that? If so, it can only come from a position of respect: for the form, the process, and eventually for a reader's valuable attention.
Links of the week October 15 2018 (42)
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:
22 October 2018
To begin, give yourself permission to write a bad book. Writer's block is another name for writer's dread-the paralyzing fear that our work won't measure up. It doesn't matter how many books I've published, starting the next one always feels as daunting as the first. A day comes when I just have to make a deal with myself: write something anyway, even if it's awful. Nobody has to know. Maybe it never leaves this room! Just go. Bang out a draft.
We've all heard the good news. Self-publishing is going through the roof. In fact, self-publishing was up 59 percent in 2012. Up from what you might ask? According to a new study from Bowker, the ISBN agency, 246,921 titles were self-published in 2011 compared with the 391,768 titles published in 2012. And, if you go back to 2007 for a comparison, you will see a whopping 422 percent increase in the number of independently published books.
But what does this mean for you? It means that providing services for self-publishers has become big business, and, as with any new, unregulated industry, it can attract a lot of snake oil salesmen, frauds, and scammers. It is important for the client, that's you, to do a thorough check on any company that appeals to you before signing on or sending them a nickel.
Before becoming a writer in my 70s, I had several overlapping careers. I have been a journalist, lawyer, government regulator, stock exchange officer, international economic consultant, expert witness, and, most recently, law professor.
These publications were targeted at lawyers, academics, and financial people. When I reached my 70s, I decided it was time to break loose and write another kind of book, which would appeal to a broader readership. It was something close to my heart that I had been thinking about for many years.
Escape: a Jewish Scandinavian Family in the Second World War is the story of the escape of my mother's family from the Holocaust, against the historical background of how the Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes reacted to the Nazis' onslaught against the Jews. For me, doing the research and then setting it down as a comprehensible narrative was an exhilarating challenge. Getting it published was a different matter. After several rejections, I decided to self-publish. Luckily, I found a marvelous editor, who not only edited but helped me with every aspect of producing the book.
Despite being described by the chair of the Man Booker prize judges as "challenging", Anna Burns's story of sexual intimidation during the Troubles, Milkman, has proved a hit with readers, its sales soaring in the first days after winning the prize.
Already the second bestselling title on the shortlist before the prize was announced last Tuesday, Milkman racked up sales of 9,466 copies in the four days to Saturday, according to book sales monitor Nielsen BookScan, and now sits in ninth place in The Bookseller's Top 50, ahead of titles by Ian Rankin, Tina Turner and Joanna Trollope. The previous week, it had sold 963 copies, with around 5,000 copies sold altogether. Her publisher, Faber, has reprinted 120,000 copies since to meet demand, bringing the total number of copies of Milkman in print to 180,000.
Burns, who claimed benefits after finishing Milkman, thanks a Sussex housing charity and a food bank as well as the Department for Work and Pensions in the acknowledgments to Milkman. She ends with thanks to friends and strangers for the "many gifts and much assistance" she has received over the years. "I look forward to throwing one hell of a party one day to say thanks to them all, but not yet, as they would have to pay for it."
It is less than six months until the UK's official withdrawal from the EU at 11pm on 29 March 2019, yet the terms of the withdrawal agreement and the key principles of future relations are not agreed. While both parties are aiming to make significant progress at the EU summit this month, it is possible that an agreement will not be reached until November or December, or at all. Given the current state of flux, the legal implications of Brexit for both the UK and the international publishing industry are far from certain. Here, we offer some potential outcomes.
Copyright framework Brexit is likely to have a limited impact upon the copyright framework, as much copyright harmonisation is derived from international treaties (such as the Berne Convention and the WTO TRIPS - Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights - Agreement), which will be unaffected by Brexit. However, there are a number of existing EU copyright directives which provide important cross-border copyright mechanisms and exceptions. The UK government currently intends to take a "snapshot" of all EU law directly operative on 29 March 2019 for incorporation into UK law, which would capture these existing directives.
Most indie authors are at least somewhat familiar with Twitter. Ever since its launch in 2006, authors and readers have flocked to the site, finding its emphasis on brevity and hashtagging features conducive to engaging fans and sparking discussions about books with people all over the world.
But, aside from providing a prominent venue for book talk, Twitter, which boasts 317 million active monthly users, offers another benefit to indie authors: advertising. The social media network's easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive advertising platform can be a useful resource for self-published authors who want to spread the word about their books and expand their fan-bases.
Last year a rural village called Mphako in Malawi received books for the very first time from Book Aid InternationalSupplies much-needed books to developing countries, raising funds from publishers and general public; 'Reverse Book Club' is masterly idea-for just £5 ($10) month you can provide 48 books to go to where they're most needed. Representatives of the Book Aid team were there to join in the celebrations, and see the joy that every book sent by the charity brings.
Mphako is one of many places around the world where books are truly rare. Poverty is the norm, and schools are hugely over-crowded and under-resourced. I visited alongside representatives of the Gumbi Education Fund, a UK NGO which focuses on improving the lives of children through access to education and works in the region, to celebrate the opening of a new community library built by the fund. We provided a collection of brand new, carefully selected books for the library, including many children's books.
When we arrived, the new library was not difficult to spot, as it was surrounded by a crowd of children. As soon as the doors opened, the children's enthusiasm was irrepressible. They were entranced by the books - gathering together around the pages to look at pictures, talking excitedly to each other. A boy who was utterly transfixed by images of helicopters told me: "I have never seen so many colours. I have never seen pictures like these."
I stumbled upon my literary fairy godmother, Lynne Tillman, in college. During our first meeting I took a deep breath, puffed out my chest and said, "I want to be a writer."
Lynne, in the first gesture of what would become a many years long mentorship asked me, "Who have you read? And what are you reading?" I don't remember what books I offered up to her, but I do remember knowing that I hadn't read enough.
Lynne soon introduced me to masters of the craft of story that would blow my head up. Paley, Baldwin, Saunders, and on and on.
I had already been a voracious reader, but I had never read with direction or purpose the way I did after that first meeting. Part of the deal was that, in each meeting, I had to report to Lynne all of my noticings on the stories I'd read since we'd last spoken. This forced me to read closely, to flood the margins with my annotations. Now, my own debut collection is set to drop in October, and reading great fiction is the first and most important thing I tell my students about writing. Read well and widely. Read what you love. It is the core of your craft. Read and get lost; read and parse the sentences apart like a surgeon. Obsess, let go. Sink into and rise out of the words that make you feel. Everybody says this because it's true.
15 October 2018
As the Frankfurter Buchmesse comes to a close today (October 14), organizers are reporting that the 70th iteration of the book fair, ranked as the world's largest trade show for the books industry, "ended with an increase of 0.8 percent in visitors at the weekend"-the public-facing part of the week-"and a slight decrease of 1.8 percent during the trade visitor days," which are Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday.
A total 285,024 visitors are reported being counted at the 2018 fair, as compared with 286,425 in 2017, representing a relatively flat level of participation year-over-year, a 0.5-percent decline from last year.
"For five days, Frankfurt was the world's largest trading center for content and stories. The book fair demonstrated that it is a place of ideas and debates - and a huge reading festival, as well. It was possible to clearly experience the enthusiasm people have for books and the meaning literature has for them. Publishers and booksellers are working intensively to develop new connections to today's customers, something that was also palpable at the fair."
One of the many articles in Publishers' Weekly coverage of the Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two., which this provides links to.
Frankfurt Book FairWorld's largest trade fair for books; held annually mid-October at Frankfurt Trade Fair, Germany; First three days exclusively for trade visitors; general public can attend last two. 2018: What Everyone Needs to Know About Copyright By Andrew Albanese | 10/11/2018 @ 12:00AM PW Talks to UCLA law professor Neil Netanel, author of 'Copyright: What Everyone Needs to Know.'
former slave's travels, a violent Swat-team arrest, a war between humans and trees... Esi Edugyan, Rachel Kushner, Daisy Johnson, Robin Robertson, Richard Powers and Anna Burns on the real stories behind their novels.
Anna Burns
Milkman
Someone said to me recently: "I'm not going to ask you what your book's about. I want you to tell me what you intended your book to do." He stressed that end bit and I thought, what a question from this person I've only just been introduced to at this party. I answered: "I can't say anything more about my book. I'm talked out. My brain has pulled over the curtains." Although true, this was also code for, "Please don't. I need a rest. Stop."
Overexposure: every writer has experienced this problem. You work on a manuscript for so long that your perception of it dulls. You become blind to its weaknesses and ignorant of its strengths.
Though that's a well-known phenomenon when it comes to editorial perception, overexposure is less acknowledged by marketers. When you're marketing what feels like your 100th thriller-as an author or for a publishing house-you might feel like you've run out of things to say. You're bored by your go-to descriptions and want to break out of the box and offer a fresh take. But this can be a dangerous strategy.
For one example, a marketer admitted that her department didn't want to call an upcoming vampire book, well, a vampire book. Because the department was coy in the marketing and advertising copy, and avoided using that label, reader response was poor. The publisher received the message loud and clear: if you have a vampire book, say it's a vampire book. Subtlety is not your friend. But the problem can run deeper than that. Publishers and authors themselves, even if they agree to say it's a vampire book, will sometimes use sophisticated language to describe the book. The motivation, of course, is not to turn off readers; instead, this is frequently a misguided effort. Readers often talk about books in more direct, straightforward ways.
Every year, there is a controversy at the Man Booker prize; this year, it is all about the work of editors. Or rather, the supposed lack of work that editors are doing.
As an editor, my immediate reaction was to bite back. Yes, I've read a few saggy titles over the past few months. (Two of them crime novels endorsed by none other than Val McDermid.) And when you read a book you think is overlong, it's hard not to wonder why it wasn't cut into shape. But I'd still caution against the reflexive tendency to blame editors. A title belongs to an author, first and last. We at the publishing end are there to make suggestions, not to implement changes with an iron rod. If an author is determined to save a few darlings that we want to slaughter, it's their call. We can't force a writer to do anything. Nor should we try.
A video of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's wonderful acceptance speech for the Penn Pinter Prize, which looks at the question: 'Are you an African writer', and is entitled 'Shut up and write'.
On 9 October 2018, English PENSupported by eminent writers, this is the English branch of International Pen, which has centres in nearly 100 countries. It fights for freedom of expression and against political censorship. It campaigns for writers harassed, imprisoned and sometimes murdered for their views. http://www.englishpen.org/ was delighted to present the PEN Pinter Prize 2018 to Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. At an event at the British Library, she accepted the prize from Lady Antonia Fraser, Harold Pinter's widow, and delivered an address entitled Shut Up And Write in which she discussed her literary inspirations, and what it means to be an 'African writer' and a feminist.
If an indie author wants to best market herself, she's going to need to start with an author website. Once she's determined which elements -- things like reviews, an author page, and social media links -- to include on her site, there are some basics decisions to be made before creating the site.
First Things First An author site starts with a domain. This is your web address. Even if and author isn't ready to get started on her site, registering her domain means no one else can use it. An author can either do this through a service like register.com or iwantmyname.com for a small monthly or annual fee or through a website builder like Wordpress.org or Squarespace. If an author's name is already taken (janedoe.com), try adding %u201Cwriter%u201D to the end (janedoewriter.com). If %u201C.com%u201D is taken, Raymond advises trying %u201C.net.%u201D It%u2019s best not to use a book title as a domain, especially if an author plans on writing more than one.