Matt Haig, Danez Smith, Ayòbámi Adébáyò and other writers on staying focused and their top tips for switching off
Links of the week September 9 2019 (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:
16 September 2019
Zadie Smith "can't stand the phones". Nick Laird pointedly owns a phone that's not smart. Brett Easton Ellis despises Instagram as "that fake place" while Jonathan Coe has said he finds being on Twitter "a bit like writing in a virtual cafe". Mark Haddon announced a retreat from Twitter when The Porpoise was published because of "a growing sense that it was detrimentally affecting the way I both looked at and thought about the world around me", but has posted every week since. Ayòbámi Adébáyò, author of Stay With Me, keeps two mobile phones, and when she writes, she hides the one with all the apps in the wardrobe. Authors can have an uneasy time with social media; "always twitching the sleeve with its wants and needs", as Robert Macfarlane puts it (at which point, he says, he shuts it down for a few hours). So how do writers manage - or deploy - the distractions?
One day not long ago in a college class I was teaching, some of my students couldn't find the page I was talking about in the reading. And it dawned on me: There was only one required text in the class, an anthology of writing about the natural world called "American Earth." And they were reading pirated copies - versions downloaded free from some dubious "provider" on the internet.
It was a college well known for its progressive politics. So maybe my students thought they were striking a blow against the dark hegemony of greedy textbook publishers. Or maybe, tuition and textbook costs having soared into the stratosphere, they just wanted to save 27 bucks, the discounted online price. As gently as possible, I informed them that they were in fact stealing from the author (or, in this case, editor) who happened to be the climate activist Bill McKibben, one of their environmental heroes. Also, Library of America, which published the book, is legally a nonprofit. (Many other publishing companies now achieve that status merely de facto.)
Sleepless in Seattle, the starry-eyed, bi-coastal love story written and directed by Nora Ephron in 1993, is a strange bird. It's the story of two people who have never met but who are destined to fall in love-finally drawn together, cross-continentally, by a collection of disparate forces, some cosmic, some synthetic. It is a movie designed to be charming (due to the presence of such universally charming elements as houseboats, twinkle lights, Rob Reiner giving dating advice, women crying hysterically while watching An Affair to Remember, and a soundtrack chock-full of Jimmy Durante). But, twenty-six years after its release, the consensus on Sleepless in Seattle is that it is not so charming, after all.
This is because some of the connections between these two characters are forged through dubious, sometimes privacy-violating methods. Our own era, which is rife with means for stalking crushes as well as specific social protocols governing the stalking of crushes, is primed to tackle the film's corresponding themes - perhaps more so than the zeitgeist that first received it (the film charmed Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert and nearly melted Vincent Canby at The New York Times).
Increasingly, people of the book are also people of the cloud. At the Codex Hackathon, a convention whose participants spend a frenetic weekend designing electronic reading tools, I watch developers line up onstage to pitch book-related projects to potential collaborators and funders.
"Uber for books": a same-day service that would deliver library volumes to your door. "Fitbit for books": an app that blocks incoming calls and buzzes your phone with reminders to get back to a book. That literary pedometer meets its real-world counterpart in LitCity: "Imagine walking down a city street and feeling that familiar buzz of a push notification. But instead of it being a notification on Twitter or a restaurant recommendation, it's a beautiful passage from a work of literature with a tie to that place." I thought back to the nineteenth-century guidebooks that inserted a snippet of Shelley next to their map of the Alps; the book has always been about bringing worlds together.
The booming growth of self-publishing has been great news for authors as well as providers of all variety of self-publishing services, including editing, designing, and consulting. But as services have proliferated, promising all variety of benefits and recipes for boosting sales, it's more important than ever for indie authors to have a discerning eye when seeking out assistance. Being able to identify when a particular service is overcharging-or just overpromising what they are actually able to deliver-is an important skill for any author to master.
The first step any author should take when determining whether a particular service or consultant is worth tapping for their publishing efforts is to get a clear sense of their background. "[I]f you're not dealing with a specific individual whose resume you can study, figure out who's behind the service," says Jane Friedman, a publishing expert and consultant who has worked in the industry for more than 15 years. "Do you trust who's behind it? Are there specific names attached? There should be! Do these people have experience that applies to what you're trying to accomplish? How many years of experience?"
Describe your current job in one sentence.
I am the managing director and a founder of Nosy Crow, an independent, multi-award-winning publisher for children aged 0-12.
What's the best piece of book-related advice you've ever been given?
I think the general question I hold in my mind is, "Who is it for?" to make me focus on the audience for a book or a piece of marketing, but I can't attribute that to any one individual. I once heard that Helen Fraser, when she was at Penguin, used to ask of a potential acquisition, "Does it make us rich? Does it make us proud? Does it make us happy?" I think the idea was that you were looking for at least two of the answers to be yes! That doesn't seem to be a bad idea to apply to most of publishing.
In the mid 1990s, the headquarters of Bantam Doubleday Dell publishers resembled a space-ship docked on a dark star. As a new editorial assistant, drowning in manuscripts, I'd come in weekends to catch up on submissions. The low intergalactic air conditioner hum made it a great place to read. It was returning one of those reader's reports-in a memo, printed out, this is how long ago it was-I discovered a light glowing from one of the corner offices.
Hello? I said, poking my head in.
Hi doll, it was Susan Kamil, publisher of Dial Press, sitting in her catbird seat over Times Square, feet on the desk, manuscript in her lap. Black Prada boots, black jeans, black sweater. She took off her glasses and sat up. We'd never met, but in those days everyone with a pulse around Susan who wasn't obviously a jerk was a doll. If she knew you and liked you, it was doll-face. Everyone else in the company ignored us, the editorial assistants. We were like ants. Susan asked me what I was doing.
Tracy Chevalier has earned a place of distinction among historical fiction writers for her beautifully imagined, meticulously detailed novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring (1997), The Lady and the Unicorn (2003), and The Last Runaway (2013). Her latest novel, A Single Thread (Viking, Oct.), takes place in and around Winchester Cathedral during the early 1930s.
Then, Chevalier says, she became acquainted with some of the less-well-known details of the building: "I saw a display about cushions and kneelers made by a group of embroiderers in the 1930s. Something about the group caught my imagination: they were making beautiful objects that would be there for hundreds of years but weren't flashy like stained glass or carvings or floor tiles. They were cushions you actually use, and they bring comfort. I thought, ‘What would it be like to be in a group like that?' "
9 September 2019
Born in Maine in 1947, Stephen King wrote his first published novel, Carrie, in 1974 and has spent the subsequent half-century documenting the monsters and heroes of small-town America. His rogues' gallery of characters runs the gamut from killer clowns and demonic cars to psychotic fans and unhinged populist politicians.
His best-loved books include The Stand, It, The Dead Zone and Pet Sematary. King's latest novel, The Institute, revolves around a totalitarian boot camp for telekinetic children. The kids check in - but don't check out.
Some writers take years; James Patterson takes a weekend. Every writer is different. I feel that a first draft should take about four months, but that's me. And I go over my work obsessively. Here's another thing - creative life is absurdly short. I want to cram in as much as I can.
In every informational interview I've participated in, students and interns begin in the same way-what they most want me to know about them, even before the school they're going to (or in one case, even their name): They love to read. When I hear this my heart sinks. I don't want to put these applications in the "no" pile, but I know I have to. In declaring that they should be hired for a job in publishing because they love to read, they betray that they have no actual idea what an assistant job in publishing entails.
As an assistant for four years, my two cents are this: Do not focus, in your cover letter, on your love of reading, your passion for the power of storytelling, or your favorite books on an editor's list. Instead, you should be focusing on the unsexy parts - your office skills, your ability to communicate, your willingness to learn, and your resourcefulness. Hiring managers or editors or head publicists are not necessarily looking for great literary minds; they are looking for someone who will competently check and respond to emails, write marketing copy, read slush, answer phones, mail books, wrangle contracts and forms from authors, negotiate text and image permissions, walk the director's dog, or literally any other task the hirers don't feel like doing.
As video content continues to grow in popularity and importance-with the original video sharing platform YouTube now the second most visited website in the world (behind Google)-are publishers doing enough to capitalise on this highly effective and engaging form of marketing?
For the last three years, Peter Rossiter has been in charge of video content at Penguin Random House, helping their YouTube channel grow from 40,000 views per month to 250,000 (that's 1.1 million minutes watched each month).
Here he shares his thoughts on the future of video in the publishing industry, as well as his top takeaways for creating a strong and successful digital marketing strategy.
Find your audience
It sounds simple but finding your audience and the type of content that resonates with them is key. It took me almost a year to work this out at Penguin. We tried many different formats aimed at various demographics, from funny staff tests to animation led short-form content, and analysed everything from our actual audience demographics to retention rates. Once we had figured out what does and doesn't work we were able to grow, not only in video but also in audience share. Ideally the strategy should be serving an audience need that can't be filled with mainstream media. If you have great video content the intent to purchase the book will be significantly higher.
People have been trying to ban J.K. Rowling's "Harry Potter" books ever since they hit shelves more than 20 years ago. Just this week, a Catholic elementary school in Tennessee removed the books from its library because one of the school's pastors believed "the curses and spells used in the books are actual curses and spells; which when read by a human being risk conjuring evil spirits into the presence of the person reading the text."
At this point, though, there are movies, comics, plays, games, sports teams, podcasts, museum exhibits, fan art and even whole amusement parks dedicated to these books. The story of a boy wizard going to a magical school and learning to fight evil with the power of love (and wands) has become such a part of the cultural zeitgeist that kids can't avoid the franchise no matter how hard some school officials, religious figures and parents might try.
And honestly, this particular school has an absurd reason for trying.
Since 2012, the year I began working exclusively with self-publishers, I've helped more than 100 authors create self-publishing imprints. Some of these were formed as corporations and LLCs, but most were in name only. The common thread between all of them-one of the earliest decisions made-was to choose a name under which to buy an ISBN, short for International Standard Book Number, a unique number assigned to every published book.
Early in the ebook revolution Amazon declared ebooks did not need an ISBN. Much to the consternation of Bowker (the official U.S. issuer of ISBNs), and the publishing industry itself, ebook self-publishing platforms had no choice but to follow Amazon's lead. Even Apple, which launched iBooks by requiring an ISBN for ebooks, was forced to abandon its position.
"Who cares?" many self-publishers declared as they forged ahead. Bowker did not or does not adequately explain the value of assigning one, so what's the point?
I can't argue with them.But like the other technology-fueled revolutions of the past 30 years, self-publishing is becoming more sophisticated. I've been thinking about what value an imprint (and ISBN ownership) provides the author/publisher, and what the consequences are for using, or not using, an imprint.
I know this may seem like minutia to new writers. But I've learned that these early decisions can and do have a long-term impact with little or no chance for fixing or correcting, short of re-publishing.
If crime fiction reflects society, what can books published during wartime tell us about ourselves? Historical events obviously help shape our society and form our sense of cultural identity, and crime fiction is one mechanism for people to reflect upon that identity. While writing my own mystery series-set during the Second World War-I became interested in what crime fiction published in the 1940s had to say about a nation's view of the war and their role in that struggle as well as the larger world.
What I found surprised me. A sampling of authors from various nations was revealing in terms of how the conflict was incorporated-or not-in crime fiction published during wartime.
"I decided to have a book of poems published at my own expense." It was 1909, a year before William Carlos Williams would open his pediatric practice in his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. A friend of his father owned a local print shop, so Williams paid for Poems, his 22-page chapbook, to be produced. Epigraphs from Shakespeare and Keats led the earnest little book. Williams brought a dozen copies to a local stationary store to be sold.
"Sold" might be a generous word: Williams only sold four copies, and made one single dollar in profit. He gave the unsold books to his family. The printer stashed away his own remaining copies, which "were inadvertently burned after they had reposed ten years or more on a rafter under the eaves of [the printer's] old chicken coop."
Williams wasn't alone: there is a tradition of poets publishing their own books. Williams thought his early poems were "bad Keats, nothing else-oh well, bad Whitman too." Walt Whitman was an appropriate influence; in 1855, he paid a print shop on Fulton Street in Brooklyn to produce the first edition of Leaves of Grass. A newspaper veteran familiar with the world of press and print, Whitman took a hands-on approach. As Ed Folsom notes, Whitman "designed the binding, chose the typeface, designed the pages, worked with an engraver on the frontispiece, and even set some of the type himself." Whitman said "I sometimes find myself more interested in book making than in book writing... the way books are made-that always excites my curiosity: the way books are written-that only attracts me once in a great while."
In 1965 the eminent American science-fiction writer John W Campbell wrote an essay titled The Barbarians Within. In it, he recommended that "the barbarian" - and it was clear he meant African Americans - be injected with cocaine and heroin in order to be kept under control. It was a plan that, he said, "has the advantage ... of killing him both psychologically and physiologically, without arousing any protest on his part". He also claimed that slavery was "a useful educational system", supported segregation, and argued that "the Negro race" had failed to "produce super-high geniuses". Black sci-fi writers were unable to "write in open competition" with whites.
When a beloved literary figure from the past is refused some kind of recognition as a result of their personal views, a backlash against modern "culture warriors" inevitably follows. This is understandable to a degree. After all, records of human communication only go back so far; we can only guess what Shakespeare's opinions on trans people would be (actually he would have loved them, have you seen his plays?). To recognise racism in canonical authors like Blyton and Campbell is not to advocate for a Year Zero approach, blitzing the literary canon until only good-hearted, liberal authors remain.