Roger Robinson's vision of Trinidad as a "portable paradise" of "white sands, green hills and fresh fish", has won the British-Trinidadian poet 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's £10,000 Ondaatje prize, which goes to a work that best evokes "the spirit of a place".
Links of the week April 27 2020 (18)
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:
4 May 2020
Robinson's collection, A Portable Paradise, which has already won him the TS Eliot prize, moves from the Grenfell Tower fire to the Windrush generation and the legacy of slavery. In its title poem, he writes how "if I speak of Paradise, / then I'm speaking of my grandmother / who told me to carry it always on my person, concealed, so / no one else would know but me".
In particularly timely words for today, the poet, musician and political activist urges that "if your stresses are sustained and daily, / get yourself to an empty room - be it hotel, / hostel or hovel - find a lamp / and empty your paradise onto a desk: / your white sands, green hills and fresh fish."
Ever since early March, when the nation went into lockdown due to the Covid-19 outbreak, independent booksellers have been tweaking their business models in an attempt to remain solvent. And in doing so, a growing number have turned to hosting virtual author events.
There is a consensus among several indie booksellers contacted by PW that virtual events are more time intensive than in-store events, when factoring in how long it takes to set up the event as well as process and ship orders. And all of these booksellers noted that though virtual events pull in viewers and increase visibility for stores, it can be difficult to convert those viewers into paying customers.
A significant proportion of the UK and Ireland's smallest independent presses say their businesses are at risk as a result of the coronavirus lockdown, having seen sales plunge and cash quickly run out. A number of presses, including Jacaranda Books and Knights Of, have launched crowd-funders in order to ameliorate the damage, but others have called for the industry to step-up with a support scheme.
A survey launched this week by The Bookseller and writer development charity Spread the Word
London organisation running creative writing workshops for writers at all stages, with a focus on new writing and live literature, and encouraging innovation and experimentation. www.spreadtheword.org.uk
received 72 responses in its first 48 hours, indicating the parlous condition of the sector and the need for immediate assistance. Publishers completing the questions included some of the most well-known presses from across the UK and Ireland, including Dead Ink Books in Liverpool, Bluemoose Books in Hebden Bridge, Norfolk press Galley Beggar, London's Pluto Press, Jacaranda Books and Orenda Books, September Publishing based in Kent, Scotland's Fledgling Press, Seren and Firefly Press from Wales, and Ireland's Lilliput Press. The vast majority of publishers polled had fewer than 10 staff.
Hello reader -
If you're in any way a member of the independent publishing community (or a former member, or a recovering member, or an aspirational member), welcome. I hope you and yours are staying healthy and staying home, if able.
I've been reflecting a lot on the notion - oft-circulated these past few weeks - that the world we want to see at the end of this COVID-19 crisis is the world we need to forge, right now, together and on others' behalves. As I rage and grieve, I also ask myself, "What kind of independent publishing industry do I want to see emerge from this exceptionally difficult time?"
On the occasion of publishing a brief collection of some of my older short stories-at the onset of the third decade of a century marked, so far, by our complete submission to market-driven technological distraction and surveillance-I am awash in a kind of nostalgia. Not for a better America. Not for my younger, healthier body and sharper memory, and not for the sweet innocence of my now eighteen-year-old daughter as an infant or toddler or opinionated eight-year-old.
What I miss is writing stories in which a life lived online does not figure - mostly. In three of the five stories in my collection The Beauty of Their Youth, the internet plays absolutely no role. In one there''s a bit of emailing. And in the final, title story, a middle-aged woman confronts the curated myths of a perfect self, both her own and those of friends from her youth, that circulate round the globe.
It's probably the single most despised document you might be asked to prepare: the synopsis.
The synopsis is sometimes necessary because an agent or publisher wants to see, from beginning to end, what happens in your story. Thus, the synopsis must convey a book's entire narrative arc. It shows what happens and who changes, and it has to reveal the ending. Synopses may be required when you first query your work, or you may be asked for it later.
Don't confuse the synopsis with sales copy, or the kind of marketing description that might appear on your back cover or in an Amazon description. You're not writing a punchy piece for readers that builds excitement. It's not an editorial about your book. Instead, it's an industry document that helps an agent or editor quickly assess your story's appeal and if it's worth them reading the entire manuscript.
The author on publishing when bookshops are closed, being an ‘exercise nut' and the dangers posed to writers by mob rule
What kind of lockdown are you having?
One of the most horrifying things about this experience is that it's having so little effect on my life. I live in lockdown all the time! I don't think this reflects well on me, but either I don't have a very keen social appetite or I'm under-aware of when I'm starting to get lonely.
AdvertisementHow do you feel about your new novel being published during this time?
Oh, that's a catastrophe. I'm ashamed of myself because I'm not supposed to care about what's happening to my book; it's nothing compared to losing a business you've spent your whole life building. But it's two years' work, and I'm publishing into a big, black hole; all the bookshops closed.
The Golden Age of British detective writing was dominated by four female authors who have predictably become known as the Queens of Crime: Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, and Josephine Tey. There was actually a fifth as well, Ngiao Marsh, but she is usually discounted as she was a New Zealander, although her books are predominantly set in Britain (and many of them are among my personal favorites).
By way of background, the Golden Age is commonly taken to be the period between the two World Wars although this is more a convenient label than an accurate description. In fact many of these books were written well after the Second World War, but they continued to follow the traditional pattern and to make use of such much-loved literary devices as mistaken identities and mysterious foreigners, not forgetting the convenient side door which is customarily left unlocked.
April 27, 2020
Dear Eavan,
We never met. But for several years I have been carrying around a letter to you that I was too nervous to send. I would like to send it now, but I cannot. Because you just died, in quarantine, in Ireland.
When I learned of your death, after a hard morning of feeling stuck in my writing and irritated by the walls and humans around me, I pushed my chair back and ran into my bedroom to sob-in a place clear from children's questions and sticky jam jars and school lessons, but still littered with laundry and books and dust. The detritus of domestic life. A space that you knew, and made beautiful and sacred through your work. A large part of the cutting sadness of your death is that now, in global quarantine, your clear, quiet poems of interior space, candles and knives, women's voices, and kitchen gardens have even more meaning and heft. We need the tender attentiveness of your words.
27 April 2020
We should begin by saying that, on a fundamental level, we understand why Publishers WeeklyInternational news website of book publishing and bookselling including business news, reviews, bestseller lists, commentaries http://www.publishersweekly.com/ chose the "Books Are Essential" tagline as a rallying cry. Like every industry during this pandemic, publishing is in a dangerous state of flux, and it needs to find new ways to move product even when supply lines are stressed and it's not safe for people to be in bookstores or go to live publishing events. But this uncertain moment is why it's all the more crucial for the publishing industry to be precise with its language, and it's why we think the tagline has missed the mark.
Right now, the term essential is used to describe workers who perform labor that provides our society with fundamental services to survive. It refers to health-care workers, grocery store employees, trash collectors, and others who do jobs that keep us safe, clean, and alive. Crucially, essential is a term applied to people - it is an acknowledgment that workers are what stitch our communities and what's left of our economy together.
One thing the pandemic has done is to make everybody more aware of "supply chains": the path by which a thing gets made and delivered to its ultimate user. Many of us heard many times that a ventilator is constructed of 150 parts that come from all over the world, hinting at the massive logistical challenges of ramping up supply. And we've learned about how hard it is to get the toilet paper or the milk intended for offices and institutions packaged and delivered to stores for consumers instead. Supply chains were not talked about much, but they're important in ways that lots of people are suddenly becoming aware of.
I doubt it was called a supply chain for books when my father started working on it in the late 1940s, but he recognized early that managing inventory title-by-title was both the achilles heel and the biggest opportunity in the trade book publishing business. Each book was not as complicated as a ventilator, but publishers did dozens or hundreds, and now thousands, of different books a year. Unlike most businesses, book publishers created unique products over and over again. Particularly in the days before computers, managing all this detail was a major logistical challenge.
Given all the disruptions to the global economy caused by the new coronavirus, unit sales of print books held up relatively well in the first quarter of 2020, said Kristen McLean, executive director, business development for NPD Books, in a webinar held last week. And though the unprecedented economic plunge makes it difficult to gauge how much of a drag Covid-19 will have on book sales in the long run, publishing has weathered previous turbulent times fairly well. During the Great Recession and its aftermath, McLean noted, unit sales fell meaningfully in only one year-2009, when unemployment was peaking-and units rose from 760 million in 2007 to 807 million in 2012. She added that the gains included the addition of e-books, and that between 2013 and 2019, unit sales generally remained flat.
While demand for books has historically been steady, McLean said, buying patterns have changed as a result of the pandemic. Between March 1 and April 4, demand spiked in such categories as outdoor skills (with print units up 74% over last year); medical history, including books on the 1918 flu pandemic (up 71%); games and activities (up 42%); and literary fiction (up 10%).
More than 300 South African authors and academics have appealed to government to allow the delivery of all books during Level 4 of the national lockdown.
From May 1st, only the selling of educational books will be permitted as part of the next stage of lockdown.
In an open letter to President Cyril Ramaphosa, Nobel prizewinner JM Coetzee and some of SA%u2019s most prominent authors including Zakes Mda and Mandla Langa praised government for its "sober, compassionate, and science-based leadership" during the crisis. But they warned that South Africa could lose its book industry if it was not allowed to trade.
This will be a strange way to begin a guide to blogging, but I want to save you time, trouble, and heartache.
The average author does not benefit much from blogging.
Yet blogging continues to interest authors, and be discussed, as a way to market and promote. Why? Because blogging does work, if certain conditions are met. The problem is that few authors meet those conditions. This post will delve into what it means to blog successfully and in a meaningful way for an author's long-term platform and book marketing efforts.
What it takes to become an effective blogger If you approach blogging as something "lesser than" your book writing or published writing, you're more likely to fail at it. While blogging can be less formal, less researched, and more geared for online skim-reading or social sharing, to do it well requires the same kind of practice and skill as crafting a novel. You get better at it the more you do it, but I see many authors give up before they've put in enough hours to understand the medium.
My first novel bombed spectacularly. This was about 20 years ago. Everything went wrong. First my editor quit after which my publishing house kinda-sorta forgot I existed. Orphaned was the word they used. Since nobody gave a damn, I at least got to choose my own book cover.
I'd sold that novel for three grand in an age when young writers were scoring obscene windfalls. Even my own publishing house had just allegedly paid a high six-figure deal to this other first-time author named Manil Suri. Our novels were coming out at the same time, and you can probably guess which novel our publishing house tirelessly promoted and which novel they couldn't have picked out of a police line-up. I kept throwing darts at Manil Suri until the reviews for my novel started coming in. And, boy, there were lots of them, a shit ton, like 40 straight good-to-glowing ones I incessantly reread and could quote at length. I thought I was a made man, but, no, the reviews didn't matter much because bookstores hadn't ordered my hardback-they'd all ordered Manil Suri's instead.
Nicola Upson is the critically acclaimed author of the Josephine Tey historical crime fiction series - praised as ‘historical crime fiction at its very best' (Sunday Times). Since the publication of her debut in 2008, Nicola has gone on to release eight more novels to widespread acclaim. With such a consistently successful track record of writing novels, we caught up with Nicola to find out how to get started on a new project...
Make friends with your work
Ideas for a book or a short story come when you least expect them, and you never know what will spark your imagination - a lonely house or a snatch of overheard conversation, something you're troubled or fascinated by, a quirk of history that not many people know about. When that moment arrives, there's nothing more exciting and it's tempting to jump straight in - but not every idea is rich enough to sustain a multi-layered plot and a memorable cast of characters, so choose wisely. You'll be living with this idea for a long time, so it needs to be a friend you can go to no matter what mood you're in, something you'll be as committed to at the end as at the beginning.
A J Waines, Fiona Veitch Smith and Holly Watt will feature in this year's National Crime Reading Month, which is now online due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Co-ordinated by the Crime Writer's Association (CWA) and Crime Reader's Association (CRA), the annual festival promotes authors at live events across the UK.
Chair of the CWA Linda Stratmann said"We've - quite literally - created crime writers in residence by asking authors to post films from their homes while in lockdown. It's a kind of criminally-good through the keyhole! "Readers love the personal insights from meeting authors in person, and most crime authors love to connect to their readers. With all the major crime writing festivals, as well as author events in libraries and bookshops, cancelled for spring and summer, we felt it was important to step in and offer a digital alternative."
On what would have been the late Discworld creator's 72nd birthday, Terry Pratchett's production company Narrativia has announced a new development deal to create "truly authentic ... prestige adaptations that remain absolutely faithful to [his] original, unique genius".
The deal will see Motive Pictures and Endeavor Content team up with Narrativia, which Pratchett launched in 2012, to make several series adaptations of the late author's fantasy novels. There are currently no details of which books the partnership will tackle, though many of Pratchett's books have been adapted before: Sky has dramatised Hogfather, The Colour of Magic and Going Postal; Soul Music and Wyrd Sisters have been turned into animations, and Good Omens, starring David Tennant as the demon Crowley and Michael Sheen as the angel Aziraphale, was recently aired on Amazon Prime and the BBC, to positive reviews.
The Rose of Sebastopol was born out of my life-long obsession with Florence Nightingale. As a child, I was hooked by the images in my Ladybird book about her, and then by the biography by Cecil Woodham-Smith, which to me read like a fairytale. Nightingale's girlhood of frustration and thwarted ambition led to international fame; 30 years of intellectual starvation was a prelude to 50 years' hard labour, during which she established nursing and midwifery as professions, and helped reform military medicine.
Why not, I thought, revisit the ending of my book? Not to change it, but to add a further chapter. 2020, the bicentenary of Nightingale's birth, seemed like the perfect opportunity - I had no idea last summer how terribly poignant a return to Florence Nightingale would be. So my inspirational editor, Juliet Ewers, helped me plan a reissue. All I needed to do was to write the chapter.
I was excited by the prospect of returning to a period, landscape, and characters I loved. But as I began to write I realised that I'd set myself quite a challenge. Fifteen years of life and four more novels had gone by since I wrote that book - I was a different woman and a different writer. And the world had changed - Putin had invaded the Crimea, we'd fought fresh wars, become embroiled in the moral and political struggle that was Brexit, seen the rise of the #MeToo movement.
‘Rights departments of publishing houses invariably seem to be the poor relation of the sales team,' says Richard Charkin. Think of the coronavirus pandemic as a prompt to have another look at that.
It's a truth almost universally acknowledged that the net profit of a general book publisher is invariably smaller or equal to the net rights income received.
At times like this, when so many physical bookstores around the world are closed, when so many publishers' and wholesalers' warehouses are working reduced shifts or none, when the profit from selling printed books has diminished to zero or-like the West Texas Intermediate oil price moves dramatically into negative territory-the income from rights to intellectual property seems even more important.
And yet, rights departments of publishing houses invariably seem to be the poor relation of the sales team except at Frankfurt and similar trade shows.
Pilgrimages to the houses of late artists and writers are often destined to disappoint. Many of us go with grand hopes of finding something revelatory-we're not sure what-that will make us feel closer to the person, perhaps lead us to discover something hidden about their work. Lives of Houses, out from Princeton University Press, is a collection of essays largely centered on such pilgrimages and what we unexpectedly find.
Perhaps we all ought to begin there - in the poems, artworks, and books themselves - even if the houses themselves are still standing. Because in trying to learn what home might've meant to the writers in this book, we sense that they lived primarily within the space of their words rather than between walls.