As someone who has published (twice) with a hybrid press, I've become aware that there's a lot of confusion about what the term means and how hybrid publishing really works.
Links of the week April 19 2021 (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:
19 April 2021
Before I became a novelist, I was a qualitative researcher, so I did what comes naturally: I investigated. I looked at the websites of presses that call themselves hybrid (or use words like co-publishing, collaborative, or bespoke) and talked with ten people who had published with hybrid presses to learn about their experience. While ten isn't a huge sample, clear patterns emerged from their stories that sometimes surprised me-and may surprise you, because they debunk some of the myths about why people choose to go hybrid.
I'll begin by explaining what a hybrid publisher is (and isn't) and conclude with questions you may want to ask if you decide to explore this option. In between, I'll share what 10 authors had to say about why they chose the hybrid path, what they liked best and least, and what advice they would give to others.
All of the UK's children's laureates, including Cressida Cowell, Quentin Blake, Malorie Blackman and Michael Rosen, are uniting to call for the government to dedicate £100m a year to revitalising "deteriorating" primary school libraries across the country, amid fears that literacy levels have dropped severely during the pandemic.
In an impassioned letter to prime minister Boris Johnson, Cowell, the current laureate, calls for £100m to be ringfenced for building new and restoring neglected libraries every year, saying that millions of children are "missing out on opportunities to discover the life-changing magic of reading".
Decades of research has linked childhood reading to future success, including a 2002 OECD study that found it was a more telling predictor than a family's socio-economic status. At the same time, both public and school libraries have been subject to swingeing cuts over the last decade. Johnson is reportedly set to unveil a "four-year emergency" plan for literacy next month, with the Sunday Times reporting that unpublished government figures have revealed that more than 200,000 pupils are set to enter secondary school this autumn without being able to read properly - a rise of 30,000 since last year.
Our resident online creative writing tutor Eliza Robertson shares five top tips for writing a short story and techniques for developing your writing skills.
1. Be the Magpie
Gather shiny things. Shiny things for a writer include: your own memories. Interactions you have witnessed. Snippets of "found" dialogue or conversations you've overheard. Children can be a rich resource. So is eavesdropping. When observing an interaction, watch the space between the two: the tension or ease. Listen to what's unsaid. Collect images: maybe the excess of flamingos plugged into a neighbour's lawn, or a man walking his kitten. Comb the news for kooky, probably local, headlines. I wrote a story this way, after a missing tiger and two camels were found in an abandoned trailer.
It started with a happily ever after.
In 1972, Avon Books published "The Flame and the Flower," by Kathleen Woodiwiss - a hefty historical romance that traded chastity for steamy sex scenes. It arrived in the thick of the sexual revolution, and readers loved it: It was an instant bestseller that's credited with birthing the modern romance genre.
There had been romances before, of course, mostly by British publisher Mills & Boon (which was later acquired by Harlequin). But Woodiwiss ushered in a new era, inspiring an American publishing boom that propelled the romance genre to smashing success.
There was one constant in those early years: "Kathleen Woodiwiss wrapped everything up with a nice pink bow, and that's something romance writers still talk about today," says Carrie Feron, a longtime executive editor for Avon who edited Woodiwiss's later books. "The HEA. A happily ever after. Because that was a promise romance books made to the reader."
Here, a dozen people - authors, editors, agents, cover artists and one mononymous male model - recount how the modern romance industry came together and took off.
Growing up in 1980s Glasgow amid a working class beaten down by Thatcherism, Shuggie Bain watches as his family becomes increasingly broke and broken; his mother Agnes' alcoholism drags her into a pit of despair, no matter how hard poor Shuggie loves her. Oh, and Shuggie is clearly gay - even if he doesn't understand that at first - and is badly and endlessly bullied for it.
Poverty, abandonment, violence, abuse and self-destruction may sound relentlessly grim, but Douglas Stuart, who built "Shuggie Bain" on the framework of his own life story, sees light breaking through the darkness, resilience and hope in Shuggie's willingness to try again each day. That's why he gave voice and stood as witness to the lives of the Bains and their neighbors - but especially Shuggie and Agnes.
Stuart's true story explains his positive perspective, at least in part: After his mother drank herself to death, Stuart, 44, escaped those dire circumstances, built a successful fashion career and a life with his husband in New York, then carved out small pockets of time over a decade to write this novel. It was rejected by 32 publishers but - here's where the hope and resilience come in - it eventually found a home, earned the prestigious Booker Prize and became a bestseller.
In November 1971, a debut novel from a young author was published, to a small but not insignificant splash. Set in a world of tiny people who live in a carpet, it was described by the book trade journal Smith's Trade News as "one of the most original tots' tomes to hit the bookshops for many a decade", while Teachers' News called it a story of "quite extraordinary quality".
The unknown author was Terry Pratchett, and the book was The Carpet People. This week, publisher Penguin Random House Children's is releasing a 50th-anniversary edition, with Doctor Who and Good Omens star David Tennant reading the new audiobook.
"Terry would have loved knowing that David was going to do it," said Rob Wilkins, Pratchett's former assistant and friend who now manages the Pratchett estate. "David was a Doctor Who that really mattered in the Pratchett household, so he would have been so thrilled."
I was talking, as one does, to the Reader on the Clapham Omnibus. I told him I was about to have a new book out after a 10-year gap. He was pleased to hear it, and he asked: "So, what made you decide to start writing again?"
"I didn't."
He looked a little confused.
I told him: "I never stopped."
His brow cleared. "Ah, it's one of these thousand-page doorstoppers?"
Ah yes, Tolstoy. There are many reasons why it took me so long to write my eighth novel, On Hampstead Heath, and not being Tolstoy is one of the main ones. It would be silly to suggest that not being Tolstoy came as a sudden revelation. After all, I'd spent my entire life not being him. But a year or so into writing the book, what had been a nagging concern at the back of my mind since I first set out as a writer became a paralysing obstacle. I would sit there, gazing at the screen and those perfectly good words arranged into perfectly good sentences, and I'd ask myself, why? Why was I adding more of the same to a world already overflowing with those perfectly good words formed into perfectly good sentences? There had to be other things I could do, other jobs where I wouldn't constantly be measuring myself against impossible standards?
On Thursday, James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble, gave the keynote address at the Independent Book Publishers Association's annual IBPA Publishing University, where he was in conversation with Karla Olson, publisher of Patagonia Books and IBPA chair. The conversation covered a range of subjects, from the impact of 2020's store closures due to Covid-19, the growing autonomy of individual B&N store managers, and how independent publishers can get their books into B&N.
Daunt began by reporting that as of today, "all Barnes & Nobel stores are opened." He emphasized that when the stores were closed last year the chain began to return the company's focus to stocking and selling books. He said the mix of books and non-book products, is 65% to 35%, something he wants to change. "I would like the percentage of books [as stock] to be 75%," Daunt said. "As soon as you approach 25% non-book items," Daunt said, "you should look long and hard" if additional items belong in a bookstore. He said the chain was especially keen to add more backlist, an area he admitted B&N had been neglecting.
The Bologna Children's Book FairThe Bologna Children's Book Fair or La fiera del libro per ragazzi is the leading professional fair for children's books in the world. has cancelled this year's physical events and will go digital-only owing to the coronavirus pandemic.
The event, which will run alongside new general trade publishing strand BolognaBookPlus and Bologna Licensing Trade Fair, had already been postponed from its usual April dates to run from 14th to 17th June. Organisers had agreed to give two months' notice of their decision on a final format and today (9th April) confirmed this year's event will only take place digitally.
A decision was made as much of Europe faces a third wave of coronavirus, including Italy, where Bologna's region Emilia-Romagna is currently in a strict lockdown.
Another shoe falls today (April 15), as London Book Fair announces that it will, after all, resort to an all-digital 2021 evocation, giving up on what organizers had hoped could be a physical staging at Olympia London. The dates, having been moved from March to the early summer, are retained this year as June 29 to July 1, but earlier additional dates are being added.
What is hoped to be a return to a full physical iteration in 2022 is set for April 5 to 7.
Branded in today's media messaging the "Online Book Fair by LBF," the coming digital program is broken into two parts, with "conferences taking place the week of June 7" and another series of digital events set for the end of June. In this way, today's announcement says, the program will "bookend the month of June."
When bookstores across the United States closed last spring, Tyrrell Mahoney, the president of Chronicle Books, braced for disaster as she watched revenue plummet. Then, months into the crisis, Chronicle found an unlikely savior: the rapper Snoop Dogg and his two-year-old cookbook.
"From Crook to Cook" sold 205,000 copies in 2020, nearly twice as many as it had sold in 2019. It was one of several older Chronicle titles with stronger-than-expected sales during the pandemic, and the company ended up making a profit last year.
"It really was our backlist that saved the day for us," Ms. Mahoney said.
Despite what seemed like insurmountable challenges last year - with bookstores closed, literary events canceled and publication dates postponed - people kept buying books. As other pastimes like movies, theater and sports were put on hold during the shutdown, books turned out to be an ideal form of entertainment for quarantine.