Most books have less than a minute to sell themselves to booksellers. A buyer in a store tends to ask a small range of vital questions. Have I heard of this writer? What’s special about this book? Why would anyone buy it? A sales rep will need some answers to these questions: ten second answers before they move on to the next title in the catalogue. Writers should spend time answering those questions, too. A ‘selling point’ is a compelling reason why a bookseller should stock your book against thousands of others. It’s rarely about the quality of the writing. (My bolds.)
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
It's Not the Writing that Counts
And here's publisher Chris Hamilton-Emery's latest corrective for those who believe that good writing rises to the surface whatever: in another blog post advising authors on publicity he says this:
Authors, Publicity and Privacy
Even so (see my last post), I can't help sounding a heartfelt agreement with Nicholas Lezard, who sends up three cheers for Jonathan Littell for refusing to appear in person to collect his Athens prize on the grounds that writing is too private a matter.
This is so true, for me at any rate, that writing is a private thing. Personally, I can only write well when I have managed to shut out all other voices from my head, to sink into a special, private mentality which is utterly divorced from the kind of mentality required for publicity, and very vulnerable to disruption so that it's often also necessary to remove oneself physically. (Anyone who reads my author blog will know I frequently complain about this problem.)
Maybe when you're winning major awards you can afford to take Littell's stand, but for most writers the need to be a publicist for one's work appears to be the cross we just have bear nowadays...
This is so true, for me at any rate, that writing is a private thing. Personally, I can only write well when I have managed to shut out all other voices from my head, to sink into a special, private mentality which is utterly divorced from the kind of mentality required for publicity, and very vulnerable to disruption so that it's often also necessary to remove oneself physically. (Anyone who reads my author blog will know I frequently complain about this problem.)
Maybe when you're winning major awards you can afford to take Littell's stand, but for most writers the need to be a publicist for one's work appears to be the cross we just have bear nowadays...
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Authors as Publicists
Here it is from a publisher (my own publisher, Chris Hamilton-Emery of Salt): in a blog post intended primarily, I think, to educate submitting authors, he says:
In another provocative and revealing blog post he advises:
Great writing doesn’t always make for great books.By 'great books' he means those which become recognized as great and don't sink without trace. Now Chris is passionately committed to great writing; by no means is he here subscribing to the (too horribly widespread) view that if a book doesn't sell either it can't be any good as literature or wanted by the public (two separate notions which are sometimes conflated). No, what Chris is saying here is that however great a book is as literature, it can't be recognized or even known as such if it isn't properly publicized, and in such a way that embeds the idea of the book in the public mind. Rhetoricians are of course committed to the magic number 3: provide a list of 3 linked points and the underlying notion will stick in the mind of the audience. A book will sell, says, Chris, if it has three 'hooks that people can remember' and 'knowing what they are is the key to getting published.' His implied advice is that submitting authors should know them, that this is how a book must be sold in the first place, by the author to a publisher, and the message is clear: publicity is everything, perhaps for literary writing more than anything.
In another provocative and revealing blog post he advises:
The best way to beat the slush pile is to avoid it in the first place. Unsolicited submissions are the worst way to reach an editor, less than 1% succeed. Most editors are receptive to recommendations (some ask their writers to be on the look out for talent). In a people business like publishing, who you know really matters. Writing is social. A couple of recommendations from the right people will open doors for your writing. It reveals two things: firstly, other published writers think you’re worth investing in, and secondly, you are already building your profile and finding readers.It goes right against the grain for me to admit it - I would love to think there were possibilities for good writing to rise on its own - but he is right. I got my own break at the start because my tutor on an Arvon course, Martin Booth, sent my work to his own agent. My second novel was published because I was talking to an editor in a bar after a reading and she suggested I send it in. So many published writers will tell you similar stories. And I have a big envelope stuffed with the form rejections I received from publishing houses when I was just sitting at home conscientiously honing my literary skills and in touch with no one else in the literary world...
Saturday, June 20, 2009
Jenny Diski: Not a Well-Behaved Guest
A very interesting article by Jenny Diski in today's Guardian, in which she recounts her recent 'sacking' as the guest editor of a student fiction anthology, for coming up with a different 8, out of the 15 pre-selected for her, from the ones the regular student editors wanted, and for her introduction, which failed to conform to the spirit of encouragement which, it turned out, the publication is intended to provide for 'new and developing student writers'.
This incident hinges on several important issues.
Firstly, the question of the guest editor. Students, anyone: never invite a guest editor unless you are going to hand over all editorial control to them for their issue! (This is why Ailsa Cox and I never had guest editors for the short story mag metropolitan, in spite of hints from our funders that it might be the politically correct or indeed exciting thing to do: we had our literary and aesthetic vision, indeed mission; on a marketing level we branded our mag with what I think was our distinctive vision; and we were NOT going to water any of that down.) It looks to me as if the student eds of this publication felt somewhat similarly, and indeed the editorship they handed Jenny Diski was a pretty toothless one, since they had already selected 15 from god knows how many, from which she was to reject only 7. One wonders: since Diski's views about this 15 were so very different from theirs, how many of those who didn't reach the final 15 might have found Diski's approval? (And this is a question which indeed arises every time you hear of the entries to major competitions being sifted beforehand, sometimes by less experienced sifters - as I'm always saying, ad nauseum.)
So why did they ask her? Looks like it was a marketing strategy, and I guess it usually is: a big name on the cover will sell more, full stop. But also the name of a serious literary novelist will create a halo of literary quality over the contributions to the book. But then Diski didn't play this last game: she said quite openly in the introduction that while all of the 8 stories in the anthology were competent, only a few met her standards for good, necessary writing. It's to Diski's credit and, if she's right about the stories, best for her reputation that she stuck to the guns of her own literary integrity. Personally I'd have balked somewhat earlier and bowed out, rather than lace these stories and their writers with this declaration of mediocrity in a publication which is presumably intended to sell (and you can absolutely see why the student editors wouldn't want to include it). Perhaps Diski doesn't expect the anthology to be on the open market, as her final statement in the Guardian article implies an inhouse circulation: 'I'm [sorry] that they thought a plea for serious writers to write seriously wasn't what new writers want to hear.'
But you know what? Diski has voiced the best-kept secret, the fact that there are lots of competent writers, but really good writers are quite rare. It's a fact which the funders of new writing, especially those with a community agenda, always deny, and which writers themselves collude in keeping quiet because it's just so scary (if it's true, how much smaller are my chances of being one of the great ones?). It's possible, too - as I think Diski may be implying - that encouraging merely competent writers to think they are good is a way of preventing them becoming good. Or are great writers great from the start anyway? Don't hit me for asking the question, please - it is a question which, as I've said before, occurred to me on the one or two occasions I came across school age literary geniuses.
This incident hinges on several important issues.
Firstly, the question of the guest editor. Students, anyone: never invite a guest editor unless you are going to hand over all editorial control to them for their issue! (This is why Ailsa Cox and I never had guest editors for the short story mag metropolitan, in spite of hints from our funders that it might be the politically correct or indeed exciting thing to do: we had our literary and aesthetic vision, indeed mission; on a marketing level we branded our mag with what I think was our distinctive vision; and we were NOT going to water any of that down.) It looks to me as if the student eds of this publication felt somewhat similarly, and indeed the editorship they handed Jenny Diski was a pretty toothless one, since they had already selected 15 from god knows how many, from which she was to reject only 7. One wonders: since Diski's views about this 15 were so very different from theirs, how many of those who didn't reach the final 15 might have found Diski's approval? (And this is a question which indeed arises every time you hear of the entries to major competitions being sifted beforehand, sometimes by less experienced sifters - as I'm always saying, ad nauseum.)
So why did they ask her? Looks like it was a marketing strategy, and I guess it usually is: a big name on the cover will sell more, full stop. But also the name of a serious literary novelist will create a halo of literary quality over the contributions to the book. But then Diski didn't play this last game: she said quite openly in the introduction that while all of the 8 stories in the anthology were competent, only a few met her standards for good, necessary writing. It's to Diski's credit and, if she's right about the stories, best for her reputation that she stuck to the guns of her own literary integrity. Personally I'd have balked somewhat earlier and bowed out, rather than lace these stories and their writers with this declaration of mediocrity in a publication which is presumably intended to sell (and you can absolutely see why the student editors wouldn't want to include it). Perhaps Diski doesn't expect the anthology to be on the open market, as her final statement in the Guardian article implies an inhouse circulation: 'I'm [sorry] that they thought a plea for serious writers to write seriously wasn't what new writers want to hear.'
But you know what? Diski has voiced the best-kept secret, the fact that there are lots of competent writers, but really good writers are quite rare. It's a fact which the funders of new writing, especially those with a community agenda, always deny, and which writers themselves collude in keeping quiet because it's just so scary (if it's true, how much smaller are my chances of being one of the great ones?). It's possible, too - as I think Diski may be implying - that encouraging merely competent writers to think they are good is a way of preventing them becoming good. Or are great writers great from the start anyway? Don't hit me for asking the question, please - it is a question which, as I've said before, occurred to me on the one or two occasions I came across school age literary geniuses.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Anonthology and Nemonymous
An interesting publication from Fourth Estate: Anonthology includes nine stories by nine of their authors, but readers are left to guess which story is by whom, and there is a competition to enter. Fourth Estate call it 'an experimental project to assess the importance placed on name and reputation over quality of writing'.
As some commenters have pointed out on Alison Flood's Guardian books blogs article, D F Lewis has been producing something similar - Nemonymous - since the late nineties *, with perhaps a little more prescience, since the cult of personality was only just then tightening its stranglehold on our literary culture, but perhaps also with greater freedom as a small magazine** publisher. Lewis's has been the purer experiment: while Fourth Estate provides us with the clues of the names of the contributing authors, Lewis publishes his issues initially without identifying the authors at all, and so readers are more truly focussed on the work itself. (As far as I am aware, the identities of contributors to each issue are revealed in the next.) The Fourth Estate experiment is predicated on the assumption that we know the contributors' writing: it's a 'recognition' exercise, and this is where it gets fuzzy: since the writers do have a reputation, is the thing we are being invited to recognize after all the writer, in which case you could argue that the ultimate effect here is once again to focus on the personality rather than the writing? Anything that draws critical attention to the issue of the cult of personality is a good thing, I reckon, but it does seem a little weird (if inevitable and maybe even necessary) to rely on personality and reputation to do it...
Edited in: * DF Lewis points out in the comments below that his first annual issue appeared in 2001.
** He also points out that his latest issues are large book anthologies.
And he adds that for the early issues he read the stories 'blind', which indeed made his experiment purer still. However, the last three issues have, like the Fourth Estate anthology, carried the randomized names of the authors on the cover (on the back, rather than the front, though) (to be matched with stories in the subsequent issue a year later).
As some commenters have pointed out on Alison Flood's Guardian books blogs article, D F Lewis has been producing something similar - Nemonymous - since the late nineties *, with perhaps a little more prescience, since the cult of personality was only just then tightening its stranglehold on our literary culture, but perhaps also with greater freedom as a small magazine** publisher. Lewis's has been the purer experiment: while Fourth Estate provides us with the clues of the names of the contributing authors, Lewis publishes his issues initially without identifying the authors at all, and so readers are more truly focussed on the work itself. (As far as I am aware, the identities of contributors to each issue are revealed in the next.) The Fourth Estate experiment is predicated on the assumption that we know the contributors' writing: it's a 'recognition' exercise, and this is where it gets fuzzy: since the writers do have a reputation, is the thing we are being invited to recognize after all the writer, in which case you could argue that the ultimate effect here is once again to focus on the personality rather than the writing? Anything that draws critical attention to the issue of the cult of personality is a good thing, I reckon, but it does seem a little weird (if inevitable and maybe even necessary) to rely on personality and reputation to do it...
Edited in: * DF Lewis points out in the comments below that his first annual issue appeared in 2001.
** He also points out that his latest issues are large book anthologies.
And he adds that for the early issues he read the stories 'blind', which indeed made his experiment purer still. However, the last three issues have, like the Fourth Estate anthology, carried the randomized names of the authors on the cover (on the back, rather than the front, though) (to be matched with stories in the subsequent issue a year later).
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Short Stories Will Do It for You
Short stories have triumphed again, this time in the Wales Book of the Year Award 2009, which has been won by Deborah Kay Davies for her debut collection Grace, Tamar and Laszlo the Beautiful (Parthian).
And here's the latest on Facebook from Salt director Chris Hamilton-Emery on the amazingly successful Just One Book campaign:
Makes one wonder if, in spite of the recession - or maybe because of it? - short stories (and poetry!) are turning the corner...
And here's the latest on Facebook from Salt director Chris Hamilton-Emery on the amazingly successful Just One Book campaign:
A month [and] we’ve had 1,400 orders and taken over £30K (two months’ cash): it’s been extraordinary, exhausting and exhilarating.The ICA is now supporting the campaign, there's to be a new ad in the London Review of Books and Birminghan New Street Waterstone's is doing a Salt table display.
Makes one wonder if, in spite of the recession - or maybe because of it? - short stories (and poetry!) are turning the corner...
Sunday, June 07, 2009
Writers and Readers
Robert McCrum doesn't appear to agree with me: he says in today's Observer that novelists writing with a greater awareness of the market, as did their Victorian forbears, would only be a Good Thing. His argument seems unclear to me, however. Making a general accusation that contemporary literary novelists 'disdain readers', he names no one specifically, and refers only to a 'literary elite'. One might assume from his reference to a time 'when "story" was not a dirty word' that he has in mind here innovative writing or complex texts. In point of fact I can't disagree with his statement that a writer-reader relationship is essential, and I think it's the challenge, and indeed the duty of the innovative writer to find ways of preserving it. But McCrum seems to be implying that all such contemporary writing, and indeed all contemporary 'literary' or 'non-genre' writing generally fails to keep this contract, with his statement that 'if there is a genre where the old contract between writer and reader is still going strong it must be thrillers.' Inadvertent or not, there seems a real anti-literary sentiment here. And then again, he asks in evidence: 'How often have you come away from a literary festival with a sense of regret at the failure of the big name in the marquee to live up to your expectations?', a question which seems like a non sequiteur, revolving as it surely does around the issue of personality and performance and having little to do with the needs of the reading experience.
In a smaller column on the same page in the printed version of the paper, McCrum develops his theme of reader satisfaction by praising the Orange prize for invariably selecting winners that 'your average reader may actually want to read.' And says that this year the prize 'surpassed itself', and goes on to applaud this year's 'worthy winner', the surely highly literary Home by Marilynne Robinson, whose linked earlier novel Gilead was too literary, highbrow and arcane in its religious reference for many of my very literary friends.
But then one suspects that McCrum's twisted knickers are the result of a journalistic need to drum up controversy as our Sunday broadsheets abandon their serious literary agenda.
In a smaller column on the same page in the printed version of the paper, McCrum develops his theme of reader satisfaction by praising the Orange prize for invariably selecting winners that 'your average reader may actually want to read.' And says that this year the prize 'surpassed itself', and goes on to applaud this year's 'worthy winner', the surely highly literary Home by Marilynne Robinson, whose linked earlier novel Gilead was too literary, highbrow and arcane in its religious reference for many of my very literary friends.
But then one suspects that McCrum's twisted knickers are the result of a journalistic need to drum up controversy as our Sunday broadsheets abandon their serious literary agenda.
Saturday, June 06, 2009
From the Brink towards a Possible Future
Due to all the remarkable support for Salt's Just One Book, it is no longer a campaign to save Salt from immediate demise but has become a campaign to build a sustainable business. Here's Salt's latest announcement:
Crossposted with Elizabeth Baines.
We’ve been busy campaigning over the last two weeks to save Salt. The business has faced some serious financial difficulties as the recession hit us hard. I’m pleased to say we’ve stabilised the business, but we still need to build our cash reserves to secure our future. We’d like to thank all our customers for supporting us; but more than that, we thought we’d offer everyone a summer treat:—
A THIRD OFF ALL SALT TITLES THROUGHOUT JUNE
We’re now giving you a huge 33% off ALL books till the end of June. Use the coupon code G3SRT453 when in the checkout to benefit. Don't forget if you spend £30 or $30 you get free shipping too.
Please continue to spread the word, and spread news of this offer. Please don't let up. It's been extraordinary, but we're not out of danger yet. Every penny goes into developing Salt's books and services. We want to start a new children's list, and offer more resources to teachers and schools. We want to extend our publishing in new areas including our translations programme, we want to offer you more free magazines online. We want to help develop more support for debuts with the enhancement of our Crashaw and Scott prizes. We're planning audio books, ebooks and new videos for you. We only want to move forward, to develop and expand what we do and deliver great books in new ways to you and yours.
We need your support throughout June. We'll try and organise more readings and promotions with our authors. Virtual book tours. More launches. We'll work with bookstores to bring you short story and poety evenings. Stick with us throughout June and we can do something astonishing. That's the power of Just One Book — we want you to be a part of it. Follow us on Twitter look for #SaltBooks and #JustOneBook. Join our Facebook Group.
And have a giggle at the vid, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdcTqXaOD2s
Oh, and one last special offer — Catherine Eisner’s magnificent crime novel, Sister Morphine for £7.50 plus P&P, simply enter coupon code EISNER in the UK checkout http://bit.ly/8rHDa
Watch out for more special offers throughout June.
Crossposted with Elizabeth Baines.
Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Alice Munro and the Nature of Fiction
No one will be surprised to hear that I am thrilled that yet another short-story writer has won a major award, the wonderful Alice Munro being awarded the International Man Booker. On Sunday the Observer ran a profile, and two of the things she is quoted as saying struck me particularly.
Firstly, she says: "I never have a problem with finding material. I wait for it to turn up and it always turns up. It's dealing with the material I'm inundated with that poses the problem." Now maybe by this she meant that there is just too much material to cover or to choose from (that word 'inundated' is probably a big clue), but I wonder if she also means this: that it's not finding material that's the problem for writers, but deciding how to process it. In other words, it's not the subject matter that is important so much as the way it's dealt with, the insights you bring to it, the language and forms which it gives rise to in a particular writer's hands. This last is an important point to make, it seems to me. We are in an age when books marketing tends to focus on subject matter alone, while it is the treatment which makes for great writing. It is one way in which a market-led publishing industry can indeed end up suppressing good books and silencing good writers.
Secondly, Munro says: "I have all these disconnected realities in my own life and I see them in other people's lives. That was one of the problems - why I couldn't write novels, I never saw things hanging together any too well." This really stopped me short. It seems to me any great novel nowadays must do exactly that, encompass the disconnected realities which characterize life in the 21st century. Maybe Munro is simply saying that she never wanted to to do this - after all, her short stories taken together do it beautifully - but I wonder if she is subscribing to a view of novels as (inappropriately) holistic, one which again lends itself to marketing and again can lead thus to the suppression of innovation and subtlety.
Firstly, she says: "I never have a problem with finding material. I wait for it to turn up and it always turns up. It's dealing with the material I'm inundated with that poses the problem." Now maybe by this she meant that there is just too much material to cover or to choose from (that word 'inundated' is probably a big clue), but I wonder if she also means this: that it's not finding material that's the problem for writers, but deciding how to process it. In other words, it's not the subject matter that is important so much as the way it's dealt with, the insights you bring to it, the language and forms which it gives rise to in a particular writer's hands. This last is an important point to make, it seems to me. We are in an age when books marketing tends to focus on subject matter alone, while it is the treatment which makes for great writing. It is one way in which a market-led publishing industry can indeed end up suppressing good books and silencing good writers.
Secondly, Munro says: "I have all these disconnected realities in my own life and I see them in other people's lives. That was one of the problems - why I couldn't write novels, I never saw things hanging together any too well." This really stopped me short. It seems to me any great novel nowadays must do exactly that, encompass the disconnected realities which characterize life in the 21st century. Maybe Munro is simply saying that she never wanted to to do this - after all, her short stories taken together do it beautifully - but I wonder if she is subscribing to a view of novels as (inappropriately) holistic, one which again lends itself to marketing and again can lead thus to the suppression of innovation and subtlety.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Just One Book: the Debate
Just One Book: latest
Here's Chris Hamilton-Emery's latest Facebook bulletin on the Just One Book campaign:
Sunday, May 31 2009
It's been impossible to think. Just over a week ago we were facing oblivion, the backlist would have sold on, but the business as a going concern was all over. I was job hunting. Stress had left me deaf. We were about to lose our home and it seemed everything had fallen off some precipice and was hurtling down into the frozen dark. We began cancelling the list and preparing for the worst. Nearly a decade of effort was being lost.
Then our viral campaign led to an extraordinary sequence of events. Facebook, Twitter and hundreds of blogs all covered the story of Salt's Just One Book offer. The media picked up on the story and suddenly over a 1,000 orders poured in, supporters arrived in virtual droves and the goodwill and great ideas became emotionally overwhelming; we had support from Foyles and Waterstone's in the UK, from independent bookstores around the globe, The Bookseller and The Guardian covered the story, the BBC wanted to cover us. The office changed from its usual focus on editorial, marketing and publicity to become a non-stop postal service, sending thousands of books off around the globe.
Alex Pryce had arrived to do a week's work experience as a Salt intern (part of our widening programme to support those wanting careers in literary publishing), what began as a project surrounding audio developments was swamped as she was drawn in to picking, packing and despatching order after order. Beside Alex, the Salt team grafted away. Charlotte and Tom, Jen and I, still haven't caught up with it all. But we're working hard, all day, all night, and still the orders are coming in.
Last week was half term, and most of my days were spent at home with the kids, sometimes reassuring them that there was going to be a future and that we would get paid at some point. I was spending as much time as I could helping make those sales. Just over a week later and we've now raised £24,000 or our £55,000 target. There's still some climb ahead, a big climb, but the enormous support of our friends and customers has bought us all time; it's all about time. What we hope most of all, is that we can keep our new customers, and that we've shown them that there's something wonderful and fulfilling about our list and our site, something exceptional about our authors.
I need to keep it all going, I need your support for one more month. So here's an offer for everyone and we hope more customers will come and join the campaign to buy just one book:A THIRD OFF ALL SALT TITLES THROUGHOUT JUNE
We're now giving you a huge 33% off ALL books till the end of June. Use the coupon code G3SRT453 when in the checkout to benefit. Don't forget if you spend £30 or $30 you get free shipping too.
Please continue to spread the word, and spread news of this offer. Please don't let up. It's been extraordinary, but we're not out of danger yet. Every penny goes into developing Salt's books and services. We want to start a new children's list, and offer more resources to teachers and schools. We want to extend our publishing in new areas including our translations programme, we want to offer you more free magazines online. We want to help develop more support for debuts with the enhancement of our Crashaw and Scott prizes. We're planning audio books, ebooks and new videos for you. We only want to move forward, to develop and expand what we do and deliver great books in new ways to you and yours.
We need your support throughout June. We'll try and organise more readings and promotions with our authors. Virtual book tours. More launches. We'll work with bookstores to bring you short story and poety evenings. Stick with us throughout June and we can do something astonishing. That's the power of Just One Book — we want you to be a part of it. Follow us on Twitter look for #SaltBooks and #JustOneBook. Join our Facebook Group.
And have a giggle at the vid, too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdcTqXaOD2s
Oh, and one last special offer — Catherine Eisner’s magnificent crime novel, Sister Morphine for £7.50 plus P&P, simply enter coupon code EISNER in the UK checkout http://bit.ly/8rHDa
Watch out for more special offers throughout June.
Thank you.
Chris
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
